Star Wars in Soul Calibur 4, 16gb Pro Duo and More MGS4 News

January 11th, 2008

Theres been some fairly significant news to hit the streets of the gaming industry in the last few days. So I have sifted through and selected some articles that I wanted to share my thoughts about.

Yoda and Darth Vader in Soul Calibur IV
Source

Namco has recently announced that it will be continuing the trend of cameo characters in their Soul series. But unlike Soul Calibur II which featured (mostly) video game cameos this time Star Wars is the theme of the show. With Darth Vader (PS3) and Yoda (Xbox 360) coming in as new additions to the series.

darth vader soul calibur 4 playstation 3

Unfortunately I see this as a big oversight by Namco. Yes, playing as Star Wars in the Soul franchise is indeed awesome but why not stick to video game cameos? Because video game cameos are much more appealling to video game players than Star Wars characters, surely. Theres also a lack of justification for choosing Star Wars characters over game characters, there hasn’t been a new movie or anything to back this up. I guess we can forget about the rumour of Kratos and Master Chief as playable characters then.

16gb Memory Sitck Pro Duo
Source

Although its a little off topic, Sony have recently confirmed a new 16gb Memory Sitck Pro Duo. The Pro Duo is the stick used for the PSP as well as Vaio notebooks, Sony digital cameras and other Sony branded products.

This article grabbed my attention because this size of memory card is almost unheard of. Although it will definetly be a costly item its a real trump for the PSP mod and homebrew scene. I don’t think that I would need a card that size for the PSP and I wouldn’t use it over my 2gb compact flash card for my Sony Alpha A100 SLR (Pro Duos write too slowly and require an shell to fit inside the card slot) but its awesome in anycase.

MGS4 on the Home Stretch

2 new articles have come in from IGN about my most anticipated game of 2008; MGS4. The articles weren’t ground breaking but the following quote pricked my ears:

on CES ‘Dual Shock’ Demo

“Another thing that we noticed is that the game looks absolutely stunning. Everything is rendered in fine detail from the war-torn middle-eastern city that the level took place in, right down to the individual hairs on Snake’s ’stache. When we asked whether or not the game will be able to run at 60 fps at 1080p, Konami said that the resolution and framerate were still being optimized and they can’t promise anything, but things were on the right track.”

This is very reassuring as I’ve been a litte worried about the game’s graphics. Obviously they look brilliant but it didn’t look like there was much variance in the colour schemes used judging by the video I’ve seen. Strangely when I look at the sceenshots it looks much more colourful than the video.

I’m not too fussed if it is run in 720p because my monitor is only fairly small so the difference between 720p and 1080p isn’t as significant than say on a 42” plasma. I would much prefer it to run at 60fps even if it was in 720p. There really shouldn’t be any games that run at 30fps anymore.

metal gear rex mgs4

See the screenshots looks vibrant

These facts suggest that MGS4 is indeed taking advantage of the Playstation 3’s to quite an extent so I guess this decreases the chance of that Xbox 360 port.

The second article summarises some more information about the release of the game. Stating that they are basically on the home stretch, that all of the content is finished and they are just squeezing out the last few bugs. More importantly though its been restated that MGS4 will launch almost simultanesous in all territories. Which is fantastic news. ^_^

Posted in News | Comments (3)
Tags: ign, memory card, metal gear solid, soul calibur

Three Recent Positives in the Gaming Industry

June 27th, 2007

Children feel really warm inside when a parent treats their child to something special. Much like children gamers feel the same way when a developer decides to treat their gamers with something special. This kind of consumer love should definitely not go unnoticed. So I have decided to talk about some of these highlights for the gamer.

Final Fantasy I + II

The great thing about these remakes are that most gamers haven’t really played the original games. There’s a lot of Final Fantasy fanboys out there that would have killed to own the original FF games but thankfully Square Enix has prevented any deaths with these two remade games. This is such a positive thing for the gaming industry as it gives gamers what they have wanted for years and honestly what we deserved.

final fantasy 1 and 2 boxart psp

Final Fantasy I has been shipped out to retailers just recently. Infact Square Enix know how badly people want this game that they had/have(damn American timezones) a launch party down at the Metreon Playstation Store in San Francisco.

