This game comes out tonight in the U.S., with both a free demo and a full version for $10.

I haven’t played this yet, but here are some good reasons to be excited:

1. Great Classic: This is a great choice for a remake. The NES original was awesome.
2. New technology: Fancy physics engine, enemy AI, flashy 3D graphics tech. This tech is common among recent big budget 3D titles, but I’ve never seen such new technology and high quality production values used on a 2D sidescroller. I remember a Contra sequel for the PS2, which was great, but this looks like a much better game, with much newer tech, and it’s $10 rather than $40.
3. Extras: Local co-op play, new weapons, new bosses, new effects.
4. Cheap: $10 for a full game like this? That’s a steal!

PSN is really rocking lately: PixelJunk Eden, Siren Blood Curse, and now this, all within a month time frame? Wow!

Today’s PLAYSTATION Store Update brings us news of Bionic Commando Rearmed. We can download and play it today. Yay! We also get a 1942: Joint Strike demo.

This dude is complaining that although it’s nice that the new PlayTV peripheral is cheaper than originally stated, that you can’t download your programs to other devices. What you can do, however, is watch programs remotely via PSP. Frankly, if I had PlayTV, I think that would be good enough for me.

I didn’t … I guess they are picking people that are members of the PlayStation Underground. Which I have been part for a LONG time. Anyway the open beta for Qore #3 and people that pre-ordered still start in late September. Let us know if you got in or not.

In the meantime check out the Resistance 2 Site. At least more sites are incorporating the PSN Login - http://beta.myresistance.net/

If you see any of your friends playing “Girl With A Stick” it’s the R2 Beta lol

In a case where Darrin’s point is being made for him, here’s an article that talks about the freedom that Sony gives its developers is what makes LittleBigPlanet possible in the first place. There’s no way a closed system like Xbox Live would support the user-created content that is LittleBigPlanet’s main focus. I wonder if the (assumed) success of this game will change Microsoft’s mind?

That’s not as far-fetched as you may think. Microsoft is famous for seeing others doing things and copying it. Almost everything they do is like that, in fact. So if they see how well user-created content works for Sony, they just might open up the vault a little bit and allow some of their own. My feeling, though, is that it’ll be too little too late.

Gameplayer LittleBigPlanet Embarrass

IGN loves Bionic Commando Rearmed, giving it a 9.4 score out of 10. The game supports two player offline co-op, which makes it a must buy for me!

Here are the movies for this week. Anything for you? Oh, and Gary I saw that Kill Bill is out on Blu-ray Sept 9th! Hopefully it’s on 1 Blu-ray disc.

* 7 Seconds
* Belly
* CJ7
* The Doors
* Felon
* Half Past Dead
* Kiss of the Spider Woman
* Maximum Risk
* Prison Break - Season Three
* Smart People
* Supernova
* The Ten Commandments
* XXX: State of the Union

Blu-ray.com

Heavy Rain has been gathering lots of positive buzz. It was shown to private audiences under NDA at E3 and it has developed its own aura of mystique. Several influential journalists have said something to the effect of “OMG! It’s awesome but I contractually can’t say anything else about it”.

Quantic Dream is a gutsy artistic developer. Some recent screenshots show absolutely dramatic improvements to the character visuals and animation. Compare the Heavy Rain teaser shots to a screen from their previous game:

Quite an improvement, isn’t it?

However, there is one big reason for skepticism: Quantic Dream’s most recent and biggest game, Indigo Prophecy (also called Fahrenheit outside the U.S.). This game got a lot of praise for being gutsy and unique which is true, but let’s take a quick sobering look back at this title:

Gameplay: The gameplay is a mix of classic adventure game elements and “quick time events” (the game flashes a symbol on screen and you have to make a corresponding timed move with the controller). The adventure elements are the better part: dialog trees and decision trees with branching plot lines along with pixel-hunting type exploration (find all the hidden items and actions available in every room). Quick time events have a bad reputation, most players don’t like them, and this game makes frequent, constant, and completely annoying use of them. It’s every bit as bad as it sounds.

