Recap of the Sony Holiday Preview Event
Last night I was able to very lucky to attend the Sony Playstation Holiday Preview event at the Burroughes Building located in the Queen Street West area. This was my first time attending a Sony event and there were plenty of games and as always there wasn’t enough time to check everything out.
Assassins Creed II
First game I was able to get a demo on and hands on time with Assassins Creed 2 from Ubisoft Montreal. The objective of this demo was to kill 5 archers and replace them with our own guards and then proceed to assassinate our target. In order to get to the area I needed to I didn’t look for a group of monks to blend in with like the original Assassins Creed, I throw some cash on the ground to try and cause a distraction it barely worked. I then hired some courtesans to cause a bit of distraction while the thieves and mercenaries I hired set off to take care of the guards. While I took care of the first 2 archers, the thieves took care of archer’s number 3 and 4 and left me to deal with the last archer who had the chance to meet my sword and ultimately die by it. I then returned back and reported in and was given my assassination target. On my way over there I stopped by a local merchant and bought some clothes for Ezio. Unfortunately I died during assassination and that crashed the demo which happened to be a known bug. I have to say overall I’ m very impressed with the changes and am looking forward to the release date.
DJ Hero
This was my second play through of DJ hero as I briefly had the chance to check it out last week at X09 where I completely sucked at the game. I was determined to get more hands on time to improve my skills and help me decide if I should buy the game or not. I initially watched several people take their turns playing their 2 set mix. Each of the individuals started on easy and gave medium a go. Don’t worry there are hard and expert modes for you hardcore DJ’s. I was able to check out the tutorial and actually learn how to play the game and I definitely going to go buy the Renegade edition when it comes out.
Tony Hawk Ride
As soon as I walked into the event I walked around the area and as soon as I saw the Sony Hawk set up I dashed right for it as I had a blast with it at X09 and I’m hooked on the game. I explained to Kelvin Lu the Activision publicist that I had already played the game and didn’t need the full demo on how to play. I started off on the half pipe where it’s all about busting tricks and getting high scores. When I was done I asked if I could do a free run on medium so I could experience going down the course and having the ability to fully control and move my character using the board. It took a few seconds to get use to the movement as in the beginner mode the game is on rails and you don’t have to worry about moving your character. I ended up with a high score and then it was time to check out the controller. There is no real difference between the Xbox and Sony Skateboard other then the buttons. As long as the pricing doesn’t get out of control on this game I will be picking up.
Where wild things Are
I was told I should check where Wild Things Are developed by Griptonite games by fellow blogger Justin Amirkhani. I was glad he pointed out it to me. As the game title states it’s based off the movie that is coming out in a few weeks. Yes I know generally movie games aren’t that good however this game looked great and played very well. The game pits you as a character named Max as he journeys across the land which is almost destroyed. He helps the Wild Things find a way to escape to a new safe land before its way to late. The game looked great and the controls were easy enough for a child to pick up and play the game.
Also on display were Uncharted 2 Among Thieves, MAG, Little Big Planet PSP, Heavy Rain, Avatar and a slew of other solid titles. With the recent price drop of the PlayStation 3, the new PSP Go! And all the amazing exclusive titles and multiplatform titles on display will surely lead Sony to the forefront during this Holiday season.
read moreHalo 3 ODST Review
This is the latest Halo title developed by Bungie Studios and it doesn’t star the famous Master Chief. Halo 3 ODST actually takes place before Halo 3. The UNSC are at war with the Covenant, and during the Convenant discover Earth and launch an assault on New Mombasa which is located in Africa. You play as the Rookie an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper (ODST) during the drop down to Earth your pod collides with another pod and you then you crash on Earth. Six hours later you wake and go through the basic Halo tutorial level. You now must make your way through the Streets of New Mombasa to find clues in order to piece together what happened to your follow squad members Dutch, Romero, Mickey, and Dare while you were unconscious. So essentially you start as the Rookie and once you find the clue that links you to a squad member you go ahead and play as your squad member and you live through what happened to them. Very interesting concept and Bungie totally pulled it off. The cut scenes tell a very interesting story.
