Consoul Games

Sony's diet consoles

2007-10-04T22:23:00.000+10:00

The Empire strips back.
Sony are trimming the fat with their two new Playstation offerings: the new Slim & Lite PSP which has been on the market for a few weeks now, and the new model 40GB PS3, which will be officially announced very soon.

At a glance, the Slim & Lite PSP looks remarkably similar to the original PSP, but has a number of significant changes. As the Lite name implies, the new model weighs much less. It's 33% lighter than it's predecessor, and that difference is immediately evident when holding the unit. The new PSP feels almost empty by comparison. It's also true to the Slim name, being almost 20% thinner. The back of the unit is now truly flat, unlike the old PSP which had protruding bumps on either side. While the screen is the same size, it's now brighter and features a faster response time (though some ghosting is still apparent). Placement of the speakers and wi-fi switch have been adjusted for the better. The responsiveness of the d-pad has also been improved.

The differences extend beyond the physical unit however. Two key additions to the PSP's functionality have been added in the Slim & Lite. First of all, the amount of RAM in the PSP has been doubled to 64MB, with the Slim and Lite utilizing the extra 32Mb as cache to reduce loadtimes and improve web browser performance. The benefit of the UMD caching feature varies greatly from game to game, but in some cases loadtimes are halved or better. I expect developers will program future PSP games to exploit the Slim's caching feature, resulting in significantly shorter loading delays.

The second big addition is TV Out. You can plug a Slim and Lite PSP into a TV and display it on the big screen. This is a feature that has been requested since the PSP launched. The output looks fantastic. It's hard to believe it's coming from a handheld. Cables are sold separately (of course) and there's one major caveat: PSP games can only be displayed in 480p via the component cable. The composite and S-video cables can display everything but games (photos, videos, etc.). I should also mention that games are displayed at the original resolution of the PSP screen, 480x272, which means they appear in a smaller window inside the 480p TV screen output. Given that all the other PSP features are shown full-screen at full 480p resolution via TV out, Sony's decision not to output PSP games full-screen has been a controversial one. Having used the TV out feature extensively, I think it was the right decision. Games look good via TV out at their original resolution. The PSP wouldn't have enough CPU cycles leftover to upscale game output to full-screen gracefully, so the choice between great looking smaller output and ugly chunky upscaled output seems a no brainer to me. If your TV has a "zoom" mode, you could always use that to do the upscaling for you.

Incidentally, it's apparent that Sony intended on supporting TV out from PSP all along. Evidence of this can be seen when playing UMD movies via TV out. They look virtually indistinguishable from DVDs. Despite the PSP's screen being only 480x272 pixels, all UMD movies are encoded at full 720x480 (NTSC) DVD resolution. My Japanese Biohazard 2 UMD from 2004 was deliberately encoded in 480p despite the fact that there wouldn't be a device capable of playing it at that resolution until three years later. Sony were clearly planning ahead.

Regardless of whether you're using the new Slim and Lite PSP or the old Phat (as it has become known), games are now able to use the PSP's full 333MHz clockspeed. Sony finally lifted the clockspeed cap that I wrote an expose on way back in April 2005 (See Unlocking PSP's Future). We should start seeing some really impressive titles on PSP in 2008. The next Remote Play barrier has also been broken: you can now actually play PS3 games on your PSP remotely. Only Sony's beautiful, but flawed Lair is playable via Remote Play so far, though other games will surely follow. The ability to remotely switch your PS3 on and off from your PSP is coming in a future firmware update too, which should make Remote Play a much more practical proposition.

So, onto the other big news; a 40GB PS3 will be launched across Australia on October 11. In the wake of Microsoft's Halo3 launch and in the lead-up to the all-important holiday season, Sony have addressed the single biggest problem the PS3 has: the price. Nearly a thousand Aussie dollars is just too much to compete effectively with XBox360. While it hasn't even been announced yet, Sony's response is the introduction of a new SKU: the 40GB model. It's cheaper. That's the main thing. The 40GB PS3 will retail for just AU$699.

Of course, reduced cost comes at a cost. The difference between the standard AU$999 60GB model and the AU$699 40GB isn't just 20GB. The 40GB PS3 has been stripped back to make the price cut possible. The card readers are gone, the four USB ports have been reduced to just two, and here's the real kicker: PS2 backward compatibility is out. I don't just mean there's no hardware backward compatibility; there's no PS2 compatibility at all.

Current model PAL PS3s feature software-based backward compatibility anyway, so why wouldn't the 40GB model? It's not like the emulation software costs anything extra to include, right? Well, it's not quite that simple. When Sony introduced software backward compatibility into PAL PS3s, they removed the Emotion Engine (the PS2 CPU) which saved them about $25 a unit. The backward compatibility on these PS3s was never pure software emulation at all - these machines still contained the PS2's GPU (the Graphics Synthesizer). Now in a further effort to reduce manufacturing costs, Sony have stripped out the GS chip, making PS2 games impossible to play on the 40GB unit.

Expect the 40GB PS3 to be officially announced this weekend (and prepare for the internet shitstorm that will undoubtedly ensue). Microsoft will counter attack with the announcement of a new cheaper XBox360 SKU, details of which will emerge shortly.

I'll leave you with more pics of my new PSP. I picked up one of the 77,777 limited edition Japanese bundles made to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the ground-breaking PSone RPG, Final Fantasy VII. The bundle came with the new FFVII prequel, Crisis Core (which is absolutely brilliant by the way).

PS3 makes firm progress

2007-05-28T10:58:00.000+10:00

Six and a half months ago, I was standing on a cold Shinjuku street with my brand new Playstation 3 while Ken Kutaragi posed for photographs behind me. Much has changed since then. Two weeks later, Ken Kutaragi was no longer President of Sony Computer Entertainment, and as of last month, was effectively retired (becoming an Honorary Chairman).

The "father of Playstation" may have left the game, but his final product, the PS3, has continued growing and evolving. There have been eleven firmware updates since the Japanese launch, with the latest, version 1.8, going live late last week.

Firmware 1.8
This has proven to be a very impressive update. Several gripes I've had with the system since day one have finally been resolved by this firmware, and many nifty new features have been added. Some of the changes are quite obvious, others not so much. Let's take a look some of the improvements that the latest firmware update has delivered.

Scaling

The new scaling options are the most talked about feature of this firmware update. Until now, the PS3 could not output Blu-ray movies at 720p resolution. Given that most HD sets in homes today have a native vertical resolution of 768 pixels, the PS3's remarkable inability to downscale Blu-ray movies to 720p (due to it's limited hardware scaling capabilities) was a real problem for it's credibility as a Blu-ray player. Not anymore. As well as supporting 720p, the PS3 now also supports 24 fps playback (to match the framerate of the original film), making it one of the more fully featured Blu-ray players available.

DVDs can be upscaled now. The PS3 can upscale DVDs to 720p or 1080i/p, and the resulting visuals are fantastic. The catch here is that DVD upscaling is only supported via HDMI cable. When using component cable, DVD upscaling is disabled. Well, it's almost always disabled. It will be disabled when watching any copy-protected (ie. commercial) DVDs via component. As a copy prevention measure, the MPAA insists that DVD players must not upscale to HD resolutions without implementing the HDCP protocol (that HDMI supports, but component doesn't).

Scaling has also been added to the PS3's backward compatibility. PSone and PS2 games, which were originally displayed only in standard definition, can now be displayed at resolutions up to 1080p. Additional options are available to apply a smoothing filter to the upscaled content and automatically "pillarbox" 4:3 games on widescreen displays. These are nice features, but you shouldn't expect a huge visual improvement. The games are not being rendered at a higher resolution, they're just being resized. Having said that, the smoothing option does make PSone games much easier on the eyes, without dramatically changing their look.

I've created some comparisons below of Metal Gear Solid in it's original 480 state and upscaled to 1080p with smoothing (click for larger versions).

The new scaling options apply not only to games on physical discs, but also to PSone games bought and downloaded from the Playstation Store. Until recently, these downloaded PSone games were only playable on PSP systems, but can now be directly played on the PS3 too. (Unfortunately, Sony have not yet made any PSone games available through the Australian or European Playstation Stores.)

Interestingly, it seems downloading PSone games is a viable way to bypass the region restrictions still enforced on PSone software. My Japanese PS3 won't play US PSone discs, but will happily play downloaded US PSone games.

Memory Cards

Speaking of backward compatibility, support for the memory card adaptor has also improved immensely. Prior to firmware 1.8, this adaptor was essentially a one-way device for one-time usage. It's only capability was copying the content of PSone & PS2 memory cards to the PS3's hard drive. You couldn't even check what was on the cards first. The implementation of the legacy memory card system was extremely limited and frustrating.

Under firmware 1.8, you can finally write files back to your memory cards as required. You can directly browse the contents of any connected memory cards and "copy-protected" save files which were previously not transferable, now are. If you're playing PSone games downloaded from the Store, you can now move their save files seamlessly back and forth between your original memory cards, the PS3's HDD and your PSP's memory stick. The entire legacy memory card system is now as flexible as it always should have been.

Remote Play

The PS3's Remote Play system, which allows a PS3 system to be remotely accessed and controlled by a PSP, has been greatly expanded upon in firmware 1.8. In addition to the Music, Video and Photo sections which were available before, the Friends list, Game menu and even the Playstation Store are now accessible. You can see which of your friends are online, check what game they're playing, and even engage them in chat sessions via your PSP. As you can see below, the Playstation Store interface is optimized for viewing on the PSP screen.
While you can now browse the Game menu (above), you still can't actually play any PS3 games via Remote Play. The only parts of the PS3 interface that remain inaccessible via Remote Play are now Settings, Users, the Folding@Home client, and actual gameplay.

There's one more change to Remote Play that needs to be mentioned. A change that really makes the Remote Play feature deliver on it's potential. Before firmware 1.8, Remote Play was little more than a clever gimmick. It's usefulness was limited by the fact that both the PSP and the PS3 had to be within direct wireless range of each other (essentially using an "Ad Hoc" connection like two PSPs connecting for local multiplayer). Firmware 1.8 adds support for Remote Play across the internet. This means you can use your PSP to access your PS3 when you're away from home. No matter where you are, if you've got your PSP and wireless internet access, you can connect to your PS3 and utilize whatever resources you have on it.

How well this works will be reliant on network conditions of course, and you'll need to sign in on your PSP using the same email address and password you use to sign into your PSN account. Remote Play across the internet won't actually be possible until PSP firmware 3.5 is released (later this week?). This feature has enormous potential and I can't wait to try it out.

UPDATE - (1/6/07)
PSP firmware 3.5 was released yesterday, and I tested the Remote Play via Internet feature last night. I'm pleased to report that all the features of local Remote Play are still available across the internet. Using the default settings, the picture quality was visibly more compressed than using local Remote Play and there was some skipping and input lag, but all in all, it worked a lot better than I'd expected.

If the "tunnel" between the PSP and PS3 has sufficient bandwidth, you can change the settings on the PSP to improve the picture quality and response time, making the experience much the same as local Remote Play. Colour me impressed.

Media Streaming

This was an unexpected and pleasant surprise. DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) compatibility was added in firmware 1.8. It's a set of standards allowing media (like videos, music and photos) to be shared between networked devices. Unfortunately, hardware with native DLNA support isn't very common right now. Some VAIO laptops support it and some high-end digital media recorders do too. That's great if you've got one, but what if you don't? Well, chances are you can easily get your PC to play along.

Windows Vista supports DLNA, but you needn't upgrade just yet. XP users can get set up in seconds flat. Just switch on Sharing in Windows Media Player 11 , and after allowing sharing to the PS3 (which will appear in WMP as an "Unknown Device") , your PS3 can access music, pictures and video stored on your PC. You can stream and play it directly across the network, or copy it to your PS3's hard drive.

Of course, your PS3 can't handle all media formats. PS3 only handles MPEG videos, for example. If you want to be able to stream all your videos (regardless of format), you'll need to do a bit more work on the PC side. There are numerous DLNA media-streaming apps available; some free, some commercial. Right now, the latest release of Nero Media Home looks like the most versatile option, as it does on-the-fly transcoding of other video formats into PS3-friendly MPEG-2.

When watching videos streamed across the network, you have the same options as you do when watching videos off the PS3's internal hard drive. You can stop watching a video mid-way through and resume it from the exact same point later. The 1.5x fast forward option is still available too, allowing you to watch videos at 150% normal speed with audio at the normal pitch. The network media streaming features all work via Remote Play too, so you can wirelessly access media stored on your PC (or any other DLNA device) via your PSP, as illustrated in the photos below.

Full Range HDMI

For folks with HDMI displays (or HDCP-compliant DVI displays), the new Full Range HDMI display option is well worth checking out. Until now, the contrast range of PS3's HDMI output has been consistent with TV standards. TV signals are contrast-compressed so that in the full 0-255 range (where zero is true black and 255 is absolute white), all picture brightness is rendered within the 16-235 range.

Many TVs can't adequately display tones darker than 16 or brighter than 235. Even if a TV can support it, it's chipset may have been configured to drop tones below 16 to black and push all those above 235 to full white. For TV, that's ideal. For PS3, these sets are best left at the default "Limited" range setting, as enabling "Full Range" will actually lead to loss of detail at the top and bottom ends.

As the name suggests, the "Full Range" option will open up the contrast spectrum to the full 0-255 range, producing deeper blacks, whiter whites and overall better contrast on displays that will support it. Monitors are built for this range, and some TVs will handle it well too. On the Samsung monitor I'm using, Full Range HDMI produces a much better picture.

Other Stuff

There are a few other noteworthy changes:

Printing support has been added, but at this stage, only a select range of Epson printers connected via USB will work.

A new Slideshow mode called "Photo Album 2" has been added to the Photo viewer. This displays virtual prints, like the original Photo Album mode, but arranges them neatly in a grid instead of randomly scattering them. Zooming and cropping functionality have also been added (finally!).

CD information is now editable. After the PS3 automatically retrieves information about audio CDs from the internet, you can now manually edit the information.

Background downloads are now supported from within a greater range of games and applications (including Folding@Home), and can be manually paused from within the XMB.

On Australian/European PS3s (that don't contain the PS2 chipset) software emulation of PS2 games has improved. A greater number of games are now compatible.

The only downside of firmware 1.8 seems to be that the PS3 arcade sticks that worked on PSone/PS2 games under firmware 1.7 no longer work under 1.8. With so many improvements, I guess they had to break something.

Considering that all this was bundled into firmware 1.8, it should be interesting to see what Sony have planned for firmware 2.0. This may co-incide with the public release of Sony's innovative Home online interface. Home is currently in a closed beta phase, and while I've been fortunate enough to have a thorough play around with it, unfortunately I'm not allowed to disclose any details about it.

What's in Store

2007-03-20T18:56:00.000+11:00

I heard that Sony switched on the Australian Playstation Store today, so I've just activated my Australian PSN account and had a look. The Aussie Store is much the same as all the others, but I thought I'd reveal what's in there for those of you picking up an Australian PS3 soon. No doubt the content is essentially the same as the UK Store, though the pricing is obviously different.

Here's the complete list:

Games
GTHD Concept (free)
Tekken 5: Dark Ressurrection ($16.95)
Blast Factor ($8.45)
Lemmings ($8.45)
Gripshift ($13.37)

Demos (all free)
Resistance: Fall of Man
Motorstorm
Blast Factor
Formula One C.E.
Lemmings Starter Pack
Genji: DotB
Ridge Racer 7

Video
PS3 Advert: trailer 2 "underbelly" (61MB 1080p)
Resistance: FoM TV advert (58MB 720p)
Formula One: C.E. trailer (73MB 720p)
Motorstorm trailer (224MB 720p)
PS3 Advert: trailer 3 "grenade" (93MB 1080p)
Resistance: FoM trailer (223MB 720p or 122MB SD)
GT HD Concept trailer (185MB 720p)
Motorstorm TV advert (6355KB 720p)
Casino Royale trailer (282MB 1080p or 38MB SD)
Gripshift trailer (91MB 720p or 23MB SD)
Genji:DoB trailer (155MB 720p)
PS3 Advert: Keiji (18MB 1080p)
Ridge Racer 7 trailer (128MB 1080p)
PS3 Stories: Control (146MB 1080p, 110MB 720p or 32MB SD)
PS3 Stories: Power (147MB 1080p)
PS3 Stories: Real Time (203MB 1080p, 143MB 720p or 146MB SD)
PS3 Stories: Cinematic (178MB 1080p or 35MB SD)
PS3 Stories: High Def (156MB 1080p, 120MB 720p or 33MB SD)
PS3 Stories: Storage (187MB 1080p, 138MB 720p or 37MB SD)
NHL 2K7 trailer (31MB 1080p)
NBA 2K7 trailer (23MB 1080p)
X-Men 3: The Last Stand trailer (112MB 720p or 29MB SD)
Behind Enemy Lines trailer (108MB 720p or 31MB SD)
The Omen trailer (66MB 720p or 17MB SD)
Kingdom of Heaven trailer (119MB 720p or 30MB SD)
Ice Age: The Meltdown trailer (98MB 720p or 27MB SD)
Speed trailer (121MB 720p or 31MB SD)

Game Content
Ridge Racer 7 Game Decal Sets 1-5
Genji Enemy Costume Pack

That's it...well almost. Strangely enough there's another trailer available that's not listed in the Video section. It's a rather brutal The Darkness: Revenge trailer that's only accessible by scrolling through the Latest section. It's the same trailer that was shown at TGS 06. Notably absent are previously announced titles like flOw, Go! Sudoku and Super Rub-a-Dub.

Remember folks, the first 20,000 Australians to activate their PS3s online are eligible to recieve a free copy of Casino Royale on Blu-ray. Good luck.

Consoul Magazine

2007-03-16T11:45:00.000+11:00

Well, this piece was going to be a long and thoughtful post-mortem of GDC '07 and the announcement of Sony's new MMO online interface, Home. The rest of the gaming press and blogosphere have already talked that to death, so instead here's a picture of a blond girl in a pink bikini, sitting on the toilet with her pants down.
This is the cover of Sony's new PS3 lifestyle magazine called CONSOUL. How nice of them to shamelessly steal my name. This free monthly magazine debuted earlier this month in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Here's my own (admittedly very rough) translation of the media release:

Sony Computer Entertainment Deutschland (SCED) brings its own lifestyle magazine to the launch of the PLAYSTATION3 on the market. In co-operation with the Köln agency, the first edition of CONSOUL will appear on 06/03/2007 with a run of 500,000 copies. The new monthly trend magazine appears in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and is distributed through stores catering to the gaming & internet scene and other selected outlets free of charge.

