Dual Triggers for PS3
I came across these a few months back while browsing on amazon.com, by snapping onto your PS3 triggers they are suppose to replicate what the Xbox 360 controller triggers feel like. As someone who spends the majority of his time playing on his Xbox 360 the PlayStation 3 controller can feel like a foreign object in my hands. Thanks to the Dual Triggers for the PS3 designed by PDP using the PS3 controller feels more natural and has allowed me to spend more time playing games on my PlayStation 3.
If your interested in buying them check out Amazon.com or PDP’s website
Tehflakes.ca Game of the Year
It’s that time of year, time to discuss my favourite game of the year along with honourable mentions and biggest disappointment. But before I get into that, I wanted to spend a few minutes talking about how I came to decision and what criteria I used.
So to me game of the year represents the overall best complete package that a game has to offer. This includes everything from the menus, the graphics, the sound, the story, the multiplayer, the connection I have to the characters within the game, and I guess the best way to say it is how engrossed I am into the game. I must eat, breathe and think about the game and lastly what replay value does it offer. Things that shouldn’t be considered when tabulating your game of the year is number of copies sold, marketing budget and whether it is a console exclusive title. It shouldn’t matter that the game is on 1 platform or several. It’s all about the best game of 2009.
There truly was only one logical choice for Tehflakes.ca game of the year that is Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. You can check out my review here. Nathan Drake is the new James Bond and Laura Croft of the video game space. The plot twists alone will have you on the edge of your seat. Uncharted 2 doesn’t do a lot new but it does what it does better than anything out there right now. You can beat it on normal in about 10 hours and don’t worry you can replay the game and be sure to go and hunt for all the treasures. Had enough of the single player? Why not check out the co-operative levels or the new multiplayer. I know what you’re thinking great a new multiplayer but the team at Naughty Dog did a fantastic job with it. In the span of 2 days I played this game for almost 15 hours and if I didn’t have to work I would have probably played more. I still continue to hop on to get some multiplayer action when I can
Well it’s time for some honourable mentions that were under consideration for Game of the Year:
- Batman Arkham Asylum
- Assassins Creed 2
- New Super Mario Brothers
Well I am certainly going to get some heat for this but Forza Motorsport 3 was probably my biggest let down of the year. Don’t get me wrong it was a good game but the difference between Forza and Forza 2 was huge, that made think we would see Forza 3 turn out to be an epic game but it wasn’t. It felt more like Forza 2.5 with a good physics system. The track selection was boring, the menu system was awful, and just in general I found it boring. I really had a hard time staying focused and wanting to play it, it was a very different feeling compared to Forza 2.
Art done by Todd Lawson -Visit Todd’s site at www.toddlawson.com
read moreGran Turismo PSP Review
We all remember Gran Turismo on the Playstation 1 with its multi disk package and countless hours of fun. Fast forward to 2009 and Gran Turismo PSP is making its debut on the portable platform. This game was roughly 5 years in development and I could have waited another 6 months for it.
Well GTPSP must surely be one of the best graphical looking games running at 60 frames per second on the PSP it makes me think it’s a tech demo to show other developers what can be done on the PSP. The soundtrack is solid and quite enjoyable throughout the experience. The only let down would be the cock pit view it’s not as detailed and polished as I would have liked.
As soon as you fire up the game you’ll be glad to see the familiar user interface we’ve all came to know and love. GT has 800 cars and 35 tracks that include over 70 different variations of tracks to play. Tracks in the game include original courses, famous world circuits, city courses ,Mazda Raceway, Laguna Seca, Nurburgring Nordschleife, Tokyo Route 246, a Seattle city course and a Grand Canyon rally track. One of the annoying parts of having 800 cars is that car manufactures only sell their cars on certain days of the week meaning you need to fire up the game every day to buy that car you need. Also the cars for sale are randomized as well as I got giddy when it was Mitsubishi day to sell cars but Eclipses weren’t for sale on that day.
There are time trials, drift and something called a career mode as well as over 100 challenges to test your driving skills. Let’s start with the career mode or the lack there of one. There is not structured career mode, all you need to is select a car, track and you’re off to the races. I would have preferred that the driving challenges played some role in the career mode. Like if you beat the first 5 challenges it opens up the first set of races and in order to progress you need to beat more challenges. The lack of career mode is really the downfall for this game. The driving challenges are so deep, rich and fun I spent the most time beating all the challenges. Drift mode is your standard drift mode It doesn’t appeal to me. Time trials are always fun. There are online capabilities using Ad Hoc which always you to pick a car, track and challenge up to 4 friends to a race.
It looks great, plays like a sim racer but the lack of structure in the career mode really disappoints me. One of the main reasons I kept going back and playing it was challenges. I had a blast and I wish we could get more via downloadable content. If you love the Gran Turismo franchise and need a really good racing game to play, than this is it. Oh I forgot to mention buy all the cars you can and get a head start on the competition when Gran Turismo 5 is released on the PS3
Uncharted 2 Review
One of the best games to date on the PlayStation platform is Uncharted Drakes Fortune developed by Naughty Dog studios. They brought back are favourite womanizing witty character Nathan Drake. What you get with the Uncharted franchise is a mash up of James of bond meets Laura croft. By this I mean you get the action intense sequences with a male character that all the women love. Then you have you have the exploring puzzle solving aspects from the Laura Croft franchise. Combine these together and have Uncharted 2 Among Thieves.