Story: The story is a blatant rip off of the popular TV series, Twin Peaks. It focuses on a murder that is committed by a regular nice guy who was possessed by a supernatural evil spirit. The story starts with a normal police investigation and then descends into the surreal and the paranormal. Sound familiar? If that isn’t obvious enough, the game’s soundtrack is composed by the same Angelo Badalamenti who is famous for doing the distinctive Twin Peaks music. I love Twin Peaks and the other works of David Lynch, but there’s nothing worse than other works that try to imitate that same brand of surrealism. Quick tip: If you ever attend a film festival and hear “this director is the next David Lynch”, head the other way! And the absolute kiss of death is when you hear something like, “this up and coming director is like a combination of David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino”.

With Heavy Rain, I have no doubt that the graphics, the animation, and the technology in general will improve. But I am skeptical about the story, the gameplay, and the synergy between the two.

So am I being overly negative? Is my skepticism valid? Or is the hushed mystique around this game deserved?

Should Sony force game studios to add specific features like Trophy support to their PS3 games? This is almost a classic left-wing/right-wing, socialist/libertarian issue and this is a debate that’s popped up on this site several times.

Johnathan Blow, the primary developer behind the critically praised Braid that was just released on XBLA (and soon to be released on PC), spoke to Gamasutra about this type of regulation on XBLA games:

“…there are still a lot of requirements, and I believe that, at least for a single-player game like my game, the vast majority of these requirements are unnecessary”

“I put in a tremendous amount of work meeting all these requirements, when I could have put that work into the actual game, and made it even a little more polished, little bit better.”

Regarding the XBLA certification process:

“But I feel like it actually decreases the quality of games, because people spend so much of their energy on these things that users don’t even really care about.”

Despite his criticisms of the regulations, Johnathan Blow was overally very happy about his experience with Microsoft.

“They also bent a lot of XBLA rules, in order to help me make the game the way I wanted, which was pretty cool of them,”

The obvious counter point is that rather than enforce lots of strict rules on developers and then “be cool about it” by letting some of them slide, they could simply have more relaxed rules to begin with so don’t developers don’t need to get special favors in order to build their games.

In general, Sony enforces less rules and regulations on developers, while Microsoft is more strict on these issues. It’s a tradeoff between developer goodwill and innovation vs. end-user consistency. Of course, PC/web/Flash games offer developers the most relaxed regulations of all since there is basically no intermediate company between the developer and the consumer.

Minimalist regulation tends to work well for cutting-edge innovation, artistry, and satisfies the more knowledgeable enthusiast fans, while more corporate regulation favors the more casual consumers and the mass market. Think of food: food enthusiasts generally prefer small, authentic restaurants that tend to be independent, while the more mainstream crowd generally prefers food chains that run each store through tightly written process scripts. Or with music, the knowledgeable fans often have very specific tastes and prefer authentic live performances, while more casual listeners just listen to heavily scripted broadcast radio.

Check out this Little Big Planet website. Not much to look at now. But if you click on the SackBoy you can place stickers all over the website. It’s actually quite fun. Here is one I created really quick, click to enlarge. Let’s see what you guys can do

NeoGAF has made some too, check it out, lol.

Little Big Planet Website

The XMB is too in-your-face for my taste.

I was playing Army of Two with Steve the other day, and there’s a part where you have to select your profile data. First, you say that you want to select it, then you have to confirm, and afterwards, you have to exit. If I selected a profile in the first place, that should be enough. Now I know what you’re going to say. What if you selected the wrong profile by mistake? Ok, maybe the first prompt might be acceptable, but once that’s passed I don’t want to have to hit circle to exit, I want it to keep going!

So what about this situation?

Say you want to change the wallpaper. You go to your photos. You go to the photo you want. You hit triangle. You select the option to set as wallpaper, and then it prompts you to make sure that’s what you want to do. After all those many steps, I think it’s pretty obvious that this is what I want to do. And besides, even if it isn’t, I can easily go back and choose my previous wallpaper.

And what about this?

You’re in the store. You want to download something. You click the download button. Then the same artifact appears again, but in list view, and you have to hit download again. What’s up with that? I already said that I wanted to download it, why does it have to ask again? And why does it ask if I want to put media on my HDD or memory stick? Can’t it just default to the HDD? I can always copy it over to the memory stick later if I wanted to!

So you say I’m nitpicking.

