It Must Be E3 Time: Two PS3 Games I Want In Two Days

SIZE DOESN'T MATTER...RIGHT?

Another PS3 game(s) to look out for:

The totally generic name may hide it, but there’s a reason this particular title is coming from a third party. Big 3 Gun Shooting includes three arcade gun shooting games: Time Crisis Razing Storm, Time Crisis 4, and Dead Storm Pirates. With all that quality Namco Bandai arcade shooting going into this package, it makes sense that Namco Bandai is publisher.

There’s also the PS3 port of Dead Rising: Extraction (which comes, allegedly, with Dead Space 2), but I don’t think I’m interested enough to bother with that again. (And I was just bored silly with Dead Space, so even if it’s ‘free’…I don’t care.)

Here’s some Deadstorm Pirates, arcade rev, courtesy Arcade Heroes:

I’m no expert, but I’m guessing this is going to have a deleterious effect on Namco’s attempt to sell the recently-released (in North America) arcade rev.

Something Twisted This Way Comes

A PS3 game I can get behind (that isn’t Demon’s Souls):

Clearly very early (and kinda ugly) but assuming it’s, ultimately, anything like TM2, I’m sold.

Also: here’s the E3 teaser trailer (no gameplay):

PSA: For Boletaria!

The Other DS

For the knaves that didn’t take up arms for Boletaria–and those desperately seeking redemption in the eyes of the king¹–now is your chance:

Demon’s Souls: $29.99 & this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping, plus $5 in free MP3s.

That’s a helluva a deal on what I’ve finally decided was last year’s game of the year and the single best reason to own a PS3.

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^{1 King ECM!}

Sony Fans Get the Shaft But They Don’t Feel The Force

Well, PS3 fans, you can always use it for other, err, recreational purposes

It seems that Sega’s big surprise reveal…isn’t:

If you haven’t heard, SEGA Japan set up a count down site for a mysterious SEGA game last week. The countdown site started at number 10. Speculation about the site’s url, next-360action.sega.jp, led people to believe that this could possibly be an Xbox 360 exclusive action title from SEGA.

Well the number count on the teaser site has been going down on a daily basis and is currently showing ‘V’ (5 in Roman Numerals), but it looks like the surprise might have already been ruined.

The latest edition of Famitsu reveals a brand new SEGA title, exclusive to the Xbox 360 – Virtual On Force. Yes once again the Japanese gaming magazine has crippled another of SEGA’s surprise announcements, by reporting on it first.

If this is true, if this is the alleged exclusive, that means, once again, PS3 owners are getting the shaft (twice–once for each stick on a twinstick, err, stick) on a game you’d think would probably, in the end, perform better on PS3 but I guess Sega knows what they are doing…right? (I know: Live got VOOT, but since it sold well, you’d think maybe Sega would want to spread the love a little, right?¹)

Video from the arcade rev:

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^{1 WRONG!}

Sony Staunches Sucking Chest Wound With a Cue Tip, Media Snores

Red is the new black, unless you’re Nintendo, then billions in profit is an ill omen

Good thing they have the WiiHD ready to drop near-term, or you might think losses like this were unsustainable¹:

The division, which houses the company’s PlayStation and VAIO PC businesses, saw sales decline 10.2 per cent to 1,578.8 billion yen (£11.6bn / $17.1bn) during the 12 month period, while it made an operating loss of 83.1 billion yen (£609m / $889m), a year-on-year improvement of 4.3 billion yen (£31.5m / $46.5m).

Reached for comment, Michael Pachter stated:

I really don’t know anything about gaming, but I’m pretty sure this means Sony is poised for long-term victory. What? Off-script? Oh, sorry, um, what I meant was: With the WiiHD coming from Sony in the near-term, their fortunes should see a marked improvement, so buybuybuy Sony stock! It’s a sure-bet, can’t-lose, investment, even when they’re losing hundreds of millions a year! (And make sure you sell all your filthy, profitable, Nintendo stock because with only 2.2 billion in profits over the past year, they are clearly not ‘poised for growth’. Oh, and they’re going to suck at E3 because I said so! What? No, I don’t like the attention. I, oh, wait a minute–hey, you, with the camera, make sure you get my good side! It’s my ass²)

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1 This isn’t so much a knock on Sony (well, it is, sort of) as it is the ridiculous media wailing about Nintendo’s constantly-dire fortunes while they continues to rake in billions in profit, but are mysteriously sanguine about the vast, stupifying, losses gushing from Sony and, until recently, Microsoft, always positioning those money-hemorrhaging financial reports as signs that they’re ready, any minute now, just around the corner, wait for it! to take the market by storm. (Witness the absolutely ridiculous statement by Michael Pachter that the PS3+Move=WiiHD comment, in the linked interview, to get the full force of this insipidly shameless mentality.)
2 OK, that last bit about his ass is probably stretching things a bit but…maybe not.

