Roses? Played out. Champagne? Too bubbly. Chocolate? A risky proposition. If you really want to make your significant other swoon this Valentine’s Day, grab a couple of controllers and play some games you can both enjoy. Sure, you could choose to pound your mate’s face in the Gladiator Duel in Sports Champions. But you know that’s a battle you can’t ultimately win — any victories now are always paid back with dish-washing duty later. Let’s make a pledge: This year, it’s about nest feathering, not neck-snapping.

Here are some cooperative-focused classics that should brighten up the boudoire tonight, plus some Trophy suggestions to keep things nice and friendly. We also want to hear from you — what games do you like to play with your main squeeze? Be sure to fill in the gaps in the comments.

PixelJunk Monsters
This is the quintessential couples game. PixelJunk Monsters’ two-player cooperative mode is legendary for transforming non-gamers into digital devotees in just a few minutes. If your significant other struggles with the tower defense basics, have him focus on upgrading emplacements and collecting gold while you focus on the strategy. A guaranteed good time for all.

Trophies to shoot for: “Construction Expert” (Build 10 towers in less than 30 seconds upon entering a stage), “Money Grubber” (Clear a stage without losing a single coin)

LittleBigPlanet 2
For starters, Sackboy is freakin’ adorable. Second, the platforming gameplay is second nature to many inexperienced gamers. If your mate has a creative bent, you might also consider building a custom level together — Create mode supports multiple simultaneous users. Or just pick one of over 3.6 million levels and play that — perhaps an enterprising user has already created a good Valentine’s Day-themed level?

Trophies to shoot for: “Complete Story Mode” (Complete the main path of the story mode), “Multiplier 5x” (Score a 5x multiplier in a Story level); “Community Spirit” (Publish a level to the community)

Dead Nation
The couple that slays together, stays together. This is a perfect Valentine’s Day choice for a mate who’s handy with an SMG and a melee attack, as you’ll need some tight teamwork to blast the countless hordes of the undead that infest the sprawling urban environments. Protip: If your significant other isn’t much of a gamer, go with the easiest “Brain Dead” setting to avoid heartbreak.

Trophies to shoot for: “Teamwork” (Complete a mission in co-op mode on any difficulty), “Double the Action” (Complete Campaign mode in co-op Mode)

PixelJunk Shooter
Despite its dual-stick shooting and retro stylings, PixelJunk Shooter is well tolerated by non-gaming significant others. Exploration is emphasized over action, and creative solutions are more important than a quick trigger finger. There are plenty of opportunities for teamwork, too, whether it’s winching your partner away from an erupting volcano or collaborating on hunting those all-important diamonds.

Trophies to shoot for: “Cave Cleaner” (Kill over 100 enemies)

The Beatles: Rock Band
Fab Four? More like Terrific Two. The Beatles: Rock Band is a good option for a non-gaming significant other. If playing the plastic axe or drums is too demanding (or embarrassing), offer up vocal duties. Who doesn’t know the words to a few Beatles songs? I wanna hold your haaaaaaand…

Trophies to shoot for: “Don’t Let Me Down” (Save a bandmate from failing), “Shake It Up, Baby!” (Use Beatlemania at least 5 times in a single song using either Bass or Guitar), “Let’s Get Some Levels” (Calibrate your system for the optimal experience)

Borderlands
An ideal choice for the hardcore shooter couple. Borderlands’ heavy co-op focus works nicely in splitscreen, and infighting will be rare as long as you agree to some ground rules on revives and sharing loot. In fact, the only risk here is that you’ll grind for loot and XP for so long that you won’t leave any time for romance.

Trophies to shoot for: “Group LF Header” (Rescue a groupmate from death in a co-op game), “There’s No ‘I’ In “Team” (Complete 15 missions in co-op), “United We Stand” (Defeat the Rakk Hive, the Vault Boss, Sledge, Krom, or Flynt in a co-op game)

Dead Space: Extraction
Some couples like their Valentine’s Day hot. Others prefer the cold vacuum of outer space, and that’s where this suspenseful sci-fi shooter fits in. Armed with a pair of PlayStation Move motion controllers, you and your main squeeze will nip and tuck the loathsome Necromorph with surgical precision. You’ll find this co-op gem lurking on your Dead Space 2: Limited Edition Blu-ray Disc; it’s also available separately on PSN.

Trophies to shoot for: “Twice The Firepower” (Play cooperatively with a second player), “A Star is Born” (Complete any level with a 5 star rating)

Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game
Deceptively tough despite the ultra-cute graphics, this 2D PSN beat-em-up is one where having a co-op partner or three will pay off in spades. You’ll want to exploit the tag-team attacks and revives as much as possible. And if the going gets tough, go ahead and steal a life — we won’t tell.

