The first 25 is for the first episodic content package that’s supposed to go out and that is in March of ’08. That’s why it moved into current because it’s in the next 12 months. The second 25 will be for the second episodic, the episode, and that will be later in fiscal ’08.
Thats what Take Two have just announced via a shareholders briefing. $50 million gives the 360 exclusivity on the episodic content, the second of which could be almost a year after the game released. I wonder how much making the full game a 360 exclusive would have cost…and how many console sales it would have made.
Nullsoft have update Connect360 to play nicely with the 360’s spring dashboard update. While this is good news as after the update it was a bit buggy the best bit for me is that .mov files are now supported. Well, WMV+WMA, H.264 and MPEG4 are actually supported now which means the 360 alongside Connect360 can playback all my video podcasts plus movies stored on the Mac. Fantastico. I’m sure the Aple TV menu system is slicker and it’s obviously quieter but the 360 makes for a great free alternative which I already own.
When I think back to older games I always remember my first view of Super Mario World, completing Mercenary, Flyspy and the first time I joined Head with Heels amongst so many others. However two games always stand out and they were from my time at Glasgow Uni. The first game was Descent which was the first proper 3D shooter. Doom got all the press but it wasn’t truly 3D as there was no Z axis really – you couldn’t have objects on top of objects in the first release. A few months later Descent came out and it was superb. I still remember playing against Ricky D with me being chased…I turned into a corridor and dived off to the left. He turned into same corridor and sped by…I moved out and fired a homing missile. I still remember the shout – ‘Bastard…………Descent’ (think Ian Paisley no surrender style voice and you’ve got it). Class.
The second game was Super Bomberman. I remember going shopping with Shakeel and as per usual we were goading each other on with purchases. Something along the lines of if you buy that then I’ll buy this kind of thing. Pretty childish but we still do it today except the purchases can be measured in the hundred’s of pounds and not tens. Anyway, I picked up a multi-tap for the SNES, an extra controller and I already had a free one..plus Super Bomberman. 4 player gaming was an instant hit with Bomberman being our game of choice. I’d hate to think how many hours we racked up on that game. Super Bomberman 2 was also purchased which introduced Golden Bomber. I still laugh when I think back to me getting the hand so often on the spinning wheel (no cheating – honest) and David’s insatiable appetite for speedy boots which we all knew would end in tears.
The reason for all this nostalgia? After many screw-ups and tamperfering with a tried and tested formula plus many a rumour, it looks like Bomberman in it’s multiplayer format is coming to Xbox Live. This Joystick article points to Australian certification and also a pretty official looking video. Bomberman, with up to 8 players, online and on the 360 – be still my beating heart.
So the update landed today and is universally ‘a good thing’. MSN Messenger integration lets you chat slowly to friends on PC’s, mobiles etc. The dashboard is faster and the marketplace does look better placed in it’s own blade. Small things like seeing what disk is in the drive is also a nice touch. However it’s competition from the PS3 thats driving some of the more interesting updates.
A slew of new video codec’s are now supported meaning the 360 now matches the PS3 for video playback. The codec’s are covered well on Engadget highlighting what works and more importantly doesn’t. Two important factors when considering the 360 as a media player though. One, it can stream over a network which makes for easy downloading, extracting and storage elsewhere unlike the PS3. Two – it’s NOISY. Too noisy to be considered as a media player in my opinion.
Another, almost undocumented new feature is for VGA cable users. As detailed at DailyTech this finally allows VGA users to remove that washed out look that I always felt plagued VGA. It made me smile as I could never understand why people convinced themselves that VGA didn’t look washed out. Hey ho…fixed now.
Just Forza 2 demo and Halo 3 beta to look forward to now.
After posting on the PS3 hardware and software it’s time to look at the games. Certainly the most important part of any console release is the quality of the games. The most touted games on release are Motorstorm and Resistance:Fall of Man. How do they shape up?
Motorstorm
Being the flagship PS3 title, Motorstorm has a lot to live up to. The game had so much pre-release hype and false starts (rendered E3 demo’s etc) and then a release in Japan minus the online component – how would it fair?
