Rise of the Kasai now offline
Which is unfortunate, but then we prefer to kill people when there are no witnesses anyway.
Sony's American arm has confirmed (via sign language, presumably) that Rise of the Kasai, its forthcoming prequel to oft-underrated brutal sneak-and-kill-'em-up The Mark of Kri, will not feature an online co-operative mode as had previously been planned.
The game, which is being developed by Bottle Rocket, tells the tale of Rau, hero of the first game, and his sister Tati, and the idea had been to have a pair of players controlling them in unison over PS2 Online. But, for whatever reason (and Sony isn't being specific), that's no longer the case.
Offline, players will be able to control one of the two characters with the other falling under the control of the AI, which is a risky strategy given the difficulty most people have developing convincing buddy AI, but we're still hopeful.
The original Mark of Kri, if you never played it (and given that it sold less than 2,000 copies in the UK, we reckon very few of you did) was noteworthy for featuring some very nice and Disney-esque cartoon visuals and using them to show people being smashed against walls to have their bones crushed. Fans of Tenchu and Manhunt style sneak-and-slaughter-'em-ups might want to keep an eye on Rise of the Kasai; although obviously they'll no longer be able to do so in teams of two.
For the record, Rise of the Kasai is still due out in the US in Q1 of next year, but there's no word on a European release date at this stage.