The story ends with your squad members fly out of the city in a captured Phantom and have took an engineer aboard. Eventually Sergeant Johnson arrives and tells the engineer that he intends to ask questions regarding its knowledge of the Covenant.
ODST plays very different from any other Halo game from the way the story is told to the underlying game mechanics. ODST doesn’t feel like a complete game but more like an expansion which allows Bungie to experiment and try new things. There are only a few new weapon variants, 1 new alien race and everything you shoot comes from Halo 3. The health system works a bit different, the more you get shot the more you stamina goes down that leads to your health going down. Low on health? Find a health pack to regain your health. The other big addition is your visor, see the streets of New Mombasa are very dark and in order to find your way you need to turn your visor on. This is a catch 22 as it allows the enemies to find where you are. Marty O’Donnell does a fantastic job with the soundtrack which really does set the mood for each level.
Another new mode in Halo ODST 3 is Firefight which allows you and up to 3 other friends take on waves of Covenant troops. Out of the box it comes with 10 maps and each map has an achievement for amassing 200,000 in points on a map. This should keep things fun and exciting for a period of time before Bungie will need to release new maps to play on. The one negative about the firefight was that as a team you share 4 lives. So if you one douche on your team that is constantly dying, you will get annoyed very quickly.
There is a second disc included with both standard and limited editions that features Halo 3’s Multiplayer. There aren’t any real big updates from Halo 3’s Mutliplayer. The second disk comes with all 21 Halo 3 maps plus 3 new maps which are only available if you buy Halo ODST. The new maps are Hetertic a remake of the Halo 2 Midship map, Citadel and Longshore.
Overall Halo ODST is a solid game and will provide you with a great story and Halo combat we all love. Overall the game’s length is could be compared to as expansion pack. It really is short but packs in a load of fun either single player or co-op. The real winner in the Halo ODST package is firefight, fighting off wave after wave of Covenant with a limited number of lives is a blast with a group of friends. I really wish that ODST came out as a downloadable expansion instead of a full retail release. The retail price of $69.99 Canadian is a bit overpriced but if you a diehard Halo fan and need your fix Halo ODST is for you.
read morePreview of the new social networking applications and Zune Marketplace
This fall, Microsoft will be rolling a fall update to the dashboard that will include Facebook, Twitter and Zune Marketplace. I recently got to check out these new features coming to the dashboard courteously of Xbox Canada’s Glenn Purkis.
The Facebook application is also launched from the Xbox live Dashboard and once you opt in you will you will be connected to your news feed, profile and allow you to update your status. Another cool thing is you are able to search your facebook friends and see if any of them are connected to Xbox live. It will be interesting to see how developers integrate facebook into their games.
Zune Marketplace is going to replace the current Xbox Video Marketplace and will provide consumers with streaming 1080p movies and television shows. During the demonstration, I was asked what movie I wanted to see and I picked one of the Harry Potter movies. After you select your movie, the service automatically runs tests to determine whether to stream in Standard Definition or High Definition, which is based on the speed of your internet connection. Within seconds we were watching Mr. Potter causing havoc with his cousins. One thing that was not discussed was the pricing structure of the movies, I’m curious to see if the price will remain the same or if they get increased.
I am a Twitter junkie and when Microsoft announced Twitter was coming to the Xbox live service I was generally excited. After seeing the demonstration, I have to say that it very easy to use and well designed. What you get is an application which you launch from the dashboard in which you can view tweets, retweet, search and view trending topics all of which are current twitter features. Once you close the application no more twitter updates. This is where I would have wanted some sort of background application were if someone’s @ replies me or sends me a direct message a little pop notification would appear.
Overall I was generally impressed with I had to see and I think if Microsoft is on their way to making the connected console. However there still is 100 friend limit issue… if you truly want to be connected to all social platforms, should there really be a friends limit?.
read morePSP Go! Review
I was fortunate to get my hands on a PSP Go! Yesterday and have spent most of the night and today checking out Sony’s newest PSP model and overall I have to say I’m very impressed. If you’re on the fence about upgrading your current PSP or if you’re new to the PSP world find out what I have to say about the device.