Not to be forgotten a pile of media for FF II has been recently shown off which is definitely worth a look.

Final Fantasy I Release
Final Fantasy I Video(GameTrailers)
Final Fantasy II Video(GameTrailers)

Grand Theft Auto Collectors Edition

grand theft auto 4 collectors edition duffle bag art book

If there’s one thing that we love as gamers, its collectables. So promotions like this one are always very welcomed. Basically for $89.99(assumingly, that’s $AUS108) you get:

-GTAIV the game for whichever console you prefer
-an artbook, which is awesome as GTA has some superbly stylistic artwork
-the original soundtrack for the game(which is only available in this pack :()
-a safety deposit box and Rockstar keychain
-a Rockstar duffel bag

This is an excellent package as its clever(the duffel bag and safety deposit box) and contains a pile of stuff that collectors and fans alike would be proud to have in your collection. Well done.

NB: This was announced sometime ago, but the first pictures have been released just recently.

Exclusive Characters for Soul Calibur IV

Much like with what happened with Soul Calibur II; Soul Calibur IV shall have console exclusive characters. Which is awesome news, although I’m not sure who they will cast for the Xbox 360 version of the game. Many Sony fans believe that Kratos from the God of War series would be an excellent choice. I of which agree as he fits into the SC universe quite nicely. Being mythical like and all. But as for the 360 who could they choose? Master Chief is far too modern for SC.

Article

Well there you have it folks, 3 reasons to be excited about games. I love in when developers do this kind of stuff, just for us. ^_^ This might become a regular segment, not sure yet, we’ll have to see if this sort of business keeps up.

Posted in Industry Issues | Comments (5)
Tags: collectors edition, final fantasy, gaming industry, gta, patriots, soul calibur

The Playstation 2 Story

June 20th, 2007

slim line playstation 2 australia

How it (tradgically) went down

I haven’t posted about this yet and I really should. Basically I’d been meaning to buy a PS2 for probably 2/3 years now and I finally got around to it the other week. I have been keenly looking for one for about 3 months and found and pretty good deal at Harvey Norman. That was:

-Playstation 2 console
-Extra Controller
-8mb memory card
-2x Platnium titles Total price - $299

So I worked that out to be about $170 or so just for the console by itself. Which was close enough to my target goal. The deal had everything that I needed to get started so and I was getting a bit anxious of just watching a few decent sales go by. So I decided to get it.I was assuming that they may have a few other titles that I might want to pick up down at my local Harvey Norman so I was prepared to maybe buy a few more games. Unfortunately their range of games were pretty average infact I was more impressed by their PSP bargain bin. Out of the limited range I chose Burnout Revenge and Tekken 5 as my 2 platnium titles, they also had the Prince of Persia Trilogy for $50 which was too good to pass up. Especially having played the original on the old C64.

All was well until I had to actually pay for the lot. This is where Harvey Normans payment procedure collapsed into itself. Chris(my brother if you haven’t caught on) and I went to the checkout and had the girl scan all of the items, we pointed out that it was a part of the deal and showed it to her in their catalogue. She didn’t seem aware of the promotion and spent several minutes staring blankly at the page. She then scanned up all of the items and looked back at the catalogue for a few minutes. Chris and I had a bus to catch, unfortunately Chris had been slowing me down(as always) before hand so we didn’t have much time on our hands. So we explained the deal to her again and kindly tried to hurry it along.

She then said that she would need to do an invoice for the package which seemed a bit bizarre. So we grabbed our goods and followed her around the store until she could find a spare staff member to do the invoice. She found one quickly enough and we sat down and this other guy went thru the products, once again looked at the catalogue for a while and then proceded to discount each item on the computer. He then wrote the discounts down on a piece of paper and led us back to the front of the store so that the other chick could finish off(or is that start?) the sale. After another customer went thru we got our goods put thru and our ‘invoice’ was printed out an overally large reciept printed from a printed that wouldn’t look out of place in the 80s.

