Category Archives: PlayStation

Games, Impressions, Music, PlayStation

Okami Soundtrack

1 Comment

Check this baby out. Got it in the post this morning from YesAsia. Thankfully I didn’t order from Lik-Sang…

Okami Soundtrack

I haven’t had a chance to listen to most of it since it’s five discs, 218 tracks, and over five and a half hours long. I think that I actually have albums that are quicker to listen to straight through than it’s been to import this thing into iTunes.

The music while playing the game has been very good, obviously with strong traditional Japanese influences and more modern elements for good measure. If you like that kind of music I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. In any case how can you say no when it’s this purdy? Anything less wouldn’t do the beauty of the game justice, I suppose.

Games, PlayStation, Tech

RIP Lik-Sang

1 Comment

Remember those days when your only choice for getting an import game was the local independent and the prospect of paying £100 for it? Or a questionable mail order company in the back of CVG that may or may not fold before the next issue? Then the Internet came along and we could get all the cheap imports and dirt cheap accessories we wanted from Hong Kong outlets, and it was good.

As you may or may not know, possibly the biggest of these Hong Kong retailers, Lik-Sang, has today announced in a surprisingly ironic statement that it’s closing down as a result of repeated Sony lawsuits against it. The most recent one, which I wrote about in my last post, ended in a ruling that the importing of PSPs into the EU before the official release had been illegal and, by association, that importing the PS3 would be as well.

“Today is Sony Europe victory about PSP, tomorrow is Sony Europe’s ongoing pressure about PlayStation 3. With this precedent set, next week could already be the stage for complaints from Sony America about the same thing, or from other console manufacturers about other consoles to other regions, or even from any publisher about any specific software title to any country they don’t see fit. It’s the beginning of the end… of the World as we know it”, stated Pascal Clarysse, formerly known as the Marketing Manager of Lik-Sang.com.

“Blame it on Sony. That’s the latest dark spot in their shameful track record as gaming industry leader. The Empire finally ‘won’, few dominating retailers from the UK probably will rejoice the news, but everybody else in the gaming world lost something today.”

Well, fuck them. Really, fuck them. I’d never once used Lik-Sang to buy a Sony product but had bought countless cheap gadgets (most recently my £10 component switcher) that are difficult to find elsewhere. Now that’s gone because Sony wants to attack consumer choice for when they decide that they don’t like paying more for a late product. I don’t, didn’t buy a UK PSP, and also won’t buy a UK PS3.

This is a sad day. I hope this pisses off enough gamers to really come back and bite them.

Games, PlayStation

Sony’s at it Again…

1 Comment

So now it’s illegal to import a Sony console into the EU without their permission, following on from all that rubbish surrounding PSP imports when that was delayed in Europe:

“The law is clear; grey importing PS2, PSP or PS3 into the EU, without the express permission of SCE is illegal. Therefore, we will utilise the full scope of the law to put a stop to any retailers who chose to do this.”

Beside the fact that if it’s illegal it’s not ‘grey’ anymore, it’s a potential stumbling block for those indies who miss out on the Christmas rush of PS3 buyers and so were counting on flogging imports at inflated prices to actually get an advantage of the high street for once. And I thought this thing was multiregion? What’s the point if you can’t import games, since the PSP embargo stopped a lot of companies even selling those?

Maybe someone should point out to them that price fixing is also illegal. I can’t think of a better term for a 33% price hike while simultaneously blocking cheaper imports from abroad. Whatever happened to competition?

Games, Impressions, Nintendo, PlayStation

Okamina of Time

Leave a comment

Now that I’ve finished MGS3 (reviewed here), finally managing to enjoy it, I’ve switched focus to Okami. As I’m sure you’re aware by now it’s to be one of the last titles to emerge from the brilliant-but-moribund Clover Studio, but, sad as it is, that’s not what I want to talk about.

Okami lets you play as a wolf. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess lets you play in the form of a wolf. Coincidence? More than likely, but I’m really noticing the similarities between this game and Zelda. I expected something more like a straight-up action game and, I suppose, if you’re going to make more of an open-ended adventure like Clover has, Zelda is the obvious template to borrow from. What has surprised me is how I’m finding myself enjoying it more than any recent Zelda.

