Sony E3 Press Conference Impressions.

Well, after this certain announcement I said I didn't need a PS3 anymore but maybe...just maybe....I was wrong. When you present what's sure to be a pretty boring financial rundown using Little Big Planet you know you're on to a winner.

Well...maybe.

To be honest I was a bit bored during most of the press conference, this this may be because they chose to concentrate a lot on other media content for the PS3. They also talked about the PS2 - which was a little surprising but Sony thinks it still has life left in it - and the PSP.

Resistance 2

A gameplay demo was shown with some big ass monster smashing up the building the player was running around in. It looks...well...average. I didn't play the first Resistance so I can't comment on it all that much but it didn't really wow me. The 8 player online co-op and 60 player online multiplayer matches, however, does sound amazingly cool.

Anyone played the original Resistance multiplayer? Let me know if it's any good.

Little Big Planet

As I said earlier Little Big Planet was used to create an interactive graph for the presentation. That very fact just shows how customisable LBP is and if anything would get me to buy a PS3 it would be this.

I can't wait to see some of the creations people make with this game. It's all about user-generated content these days.

Playstation Network (PSN)

PSN now has over 180 million downloads under its belt so there's no question over whether or not people are taking advantage of it. Sony talked a lot about content for PSN and it seems to be a pretty big deal in making the PS3 more of a general media device rather than just a games console.

Like Microsoft they've got deals with some of the big movie studios (such as MGM, Fox and - obviously - Sony Pictures) and the resulting movies should be available right now (in the US anyway). TV shows will be $1.99 per episode while movie rentals will be $2.99-5.99 and $9.99-14.99 for purchases. You don't have to wait for the entire TV show or movie to download as progressive downloading will allow you to watch while you download. Any TV or movie downloads can also be copied over to your PSP so you can watch your content on the move. Sounds good huh? Well I wish Europe would have as much content.

More content comes from Gran Turismo TV which lets you watch content from motoring shows around the world online. Since this includes the excellent Top Gear it's a pretty amazing line-up of content.

Life with Playstation will also be hitting soon, which will deliver real-time news straight to your PS3. I assume this is a little like the Wii News channel.

Finally Ratchett and Clank: Quest for Booty will be released as a downloadble game on PSN. It's going to offer around 3-4 hours of gameplay but apparently have all the humor and action of a normal Ratchett and Clank game.

Some more PSN games:

Crash Commando Fat Princess Flower Pain: Amusement Park Siren: Blood Curse Ragdoll and Kung-fu: Fists of Plastic Pixeljunk Eden

Sony thinks it's going to be the 'ultimate social experience'!

Playstation Home


There wasn't much of Home shown but it will be available to try at E3 so they'll be more information coming out soon. One thing it did show, however, is the unique game spaces in Home that have environments modeled after the settings of each respective game. You can also jump straight into the game from these environments.

Three of the spaces shown were Warhawk, Uncharted: Drakes Fortune and Resistance 2.

PSP.

Resistance Retribution (a short of filler between Resistance: Fall of Man and Resistance 2), which is a third-person game, will be coming out for the PSP in Spring 2009. I'd like to say that i looks pretty decent for a PSP games but it's pointless because I know that PSP games can look damn good and this one is no exception. It's by the same guys who did the Syphon Filter games so I high hopes for it.

Other games include Patapon 2, Loco Roco 2, Lego Batman, Super Stardust: Portable, Valkyria Chronicles and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed amongst others.

More More More!

Apparently it's the year of the PS3!

DC Universe (an MMO)
Infamous (looks amazing. An anti-hero/superhero game in which you use electricity in a free roaming city)
Motorstorm: Pacific Rift
Quantam of Solace (Bond)
Ghostbusters Soulcalibur IV
God of War 3
The Agency (a spy MMO)
Killzone 2
Buzz Quiz TV
Singstar
Guitar Hero: World Tour
NBA 09: The Inside
Resident Evil 5
Mirror's Edge
Naruto: Ultimate Ninga Storm
Socom: Confrontation

Woah, there's a lot of games in this post.

Finally MAG (Massive Action Game...what an original name!) was unveiled. This game is a bit like Planetside as it allows massive battles of up to 256 players. To avoid massive confusion in these battles the game is squad-based allowing squads of 8 players each. This is combined with character growth (maybe a bit like Battlefield and Call of Duty 4) all taking place in one world.

That's it for the press conferences. I'll be posting more news from E3 in it's remaining two days.

New GTAIV Site Now Live!

Just a quick heads-up that the upcoming Grand Theft Auto IV now has it's own fully fledged flash-based site.

Flash-based annoyance aside there's a tonne of new images and a few videos showing off the new environment and it's characters. There's also a map of Liberty City (where you can click on points of interest) which is likely the final design.