Trophies to shoot for: “The Power Of Friendship” (In a multiplayer game, reanimate another player at least 25 times), “Armed And Dangerous” (Defeat at least 200 enemies using interactive objects)

Time Crisis: Razing Storm
Gaming scholars have long known that lightgun-style shooters are an ideal choice for casual-gaming partners, and Time Crisis: Razing Storm is a natural if you’re packing two PlayStation Moves. The Arcade mode is packed with humongous action set pieces, screen-filling boss battles, and loads of secrets. Don’t overlook the Time Crisis 4 and DeadStorm Pirates bonus games, either.

Trophies to shoot for: “Arcade Master” (Clear Arcade Mode Ranking Play), “Synchronized Shooting” (Reach a Teamwork Level of 100% in DeadStorm Pirates), “Sharpshooter” (Obtain a ‘Nice Combination!’ rating 100 times in DeadStorm Pirates)

We’re happy to announce that today, PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe makes its grand debut outside the PlayStation Network! Yes, that’s right, due to popular request from you, the fans, we have twisted Sony’s arm to release the game on UMD in North America. Even better, we have squeezed the price down to just $9.99 which is an *amazing* value! Think about it: three islands and over 45 stages to play. As Monsters fans know, that means quite literally hundreds and hundreds of hours of incredible gameplay…every minute as addicting and fun as the last.

On top of that, full online play is supported. You can play cooperatively with anyone in the world, or just hang out in the chat rooms and watch the sports-like “ticker-tape” commentary of existing games run by. It’s a very cool new feature, and we hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

And of course, all the money we make from Monsters is being funneled into future PixelJunk games (we have some crazy stuff in store for you!), so that’s an even greater incentive to jump to your local game retailer right now. Buy it for yourself, buy it for your family, buy it for your friends. :-)

For those that don’t already know, starting April 27th, the UMD version of PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe for PSP will be available at your local retail outlets for just $9.99! This is by far the best deal ever offered for any UMD title.

So for those that haven’t picked up PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe for their PSP, there’s no better time than now to pre-order your copy at your local retailer. At $9.99, don’t be surprised if your local retailer will be sold out on April 27th.

So, to recap for those who haven’t seen the various blogged reports on it, PixelJunk Racers 2nd Lap is a bit of a fan service really – we went back to the original Racers and added Trophies, but we didn’t want to just stop there (just adding the bare minimum isn’t really what we do). So we added a whole new feature – ghost attack. What this does is record how you played whenever you register a new score on the high score tables, so anyone else in the world (including your friends of course) can play against you, trying to best your score.

On top of that we made the single-player tournament a little easier to complete, so you can open up the ghost attack and various party modes even more quickly (and of course gain those Trophies more easily too!).

Just to go on the record – this game *isn’t* really a racing game. It’s as much a racing game as, say, Rally-X was back in the day, really. It is a slot-car based arcade game with lots of fun, wacky modes and ideas in it, and as a result is excellent fun if you get a few people round. And if you can’t get a few people around, the ghost mode opens up a ton of competition with your friends on the ‘net.

Now that I’ve covered off on 2nd Lap, I’m also here to deliver more news to the PixelJunk fans out there. This Spring, we will also be making PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe available on UMD! So, for those of you who prefer to have a hard copy of one of your favorite games … you are in luck. The UMD version of PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe will be available at participating retail outlets beginning April 27 for $19.99.

For more information on the PixelJunk franchise, please check out our blog posts here and here. Continue to check back in with us for more information on 2nd Lap and everything PixelJunk here on the PS Blog!

We’ve been holding on to this video interview with SCEE‘s Jem Alexander and I until we were ready to announce PixelJunk Shooter‘s release date. With that out of the way, hit “play” below:

I was a bit tired during that interview, which is my excuse for the over-use of the adjective “cool” (the game *is* cool though! *Very* cool cool indeed)! Here’s the story behind that:

The time was 12am midnight and it was a warm early Autumn night and my heavily loaded car was waiting for me to drive it from Kyoto to Tokyo (estimated 8 hour drive).  This was the start of our journey to the Tokyo Game Show to set up our very own booth for the first time ever.  To cut costs wherever we could, I decided I would drive overnight, lugging the heavier stuff (big TVs, free give-aways, PS3s etc) and saving on train tickets too (by including a couple of Q-Gamers in the drive too).  The car was ram-packed full and weighed heavily down!  Luckily it is a Murano so fairly large and sturdy in the first place, but it’s a wonder the police didn’t pull us over during our trip.
 

