Riddled with Rumors: With exclusive info on The Beatles: All You Need Is Blood

Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of Riddled with Rumors, your Sunday dose of speculation and gossip-mongering. As always, we have another collection of barely-researched claims to post which exist only to drive pageviews and give us something easy to write about.

As a special treat this week my sources have done some digging and discovered yet more juicy information on Harmonix’s Beatles game, which we revealed last week as The Beatles: All You Need Is Blood. We already know the premise –John Lennon survived his assassination attempt and reformed The Beatles as a secret UN group — but now we have further plot, gameplay and multiplayer details. Just don’t tell anybody because I am breaking ten million NDAs with this stuff and MTV could kill my family. 

Hit the jump and prepare to, once again, be Riddled with Rumors.

– Remember that so-called “fake” rumor about Microsoft working on a new SKU called the Xbox Pure? Well, according to my anonymous friend at MS, there IS a console in the works that goes by the name of Xbox Pure. Apparently the similarity between the infamous joke rumor and the new Xbox model is a complete coincidence, as the two occurred independently. We’ll be keeping an eye on this one.

– We’ve been hearing tales of a secret Zombie Mode in Left 4 Dead. Details are sketchy but we feel that it will be a multiplayer option. Valve has refused to confirm or deny anything, but there are strong clues in L4D‘s advertising that zombies will be involved.

– There is word that Traveler’s Tales’ next title in the wildly popular LEGO series will be LEGO Lolita.

– According our sources in Activision, plans for Guitar Hero: Nirvana were scrapped when it was suggested that the combination of rhythm action and lightgun gameplay was in extremely poor taste.

– Rumor has it that Gears of War 2 creator Cliff Bleszinski is making a jump from videogames to movies. The Hollywood feel of the Gears series make this a natural move for the Epic designer, and he is apparently excited to bring the same style that makes his games popular and use it to create gripping film. According to reports, he will be writing the sequel to Memoirs of a Geisha, which he feels has a very “Gears-like” quality to its mythos.

– A leak from Nintendo’s FTP seems to hint that they are working on their very own answer to Microsoft’s popular “avatars.” Very much like avatars, Nintendo could soon allow you the opportunity to create your own characters for use in games. It looks like Microsoft’s huge share of the emerging “casual” demographic has caught the attention of the traditionally hardcore Nintendo.

– We hear strong word of an Assassin’s Creed sequel that is set in the Spanish Conquistador period. This goes hand-in-hand with the other rumor that it will be set in 1978, the year Grease cemented John Travolta’s status as a superstar. 

– Apparently, Capcom has opened a brand new internal studio. This studio’s talents are being put to use exclusively to keep remaking Resident Evil.

– We’ve heard through the grapevine that Silicon Knights’ Denis Dyack is currently writing a musical stageplay. From what we’ve been told, this new opus is titled, “The Man Who Sung For Heaven,” and is about a man called Benis Byack who has been given a task by God to create the world’s most beautiful song. The story revolves around how weak-minded villagers are cynical of Byack’s mission, and his struggles to make believers of his peers. In the final scene, Benis Byack sings his song and the people drop to their knees, weeping openly and remarking about how wrong they were, and how their empty souls are now filled with one man’s vision. There will be elements of Norse mythology.

– As promised, here are the exclusive details for The Beatles: All You Need Is Blood:

• The game’s opening level takes place moments after Lennon is shot. In AYNIB‘s alternate universe, Lennon actually survives, and you have to crawl to the nearest health pack. You’ll find Mark Chapman’s discarded gun and chase him through a winding sewer before he escapes via a Griffon-Class attack helicopter.
• You’ll find out that Chapman is a pawn for a shadowy underground organization who are devoted to perpetuating war, something they believe is necessary to keep mankind strong. Their assassination attempt was to stop Lennon’s quest for world peace.
• One by one you will recruit each member of The Beatles until you have a four-man squad.
• You only play as Lennon in the single-player campaign, but you will need to use the skills of the whole team for a variety of environmental missions. For instance, Paul McCartney can reach higher places with his wings, while George Harrison can summon water with a weeping guitar. As ever, details are scarce on what it is Ringo Starr can actually do.
• The gameplay is that of a traditional squad-based shooter with a cover mechanic.
• Multiplayer will support free-for-all, team deathmatch and a capture-the-flag scenario. Up to four teams of four can compete in 16-player matches. In addition to The Beatles, other playable teams will include The Kings, The Supremes and Oasis.

– The Wii version of Sonic Unleashed may hit a delay, as apparently the development team can’t decide whether it wants minigames where you waggle the remote up and down, or minigames where you waggle the remote left and right.

– Persisting rumors that Jack Tretton is a follower of the occult have been given further fuel today by suggestions that he has employed a live octopus to work as his personal assistant. According to an insider report, SCEA employees are not permitted to look directly at the octopus, nor may they show their back to the octopus. The octopus is allegedly treated as a high-ranking executive within Sony, and the octopus may surf the Internet for its own personal use. The octopus is also allowed into the Home beta.

– We’ve heard that Capcom is very interested in a Capcom vs. Congo game. A variety of classic Capcom characters will go up against the super-powered apes from the 1995 movie Congo.

And that’s it for another week. Remember, if you disagree with any of these rumors, then you clearly do not understand the videogame industry. We’ll be back next week with yet around Riddled with Rumors. Which ones will come true in the meantime? Why, all of them, of course.

Because they are true.