CONSOUL covers the PLAYSTATION 3 from the perspective of lifestyle and entertainment enthusiasts. High production value photo shoots, reports on sports, fashion and design, and music and movie reviews will fill CONSOUL's pages, as well as features on the technical highlights of the PLAYSTATION 3, and outstanding games and gadgets. The articles, which are all written by an independent specialized editorship, don't lose themselves in technical details, but inspire curiosity to find out more and targets a readership which sits around the fringe of video game topics.

PLAYSTATION 3, which will be available with the European-wide sales launch on 23 March 2007, is more than just a next generation game console, but a multimedia high-end entertainment centre. CONSOUL welcomes this new dimension of digital convergence, which is made possible with the start of the PS3. "The PlayStation brand will be shaped with PS3 as high definition home entertainment. With CONSOUL we look directly at the lifestyle of our customers. We address all, the fun of new emerging gadgets, the digital life of the internet, and naturally our outstanding games and films", said Uwe Bassendowski, Managing Director of Sony Computer Entertainment Deutschland GmbH.

Wow. I'm still not sure exactly where the girl on the toilet fits in, but she will no doubt attract some attention. I'm somewhat dubious about the "independent" editorship, but this seems to be the direction in which Sony's 'decentralized' PR is headed (see also thinly-veiled Sony mouthpiece blog ThreeSpeech). I'm curious to see what this magazine actually contains. If anyone could send me one, or provide some scans, I'd be much obliged.

UPDATE: First they take my name, then they take my story.

So I had a subtle dig at Threespeech in this post. Well, they've responded by ripping off part of the post (complete with my re-sized, re-named cover picture and my own bodgy translation) and posting it on their site, without credit. Do not underestimate the petulance of Playstation.

Thanks to good folk like Chris Kohler @ WIRED, N'Gai Croal @ Newsweek and Brian Ashcroft @ Kotaku who gave credit where it was due.

PS3: Shown to scale

2007-01-29T12:02:00.000+11:00

First of all, the Australian release details have been finalised:
March 23 2007. AU$999.95.
Only the 60GB model will be initially available.
Now on with the show.

Scaling has been a high-profile issue for the PS3. While the PS3 can natively render at resolutions as high as 1080p, it has been drawing heavy criticism for it's apparent inability to perform hardware scaling. The PS3 currently will not upscale games rendered at 720p to 1080i/p. For the small number of people who have older HDTVs that support 1080i, but not 720p, this is a disaster. Similarly, the PS3 cannot downscale Blu-ray movies from 1080p to 720p. Even backward compatibility was suffering horribly from scaling issues, with PSone and PS2 games being badly stretched to higher than their original horizontal resolutions.

Fortunately, it seems Sony are taking steps to address the situation. First of all, Sony have released PS3 firmware version 1.5, which among other things, fixes the backward compatibility issue. PSone and PS2 games now display correctly, without any horizontal distortion. This welcome upgrade finally brings PS3's backward compatibility up to scratch. Of course, it could be further improved with options for higher resolutions or texture filtering (like the PS2 had), but we probably shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.

As previously hinted at by Resistance developers Insomniac, it turns out the PS3 does in fact have some kind of hardware scaler built-in. Developers just weren't able to access it until now. The latest software development kit (SDK) from Sony has at least partially unlocked it for developer use. Why it was locked previously is unclear. Unfortunately, full-frame hardware scaling from 720p (1280x720 pixels) to 1080p (1920x1080) still isn't possible. Oddly enough, the newly unlocked hardware scaling functionality supports only horizontal scaling. Any vertical scaling still has to be performed in software, at the cost of processor time. So while this isn't the ideal hardware scaling solution, it's half way there.

Sony have wisely included a new 960x1080 rendering resolution as an option in their latest SDK. The beauty of this resolution is that the actual number of pixels to be rendered is only marginally higher than standard 720p (less than 10% extra), and because the full 1080 lines are already rendered, the PS3 is able to upscale it to full 1920x1080p at no extra cost.

So it seems the PS3's hardware scaling abilities aren't quite as lacking as originally thought. There's still a way to go toward resolving all of PS3's scaling issues (720p Blu-ray movie playback is still a sore point), but Sony are certainly taking the issue seriously. Whether they can still find a way to achieve full-frame hardware scaling is anyone's guess.

Red Steel

2006-12-21T12:01:00.000+11:00

The weight of expectation can be a heavy burden.

Ubisoft's high-profile title Red Steel carried a lot of baggage to the Wii launch. It was the first Wii game announced and was hotly anticipated from the moment the first screens were shown. Even Nintendo themselves constantly hyped Red Steel as a great showcase for the Wii in the lead-up to launch. Beautiful, crisp anti-aliased screenshots found their way around the web. Despite being devkit "bullshots" that were obviously higher resolution than the Wii could support, they raised people's hopes of how good the game might look.

Despite playtests of beta versions being met with less than stellar impressions, hopes for Red Steel remained high. The gaming community wanted to believe. The final review copies went out, and the discrepancy between expectations and reality became abundantly evident. The press were merciless: "Horrible", "buggy", "broken". Reviews were mostly five or six out of ten, even falling as low as four.

The community quickly turned away from what had apparently been a terrible train wreck. Red Steel dropped off the shopping lists of many of Wii's early adopters. I had originally planned on buying it on day one, but it's critical reception had been so scathing that I didn't even consider it when I picked up my Wii at launch. A day or two later, I felt strangely compelled to try it anyway. I knew it was meant to be awful, but the curiosity was killing me. For such a high-profile game with a budget of ten million Euros (that's bigger than Gears Of War!) to have failed so spectacularly, the result was something I just had to experience for myself.

While so many other mediocre Wii games had sold out in the pre-Christmas shopping frenzy, I had no trouble finding stores with Red Steel in stock, and even got a good discount on it. My initial impression was pretty much consistent with the general consensus.

Red Steel: Not ready. There's no escaping the fact that Ubisoft rushed the game out for launch. Right from the boot up, the game feels like a beta: unfinished, and desperately in need of more polish, or any polish for that matter. The loading screens, menus, and cutscenes all feel like internal placeholder work that should have been redone properly before the game ever saw the light of day. Then the game itself begins and the stuttering frame rate and last-gen graphics join forces to dig the hole a little deeper. So how do I control this thing? Whoa. Oh boy. It doesn't handle like any FPS you've ever played and it's not like a lightgun shooter either. It's a new control scheme that you're not accustomed to, and for the first few minutes, you'll probably feel like it doesn't work very well.

I have to wonder how many reviewers crystalized their opinions at that point. It would be easy to throw up your hands right there and decide the game was crap. The thing about Red Steel is that it takes time to open up, and it needs the player to give it that opportunity. Half an hour in, the game still seemed bad, but the control scheme wasn't grating quite as much. I had adjusted to the idea that I needed to point the remote at the screen all the time, and that it controlled both the aiming reticule and the direction I was facing.

An hour in, the sluggish frame rate was still bugging me though I'd gotten over the initial shock of the chunky looking graphics and occasionally dodgy textures. I still wasn't really comfortable with the controls, but I played on. The disconcerting way the game just froze up for a few seconds every time I reached a checkpoint was certainly contributing to the amateurish vibe of the game. The storyline and characterization hadn't improved matters either. They were terrible in fact. Poorly written, poorly acted, and absolutely riddled with clichés and stereotypes. Any cheesier and the game disc would have had a stuffed crust.

And yet, as I continued into the third, fourth and fifth hours of the game, I noticed something odd happening: I was having fun. The control scheme had pretty much clicked (although moving toward the TV to zoom in still felt a little clunky) and I was really enjoying the immersiveness of it. Graphically the game had become much more impressive too, though inconsistently so. It still had it's ugly moments, but there were plenty of nice subtle effects on show coupled with some beautiful set pieces and good art direction. Even the cheese had turned golden. I found I was appreciating the dodgy dialogue and lame plot on a B-movie level. I was hooked. I just wanted to keep on playing.

Red Steel's gameplay carves it's own path somewhere between lightgun shooter and first-person shooter, and strikes the balance quite well. The sword fighting isn't what we were all hoping for, but in the grand scheme of things, it's little more than a mini-game. Shooting and hurling grenades is what Red Steel is about. I'm more than happy with Red Steel's duration. As a fan of lightgun games that usually last no more than an hour or two, I think the ten to fifteen hours on offer in Red Steel is a satisfyingly large serving. The campaign is about all there is though. The offline multiplayer is okay, but the lack of online multiplayer is a real disappointment.

So I'm left with mixed feelings about this game. It's so bad on so many levels that I feel like I should just consider it as a straight-out bad game. ...and yet, in spite of it all it's faults, I enjoyed it. I really had fun with it, which is more than I can say for many technically accomplished and highly-polished games that are just boring to play. It certainly won't be remembered as one of the Wii catalog's highlights, and no doubt much of my enjoyment of the game was based on the novelty of using the Wii remote and nunchuck to play it, but so what? Putting aside all other considerations (like the shoddy execution of the entire game), if the sole purpose of a game is to be fun, then I can't deny that Red Steel delivered.

If you're willing to persist and forgive it's flaws, Red Steel actually does offer one of the more interesting and fun experiences available in the Wii's launch line-up.

PlayStation3: consoul on console.

2006-11-30T10:18:00.000+11:00

So I've been putting the Japanese 60GB PS3 I picked up on day one through it's paces for about five weeks now. I finally feel like I've seen enough to share some detailed hands-on impressions. As usual, I'm not going to spin this either way or try to convince you to buy one or not - I'm just going to call it as I see it.

The Design

The first thing that strikes you when you take the PS3 out of the box is the sheer size of it. It's big. Bigger than you expect. (325mm x 98mm x 274mm) The depth of the unit is the most surprising part. However, like a woman in a black dress, the PS3's dark translucent curved design works wonders in minimizing it's apparent size. When you've actually got your PS3 set up, either horizontally or vertically, you likely won't notice it's depth anymore, as your eyes are drawn to it's uncluttered tapered front. The name "PLAYSTATION3" is emblazoned across the hood in the same font Sony Pictures have been using for the Spiderman movies.

Unlike the all black 20GB unit, the 60GB unit features a silver strip along the base and a silver panel on the front where the optical drive is. The drive has a self-loading disc slot with the trademark Playstation logo below it, which can rotate 90 degrees to match the orientation of your console. On the ledge beneath it are the power and eject buttons. I call them buttons, but they're really just touch sensitive areas, completely flush and with no discernable edges. The power lights are reminiscent of the PS2 - one red light indicates the system is in standby, and a pair of blue and green lights illuminate when the system is on. The blue light flashes when loading or ejecting a disc. Four USB ports are tucked under the overhang on the front, along with indicator lights for HDD and Wi-fi activity.

Like the original PSP, the PS3's shiny black surface is an absolute fingerprint magnet. It also shows dust like you wouldn't believe, so for this reason alone, you're best standing the PS3 vertically if your loungeroom setup can accomodate it. Overall, the PS3's physical design is slick and appealing, while being quite understated. Rather than standing out like a 360, the PS3 can blend in with other home theatre components very well.

The Ins and Outs

One of PS3's much heralded points of differentiation from XBox360 is it's ability to natively render and output graphics at HD resolutions up to 1080p (1920x1080 progressive). That's effectively twice as many lines per frame as the 1080i (interlaced) HDTV broadcast standard. Sony brashly claimed that "the HD era doesn't begin until we say it does".

When first shown at E3 2005, the PS3 proudly sported dual HDMI outputs. By E3 2006, the 60GB PS3 had only one HDMI port and the 20GB had none. Shortly before launch, the word was that the 20GB would get one HDMI port and the 60GB would have two as originally intended. In the end, both models ended up with only one HDMI output.

The display settings selectable in the PS3's menu are dictated by what kind of cable you're using for output. If you want to see every pixel of the PS3's 1080p graphics at the best possible quality, HDMI output is your best option. Of course, you'll also want an HDMI cable and a compatible display that's capable of actually resolving 1080p. Got an extra $3000-$5000? You're all set then. If your TV doesn't accept HDMI, but is capable of resolutions above standard defintion, then component is for you. Like HDMI, the component cables can output resolutions up to 1080p (including 480i, 480p, 720p, and 1080i). Unlike HDMI, component output is analogue rather than pure digital, but it's picture quality is still very good.

The trouble is that Playstation3, the 1080p console that apparently ushers in the true HD era, doesn't come with cables that support HD resolutions at all. It comes packed with the same composite AV-multi cable (with the traditional yellow, red and white plugs) that shipped with the original Playstation ten years ago. Using the included cable, you can only display in 480i (standard def). Admittedly, many people, okay most people, don't have a TV that accepts component or HDMI input. The majority of people still have standard definition TV sets. You have to wonder though, how many of those people are dropping a big wad of cash on a high-end device that renders games and plays back movies at 1080p? I understand that Sony felt it necessary to include cables to support standard definition TV, but why not include component or HDMI cable as well?

Memo to Sony: Your "HD era" hasn't begun if your console doesn't support HD out of the box. Microsoft got it right. The Premium 360 pack included a single cable that had both component and composite plugs. The lack of HD cables in the PS3 box is disappointing (and downright cheap). On the upside, if you already own a PS2 and a TV that supports component, then you may already have a set of component cables for your PS2 (as I did). You can just use those.

I know many people intend to buy a PS3 first and get an HDTV later. Fair enough. PS3 still looks okay at 480i, but you should definitely be aware that you're missing out on the big picture. Technically, you're seeing less than a quarter of the detail you'd see in 1080p. If your TV doesn't support at least 480p (EDTV), you're robbing yourself. That said, I should mention that most of the launch games don't actually render at full 1080p. True 1080p games will become more common as software developers get better acquainted with the hardware.

The back of the PS3 also features digital optical output and an ethernet port for taking the console online. The 60GB model also offers wireless connectivity via wi-fi, with optional WEP or WPA-PSK security. Also exclusive to the 60GB model are card reader slots for Compact Flash, SD/Mini-SD and Memory Stick Pro, all neatly concealed behind a flap on the front. Like the rest of the casing, the flap is translucent, so the access indicator lights for each of the slots can still be seen flashing when the flap is closed. The left side of the unit (or the bottom if you're standing it upright) is where the hatch concealing the hard drive caddy is. Should you feel the need, replacing the stock internal drive with a higher capacity 2.5" inch SATA notebook drive is a simple process, and is fully explained in the PS3 manual.

The four USBs are perhaps the most versatile ports, allowing all kinds of devices to be connected. You can charge your Sixaxis controllers with the cable provided, or plug in an Eyetoy, flash drives, cameras, keyboards, external hard drives, or your PSP or iPod. Whatever. If you'd rather go cordless, up to seven Bluetooth devices are supported simultaneously, including the Sixaxis controllers and headsets.

Note for PS3 importers: The sticker on the bottom of the PS3 indicating that it requires 100V power is somewhat misleading. Despite what you may have read elsewhere, you don't need to go out and spend a couple of hundred bucks on a 500 Watt sine-wave down converter. Inside the PS3, the AC adaptor is actually clearly marked as being designed to accept 100V-240V at 50-60Hz. In other words, it's universal. You can in fact plug your PS3 directly into 240V without frying it. I'm running my PS3 straight off Australian mains power right now.

Boot Up

You can power up the PS3 by touching the power or eject icons on the PS3 itself, or by holding down the Playstation logo button on any Sixaxis controller. The system emits a beep and only takes a few seconds to boot up into the menu. The words "Sony Computer Entertainment" briefly appear and there's a short sound like an orchestra tuning up, which sets a rather classy tone.

The loud beep is kind of annoying and unnecessary in my view. The system also beeps if you use the power icon to switch it off. (Shutting down the system using the controller does not produce a beep.) As someone who often dons a pair of cordless headphones and plays late at night while my family sleeps, I really appreciate that the PS3 runs virtually silently. Considering the system's processing power and it's internal PSU, the fact that it runs so quietly is quite an achievement. By comparison, my XBox360 sounds like a hair dryer. I can only assume Sony included the beep because the touch sensitive power and eject icons can easily be activated accidentally. Regardless of their rationale, the inclusion of the beep irks me.

The Interface

If you're familiar with the PSP's user interface, you'll feel right at home here. PS3 employs a variation of Sony's Cross Media Bar (XMB) interface, as seen on the PSP. Behind the menu, a fluid ribbon waves slowly and like the PSP, the background colour changes throughout the year. If like me, you play mostly late at night, you won't see too much of the background colour, as each day it gradually changes from being brightest at midday to being pitch black at midnight. From left to right, the menu has eight top-level categories: Users, Settings, Photo, Music, Video, Game, Network and Friends. Let's take a look at these individually.

Users

PS3 is Sony's first console to feature integrated user accounts. You'll need to create an account whether you're going online or not. You can create and store up to sixteen user accounts on your PS3. Each of those user accounts can have an associated PlayStation Network (PSN) account for online play and transactions (see Network section). The PSN name and local account names need not be the same. When logged on as one user, you will not be able to see, load or delete other users saved data.

If you have created more than one account on your PS3, the first thing you'll be prompted to do each time you power on, is choose which account you wish to use. I'd recommend creating at least two accounts, as this prevents the PS3 from auto-booting games when switched on. If you have to choose an account, you'll be sent to the XMB menu afterwards. If there's only one user account, it'll automatically be signed in and any game disc present will boot immediately.

Settings

There's a whole lot of settings you can tweak in here. Display, Audio, Networking, Formatting, etc. Perhaps the most interesting option in Settings is the "Install Other OS" option, which allows you to install Linux on your PS3 and use it as a fully fledged computer. You can install whichever flavour of Linux you like, but Yellow Dog Linux 5 is the best option, as it has been specifically written for PS3 hardware. Be aware that to install Linux, you'll first need to re-partition the hard drive, so be sure to back-up any saved data you want to keep to removable media first. Reformatting (or replacing) the hard drive will not delete your user accounts or any system updates. Obviously, Linux on PS3 is best used with a high resolution display.