What comes in the Package?
Well what do you get for $249, inside this very small box you get the PSP Go!, Media Go Disc, a voucher for Rockband unplugged, USB Cable, AC adaptor, AC power cord, manual and quick start guide. A Patapon 2 demo also comes preloaded on the PSP Go!
Teh Good
Design – Simply put this is a very sleek and well designed device from the sliding mechanism to the beautiful screen to well place and designed left and right shoulder buttons the PSP Go! Fits perfectly into my hands and feels comfortable in my hands.
Digital Library – Since I’m not a current PSP owner I don’t have any UMD’s so the facts there are over 150 UMD released games for me to download and play. Also all new UMD releases will be released on the Playstation Network Store on the same day. I am downloading Gran Turismo as I type this. There are over 60 Playstation One games to download and play on your PSP Go! Hello Metal Gear Solid!. Finally we have our Minis which are bite sized games for gamers on the go, which could be very similar to most IPOD Touch/ IPhone games if they are priced accordingly.
Plenty of Storage – The PSP Go! Comes with a whopping 16 gigabytes of internal storage. That means you could hold 15 1 gigabyte games on the console. This is probably the most important thing you can add additional memory to the unit by purchasing Memory Stick Micro M2. So far the biggest M2 stick I’ve seen for sale is 16 gigs that could give you a whopping 32 gigs of space for games, movies, music and podcasts. That’s more than enough content for a flight across the Atlantic Ocean or your every day commute.
Teh Bad
Upgrading your PSP, trade in those UMD’s as well – Well if you have a current PSP and a collection of UMD games you have 1 of 4 options if you want to get a PSP Go!. 1 being trade them in, 2 sell them or 3 throw them in the trash and finally put them in a box and put that box in storage. As of right now Sony has Zero plans to offer some sort of trade in program or anything for those users with UMD games that want the go. Your only option at the moment would be to buy them on the Playstation network at full price. Luckily, this doesn’t affect me as I’ve zero UMD’s however I fully understand how this affects a lot of people. Hopefully Sony does something to address this quickly.
1 Analog stick and no Touch Screen – People have been calling for a second analog stick on PSP’s for a long time. I understand we have limited size on the GO but surely you could have put the second analog stick to the right of the other analog stick and bumped up the start and select button to the middle of the device. Here’s a big annoyance for me, no touch screen. This could have potentially been a IPod Touch Killer if it had a touch screen. Just the thoughts of browsing the XMB and selecting what music, video, podcast, game or what I wanted to buy in the PSN store with my fingers would have been killer.
Software Costs – I’ll start with the mini’s they seem to be a bit over priced if there suppose to be bite sized games on the go. $4.99 to $9.99 simply won’t compete with the tiny bite sized games that belong in the ITunes store. Digital downloads should generally be cheaper in my opinion then there UMD or full retail released counter parts. Why you might ask? Well there is no UMD disc, no packaging and no manual to be printed this 3 factors a lone should add to minor savings for the consumer. Gran Turismo UMD retail is $39.99 Canadian and should be $31.99- $34.99.
Teh Conclusion
At the end of the day I love my PSP Go! Am I sucker for new hardware or is it a well designed device. I am definitely leaning towards the later for a variety of reasons that I listed above. Add in the fact that the games I’ve been playing have been totally fun as hell. I also managed to watch a full episode of a television show that will remain nameless and was very impressed with the quality of the screen and sound. I highly recommend that if you currently have a PSP you’ll hold off a for a little bit as I have a feeling Sony may have to do something regarding UMD’s and people wanting to upgrade. If you’re looking at buying a PSP this is the model for you.
X09 Community Dinner
A large group of Xbox Community members went to Jack Astors for dinner, check out the photos
Jaken Bear and The Ic0n
Jaken Bear, The Ic0n, Geekess
Johnny Rotten73
Keadin and Master Switch
Master Switch Dancing for us
Tehflakes and GreenSkull
