Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception
Check it out the first Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception trailer!
Video courtesy of game trailers.
read moreGran Turismo® Series Sales Exceed 60 Million Units Worldwide
Gran Turismo® Series Sales Exceed 60 Million Units Worldwide
Over 5.5 Million Units of Gran Turismo®5 Sold Worldwide 12 Days After Release
Tokyo, December 10, 2010 – Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) announced today that the cumulative worldwide sales of the Gran Turismo® franchise, a genre-defining racing and car-life simulator available on PlayStation®, PlayStation®2, PlayStation®3 (PS3™) and PSP®(PlayStation®Portable), has exceeded 60 million units* as of December 6, 2010. This remarkable sales figure was achieved in just 12 years and 11 months since the Japanese launch of the first title in the franchise, Gran Turismo, in December 1997.
The Gran Turismo franchise, from the original Gran Turismo to the latest Gran Turismo®5, has continued to evolve alongside the PlayStation platforms. With its outstanding gameplay, beautiful graphics and true-to-life driving simulation, the franchise is recognized as the world’s number one automotive game title on the PlayStation format, receiving high regard not just from game fans, but from professional racing drivers and enthusiasts in the automotive industry.
The ninth installment of the world’s best-selling racing franchise, Gran Turismo 5 for the PS3 system, features a completely new physics engine for an improved feel for steering during turns and drifts, delivering a more intuitive driving experience than ever before. The game also features an impressive line-up of more than 1,000 licensed karts and cars from the world’s top manufacturers. Other highly anticipated features include stereoscopic 3D support, real-time car damage, dynamic weather effects, kart racing, a Course Maker, and a deep online and community feature set where players can race online with up to 16 players through PlayStation®Network. With the widest scope and depth of gameplay options in the Gran Turismo series, Gran Turismo 5 offers users an entertainment experience that is only possible on PS3. As of December 6, more than 5.5 million units of Gran Turismo 5 have been sold worldwide. Gran Turismo 5 will further continue to contribute to the expansion of the PS3 platform.
For all Gran Turismo fans around the world, SCEI and the developer of the Gran Turismo series, Polyphony Digital Inc., will continue hereon to vigorously promote development of the Gran Turismo series, which can be expected to evolve even further through the PS3 platform and broadband network environment.
* Sell-in number
Cumulative Worldwide Sales of Gran Turismo Series (million units)
Title Japan North America*1 Europe*2 Asia WW
Gran Turismo 2.55 3.98 4.24 0.01 10.78
Gran Turismo 2 1.71 3.96 3.65 0.02 9.34
Gran Turismo 3 A-spec 1.89 7.14 5.76 0.01 14.80
Gran Turismo Concept 2001 TOKYO*3 0.43 — 0.94 0.13 1.50
Gran Turismo 4 Prologue 0.79 — 0.39 0.16 1.34
Gran Turismo 4 1.27 3.02 6.40 0.17 10.86
Gran Turismo 5 Prologue*4 0.75 1.13 3.04 0.11 5.03
Gran Tursimo (PSP)*5 0.34 0.67 1.19 0.04 2.24
Gran Turismo 5 0.55 1.25 3.56 0.16 5.52
Total 61.41
*1: Including Latin American countries
*2: Including PAL territories
*3: Including series tiles
*4: Including Download Version and SpecⅢ
*5: Including Download Version
Title Release Dates in North America
Gran Turismo May 12, 1998
Gran Turismo 2 December 7, 1999
Gran Turismo 3 A-spec July 10, 2001
Gran Turismo 4 February 2005
Gran Turismo 5 Prologue April 15, 2008
Gran Turismo (PSP) October 1, 2009
Gran Turismo 5 November 24, 2010
PlayStation, PS3, PlayStation logo and Gran Turismo are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
All manufacturers, cars, names, brands and associated imagery featured in this game are trademarks and/or copyrighted materials of their respective owners. All rights reserved.
Gran Turismo 5 Collectors Edition Unboxing
Gran Turismo 5 has been out for almost 2 weeks now and that’s how long it’s taken me to get a collectors edition in my hands. Enjoy the photos!
Call of Duty Black Ops Goes 3D
On October 5th Activision Publishing Inc put out a press release stating that Call of Duty Black Ops would be going Stereoscopic 3d. Well this is great news as today October 5th 2010 is the PlayStation Canada Holiday Preview event at the newly renovated Sony Centre in downtown Toronto. Yes that put us among the first to see this newly announced mode for the Call of Duty franchise on the PlayStation 3.
To continue with its annual release, Call of Duty will be coming on November 9th 2010 and is being developed by Treyarch Studios. Black Ops will be available on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC and will come with 3D support if you have the required hardware to take advantage of this technology. Don’t worry, if you don’t have a 3D TV simply just hop into the menu and ensure 3D is turned off.
Jay Puryear Senior Manager at Treyarch studios was on hand to provide us with a 20 minute demo featuring 2 levels from the single player campaign called WMD and some time with the Number’s chapter which is yet to be shown publicly.
WMD starts with an interactive cut scene where an SR-71 Blackbird recon airplane takes to the sky and provides its eyes for a squad of troops down below. You direct and navigate them to various checkpoints throughout the level. Upon reaching each checkpoint you switch and take control of the squad of troops and fight off the enemies.
Numbers chapter starts with an interrogation scene where glass windows get smashed and a piece of glass gets put down a throat of the villain as we seek to get information out of him since he’s working for the enemy. Since we didn’t get the information we want we might as well throw a few good punches at his jaw. Before the interrogation is over, the enemy zeros in on your location and storms the building. Our prisoner takes the lead and heads up flights of stairs to the roof top where we proceed to take big leaps and jump across buildings. Once we make it inside we find a nice stash of weapons that our prisoner has stored away for us.