Photo

The Photo section allows you to view images stored on the internal hard drive, inserted cards, sticks, or any connected media. Jpegs, Tiffs, Gifs, BMPs and PNGs are supported. Like the PSP, the PS3 will not automatically detect Images, Music or Video files that are buried several directories deep on your removable media. However, the PS3 does provide an option to display the entire directory structure so you can dig out any files that don't immediately show up.

One of the more useful features of the PSP's photo viewer was the zoom tool. On PS3, zoom is conspicuously absent. Small images are scaled up to the screen size, but you cannot manually zoom into photographs at all. It's a glaring omission that should be rectified in a future system update.

There are four slideshow styles: Normal, Slide, Portrait and Photo Album. Each can be run at three speeds. The Photo Album slideshow mode has attracted a lot of attention. It renders the images as prints, polaroids and negatives, and casually tosses them onto a virtual tabletop, grouping them together with times and dates seemingly handwritten in pencil. It's a strikingly realistic effect. You can control the position and zoom of the camera above the table with the analog sticks. Impressive as it is, the Photo Album mode is ultimately just a great looking gimmick that falls short of being useful, because you can't actually zoom into any one photo so that it fills the screen.

Normal mode is exactly that: static images are shown with a quick dissolve between them. Slide mode adds animated transitions replicating a traditional slide projector, where one image is whisked off the side of the screen momentarily and replaced with the next. The timing and realistic motion blur really nails this effect.

Portrait mode is, in my opinion, the most interesting option. It cycles through the images with dissolves in between, but also pans across the images and zooms in and out. The Xbox360's slideshow option does the same...well, almost. The crucial difference is that the PS3 is not choosing the zooms and pans randomly. It's actually interpreting your photos. It's looking for faces and points of interest. While it's not 100% accurate, it's usually able to pick out the important parts of the picture to zoom in or out from, or pan across. It took me a while to even notice this particular subtlety, but it's now my favourite undocumented feature of the PS3.

Music

From here you can play music off the HDD, or any other media, including CDs or even SACDs. Congratulations if you're the one person who actually has an SACD. You can rip songs or whole albums to the hard drive, and choose from a wide range of codecs and bitrates. ATRAC, AAC, MP3 and WAV are supported, though protected MP3s (like from iTunes) won't play. When you put in a CD, the PS3 will sneakily begin retrieving album information from the internet, so you'll get full artist, album and track information without having to type anything in.

A couple of different visualizer options are available, which adapt to the music quite well and are quite soft and pleasing to the eye. Holding the PS button during music playback pulls up the XMB again, so it's possible to play music and watch a slideshow at the same time. Unfortunately, there seems to be no support in the operating system for custom soundtracks in game. Hopefully this will be addressed as the system software is updated.

Video

Again, you can access files on the hard drive, or any other connected media. DVD and Blu-ray movies will also show up here. While it doesn't support as many video formats as I'd like, the MPEG1, 2 and 4 (including H.264) codecs are a good start. Videos stored on the hard drive can have animated thumbnails, which look fantastic. Contrary to what you may have expected, none of the videos will have an animated thumbnail until you give them one. You need to start playing the video and then choose a point at which the 15 second loop should start, then manually select the thumbnail icon from the OSD. It would have been nice if these videos defaulted to using the first 15 seconds as their thumbnail. By default, they actually don't have a thumbnail at all; not even a still image.

If a DVD or Blu-ray disc has been inserted, the XMB gives no indication of what is on it; only showing that a disc is present. While that's essentially a limitation of the DVD and Blu-ray formats, after becoming accustomed to the animated menu icons for UMD movies in the PSP's XMB, the generic disc icons for DVDs/BDs are a disappointment. A feature like the one used for retrieving CD information could perhaps be implemented to allow the PS3 to recognize specific DVD and Blu-ray movies.

Anyway, the playback quality is excellent. 1080p movies play off the HDD or BD without a hitch, and look sensational. As other sites have reported, the PS3's image quality trumps that of some dedicated (and far more expensive) Blu-ray players. Strangely though, PS3 only supports Blu-ray movie output at 480 or 1080 (interlaced or progressive). 720p Blu-ray output is not available, even though most PS3 games currently natively render at that resolution. This is another oddity that will hopefully be resolved by a system update. It's possible however, that the PS3 is incapable of supporting 720p Blu-ray without a hardware scaler. Time will tell.

Putting in the memory stick from my PSP, I found all the videos I'd encoded on it immediately showed up in the PS3's menu with their original thumbnails. They scaled up pretty well when played too. Taking the memory stick out of my Sony Cybershot camera and putting it in the PS3 didn't yield such good results. No videos showed up at all. I had to switch on the 'show all directories' option and then dig down through Sony's arbitrarily named folders to find the movies, which displayed without thumbnails. Admittedly my camera is a few years old now, and other newer cameras may be better supported, but a bit more comprehensive support for Sony's own product lines surely isn't too much to ask for.

Game

What?! You mean it plays games too?
Yes, we've reached the "Play" part of the Playstation 3 at last. Well, sorry, I'm not going to bother going into much detail about PS3's games here. There are plenty of detailed reviews of individual titles elsewhere. Instead, I'm going to take this opportunity to reveal one specific and little-known aspect of the PS3's game functionality, before discussing backward compatibility.

Region free. Those two words are being used a lot in relation to PS3. So is it really region free? Well, yes. And no. Mostly no actually. It's not region free for DVDs or Blu-ray movies. It's not region free for PSone or PS2 games. You can only play DVD and Blu-ray movies or PSone and PS2 games that match whichever region your PS3 console comes from. Those of you who have been following the PS3 news no doubt knew this already.

You'd also know that PS3 is officially region free for PS3 games. Hmm. I suppose that depends on how broad your definition of region free is. You can buy a game from one region and play it on a PS3 from another region. That much is true. That being the case, you'd be forgiven for thinking that it doesn't matter where your games come from, or where your PS3 came from. As far as playing PS3 games is concerned, the experience should be the same no matter what, right? Wrong.

This raises an interesting 'feature' of PS3's region coding that seems to have been kept quiet. I bought a Japanese copy of the critically acclaimed Resistance: Fall of Man at launch, with my Japanese PS3. Packaging aside, the Japanese Resistance and the US Resistance are feature identical. The discs both contain all languages and all game content. So I was somewhat surprised when I read impressions from US gamers discussing the game's "hero moments" and the way the blood splatters on environmental objects. Blood? I completed the game and never saw a drop. Hero moments? These are sequences where you have the opportunity to save handy allies from a grisly death, not that I'd encountered any such sequences in the game. Something tricky was going on.

My experience of Resistance had been censored, completely unbeknownst to me. The once liberal Japanese have apparently become conservative regarding graphic depictions of violence recently. Resident Evil 4 (on GC and PS2) is a good example of this. It featured chainsaw decapitations and other explicit death scenes that were cut from the Japanese release, but remained elsewhere in the world. Resistance has apparently been adjusted to appease the censors too, but the method has changed.

No content has been cut from the Japanese release. If you take my Japanese copy of Resistance and start playing it on a US PS3, you'll find it plays completely uncut, with all blood splattering and hero moments intact. Conversely, start playing a US copy of Resistance on a Japanese PS3 and the blood and hero moments are gone. The games have not been cut. The PS3 console itself is determining what gets cut.

A Japanese PS3 will censor games to meet the Japanese rating. It makes no difference if you're signed on under a US profile, or playing a game you bought in the US or anywhere else. No doubt the US and forthcoming Euro/PAL PS3s will work the same way. Game content will be altered/cut on-the-fly to meet the ratings requirements of the region that machine was intended for. It certainly will be interesting to see how different PS3s handle a game like Grand Theft Auto 4.

This revelation probably comes as a bit of a kick in the teeth to people who've imported a Japanese PS3. The prospect of playing a needlessly censored version of Resident Evil 5 is somewhat depressing. Fear not! You shall go to the ball! I'm going to tell you how to get around this awful bit of region coding. The trick is all in the save file. When you boot up a game for the first time, your PS3 creates a save file in a folder on the hard drive for whichever user account is logged on. It's then that the PS3 checks the hardware region coding and decides whether it will be censoring the game or not. It never performs this check again. So the key to getting around the censoring is getting your hands on another save file that was created on a PS3 from an uncensored region.

Here's the catch - you can't just get a save file created using the US release of a game on a US PS3 and expect it to work with a Japanese game. The disc IDs are different, so the game will refuse to load the save data. What you'll need to do is have someone with a US (or other region) PS3 boot up the Japanese game disc. They don't even have to start a new game. Just booting up the disc will create a save file that indicates the game is being used on US hardware. Take a copy of that save file and import it into your Japanese PS3. Bingo. You can now start a new game with all features uncensored. I'm playing Resistance again, on hard, with all blood and hero moments unlocked.

Backward Compatibility

I expected that backward compatibility would just work on PS3, without a hitch. The PS3 actually contains the same (EE/GS) chipset used in the slim PS2, so hardware compatibility shouldn't have been a major factor. It's interesting then that many games do exhibit issues. Usually it's nothing that will make a game unplayable, but it's surprising that a machine as advanced as a PS3 can't necessarily do a PSone game justice.

While individual titles seem to exhibit different issues, there's one broad problem that seems to plague all the PSone and PS2 games when played on PS3: it's the horizontal resolution. The vertical resolution of the backward compatible games seems to match the original (480 in the case of most NTSC games), but the PS3's horizontal resolution seems to be higher than that of the original games. That's not to say the backward compatible games are being rendered at a higher resolution - as far as I can tell they're not, but rather they're being stretched to fit. The result is ugly. As PAL gamers, you've probably noticed the awful line doubling evident in many game FMVs that were shoddily converted from NTSC to PAL. The effect seen in backward compatible games on PS3 is very similar, only the lines being doubled are vertical instead of horizontal. It's not always obvious, but the overall effect is that games look worse on PS3 than they did on their original platforms. The PS3 does not upscale (apart from showing 480i games at 480p) old games and has no texture filtering options like PS2 did. Disappointing. I can only hope that future system updates improve backward compatibility and give us options like upscaling and texture smoothing.

The PS3 has no PSone/Ps2 memory card slots, so save files for PSone/PS2 games are saved to the internal hard drive on virtual memory cards. You have to create these cards from the XMB in advance and they hold only as much as the original cards did (example: virtual PS2 memory cards can only store eight megabits of save data). You can create as many cards as you like, but only two can be assigned to the virtual memory card slots at any time. Unfortunately that limitation applies across the virtual slots regardless of whether you're playing PSone or PS2 games. This means if you have PSone memory cards assigned to slot one and two, when you start playing a PS2 game, those PSone cards are still assigned to both virtual slots. It would have made more sense to be able to assign slots one and two for PSone and PS2 games independently. How often do you need to access a PSone memory card when playing a PS2 game? Never.

One of the (many) great failings of XBox360's backwards compatibility was the inability to bring save files across from the old XBox. Sony addressed this issue on PS3 by creating a legacy memory card adapter (sold separately) that plugs into the PS3 via a USB port. This means you can plug in your old PSone/PS2 memory cards and import your existing save data. This is a great feature to have, but the implementation of it is extremely inflexible. When you plug any memory card into the adaptor, the PS3 gives you only one option: to import the entire contents of that card onto the harddrive. You can't choose to import specific save files, or even view the contents of the card to see what's on it first. (You probably don't have a dozen different memory cards, but I do, so not being able to simply check what's on them is annoying.)

You cannot access cards plugged into the adaptor from within PSone or PS2 games, and copying the contents of the memory card to the hard drive is a one-way operation. Ideally, you should have been able to just use the cards plugged in via the adaptor as if they were plugged into a slot on the original machine. Not being able to copy save files back to the memory card makes the situation worse. Consider this scenario: You copy your PS2 memory card containing your Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence save data. You play MGS3:S on the PS3 for several hours before deciding you'd rather continue playing it on your old PS2 (which isn't plagued by any backward compatibility issues). Unfortunately, you've now lost all progress and anything you unlocked while playing it on the PS3, because the PS3 does not allow you to copy save files back to the memory card. The restrictive way in which legacy memory cards are handled is immensely frustrating.

Network

Three topics to talk about in here: The Internet Browser, the PlayStation Store and Remote Play. The PS3's Internet Browser is actually pretty decent, but it's no match for a traditional computer-based browser. It's a vast improvement on the PSP browser, but that ain't saying much. It handles many complex sites very well, including Youtube, forums, and even e-commerce and banking sites that use SSL. You can have multiple windows open simultaneously and it decodes and displays pages quite rapidly. I've heard many people complain about how slow the browser is, but in my experience that mostly comes down to network conditions. In Tokyo, I found browsing on the PS3 very fast. Here in Sydney, it's much much slower. I blame Telstra.

The biggest problem for the PS3 browser is the interface. Using a Sixaxis instead of a mouse and keyboard is a chore. An on-screen button-based mobile phone-style text entry window pops up whenever you click in a text field. It's predictive text works well, and it learns and improves the more you use it. Of course you can plug in a USB keyboard, but you'll still find the on-screen text-entry window appears. You can never type directly into the page. Worse still, the text-entry window is character limited, so if you try to reply to a particularly long email, you may find you can only enter a few words, as the previous email has nearly filled all the available space. Other missing features like the ability to select, cut, copy and paste really restrict the browser's usefulness. In any case, if you really want to browse the web on your PS3, you can install Linux on it and run Firefox. Alternatively, just use your PC to surf the web.

The PlayStation Store is Sony's answer to the XBox Live Marketplace (XBLM). From here, you can download game and movie trailers, playable demos, full games, and additional content for retail titles. Rather than being integrated into the OS, like the XBLM, the PlayStation Store is essentially an external website. As such, it feels a bit clunky and unresponsive at times. Consequently, just navigating it's content can be a bit painful. The Store is best displayed at 720p or higher. At lower resolutions, you'll get a cut-back version of the store that's much less attractive. There's no background downloading, or download queueing (yet). If you want to download something, the PS3 will leave you looking at a progress bar until it's complete.

On the upside, the Store uses real currency amounts for transactions. Microsoft and Nintendo's download services utilize "points" which deliberately create a layer of abstraction between the listed 'price' and how much real-world money that really is. In the PlayStation Store, you know exactly what any transaction will cost you because it's there in dollars and cents. Better yet, you aren't forced into buying five or ten thousand points when you only want a three thousand point item. You can just pay the exact amount. This is an often overlooked feature of the PlayStation Store. If you opt to add credit to your account in advance, you'll only be given set options for $20, $50, etc., which is much the same as buying point packages. If instead, you go straight to the checkout without any credit, you can charge the exact total to your credit card (provided it's more than $5). As an aside, contrary to what you may have heard, you can use foreign credit cards in the US Store. Game pricing seems quite reasonable too. As an example, the new 3D HD Lemmings game is available for download for an introductory price of USD$2.99. A whole range of PSone games are available to download, transfer and play on PSP for just six bucks a piece. It's hard to say how it will all turn out long term, but right now, compared to it's competitors, the PlayStation Store's transparent pricing scheme and bang-for-buck seem much less geared toward ripping you off.

Building on Sony's Location Free Player technology, PS3's Remote Play function allows you to control your PS3 wirelessly from your PSP. You don't need a wireless router for this to work, the PSP and PS3 connect directly to each other via wi-fi. There's a quick one-time set-up required on both machines, but once they're configured you just choose Remote Play from the menu on the PS3, do the same on your PSP and then you're looking at the PS3's XMB on your PSP. At present you can do just about everything but play games and watch DVDs or Blu-ray movies. I'm not surprised that games are off limits, as there is a slight lag when using the PSP's controls in Remote Play that would hurt gameplay badly, but it's hardly noticeable when just selecting options in the XMB. You can access whatever is on your PS3's hard drive, be it music, photos or movies (even 1080p video content streams smoothly), and you can also use the PS3's superior web browser. Very impressive - it will definitely wow your friends...but is it really useful? It seems a clever if not hugely practical gimmick at this stage. It's potential may be better explored in future.

Friends

PS3's friends list is a bit light on detail compared to XBox Live on 360. There's a basic list of your friends, with avatars, indicating whether they're online or not and what game they're playing (if any). That's about it. You can't check when they were last online or what games they've been playing. You can send and receive messages and initiate chat. There's a section called "Friends Met" which I expected would show players I'd recently played against online, but after many multiplayer sessions of Resistance and Ridge Racer 7 it remains empty. Right now, PS3 games maintain their own friends lists. I expect the Friends Met section exists in anticipation of a time when PS3 games begin using the one unified list. So far the only way I've been able to access the main Friends list in-game has been to send people an invitation to join. Similarly, rankings and achievements are tracked only within individual games, so there is no Gamerscore equivalent.

Final thoughts

Reading back over this, I've certainly listed a fair few gripes and flaws that I see in the PlayStation 3. That's not to say I don't like it. On the contrary, I think it's a great piece of hardware with a lot of potential. I just wanted to give a "warts and all" overview of the system. Many of PS3's current shortcomings could (and should) be overcome with software updates. Sony have issued four PS3 software updates in as many weeks since it's release, so I'm sure there will be many improvements to come. Even as it stands, the PS3 packs in a lot of great features and the hardware seems well equipped to weather the years ahead as consumer uptake of HD expands. Having official support for Linux installation and user-upgradable hard drives in a console almost defies belief.

As much as Sony and Microsoft want you to see their new consoles as much more than just game machines, in my opinion, the real measure of a console is still the games it brings us across it's lifetime. It's way too early to judge how Playstation 3 will perform on that front. There are only a few games worth playing on the system so far. The hardware certainly has the potential to deliver deep, engrossing HD games. Let's hope the developers make the most of it.

PlayStation 3 is still scheduled to launch in Australia and Europe in March 2007.

The Yodobashi Shinjuku PS3 Launch Massacre

2006-11-15T11:52:00.000+11:00

A view from the queue.

Sure was a hell of a way to start a holiday. I had flown out of Sydney on Thursday night, arrived in Tokyo on Friday morning, got a bus through the gridlock from Narita to Shinjuku, dropped my luggage off at the hotel and started making my way to the nearby Yodobashi Camera as the sun began to set. With only 80,000 Playstation3s available for launch, getting one was not going to be easy. Most japanese retailers don't take pre-orders, particularly when there are so few units to go round. A lottery system was being implemented at most stores, meaning that getting the chance to buy one came down to sheer luck. I didn't like my chances. With many retailers being allocated less than ten units, even camping out overnight at one of the few non-lottery retailers was no guarantee of securing one.

