Although the fact that someone leaked a load of pics may have something to do with the timing!
I should wait for the official announcement at E3 (when we were intended to find out about it) before I comment but my first impression is a little underwhelmed.
I’m not too keen on the new design (it slides apart now!). I prefer the old one to be honest, but thats only my personal preference.
The biggest change is that they’ve dumped the UMD drive and replaced it with 16GB of on-board flash memory. Getting rid of the UMD drive is a good thing but 16GB is a little miserly when you consider the size of PSP games. iPods come with about 120GB of space as standard now so you would expect a new PSP to at least equal it. Do Sony want us to buy lots of games or not?
Strangely they have shrunk the screen size to 3.8 inches. Probably to squeeze some more battery life but I can’t help thinking this is a step backwards.
But, like I said… We should wait until Sony officially tell us about it. I am being negative about unconfirmed speculation.
If they announce a load more PSP games in development, more integrated connectivity to the PlayStation Network for online gaming and bringing trophies across to the PSP. I would be very happy!
When I first posted about Radio 1’s Big Gaming Weekend last bank holiday I admit I was a little cynical about the whole thing. But I am pleased to be completely wrong! It wasn’t too bad at all.
Call of Duty 4 won the best game of all time poll and Final Fantasy VII (my own choice!) came in at a very respectable third place.
The best part of the entire weekend was hidden right at the end of bank holiday monday and was a two hour gaming soundtrack mash-up mix by Jaguar Skills.
Featuring hip hop remixed as chiptunes, adverts from the Grand Theft Auto radio stations, Pacman, Mario, Outrun and Street Fighter 2 mash-ups AND even the Ulysses 31 theme!
I’m not the greatest fan of reality TV but that’s a rant for another post. Nevertheless I have been forced into watching a couple of episodes of The Apprentice and I came across this mash-up by Cassetteboy the other day.
Criterion have announced the release date of the Big Surf Island update to Burnout Paradise and it’s going to be out on June 11th. Although no price has yet been set (that I am aware of, correct me if I’m wrong).
It seems like a couple of years (slight exaggeration) since the Tomb Raider: Underworld trophy patch was announced for Japan.
But it’s finally making it across the shores according to an announcement by Keir_Eidos on tombraiderforums.com (I’m assuming this is all geniune?):
PS3 Trophy Patch announcement
I am pleased to be able to announce that the PS3 Trophy Patch for Tomb Raider: Underworld has a confirmed worldwide release date of Thursday the 28th of May.
Huzzah!
Sorry for the delay and thank you very much to those who were able to wait patiently, it’s really appreciated and I hope you get some great Raiding out of it.
I expect there will be more whoring than raiding when the trophies are released!
Now for fuck’s sake! Get off that Hannah Montana game people! Have some self respect!
Just heard about this next interweb phenomenon in the making… Basically, find a plain old black t-shirt on Amazon with a picture of three wolves and the moon. Then just insert this comment:
This item has wolves on it which makes it intrinsically sweet and worth 5 stars by itself, but once I tried it on, that’s when the magic happened. After checking to ensure that the shirt would properly cover my girth, I walked from my trailer to Wal-mart with the shirt on and was immediately approached by women. The women knew from the wolves on my shirt that I, like a wolf, am a mysterious loner who knows how to ‘howl at the moon’ from time to time (if you catch my drift!). The women that approached me wanted to know if I would be their boyfriend and/or give them money for something they called mehth. I told them no, because they didn’t have enough teeth, and frankly a man with a wolf-shirt shouldn’t settle for the first thing that comes to him.
The internet will then add a few hundred more comments for you, including a 2300% rise in sales of the t-shirt in question too!
Remember… Most shirts like this only contain one wolf. This shirt has three wolves, plus a moon. You are basically getting three wolves and a moon for the price on one wolf. You won’t find that deal anywhere else.
The page is here and there are about 298 five-star ratings so far!
Go wolves go! Rise up to that moon you long so much for!
I’ve been hearing rumours about this for the last week or so but an official press release on the BBC website confirms that Radio 1 and 1Xtra are indeed doing a Big Gaming Weekend this bank holiday running from 22nd to 25th May.
I’m slightly sceptical that it may mean that a load of DJ’s that aren’t really interested in games may be forced to talk about a subject they aren’t particularly that enthusiastic about… But I’ll be happy to be proved wrong.
DJ leaderboards, a top 100 game countdown, game reviews and game soundtracks are going to be part of the mix. I’m looking forward to hearing which soundtracks are played. Comic Bakery might be a long shot but I think the recent Mirror’s Edge theme, Still Alive by Lisa Miskovsky, would fit well into Radio 1’s existing playlist… Especially the drum ‘n’ bass remix here!
Does this mean that playing video games is socially acceptable yet?
Sony are giving away Rag Doll Kung Fu: Fists of Plastic for free! The catch is that it’s only on the US Playstation Store (The UK Store is still selling it for £7.99).
Fortunately it’s easy for UK Playstation owners to make themselves a US PSN login. There are a few guides to this on the internets already but as a brief guide you just need to create a new user on your PS3 and then go to register a new Playstation Network account. When you are prompted for your region make sure to select America. The only slightly tricky part is when you are asked for an address and zip code… I found that Beverly Hills 90210 works well!
As an additional bonus you’ll find a lot of PS3 and PSP demos on the US store which haven’t made it to Europe yet (…even though the full games have been out for months in many cases! PixelJunk Racers for example.)
But hurry… The free Rag Doll Kung Fu offer is only open until Thursday 21st May!
Just downloaded the new voice control plug-in for Singstar on the PS3 and was very impressed with it. You can either directly say a song title you want play or use simple phrases like “Browse Right”, “Browse Left” and “Select”.
We tried tricking it last night by speaking fast or being lazy with pronunciation but it got it right every time. A nice feature is if you say “Stop” about half a second too late when you are scrolling through songs, it recognises you intended to stop on the previous song and moves back to it quick. Simple but genius!
Is it possible that sophisticated voice control could potentially be a more revolutionary game control device when used simultaneously with a joypad than waving a Wii-mote? (Which, to be honest, makes your arms tired after a while!!)
The other game that came out recently for the PS3 that also uses voice control effectively is Tom Clancy’s Endwar which is a real time strategy game that I couldn’t get into (not because it’s a bad game it’s just I’m rubbish at RTS’s!).
Although I may give the Endwar demo another try as I’ve seen the game on offer and I’m half-tempted to buy it… As having 20 games started but not completed clearly isn’t enough for me as it is.