It's good to see some new stuff and it only gets me even more excited for the game. Roll on April!

Welcome to Liberty City. - Rockstar (Via Kotaku)

Sony Pays Its Bills? Not Quite!

To kick off my return to video game blogging (I've still been blogging elsewhere) shall we having something odd? Here we go then!

Just when you thought Sony had gone far enough with it's various marketing campaigns they go and do something you just never expected. This time around Sony has gone and put a PS3 kiosk inside a bank. Yup, you heard me right (or rather read), a bank!



Located in Shinhan Bank, Seoul, Sony Computer Entertainment Korea (SCEK) set-up something called 'The Bank Zone' intended for bank customers to take part in the PS3 experience (which is about two decent games).

Ok, so banks can be busy and extremely boring places but you go to pay your bills, and deposit bills - amongst other boring things - then you get out of their as fast as possible. I suppose it makes sense in a way as the Koreans are gaming mad but I know I don't go to the bank to try out a PS3 - I do it in a video game store.

I don't think we'll ever see this type of thing in the UK (or the USA) simply because people don't really want to play video games in a bank. If we want to try out a PS3 we head to a video game store or somewhere like HMV. It would be amusing to see a bank flooded by teenagers who come in solely to horde the PS3 kiosk for their own (like the chavs do in GAME) whilst tired and frustrated bank staff try to explain the benefits of a mortgage. To be fair it would give the children something to do whilst their parents pay the bills.

One question still remains though; 'Why would you want to spend anymore time than is needed inside a bank?'

Sony PS3 to join with a cinema and bank - AVING USA

E307: My Thoughts on the Three Press Conferences.

E3 may not be as big as it used to be - or as flashy - but it's still an important date in the game industries calendar. Although the extravagant booths and the scantly clad booth babes may not be a part of E3 anymore the press conferences held by Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft are still very much a highlight. After watching all three conferences I've come to the conclusion that each console has something unique and amazing to offer us all. At last I'm genuinely excited about this new generation of gaming.

If I had the money I'd own all three consoles but, for now, I think it'll have to be the 360 (mostly because I can hook it up to my monitor to get HD visuals without having to splash out on a new TV).

Microsoft.



Every year I'm baffled by Microsoft's press conference. Not by what's on offer but by their insistence to hire people who'll sit in the audience whooping and hollering after every soundbite, video and new piece of information. If a company is offering genuinely exciting products then the journalists and general public don't need a few over-the-top antics to become interested.

The press conference opened with a band playing the theme from Halo, because we all know that Microsoft can't do anything without mentioning Halo (to be fair though the press conferences are all about promoting the things that are making them money). As with every E3 press conference, however, there's always something that makes you cringe. This time it was Peter Moore playing Rock Band with Harmonix and trying to sing. Still, the game looks amazingly cool even if I ashamedly admit I've not played Guitar Hero yet.

I've been planning to get an Xbox 360 for a while now but lack of money has proved otherwise. One of the main reasons I want to get a 360 is because I'm deeply interested in Mass Effect. As expected it looks absolutely gorgeous. I like RPG's that don't follow the 'normal' RPG formula in that you can shoot someone in the face without all the bother of statistics. It's also coming out in November so I best get a 360 soon.

A tonne of trailers were also shown, some of which you may have already seen (such as GTA IV). Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is looking nice, but I always have been a bit of a Call of Duty fan. It seems the popular Call of Duty formula has translated well into the modern era (see charlieoscardelta.com for more details). It was annoying that no new footage of GTA IV was shown (they just showed the previous two trailers) but I expect we'll see some new footage soon enough. Microsoft seem to fapping over the additional content Rockstar will exclusively provide to the 360.

Assassin's Creed is also a game I'm looking forward to and a new real-time demo was shown during the press conference. I'm really loving the interaction with pedestrians (if you can call them that) and the free running.

I think I'm missed something....oh yes, that mostly unknown game called Halo 3. It's not all that important because the game itself isn't very popular (wink wink) but a new trailer was shown. Curiously it was a live action trailer that left many disappointed (probably connected to the Halo movie) . A new Halo 3 360 was also confirmed and shown, which also includes a 20GB drive. Just to be annoying another Halo 3 trailer was shown before the conference ended.

Obviously you can tell I'm not a massive Halo fan, but I always did think it was a bit overrated. Anyway, overall the conference was nothing special. Plenty of gameplay but nothing we didn't already know or anticipate.

Nintendo.


Some have said that the Nintendo press conference was disappointing but I both enjoyed it and thought it showed a lot of new innovation off. Granted, some of it we've known about for a while but it never hurts to get new details - does it?

