Having shared some of my favourite custom themes for the PSP in the previous post, I now bring you what I have to show for the last couple of days.
I don’t think it’s half bad for a first attempt, although perhaps I could have gone for a bit more consistency with the logos I used to mark options. And it is, of course, yet more proof that I need something more productive to do with my time.
Feedback is welcome.
The recent 3.70 PSP firmware (also in the 3.71 M33 custom firmware) added support for custom themes to personalise the XMB. Using this utility it’s possible to make your own, and since the homebrew community has been customising the XMB for months through less legitimate means, it naturally hasn’t taken long for some good, highly professional ones to show up.
I downloaded a rather impressive theme pack and trawled some forums for the best, as well as a couple that are a bit rubbish really but I found funny. Here are some of my favourites, both official and fan-made:
Cookie (official)
Doom
These are unusual times. I’ve found a PS3 game to play and we’ve got a proper game that’s being digitally distributed. ‘Proper’ meaning not a touched up classic and not a £5 twin-stick shooter. It’s something new to console gaming and I really like it – Sony’s taken what could easily have been the next Shadowrun and done it right, making what’s probably my favourite PS3 game yet.
The Warhawk concept has been reinvented as a multiplayer-only Battlefield clone which, to be fair, is the game you want to copy if you’re making a multiplayer war game. And like Battlefield, it suffers from fairly average infantry and ground combat mechanics that are entirely forgiveable in light of some superlative aerial combat. While limiting yourself to the dogfight servers means missing out on certain dimensions of the gameplay, it’s the best way to guarantee a good game without the risk of being left behind without even a wheeled vehicle to carry you into the fray.
I inevitably gravitated towards flying the titular aircraft with sticks (I make no secret of my dislike of the ‘waggle’ fad), a setup which gives one stick to traditional flight and the other to the necessary aerobatics that make dodging and weaving between rock formations quick and intuitive. It never fails to be exciting when you have 16 wingmen flying with you towards the inevitable chaos of missiles and flak that await in the middle.
Warhawk isn’t particularly fully-featured and seems to have constant issues with connections and stats which should really be ironed out by now, but Sony has gone about it in the right way by making it £20 (or £40 on disc with a Bluetooth headset). To make the Shadowrun comparison again, that was also light on content but sold at retail for £50, and look how that turned out.
If this is a way to sidestep crippling development costs while still giving us proper next-gen games, I’m all for it. Of course I still want my big budget BioShocks and blockbusting Halos, but we can’t afford to spend £50 on every game that comes along.
Could this turn out to be Viva Piñata’s successor for the title of best game nobody played this year?
It’s not often that a game is a genuine surprise, least of all when it’s a strategy RPG – a subgenre which combines a genre that I dislike and one for which I’m largely ambivalent. Being that I’d read nothing about this game, I had visions of a grim, serious SRPG based on the real life heroine, probably drab and with lots of horses and archers, and maybe even some light immolation towards the end.
I’m only a few hours in and so can’t speak for the outcome (surely Joan of Arc without fiery death is like Titanic without an iceberg?), but nonetheless I implore you not to write this one off. It’s from Level-5 – those of Dragon Quest VIII and Rogue Galaxy – and while it still takes place against the backdrop of war between France and the invading English, Henry VI is now a possessed child in cahoots with the forces of darkness. While the full extent (and source) of Jeanne’s supernatural abilities are yet to be revealed at the point that I’ve reached, it’s safe to say that there’s more to it than voices in her head.
The presentation here is stunning. Many of the significant cut scenes are told through anime, fully voiced and with excellent production values, and the main game is no slouch either. It maintains the look of DQVIII, and while it gets the most out of the PSP by limiting the scope of each location (one of the necessities of the genre), the characters and environments stand up well to being zoomed it for story scenes. Even on the small screen the towns have personality, and the characters remain as charming as any of Level-5’s creations as they trade quips and words of encouragement during battle.
Coming at the same time as BioShock and certain other games due in the next month, even at its budget price ($30 in the US) I can’t see Jeanne d’Arc being a hit. It’s unfortunate when it’s been out in Japan since last year and we’ve just had our usual summer with nothing to play but alas, this is the industry that we rely on to give us what we need. Don’t miss out on Halo 3 to play this, but if you have a flight (see? Another boat plane they missed with a late release) or just want something portable it seems worth a go. If you like SRPGs you should have no hesitation.
I spent today up at Sega’s headquarters in London at a bloggers’ event to check out the new Sega Rally (aka Sega Rally Revo) which is due next month. Free stuff and the opportunity to play a new game is the only thing that will get me up in time to catch the 6:56am train.