 
In Japan the freeways aren’t “free” but recently there is this “ETC” deal which lets you drive on most of them for a single charge of ten bucks or so. Oh and some stretches of road are only 2 lanes (because of the mountainous nature of the country), so as you can imagine there were a few bottlenecks on the way, and one accident that had occurred only a few minutes before we passed it near Mt. Fuji just as it was getting light, that wasn’t the greatest thing to see in the wee hours!  We arrived in Tokyo safe and sound though!
 
Driving through Tokyo on the express way is an interesting experience. You are in Shibuya and below is the ubiquitous maze of tiny streets but you are oblivious to all that as the express way is up above it all in a world of its own, lined by tall buildings.  One minute you are in Shibuya, and the next Roppongi, then you are passing Tokyo Tower and driving over the rainbow bridge, the speed at which it all flies by makes Tokyo seem so small! (It isn’t of course, not by a long shot).
 

 
We arrived 10 minutes later in Makuhari Messe where TGS is always held, grabbed a quick Denny’s breakfast as it was the only place open at 7am and then drove to the conference center.  They allowed us to drive right into the hall and park the car next to our half-finished booth (we employed a company to set up the walls and large prints).  It took us the rest of the day to set everything up, including DIY anti-theft locks for the PS3 controllers! (The problem with Bluetooth controllers is that people can easily walk away with them, and we didn’t want that to happen!)  Once everything was finished it really looked great for such a small booth!  We then went and got some much needed sleep because by that point we were totally knackered!!
 

I might as well use this blog entry as an excuse to talk a little bit about the response last month’s release of PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe has been getting – it has been awesome!  Metacritic currently has us at 88 and we’re in the top 10 of all-time best PSP games, which is absolutely incredible for us!  It seems most people are playing the game in offline 1p mode (which of course is engrossing to the extreme), but everyone should definitely try out the online play. It’s a lot of fun and there are lots of like-minded Monsters fans out there to “parlay” and boogie on down with.  It’s also surprisingly fun to simply hang out in a one of the lobbies and watch the blow-by-blow tickertape commentaries of other people’s games. Remember you don’t need a PSPgo to play Monsters Deluxe, it works fine on any PSP!  That’s something we’ve had a lot of mails about.
 
Anyway, I’ll sign off here and write up another blog once Shooter is out!  Remember to post comments!

When the convention center at Makuhari Messe opened its doors, our first meeting was with Q-Games’ Dylan Cuthbert. As is customary with this Kyoto-based team, every time you see them, they’re showing something new. We’ll be reporting on some new PixelJunk Shooter level reveals soon, but first -PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe is complete and ready to roll out this week (October 1) on PSP.

In this interview featuring new footage, Dylan details the new island, new trap tower, new enemies, and online play.

Hey PixelJunk fans,

Well, Q-Games has been busy again, and not just on PixelJunk. You may have noticed some new additions to the PlayStation 3′s XMB (Xross Media Bar) with the latest firmware update to version 3.00.

Well, we’re behind the “star dust” and if you haven’t noticed it yet, you’re in for a nice surprise. We wanted to implement something like the beginning of the movie Gattaca but they wouldn’t let us go quite that far, so we settled on the subtle but pretty dust effect you can see now. If you shake the Wireless Controller, you can move them about a bit, as if they are being carried by eddies in the wind.

Also, there are these new things called Dynamic Themes, and we’re proud to say that this is a system we were involved in developing. Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) wanted to spice up the background a bit and static pictures just didn’t cut the mustard. So we collaborated with them to make a system where developers can display what they want and animate and move them around. This definitely adds a little life to the PS3′s background so be sure to try it out.

In fact, go ahead and download our PixelJunk Monsters Dynamic Theme which is now available for $2.99 on the PlayStation Store. Soon you’ll have the little Tikiman running around amongst the trees behind whatever it is you are doing in the XMB. This is actually the very first theme ever made with the system because we used it to test out the features!

So go for it and grab a bit of PS3 history for yourself.

Oh and one more thing…PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe is coming to PSP very soon featuring a brand new island, more maps, new monsters & towers. We’ll have more info on that later!

What’s not on show at E3 however, is the internet co-op play we have implemented so I thought I’d spend a little time explaining what we have implemented as it is pretty cool.

To begin with, in order to meet up with friends (or strangers) you need some kind of lobby or chat room system so we have implemented that – you can create rooms freely, bookmark rooms to go back to easily, set up your preferences for what maps you want to play so people can search for your room more easily etc., all the standard stuff. There is a cross-translated menu for saying simple things no matter what language the other player understands and of course you can type messages in freely. Each room can have up to 8 players in it.

