We’ve had a long love affair with The King of Fighters here at PS3 Attitude. Some of the team remember the original title, and many of the subsequent sequels, with great affection.

But that love affair offers a double-edged sword, since the latest in the franchise – and the first to hit the current generation of super-consoles – needs to impress us more than the average punter.

Does The King of Fighters XII do enough to punch and kick its way back into our affections?

We told you in our review that it wasn’t a game breaker, but most of you went and cried foul anyway about Ghostbusters’ resolution on the PS3 when compared to the Xbox 360 version. “We got effed in the a” was the general consensus of many a PS3 owner. Maybe there was some truth to that after all. Maybe.

For as long as we can remember, Final Fantasy fans have been nudging Square Enix to remake their most favourite game in the franchise; FF VII.

The PSOne classic recently hit the PlayStation Stores around the world and the request for a remake has never been higher.

The PS3 re-design was recently revealed by Sony at GamesCom in Cologne.

While we were not surprised to see the new PS3 unveiled, it struck me as somewhat odd that no-one had thought that a re-design of the PS3 would look like the model that was unveiled.

Why?

Heavy Rain has got the gaming community in a spin, what with the stand-out realistic graphics, amazing sound and impressively large script.

But the game has also gained a fair number of detractors, stating that the ‘quicktime event’ gameplay is hackneyed and more akin to Dragon’s Lair than a PS3 blockbuster.

So it was with great interest that we grabbed a DualShock 3 controller and headed off into the world of Heavy Rain for the first time. Here’s the story of what it really feels like to play…

One week after its release onto the PlayStation Store in North America, the new game by TikGames and Creat Studios is arriving in Europe this Thursday.

Smash Cars is a follow-on from the 2003 smash hit for the PlayStation 2, and is a single and six-man online multiplayer toy car racing game for the PlayStation Network.

Heavy Rain has been making waves at GC09 this past week.

One of the snippets which has come to light is the length of script, and boy is it a mammoth. Not literally, obviously… That would just be ridiculous.

No, Heavy Rain has one of the largest scripts of any entertainment medium we have ever heard of.

For comparison, the average script is between 95 and 125 pages long.

Heavy Rain, on the other hand?

Sony’s new unnamed motion controller announced at E3 is already expected to be released next Spring, and with the use of the PlayStation Eye, a number of controllers can be used at once.

They will be sold individually, but one question that has been on some people’s lips since the conference is whether some games may require you to own more than one controller, forcing gamers to fork out more money from their pockets.

Recently, ShopTo.com announced they were taking pre-orders for the new PS3 Slim at only £229.00 in the UK. So we thought we’d do some digging around to see if this really was the best deal for British PS3 fans.

As with any article of this type, the details are correct at the time of writing. With ShopTo putting pressure on other retailers, anyone could meet or beat that deal at any moment.

So where should you place your bets if you want a PS3 Slim next week? We’d suggest to take a look at all the options first…

One of the things we have been saying about the new PS3 and price is that Sony needs to back it with advertisements.

It’s all very well making your hardware more affordable for consumers, but you need to make sure they are in the know.

We all know that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is going to be huge. First came the announcement of the massive Prestige Edition, complete with night vision goggles, and now we have Mad Catz, the accessory guru, bringing us official MW2 themed merchandise.

From controllers to faceplates, Mad Catz has all your areas covered. Below are the different accessories and their descriptions along with suggested retail prices.

Despite GamesCom being ‘dead’, we still have a lot of GC09 coverage to deliver for you, starting with our hands-on experience of two forthcoming PSN titles – PixelJunk Shooter and Dead Nation.

Whilst we all knew in advance about PixelJunk’s latest title, Dead Nation was one of a number of ‘quietly announced’ titles at GamesCom. So, how do they both play, and will you be wanting to spend your hard-earned cash of either of these games come launch day?

The PlayStation Network is going to have some maintenance work done later today, Tuesday 25th August.

Unfortunately, this also means that we will not be able to get onto the network between 4:15pm and 9:05pm (BST).

But what does this mean for us gamers?

With the massive price drop, and introduction of the slimmer PlayStation 3, SCEE boss Andrew House can see the company fully taking on the challenge presented by Microsoft that has seen the PS3 linger behind Microsoft’s Xbox 360 in total sales for the region.

It appears that more evidence has risen that suggests Gran Turismo 5 will be releasing this year after all, despite no official announcement at Gamescom.

A picture from GTPlanet that is said to be of the game’s official brochure given out by Sony at Gamescom strengthens the possibility that the game could still release before 2010.

Now that Gamescom is over, we look forward to the third big event on the gaming calendar, the Tokyo Game Show.

Held at the Makuhari Messe, in Chiba (which is in Tokyo, naturally), TGS takes place this year between the 24th and 27th of September. Want to know just some of the games that will be on display?

Waiting in the wings to see how players react to Borderlands, Gearbox head honcho Randy Pitchford is promising that gamers’ reactions to the title will dictate how they will proceed with upcoming downloadable content already in development.

And if the bazillion weapon combinations isn’t enough to spend your time on, the game also has more content than you could shake a gimp-mask wearing mutant at.

Proving that Activision are in fact the devil, it transpires that future DLC for upcoming Guitar Hero 5, though compatible with Band Hero, will not play nice with gamers’ current faux-band set up, Guitar Hero World Tour.

So, rockers hoping to stick with what they’ve got and simply add to their set-lists through new DLC, ‘fraid not – you’re gonna have to buy the new game.

Who’d have thought after the appearance of ninjas and then pirates over at Titan Studio’s official blog last week, we’d still be reporting on new classes days later.

We suppose it makes sense.

After all, if pirates are the natural enemy of ninjas, we can’t have cheeky chefs running around unanswered. Strange though as it may seem, these culinary misfits will not be countered by abrupt waiters or an acerbic food critic class, but with another royal newcomer. Kings.