I had heard that Yodobashi weren't going with the lottery system, and were likely to have a decent amount of stock - rumour had it they were getting 100 units. I had decided early on that the queue at Yodobashi Akihabara would be a nightmare, so I figured the Shinjuku outlet would be a safer bet. Given that people in the US had started camping outside the Best Buy in Burbank several days earlier (even though the US launch was still a week away), I wondered how large the queue would be at Yodobashi Shinjuku when I got there on the eve of the launch.

Arriving at the Yodobashi games store in the narrow street behind the main Yodobashi Camera building just after 5pm, I could see there was no queue at all. The front of the store was dominated by a large Playstation 3 display with three demo units connected to gorgeous new 1080p Bravias. Only the middle PS3 was actually playable; the other two were running long demo loops and had no controllers attached. There were less than thirty people standing around, and most of them appeared to be just passers-by who had stopped to take a look at the display. No-one was even playing the PS3. I was pleasantly surprised by the apparent lack of interest. I spotted another couple of gaijin checking out the displays, who turned out to be an American exchange student and an English, but now Kyoto-based, writer for Joystiq, GameSpy and *cough* Spong. He told me that there wouldn't be a queue until the Yodobashi staff announced where the queue would actually start, and that probably wouldn't occur until closing time - 10pm.

I considered wandering off to find some dinner and returning closer to ten, but with every passing minute, more people were arriving. The beginnings of unofficial queues were forming, and being quickly broken up by a few police who were making sure that traffic could still get down the lane. With five hours to kill, I decided I'd pass the time while holding my position right at the front of the store by getting hands on with the four playable demos and watching all twenty rolling demos.

Devil May Cry 4 was a joy to play and looked fantastic - very reminscent of DMC1. It's framerate occasionally dipped, but only during cutscenes. Gran Turismo HD's alpine course ran smoothly and looked good, but much to my surprise, the conspicuous lack of rumble in the new Sixaxis controller actually did detract from the experience. When you drive across a bridge or slip off the edge of the road, you expect to feel it. The screen was shaking, but the controller was dead in my hands. I hadn't expected I would miss rumble at all, but I did. There are certain games where it adds to the immersion, and Gran Turismo is one of them.

Ridge Racer 7 was, well Ridge Racer...again. You know what you're getting with Ridge. At 60fps in full 1080p it was truly gorgeous, and the drift gameplay is as satisfying as ever. Slipstreaming seems to be the one significant new addition to the game. Sega's tennis game Power Smash 3 was the fourth playable demo, which looked good but didn't really grab me. Of the rolling demos, the standouts were Motorstorm, Final Fantasy XII, Lair, Heavenly Sword, Ninja Gaiden Sigma, Virtua Fighter 5, Eye Of Judgement, and of course, Metal Gear Solid 4.

By 8:30pm, the street was full of people waiting to queue; a few hundred at least. Unfortunately, the main loading dock for Yodobashi is directly across the road from it's games store, so every so often a large truck would squeeze down the street and perform a tight reverse turn into the dock. No-one wanted to lose their position, so with the help of the police, each truck ended up slowly navigating the sea of people, crushing them against the storefronts and hitting them in the head with their side mirrors. It was going to be a long night. My feet were killing me already from just standing in the jam-packed crowd for a few hours. Several other gaijin had arrived, one of them being a friendly Welsh bloke who, with his Japanese wife, had attended several previous console launches here. With a little help, he'd bought 22 PSPs at launch and made a small fortune selling them on to international buyers. The guy was a pro. He had no interest in the games. It was strictly business. He had convinced several of his non-gamer mates to come along and queue up for him this time too.

A quick poll of the gaijin in the area revealed that I was the only one who intended to keep the PS3. All the others were going to sell theirs immediately, even if they were gamers. Many of them weren't even buying any games. I found this state of affairs a little disappointing, but as a Tasmanian ex-pat explained to me, he was going to sell his in order to make some money so he could buy an HDTV. That way he'd be ready for the PS3 when the software catalogue improved. With only five titles available for the Japanese launch (and only a few being any good), I couldn't really argue with his rationale. Due to the ludicrous prices the PS3 was fetching on the international market, there was a good number of gaijin present, including quite a few Chinese and Thai, but the vast majority were actually Japanese, and judging by the number of DS's and PSPs in the crowd, they were indeed gamers.

Not long before nine, the playable demo unit crashed, leaving only a few scattered white pixels across the bottom of the screen. Not a great omen for the reliability of the first-gen PS3 hardware. About twenty minutes later, one of the Yodobashi clerks pushed his way through the crowd to the kiosks. I figured he was just going to reset the crashed one. Well, he did turn it off, but he turned off the other two as well. A moment later all hell broke loose.

Somewhere down the street, someone yelled out something and everyone ran. I didn't know where they were running, but I ran the same way. The flood of people came careering down the street, running in a blind panic, like Godzilla was after us. The wave of people I was in ran broadside into a bicycle, tipping it over, and leaving many people stumbling. I richocheted around it and using my height advantage over the crowd, I pushed and weaved my way forward through gaps I could see in the haphazard stampede. As I got near the front of this impromptu running-of-the-bulls I could see there were many innocent bystanders being caught in it's wake. Women were screaming and brave men were pulling them out of the way into nearby shopfronts. As I dodged another pile-up and rounded the corner of the block, I saw it. A queue growing as fast as I was running. A human serpant, four or five people thick, materializing down the street. I threw myself to it and was instantly crushed into a human terrine.

As the rush to join the queue continued down the block behind me, I took stock of my surroundings. The queue ahead was sizable. I couldn't see quite how long, as it seemed to have begun somewhere just around the corner near Club Sega. It appeared that there were easily more than a hundred people in the queue ahead of me. My heart sank. This was not an ideal outcome. I couldn't see any of my gaijin comrades. God knows where they (and their useful translation skills) had ended up. To make matters worse, I was stuck directly under a scorchingly hot floodlight mounted on a shopfront awning, just inches away from my head. It was only a few minutes before the sweat began running down my face and dripping from my eyebrows. Had I been able to move my arms, I would have wiped it away, and taken my jacket off too. The queue was so densely packed I could not move at all.

I wasn't feeling real good about the situation at this point. It appeared I would be trapped under this sunlamp for the next eight or nine hours, unable to move, unable to disappate any body heat (as I was in direct physical contact with all the people around me) and unlikely to get a PS3 for enduring this torture anyway.

It was only another five agonizing minutes before the police came along and started pushing the queue back, creating small breaks in it to allow people to get in and out of the other Yodobashi outlets we had queued in front of. That got me out from under the burning floodlight and gave me the opportunity to elbow myself a little more breathing space. The looping Yodobashi jingle that had been driving me mad for the last few hours stopped. To my bemusement, in it's place, the PA began playing Auld Lang Syne over and over instead. This was apparently a signal that the shops would soon be closing.

After 10pm, when the shops had closed, the two Japanese girls next to me took the opportunity to sit down with their backs against the rollerdoors. I opened up the small pouch I had brought with me and pulled out the tiny Jackeroo folding camp seat that I'd bought at K-Mart shortly before heading to the airport on Thursday evening. I found just enough room to unfold it and set it down beneath me. It was small and uncomfortable, but as I finally took the weight off my feet, I decided it was the best six bucks I'd ever spent. Had I continued to stand, I would have seen it coming, but half an hour later, myself and the two girls were suddenly swamped as the wall of people began moving quickly backward. I scrambled to my feet but my pouch (with PSP inside) was lost in the incoming swell. Somehow it was returned to me by a chain of kind hands as the tide subsided and the wave of people compacted back into a dense immovable mass. While I wasn't happy about being packed like a sardine again, it became apparent the reason the queue was being moved back again was to give everyone enough room to sit. It only took another fifteen minutes before R2 shut down the Death Star trash compactor and we were all able to sit in relative comfort.

A couple of Yodobashi clerks were issuing the people sitting about fifty feet ahead with tickets. This was a reasonably good sign. On one hand, it meant that anyone getting a ticket was guaranteed a PS3. On the other hand, there were about 70 people between them and me. If the rumours of this store getting a hundred PS3s were true, then I was certainly too far back. As the clerks slowly approached, I could see they had plenty of tickets left in their hands. I breathed a deep sigh of relief as I accepted my ticket for a 60GB PS3: ticket #220. Looks like I'd chosen the right store - Yodobashi Shinjuku had evidently been allocated a whole lot of units.

My Welsh scalper friend came casually strolling down the street smoking a cigarette. "What happened to you?" he asked. Thinking back on the chaotic queue formation, I honestly didn't know. He had been tipped off about the queue announcement by some seasoned Japanese scalpers just before it happened and had scored ticket #54. His wife was holding his spot near the front of the queue. "So," I asked, "what news from the front?". Word from the front was that this Yodobashi had been allocated a thousand units, with an even split of 60GB and 20GB SKUs. He took a walk down past the twenty rows seated behind me to the corner and confirmed that the queue streched back at least another two blocks before it left his line of sight. Some of the other gaijin were ahead of me, others behind. At least none of us would be leaving empty handed. I got him to buy me a much needed drink from a vending machine before he headed back.

The reality set in that the excitement was over. I was in the queue, I was guaranteed a 60GB PS3, and now I had to sit here for another seven or eight hours. Sales would not begin until 6 or 7am. I hadn't had more than an hour's sleep since I woke up on Thursday morning and it was now almost Saturday. This Suntory Boss Black coffee in a can was really hitting the spot. Several blocks away and thirty-three stories up, my wife and baby boy were sleeping soundly. Lucky buggers. Out of nowhere, a fully outfitted stormtrooper patrolled past the line, keeping a watchful eye on us rebel scum.

It wasn't until midnight that I actually wondered why there wasn't a midnight launch anywhere in Tokyo. Midnight launches are de rigeur everywhere else in the world, so why not here? By 1am one reason became clear. The streets had been busy with young party people and drunken businessmen until then, but by 1am the streets were deserted. Most people in Tokyo don't have a car and the whole city relies on its ruthlessly efficient train system. The trains stop at 1am. If sales began at midnight, most people wouldn't be able to get home afterward.

2am. It was getting cold...and I felt what I hoped weren't the first signs of rain. A man in a suit and tie keeled over asleep in front of me. Apart from him, there seemed to be no-one sleeping. Well, there was another drunk businessman in an expensive suit who had clearly missed his train and was passed out in the gutter across the road, but the queue itself was awake. There was a whole lot of wireless Monster Hunter going on with the PSP owners, and the DS's were on fire. I've never seen Pictochat moving so fast. There was a surprisingly high number of girls in the queue, about one in five, though I wondered how many were actually buying one for themselves.

Not much happened as the early morning hours passed by extremely slowly. I watched episodes of Consolevania, On The Spot, and Good Game on my PSP to pass some time. I was pleased to hear I'd won a Good Game t-shirt for a review I'd written. I stepped out of the line to stretch my legs and chat with the other gaijin I'd met earlier. We had all made it into the first third of the queue apparently. Over a thousand people had turned up here, but only a thousand tickets were issued. We talked about everything we could think of, but time just seemed to drag on forever. By 5:30am there was nothing left to say. We all just stood around nodding knowingly at each other and looking at our watches.

At 6am the queue began standing up, so we all rushed back to our places. The lights in the Yodobashi storefronts came on. Stand up everyone! It is time...to wait. Nothing happened, and everyone returned to their delirium. At 6:30am, I looked up momentarily while watching the 1UP Show and saw Phil Harrison (head of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios) walk right past me. No-one else seemed to recognise him at all. I was a bit slow pulling out my camera, but that's his bald head walking away in the photo. You'll just have to trust me.

At ten to seven, the Yodobashi clerks returned and began dividing the queue up into managable groups. By 7am, my group had moved toward the corner and some press photographers had arrived. I heard a countdown and applause from the store. Sales had begun. Five minutes later I saw the first guy walk away with a big Yodobashi bag.

It was then that the rain that had been threatening us all night decided to fall. Fortunately about one in four people had brought an umbrella, which was just enough to keep us all from being soaked. Having just bought his PS3, the Welsh scalper ran up to me and handed me his wife's Yodobashi points card. Yodobashi's generous loyalty program nets members ten percent of the value of their purchase, so chalking my sale up on their card would get them a free Sixaxis at least. I was happy to oblige. As I finally returned to the store entrance, a man wearing a sandwich board showed us the five games and accessories that we could choose from: Ridge Racer 7, Resistance: Fall of Man, Genji, Gundam, Sega Golf Club and extra Sixaxis controllers. The legacy memory card adaptor was also pictured but had already sold out (though I later picked one up elsewhere).

Just as I was entering the store, I heard someone call out my name. Turning around I saw my wife and son waiting across the road having braved the rain to come down and meet me. Better yet, they had brought food and coffee. Awesome. The queue weaved through the back of the store before reaching the cashiers, and with only three registers operating, it seemed to take forever to get there. I shudder to think how long the folks at the back of the queue must have waited before they got their PS3s. I finally got served and chose Ridge, Resistance and an extra Sixaxis. The 60GB PS3 was only 62,000 yen (roughly AU$680) and the games were about ¥4,500 (AU$50) each. Much cheaper than they'll be when they become available in Australia four months from now. I tried to put them on Mastercard, but despite having informed my credit card company in advance that I'd be in Japan for two weeks, the transaction was declined. As luck would have it, I had just enough cash to cover it. I wouldn't even have been able to afford the ¥1,200 memory card adaptor had it been available.

The rain eased slightly as I triumphantly stepped out onto the street and was greeted by the smiling faces of my wife and son. Fresh hot black coffee made the victory even sweeter. I gave the Welsh scalper his points card back, and he also gave me a coffee. Gah! It had milk in it. I told him it was okay as I already had another one, but he insisted on running off and buying me another black coffee anyway. I noticed a small man in a brown suit walk past me into the store. It was none other than "the father of Playstation", Ken Kutaragi, who had come to see how things were going.

With my day one PS3 in the bag and my family beside me, I headed back toward our hotel, basking in the glow of a mission successfully accomplished. You might think I'd have been keen to get back there and try out the PS3. You'd be wrong. All I really wanted to do was take a piss, have a shower and go to sleep. With the fifty hour ordeal behind me, that's exactly what I did.

Zelda: Twilight Princess EB exclusive

2006-10-19T15:54:00.000+10:00

There was an Electronics Boutique vendor event held in Melbourne last week, where EB Managers had the opportunity to get hands on with forthcoming hardware and software including the Wii and PlayStation3.

One of the more interesting rumours that I heard following the event was that EB had secured an exclusive deal with Nintendo, such that the flagship title Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess would only be available from EB in Australia. I didn't believe it - it seemed extremely unlikely that Nintendo would shaft all the other retailers and limit sales of their single most anticipated game. Giving one chain exclusive rights to sell such a key system-selling title just didn't make sense. It couldn't be true. I dismissed the rumour...until I heard it a second time, from a different source. This time the story was that EB had exclusive rights to Twilight Princess for three months.

In both cases, the news was second hand. Someone heard from someone else. Hardly reliable. Surely it was just a misunderstanding. I figured somewhere in the retelling, someone must have had their wires crossed. No way could it be true. A search of the usual rumour mills online turned up nothing, but when you're looking for something that no-one is supposed to know, that's often the case.

I decided to get some exercise in my lunch break by scouting around the EB outlets in the Sydney CBD to dig for an answer. The store clerks were as surprised by the rumour as I was. They hadn't heard anything, which was pretty much expected, as they're just clerks, and EB's Sydney training events don't begin until next week.

I was on my way back to the office when I walked past one of the outlets again. Looking in, I spotted the area manager out the back in the storeroom. Bingo. He would know. He would have been at the Melbourne event. Before I could even finish asking him the question, he said "Yes!".

Huh? I still didn't believe it. I asked again, managing to complete the question this time, and finally got an answer that made sense.

Electronics Boutique will indeed be Australia's exclusive retailer of Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, not for three months, but indefinitely...on Gamecube. Okay. The Wii version is not bound by any exclusivity deal. Given that most other retailers have dropped Gamecube support now anyway, this news is not really shocking. Sales of the Cube version in Australia won't be huge anyway. Nintendo want you to buy their new system to play Twilight Princess on, so this deal won't hurt them one bit.

So there you have it: Twilight Princess is EB exclusive in Australia. On Cube.

New & Used: are you entitled?

2006-09-12T09:44:00.000+10:00

The rumour that Sony are preparing to implement an "entitlements" system for PS3 has been going around for a while now and the widely held belief is that it's a knock-off of XBox360's "achievements" system. Well, I don't believe that to be the case. I think Sony's entitlements are more analogous to XBox360's Microsoft points. They're for currency - not vanity.

The entitlement system may well be a key part of Sony's plan to shake up the videogame market and solve a growing problem in the industry: the used game market.

Anyone who has been to an Electronics Boutique recently will have noticed just how the pre-owned game market has changed. There was a time not long ago, when all used games were significantly cheaper than new ones. Now you'll find used games on EB shelves for only $5 or $10 dollars less than the brand new copies. EB have worked out that many consumers won't care if a game is pre-owned if it saves them a few bucks. Indeed, on many occasions, I've seen EB clerks actually suggest that customers fronting up to buy new games buy the pre-owned ones instead.

So what's the problem exactly? Consumers can purchase the games they want for a few dollars less, and when they don't want a game anymore they can take it to EB for a bit of trade-in credit, and someone else can buy it for cheaper than retail. That's all good right? Well, no.

Think about piracy. Most of us accept that piracy isn't good for the industry. The industry has worked with law enforcement agencies all over the world to try to put a stop to commercial pirates who profit from the sale of illegally reproduced games. We all understand the reason why: Developers and publishers don't make a cent from pirated games. That's obvious.

Now take another look at the used game market. Developers and publishers don't make a cent from used games. There's a huge amount of money being made every day from the sale of used games, and the people who made and published the games aren't seeing any of it. Of course the game stores want you to buy their pre-owned game instead of the new one. Which one do you think they're making more profit out of? Developers and publishers see the used game market as a commercial threat in much the same way as piracy. The only significant difference is that piracy is illegal, whereas trading in used games is not.