Gee, It’s Almost Like It’s A Coordinated PR Event

Sackboy shows his less endearing, more burlapy, side

For a game that has gotten, at best, mixed reviews¹, it’s amazing the big gaming sites have basically gone all Little Big Planet 2, all the time, today:

Little Big Planet 2 is in production and the gaming sites want you to know it.

Currently the front page of Edge has four LBP2 related stories running, including the top article:

*An announcement of the game
*A news piece on how it is not just an expansion
*An article detailing the newest Edge issue, featuring a LBP2 cover story
*A story on the new features

1Up is also a little LBP2 crazy, with five stories on the game including the top article:

*An announcement of the game
*A news piece on how it is not just an expansion
*“Six Levels I’d Love To Create Using Little Big Planet 2’s New Features and Themes”
*A LBP2 music announcements piece
*And the LBP2 debut trailer

Oh, there’s much more at the link, but it’s almost like, I dunno, Sony PR called in some favors to get this sort of saturation-bombing coverage all on the same day, dontcha think?

And notice how a lot of the stories appear to be dupes of one another (e.g. a news piece on how it is not just an expansion, because that was the first thing that leapt to anyone’s mind??), no doubt purely coincidental, even across sites that don’t share any connection at all, except…Sony PR.

Hell, I bet they didn’t even get lots of advance notice to have pieces like “Six Levels I’d Love To Create Using Little Big Planet 2’s New Features and Themes” ready to go just in the nick of time! Right?²

(Yeah, yeah: “slow news day” except that legitimately huge/universally-loved/mega-selling games don’t get this kind of ‘we’re caught in a tractor beam’-level coverage all in one day–a day that’s not even close to being over yet, so there’s still time for more!)

Note: if you haven’t gotten it yet, this is a coordinated PR event. The problem is that the allegedly independent gaming ‘journos’ are part and parcel of the hype machine that’s trying to sell the game to you, their readers, when they should be viewing such things with at least a semi-jaundiced, un-compromised by noxious spin, eye.³

Meanwhile, this story labors in complete obscurity, probably because shining a light on it would tick off the hand that feeds them and that’s a huge no-no in game ‘journo’ circles. Oh, and of course LITTLE BIG PLANET 2 (BUY IT THIS YEAR)! is much more important than prison labor/sweatshops/child labor in China. Naturally.

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1 Not in the gaming media, but in general, by the end-users who were a great deal more circumspect in their praise/adulation than the absolutely hysterical (in the crazy, not so much funny, sense) worship given to a game most people have concluded has a kinda cool tool set wrapped around a game w/ pretty lousy controls.
2 This is standard op for game journos: they’ll get packages of materials before the big reveal (which is, of course, a coordinated PR effort) so they can have plenty of unbiased, original, content for the gullible fools that think all of this stuff comes from their ‘scoop’ and ‘from the heart’ or in the heat of the ‘ZOMG this is awesome’ moment.
3 There are no jaundiced eyes in the world of game ‘journalism’, as credulity carries the day when there’s money to be made.

I’ll Never Say Another Bad Word About NEOGEO CD Loading Times

Wait for it:

And that’s where I was, ECM III, when the first manned Martian landing occurred way back in 2030 and your Dad, ECM Jr., was just graduating college…what? Oh, the video is over? Ah, good–I was worried for a minute that it might just go on forever…

The Last Man on Earth You Want Working to a Tight Deadline

If it took 5+ years to make one of these, there’d be no Ferrari

Kazunori Yamauchi, father of all things Gran Turismo (and Sky Blazer alas!) is, quite literally, the last person I’d ever hire to work to even a loose deadline, let alone one that would have cost me north of $60 million dollars (at last count some time ago) over the course of five, long, years¹:

“About 90 per cent of the game is done,” Yamauchi told Inside Line (thanks VG247). “We are just working on the last 10 per cent and polishing up everything.”