Nintendo showed small films throughout the press conference showing how their innovation had been received in the media, especially the Wii-mote. You can't blame Nintendo for emphasising how popular the Wii has become and, if it were any other company, I'd be saying it can get tiresome. However, Nintendo has always prized itself on originality and innovation and they hardly ever (Virtual Boy excepted) fail to deliver. So, in my eyes, they're allowed to bask in their glory.

I was surprised when Reggie revealed 69% of industry growth this year came from the sale of Nintendo products. I realise that the DS and Wii are selling by the bucket loads but 69% seems like a bit of an overblown statistic to me.

The new Wii Zapper design was shown next, looking a bit more futuristic than it's earlier prototype and also a bit like a sub-machine gun. To be fair it's nothing new and it's getting more and more like the Wii is something you'd play in an arcade. Ignoring it's b-movie style name the price point, at $19.99 for North America, is very pleasing.

More games were talked about and shown off (such as Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, Metroid Prime 3 and that Mario and Sonic Olympics game that millions of people are looking forward to...) but I'm not going to concentrate on those because the Wii Fit is really something worth talking about. A new 'controller' (like a square board) is placed on the ground and you stand on the board doing the various exercises while the 'controller' picks up your movements. Various moves include push-ups, step aerobics, one-legged stretches, sideways twists and even heading footballs. More than 40 different exercises will keep you from getting fat. There's been various 'gimmicks' in the past that say we can use video games to exercise but I really see people (including myself) using this to exercise, mostly those who don't go to the gym though.

Nintendo always aim to please and I don't think they've let us down this time. Some said that the appeal of the Wii would quickly wear off but Nintendo are making sure that new innovative and fun additions keep people interested.

Sony.


I've always been a bit of a Sony guy (after my good old Sega consoles, of course) but the Playstation 3 didn't really interest me at first. These days, however, the PS3 has far more on offer than what was previously touted.

A big highlight for me is LittleBigPlanet. I prefer PC games usually because user generated content (such as mod's and new levels) plays a large part in a games community. User generated content for consoles has been a long time coming and now the three consoles of the infrastructure to support it then I think it's time it's rolled out in a number of games. LittleBigPlanet is exciting because it keeps us gamers hooked by allowing us to create our own content. A games lifespan can greatly increase if the power of creating new content is put in the players hands. I'm glad and excited that Sony has begun to recognise this.

Speaking of user generated content Playstation Home (Sony's 'social network/Second Life lookalike') was constantly emphasised, with Harrison and others speaking from it. You can always guarantee a bit of cheesiness at E3 press conferences and Sony didn't fail to deliver
(such as Chewbacca presenting the new white PSP design with Darth Vader's face on it) but Home is looking pretty nifty, even if I haven't really figured out it's purpose. I do like the ability to upload pictures taken on a mobile phone straight into Home, however.

The new PSP doesn't really look much different. Sure, it's lighter and a bit thinner but the re-design is nothing as drastic as the DS Lite was to the original DS. There's a new video output feature which allows you to watch videos and play PSP games on a TV screen. I don't think this is a good enough reason to buy the new PSP if you already have one though.

Some games that caught my eye include the incredibly tough looking puzzle-game Echo Chrome, Warhawk, a dark looking game called Infamous, and a new apparently real-time trailer of MGS4.

Killzone 2 was left to the end and, well, it was obvious why. Killzone 2 looks to be Sony's killer ap at the moment and, let's face it, it was going to be hard to regain people's confidence after the travesty that was the original trailer. I'm pleased to say that it's looking almost as good as the original trailer (see the two compared here). A Halo killer? It annoys me when people say that. The two games are vastly different so comparing the two is pretty pointless. Halo is a far more colourful game while Killzone 2 does look overly dark.

There's still a lot of things that Sony need to do in order to make me want to buy a PS3, and the PS3 also needs to get a lot more exclusive games. Still, my confidence in Sony has risen a bit, but I think I'll give it another year in order to make a good judgment.

Man Shot Waiting For Playstation 3.

HARTFORD, Conn. - Two armed thugs tried to rob a line of people waiting for the new Playstation 3 game system to go on sale early Friday and shot a man who refused to give up his money, authorities said. - Yahoo

It's a mad world when people are shot over a video games console. It's also mad that people will pay over, on eBay, $1000 for something when thousands will be shipped out in the coming months.

It's a games console, there are far more important things in life then bragging over having a PS3 before everyone else.

1 shot in Conn. Playstation waiting line - Yahoo News.

No Gamerscore Or Achievements On PS3

Speaking with Game|Life, SCEA's executive vp Jack Tretton confirmed that PlayStation 3 user accounts will not feature an aggregate score based on gaming accomplishments, squashing rumors that Sony would counter Microsoft's gamerscore/achievement system with "entitlements." - Joystiq

I think that's pretty much sealed the deal here, 360 here I come (and possibly the Wii). I'm going to leave Sony to wallow in it's deep grave. Sony will be like a spider trying to get out of the bath tub...

