If you’re like me, you may well have missed out on the phenomenon that is Uncharted. So many games, so little time, right? Well, as of September 6th, in North America at least, we no longer have an excuse. At an unbeatable price of $39.99, the Uncharted Greatest Hits Dual Pack is coming.
When the words “Street Fighter” are brought up,
many hark back to a simpler time. A time when one would beg their parent
to borrow an extra quarter in order to play as the guy who could shoot
electricity, or the Russian giant who could overcome any foe. With the
release of 3rd Strike Online Edition for PS3 and Xbox 360, these memories can
be relived in the comfort of one’s own home. And while 3rd Strike may have ditched most of the
cast of previous SF games, the characters provide a fun change, something that
is held perfectly intact with the Online Edition. With arcade-perfect gameplay and GGPO online integration,
this version of 3rd Strike may be the best one yet.
The visual features that this version of 3rd strike offers
are quite astounding. It allows
for the choice of 4 screen sizes (Normal, Widescreen, Stretched, and Arcade
Cabinet), 3 character visual filters (Crisp, Smooth, or None), and even the
option of turning scan lines on or off.
With so many options, players can adjust the settings to their preferred
specifications with ease. In
addition to the graphics looking very crisp, each of the moves seems to convey
what it is really well. When you
press hard kick, the character truly does seem to wind up and unleash a move
that usually knock the opponent back very far. Similar to Street Fighter 4, when the character is knocked
down, the background will often react in some way (whether it is cans flying up
or snakes falling out of trees), and the way that these backgrounds animate is
also very satisfying.
This morning on the Playstation blog, a new advertising
campaign was announced that hopes to capture gamers of all walks of life. The
“Long Live Play” campaign marks the return of the fan-favorite Kevin Butler
character to the Playstation Network.
His other two campaigns (“Dear Playstation” and “It Only Does
Everything”) were wildly popular and made it possible to have the PS3 available
in 50 million homes worldwide.
Until this point, the PS3 had a niche audience, so the
unveiling of this program is most likely to capture the casual market that has
until this point been largely on the Wii and Xbox 360. Now that the system has dropped to
$249.99 for a 160 GB product, it seems like Playstation is trying to end strong
and have a nice transition to the next generation of systems, whenever they may
be coming.
People who want a cheap, decently sized 3D TV can now get a new copy of
Resistance 3 for free in the deal, but there’s a catch. They have to
pre-order the TV before the end of September.
The
PlayStation Blog posted a video today featuring Nolan North. If you
aren’t aware of who Nolan North is, he voices Nathan Drake, the star of
the Uncharted series and practically every other video game
protagonist. Okay, that’s a joke, but it’s not that far off from the
truth either. Anyway, I’m sure you are wondering what they were up
to… Well, it seems they were able to get their hands on a copy of the
collector’s edition of Uncharted 3. The video shows Nolan unboxing the Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception
Collector’s Edition as he walks the viewer through all the bonus
content, and there is quite a bit. The collector’s edition will be
available on November 1st and will retail for $99.99(US).
Check out the video here.
Activision was nice enough to have a pre-PAX media event and they showed off a few games, including GoldenEye 007: Reloaded.
If you think this game is just going to be another port of the original
game developed by Rare for N64, you’re wrong. It’s not the same game;
it’s not even the same Bond. The story was rewritten and the old
characters have been replaced by the cast and crew of the new Bond
movies. That’s right – it is the Daniel Craig Bond, not Pierce Brosnan.
I have never used the Home service network on my
PlayStation 3, but from what I’ve learned, I’m really not missing much. However, with
apparently 23 million people using the service to date, it’s not surprising
that Sony continues to support the thing.
Coming to Home this fall is a giant update including a complete
remodeling and
redesign of the main hub of the interactive social feature and a much
larger
focus on games. Four new districts will be added, all themed around
specific
game genres. The other new big feature is a teleportation system that
will make moving people’s digital avatars around much easier and faster.
Sony intends to not simply remodel the main hub for the ease of use
alone, but they also intend to make partaking in the new shift towards
more gaming centric elements
easier. A quest system will be included in making Home itself much
more of a game, including simple solo quests and long branching path
chained
quests, similar to how MMOs are typically structured.