I’m not! It’s all about the total user experience. Frankly I don’t like being nagged to death for everything I want to do. “Are you sure Jonnyboy that you want to do this action? After all, it’s completely harmless and you can easily undo it later if you really had to. But I don’t trust you to know what you’re doing, so I’m gonna bug you about everything you do until the cows come home.”

Let’s take a look at the Mac.

One of the things I found was odd when I moved over to using my Mac (a white MacBook, if you must know) is the lack of confirmations. No “Apply” buttons. In the preferences, when I selected something, it just happened. When you change the desktop background on a Mac, it changes as soon as you click on the image. How refreshing! How instant! How easy!

I think Sony has a bit to learn…

Later today you can download a PlayStation Home theme from the PlayStation Store. This will submit a application to join the Home Beta.

We will be using a variety of criteria including activity on the PLAYSTATION Network to determine eligibility for the Beta community. Existing beta testers have automatically qualified to be part of the expanded beta.

Japan had this happen a week or so ago, and I entered to try my luck, but I didn’t get in. So good luck to all the PS3Blog.net writers and readers!

Want into the PlayStation Home Closed Beta test? Here’s How to Apply

This is exactly why I like MGO: it’s so unique. It has so many things that other games don’t have. And this is another to add to that list. It started one night when I logged on for a few minutes and there was a news flash about the very first Instructor class, and only 15 people could get in. So I waited until 10 pm and refreshed like crazy and tried to join, but sadly I couldn’t get in.

But after a few days a lot of other people got to be a Instructor so it’s fairly easy to become an Instructor now. It really is a great place to refine your skills. I learned from one Instructor a easier way to get head shots from mid to close range.

Basically to become an Instructor you need to be in a room with an Instructor for 30 minutes then the Instructor will get a pop up message saying “User name can Graduate” (something like that). Then the instructor can wait for others to qualify or just start the Graduation Ceremony. I won’t say what it involves, but it’s fun to see for the first time. But even if you don’t get to graduate you at least get to watch. Just be sure to select yes to save after!

The Instructor can choose to promote you or not, so be respectful! This is me as an instructor

I promoted 3 guys to Instructors last night, it was fun. We just chatted and tested out various things. Make each other fart, lol. See pics below Click on any of the pics in the post to enlarge them.

Join Combat Training

Join a game in which you can receive Combat Training from the host player. Just like with “Join Game” in Free Battle, you can check what kind of game it is before joining. *Your skills during Combat Training will be the same as those set by the instructor.

Notes on Combat Training

LECTURE MODE

In this mode, you will receive various lectures from the instructor. What the lectures are about are decided by the host instructor.
Check the comments when selecting a game, and choose one that you would like to learn more about.

Practice Mode

Practice mode comes after lecture mode and gives you a chance to apply what you just learned in a Team Death match. The instructor will be there to guide you along the way.

Graduation

The instructor will decide whether a player deserves to “Graduate” after receiving a certain amount of combat training. If a player has what it takes and shows proper etiquette, then you can graduate them.

“Graduation” is one of the conditions necessary for obtaining the Instructor skill, which allows you to create your own “Combat Training” sessions.

Instructor Skill

To become an instructor and create combat training sessions, you must have the “Instructor Skill”. To earn this skill, you must clear certain conditions. We trust that all of you with the Instructor Skill will raise fine soldiers. Good luck!

MGO Online Manual

I know that this news isn’t new, and I don’t think that this screenshot is even new, but seeing it today I got excited all over again that we’re finally gonna have a next- this-gen racing game that supports four players. This is gonna rock for my friends and me. The last time we did any amount of 4 player racing was PGR2 on the original Xbox.

Remember that, in addition to 4 player splitscreen, this game will also offer many more tracks than the original MotorStorm did. And custom soundtracks! And trophy support!

I’d like to ask two things of the developer, though, if you’re reading this:

1. Spread the on-screen graphics out a bit. They are getting in the way of seeing what’s actually happening. I know you do this because of overscan, but different sets have different amounts of overscan. Maybe you can make this adjustable? Or put the stats in a vertical column near the middle split?
2. Put me in the beta! I want to play this! I want to play this with my friends! Pretty pretty please?

That’s it!

Screenshot - MotorStorm 2

Finally some SOCOM: Confrontation public beta info! It’s coming in September. For those of us who bought the first issue of Qore, we get into the beta a week later than those who preordered the game.