PS3

Burnout: Paradise demo

An absolutely amazing demo of one area of the new Burnout game and it's huge. Then you realise that the demo lets you play online with 3 friends with full (best quality) chat. It also uses a camera to take "mugshots" when you're on the receiving end of a Takedown and sends then to the person who took you out. I'm looking forward to the full game in a months time.

The Club demo 

The best looking Sega game I've seen in a long time sadly let down by a shockingly control setup. The game plays like the amazing Mercenaries mode in Resi 4. The aiming being to take guys out but keep a ciombo going to get maximun points. Not a bad game lets hope you can map the buttons when it's fully released.

Super Stardust: HD (demo/update)

I was that impressed by the demo that I bought the full game £4.99. I'll write a proper review but I must mention that this game allows for music to be played off the HDD. The game is basically a 2 stick shooter like Blastfactor but flying around a planet instead. It has online scoreboards but best of all. The demo (and full game) allows you to play the MP3's from your HDD as background music.

Over the last few weeks there seems to have been a major amount of game's having patches put into them These are usually to fix bugs or add compatability with other things ie Rumble function.

Warhawk: V1.2: Adds Rumble support, fixes a few glitches, allows for the Dropship to be used. This is the Omega Dawn pack which is £3.99, I'm currently trying to get a group of mates together to have a bash on this.

F1 CE: V1.1: Adds rumble, sorts out a few bits in the online stuff including adding ingame messaging. But still no promised PSP wing-mirror, boo, hiss!

R:FoM: 1.4!? Adds new map pack. Had skeletons running around for halloween, adds rumble and a new map pack. Which I'm yet to DL.

Others I know of are Heavenly Sword, Assassins Creed, Super Stardust HD. I'm expecting Ninja Gaiden: Sigma, CoD4 and a few others to get rumble added soon.

I should also have mentioned that Folding@home has been updated (now Ver 1.3) and now allows music to be played from the HDD at the same time as performing calculation for the protien folding project. It means I'm now doing more folding which is top.

Finally my PlayStation Eye (PS3 version of Eye-toy) has arrived from play.com costing £25.00.

WipeOut: Pulse

As reads of this blog will probably know I'm a big WipeOut fan and always try and play these games. WipeOut: Pure the prequal to this game was awesome and a must buy. This game goes further by finally allowing online multiplayer. As well as ad-hoc.

I only managed to have a quick game share 2 player race and a couple of goes in singleplayer but it's evolved again from the last game. Now you game ride on the ceeling due to magnetic tracks that grip you as you go over loops.

The speed that this game is famous for is very much present as is the banging soundtrack. As soon as I get chance to have a proper session I'll add a better review. I did manage to have a look at some of the online stuff and wow, there's even a ships livery editor. There will also be downloadable tracks both for racing and listerning and the game allows for music to be played from your PSP's Memory stick.

Silent Hill: Origins

Sadly I've not managed to have an actual play but I've been watching someone play the first couple of level and from what I've seen wow. I'd go as far to say that it looks as good as Silent Hill 2 for PS2. The gamedoesn't appear to have changed much other than the ability to change between worlds by touching mirrors. The game requires you to check every bloody door only to discover them locked and solve puzzles. Looks amazing and sounds really nice. Review coming soon.  

Uncharted: Drakes Fortune £33.98 Play.com

Billed as a more action packed male Tomb Raider, mixing puzzles, climbing and gunplay. This game is unlike TR in the fact that the game's puzzles don't appear to be anywhere near as taxing as the ones Lara has to deal with and the gunplay is far better. It allows you to get cover and return fire.

The graphics have to be seen to be believed and I really want a HDTV to be able to fully enjoy the visual splendour. The motion blur when turning the camera has to be seen to believed, as well as the water effects and the visual set pieces. The Sound is in DTS and works really well, all the ambient noise and gunshots are great. The menu screen it appears to be a bit broken but that could be my amps fault!? 

The story, well it's about an ancestor of Sir Francis Drake searching for lost treasure. Which starts by Drakes coffin being rerclaimed from the sea only to discover it missing a body but finding a diary. I don't want to spoil anymore than to say his journey is being filmed and funded by a reporter.

The story flows through without loading screens. All you get is a chapter marker when you go into the next level. Which means that after 6 hours played I'd played through a fair few levels. But not really felt like it.

The controls work well allowing for cover fire both aimed and blind. The 'nades are thrown via tilting the 6-axis or can be thrown from cover. You also have the ability to do a rush combo hand to hand style. Great for when you're nearly out of ammo. The clambering and climbing that is done is very easy to control and looks amazing all those frames of animation really pay off.

From what I've played I'm loving it and the bit's on the jetski are really beautiful and make a change from running for cover and returning fire.

I'll let you know what I think when I've finished it but I hear a sequel has gone into production so Sony must feel it's worth continuing and the reviews have all been really good for the game.

SingStar (Solus) PS3 £17.99 Play.com

If you've ever played a PS2 SingStar game you'll know exactly how to play the new next gen version.

