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.
read more
May 2010 NPD’s
Well as I say every month, it’s my favorite time of the month as it’s NPD time. Time to see what software customers where buying and what hardware those games were moving.
Twitter and all the video game podcast’s were all over Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption so it’s no surprise to see it have the top spot. I bought the game but after 3 hours of game play I’ve yet to get hooked into it. I know I’m still early on in the game but I don’t get it yet.
1. Red Dead Redemption Xbox 360 – 945.9K
2. Red Dead Redemption PS3 – 567.1K
3. Super Mario Galaxy 2 Wii – 563.9K
4. UFC 2010: Undisputed Xbox 360 – 221.1K
5 UFC 2010: Undisputed PS3 – 192.3K
6. Wii Fit Plus w/Balance board Wii -
7. New Super Mario Bros Wii -
8. Alan Wake Xbox 360 -
9. Pokemon SoulSilver NDS -
10. Skate 3 Xbox 360 -
Hardware Sales:
Nothing out of the ordinary here as the Nintendo Wii continues secure the top spot in sales. June should be an interesting month to see if the new Xbox 360 slim can overtake the Wii.
PlayStation 3 154.5K
PSP 59.4K
Xbox 360 194.6K
Wii 334.8K
Nintendo DS 383.7K
ModNation Racers Launch Event
On Thursday May 20th the Canadian media was invited out the ModNation Racer’s launch event for a day of hands on time with the game and of course some Go Karting at the 401 Mini Indy in Toronto.
ModNation Racer’s is developed by United Front Games who is located in Vancouver. The motto behind MNR is “Play, Create, and Share”, you may remember a similar motto from another Sony title Little Big Planet.
The game looks great and the controls work really well. The typical premise of a racing game is to drift around corners, collect boost, collect power up’s to blow your enemies out of the track and you also have the ability to block enemy attacks as well.
I had the most fan sitting down making my character and I think the real legs of this game are going to come from the user generated content. I wish I had more time to sit down and design a track for everyone to play but don’t worry as soon as the game is released on May 25th I’ll be working hard to get a level out. I’m also excited to see what their downloadable content plan will be for this game. What kind of crazy cool stickers, objects, animals and potential tie in’s with other Sony franchises.
Photo’s from the Event:
Follow up – Astro A40′s
Well it’s been about 4 months since my loving girlfriend bought me a set of the Astro A40′s and Mix up for Christmas or whatever holiday you call it. I think it’s time for a follow up since my review. These beauties sound amazing, it’s as simple as that. With my girlfriend in her final year of university there was a lot of studying going on, a lot of papers being written and not wanting to sacrifice all the amazing titles that have come out in the last 4 months the A40′s have earned every penny of the $249.99 price tag however there are a few complaints for home use I have that I would like to see fixed for a future enhancement.
My sofa is about 5 feet away from my home entertainment console so I have 2-3 cables spanning across my living room floor onto my sofa so I can control the mix amp. So I could spend an extra 20 bucks and buy the re-chargeable battery for the mixamp to eliminate 1 wire. Great I still have 2 wires for sound from my Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Great, super annoying. I don’t really need to control the sound of every game every minute.
Another issue I’m having is trying to figure out how to get all my audio sources into a receiver and than have the output into the mixamp. So Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 sound into a receiver via optical in using optical out into the mixamp. Great it sounds easy on paper but I just can’t seem to figure what components to buy. If you have ideas, send them my way.
Other than my small personal annoyances, I love them.
read moreMarch NPD’s
It’s one of my favorite times of the month, NPD sales are released. Just a reminder that these are NOT the Canadian numbers.
The DS Lite, DSi and DSi XL take the top spot this month. The 360 and PS3 both very respectable numbers and the PSP was almost outsold by the PS2. Seriously? why are people STILL buying that console?
1.Nintendo DS 700.8K
2.Wii 557.5K
3.Xbox 360 338.4K
4.PlayStation 3 313.9K
5.PSP 119.9K
6.PlayStation 2 118.3K
Dear Kratos, thanks for the awesome combos you allowed me to pull while slaying Greek gods. Check out my review here. I’m playing a Final Fantasy game for the first time in my life and I’m very much enjoying it so far and god damn does it look stunning on the Playstation 3,No wonder it outsold the 360 version!. Battlefield Bad Company 2 is still my go to multiplayer game and props goes out to Dice for making a great game.
01. God of War III (PS3) – 1,100,000
02. Pokemon SoulSilver (DS) – 1,020,000
03. Final Fantasy XIII (PS3) – 828,200
04. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (Xbox 360) – 825,500
05. Pokemon HeartGold (DS) – 761,200
06. Final Fantasy XIII (Xbox 360) – 493,900
07. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii) – 457,400
08. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (PS3) – 451,200
09. Wii Fit Plus (Wii) – 429,600
10. MLB 10: The Show (PS3) – 349,200