It's a situation that the industry has begrudgingly accepted. You as the consumer do have the right to sell the game you bought. Sony are looking for a way to reconcile the consumers right to sell, and the industry's desire for a piece of the action. Entitlements may be the answer. Sony's chief technical officer, Mayasuki Chatani, recently filed a variation on of one of their previously lodged patents. It's called "Incentivizing software sharing through incentive points". You can read the full patent here, but the abstract tells us that the patent covers:

"A method for incentivizing sharing of a software product through awarding incentive points utilizing unique identifiers including removable storage identification, user console identification and user identification. The granting of access permissions and the awarding of incentive points are facilitated through a host server."

Thanks to an in-depth analysis of the patent by Panajev at NeoGAF, it's evident that the patent describes a system where gamers are actually encouraged to pass on game discs that they have tired of. You'll be rewarded with points for doing so. While the patent never actually uses the word "entitlements", it's clear that the points in question are an online currency:

"Points have value, and may, for example, be redeemed for rebates on disc purchases, publisher promotional items, updated versions of discs or user consoles, or may be traded among users."

Well, isn't that lovely? Sony want us to play nice and share. It must be time for DRM to rear it's ugly head. The system outlined in the patent relies on a set of unique identifiers and a centralized network. Each game disc will have it's own unique ID code, as will the consoles and the gamers themselves. When you first switch on your console, the setup process will have you establish a gamer ID (in much the same way XBox360 has you create a "gamertag") and the first time the console goes online, it will register you and your console's codes with Sony's centralized servers.

Any discs that you play from then on will be registered against your gamer and console codes. That way Sony can keep track of who originally bought a game disc and who has played it subsequently. The original purchaser of the game will be authorised to play it. When that disc finds it's way into another gamer's console however, that gamer may or may not be entitled to play it.

"The DISC UNIQUE ID 230 uniquely identifies the disc 110. The contents of the disc 110 cannot be played on the user console 115 or other devices without access permission for the disc 110."

Permission to access the disc content is granted by the servers on the Sony network. The exact details of the circumstances under which permission would be granted or denied aren't clear, but would certainly be based on the records in the Disc Database.

Among the information stored in the Disc Database are fields called "user ID", "user consent" and "transfer charge". "User ID" is the current owner of the disc, "user consent" is who the owner authorizes to use the disc, and "transfer charge" is a point value indicating how much payment the owner should recieve for transferral of ownership. The definition of the "transfer charge" in the patent is broad enough that it can encompass there being no transfer charge at all, if, for example, you just wanted to give a game to your friend. However, "other charges" are mentioned (though not detailed), which may involve fees paid to Sony and/or the game publishers/developers for the transferral of ownership. In this scenario, your friend would still need to pay some amount to 'activate' their ownership of the game, and you as the original owner would receive some reward points for your part in sharing the game with the community.

So every time a game changes hands, Sony and the game's publishers and developers can potentially profit from it. Better still, the system actually encourages you to share your games by rewarding you with entitlement points. Ingenious, eh? The profit that game stores are currently making from used game sales can instead be split between the seller, the publisher, the developer and of course Sony. The downside is that there may no longer be a way of giving a game to someone else without them having to pay for it.

No doubt you're already thinking that the whole system can't work if the console isn't online, and to a degree that's true. Consider however that every PS3 has a hard drive capable of caching data from it's last exchange with the network, and indications from the XBox360 suggest that the majority of next-gen console owners will be online. Furthermore, just like the process of registering and authenticating software in the PC world, less elegant alternatives to automated online registration can exist (authorization codes issued by phone for example).

Rumours suggest that perhaps this system will only affect online play. You may be able to freely play the used game that was given or sold to you, but when you first take it online, you could be prompted for a payment (in entitlement points) to activate it for online play. In the context of a free online gaming environment (unlike XBox Live Gold's subscription service) that doesn't seem unreasonable.

Keep in mind that none of this is confirmed for PS3, PSP or PS2. This is just speculation on what Sony may be planning based on the content of one of their patents. It certainly would punch a hole in EB's share price if true.

PS3 Delayed. Again.

2006-09-07T10:40:00.000+10:00

The curse of the worldwide launch strikes again. Yesterday, as eager fans across Europe and Australasia counted down the 71 days until the PlayStation3 launch, Sony issued a press release:

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) today announced that it would revise the launch date of its PLAYSTATION® 3 computer entertainment system in the PAL territories of Europe, Russia, Middle East, Africa and Australasia from 17th November 2006, as previously announced to March 2007.

Launch dates for Japan and North America will remain the same, which are November 11th and November 17th respectively.

The revision of the launch date in the SCEE territories is caused by the delay in the mass production schedule of the blue laser diode within the Sony Group, thus affecting the timely procurement of key components to be utilised in PLAYSTATION 3.

Reset your clocks. March 2007: that's six months away. Just when PAL gamers were beginning to think they weren't going to be treated as an underclass in the next generation, they get punked again. You can almost hear the echo of Microsoft's "simultaneous worldwide launch" for XBox360. That ended up taking four months to reach Australia after the US launch.

Not surprisingly, yesterday's announcement was not well received. It was only a few months ago that the launch was delayed until November. Yesterday's news that PAL gamers would have to wait until March next year caused an explosion on the Australian Playstation forums, with the forum moderators inexplicably becoming the targets of so much misdirected anger. The European Playstation forums actually went offline, collapsing under the weight of rampaging fanboy lynchmob.

In reality, no-one would be more disappointed than Sony themselves. Kissing goodbye to the Christmas sales across PAL regions has got to hurt. Knowing that they're delivering those sales to Microsoft and Nintendo on a platter would only make the aftertaste that much more bitter.

As revealed in the press release, the low production yields of the blue laser diode (the key component of the PS3's Blu-ray drives) are the reason for the delay. Sony just can't meet their production schedule. While the launch dates for the US and Japan haven't been pushed back, the news isn't good for those regions either. The number of consoles available for launch has been slashed; the US will only have 400,000 available on day one and Japan will have a mere 100,000. The total number of PS3's expected to ship before the end of the calendar year has been halved from 4 million to 2 million.

Sony's dominance is looking increasingly shaky. Xbox360's user-base continues to grow and it's games are steadily improving. Nintendo's Wii looks set to attract sales with it's innovative control scheme and low price point. PlayStation3's high price and late start into the next-gen race could be serious hurdles in Sony's way. If Microsoft were to drop the price of the 360 before Christmas, PS3 would certainly have a hard time gaining market share.

My own plans to pick up a PS3 in Tokyo on November 11 don't look too good now. There won't even be enough PS3's in Japan to cover the pre-orders.

PAL May Cry:
one disappointed fan's reworking of the "This is living" European PS3 slogan.

Psst. Want some PS3 info?

2006-08-30T14:01:00.000+10:00

Haven't had much time to post recently, so I'll take this opportunity to quickly share some more information on Playstation3. Some of it is common knowledge, some isn't. I've gathered this from a few sources, both online and off, with beer and without. I trust the sources, but haven't confirmed any of it personally, so take it how you like. As the late Jack Palance said, "Believe it...or not".

It's true that PS3 offers nearly 100% backward compatibility with upscaling...unless you want to play games using non-standard controllers. The complete lack of controller ports means that your G-Con45, dance-mat, Beatmania turntables, Guitar Hero guitar, etc. won't be able to plug into the PS3. Of course, Sony's first-party custom controllers (for games like Singstar, Eyetoy and Buzz) will still work as they're USB devices. A third-party solution (adapter) may emerge, but Sony aren't interested in supporting non-Sony controllers.

On the upside, game save files will be transferrable. Despite PS3 not having legacy memory card slots, Sony will provide a method of copying save files from PSone/PS2 memory cards to a "virtual memory card" on the PS3. If only Microsoft would do the same for XBox/XBox360. The hard drives in both the 20GB and 60GB PS3 models are user-replaceable. Gamers can buy higher-capacity standard notebook HDD's off the shelf and drop them in. Technical support will only be offered for the official Sony drives however.

The PS3 online service will indeed be free. Unlike the XBox Live Gold subscription service, Sony are providing online multiplayer, friends lists, automatic skill-based match-ups, Eyetoy integration and multiple gamer accounts free of charge. Your credit card isn't off the hook though, as all manner of dowloadable content will be available to purchase.

A fully-featured web browser is included and mice and keyboards are natively supported, though Sony won't be selling them. Developers are free to implement mouse/keyboard input in games, but supporting the PS3 controller is mandatory. Support of its motion sensing capabilities is being encouraged. Controller vibration is not coming back.

PSP integration is still going ahead, though it may not be ready for launch. You'll be able to use your PSP as a remote control for the PS3 and will be able to see the PS3 screen on your PSP provided both devices are on the same wireless network. Incidentally, PSone emulation on PSP will begin in October via a firmware upgrade. Only a small selection of titles will initially be available for purchase.

PS3 game prices will be comparable to XBox360 titles. Unfortunately, the number of titles in the launch window is shrinking rather than growing. Looks like there will be about fifteen games in the launch lineup, rather than the original target of thirty. Taking advantage of the higher capacity of the Blu-Ray format, the games are massive in terms of actual data. 85% of PS3 games currently in development would not fit on a DVD-ROM. To take an example, launch killer-app, Resistance: Fall of Man, is currently weighing in at 20GB. Forget 5.1 surround, it supports up to 7.1. It sports over a dozen multiplayer modes supporting up to 40 players online.

Killzone is said to be progressing well, but will be kept under wraps until closer to launch. Apparently it will actually live up to the graphical standard of the notorious E3 2005 target render video. For Sony's sake, it would want to. Due in March, Heavenly Sword is reportedly shaping up well too, having undergone significant improvement over the already impressive build seen at E3 2006. The violence and gore factor has also been upped a notch after indications that the earlier build would have attracted an M rating anyway. Gran Turismo HD is a long way from release and will be an entirely new title. GT4 Online for PS2 was developed and is undergoing internal evaluation. It may never be released.

Despite not having HDMI, the 20GB PS3 will actually be capable of 1080p output via component. Nevermind the fact that no currently available TV sets support 1080p component input. A PS3 controller or PSP can be used for Blu-ray movie playback, and an official dedicated remote is also planned.

Expect some official announcements from the Tokyo Game Show in a few weeks.

The new European PS3 slogan.

While we're on the subject of PS3, stay tuned for a launch report from Tokyo, as I'll be there on November 11.

Tekken It Outside

2006-07-13T09:51:00.000+10:00

Tekken: Dark Resurrection (PSP)

Ever since the PSP launch, gamers have been waiting for Namco's flagship fighting series, Tekken, to appear on the platform. While Tekken has in fact gone handheld once before, in the form of Tekken Advance on GBA, it was a rather disappointing affair, being a cut-down 2D sprite-based version of Tekken 3 with only two control buttons. Tekken has always been synonymous with Playstation, so it's only natural that the Playstation Portable should offer us the true Tekken portable experience.

Having spent the last week playing the Japanese version of Tekken: Dark Resurrection, let me tell you, it's an absolute knockout. It's a better rendition of Tekken than I ever imagined possible on the PSP. It's virtually flawless.

The last Tekken seen on Playstation2 was Tekken 5 (see my review here), which was a much better game than Tekken 4, and a triumphant return to the series' strengths. Since then, Namco have released two upgrades to Tekken 5 into arcades: Tekken 5.1 and Tekken: Dark Resurrection. Dark Resurrection is the ultimate version of Tekken 5 - it's been fine tuned and better balanced, and features three additional characters, as well as a whole swathe of extra content. It's this version that has been given the handheld treatment, making Tekken: DR on PSP the deepest and most complete version of Tekken available.

The most striking thing about playing Tekken on PSP is just how beautiful it is in motion. Screenshots cannot do it justice. It's simply gorgeous and the bouts spill out at a solid 60fps. Admittedly it isn't pushing quite as many polygons as T5 on PS2, but the difference is hardly significant. The characters look great and their clothes, hair and facial expressions animate fluidly as they duke it out in 19 lush detailed arenas. There are 34 playable characters (the largest roster yet), all selectable from the beginning. Armour King returns to the tournament, as well as newcomers Lili and Dragunov. Every character has at least four outfits and there are hundreds of individual customizations available for each; literally twice as many as there were in Tekken 5. Most of the arenas are variants of the original Tekken 5 stages, at different times of the day, and with new music tracks. Even Tekken 5 veterans will find Dark Resurrection a fresh experience, due to the new characters, new looks for old characters, new arenas and the new soundtrack.

On the PSP's screen, the opening intro FMV looks great (being an extended version of the arcade DR intro) and the original T5 intro movie is unlockable too. Every character has their own FMV ending unlockable by completing Story mode as usual. There are extra modes galore in Tekken: DR, including Gold Rush, Command Attack and Tekken Dojo in addition to the usual modes like Arcade, Survival and Time Attack. All the modes earn you cash to buy extra character customizations. In case you need a break from fighting, the ever popular Tekken Bowling mode makes a welcome return too. The Dojo mode allows you to face off against "ghosts" of human players, providing a change from the usual CPU AI. Extra ghost packs are available to download through the game's Network menu, which also allows you to see how you fare in the global rankings and even download Tekken wallpapers for your PSP.

Ad Hoc multiplayer is supported of course, though true online play isn't, which is probably just as well, as the inevitable lag when playing a game as fast as this online would drive people crazy. Fortunately Namco have made up for it by implementing Game Share multiplayer instead, meaning you can play local multiplayer with only one copy of the game. Your Tekken-less friends can wirelessly download the game from your PSP and join in the action. Better still, the Game Share function will utilize whatever free space they have on their memory sticks as cache to improve loadtimes.

Enough gushing then, time for the gripes. Whoa, didn't I say it was virtually flawless? Well, yes, but only within the limitations of the system, and with Tekken: Dark Resurrection those limitations become glaringly apparent.

Darkness isn't something the PSP handles terribly well. The nature of it's LCD screen means that shifting blacks in particular are accompanied by noticeable blurring. When a game as dynamic as Tekken is pushing out 60fps, blurring becomes an issue. It doesn't detract from the gameplay at all, but it does mean that in the heat of battle some of the meticulous detail is lost in a blur of flailing limbs. Far more disturbing is the PSP's d-pad which is frankly not up to the task. For basic four-way directional input, it's functional enough, but it fails to register reliably for the precise diagonal and quarter circle command input that fighting games require. You can still bust out the ten-hit combos if you try hard enough, but you'll probably find yourself avoiding using certain moves because the PSP's d-pad prevents you from executing them consistently. This control issue is immensely frustrating given the near perfection of Namco's conversion. Wisely, Namco have allowed the analog nub to be used for directional input too, but in practice, it's less than ideal. Some retailers are giving away a stick-on rubber attachment with Tekken: DR to improve the d-pad's responsiveness. If you can get one, I'd highly recommend it.

Putting aside the PSP's shortcomings, Tekken: Dark Resurrection is a stunning achievement that raises the bar for how good PSP titles can be. The King of Iron Fist has won the title as the king of handheld fighters.

9/10

Tekken: Dark Resurrection is due out in Australia on September 15.

Sony's Pre-E3 Conference 2006

2006-05-09T18:10:00.000+10:00

The pre-E3 conferences for 2006 have begun. Of the three console manufacturers, Sony staged theirs first, in what has proven to be a strategic move. After kicking off nearly an hour late, Sony's two hour presentation was a solid success, even if many of the games were less than inspiring. The conference dragged at times, but the surprises at the end certainly made up for it. Here's my own complete breakdown of the event with some further analysis:

Kaz Hirai, president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America, began by reaffirming the success of the Playstation brand and their ongoing commitment to Playstation2. Sony have shipped over 100 million PS2 consoles in less than half the time it took to shift that many of the original Playstations. On the software side, over a billion units of PS2 software have been shipped. Hirai went on to talk about the PSP, which Sony can now comfortably say "delivers gaming experiences rivalling that of Playstation2". On average, PSP has sold nearly a million consoles a month since its launch, with over 17 million PSPs now shipped worldwide.

Unfortunately, it seems there are relatively few PSP titles on the way that are worth getting excited about. The video montage of PSP titles "scheduled for release later in the year" included some titles that are already out (like Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror) and spent far too much time on lackluster titles like Ape Academy 2. On the upside, Killzone: Liberation, LocoRoco and breakdancing game B-Boy are showing promise. A budget "Greatest Hits" range of PSP games (similar to PSone and PS2's Platinum series) was announced, and the forthcoming addition of RSS video support, Voice Over IP (VoIP) and camera and GPS peripherals for PSP was confirmed.

Finally Kaz moved on to Playstation3: "Last year we outlined the specifications of the machine, but let's review its main features and benefits". This clever introductory line was no doubt intended to distract attention from the fact that PS3's specifications have changed somewhat since we heard about it last year...but more on that later. Hirai once again explained how PS3 is compatible with Blu-ray movies, PS3 games, CDs, DVDs and PSone and PS2 games. He also detailed connectivity options between PS3 and PSP via wireless or USB connections, or via memory stick. After stressing the importance of Blu-ray media's mass storage space for next generation HD gaming, he went on to reveal that according to their research, 25% of US households will own a HD display next year. All PS3s will ship with a harddrive built-in and things are still on track for a simultaneous worldwide launch in November. Compared to the silver PS3 prototype seen last year, a slightly fatter "clear black" model of the PS3 was displayed on stage. After last year's 'target render' scandal, Kaz was genuinely pleased to tell the crowd that at this E3, Sony would be demonstrating real live gameplay on final devkits, and that the assembled crowd would have the opportunity to play it for themselves on the showfloor. He then introduced Phil Harrison to the stage.

As president of the newly consolidated Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios, Phil Harrison is the frontman of Sony's first-party software. Phil brought Kazinori Yamauchi out to give a rather long look at a Gran Turismo HD prototype made specifically for E3. Rather than being a GT5 work-in-progress, it was basically assets from GT4 given a boost for rendering at high definition. The demonstration ran at a smooth 60 frames per second in full 1920x1080 progressive resolution. Four tracks were selectable, and the vehicles included racing, production and formula one cars, as well as motorbikes and even scooters. Yamauchi made the point that as a full uncompressed 1080p signal, the PS3 was delivering about three times as much picture information as most high-definition broadcasts available today...or twelve times GT4 on PS2. Despite the high level of detail, through utilizing PS3's harddrive, loadtimes from menu to race were reduced to just two or three seconds.

Next up Phil introduced Dr. Richard Marks (creator of Eyetoy) to demonstrate an interesting card based battle game called Eye Of Judgement that uses the Eyetoy to make creatures materialize on screen above real world cards placed on the table. The cards in front of the player can be moved and tapped to manipulate and command the monsters on screen. We'll likely see more games like this on PS3 using this kind of augmented reality technology. As a bit of an in-joke, Phil ended the demonstration by whipping out a special card from his jacket making a fire-breathing yellow rubber duck materialize.