If anything this version is even simpler and all the options such as SingStore (allowing for additional songs to be downloaded), My Media (photos, videos and audio playbacks) taken during the game, My SingStar Online (online profile and place to store and rate your own and other media). Simply press Start and you can also access your Friends list on the XMB. Thus sending them, messages or read ones sent to yourself.

The game also allows you to change a few basic option but not enough that need to be adjusted ie menu music volume.

Before I start getting on my soapbox about how bad certain aspects of the game are I should just say this game is most fun when served to a room full of drunken family and/or friends. Hook up either a PS2 Eye-toy or PS3 Playstation Eye and the fun really begins cos you can record yourselves singing. This also takes photos during the game and shows star moments. These efforts can be uploaded and shared with the world (well Europe for the moment) or just with your friends.

You can also view you friends or anyone elses profile and rate there stuff. You should be able to comment but for some unknown reason this doesn't work.

Now I'm going to list all the issues I've found so far:

1. The camera image is a mirror image of yourselves which means that logo and writing are all backwards.
2. The servers are appauling and keep timing out when trying to connect to SingStore, My SingStar Online. Pages take an age to update, especially if you're uploading or downloading at the same time.
3. The Meet SingStars hasn't been updated in months.
4. "Hundreds of songs available to download" is what the Online page says. This is not the case the disc comes with 30 and until today there were only 41 additional tunes for download. Of which all of them have been on other discs. Which you can't use to credit your account as promised. Another 14 tunes were added today but are mainly Blur and Supergrass. Which is good for me but not for others. There is also another update planned in 3 weeks. But this is still some way off the 350 songs promised on launch.
5. The game seems to have reset my network settings meaning my system is now on NAT3 which is preventing me from uploading anymore videos as I get a "FT0 Error". My PS3 now crashes when I try and change my router settings.
6. I bought the Solus version meaning it doesn't come with mics. The version that does, doesn't come with the much promised Blue-tooth mics. Not a big issue for me but would have, had I spent the extra amount on somethign I already have. 
7. I cannot save my media to my HDD or transfer it to my PSP as promised. 

There has been an offical response to some of these issues but it looks like yet again Early adopters are being used as unpaid beta testers.

Sony get your acts together you get have it both ways. By getting us to pay for something yet you expect us to test that it works.

These issues may be addressed before the US release in May but I'm not sure they will be completely ironed out. I'm expecting that SingStar 2 will be due by November and fix alot of these problems if not Sony you had better get a patch ready for one of your updates.

It's a shame that these issues have spoilt for me what should have been a beautifully seemless experience. The store is great but space and poor selection. I'm guessing greedy artists asking for more money cos they're content is being used differently than originally intended for SingStar on PS2.

It's great fun seeing some of the creative videos that people creat and has inspired us for parties to do a few special things for uploading.

PlayStation Eye & Eye Create Software £24.99 Play.com

Playstation Eye: 

The update to the PS2 Eye-toy, that looks like it's got a mono-brow due to a rather smart set of mics. Above the lense.

The camera quality is dramatically improved along with the above mentioned mic makes it a rather useful tool for video chatting to buddies via the PS3. The camera also has two zoom options wide and close which help depending on what you're filming. The camera also copes with low light far better than the orginal Eye-toy ever did. But still requires some light tobe able to film things properly.

The mics can be used for chatting in games to so you don't have to use a blue-tooth headset or SingStar mic. As well as for recording audio in Eye-create The mics help to focus on vocals rather than background game sound effects or music. 

The major bonus was the fact that it came with a Blu-ray disc containing video creation and editing software Eye-create. Which has been available as a download for sometime now.

I've previously mentioned the PS-Eye downloads I purchased but Burnout: Paradise uses the camera to send Sanpshots to people who get a Takedown against in the game. It also works as a streaming camera for chatting as well from what I can see from the demo.

Sadly I've not played any of the actual games but they look pants so haven't paid for something I won't play. Sony give us a PS3Ninja cos that game kicked but. The previous Eye-toy game packs were great fun and really could be added to the store.

Eye-Create 

This may look a bit Fisher-Price but this simplicity is amazing. It allows for alsorts of experimenting and has a few tricks I've not seen on anything other than expensive digital cameras.

You can choose to take pictures, videos or record audio and edit them together to create movies that can be exported to the Movies section on the XMB.

The movies that are recorded can be edited and dubbed with new audio or have effects put on them. Sadly no transitions or titles are included to make things look really professional. But you can revers and mirror images as well as adding ghosting effects and many, many others.

Recording movies can be done in a few ways: recording just what the camera sees, recording time delayed images (eyery 5, 30 or 60sec) great for Sunrises or my personal favourite Stop motion which can be used to make standard animation or for creating that strange visual effects. This function allows for skinning (which gives a ghost image of the previous frames so that things can be lined up how you need them. I'm working on a few ideas at the moment and as soon as I'm able to get them on youtube feel free to comment.

In my opion the camera is a must purchase if you intend to use it for video chat or haven't bought a headset for game chat. If you like making silly films like me then you'll find that the PS3 is rather adept in that area too.