This whole ordeal took about 25 minutes and as you may have already guessed we missed our bus. Now I can’t help but feel sorry for those poor sales people. I mean I don’t blame them for any of this as its not their fault. Except for not knowing that you have a major special in your catalogue that has been running for 4 days or not knowing how to take a few %s off a few products.(why would you employ someone that couldn’t do that?) You see its the POS(point of sale) procedure where the fault lies. There are many many Harvey Norman stores around Australia and yet they don’t have a database system in which they can scan an item an it will come up as a reduced price. What we noticed was that any price reduction has to be entered manually. Now what happens in the ‘invoice’ case is that each item must be marked down individually by a certain amount(%) and those calculations would be sent to the checkout staff to process. This is a ridiculus system of time wasting for the customer and makes no common sense.

I spose its no surprise really I very rarely(infact I don’t believe that I have even bought something from their before the PS2) shop at HN. Infact bfore I bought the PS2 I despised them for their -ve comments on the Nintendo Wii, seemingly morotic staff and well…they just plan annoyed me. But (thankfully) I have a real reason to hate them now. Ain’t gonna shop there again.

I haven’t had a retail bitch for sometime. So thank you for letting it get off me chest.

What else I snapped up

I bought the console a few weeks ago and hence in the time of me wiritng this to back then I have had the time to buy some games for it. Luckily for me its been a great time to buy games. Being the end of the finanical year numerous retailers are having great deals on some stellar games. Everything that I’ve bought has been reduced. ^_^ Here’s the list of games:

-Tekken 5
-Burnout Revenge
-Prince of Persia Trilogy
-Super Monkey Ball DX
-Soul Calibur 3
-God of War
-Final Fantasy X
-Final Fantasy X-2
-Kingdom Hearts 2
-GTA: LCS
-GTA: VCS
-Sega MegaDrive Collection

I’ve been trying to stay focused on certain games and here’s my brief impressions:

Burnout Revenge

This game is totally apt, fantastic production values, gameplay thats fined tuned to perfection. Its just too good. I love playing this game as its such a rush. I found it a wee bit tricky to settle in but now that I have its totally awesome. Soundtracks great too, go Junkie XL.

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time

Some people think that this series is the series of last gen, but I have to disagree. The games reek of Ubisoft quality but I can’t help but feel that its not as refined as it could be. Specifically the combat, I often find myself become more and more frustrated with it. The acrobatics are definetly very impressive. The game is the perfect 3D conversion of the old 2D PoP games in terms of design. Which is very reminiscent of the older games, I can’t help but dig the nostalgic value from my old C64 version.

Soul Calibur 3

I haven’t played any single player of this game yet. Chris and I have been furiously duking it out in the Vs mode. This game is a true step up from SC2 which I wasn’t expecting. The gameplay flows more beautifully than the silk that drapes the walls of some levels. This game makes Tekken 5 feel like something from the stone age.

Sega MegaDrive Collection

I wasn’t expecting to buy this game for a while but it was price at EB($25) which was too good to pass up. The best part about this collection is that it does justice to the old MegaDrive. That is the emulations are faultless, presentation is slick and the additional options such as saving anywhere are just downright handy. Oh and nothing beats playing some co-op Golden Axe. Once again this one brings back those oh so lovely nostalgic memories, from playing this console at my cousins place every weekend when I was a young chap.

Conclusion

Its about time that I bought a PS2. I’m glad that I’ve decided to do it now as its at the perfect time in terms of software range availability and price. I’m also pleased that I bought it now instead of holding off. Thanks for reading. ^_^

Posted in General Gaming | Comments (1)
Tags: burnout, buying games, harvey norman, patriots, playstation 2, soul calibur