Just as the audience was starting to get a taste for actual PS3 gameplay, Kaz Hirai reappeared to prattle on about Sony's online network strategy. In short, he described a system virtually identical to XBox Live, without ever using those words. He followed this by launching into the first public demonstration of classic PSone games being downloaded and emulated on PSP. Sure enough, there was Ridge Racer in all its original 1995 pixelated glory on the PSP...and Kaz managed to drive into a wall straight off the grid. Hirai revealed that like XBox360's Microsoft Points system, Sony's online service will include microtransactions to pay for content, with pre-paid Playstation Cards available at retail outlets as one payment option.

Phil came back out to show the content store interface in PS3's operating system, and to explain how the shops could also be integrated in-game. Singstar PS3 was demonstrated with an integrated iTunes-like "Singstore" interface to buy songs. So as not to scare anyone, song pricing was set at $0.00 in the demonstration. The Japanese historic battle action game Genji 2 was demonstrated next. While technically impressive, it's next-gen Dynasty Warriors-style gameplay failed to excite the crowd. Phil's attempts to drum up more applause for it also fell flat.

He quickly moved on to show an interesting example of PS3-PSP connectivity in which a PS3 running a Formula One game was wirelessly connected to a PSP that acted as a real-time wing mirror, showing the view backward down the track during the race. Phil stopped talking for a moment to let a huge live gameplay demo of Heavenly Sword speak for itself. It's God Of War-style combat action was frantic, varied and amazingly cinematic. In all aspects, it easily lived up to last year's target render. The crowd cheered and applauded.

Having ended those gameplay demos on a high note, a selection of rendered videos of first-party games still further out in development were shown. Dragon epic, Lair, London gangster tale, Getaway, dark fantasy, Monster Kingdom, and uhh... nature documentary game, Afrika, all looked intriguing, but gave no impresion of their actual gameplay. Everybody's Golf looked just as you'd expect. Sony's London Studio unveiled Eight Days, showing off a truly spectacular trailer featuring a car chase and explosive gun battle at a gas station in the Arizona desert. Let's hope the game can live up to the trailer. Naughty Dog, developers of the Crash Bandicoot series, enthused the crowd with their trailer for a surprisingly violent and realistic action adventure game set in a dense jungle. No name was given for this project. Concluding the first-party game demos, Insomniac's Ted Price talked about their bleak 1950's alien invasion shooter Resistance: Fall Of Man, and played the game live, displaying significant improvements over last year's early work-in-progress.

Kaz came back out to introduce PS3's third-party game line-up. Snippets of many games were shown, including Assassin's Creed, Mobile Suit Gundam, Coded Arms: Assault, Ridge Racer 7, Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway, Sonic, Virtua Tennis 3, Virtua Fighter 5, John Woo's Stanglehold, Fatal Inertia, Bladestorm and Armoured Core 4. Tekken 6 was also shown briefly and appears to be headed down the Dead Or Alive direction of greater environmental interaction.

EA's CEO, Larry Probst, took the opportunity to talk about EA's PS3 catalogue. The EA Sports team have been doing a lot of work on improving their characters' awareness, responsiveness and footwork, as well as their expressions and believability. By using their new universal capture system, they were able to reproduce a very realistic and expressive Tiger Woods in real-time. As well as NBA Live 07 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07, Larry also confirmed that Fight Night 3, Need For Speed: Carbon, Medal Of Honour: Airborne, Army of Two and Madden NFL 07 are all set to appear on PS3.

Kaz Hirai introduced Square-Enix's Final Fantasy XIII for PS3, adding cryptically that multiple versions would be available, including Final Fantasy Versus XIII. Needless to say, the trailer looked incredible, featuring a female lead character and a mix of natural environments with a very futuristic fantasy aesthetic, reminiscent of Namco's Xenogears/Xenosaga series.

As if that wasn't enough, Hirai continued to pull out the big guns by introducing the new trailer from Konami's super producer Hideo Kojima. Before the trailer began Hirai made sure everyone understood the footage in the trailer was running real-time on PS3 hardware. The mere mention of the words Metal Gear Solid 4 had the crowd cheering with excitement. What followed was a dark, deeply contemplative musing by an aged and troubled Solid Snake on the nature of war and how it has changed. By contrast, it made every other game shown in the conference seem shallow and meaningless. Every major character from the series made an appearance in the trailer, and while they've all aged, none have aged so much as Snake. Something unnatural (Foxdie?) is at work behind Snake's haggard visage. The trailer ended with the shocking vision of a resigned Snake flicking away his cigarette and slowly loading a bullet into his pistol before putting it into his mouth. The screen flashed red and the title appeared: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. If you'll forgive the pun, it was mind-blowing - the fans were shellshocked. As we've come to expect from Kojima, MGS4 looks absolutely staggerring and it's atmosphere was nothing short of electric.

As the conference neared it's end, the big talking point of Sony's conference occurred when "the father of Playstation", Ken Kutaragi, took the stage and revealed Playstation3's "one last big secret". He pulled the final PS3 controller out of his jacket. After the overwhelmingly negative reaction to previous showings of the prototype "batarang" controller, Sony have apparently decided upon a design that the public will feel more comfortable with: it looks just like the PS2's DualShock2 controller. Virtually identical. It's wireless (via Bluetooth), weighs less, and features slightly deepened shoulder buttons as well as the now obligatory home button. Kutaragi chuckled at the crowd's underwhelmed reaction. What really sets it apart from the DualShock2, he said, is not its appearance, but the systems inside it.

Ken called Phil Harrison back out to demonstrate what it could do. An image of the controller in a box appeared on screen. As Phil picked up the controller on the podium in front of him, the controller on screen flew into the air. Phil began tilting the controller in his hands and the on-screen controller mirrored those movements. As Kutaragi stood by looking hugely pleased with himself, Phil explained that the PS3 controller features six axis tilt-sensitivity. You could almost hear the Nintendo fans crying out in agony at this shock announcement. On the face of it, it certainly felt like Sony had copied the core innovation of Nintendo's Wii controller, thereby robbing them of their main selling point. However, it's not quite that simple.

The Wii controller actually has motion tracking, not just the tilt sensitivity of the PS3 controller. In other words, while the PS3 controller's six axis sensitivity can detect pitch, roll and yaw, as well as acceleration along the X, Y and Z planes, Nintendo's Wii does all that and also knows where the controller is in 3D space and what it's pointing at. In short, Wii's motion sensitivity is smarter and more versatile, but whether Nintendo can convince people of that is now in doubt. Nintendo certainly appear to have lost some of their edge, so it will be interesting to see how they react (if at all) in their conference just fourteen hours later. If Nintendo really do have some secret ace in the hole, they now need it more than ever.

As an aside, it seems we can't go calling Sony's new controller the DualShock3. While it wasn't mentioned in the conference, according to Sony's press release, "the vibration feature that is currently available on DUALSHOCK® and DUALSHOCK®2 controllers for PlayStation and PlayStation®2, will be removed from the new PS3 controller as vibration itself interferes with information detected by the sensor." Hmm...yes. Well, there's that and then there's the Immersion lawsuit that the press release doesn't refer to. In 2005, Immersion sued Sony claiming their haptic feedback intellectual property had been used in DualShock controllers. Sony chose to fight...and lost. Microsoft had previously faced the same lawsuit over their XBox controllers, but in true Microsoft style, they settled out of court and bought stock in Immersion. The Immersion case may have had something to do with the removal of rumble from the PS3 controller. After all, they could have included both tilt-sensing and rumble, and left it to developers to decide when to use either feature.

Not surprisingly, Phil and Ken talked about the "fantastic innovation" of the PS3 controller as if it were an entirely original idea. It was as if they'd never heard of Nintendo's new controller, or Logitech's decade-old tilt-sensitive Wingman controller for that matter. Following yet another rubber duck demo from Phil using the tilt features, Dylan Jobe, one of the developers of Incognito's Warhawk used the new controller's sensitivity to fly an aircraft in the game. His banking and rolling was most enthusiastic. Motion sickness ensued. From what Dylan and Phil said, it seems that the controller's new features have only been finalised in the last few weeks, so I'd expect that virtually none of the titles currently in development would have been designed to exploit them.

Kaz came back out for the final wrap up and in an unexpected move, finished by laying out all the details on pricing and exact release dates for all territories. The Playstation3 will be available in two configurations, with either a 60GB or 20GB harddrive. It will hit retail in Japan on November 11. The 20GB version will sell for 59,800 Yen, while the 60GB version will have an open price to be determined by the retailers. In North America, PS3 will launch on November 17, with the 20GB SKU retailing for US$499 and the 60GB at US$599 ($549/$659 for Canada). Europe and Australasia will also see PS3 launch on November 17 for 499 (20GB) or 599 (60GB) Euros. While the conference didn't reveal specific Australian pricing, I have since read an official press release confirming that it will cost $829 Australian dollars for the 20GB PS3 and AU$999 for the 60GB version. Considering the components inside, I expected it to cost a thousand bucks locally, so I'm not surprised, but I'm sure many Aussies will be. Kaz confirmed that there will be 2 million units shipped on launch, with a total of four million PS3s shipped by the end of the calendar year.

So that was Sony's pre-E3 conference. No doubt there'll be many more PS3 game announcements as E3 itself takes place. The price differential between the 20GB and 60GB Playstation3's seems a little excessive though doesn't it? Does the extra 40GB really cost a hundred US dollars? A thorough read of the press releases reveals what Sony's conference didn't. The 20GB PS3 is very much a cut-down version of the 60GB model. After hyping the PS3's dual-HDMI output last year, Sony have now decided that the 20GB PS3 will not feature HDMI output at all. For a Blu-ray device, this seems like a ludicrous choice. The AACS copy-protection scheme employed on Blu-ray movies ensures that all movie content is downscaled to a non-HD resolution unless it is sent via an HDMI output. Put simply, the 20GB PS3 will not be able to display Blu-ray movies in high definition, which kind of defeats the purpose of them. Furthermore, the 20GB PS3 will apparently have no wi-fi capability, and no card reader for SD, Compact Flash or Memory Stick.

Even the 60GB PS3 shows a significant drop in the number of rear ports since I wrote my original PS3 hardware feature based on last year's PS3 prototype. After all the talk of dual-HDMI output last year, it now appears to have been completely scrapped. Two of the three ethernet ports and the rear USB ports are gone as well. I'll leave you with this comparison shot I've put together of PS3's rear ports:

Wii all have our theories.

2006-04-30T17:33:00.000+10:00

So Nintendo's Wii announcement has really set the gaming world ablaze. Love the name or hate it, you've got to hand it to Nintendo - in the lead-up to E3 2006, everyone is talking about Wii. They've created the kind of buzz money can't buy.

So much so, that some people are claiming the whole Wii name is a PR stunt, and that the real name of the console-formerly-known-as-Revolution will be revealed at E3 in a little over a week. The proponents of this rumour point to the fact that Wii does not appear to be a registered trademark in the USA or Japan at all. Having searched the US and Japanese trademark websites myself, it is true that "Wii" is not listed. I don't believe the rumour though. I'm of the belief that Nintendo lodged the name Wii as a trademark around the time of the announcement, and it simply hasn't been processed and listed on the websites yet. The name Wii is real and here to stay if you ask me. In fact, the more I think about the name Wii, the more sense it makes to me.

I've heard plenty of rumours about the Revolution project over the past two years, and most of them were completely false. Most of them. Some of them turned out to be correct. As many of you would know, the rumour of the motion-sensing controllers was being spread on the internet long before it was officially announced. As good as Nintendo are at keeping secrets, the people in the know are only human, and it's inevitable that a certain amount of leakage will occur.

Ever since the unveiling of the Revolution prototype about a year ago, I've had the distinct feeling that Nintendo have a big rabbit up their sleeve. The motion-sensing Wii-mote/Ninchuk controllers and backwards-compatible virtual console concepts are great, but I can't shake the feeling that the real secret hasn't been let out of the bag yet. The (let's face it) bizarre name Wii has only strengthened my suspicions that there will be a big surprise revelation from Nintendo at the forthcoming E3.

To my mind, there are many questions that seem to have been left conspicuously unanswered. First of all, what is behind the front flap? Does it not seem a bit strange that there's a big door on the front of the console and no-one is talking about what's behind it? We know the games don't go in there, we know that controllers and memory cards don't go in there - so what's in there? Next, the controller itself: like the remotes we're all familiar with, the Wii-mote has a dark translucent panel on the end of it...but are we supposed to believe the remote works by infra-red? Infra-red game controllers are history. There's something else behind the dark panel, but what? Finally, if the console launch is only months away, doesn't it seem odd that we haven't seen any game footage at all, and only a handful of still images from devkits have appeared online? Why are Nintendo holding out on us?

Allow me then, to indulge in my grand unified theory. Here's an idea for your consideration that draws on various technical details and some of the other rumours I've heard over the past two years:

"I always thought that games would eventually break free of the confines of a TV screen to fill an entire room. But I would rather not say anything more about that."
-Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo guru.

"The Revolution will not be televised."
-Gil Scott-Heron, poet.

The console will not be connected to a television. Wii is a display device itself. The front door on the console conceals two compact projection devices, that together are able to project a stereoscopic 3D image, visable without the need for visors or headsets. As I have seen with my own eyes, this kind of naked-eye 3D display technology already exists, and looks stunning, though it hasn't yet been used for video game applications. See this page on POC.com (Physical Optical Corporation) for more details.

Wii games will be displayed in 3D on a screen positioned between the player and the console. The stand that the prototype consoles have been shown on angles the front of the console upward for projection purposes. Beyond simply showing a 3D image from a given angle, the screen can act as a 3D "window" onto the game world, changing perspective by tracking the position and alignment of the controller. Nintendo patented this concept in US patent 6908388, which details "a game system and a game program allowing a player to feel as if a three-dimensional game space is tilted in accordance with a tilt of a game device". This process is made possible in part by a camera built into the end of the controller, which can also used for capturing player movements and transposing the player's face into the game. This is a modified version of the 'Ningen copy/Manebito' Gamecube camera accessory that was trademarked but never released.

The name Wii is a pictogram. Nintendo have already explained the symbolism of the double i, representing the controllers and the people gathering together, but what of the W itself? The capital W is made up of two "V" shapes, that represent the twin projections.

So that's my theory for what it's worth. I could be utterly wrong. I probably am. Regardless, as Nintendo of America's PR Manager Matt Attwood said in a recent interview with Game Informer, "I would say 9:30 in the morning on Tuesday of E3 will be filled with surprises and I would just show up...[snip]...you’re going to be very surprised."

I for one, can't wait. E3 2006 begins in just over a week.

Wii. Are Nintendo taking the piss?

2006-04-28T09:18:00.000+10:00

Nintendo have just officially announced the actual name of their next-gen console, that has until now been known as Revolution.
Wii (pronounced "we"). You heard me. You can certainly count on Nintendo to be different.

Here's what they have to say about it [from Nintendo.com]:
"While the codename "Revolution" expressed our direction, Wii represents the answer. Wii will break down the wall that separates video game players from everybody else. Wii will put people more in touch with their games... and each other. But you're probably asking: What does the name mean?
Wii sounds like "we", which emphasizes this console is for everyone. Wii can be easily remembered by people around the world, no matter what language they speak. No confusion. No need to abbreviate. Just Wii.
Wii has a distinctive "ii" spelling that symbolizes the unique controllers and the image of people gathering to play.
And Wii, as a name and a console, brings something revolutionary to the world of video games that sets it apart from the crowd.
So that's Wii. But now Nintendo needs you.
Because it's not really about me or you.
It's about Wii.
And together, Wii will change everything."

Marketing disaster or not? No doubt the name sounds better if you're Japanese or French. Whether the western gaming world can suppress it's tendency toward toilet humour enough for the new name to be taken seriously is anyone's guess. The Playstation and XBox fanboys who constantly referred to Nintendo's last home console as "Gaycube" are going to have a field-day with Wii. I have no doubt that the console itself will be excellent, but for a product designed to "break down the wall" and attract the biggest possible audience, I think the name has put up a barrier that some potential customers will have trouble getting past.

Nintendo are going to have to proceed carefully and watch their wording at E3 next month. Satoru Iwata should probably avoid talking about "waving his Wii wand" and let Reggie Fils-Aime lead the crowd in a chorus of "Wii will rock you" instead. While the launch date has not yet been announced, there's sure to be some pant-wetting excitement when Wii is released later this year.

XBox360 Australian Launch

2006-03-23T09:00:00.000+11:00

The official Australian launch event for Microsoft's XBox360 was staged last night in Sydney's Pitt Street Mall, and the heavens opened to rain on their parade. Between the 9pm kickoff and the eventual midnight sales launch, the patchy rain varied between light mist and torrential downpour, but the event went ahead quite successfully regardless. Microsoft laid on free pizza and drinks, plus a wide range of entertainment, including brazilian drummers and capoeiristas, breakdancers, and several performances from the ever-popular cheerleaders. Nova 96.9 broadcast live from the event and Channel V had a couple of crews doing coverage.

The south end of the mall was filled with demo kiosks and several larger plasma and projection set-ups, ensuring that everyone who wanted to get hands-on with a 360 didn't have to wait too long. Unfortunately all the retail kiosks only had the same Project Gotham Racing 3 and Kameo demos that have been in stores for weeks now. Only three of the bigger display units had Amped 3, Dead Or Alive 4 and Fight Night Round 3 available to play, and they were in pretty high demand. Fight Night Round 3 was far and away the most impressive game visually. It was the only game that was really obviously a generation ahead of anything we've seen before. On the big NEC hi-def plasma, its stunningly lifelike graphics were an absolute knock-out, though the gameplay itself left me cold. As did the rain.

Much to their credit, the promoters were handing out plastic emergency ponchos to anyone who wanted one. Most people braved the rain without them...until it really started pissing down and then many were happy to forego fashion for dryness. Much of the crowd dispersed at this point. A three man crew kept the remaining crowd entertained with some beat boxing and old school poppin' and lockin'. After winning the crowd's respect, they soon lost it again when they launched into their audience participation promo rap. "When I say X, you say Box, When I say 3, you say 60" - the crowd sympathetically played along to begin with, but when it came to "Everybody say Microsoooft!" the silence was punctuated only by laughter.