From the moment you start Uncharted 2 you will notice how gorgeous this game is, in fact I will say I don’t there is a better looking next gen game. This games audio is a reason to get a surround sound system or a very end set of headphones is to experience the audio. The gun sounds; the rain and music simply compliment and go hand in hand with this game. The voice acting is simply brilliant throughout the game Nathan Drake will simply leaving you laughing at the remarks he makes. The supporting cast in the game also has some tremendous voice acting. The actors can only do so much with a script that the writing team gives them and wherever Naughty Dog found these writers they deserve a big pay raise.
Uncharted 2 does not do a whole lot different from the first game but it just does it better. The combat in Drake’s Fortune was one of the weak spots of the game, the team over at naughty has greatly improved the shooting mechanics and it certainly shows. Enemies are no longer bullet sponges unless they are completely covered in Kevlar armour. The cover mechanics have also greatly improved allowing Nathan slide from cover to cover effectively. Blowing enemies up with grenades is always fun but it was a real struggle in first game which involved using the D-pad or six axis. Now all you have to do is aim and tap L2. It’s much easier and more effective. Melee combat is just more fun to use as well and there are several trophies available to encourage melee combat. There is also a heavy focus on stealth whether it be shooting enemies from ledges, pulling enemies off of ledges or running down the very quietly and then knocking out the enemy.
I played it on normal and beat the game just under 10 hours that has Nathan Drake searching for a mythical city of Shangri-La because he wants unravel the mystery of Marco Polo’s voyage from China in 1292. After spending time with Kublai Khan, Marco departed with 14 ships and 600 passengers and crew but when he arrived at destination he only had 1 ship and 18 passengers. Throughout the course of the game Nate encounters friend Flynn who turns into a foe, Chloe, Zoran Lazarevic, our good friend Sully and Elena.
One of the biggest editions to the game is multiplayer. There is Co-operative multiplayer as well competitive multiplayer. First up for co-op will allow 3 players to take on roles of Nathan and 2 other characters as they make their way through gun fights and team based objectives. Should one of your comrades should fall you will need to revive them and I have to say as someone who was downed a lot good teammates are key to this mode. Gold Rush has players team up to get a treasure and return it to their base. You also have survival mode where you take on wave after wave of bad guys or girls. For competitive play you get the usual deathmatch, elimination and capture the treasure and much more. There is a bit of RPG element to the multiplayer as you can gain ranks and in turn allows you to buy perks or upgrades with the cash you earned in game (if you finished Uncharted you’ll start with 80k). Levels have been taken right out of the first player campaign so that means you can climb up to the get the higher ground on the other team. Naughty has also implemented a party system that works extremely well for a Playstation 3 game.
If you own a Playstation 3 there is no reason why you shouldn’t play this game. It’s gorgeous looking, it’s funny and it was one of the first games in a long time made me completely lose track of time. The single player campaign is epic and multiplayer is quite fun and for 60 dollars this game is a steal!.
read moreGhostbusters: The Video Game Review
The game starts like a movie with a full introduction and opening credits and then you’re greeted with the Ghostbusters theme song we all came to know. The opening level of the game consists of the team training a new recruit who they call the Rookie. He’s faced with capturing ghosts that have escaped from the containment unit.
From the moment the rookie strapped on the new prototype proton pack and got lectured about why proton beams should never cross paths. I felt like I was actually part of the team. Too bad there is no punishment in game for crossing paths which I was a little disappointed with.
The single player campaign follows a story around a large PKE wave hits New York City and sends the team on a variety of missions to capture a wide variety of ghosts. Throughout the game everything you do is scrutinized by a douche bag named Walter Peck who is now in charge of the Paranormal Contract Oversight Committee who was appointed by the Mayor. During the course of the game you meet Dr.Ilyssa Selwyn a museum curator who’s ties to this mysterious events leads you to find and destroy node’s and node guardians at the Sedgewick Hotel, The New York public library, the museum of Natural history and the final node being a mansion that rises from the middle of the Hudson River.
The basic game play consists of firing your proton stream at ghosts, weaken down and throw out a trap and slam them into a trap and pick up the trap and you have a ghost captured. You earn cash on each mission which can be used to purchase weapon upgrades throughout the game. You’ll also receive upgrades from Egon as the game progresses since you are experimental weapons specialist. One of the first things I upgraded was the trap; the upgraded trap makes capturing ghosts a lot easier.
This game also features a multiplayer aspect which consists of the 4 Ghostbusters cooperatively blasting and capturing ghosts. There are six jobs (game play modes) for you to enjoy. The six game modes are survival, containment, protection, destruction, thief and slime dunk. If there was ever a game that did not need multiplayer Ghostbusters is it. After a long and drawn out campaign last thing I wanted to do was run around and capture more ghosts. I had my fix and that’s all I needed.
Overall I had a lot of fun using the proton beam to weaken, slam and capture ghosts, my biggest complaint is I feel the game dragged on too long. It also has a 60 dollar price tag which is probably a little too high but you need to pay for all the original Ghostbusters for incredibly funny voice acting work they did. If you can find this game for 40 bucks and want to experience would it would be like to weld a proton pack, I would highly recommend you do.
PSP 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.