...or maybe not, who knows? They'll certainly sell the PS2 but the top spot? If they go the way of the PSP I will stand corrected. You would have thought Sony would have rolled with this idea since they seemed to have stolen every other idea out there. Motion censor Dualshock anyone?

No gamerscore, no achievements on PS3 - Joystiq

Gaming Week - 1.

At the end of every week, or Saturday as today would have it, I sit down with a good old beer (substituted for a bottle of Strongbow this time around) and talk about the gaming events of the week. I also take a look at what games have been throwing my social life out the window and attempt to inject some sort of humor into the proceedings. Enjoy.

Let's begin this first edition with a quick announcement. I haven't given up on this blog, and I never will. Regular readers (what? you have READERS?) will notice that I only really update when something interests me and I think it's worth my time talking about it. I also like to post long posts like this so you're actually getting something original from this blog and not just a copy of what all the other gaming blogs are posting with a few boring-ass comments tacked 0n. I update this blog when I feel like it - don't get me wrong - I love my readers but if I feel it's not going to be worth posting then I don't bother. The last thing I want to do is bore readers with the same posts' they've seen a thousand times around the wondeful, yet very similiar, blogosphere.

Now that's out of the way here's my attempt to, um, bore you?


Return to Castle Warcraft.

I realise that half of you have probably closed your browser tab - or, if you're using one of the inferior browsers, browser window - at the mere mention of the dreaded Warcraft infection, and I don't blame you to be honest. So why am I talking about it? Well, I'm stupid that's why.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have returned to the game that breaks up marriages and kills people, World of Warcraft. Well, that's a lie, I've reactivated my account but have yet to actually jump back into the game after updating it with all the patches that have come out since I gave up on it. I honestly don't know why I've gone back. I hate the community of 14 year olds and despise the same boring quests and click, damage, click, damage, heal, click, damage, run that send me half to sleep. I just figured that it's only £8.99 and I may as well give it a try since I'm terribly bored at the moment.

Who knows, maybe I might start to enjoy it again. Besides, my level 30 Night Elf Rogue needs some loving....

...or maybe I've just wasted another £8.99.

Gordon Freeman is a social retard.

I've finally got around to completing Half-Life 2. I was ready to throw my sock at Valve for the ending but I soon calmed down and ordered Episode 1 through Amazon (I so hope it has Obi-Wan in it...ok...bad joke. Just as long as I can kill Jar Jar Binks).

Other than the abrupt ending I really enjoyed it, especially the assault on City 17. There's just so much glee in watching the rag doll physics throw a combine soldier down the shaft of the citadel, bouncing off the scenery as he falls, and then doing it all again?

Story? Oh yeah, um, I suppose that's ok...

Stabbing cute animals.

Animal Crossing: Wild World has been in my DS Lite constantly. The strange thing about this game is that it's addictive and it really shouldn't be. It get's to the point where I'm checking my watch to see if Tom Nook's has closed yet while writing actual letters to the animals that they never understand anyway.

Stiches finally pissed me off so I hit him around the head with my trusty spade (about the only thing it's good for) and buried his body next to Pudge (everyone thought he moved out of town). The 'cuteness' and the way they talk to you is just, so, sickening - it really makes me cringe. So, why do I play it? No idea, maybe I just like collecting shells on a fake beach when I'm supposed to be doing work.

Now my brothers joined in I can have fun leaving abusive messages to him on the message board though. Which is always good to put extra time in taking the mick out of him, which brothers love doing.

PS3 delayed in Europe.


I wasn't that shocked about this news to be honest and, lo and behold, I didn't give much of a shit either. People should know by now that Sony never keep their promises and to expect a worldwide release date was like expecting a peadophile to be allowed to host a children's party.

In the end I think it translates into a good thing for us Euro's. Xbox360, and many previous console's, were plauged by problems with the console when it first launched, especially when a console was rushed out like the 360 was. There's been a notion that the US and Japan are actually 'beta testhing' the console's for Europeans. By March 2007, the month it's been delayed to, most of these problems should have been sorted out (except the price tag damn them!) so we'll have a much smoother ride. Not only that but they'll be more games and hardware available for the console, so we win in the end. Yet I can't help feeling by then the 360 may have had a price cut and the Wii will also be out. I know what I'm going for and it defintally aint Sony, sorry guys.

That's pretty much all I have time for at the moment. I was going to do all this thing about how people who own both a PSP and DS (like me) can enjoy them equally but I'm going to leave that to a seperate post. I have plenty more to say but I fear this will turn into somewhat of an essay so I'll leave them all for other posts.

Thanks for sticking with me, and stop by sometime in the future - I'll give you a free hug!