We also had a chance to check out some of the combat training mode which is essentially you and up to 5 of your friends taking on 6 AI bots in a multiplayer game. Don’t worry, the bot’s difficulty setting scales just like the single player campaign; Easy, Normal, Hardened and Veteran. It teaches and allows you get a feel for COD multiplayer without going online and getting your butt kicked by those trash talking 14 year old kids. It looked really good in 3D, however, I’m not sure I want my multiplayer shooters in 3D yet as there is to much going on for me.
Enough talk about Call of Duty Black Ops and on to the 3D talk. Considering that a decision at Treyarch was made no more than 5 months ago to implement 3D to this iteration of COD is astonishing. Back when the discussions first started this idea was looked at as a nice option to have for the game, but as things progressed it became obvious to the team that 3D needed to happen. I’ve seen a lot of 3D movies lately and some of the implementations were awful and felt more like a checklist requirement the movie needed to have. Have no worries here folks, this is the first video game that support’s 3D that has made me go OMG I think I need a 3D television. The first thing I remember seeing when I turned on the 3D glasses was Jay having his character looking down the scopes of his rifle and going shit that looks crazy real. The cross hairs and debris looked they were flying my way.
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Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 Review
2010 – 2011 has been an interesting year for the worlds number 1 ranked golfer Tiger Woods. Off course behavior cost him numerous sponsors and millions of dollars but Electronic Arts stuck by the man who has transformed golf to what is today and release this years annual edition of the franchise. You’ll notice right off the bat that Rory McIlroy is also on the cover. Is this a ploy to get positive attention to the game to also feature one of the upcoming European players or is it strictly to promote the Ryder Cup which is the best golf team event on the planet. Enough talk about that and let’s get back to regularly scheduled review.
Another year means minor visual upgrades to the game. It looks great but how far can you go to improve graphics in 12 months. There are a issues with the voice acting in this game. First of all, can we please get rid of Kelly Tilghman. Her voice is annoying and she isn’t funny at all. Further more, there have have many issues triggering the audio cues. By that I mean, how can the game tell me I’ve hit an awesome shot so close to the pin when in fact the ball is 20 yards from the pin and in the rough? Honestly it’s ultra annoying. EA we all know you have ultra huge QA department and these little annoying bugs should get squashed.
One of the big additions to Tiger Woods PGA tour 11 was adding the Ryder Cup which is in my honest opinion one of the best golf tournaments to watch. Sure we all love the masters but there is just something about the Ryder Cup. USA Vs Europe Team play sounds great? It sure does however there are some issues with the implementation of the concept. First of all, not all the players in the roster of PGA tour are not eligible to play in the Ryder Cup and thus should not be allowed to play. Sure I’m getting pretty technical here but I am golfer and a huge golf fan and I don’t think it’s too hard to follow the rules of the Ryder Cup. Also I found the fourball matches took far to long to play. I often found my self getting quite sleepy playing this portion of the Ryder Cup.
There has always been a fine line between enjoying Tiger Woods and getting your balls handed to you playing on the Ultra tough Tour Mode. This year the team over at EA has introduced True-Aim. This allows you to get up close and and see the hole and course from the golfers perspective. True-Aim removes the old accuracy circle we were use to in Tiger Tiger Woods games and forces you to aim your shot entirely from an over-the-shoulder camera. This is how Tiger and the rest of the PGA, LPGA, and European tour players play. This adds an interesting challenge on it’s own and I struggled with it at the very beginning. So after you pull the analog stick, the only indicator you get that your shot is good is by the noise the crowd makes and the commentators have to say.
The focus system is another effective tool at increasing the difficulty of your round without getting frustrating. The focus meter sits on the lower left of the screen where it normally does. You use it to add power to your swing, spin to your ball and finally to use to putt preview. Using the focus meter uses up it’s availability pretty quickly and generally I’ve found it adds a bit of a tactical element to the game. When do you use it? when do you not use it? those are the tough questions to answer during a round of golf. How do you gain focus back? simple, hit quality golf shots on each hole. No longer can you simply rely on putt preview for 18 holes you actually need to think and implement a bit of strategy into your round of golf.
Online modes haven’t really changed since the inception of the Tiger Woods franchise on next gen consoles. You still have your typical gamernet challenges, weekly, daily and play with the pro tournaments that we’ve all come to play hours of. The only real addition to the online mode is team play where you can join 23 other plays and play on Team USA or Team Europe. I’m really hoping for some improvements.
Career mode hasn’t seen a drastic change either you still have 48 skill challenges that pit you against some crazy shots, rounds of golf done by by the tour pros. The PGA season is firmly intact and the race to the Fedex cup is on. You’ll now notice you no longer earn cash but Experience Points (XP) based on your actions on the course. Make a birdie? It will yield you 25 XP points. There are 7 levels in all to get and you’ll need 100,000 XP points to get. XP can be really hard to earn in the early stages of the game but later on when you have your character maxed out XP comes by a lot easier. You can assign this XP points to your character growth or to buy new shinny clubs. Not happy with a decision you made? no problem you can reallocate those XP points if needed.
Another year means another annual edition of Tiger Woods, is it this year’s addition worth $69.99? Personally, I don’t think so but as you can tell I’m a sucker for golf games and keep buying them. I really wish I could avoid purchasing it. For those who are hardcore into their golf the new additions of True-Aim, Ryder Cup, and XP system are welcome changes that make the game a bit more challenging. I’ve yet to shot lower than a 61. If your like me and you love golf be sure to pick this up as I can’t wait to the play the pros tournament when the Ryder Cup does actually come around.
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