Maybe it’s just the tremendous amount of personality that the stunning visuals give it, or maybe that in eight years Zelda arguably hasn’t matched the sheer quality of its first 3D outing. It might even be that the trend of giving Link a magical instrument with which to manipulate the world (ocarina, masks, rod, baton, talking hat, etc) is echoed and superseded in Amaterasu’s infinitely more versatile paintbrush. Whatever it is, Ammy is certainly an able rival to Link. And she, too, has an annoying sprite for a sidekick.

Whether it actually manages to top Zelda at its own game or not, Okami deserves your money. Sales haven’t met expectations, so make it a big seller and show Capcom the error of its ways. RIP Clover.

Games, Movies & TV, Nintendo, PC games, PlayStation, Sega, Xbox

This is Getting Silly

6 Comments

I make no bones about how annoying I find the tendency of the games industry to pile all their big releases into the Christmas period and leave an incredibly lean summer. I understand why they do it but for those of us to whom picking up the latest releases is an obsession – part of the growing Xbox Live mentality where you have to play what all your friends are, I suppose – it’s tantamount to torture.

I went through various release lists and worked out all the games and hardware that I intend to buy before the end of the year. Take a look:

October

  • Contact (US DS)
  • Final Fantasy XII (US PS2)
  • Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (US PSP)
  • Power Stone Collection (US PSP)
  • Pro Evolution Soccer 6 (UK 360)
  • Splinter Cell: Double Agent (UK 360)
  • Tony Hawk’s Project 8 (UK 360)

November

  • Call of Duty 3 (UK 360)
  • Elite Beat Agents (US DS)
  • F.E.A.R. (UK 360)
  • Guitar Hero II (US PS2)
  • Football Manager 2007 (Mac)
  • Final Fantasy III (US DS)
  • Final Fantasy V Advance (US GBA)
  • Gears of War (UK 360)
  • HD DVD drive (UK 360)
  • Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (US Wii)
  • Lumines II (US PSP)
  • Rainbow Six Vegas (UK 360)
  • Wii (US)
  • World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade (Mac)
  • Yoshi’s Island 2 (US DS)

December

  • Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (US DS)

Throw in a few HD DVDs and all the summer movies that are hitting DVD and you have some serious wallet rape going on here. The average person isn’t going to be able to afford to spend a tenth of that on games alone so surely this practice of all saturating the market at the same time can’t be beneficial.

I’ll bet that there’s more than a couple of European gamers out there who are silently thankful that the PS3 was delayed.

Games, Impressions, PlayStation, Sega, Xbox

O Sega, Where Art Thou?

2 Comments

So I downloaded the Sonic The Hedgehog demo on Xbox Live…

Jesus fucking Christ. This just sums up everything that’s happened to Sega over the last few years. The trailblazing company that brought us so many great and innovative titles on the Saturn and Dreamcast just seems to have rotted away, leaving a festering carcass that just churns out complete pap.

The anticipation that I used to feel for a new Sega game is replaced by a creeping dread that somehow they’ll have fucked up the unfuckupable like Phantasy Star Universe. Even Sonic for that matter should be easy – run really fast through some pretty landscapes and that’s it. No digging for emeralds, no dark emo hedgehogs, no vehicles, and certainly no cats fishing for their frogs.

If you haven’t played the Sonic demo, it’s rubbish. Complete pish. For a start Sonic isn’t fast, which is like making a Zelda game where Link doesn’t have uncomfortably effeminate personality traits. The camera is so slow that it has to be a joke (maybe the whole game is a joke). You spend more time watching Sonic fall to his death than actually doing anything that resembles gameplay. Twitchy controls, slowdown, and it looks like Sonic Adventure 2 in 720p. Just wrong, and that’s even without Shadow in it. What the hell is Sonic without a sense of speed?

This isn’t the Sega that could do no wrong. Only a few years ago they gave us Shenmue, two pretty competent 3D Sonics, Phantasy Star Online, Jet Set Radio, Skies of Arcadia, Crazy Taxi, F355 Challenge; the only recent Sega game that I’ve enjoyed can’t be described without the word ‘flawed’ in there. They didn’t put out rubbish like this on Dreamcast or even in the early days of their multiplatform life: Jet Set Radio Future and Panzer Dragoon Orta were as good as anything they’ve done. Sonic Heroes wasn’t.

So what’s happened to them? Is the current Sega an evil imposter or something?