Sorry to go off topic but I’m moving home tomorrow and unfortunatley I’m leaving my PC behind which means I will be offline for a while so will be unable to contribute to this excellent site.

As soon as I can afford an iMac (if someone wants to give me one for free I won’t refuse ) and broadband connection I will be back and posting my usual inane rubbish!

I have to admit I’ve really enjoyed writing on here and being part of this place so I must thank Henning for giving me the opportunity to write about all things PS3. Thank You it’s been a pleasure!

I also would like to thank everybody that has commented on my posts, you’ve made me feel like all the effort has been worthwile even though a great deal of our readers still prefer to lurk rather than to make their voices heard.

I’ll still be visiting this place at every opportunity to keep up to date with Henning, Tom & Darrin’s view on the PS3 and everything to do with it, so play nice.

Oh and whoever writes about DMC4 had better do a good job ……just kidding!

Thanks and see you soon!

Sorry guys, I don’t have any updates for you today - my internet has been down almost the whole weekend, and is still down. I’m posting this from work (for shame!).

I hope you’ll indulge this totally off-topic post, but I had to post this because (a) I like my Coca-Cola, and (b) Gary likes his GTA. Put them together, and what do you get? My first experiment in linking a Google video into a post.

What do ya think?

[via GyozaGaming!]

Well, because of scraper sites out there passing off my content as their own, I’ve had to go to summary feeds for PS3Blog.net. Sorry folks. Please tell me what you think.

I have to tell you that this really ticks me off. I’ve even talked to one of these scraper site owners, and they think they’re doing nothing wrong. And the guy wanted to affiliate with me! There are so many annoying, unscrupulous people out there, sometimes it gets depressing. They ruin it for the rest of us.

When I was in grade 5 my parents enrolled me in piano lessons. We used the Royal Conservatory of Music curriculum. And don’t let that “we” fool you - I didn’t have any choice in the matter. I spent a lot of time learning a lot of boring songs, and I can’t say I enjoyed it all that much. Playing music didn’t seem to be my cup of tea.

Well, until Harmonix came along. They added some sugar and ice to that tea, and now I love it. Their first game was Frequency, and I still think it stands up very well. My friends and I think it’s actually a better game that its sequel, Amplitude. Amplitude has a better multiplayer mode - everyone’s on the same screen. But it feels less like you’re actually playing a track. In Frequency the feeling of playing the bass or drums or synth or whatever was a lot more immediate - it really felt like you were playing the instrument. In Amplitude it’s like you took one step back from it. Also, another advantage of Frequency over Amplitude is that it had better songs. Actually, most of the songs in the two games aren’t really my cup of tea, and that’s where Harmonix’ next title, Guitar Hero, makes the big leap, in my mind. It just has a bigger selection of better songs than Frequency or Amplitude. On the other hand, multiplayer isn’t as good, and you can only play with two players and not four.

It’s still a good game and I’m eagerly awaiting the sequel, due to arrive in the fall. Harmonix is also evaluating the next gen machines to determine what they’ll do there, according to this Joystiq interview with Rob Kay of Harmonix. Unfortunately, they don’t give any hint as to what kind of game they’ll make for which platform. But if their track record is anything to go by, then it’ll be a fun game to do with music! (What keen insight I have!)

One of my favourite games is Champions of Norrath (CoN). Prior to that game, I’d never played any RPG’s, so the idea was new to me and fresh. But that’s not the main reason I liked the game. Sure I played it a full weekend straight when my wife was away with the kids. After a while, though, playing single player didn’t interest me too much anymore. It’s the multiplayer co-op aspect that gives the game such lasting appeal. I still play CoN and its sequel, Return to Arms (RtA) with my friends and have a blast.

I’ve always made it abundantly clear here that I prefer multiplayer games. I love sitting down around my TV with my friends, gabbing about the latest happenings inbetween bouts of killing, racing, hacking, and slashing. And while playing against one another is fun, we’ve found that co-operative play can be even more fun.

It’s fun in games like Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter to plop ourselves down in a city with 40 bad guys and go on the hunt. “By the fountain! By the fountain! Got two - there’s another three sneaking around the west side!” It’s really a blast, and it helps to play on a large HDTV!

VicViper over at bits & bytes & pixels & sprites makes a strong case for co-op play as well, and he says it much more eloquently than I can. Check it out. I hope that in the next generation, co-op and multiplayer becomes more important, not less. It’s disappointing to see a game with such potential as PGR3 go to two-player. Let’s hope that more games go to multiplayer and co-op modes, like Resistance: Fall of Man.

bits & bytes & pixels & sprites - Dear Next-Gen, Can Co-Op Come Out and Play?

My basement is currently a concrete floor and exposed joists and insulation. It’s my pride and joy - it’s where I go to store stuff. But one day I hope to make it do just a tad bit more than store stuff. I want it to be as awesome as this:

Well, to be honest, I don’t think I’ll ever have the budget to put together something like that. But I do have plans to make a pretty cool home theater slash office space. No home theater, in my mind, would be complete without some serious gaming technology. In this case, they do the whole Xbox 360 thing. No walking over to a closet or stand to swap out games. The console is right there where you sit! (That was part of my plan - they stole my idea!)

