Category Archives: PlayStation

Games, PlayStation

The Whites Are Coming!

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I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at this one. There’s a huge palaver over a new billboard in Holland for the launch of the white PSP since it has a white, blonde-haired woman grabbing a black woman by the face while proclaiming that “White is Coming”. Hmm…

LocoRoco

Now I hate all this political correctness shite (I’ll happily laugh at jokes about white people, black people, men, women, religions, gingers, blondes, the French, etc) but surely an ad agency had to know that people were going to find that offensive?

That was probably the idea since there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but coming after the shock news that LocoRoco is an allegory for white flight, complete with what appear to be fanged Rastafarian minstrels trying to eat the poor oppressed white (yellow?) folks, does this mean we can expect to see Ken Kutaragi goose stepping across the stage at E3 2007? It would surely be less controversial than his showing this time.

As I often do, I’d like to thank UK Resistance for the usual biting analysis:

The key facts of the matter are this: It don’t matter if PSP is black or white. It’s still shit and hasn’t got any games.

Can’t argue with that…

Editorials, Games, PlayStation

I Don’t Get Metal Gear

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Take it, Snake

I bought Metal Gear Solid 3 when it was released in the US after the unanimously good reviews and because it was the first hot import after I got my PS2 chipped but gave up a short way into it. It’s not that I thought it was a bad game…it’s just that the camera system was still in 1998, and while that worked in the angular environments of MGS and MGS2 it felt positively archaic in the organic Russian jungle.

Not only that, but as if the rampant surrealism wasn’t weird enough, the game crammed it into copious cut-scenes that I just couldn’t deal with, cinematic though they were. Some call it postmodern; I can’t remember what I called it because I fell asleep.

The first MGS was just a bit quirky which I could handle and I ended up thoroughly enjoying it, but I don’t have to explain the controversy around the direction that MGS2 went with its story (angsty Teen Beat coverboy finds time to discuss King Kong with ex-girlfriend while on top secret infiltration mission) which led to a premature end to my time with that one.

Cut scenes are skippable though, so since MGS3: Subsistence adds a 3D camera I bought a used import copy a couple of days ago (£15 = bargain!) to see whether that puts it closer to my stealth action darling, Splinter Cell. It’s an improvement, but the gameplay still just seems so outdated. I really can’t tell…is it Metal Gear? Or is it me?

Games, PlayStation, Xbox

Democracy In Action

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This made me laugh. The nominations for the 24th annual Golden Joystick awards are open and us gamers can show how democratic we are by voting for our favourite games of the year. The esteemed UK Resistance (militant Sega fanboys who still resent Sony – see here and here – for murdering the Dreamcast, for those who aren’t in the know) are calling for everyone to vote for 50 Cent: Bulletproof so that the developers have to go and collect their award and get publicly humiliated on TV.

Naturally this will also lead to nobody making any more stupid urban “gangsta” games, so we all win. Do it now.

Games, Impressions, PlayStation

LocoRoco

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LocoRoco

Yeah, I found a use for the PSP. How unbelieveable is that? There’s been a LocoRoco demo out for a while (get it here) and I finally got around to updating the PSP to 2.7 and giving it a try. Not only is it a PSP game that isn’t a port, but it also seems to be a bloody good one.

Seriously, give it a try. It’s almost DS-like in its simple design – three buttons are all that’s used. You tilt the world with the shoulder buttons and move your weird singing blob across the terrain while pressing both together to make it jump, and as it enlarges in that way that rolling blobs in video games tend to do you can press circle to break it into a mass of smaller ones. Holding circle makes them join up again as they scream like children.

More than anything it’s a charming little game. The flat graphics are cool, the music is something out of Katamari Damacy (the blobs even sing it if you look closely), and the sound effects are a good laugh. It’s supposedly out in Europe next month before even Japan so get the demo and give it a try.

Games, PlayStation

What Can I Do With £425?

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Not give it all to Sony, that’s for sure.

That’s fucking insane. It’s $200 more than the already-expensive US 60GB model, and of course Microsoft must be having a field day with the fact that it’s nearly £150 more than the premium 360. Most were expecting a 360 price drop by that time but to be fair they don’t even need to. We Brits are used to paying a premium over the rest of the world but at least with the 360 we’re only paying $30 more than in the States.

Chances are for that amount of money I’ll be able to buy a Wii, the 360 HD-DVD drive, and have money left over for some games for both machines. Fuck them.

Editorials, Games, Impressions, Nintendo, PC games, PlayStation, Sega, Xbox

E3 Thoughts

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Nothing mind-blowing from any of the big three, then. Some impressive stuff, to be sure, and some things better than others, but no clear advantages for this console war. My biggest thought so far has been “OMG!”:

Halo 3's Ark...or is it?

This is probably going to be a long post…

First the conferences. I stayed up late to watch the Sony one live and, like most people seemed to, came away disappointed after all the hyperbole. Only three games really struck me – Final Fantasy XIII, Metal Gear Solid 4, and Virtua Fighter 5 – and the rest seemed spectacularly unspectacular. Tekken 6 didn’t even look as good as DOA4, and Resistance looked like a browner Call of Duty, for example. I was impressed with the very cool Eye of Judgement demo and the aforementioned three games, but then…$600. It’s not even a generation ahead of the 360 but is $200 more? No thanks.

There is a $500 unit, but who wants that? You lose the HDMI (so none of the advertised 1080p, ever), memory card slots, and wi-fi. At least if you buy a Core 360 you can buy the things to take it up to the premium one at a later date, but with the PS3 you’re stuck with the crippled one. I’m not going to get started on the “amazing innovation” (their words) of the motion sensitive controller but suffice to say that Nintendo must have been pissed.

What made me laugh was listening to Radio 1 the next day which is usually the home of PlayStation fanboy chavs and the opinions that were called in were universally negative. They even said that the consensus seemed to be that they’d “copied Microsoft and Nintendo and slapped a massive price tag on it.” Continue reading E3 Thoughts →