This year has been a fantastic year so far for
games. No matter what you’re into there has been something released that is for
you. Our PS3 department of Thomas Markey, Aaron Betts, Josh Margolis, Joe
Button and Matt Jacobs bring their personal top three games of the year so far.
For those of you that bought inFamous 2, the multiplayer beta for Uncharted 3 is available now for you jump in and enjoy. Everyone else will gain access from July 5th and last until the 13th, and first impressions are simply great. Uncharted 3 is easily the Playstation 3’s biggest exclusive this year and, as such, it has incredible expectations to live up to. I haven’t played a great deal of the multiplayer in Uncharted 2, but what I’ve seen so far from this beta is certainly impressive.
The Metal Gear franchise is without doubt one of the most iconic and individual in the history of gaming. From it’s very first iteration on the MSX2, Metal Gear has contained a kind of atmosphere and tone that simply cannot be found anywhere else. Outlandish characters and incredibly intricate and ludicrous story lines are staples of a series that has done incredibly well, with it selling over 25 million copies worldwide. This makes it one of the most successful of all time, but the duration of development and its costs have increased dramatically, with MGS4 costing an estimated 70 million dollars and taking about 4 years to complete. Granted, MGS4 sold over 4 million copies, but it left the series at a crossroad.
MGS4 ties up pretty much all the story threads that were created throughout the Metal Gear Solid series. The very fact that it is most probably Solid Snakes’ last adventure, it garners the title a lot of attention. Kojima is now faced with a difficult task of replacing one of gaming’s most iconic figures and creating a story that is as off the wall and can command the same amount attention as MGS. While there are no real casualties at the end of MGS4, Solid Snake is obviously on the way out. Yes, Kojima could conjure up some horribly contrived reason to keep Snake around or even go back to an unseen adventure featuring Big Boss, but for the good of the series I think all of remaining cast at the end of MGS4 need to be left as they are and a new one to be ushered in. The only acceptable reason to have a game featuring Snake is probably in a remake of the two original MSX2 Metal Gear games. Not many people will have played either game, so there is potential to reinvigorate the stories of both games to keep them consistent with the Metal Gear cannon. It will give players a chance to experience the earliest incarnation of Solid Snake. It would only be suitable to bridge the gap between whatever the next innovation for the series will be.
It’s an
odd time for motion controls. The market leaders in motion-controlled
gaming (Nintendo) are doing their best to move away from the business
that has brought them so much success in the last couple of years.
They would seem to recognize based on what most people have (apart from Sony and
Microsoft), that motion controls are done. The Wii fad swept the
industry and became somewhat of a pop culture icon; however, sales of
Nintendo’s system have fallen dramatically in the last year and it
would seem as though the market at large has become exhausted with
motion controls. As Nintendo moves one direction and tries to capture
the attention of the world once again with its new system, the Wii U,
Sony and Microsoft are beating a dead horse with their
individual pushes to keep motion controls relevant.
Sony’s
next-generation portable, now named the PlayStation Vita, is causing
quite the buzz among gamers and is already being
pre-ordered. The Vita is packed with cool new features and
capabilities and is sure to make the PSP obsolete, but how will it
stack up against today’s most popular smartphones, such as the Apple
iPhone and Samsung Galaxy? The PS Vita’s full specs have been
revealed, and Sony already announced that 3G models will be
available. The company has formed a
partnership with AT&T to be the mobile carrier for the device, but
it isn’t exactly a phone. Users will be able to connect to
mobile networks and use voice chat functionality, but the Vita will
not be a practical alternative to an actual smartphone. While this may come
as a disappointment for some, the device aims to be
more of a “portable entertainment center” where users
can connect and play together from anywhere.
Pretend for a moment it is the year 1995, 3D graphics in
video gaming are still a relatively new big deal. Let’s say you are in the middle of your
elementary school years and already way into games. The PlayStation has been out for a couple of
months and all your friends are talking about how amazing it is and how you
need to get one. Naturally you end up
bugging your parents and in the not too distant future you finally get your
hands on the machine and this awesome game your friends were all talking about;
it’s called Twisted Metal.
Like everyone, I’ve been watching insane amounts of E3 footage this
week, but one game in particular really stood out for me. While
Battlefield 3 looks amazing and I can’t wait to play titles like
Uncharted 3, Mass Effect 3, and Gears of War 3 those games are pretty
obvious to be on most people’s radars. Instead, I am going to take this
opportunity to single out a game you may have ignored for one reason or
another. I’m quite passionate about gaming and nothing is cooler to me
than seeing new, interesting ideas and huge strides in design innovation
and the continuing evolution of the medium overall.
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.
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.
Over the last few years,
since it was re-launched back to its full glory after a couple of more
restrained years, E3 has become the standout video game showcase for both
consumers and the gaming press. It’s the one true event of the year where you
can guarantee a blowout of info about virtually all the upcoming software and
hardware worth hearing about across the gaming board.
E3 (or Electronic Entertainment
Expo) first started in 1995. Back then Sony was showing off the original
PlayStation for the first time to excited western gamers. This year’s E3 should
be as good as ever for PlayStation fans with some great exclusives to drool
over. In this feature I
highlight (in no special order) some of the games and hardware that I will be
most looking forward to hearing more about during the show.