Of course I plan to procure myself a PS3 as soon as November 17th rolls around, so my equivalent pic to this one would look a little different. But it’s still pretty cool.

Right now my home theater is the same thing as my gaming room, which is the same thing as my family room. When looking for a house, I made sure that the basement had a configuration conducive to a home theater. Nice big room, no posts. (I had to have a beam strengthened to get rid of the posts.) So I’m ready for the future, but currently it’s all in my mind.

Does anybody here have a dedicated home theater / gaming room? What kind of setup do you have? I’ll go first. I have a Hitachi 57″ rear-projection CRT HDTV. Some Linn 5140 and 5120 speakers. A Paradigm Servo-15 sub. A JVC DVD player and a Harman/Kardon AVR500 receiver, which I hope to replace as soon as I can with separates.

A gaming music lover and movie junkie’s paradise.

I’ve had my HDTV for two years now (see the picture of my set below), and I’m really enjoying it. Every time a program comes on TV that’s not in HD, I’m disappointed. Last season my cable company didn’t have a channel that carried Smallville in HD, and I was miffed. Watching the Olympics, my wife once complained that the event she wanted to watch was on a “regular” channel. The HD experience is one you need to experience, not one that people can tell you about. And in my view, you really need a larger set to get the full impact. None of this 34″ widescreen HDTV stuff! Sure you get the benefit of a widescreen display, but at 34″ and most viewing distances, an EDTV (Enhanced Definition TV, between SD and HD) would be just as good.

So if you were to ask me if a future PS3 owner should own an HDTV to use it with, of course my answer would be “yes”. Am I biased? You bet. But it’s from experience. My friend Todd has an Xbox 360 and it’s fun to play games on his 32″ SDTV. But he brought the 360 over to my place once, and it was like a white chocolate Easter bunny versus the white chocolate chunks from Laura Secord. (Hmmm, I guess that analogy only makes sense if you’re a white chocolate lover like me, and you know how great the chocolate is at Laura Secord stores. Ah well. Insert your own analogy expounding a big difference, if you like.) We play GRAW in four player mode, and it’s hard to see what you’re shooting at on a 32″ TV. We each get one quarter of the screen, of course, which makes it rough on a small SDTV. The HDTV makes all the difference. Not only is the image much bigger, it’s also more detailed. An SDTV gives you “Is that Todd in the distance there? Do I need to shoot? Yeah, I guess. Okay, line up on those two pixels there and pull the trigger. Nope - missed. Move over another pixel.” While with an HDTV it’s more like “Ha! Got Todd! Now where’s Steve? Ah! Right behind me!”

But I guess if I had to get all technical on you and answer the question in this article’s title, that is “Do PS3 owners need an HDTV?”, the answer is “no”. You do not need an HDTV to use and enjoy a PS3. You will covet one. You’ll think “How did I ever manage with a cruddy old SDTV?”. You’ll sell your left lung for one because they’re so cool and nice to play games on. But technically, if you’re gonna get right down to it, you don’t really need one. Just don’t tell anyone I said that, okay?

GameSpy - Do Gamers Really Need HDTV?

I’d never heard of gaming lag until a friend of mine with an LCD HDTV complained about it to me one day. Apparently, the image on his screen was being displayed just a bit after it really should. So my friend would react to something that he sees on screen, but his reactions were always too late. Therefore, gaming became a very frustrating experience for him, and he couldn’t use his nice LCD rear-projection HDTV to play video games.

I had no idea what he was talking about.

It never happened to me, and this article from IGN helps explain why. Some kinds of displays are less affected by gaming lag than others. IGN points out that CRT displays are among the least affected, and I have a CRT rear-projection HDTV. So that was explained. But I think that IGN also puts the finger on the real problem. It might be that CRT displays are less affected, but I think that it’s more to do with the video processing that is part of the HDTV. The HDTV has to take the incoming video signal and process it for display. It might have to do some deinterlacing. Some scaling. Sometimes a display will do colour correction, edge enhancement, and other fake effects to trick you into thinking you see a better image when in fact you’re just seeing a less accurate one. IGN points out that often these things can be disabled, and that some HDTV’s even have gaming modes that disable these things for you.

What does this mean for you? Ideally you could bring your console into a store and try it out on a display that you’re thinking of purchasing. Often that’s not possible. So you’ll having to do some research on the internet, and see if gaming lag is a problem for the set you’re thinking of buying. You can also see if the set has a gaming mode.

It’s not really a problem we need. We already have to think about DLP versus LCD versus whatever. HDMI and 1080p. PVR and cable versus satellite. Etc. But if you don’t make sure that your television doesn’t suffer from gaming lag, you could be in for a very frustrating experience. Take it from my friend - it’s not a pleasant experience.

IGN - HDTV-Gaming-Lag: An Epidemic Exposed

It’s funny that we were just talking about this the other day. The Court of Appeal in the UK has ruled that the PS2 is not a “digital processing unit” - it’s a games console. My view, of course, is that it’s both, and I don’t really see how the court of appeal can deny that it’s a digital processing unit. Because it’s a unit that does processing digitally. Duh!

