Playstation 3

Happy Birthday PlayStation 3

The PlayStation 3 turned 5 years old on November 17th.  The PlayStation
brand struggled through some dark times in the early days of the PS3
launch.  The PSP was decimated by the Nintendo DS and the PS3 was a year
behind on an XBox360 that was just starting to hit its stride.  With a
staggering price point of $600.00 and a relatively weak launch line up,
year one was looking pretty grim.  Sales were meager in the first years
of the PS3’s life.  Sony, to their credit, never gave up.

Bully sequel after Max Payne 3?

Rockstar Games Vice President Dan Houser has stated in an interview with Gamasutra that once Max Payne 3 ships they may be looking into a sequel to the critically acclaimed high-school sandbox title, Bully.

“Contrary to a lot of people, we like to take a little bit of time at the end of a game before starting a sequel, so we can wait for the excitement or disappointment and everything else of the experience to shake down and really see what we should do in the next game. So we knew that we didn’t want to start doing the Bully sequel instantly at that second with those guys, even though it is a property that, like Max, we adore and might come back to in the future. There was just no impetus to do that then.”

Starhawk Beta Starts Nov 22nd

Anyone who owns a copy of Warhawk and opted in to the sequel’s upcoming beta might get a chance to check it out next week.  

The closed beta for Starhawk begins on Tuesday ,November 22^nd.   To get access, you’ll need to have signed up for PlayStation’s emails (done via your PSN account) and naturally be one of several people who spent some time with the previous game.  Being a closed beta, not everyone gains access, as Sony is randomly selecting people and sending out emails with codes. SCEA Senior Producer Harvard Bonin also informed fans via the PlayStation blog that the closed beta will be rolled out in stages, gradually allowing more people access.  So, don’t worry if you don’t get a code next week, as the beta has no set end date at the moment.

People who also happen to have got themselves an early copy of Uncharted 3 can look forward to getting into the beta in January next year.  While I never played Warhawk myself, I’m very interested in the sequel, as it’s certainly looking like a fun time, what with all the cool looking sci-fi vehicles and utter madness that only comes from large scale multiplayer action titles.

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations Review

The best way to define Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is by saying that it is another Assassin’s Creed game.  One of the main questions on everyone’s mind was whether or not the amount of changes from AC2 to AC: Brotherhood would be consistent in the changes made from Brotherhood to Revelations. In both cases, the development time was about a year, but unfortunately, the changes between Brotherhoodand Revelations are not as apparent.  With Brotherhood, the changes that they made were amazing.  Brotherhood was the first game where you could recruit assassins to your cause and use them, either to take out guards or take on missions abroad.  This system worked incredibly well, and the ability to call an assassin to take out an unsuspecting group of guards never got boring.  In addition, the inclusion of a competent multiplayer mode made Brotherhood easily worth the $60 price tag.

Revelations is a
much different case.  While it does
have all of the elements that made Brotherhood
special, the changes that it makes from Brotherhood
seem negligible in comparison. 
The changes that have been made can really be categorized into two
groups: a bomb making element, and an improved templar den capture/defend
mechanic. 

Finally, Some Real Hope for Sonic After All These Years.

There’s probably a large amount of people that aren’t even aware that Sonic Generations came out a little over two weeks ago. Come to think of it, there’s probably a large amount of people out there who don’t care either. It was released in the same week as Uncharted 3 and a week before juggernauts such as Modern Warfare 3, Assassin’s Creed, Skyrim and Halo. Of all the games that people would prioritise, I doubt that a new Sonic game would have been one of them. With that being said, I do want to talk about Sonic Generations, mainly because the game is actually pretty damn good and also because of the above game releases that will be hogging all the lime light.

Now first things first, I’m not putting Sonic Generations in the same league as those games, I mean it’s a much better game than Skyrim for a start… had you going for a second there, didn’t I? Anyway, the Sonic franchise has not been treated with much care since his days of glory on the Sega MegaDrive/Genesis all those years ago. The best attempts at recreating the magic of the 2D games were always the handheld titles and for almost 15 years the various 3D versions have been getting worse and worse. While Sonic Generations is not a complete return to the standards of say, Sonic 2, when compared to recent efforts, it comes pretty damn close. That being said, you don’t have to justify the merits of Generations by that comparison alone, it is still a great platformer that, for the first time since Sonic Adventure, has made this franchise feel modern. In both gameplay and presentation, this feels like a game that was released in the year it actually was.

How the Saints Row Franchise Differentiated Itself from the Sea of GTA Clones

Upon the 2006 release of Saints
Row, the words that seemed to be on everybody’s lips were “GTA Clone”.  And when you look at the most general
structure of Saints Row, there is a
vague similarity. You are playing a sandbox game set in a city area where you
go around killing people in 3^rd person.  While at its most basic level it is similar to a game like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (the
latest GTA game out at the time that Saints
Row was released), the differences are quite numerous.  Unlike in the GTA series, in Saints Row, you were an active member of
a gang (the 3^rd Street Saints), and your main mission was to go
around the city and claim land for the Saints from the other gangs (the Vice
Kings, Los Carnales, and Westside Rollerz).  Because of the fact that you were in a gang, there was a
much higher sense of comradery than in the GTA series.  Sure, you had friends in San Andreas, but Saints Row went as far as creating a “Homie” system where you could
recruit a fellow gang member to help you on a mission or stronghold
takeover.  On a different level,
the protagonist in Saint’s Row is
largely silent for the whole game (he/she maybe has 3 lines of dialogue), so
there is really no characterization. 
What I mean by this is that you could place any person into the position
of the protagonist in Saints Row and
it wouldn’t change, because the only thing that you really know about the
character is that he or she is part of a gang.  With every GTA game (starting with GTA III), you play as a
named character and learn a lot about whom they are and the struggles that they
go through, which is extremely different from Saints Row.  Yet
despite the differences, the easy categorization was to say it was like GTA,
but GTA was better so they did not need to play Saints Row.  In order
for Saints Row as a franchise to
survive, it needed to differentiate itself from GTA.

Luckily Saints Row 2 was
able to do this partially due to what GTA IV did to itself.  With GTA IV, there were some funny
parts, and the humor was still partially there, but overall the story was much
more serious, Hard Times in Liberty City through the lens of Niko Belic.  So all that Saints Row 2 had to do was amp up the humor a bit, and the
disparity between serious GTA IV and
ridiculous Saints Row 2 would
separate them as products.  While
they would both still be sandbox games, the tone of Saints Row 2 would be much more different.  They also may have benefitted from the
fact that Saints Row 2 came out 6
months after GTA IV (Saints Row 2 in October and GTA IV in April), but they did amp up the
humor and ridiculousness and that helped to differentiate them as two separate
products.

Saints Row the Third: Review

Saints Row the Third is an ambitious and often very weird game that has some truly incredible creativity behind it and will have you doing things you’ve never done in a game before. In terms of raw content however, it can get quite divisive and often feels like it could have been so much bigger and better. 

Sticking to the core game will give you one of the most unique experiences you will ever come across between the dildo bats, hover bikes, BDSM clubs, transforming VTOLs, brain controlling octopus guns and mutant clones. Volition had a ton of crazy ideas and crammed as many as they possibly could into one game. However, should you deviate from those core elements and start doing the side missions and activities, you will come to realize the world of SR3 is quite small and almost bland at times, lacking the depth required to keep a player interested outside of the primary experience.  While this is typical of all open world titles, the Third promotes its craziness so well that you can’t help but feel disconnected between the main game and everything around it.