Motorstorm is in some ways the perfect release title. Loud music, high impact visuals and massive, at times bewildering arena’s to race in. You can’t fail to be impressed in that first half hour. For mates popping round and demo pods it’s a great game. After that half hour though is pretty disappointing. You realise that there isn’t much variety to the music and it soon repeats. You also realise you can’t change it to any of your own music. The graphics still impress but there’s a sameness about everything. Away from the wow stuff though and it’s just repetition. Offline is just select a bike, truck etc and race on one of the eight tracks. Yep – no longer arena’s. There isn’t that many routes and there’s usually the one route for your particular vehicle. The load times are also very long – some of the worst I’ve seen in recent years. It gets very annoying that selecting a vehicle takes such a long time, never mind the actual track loading.
Online is at times impressive (lag free 12 player racing) but I reckon at least a third of my online games have not started, crashed out or been buggy in such a way to ruin the race. One of the other shortfalls is the lack of interaction. For all you know your racing against AI with the PS3 generating random gamertags to display – it is totally lacking in speech and atmosphere. While it does support speech hardly anyone has a headset and the game will also switch off speech to protect lag. Unlike offline, most online games also have catch up disabled. Quite a lot of the games I’ve raced sees one person break away from the pack and he will ultimately win the race as the pack fight each other while he sails off into the distance. Like the real F1 most online races are decided within the first few corners.
Ultimately if you get a PS3 you should get Motorstorm as it does initially impress – just don’t expect that feeling to last. Continue reading “PS3 – The Games”
The PS3 is potentially the most capable console ever released. However if the software isn’t up to driving it then it’s all a bit pointless. I’ll cover the main user interface and also the media playback and networking capabilities of the PS3 in this post. I’ve already covered my thoughts on the PS3 hardware which just leaves the games to cover in a future post.
Cross Media Bar
The Cross Media Bar (XMB) is Sony’s standard GUI in a lot of their products – PSP, high end Bravia’s and now the PS3. It’s very easy to use and provides quick access to stored content, games and online features. I prefer this to the 360 blade’s which while easy to use can take a lot of button presses to reach your content or fire up a quick game. While the XMB is great, whats not so great is that you can’t access it while in game or watching a movie. Pressing the PS home button allows you to return to the XMB, not access it.
From the XMB you can reach the following functions.
User
This menu control user access. You can create multiple users and also apply parental controls to the users to give finer control over kids accessing adult material. I’ve actually created three users with each user accessing a different store (each store has different content). Each user can also have a different network ID and friends list.
Photo’s
Photo Album view renders the pictures in 3d with hand written time stamps which is a really creative way of showing photo’s. You can also use standard method of viewing, rotating and zooming of images and you can also change the sort order of the photo’s.
The background to the GUI changes colour depending on the month and the time of day. While this is nice it would have been better to give users the chance to pick their own background. The PSP was initially the same until a firmware update allowed the user to pick their own backgrounds.
Music
You can playback MP3’s and AAC files. You get a nice visualizer while playing although sometimes there were some playback issues with files, especially if you crank the volume up. If I up the volume via the amp the quality is fine but if I up the volume via the PS3 the sound degrades. Annoyingly you cannot select any locally stored music to be played in game, a feature the 360 has had since day one. I also found it a bit unituitive when selecting tracks, albums and genres and unlike the 360 you cannot select music stored on pc’s or mac’s. You can only play cotnent stored locally or plugged in at the time via a USB drive. Continue reading “PS3 – The Software”
So we get to play Halo 3 beta for three weeks only from the 16th May according to BBC. Boo hiss. Three maps is surprising though. Just a shame the beta is on at the same time as Forza 2 is released. More info on Bungie site.
Since it’s announcement in 2005 the PS3 has always had a rough ride. It’s too big, it’s too expensive, it’s too late. I’ll start of my thoughts on the PS3 by first looking at the hardware. I’ll then follow up with a post on the software and operating system and finally the games. Phew.