I’m just going out on a limb here, by my guess is that the Court of Appeal just doesn’t want to give Sony their £34.2m import duties back. In 2001 the import duty for games consoles was 1.7%. It fell to 0% by 2004.

Supposedly Sony’s lawyers were also quite shameful in their filings too, saying not-so-nice things about the jude. Tsk tsk Sony!

Reg Hardware - PlayStation 2 is not a PC, says Court of Appeal

I seemed to have missed this but Sony announced at E3 that the PSP will be getting a range of platinum games just like the PS2. The range of ‘best selling’ titles are only available in Europe at the moment & will be availabe in the UK June 2nd.

The games said to be among the first range of platinum titles are Everybody’s Golf, WRC, F1 Grand Prix, Medievil Resurrection, Ridge Racers, Virtua Tennis: World Tour, Burnout Legends, WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2006, Need for Speed Underground Rivals, Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire & Peter Jackson’s King Kong.

No WipEout Pure. Strange. I’ll definitley get Everybody’s Golf, possibly Burnout Legends & I would’ve got WipEout if it was available at the cheaper price.

Allaboutgames - PSP Gets Platinum Range

GameSpot has a preview of the Formula One 2006 game coming from Sony. I know it’s not PS3 related, but there’s some interesting stuff in here that may bear some relevance. The game has all sorts of new features, like pitstops and the like. It is being released on both the PS2 and the PSP this summer.

And here’s where things get interesting - PS2 and PSP owners can race each other! I don’t recall seeing this before, where a person on one console/portable platform can play against a person on a different platform. You’ll be able to join the same lobbies and compete in the same races. Pretty neat stuff. I assume this is part of where Sony is going with the PSP and PS3 integration. I wonder if one day PS2, PS3, and PSP owners can all race against each other?

E3 06: Formula One 06 Hands-on - PlayStation 2 News at GameSpot

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while but I didn’t have enough time to give it the coverage I think it deserves. Here goes…..

We all have expectations as to what the next gen consoles will give us. Better graphics, more storage space, wireless joypads etc etc, but what about what really matters: the gameplay?

Well LucasArts & NaturalMotion have something in store for us all!

Indiana Jones is set to showcase a fantastic looking technology, from NaturalMotions, that aims to replicate “real-world physics”:

Utilizing a run-time animation technology called euphoria, the game is poised to push the limits of what was previously possible. The company that developed the technology, NaturalMotion, has been working for years to hone euphoria to accurately replicate real-world physics such as strength, weight, and momentum with in-game character models. Whereas before, all animations had to be pre-programmed, euphoria allows for reactions and behaviors to occur in real-time — allowing models to react realistically to whatever situation might arise.

To be clear, euphoria is not an AI program, it’s an animation technology that allows for physically accurate behaviors. The AI is programmed by the developer, in this case LucasArts, into the euphoria models to control them. What we saw at LucasArts was the marriage of euphoria physics and LucasArts A.I. scripts.

Before I go on I recommend you check out the two videos from IGN:

IGN - Euphoria In Action

WOW!!!

Read the rest of this entry »

I know this is a PS3 blog but this has to be seen!!

It’s a trailer for God of War 2 on PS2:

GAMETRAILERS - GoW2 Trailer

Oh.My.God!

I initially wanted GoW2 on the PS3 but after seeing that I think they are justified in keeping it on the PS2. It looks fantastic & if it turns out to be the last high profile game for PS2 then what a way for it to bow out.

Plus it will give the developers time to work on GoW3 on PS3. Oooohh what a prospect that will be!!

Henning I think you’d better hurry up & play God of War before this comes out next year (& before the PS3 is released).

1up - GoW2 Interview & Trailer

I haven’t bought a game for my PC in a long long time. I’m more of a console gamer now, so I never play games on my PC anymore. But yesterday I decided to buy Call of Duty 2 because I’d been playing it multiplayer during lunch at work and it’s a great game. I thought it would be cool to take it for a spin on my machine at home, and check out the single player mode.

It doesn’t run. Something about my video card not supporting dynamic textures. Which really ticked me off. I can’t take the game back because I’ve opened it! To prevent this exact scenario, before I bought the game I checked the minimum system requirements. 1.5GHz Pentium 4. Check. (Actually, mine’s 2.5GHz, so it’s even better than minimum.) 512MB RAM. Check. Graphics card must have 64MB of RAM. Check. In an NVIDIA card, it must be at least a GeForce 4. Check. (Mine’s a GeForce 4 MX 440.) So my machine should run this game just fine.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is that I tried to play a game on my PC. I know how bad this can be, seeing as how installing a total of 4 games totally screwed up the machine my kids use, but I thought I’d give it a chance.

Now I’m left with a decision to make. Do I sell the game at a loss? A brand new game that cost me $60Cdn? That I haven’t even played? Or do I throw more money at it, and upgrade my video card? I’m not exactly made of cash, so this option doesn’t appeal to me very much.

But I really wanted to play that game!

Crap.

Crap. I can’t wait for my PS3 to arrive, when I can play games with this quality and I know they’ll just work.