PS3 Attitude

PlayStation 3 news, views and gossip from PS3 Attitude - a daily news site with bite!

Friday, 7 September 2007

PS3 Attitude; call for writers (100th post)

PS3 Attitude is 100 posts old. I know, I know - that's baby food as far as news sites are concerned, but the site has been building nicely since its birth and we'll be coming along with some nice new exclusive content and additions to the site real soon...

In the meantime, we'd like to repeat our call for writers.

You need to be able to write. You need to have a PSN ID.

If you fill those two requirements please send a sample of your writing to [email protected] so we can consider your skills and get you on the team!

Look forward to hearing from all your budding PS3 news writers...

Labels: , ,

Star Ocean 4 a PS3 exclusive; new sites go live

Ahead of the hotly anticipated Tokyo Game Show, Square Enix have announced two new Star Ocean PSP titles and Star Ocean 4. The new Star Ocean 4 portals are up and running as I write this.

According to the usually very reliable Next-Gen.biz, Star Ocean 4 will be a PS3 exclusive, with the official word to be announced at TGS later this month.

We're still smarting from the one time we printed a rumour and it was wrong, but it looks like this one will stick...

Labels: , , , ,

Tuesday, 4 September 2007

Motorstorm gets patched today

As well as the firmware update today (which is still 'up in the air' as far as the actual details of the upgrade are concerned), Motorstorm is getting a patch to v2.0 in readiness for the Coyote Revenge pack.

Here’s what the patch brings:

Vehicle Select enhancement – your last-used vehicle in each class will now be presented as the default choice during vehicle selection.

Assigned player colours are now displayed in the lobby to make keeping track of your friends and rivals easier during online races and Eliminator matches.

Further Player-Stat Improvements.

Purchasers of ‘Coyote Revenge’ can now race this track in Online and Time Attack.

Purchasers of Eliminator Mode will find results from this mode also contribute to their Fame Ranking.

Track Exploits for Grizzly and Raingod Mesa have been addressed.

Headset support – An occasional firewall conflict with headset communications has been resolved.

Headset support – voice comms output now available exclusively through headset.

Many other improvements and tweaks throughout the game.

Labels: , , ,

PS3 firmware v1.92 arrives; what's new?

If only we knew!

Seriously though, with the lack of a 'change log' or release notes for every update, it is hard sometimes to see what has changed.

Some users are reporting faster XMB load times.
Someone said that this release adds in support for 'flash wallpapers'.
GAP members are saying this release fixes freezes in Warhawk games.
Others are saying the web browser has been improved.
And I've seen at least one reference to fixes for those pesky PS1 titles that have been an issue, plus a fix for Lair controls (which affects the US right now, since Lair isn't in Europe yet).

All in all, a bug fix release with the ability to have flash wallpapers as well.

The only thing I do know for sure is that after I upgraded, most of the websites I tried to visit came up with a Network Error, but that could just mean I need to restart the PS3 or my router to fix it - I'll do more testing later.

What have you found so far?

Labels: , , ,

Monday, 3 September 2007

Warhawk; first impressions


So, I've been playing Warhawk on and off since it came to the PS3 in Europe last week. Whilst I largely stay away from writing long, drawn-out game reviews on PS3 Attitude, I thought I'd pop down a few thoughts for you all.

And if Incognito get to read this, please consider this a 'beta test' report as there are some things that need dealing with...

First and foremost I think Warhawk is one of the most accomplished multiplayer experiences I've ever come across. The game is truly brilliant. I've played with and without the motion sensing on, and both the SixAxis tilt controls and the analogue sticks do a great job. Control of the aircraft is more intuitive using motion control, but ground vehicles suffer slightly and are better controlled by the stick.

Consequently, I end up using the analogue sticks as it's fun switching between modes of transport.

Everything about the gameplay is great. The 'sandbox' style environment that lets you decide how to go to battle is welcome. The feeling of teamwork in a lot of the games I've played is excellent. Stand in front of a jeep or tank and, most of the time, the player will stop so you can hop on and go to battle together. Some of the time they'll run you over, of course!

So where could it be better? Here's the 'beta test' bit, and I'm surprised these didn't get caught and fixed in the real beta programme.

It takes ages to get in to a ranked game. There just aren't enough Sony servers and when you try to join one that says it has 19 players out of 24, by the time the game has tried to join the server that game is full. The timeout setting means you have to wait a minute between trying other servers.

And because of the distributed game server system allows every PS3 to become a host, it takes ages (even with filters) to refresh the list each time. I see, on average, over 450 servers in the game list in Europe alone. I filter them by ping time to cut them back to only the servers that seem live, but even that results in a big list.

No one, in my opinion, has matched the ease of the Resistance multiplayer system. They make it so easy. Choose your type of game, wait whilst the PS3 wastes a bit of time with some nonsense graphics, and then a game is chosen for you and you join it automatically. Bliss.

Why Warhawk and others can't copy this approach, even with distributed servers, is beyond me.

Also, because the servers can be hosted by a person, they can kick you off if you shoot them down and they don't like it! Or they can quit the game entirely and leave you without a resolution to the match you were playing. I know that is going to be a gripe of any 'local server' setup, but maybe Incognito could penalise people for quitting their server mid game just because they don't like the way it's going.

My final grip is the Clan system. Instead of selecting my buddies from my Friends list and simply clicking an 'invite to clan' button, it seems the only way to get people to join my clan is to go to the Community menu, then the Clan menu, then the My Clan menu, then the Admin menu and finally type (yes type) the exact PSN ID of the people I want to join, case sensitive.

Ridiculous.

If they fix the server issues by adding more hardware, sort out a 'quick join' option to jump into a game (Resistance style), penalise people for quitting their servers mid-game and make inviting your friends to your clan quick and easy, it would make this the most complete multiplayer title on the PS3 by some distance.

Fix these issues Incognito and you're on to a complete winner.

Labels: , , , ,

Forthcoming European PSN releases

Whilst we still can't be happy in Europe at the short end of the stick we seem to get when it comes to PSN or even full game releases, it's always welcome getting new content to feast our eyes and ears on.

ThreeSpeech have been good enough to announce a bunch of releases for our viewing pleasure:

  • MotorStorm Coyote Revenge Weekend VIP Pass 06/09
  • MotorStorm Vehicle Set 1 13/09
  • MotorStorm Vehicle Set 2 27/09
  • Heavenly Sword Making of and anime part 4 6/09 (which you should already have downloaded from the US store, frankly)
  • Heavenly Sword Making of and anime part 5 13/09
  • Lair trailer No.3 6/09
  • LocoRoco Cocoreccho trailer 13/09
  • inFamous trailer 13/09
Enjoy!

Labels: , , , , , , ,

Lair plays on PSP via PS3 Remote Play

In the beginning, there was an obscure Japanese PS3 downloadable title that played via the PSP Remote Play feature.

Then we had an update to the [email protected] application that allowed it (finally) to be controlled via Remote Play.

But now the daddy of all PSP Remote Play opportunities is upon us - marvel at the video below showing Lair playing on the PSP.

The first disk-based title to support this brilliant feature of the PS3, reports are already saying that the game is somewhat easier to play on the PSP due to the analogue stick - obviously the PSP doesn't support the motion sensing controls we enjoy via the SixAxis.

Hopefully this will be a continuing trend with future games...

Labels: , , , ,