Meanwhile the loyal fans who had actually turned up to collect their pre-orders couldn't see any of the hoopla, as they were all lined up around the corner waiting to get into EB so they could complete any outstanding transactions and receive a ticket that they could trade for their XBox360 at midnight. Still, it's not like they were missing anything... Well, not unless you count a bunch of perky cheerleaders in skimpy white outfits gyrating in the rain as something. The crowd that dispersed earlier miraculously re-appeared when the cheergirls did their raindance.

Nova's live broadcast may have been good for spreading the word, but they sure lowered the tone of the live event. Their broadcast was blaring out of the on-site PA and while their music was suitably commercial and upbeat, their high rotation advertisements for local brothels and erectile disfunction nasal sprays seemed somehow inappropriate for the family friendly event. The fact that the two idiots hosting Nova's broadcast constantly referred to all the people assembled as "giant nerds" really won over the crowd too.

As midnight approached, the ticket holders were herded into a taped-off enclosure in front of the main stage area. A promo girl came along offering the guys at the front free XBox360 caps which they accepted and put on. One guy declined, but the cap was thrust back toward him. "Just take the hat," the girl said, "it's for the money shot." Suitably reassured that the cap would provide him with some protection from the impending money shot, he donned the cap as instructed. With only minutes to go there was a quick jolt of the emerging dance craze krumping and clowning, followed by a final cheerleading routine to the 80's strains of "Living On a Prayer". With seconds to go there was a quick countdown before the screen dropped, the tape was released and a fun-run style rush for XBox360's ensued. (Download and watch the video here.) A few gamers actually tripped over the screen that had dropped and thanks to wet shoes a bit of a pile-up occurred, though unfortunately I didn't catch that in the video.

So the happy pre-order folk were finally able to pick up their 360's and go home, the media got a nice shot of the crowd stampeding in, and Microsoft pulled off a pretty impressive launch event despite the weather. Perhaps the other winner of the night was the homeless and sanity-challenged man who spent the night wandering about muttering to himself and scarfing pizza and Coke Zero. He came away with a full belly, a new hat and several emergency ponchos. Everybody wins.

Playstation Business Briefing 2006

2006-03-15T20:21:00.000+11:00

Sony have unleashed a wave of new information at their Playstation Business Briefing in Tokyo today. It's about time too, as confidence in Sony (as reflected in their share price) was beginning to drop. Up until yesterday, Sony had stuck by their story that they were aiming for a (northern hemisphere) Spring launch for their next-generation console. Given that retailers still had no firm dates, developers had no final development kits, and the PS3 motherboards hadn't even started rolling off the factory floor, no-one in the industry believed them anymore.

So they've come clean: PS3 has officially been delayed. As had been widely speculated, the delay was put down to "Blu-ray spec finalization". Playstation3 is now due for launch in November. Ken Kutaragi pleasantly surprised everyone by explicitly stating that PS3 would launch worldwide before Thanksgiving (which is November 23rd this year). After a "simultaneous worldwide launch" was promised for XBox360 (Australia is still waiting Microsoft!), many people may be inclined to take Sony's announcement with a grain of salt. Promisingly however, David Reeves, head of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has since echoed Kutaragi's assurance, saying "We are absolutely delighted that we will be able to bring PS3 to gamers in Europe and Australia before Christmas". Unlike Microsoft, who weren't able to produce enough consoles to supply all territories at once, Sony plan to produce a million consoles a month in the lead-up to the launch and beyond, ensuring that supply channels remain filled. Their goal is to have six million PS3's shipped by the end of March next year.

Kutaragi confirmed that PS3 will feature an upgradable 60GB hard drive with Linux OS onboard to act as a home server for various kinds of media. PS3's "Playstation Network Platform" will be an online service not dissimilar to XBox Live, with lobbies, player matching, voice chat, and commerce features including bootable downloads. The online service will be available from day one, and will apparently be free. While no specific games were discussed, it was revealed that all PS3 games will be released on BD-ROM (Blu-ray discs) as an anti-piracy measure. 100% backwards compatibility was reconfirmed - the PS3 will display all games, including PSone and PS2 titles, in high-definition via HDMI output. Final devkits and contollers will be distributed in May, allowing developers ample time to tweak and polish games currently in development.

There was quite a bit of news on the PSP front too. Utilizing PSP's wireless capabilities and a digital camera add-on, PSP will exploit Video Over IP technology so that it can be used as a videophone. PSP software will also become available through an e-Distribution system and memory stick booting will be supported. PSone games will be available to download and play from PSP's memory stick via an official emulator. Of course, the PSP is still short two shoulder buttons and one analog stick, so the controls could prove problematic. These features are expected to be available by the time the PS3 launches. In the meantime, support for the popular Macromedia Flash 6.0 format will be included in the next firmware update.

The white PSP and cheaper PSP pack (sans accessories) that were previously only available in Japan are coming to the western markets too. Forthcoming GPS and EyeToy add-ons for PSP were also discussed. Interestingly, Sony's own research shows that people most often play the portable system at home.

In typical fashion, Kutaragi made some vague marketing-speak comments about PS3 being "4D" and going beyond the space seen in PSone/PS2 games to become truly "live". He didn't miss the opportunity to congratulate himself on just how successful Playstation2 has been either. With more than 100 million PS2s and over a billion games shipped worldwide, there's no denying that PS2 has been a phenomenal success.

As informative as the meeting was, several questions over PS3 remain, with pricing, games and region-coding topping the list. Expect more details (and hopefully some playable PS3 games) at E3 in May.

Touching Is Evil

2006-02-10T09:33:00.000+11:00

Resident Evil: Deadly Silence (DS)
(aka Biohazard: Deadly Silence)

Ten years ago Capcom released a game called Resident Evil (or Biohazard as it is known in Japan) that established a new genre in gaming: Survival Horror. Okay, so many people insist that Interplay's PC game Alone in the Dark actually started the survival horror genre and Capcom simply stole the concept, but consider this: Resident Evil was the game that coined the term "Survival Horror", and popularized the genre. Furthermore, the first true survival horror game was not Alone in the Dark (1992), it was Capcom's own Sweet Home (1989), a Nintendo Famicom (NES) game released only in Japan. Sweet Home features a group of people exploring an abandoned mansion in the woods, solving puzzles and battling zombies and other monsters. Sound familiar? It even has the classic door-opening scenes between rooms, and during the game one of the characters actually says "We must escape this house of residing evil!" Whoa. I'm off on a tangent already.

Let me start again. Ten years ago Capcom put Survival Horror on the map with Resident Evil (1996). At the time Capcom were in a financial slump, and the worldwide Playstation hit rescued the company and became their flagship franchise. Since then Resident Evil has spawned many sequels, prequels, spin-offs, ports and remakes -over thirty in all. For a series based around the undead, the franchise still has a lot of life in it; last year's Resident Evil 4 was hailed by many as Game Of The Year, and the forthcoming Resident Evil 5 is already the subject of much anticipation.

In order to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Resident Evil, Capcom have gone back to it's roots and have just released a new port of the original Playstation game. Dubbed Deadly Silence, the name inevitably leads to "silent but deadly" fart jokes, but also hints at the system it has been released on: Nintendo's DS. It's a somewhat unlikely match, as the DS is not known for mature or violent games, and translating a CD-based Playstation game to a cartridge-based handheld that has two screens with touchscreen and microphone functionality doesn't seem to be the most logical choice. And yet...it works.

Resident Evil: Deadly Silence offers two main game modes: Classic mode and Rebirth Mode. Classic Mode is just that - a near perfect port of the original game. Rebirth Mode mixes up the formula to take advantage of the DS' unique capabilities, and to shift the veteran players out of their comfort zones. It's amazing how well the game has translated to the DS. The top screen shows a live map, your equipped weapon and character status, while the bottom screen shows the action unfold. While that bottom screen is obviously much smaller than your average TV, the visuals look much the same as the original, as the actual resolution of each DS screen is not much less than the output of the Playstation version. The DS screens each have exactly 80% of the horizontal and vertical screen resolution of the Playstation original (RE on PSone: 320x240, single DS screen: 256x192). The pre-rendered backgrounds have been made a little brighter (presumably to allow greater visibility when playing in brightly lit conditions), but other than that, you'll hardly notice the difference. DS isn't exactly known for it's 3D capabilities, but the 3D in RE:DS does not disappoint. The framerate is rock solid and while the polygon count for each character has actually dropped slightly, the level of detail has increased, and characters look markedly better overall. In Rebirth mode, there are often more characters/monsters on screen at once than there were in the original too.

RE:DS is the biggest DS game to date in terms of sheer filesize, having squeezed all the content of the CD-based game onto a 1 gigabit DS cartridge. All the shockingly cheesy voice-acting and FMV cutscenes of the original game are present here, including the wonderfully lame live-action intro and endings. The audio quality is good, though compression is evident in much of the FMV. Purists should note that the intro is not the uncut version, and for reasons unknown, one mansion hallway music track has been dropped and Richard Aiken's voice actor has been replaced (though his dialogue is word-for-word the same and is acted just as poorly).

So what's new? Well, even in the Classic Mode, there are some new additions. The 180 degree turn that was added to later RE games has been added to the control scheme, and the left trigger button can be used to draw your combat knife at any time, which is a particularly useful new feature borrowed from RE4. Better still, the combat knife no longer occupies a slot in your inventory either. In a nod to the surgeon general, Chris Redfield no longer smokes, and consequently doesn't carry a Zippo lighter (though one is still available in the mansion). The door opening and stairwell screens that covered the Playstation's loadtimes are still included, but can be immediately skipped with the press of a button. The momentary pause between screens when changing camera angles is gone now too, and the game flows much better as a result.

Rebirth Mode's most notable addition is the surprise first-person attack. When entering a room, even if you've been through it many times already, you may randomly encounter a touchscreen knife-battle shown from a first-person viewpoint. Zombies, dogs, crows and the like will come rushing at you and you need to swipe the touchscreen in order to dispatch them with your knife. By swiping the touchscreen in different ways, you can execute a variety of knife attacks and combos, and by timing your attack correctly you can even perform one-hit kills. The random nature of these events frequently catches you off guard, and can easily prove fatal if you're already on Danger status and are running back to an item chest through what you think are "safe" areas. Clearing these encounters rewards the player with ammunition or herbs, which is just as well considering the amount of enemies you'll encounter. Rebirth Mode puts the emphasis more on action by throwing in lots more enemies and combining enemy types. Dealing with a few zombies becomes much harder when there's a crow or a dog or two in the room at the same time. Working out which enemies to take out first and keeping the rest off you in the meantime is a refreshing challenge.

Many of the puzzles in Rebirth are new and mostly based around the touchscreen. There's even an optional challenge to revive one of your team members by blowing on the microphone to simulate CPR. I was surprised to discover the touchscreen can be used during normal play too. If you're being munched on by a zombie, rubbing the touchscreen will make your character perform a defensive move like a kick or knee to get them off you faster. The save rooms feature new blue puzzle boxes in Rebirth Mode too, similar to those in Capcom's Onimusha series, each of which needs to be solved with a simple touchscreen logic puzzle. While there are no new areas in Rebirth, the new item locations, puzzles, weapons, and greater emphasis on action certainly make it a fresh experience. Completing the main game with each character in both Classic and Rebirth modes unlocks new costumes and the rocket launcher (if you're fast enough) as well as new playable characters for the Multiplayer modes.

That's right - Resident Evil on DS features up to four player wireless Multiplayer in both competitive and co-operative modes. Three scenarios are available and completing these unlocks even more playable characters. Each player will need a copy of the cart, and only local multiplayer is supported (no wi-fi unfortunately). One more new game mode is unlockable: "Master of Knifing", which is basically all the first-person knife battles in a survival mode.

Certainly the most perverse new addition to the game is this little easter egg: if you leave Jill alone until she enters her inactive animation, you can then tap her on the chest or the behind and she'll react with surprise. Likewise, and even more disturbingly, you can touch Chris too. Ahem. WTF Capcom.

All in all, RE:DS is a really well done port, with loads of nice extras. Fans of the original will relish the opportunity to revisit it on a portable system and experience all the new content. Newcomers to the series expecting something like RE4 are in for a nasty shock. The tank-like controls and limited inventory space of the original Resident Evil are as unfriendly as they ever were, and rightly so. This tenth anniversary port shows just how far the series has come, while at the same time demonstrating that what made this game a classic still holds up after a decade.

8/10

The Limited Edition Japanese version of Biohazard: Deadly Silence comes with a S.T.A.R.S. branded black leather DS case and strap.

While we're on the subject, you can read my full review of the PS2 port of Resident Evil 4 on Game Power Australia now.

Next Generation

2005-11-22T17:00:00.000+11:00

Apologies for the lack of recent updates. Team Consoul have been busy with the release of their next-gen handheld. As is common in such cases, the release date slipped due to a longer than expected internal development cycle, and the launch was consequently two weeks late. The project formerly under the working title "Pumpernickel" was officially released as "Jack" (aka "P-Jack") on October 19.

Jack is a bit bigger than your average handheld, weighing in at ten pounds, but provides an entirely new range of visual, aural and err...olfactory experiences. Jack has been warmly received by shareholders and is showing great potential.

In other news, the next generation of home consoles is finally kicking off with Microsoft's XBox360 going on sale in the US today. Two versions are available: the cheaper "Core System" (US$299 without hard drive) and the full "Premium System" (US$399). Games for the 360 have actually been on shelves (and on sale) for some time now. They were distributed to stores early to ensure gamers weren't left without games when the system launched. While there are a respectable number of 360 launch titles (more than a dozen), reviews have been lukewarm on the whole. Most of the 360 launch titles aren't jumping out and screaming next-gen - rather they feel more like current generation games with a high definition makeover. In some cases, that's precisely what they are, though a few new titles like Call of Duty 2 and Sega's Condemned are showing a clear jump above what current generation consoles can offer. Having said that, gamers who have seen Call of Duty 2 on a high end PC won't be blown away by the 360 version.

The Premium XBox360 (bottom) is distinguishable from the Core system (top) by it's dark disc tray cover and the removable hard drive enclosure (left).

Microsoft have launched XBox360 just in time for the US holiday season, in the hope of translating the Thanksgiving and Christmas shopping sprees into a well established user base before Sony get PS3 out of the gates. At this early stage, I imagine the XBox360 will prove popular with owners of high definition sets, who will appreciate its native 720p output. The vast majority of gamers (who still have only standard definition displays), will probably adopt the wait-and-see approach. To say there's a high level of awareness and anticipation of Sony's Playstation3 in the gaming community is something of an understatement. Many will resist investing in a 360 until the actual relative capabilities of 360 and PS3 become apparent. Some media outlets have already taken sides, such as Fox News, with their brilliantly subtle piece entitled "Don't buy XBox 360".

Software sells hardware. This is day one for XBox360, so it's a bit early to expect a killer app of Halo proportions, but realistically, that's what Microsoft are going to need in order to maximize their early start advantage.

Sony Power Vs. Mod & God

2005-10-08T08:43:00.000+10:00

Sony have finally officially announced the impending release of a new battery pack for PSP. This is something I've been anticipating since April, as it seemed like a key part of their strategy to unlock PSP's full clockspeed. The new battery will retail for 5300 Yen (around US$45 or AU$60) and should provide an extra 20% battery life. Not exactly a giant leap in battery technology, but it's a start. An official standalone PSP battery charger has also been released in Japan, reducing chargetime from over two hours down to around 90 minutes.

As expected, in response to the recent PSP downgrader hack, Sony Japan released firmware version 2.01 this week, blocking the exploit that made the downgrader possible. Considering that the voluntary update contains no new features, uptake will likely be low.

The Australian High court has upheld the prior ruling of the Federal court, concluding the four year battle that was the Sony vs. Stevens case. Essentially the ruling states that mod chips are legal. The key argument was that they can be used for the legitimate practice of bypassing region coding, allowing Australian Playstation owners to play genuine Playstation games purchased in the USA or Japan. Furthermore, the judiciary and ACCC found that the mod chip itself does not infringe copyright, rather the act of illegally reproducing a game by way of a CD/DVD burner is where an infringement occurs. The consumer's legal right to circumvent region coding in Australia is not likely to change, but nor is Sony's practice of region coding their games.

Perhaps somebody up there doesn't like Sony at the moment. The Vatican certainly thought so when they expressed their disapproval of Sony's recent Italian advertising campaign to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Playstation. The campaign features a man wearing a crown of thorns bearing the trademark Playstation symbols: the cross, circle, square and triangle (below). The slogan reads "Dieci anni di passione" - Ten years of passion (a clear reference to "The Passion of the Christ"). Sony withdrew the campaign after the Vatican's objections.

Leading anti-virus merchants Symantec have listed the first PSP Trojan on their website. This is being widely reported as a "PSP Virus" (!!!) on news sites, but it isn't a virus at all. What Symantec are referring to as "PSPBrick" is just one of the fake downgrader programs available on the internet. It uses the 2.0 TIFF exploit like the real downgrader does, but simply deletes core system files instead of downgrading the operating system, so the the PSP will no longer boot up. It's not a virus, and it's not capable of infecting your PSP through the PSP's web-browser. The only way this fake downgrader poses a threat is if you're stupid enough to download it on your PC, transfer it to your PSP and launch it via the picture viewer.

In vaguely videogame related news, CEATEC (the Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies) has kicked off in Japan. Toshiba, who co-developed the Cell microprocessor (PS3's CPU) with Sony and IBM, are displaying an amazing tech demo exhibit being referred to as a "digital mirror". The "mirror" captures live footage of whoever sits in front of it, and seamlessly mixes their image with a 3D model that mimics their movements and facial expressions in real-time. Utilizing the power of the Cell, different clothing, make-up, tattoos and hairstyles are all able to be applied to the sitter's "reflection" in real-time.
If you're finding it hard to visualize what I'm on about, just watch this Japanese news report (right-click to save - 60 secs, 2.9MB).

Real 2.0 to 1.5 PSP Firmware Downgrader

2005-09-28T10:54:00.000+10:00

Well, whaddya know? It's been done.
The seemingly innocuous 64K non-kernal mode buffer overflow exploit recently found in the picture viewer of the version 2.0 PSP firmware has been used to make a downgrade possible. The best we'd seen from this exploit until now was a rather weak version of Pong, but now 2.0 users can actually downgrade their PSP's firmware back to the homebrew-friendly 1.50 version.

