Face it, no one wants to buy a dozen fake musical instruments just to play their favorite games. I need only one plastic drum set in my house. When it comes to guitars, two Fisher Price-style guitars are enough. I’m not starting a guitar collection. I don’t want my living room to look like a day care center.
Michael Shorrock, director of 3rd Party Relations, SCEA, says that “For the past several months, we have been working closely with Neversoft and Activision, Harmonix and Konami to ensure that PlayStation 3 guitars and drum sets will all feature a basic level of gameplay compatibility.”
We don’t know what a “basic level of gameplay compatibility” is, but I’m hoping that means players can bang out the songs and leave the specialized features for game-specific equipment. But I like the idea of a Rock Band 2 working on Guitar Hero World Tour and the Guitar Hero World Tour drums working in Rock Band 2.
Although it may not be a win for the publishers, it is a great move for consumers.
The only thing is that the Resistance 2 beta is only available with a subscription. So folks you have to pony up $24.99. I’m crossing my fingers and hope this is true. I’m still waiting on that SOCOM: Confrontation beta from Qore episode 1. Is that even up yet?
The PlayStation Blog released some images of some preorder goodies for LittleBigPlanet. Along with a burlap pouch (those are so in right now) to keep the game safe, there are downloadable SockBoys and SockGirls.
The first of the downloadable goodies is a SockBoy Kratos. Yes, he looks unhappy. You almost can’t tell the difference between SockBoy’s scowl and the one on the god of war.
The second downloadable character is Nariko from Heavenly Sword. Her design is nowhere near as exciting. At times, you could mistake her SockGirl for a SockBoy.
But what would be really awesome is if Sony created a plush versions of both. You could pretty much rule the world with all the money you’d make from those and (maybe subsidize the cost of a pricey of PlayStation 3.)
Great news Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is the first PlayStation 3 title to get the coveted Platinum Trophy, according to the PlayStation blog. Now, for the bad news, players who have already beaten the game and searched through every nook and cranny for medals and rewards and such have to do it again.
This is truly a case of infinite sadness.
The trophies will not be retroactive. You will have to repeat play through Uncharted yet again. Naughty Dog’s reason for the second go-around is that they want players to get these achievements fairly and the developers have seen game saves floating around on the Interwebs.
Here’s a list of the trophies courtesy of PS3Trophies.org.
On a side note, Bioshock for the PlayStation 3 had its Trophies announced. Among the interesting award is “A Man Chooses,” in which players complete the game on Survivor difficulty. The hardest goal is “I Chose The Impossible,” which is awarded when players beat Survivor mode with Vita-chambers turned off.
On Friday, Sony will be adding a massive update to Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, according to the PlayStation blog. The company mentioned it in its E3 media briefing, and in a couple of days, gearheads will be able to check out Gran Turismo TV firsthand.
Here’s a list of shows on the channel and another thing to note:
For the first two weeks only, we are providing all pay-per-view content for at a discounted price of $.99! It’s a good way to get a taste Gran Turismo TV. The HD content we shoot for our exclusive stuff looks pretty amazing. Following the initial two-week period, content will start at $1.99. So start downloading away!
This will only matter to you if you’re really, really, really into cars. Speed Channel fans are probably champing at the bit.
Over the past three years, I’ve managed to avoid the whole brouhaha over Killzone 2. I’m blissfully unaware of the whole controversy over the 2005 E3 footage. I’ve never bothered to see the video.
And the only footage I’ve seen was of a mission where the player had to take down a weird super gun. But other than that, I went into the Killzone 2 demo as a blank slate not swayed one way or another of the title’s past.
Kyle Shubel, the manager producer for the game, gave me a tour of the game before handing over the controller. The game is divided up into eight levels with about six subchapters in the level. Overall, he said there’s about 12 hours of gameplay.
Right off the bat, I’m thrust into the gameplay. I’m in a war zone that reminds me of World War II except there’s a bit of a sci-fi twist. The soldiers look like Karl Ruprecht Kroenen from Hellboy.
Penny Arcade’s first game On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode 1, previously a PC (and Mac and Linux) and 360 exclusive, is coming to PSN in “late Fall”. If for some reason you haven’t already played it on the PC and you don’t own a 360 your chance is coming.
Of course if you’re reading this you own a computer so, you know, you can go play it now. Just saying.
It looks like there’s an update in the Resistance 2 alternate reality game. There appears to be a split within America in this alternate reality timeline.
According to the weird e-mail, everything is not what it appears to be. A couple of words pop out in the message aside from the old timey telegraph style. Stop. It’s written like this. Stop.
The biggest code word from the message is Project Abraham. What does it mean? We’ll it looks like this site has something to do with it. It’s a little creepy.
Afro Samurai, based on the Spike TV show of the same name, is violent.
There’s more to it, such as the impressive cross-hatched textures giving the game the appearance of the show on which it’s based, but after seeing a demonstration of the combat system everything came back to the very graphic violence.
Not to be left out, the PlayStation Portable also had a presence at the media briefing. It wasn’t earth shatteringly huge, and we covered some of them in other posts.
But one of the news tidbits we heard was that the PSN movies will be downloadble to the PSP. That means you can take those movies with you on the road and not worry about that pesky UMD sucking away the battery life.
Next up, Sony announced a trio of new PSP. We have the expected Loco Roco 2 and Patapon 2. But I wasn’t ready to see was Resistance: Retribution. What? A Resistance game on the PSP? How is that possible? From what I saw of the trailer, it looked pretty good.
You don’t play as Nathan Hale. Instead, you are some random looking guy with an army jacket. The game is played from a third-person perspective. As expected, players shoot Chimerans, take cover, runaway, repeat. This isn’t a title about picking flowers.
Lastly, Sony is releasing another limited edition Entertainment Pack. We had a red God of War PSP. We even have Madden NFL 09 version coming in the next few weeks. But the latest pack hitting shelves will be a PSP Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters bundle. As you would expect, the pack comes with a PSP, a copy of Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters, a voucher for echochrome on the PSN and National Treasure 2.