The first thing that strikes you is how shiny the PS3 is. Not just the little silver sections but the whole thing – piano black shiny that is a magnet for dust and fingerprints. Then you notice that there is no ugly power brick that sits out with the console. Everything is contained within the not inconsiderable PS3 case and while the case is bigger than the 360 it’s not overly so as first touted by the media. The design also hides it’s size well in my eyes and looks pretty good. If you add the 360 power brick to the 360 then it’s probably a bit bigger than the PS3. Still, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and some people think it’s butt ugly. I guess it’s one of these love or hate designs.
Annoyingly even though Sony touted the PS3 as ‘true HD’ it doesn’t come with an HDMI cable which is a bit cheap after paying £425. With everything connected up you then plugin the sixaxis controller via the charge cable. For me this is another issue as the cable is really small at only 3ft. While a longer one can be purchased (Maplin sorted me out) it’s another little bit of cost cutting although the 360 didn’t come with any recharging capability – the plug and play kit was a separate purchase so it’s a small gripe really.
Once you switch on the PS3 it will auto detect video settings and then you are in the PS3 front end. One of the more lauded features of the PS3 is 1080p playback. However many launch games do not support 1080p and there are still precious few users who have access to a 1080p screen. If you’ve used a PSP then the interface will be instantly familiar although thats for another post. One of the problems with the 360 is the noise it makes and I was expecting the PS3 to be worse as it uses more power. Surprisingly it’s pretty quiet. After some play it does increase slightly but no where near the noise of the 360 which is down to fan and disk activity. It does generate slightly more heat but nothing thats too alarming if you’ve felt the back of a PC before. It’s quietness is a real strong point and is ideal for movie and music playback unlike the 360.
Another sleek feature is the touch sensitive power and eject buttons. While it’s a gimmick it works really well and adds to the overall finish of the hardware. Disks are loaded via a slot loading mechanism which works like a mac. Put the disk in half way and it’s pulled in by the PS3. The disk when loaded is fairly quiet, impressively quiet compared to the 360. The disks are one of the more contentious features of the PS3. The PS3 is a Blu-Ray player and all games will come on Blu-Ray disks too. This feature undoubtedly added to the delay and cost of the PS3 and only time will tell whether it was worth the wait. Continue reading “PS3 – The Hardware”
It’s the eve of the PS3 launch in the UK but there’s been two cracking games launched recently on the 360 that are highly recommended.
Firstly is GRAW2 (thats Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter….2). This plays like any other first/third person shooter and at first is dissapointingly familiar. Especially compared to GRAW. However the multiplayer options are far more comprehensive than the previous version. The online graphics have also been improved. By adding better shadows and lighting the depth and difficulty has also increased. Environments are far more realistic and it can be really difficult to spot enemies now. Clan support has been added along wth more maps, more gameplay types and allegedly a great single player game although I have to depend on friends opinions for that one as I’ve yet to strike a blow in the offline game. Still – a great game and this is the best in the series so far.
The achievements also deserve special mention. Small rewards that are drip fed the more you play although one that stood out is the one hour defend. Defend a base against infinite enemies for one hour. With no ammo drops. It was tough but when six of us completed it last night…well…there was a great sense of achievement which is what it’s all about.
After a tense game of GRAW what better way to relax than a game of Worms. The classic game surfaced a couple of weeks ago on Xbox Live Arcade and it’s just…perfect. It first came out in 1994 and for those not in the know it’s a turn-based strategy/arcade game. You take command of a team of four worms and the aim is to destroy the other worms. Simple. Up to four players over Live can take part over an almost infinite set of levels.
The beauty of this game is it’s simplicity. Controls are easy and the physics all pretty realistic but it’s the variety of weapons and ways of killing your enemies that lift the game. Standard weapons are bazooka’s, grenades, air strikes. However there are super punches, jet packs, ninja ropes and exploding sheep that make killing other players an absolute joy.
On Live you can name your team and individual worms and also select a voice pack for your worms. Online games are so unpredictable. Even when ahead the other three teams can easily team up to knock you out. It’s also easy to kill yourself in the most unpredictable way but it’s a great laugh. Single player is frustrating though as the computer AI is far more accurate than fallible human opponents. Get three mates and you could spend hours on this – a bargain for only 800 gamer points.