However, we’ve gone a little bit further with a feature we haven’t seen implemented before; when two people start up a co-op game a little running “ticker tape commentary” starts scrolling across the top of the chat window, so the people who aren’t playing yet can read a blow by blow account of what the two players are up to in their game. It’s surprisingly entertaining to watch while you are waiting for someone to start up a game with you. I’m hoping this gives the chat rooms a warmer, more community-like feel so people will enjoy just hanging out in their favourite rooms.

Within the game itself, you can talk to your partner-in-crime by using a new ring menu that gives you a set of simple icons you can string together that are surprisingly effective at conveying what you want your friend to do. It’s a lot of fun running around and directing the other player while you dance on towers.

I’m not sure when it will be going on sale, but when it comes out this game is a must-have for all law-abiding PSP owners everywhere, it’s dangerously addictive and now it has gone mobile you can play it everywhere!

We pulled out all the stops and decided to make this the ultimate version of PJ Monsters, so we didn’t just add a new island, we’ve gone through and added new monsters, new towers, and a whole new island. On top of that we’ve added loads of goodies, concept art, and a bunch of new tunes and even some art videos from Otograph. We’ve basically gone and packed it with everything we could possibly think of, so we are calling the game PixelJunk Monsters DELUXE!

The original islands are also in there but they have been “remixed” to include the newer types of monsters and get you to use the newer towers. I’ll write another blog entry in a short while where I’ll go through the new towers and their abilities, but they are a lot of fun to use and add a whole new layer of strategy to the game.

Oh… on a final note, we’ll be supporting WiFi multiplayer, so you can play with other people on their PSPs. There are some cool ideas in this and a fun little icon language to let you talk to each other while playing but just this alone requires an entire blog entry so I’ll come back later with more details and pictures of how it will all work.

Thanks to all the PixelJunk fans for their support, it keeps us motivated!

The patch will be releasing VERY soon, with Japan getting the first patch release on October 23. If all goes well with final testing, you will see the patch in SCEA and SCEE territories on October 30. If there are any delays to the above mentioned dates, we will be sure to update the blog to let you know about it, so stay tuned!

The Q-Games team has been hard at work on the PixelJunk Monsters patch and has packed a TON of great features into this great game. I’ll give you a quick breakdown of some of the new features you will expect to see:

Game Difficulty settings
You can now choose between three different difficulties of gameplay! There is a Casual mode, the Regular/Ranked mode, and Hard-core mode. The great news here is that you can use any combination of difficulties to complete your progress through the islands! Is there one particular map that’s too hard? Try it in Casual mode. If you Rainbow the level, that rainbow counts and will remain on the map no matter what difficulty the other rainbows were achieved at! Only the Regular difficulty will register on the ranking boards, though.

Tower Menu selection
You can now set the default menu to appear when selecting a tower! How many times have you sold off a tower and run over to another tower to quickly upgrade it and accidentally sell it by mistake? I know I’ve done that many, many times. Now you can choose which option appears as the default, instead of the last action you selected.

Tower Balancing
Those of you who have purchased Encore know about the reduced cost on the Ice Tower, and balanced functionality of the Tesla tower. This patch applies those changes to BOTH islands, not just the Encore island.

Video Recording / YouTube Support
Ever since Q-Games included this feature into PixelJunk Eden, we knew it needed to be in Monsters as well. You will be able to record up to 10 minutes of gameplay and upload it directly to your YouTube account, or send it to your video folder on your PS3’s XMB.

XMB Custom Soundtrack Support
You can now make your own custom soundtrack to listen to as you play PixelJunk Monsters and Encore! I’ve personally been enjoying listening to the PixelJunk Eden soundtrack while I play Monsters, as well as listening to the PixelJunk Monsters soundtrack within Eden! It’s great how well those fantastic soundtracks work in other games.

With these features being added, and several other small bugs being fixed in the game, we think you’ll have a great time playing PixelJunk Monsters and Encore all over again.

I think that’s about it … But it feels like I’m missing something … Hmm … I can’t quite put my finger on what I might be forgetting. Wait a minute … I remember now …

TROPHIES
Trophies are now added for both PixelJunk Monsters and Encore. We weren’t able to retroactively apply Trophies to the previously played data, but Q-Games didn’t want to force people to play everything all over again. They came up with a great idea by creating Trophy Challenges. These challenges have specific maps with set rules or objectives that will reward you with Trophies if you complete them properly.

Recently, Jeff Rubenstein got to visit Q-Games in Kyoto (the lucky so-and-so) and shot an interview with Dylan to talk more about the patch for PixelJunk Monsters. Check it out …