Which would be fair enough, except it’s exactly what he said in January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. And indeed roughly what he said in October.

Now I don’t care about this game at all, and I understand the idea of ‘not rushing perfection’², but someone at SCE should have, years ago, put the brakes on this out-of-control, high spec, game development type R if only because it probably could have shipped, well, years ago, collected rave reviews, sold millions, helped the PS3′s flagging fortunes and had a sequel ready to go this year.

Instead, they let the raving eccentric go on and on and on and on with no real end in sight and is, yet again, a microcosm for the serious problems Sony has had for 90% (see what I did there?) of this generation. (This is assuming, of course, Yamauchi doesn’t have pics of Howard Stringer caught using a Samsung TV at home or other, compromising, material like that Kaz Hirai’s biz degree³ is, based on SCE’s performance, from Okinawa CC.)

I think it’s even fair to ask if this game is going to make 2010, at this point, and you can pretty much write off Europe right now as the game powerslides into its eighth(!) year in development on its 3.6 millionth set of tires.

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1 Did I mention that was five, long, years as of 2008? No. Oh, well, there you go.
2 There’s not rushing and there’s a laconic, eh, we’ll get it done when we get it done attitude that seems to infect high grade Japanese devs and leads, ultimately, to their destruction See: Suzuki, Yu and the debacle saga that was Shen Mue.
3 Haha, just kidding! Kaz has a Bachelor of Arts degree.

Bonk: Now With 1/10th the Charm

I want to LOVE this game, but Hudson is making it harder than Bonk’s head:

Look: I want to like all these retro-styled updates to classic games like the upcoming Rocket Knight and, of course, Bonk, but this bizarre insistence on using creepy-looking, ‘realistic’ graphics for games that would benefit massively from classic, 2D, pixel, artwork, is starting to grate on my nerves. (Yes, I know: I’m a charter member of the graphics>gameplay club *flashes Wii and DS receipts from launch day*, but, man, is this really too much to ask??)

And yes, I promise: I’ll take them on their own terms when they arrive, but couldn’t they have at least half the charm, graphically, as NSMB Wii?? (I’d argue that Sparkster and Bonk, graphically, had way, way more charm than 8 or 16-bit Mario, to boot.)

For reference (Bonk’s Revenge on PCE/TG16):

Internet>Sony: Fix PS3 YLOD For Less Than a Dollar

Math is fun when it doesn’t cost $100+

And here I thought Sony employed PhDs in engineering to build their products:

Since we see quite often people here in forums asking for help regarding ylod, I wanted share my alternative method for repairing YLOD since I consider it to be easier and it doesn’t require complete dissassembly. This method has also worked for GLOD(green light of death – all lights seem normal but no video/audio output and controllers won’t sync). I have sent email to gilksy some time ago, but since he hasn’t replied I decided to post my method here. I actually discovered this first time some time before gilksy published his guide but since hadn’t much experience using this I didn’t post this.

Since problem is very similar to xbox’s RROD the fix fundamental is similar: add pressure to GPU and CPU. I tried various things(shim etc.) before I figured out how is the fix would be. You need just 4 big washers(diameter 40mm, hole 8mm and 1mm thick. You can find these every hardware store for less than 1euro.) to do this.¹

This information is instructive for two reasons:

1. It beats sending your PS3 away to Sony and getting raped charged at least $100 to fix it as a part of Sony’s scheme ploy biz plan to put a PS3 Slim in every home.²

2. The fact that a fix this simple and innocuous wasn’t part of the original hardware spec for the device, leads me to the unavoidable conclusion that some dude on a random message board in the wilds of the Internet is more competent at electrical and mechanical engineering than Sony’s brightest bulbs.

Disclaimer: I have not, myself, tried this fix, so if your PS3 decides to hurt/maim/kill you for trying to tamper with its Planned Obsolescence^TM feature³ a la Hal9K, leaving your wife a widow and your child an orphan….can I have your stuff?

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1 A Euro is worth, roughly, $1.30 as of today. (The washers will run you about 50 cents, tops, at Home Depot.)
2 Thus padding their hardware sell-through numbers, i.e. SOP for Sony since at least the PSOne.
3 One feature, I’m reasonably certain, Sony won’t be removing anytime soon.