Playstation 3

Sony E3 Press Conference Expectations

 E3 is upon us: the annual industry banquet that we video game enthusiasts salivate over. A plethora of juicy new announcements and seductive looks at some of the rest of the year’s biggest titles is but mere hours away. Sony will, of course, close the opening day of this year’s show with what will certainly be an interesting press conference. They have experienced an extremely shaky start to the year and will need to come out swinging in order to reinstate much of the confidence that has been lost in them via recent events. The hacking of PSN will undoubtedly be the 800 pound gorilla in the corner that shadows over at least the initial portion of their conference. Yet it is not expected that Sony will apologize directly for the loss of millions of users personal information at E3, and they really have no reason to. They have made an attempt, albeit quite a weak one, already, with various free games now up for download on PSN, and the whole affair is best left to fade into distant memory.

Those memories will need a little help on their way, though, so I expect to see Uncharted 3 or Resistance 3 relatively early. Nothing says “I’m sorry” like the outstanding visuals and undoubtedly solid gameplay that the stage demos of either of these PS3 exclusive heavy hitters are sure to showcase. There is always room for an announcement of a new game or two, but for the most part, expect Sony to play it safe on the PS3 side of things this year. As such, PSN will most likely receive little in the way of attention during the conference but the Move will certainly feature heavily. Microsoft is sure to unveil a suite of new titles for its own motion device, Kinect, at its own event earlier in the day, and Sony will have to show it is committed to keeping up appearances with the Move. Sony won’t commit to motion based gaming as heavily as Microsoft has, however, as they still have their eyes on the hand held market.

Darksiders 2 Reveal

The original Darksiders was a gaming experience that really
resonated with me, from the art style to the overall design and ambition, it
definitely seemed like a start to a series that will only get bigger and better
as time goes on. As the first game developed by Vigil Games it gave me high
hopes for their future as a developer.  If
the current trend is to be assumed we could indeed be looking at another
three titles in this series, the second of which I am very excited for. Darksiders
2 was recently revealed and the protagonist is none other than the rider of
Death.  

Konami PS2 Classics Get HD Makeovers

Konami
revealed through their pre-E3 press conference yesterday plans to
release three separate HD collections of some of their most revered
games of modern times. Metal Gear, Silent Hill and Zone of the Enders are the franchises receiving the HD makeover and shall all be released between 2011 and 2012.

The earliest of which will be the Metal Gear Solid HD collection, due for release this November. Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 as well as PSP game Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker will be included. The original Metal Gear Solid
is omitted from the collection for unknown reasons. All versions will
feature redrawn art, upgraded audio and UI, trophies or achievements
(depending on the system), and “transfarring.”

Is It Worth It?

I have been a PS3 owner for a while now. I still love my machine as much as the day I got her. However, times have changed. While my 60 GB PS3 was once the biggest fish in the sea, now, it’s just a bloated fish. Newer members of the PS3 family have bigger hard drives that you now need with all the downloadable content, and enough left over to store all your movies and music. However, there is always the option to upgrade.

Upgrading your PS3 is not a new prospect. Its original purpose was to give extra space for those that added a second operating system, though with that being a dead idea the feature is most useful to those who feel they need the space for other things: music, videos, pictures, DLC, or even games. It is one of the many things that sold me on the system. Now, I’m sure you’re wondering if it would be worth it for you. The answer is easily yes for older users like myself. At this point in the game, with all the great things you can do with the PS3, space is a growing issue. Having just 20 to 80 gigs of memory is cutting it really close, and honestly it’s really easy to upgrade. Best of all, it’s not that expensive.

L.A. Noire Review

L.A. Noire is an incredibly ambitious hybrid of Rockstar’s typical
violent, open world action games and the kind of investigative puzzle
adventures that rarely get budgets that approach this level. It’s an
interesting experiment and for the most part a very entertaining
experience, though it does have a few issues that prevent it from being
counted among the best of both genres.

Activision Announces Call of Duty: Elite

Activision has announced a new title in the Call of Duty franchise called
Call of Duty: Elite, which is being developed by Beachhead Studios. But, unlike
other products in the Call of Duty series, this new title is not a game. Instead
it is essentially a tool to unify a player’s profile across the different Call of
Duty games. Because of the popularity of the Call of Duty series, there are still huge
numbers of people playing the older games, like the first Modern Warfare, as
well as other gamers spending most of their time on the latest game, which is
currently Black Ops. The aim of Elite is to give players one single profile
that will work across all the Call of Duty games that support it.

Into The Pixel 2011: SCEA Artists Honored

2D and
3D artists usually work behind the scenes during a game’s
development, but they’re among the most important figures in the long
process of creating virtual worlds. It is up to talented conceptual
and traditional artists to visualize and produce a game’s
environments, characters and other entities before the actual
development begins. Without art as a base, it would be much more
difficult to design and develop today’s video games. Sony Computer
Entertainment of America (SCEA) is very fortunate to have many highly
skilled game artists among its dedicated developers. As a result, the
PlayStation 3 (and PSP) console benefit greatly from the highest
quality game franchises such as Ratchet & Clank, Killzone
and the Uncharted series. Along with others, these titles have
a very rich art department and it seems that, in addition to each
game’s success, their artists’ hard work is gaining some much
deserved recognition.