However, when the last time that Sega attempted to bring a classic series into the next generation with its original title we got that Sonic abomination, so you could be forgiven for approaching this one with trepidation. Particularly so when Sega Rally had already had its equivalent of Sonic Adventure 2 – the warning that all was not well, if you will – but now that I’ve stretched that metaphor as far as it will go I can safely say that this won’t be another disaster. Far from it, in my opinion.
Since graphics are often the most salient feature in this generation, I’ll touch on those first. Sega Rally looks good, if only verging on great. The framerate could have done with some tweaking (bear in mind that the build wasn’t final and it was running on the PS3) and overall I didn’t feel like it had all the graphical bells and whistles of DiRT, the most obvious comparison to make. Even so, it certainly didn’t look unimpressive and importantly looked like Sega Rally, complete with the vivid primary colours and flamboyant touches that typified the old Sega arcade racers. Speedboats in the trackside water, gliders and helicopters popping up as you pass, etc. Alas no suicidal spectators like in Sega Rally 2, but you can’t have everything.
The USP here is terrain deformation which, as they took great pains to point out to us, is the real thing here. Motorstorm’s wasn’t persistent, apparently, and other games don’t have it modelled in such intricate detail and with such great impact on the gameplay. It was definitely striking to watch cars carving grooves and divots into the track which were still there on the final lap, affecting racing lines and sending vehicles bouncing around as they negotiated turns and in turn affecting the lines taken by the AI, which in this relatively unbalanced build was monstrously hard. We played with the seriously impressive (and equally expensive) Logitech G25 wheel which went a long way towards completing the effect.
Most importantly, though, it still plays like Sega Rally. Despite the effort poured into the realistic track physics, it has no pretensions of being a sim which I find highly appealing. Racing against other cars rather than the clock, arcadey handling that realises that sliding around in the mud is fun and not something to be punished if you can’t do it perfectly, and proper online multiplayer (I’m looking at you, DiRT). Incidentally we were playing network games over the Internet with no discernible lag.
So for me Sega Rally has gone from a game that was barely on the radar – there’s some other 360 game out in late September, remember? – to a very probable purchase. I feel like I need something different in a Q4 that’s overflowing with shooters and a blast from the past like this could be just the thing.
Oh, and I can’t let this go without bringing up the little competition that they put on for us to compete for a huge trophy and a Sega racing jacket. They say a picture speaks a thousand words; this one speaks six. Out of a possible six :D
And they also may or may not have accidentally let slip what everyone knows but Sony won’t confirm: that a Sixaxis with force feedback is on the way. Someone mentioned supporting it in the PS3 version, at least.
One of my bugbears with many HDTVs is that although they have several SCART sockets which will (hopefully) be all but obsolete in a few years, most of them around the lower end only have a single HDMI port. Not ideal when you have an upscaling DVD player, 360 Elite, PS3, HD set-top box, and the rest.
Enter Joytech. I was wary of their HDMI switch after the serious performance problems with their component switchbox (the first version had problems with HD sources, making it all but useless), but for £30 (minus HDMI cables) I thought it was worth the risk.
What a fantastic little box! I’m going to have to gush a bit here because, aside from the lack of even one included HDMI and the fact that the blue indicator light is too bright in a dark room (I stuck tape over it to take the edge off), I have no complaints. It does exactly what you want it to – that is, it switches between HDMI sources quickly and is HDCP-compliant – and has a couple of handy touches that make it especially easy to recommend.
The first is that in addition to the normal plug, it comes with the option to power it over USB. With so many consoles and modern STBs having USB on the back it can save a valuable slot on the mains. The PS3 doesn’t send power to its USB slots when it’s turned off but the 360 (and HD DVD drive) and Wii both do, as does the Sky HD box, I’m reliably informed. This is an option that more low powered items should have, and in future I want all phones and portable devices to support charging over USB as standard, please.
Secondly it comes with an infra-red extension attached to a small box that can be taped to the TV or somewhere discreet. No need to have the box on display in order to change it remotely so it can be safely chucked into the jungle back there where you never have to notice it again. Unless you’re in a dark room, in which case you’ll notice the aforementioned blue glow all the time. The day that electronics companies realise that as cool as blue LEDs look, they’re usually far too bright will be a happy one.
Considering that only a year ago you’d be looking at well over £100 for a half-decent HDMI switch this is an absolute steal. Just don’t get suckered into buying overpriced leads (95p through Amazon Marketplace) to go with it.