There are several files required for the downgrade, including the official Sony 1.50 upgrade file. The process itself, while fairly straightforward, has a few hair-raising moments, such as when the 1.50 "upgrade" gets to 99% completion and then crashes with an error. After a reboot, it errors again, but finally after another restart, the PSP settles in as a fully functional 1.50 unit.

I'm not going into a lot of detail or providing any links, as there's considerable potential for irresponsible use (ie. mass piracy and the odd bricked PSP). Having said that, it's worth noting that ex-WAB team member Yoshihiro is one of the coders responsible. After the WAB team debarcle, Yoshihiro has silenced his critics with this release. No doubt Sony will release a plugged version 2.1 firmware upgrade very soon, and make it a mandatory upgrade for upcoming PSP titles, like GTA: Liberty City Stories. Until then, it seems PSP owners have the ability to upgrade and downgrade between versions 1.50 and 2.0 as they see fit.

TGS wraps up, PSP plugs in, 2.0 exploit's out.

2005-09-24T10:03:00.000+10:00

So the Tokyo Game Show is over for another year. The Metal Gear Solid 4 trailer really knocked everyone's socks off and initially sparked debate over whether it was pre-rendered or actually running in real-time. After the Killzone 3 trailer shown at E3 in May turned out not to be truly real-time, people have become understandably sceptical. Hideo Kojima took the opportunity to nip the rumours in the bud, by demonstrating the MGS4 engine in a live presentation at TGS. He controlled the camera and altered many effects on the PS3 alpha kit as proof that MGS4, while still at least a year from release, is already running in real-time.

Konami also let attendees get hands-on with their new 3D PSP peripheral for Metal Gear Ac!d 2 on the show floor. The "TobidAc!d" is a lightweight add-on (reportedly made of cardboard) that folds around the PSP and produces a convincing 3D effect by splitting the widescreen into smaller displays for each eye. It has now been confirmed that the entire game can be played in 3D and that the title will sport USB connectivity features with MGS3:Subsistence on PS2. Cinematic sequences and photos taken from MGS3:S on PS2 will be viewable in true 3D on the PSP. The "TobidAc!d" was shown in both black and white variations to match the PSP's colours.

Nintendo put many gamers' minds at ease when they announced that an official cradle would be released allowing their radical new Revolution controller to slot into a more traditional Wavebird-style controller, allowing conventional controller input in addition to the new motion-sensing features. While many tech demos were playable, no actual Revolution games were shown.

Microsoft's TGS showing for XBox360 didn't cause much buzz. Racing games Project Gotham Racing 3, Ridge Racer 6 and Test Drive Unlimited were all on show, but failed to inspire and were widely regarded as "more of the same". Dead Or Alive 4 (above) and Gears Of War looked gorgeous, but less than innovative. The first wireless arcade stick for 360 was shown in a DOA4 theme (below).

Capcom had a very strong presence. Dead Rising looks set to be a launch title on 360 and is shaping up to be a dead-ringer for George Romero's Dawn of The Dead, while Resident Evil 5 (below, coming to 360 and PS3) looks stunning, even at this early stage. New additions to the Devil May Cry and Viewtiful Joe franchises also look promising.

Sega's Sonic Team unveiled a playable next-gen Sonic title (above, for PS3 and 360) that looked great and retained the classic gameplay style of the original Sonic games. A new PSP exclusive version of Namco's brilliantly quirky Katamari Damacy franchise was playable at their booth (below), though the lack of twin analog sticks means the d-pad and face buttons are used for control instead. Namco also staged a tournament for their soon to be released PS2-exclusive fighter, Soul Calibur III, which could be the deepest fighting game yet, featuring an unprecedented amount of extra modes and huge scope for creating and customizing characters.

Okay, enough TGS...moving on:

The first true exploit for the PSP's 2.0 firmware has been found. A method for triggering a buffer overflow and running a simple piece of homebrew code embedded in malformed PNG and TIFF images has been discovered and released. Whether this exploit can be reworked and used to launch more complex homebrew applications remains to be seen. This may finally draw attention away from the long awaited 1.5 downgrader from Yoshihiro, which has proven to be vaporware. It turns out Yoshihiro never had a working 1.52 to 1.50 downgrader and the WAB team accepted a whole lot of PayPal donations under false pretences. The other notable WAB team member, AloneTrio, seems to have kept most of the money. The saga ended with a customary team meltdown and undignified brew-ha-ha of lies, greed, insults and blame-shifting.

Meanwhile, Team Xecuter, famous for their XBox mod chips, are preparing an unofficial PSP AV-out adapter for commercial release. The solderless system, currently dubbed PSP2TV, has two parts: the first is a replacement faceplate with a connector for the second part, which clips onto the back of the PSP when needed (while still allowing the UMD door to open). The back part features standard stereo AV out RCA connections, plus a port to attach a PS2 controller! The aspect ratio is selectable between 16:9 or 4:3 output.

TGS 2005

2005-09-16T22:15:00.000+10:00

The annual Tokyo Game Show began this morning and has already proven to be a big event. Nintendo's head honcho, Satoru Iwata, kicked it off with his keynote speech. Aside from announcing the forthcoming Nintendo wi-fi online service, he also revealed Nintendo's big secret: the controller for Revolution, their next generation console. No, that's not some new iPod he's holding (above), it's a wireless controller that strongly resembles a common remote control. We all knew Revolution's controller would be different, but this is really different.

The basic controller is held in one hand, like a remote, with the d-pad at your thumb, a large "A" button below it and a "B" button trigger on the underside for your index finger. The revolutionary part is that the whole unit is motion sensitive. The Revolution console can sense the position, alignment and motion of the controller in 3D space. You can tilt, turn, raise, lower, swing, point or otherwise move the controller as input. The controller also allows for additional control modules to be attached, such as the analog stick and twin trigger attachment shown today (below). With a cord between the two parts, the Revolution controller takes on a distinctive nunchaku appearance. I choose to call them "Ninchuks".

The last time we saw the Revolution (at E3 in May), the prototypes were mainly black. Apparently black is like so last generation. White is the new black. Nintendo's Revolution, Microsoft's XBox360, and even Sony's PSP and PS3 are now being seen in white varieties. Apple's iPod certainly has set a trend...but I digress. Nintendo showed off a wide range of basic tech demos using the Revolution's motion sensing capabilities. The potential uses for this controller, like flying a plane, fishing, aiming and shooting, sword fighting etc. are near limitless. One of the demos shown was a retrofitted version of the first level from their current Gamecube hit, Metroid Prime: Echoes. This was an effective demonstration of how the new control scheme can be put to use in conventional games. The analog stick and buttons were used as usual, but the motion sensing feature allowed users to look around freely and aim precisely just by moving their hand.

One of the oft-stated goals of Nintendo's strategy with Revolution was to broaden the audience, providing a method of control that is as simple and intuitive as possible, so that people who have never played videogames before can just pick up the controller and play, without having to worry about convoluted control schemes or complex button layouts. I'd say they've hit the mark with this controller, but whether Revolution will prove to be a success is still very much in doubt. Hopefully third party software developers will get behind the console and make the most of it's unique possibilities. When you're competing with world powers like Microsoft and Sony, being radically different is a big gamble. I hope for Nintendo's sake that it pays off.

Speaking of the competition, Microsoft chose their pre-TGS show yesterday to announce firm dates for the XBox360 launch. It's hitting retail on November 22nd 2005 in North America; just in time for the all-important holiday season. Europe will follow on December 2nd, and Japan a week later on the 10th of December. While Microsoft previously confirmed that the 360 would be available in two versions (the full version or a cheaper, cut-down "core" system) for the US and Europe, it's now clear that only the full version will be sold in Japan. It was announced that it would go on sale for 37,900 yen, making it slightly cheaper than the US full version's US$399 price.

In Sony's camp, Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear series has stolen the show so far. The showing of a new trailer for Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots running on PS3 hardware was a real eye-opener. Solid Snake has never looked so real...or old. Some years have passed since MGS2 and Snake (below) is no spring chicken.

Even Otacon (above) is showing his age. Fear not, tactical espionage fans, as Snake is still kickin' it in a battlezone somewhere and still enjoying a crafty cigarette when he can (though he's hacking his guts up a bit more than he used to). Kojima's quirky humour is evident in the trailer and the visuals are second to none. The MGS4 trailer really highlighted the power of PS3 to create richly detailed cinematic graphics. Hopefully a higher quality version of the trailer will be leaked to the net soon. The prospect of playing this game in true high-definition leaves me breathless. Forget Killzone. MGS4 is Playstation3's new killer app.

Returning to the current generation, Kojima is also readying "Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence" for release on PS2. This is an expansion on MGS3, much like "Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance" was to MGS2. The biggest single addition to the game is an online componenent. The MGS series has never offered an online multiplayer experience before, and Subsistence looks set to deliver both quality and quantity on that front. The latest footage shown at TGS revealed more multiplayer maps and cameos from an unlikely source: Rumble Roses. Yes, the provocative lasses from Konami's all-female wrestling game (which is currently being remade for XBox360) are playable in MGS3:Subsistence. First it was the monkeys from Ape Escape, and now it's scantily-clad female wrestlers. No-one can say Kojima takes his games too seriously.

Finally, Kojima had another surprise in store for the next installment of the Metal Gear Ac!d series on PSP. Metal Gear Ac!d 2 will apparently support a new peripheral that transforms the PSP into something that looks more like a set of binoculars. This will allow players to see portions of the game in true stereoscopic 3D! Few details have been revealed at this stage. I somehow can't see too many people using this peripheral in public, but it's interesting nonetheless.

UMD Movie Madness

2005-09-02T15:15:00.000+10:00

One day after the Australasian/European PSP launch and forums across the net are once again alive with new owners moaning about dead or stuck pixels on their screens. They're a vocal minority however. Most people apparently don't have any, and of those who do, few of them consider it to be an issue. Yoshihiro (see last post) bought himself a French v1.52 PSP yesterday and is said to be busy working on a PC application that will make up part of his yet-to-be-released firmware downgrader.

What has turned out to be interesting about the Australian launch is the UMD movies. Sony have been very clear that UMD movies would be region locked just like DVD movies. Indeed, the Hollywood studios insisted upon it. Up until now, that was taken as a given. Japanese UMD movies wouldn't work on US PSPs and vice versa.

When I walked into Sony Central today, they swore blind that this was still the case. I then pulled out my Japanese PSP and suggested they try it. They grabbed the nearest Australian UMD movie (Hellboy: Directors Cut), I popped it in my PSP and guess what? It worked. Despite the clearly marked "Region 4" logo on the case, it loaded straight up and played just fine on my (Region 2) PSP. Owners of US PSPs have also reported success in playing Australian UMD movies on their units.

So what is going on? Have Sony changed their mind? Have they slipped up? Were they just pretending there'd be region locks on Euro/Aus UMD movies to discourage importers? The real story isn't clear yet, but I'm leaning toward option 2. This feels like a mistake.

Sony were under some time pressure to meet the Sept 1 launch and perhaps they didn't double check everything. It seems apparent that some of the first batch of Australian UMD movies were pressed without a region code being set (ie. they're set to the region zero default, which will work on all PSPs). Sony also made a minor slip-up with their first Australian download pack for WipEout Pure. It comes up as "Corrupted Data" when viewed on the memory stick duo. It still works in-game though, so it's no big deal. (Memo to Sony: If you want to fix this, you may want to correct the typo in the directory name reference in the PARAM.SFO file.)

I guess we'll have to wait and see whether any of the second batch of Australian UMD movies work on imported PSPs to determine whether the lack of region coding was actually a mistake or not. I don't imagine the movie studios would be too impressed should their movies continue to be region-free. Another PSP retailer I spoke to today said all of his current UMD movie stock worked on his US PSP, though from my own tests I can confirm that some Australian UMD movies, such as "Be Cool" are correctly region-locked.

To those of you waiting for a significant PSP price-drop: don't hold your breath. Sony have Australian retailers under contract to sell all 1st-party PSP products at the current RRP until March next year: $399 for the PSP and $79 for 1st-party games. Should they breach this, the threat is that they'll be cut off from delivery. Major chains will likely drop the prices slightly anyway (as Sony wouldn't dare cut them off), but smaller games retailers will probably have to toe the line. Retail profit margins are slim anyway.

Enjoy your new PSPs everyone.
For lots more PSP coverage, check out my articles at Game Power Australia. More of my reviews will be online there shortly.

PSP Firmware Downgrade?

2005-08-30T16:13:00.000+10:00

The PSP is finally set to go on sale across Europe and Australasia this Thursday September 1st. Sony are shipping the unit with the version 2.0 firmware, which means no homebrew shenanigans. Or does it?

To say the Aus & Euro PSP's ship with 2.0 isn't quite accurate. They are actually going on sale with the version 1.52 firmware onboard, and the 2.0 update is on the bundled Sampler UMD ready to install when you first run it. Those of you who have been keeping up with PSP news will know that you can't run homebrew on v1.52 anyway, so it would seem there's no advantage in not updating to version 2.0 immediately.

Hold that thought. Before you run that Sampler UMD and irreversably upgrade your PSP to the version 2.0 firmware, ask yourself: "Do I want to run homebrew?" Maybe you don't, and maybe you can't wait to use 2.0's wireless web-browser. Good for you. If, on the other hand, you have some interest in PSP homebrew then you probably shouldn't run that Sampler disc just yet. Apparently there is in fact a method to downgrade a version 1.52 PSP to the homebrew friendly 1.50. This has been rumoured for some time, but always seemed unlikely, as commonsense suggested that to run a downgrader on a 1.52 PSP, you'd need an exploit to run unsigned code on it in the first place, which would make the purpose of the exercise rather redundant.

While the actual method hasn't been revealed yet, well-known PSP coder and notorious WAB team member, Yoshihiro, has confirmed that he has found a way, and is expected to go public with the process on September 1. As rumour has it, the method involves wirelessly sending a firmware downgrader to the 1.52 PSP via the Game Share function. The catch? You'll need a PSP capable of running homebrew to send it in the first place. If you don't know anyone with a version 1.00 or 1.50 PSP, then you're out of luck.

Of course, this is all unconfirmed at this stage, but Yoshihiro is unlikely to be bluffing. No doubt future PSP games will require the version 2.0 firmware anyway, but if you're a new PSP owner who's keen to dabble in the world of PSP homebrew, you may still have a chance. Stay tuned.

Aus/Euro games do not play well with others & 2.0 uncracked.

2005-08-12T12:09:00.000+10:00

So, it's official. You can't establish ad hoc multiplayer games between import and local PSP games (at least not with the current crop of games). It was already known that this couldn't be done between US and Japanese games (which isn't that surprising given the language difference), but after yesterday's tests I can now confirm that it can't be done between Euro/Australasian games and US titles either, regardless of who hosts and who tries to join. Despite not being region locked, the Euro/Australasian PSP games have indeed been changed from the US releases. While the inability to connect to import games for ad hoc multiplayer is disappointing, the upside is that some games will be released here with extra features not found in the US versions.

I'm pleased to report that the local release of WipEout Pure has an extra option on the main menu that isn't in the US or Japanese releases: "Teasers", which gives access to playable demos of Fired Up and Medievil: Resurrection. As an aside, there may aso be some reason to believe that the Euro/Australasian WipEout Pure could feature true online (infrastructure mode) multiplayer. I can't confirm this unfortunately (as no wireless router was available during testing), but the "Download" option on the US release's main menu reads "Online" in the local version. This could just be an insignificant wording change, but here's hoping there's more to it.
(You can read my WipEout Pure review here.)

In other PSP news, several websites have been reporting that an exploit has been found in the latest version 2.00 PSP firmware. (example: Tom's Hardware Guide article) Let's set the record straight. 2.00 has not been cracked. The 'method' described (and shown in the now widely-circulated video) isn't an exploit at all, it's there by design. One of the common features of every version of the PSP firmware is it's willingness to attempt to boot firmware update programs. Put an EBOOT.PBP file (with a correctly formed header) in a folder called UPDATE, and the PSP will attempt to run it, after checking that the version number in the header is greater than the version of firmware currently installed. That's been known for some time.

The thing is, once the PSP checks the header and confirms the version number of the update is greater than the existing firmware, it won't boot the program that follows unless it's a genuine, unmodified, encrypted update file from Sony. So the trademark "ding" sound and PSP logo screen displayed after selecting the icon for the "hacked" update file prove nothing other than the fact that some idiot can use a hex editor to change "2.00" to "2.10". The program itself doesn't run after that, because it's not properly encrypted. Hackers cannot correctly encrypt their programs. The 128-bit private key encryption is for all practical purposes uncrackable.

You can't so much as edit a single byte of the update program beyond the header without rendering it useless. What the video that's causing all this fuss shows is not "hacking" 2.0. It's not even a step in that direction. It's the PSP doing exactly what it should do - checking the header, displaying the boot animation and then refusing to run the program, because it's not genuine. This is a guy hitting a brick wall and thinking he's a 1337 H@X0R. Certain news sites need to do their homework.

Finally, to change the subject from PSP for a brief moment (hard to believe I know), I've written a couple of articles for Game Power Australia over the last few months. Here are some links if you're interested:
Tekken 5 Review (PS2)
Full Spectrum Warrior Review (PS2)
PS3 Hardware Feature
XBox360 Hardware Feature

Aus PSP release schedule

2005-08-11T22:51:00.000+10:00

The Australian PSP launch is rapidly approaching, and internally Sony Australia staff already have the Australian PSPs and software ready for September 1. I met briefly with a Sony tech support guy this morning, who borrowed my US WipEout Pure and Japanese Ridge Racers UMDs to test whether you can actually initiate ad hoc wi-fi multiplayer between import games and Australian PSP games (with both UMDs running on Australian PSPs). I doubt that it will work, but it's certainly worth a shot. The tech support staff have a rather short timeframe to familiarize themselves with all the technicalities before the deluge begins next month. Good luck guys.

The PSP will ship in Australia with the version 1.52 firmware onboard, though the bundled sampler disc will install the latest version (2.00). The line up for the Australian launch is very impressive, with plenty of games available from the get go. There'll also be 18 UMD movies (some not yet released on DVD) on shelves for launch, with plenty more to follow in the months ahead (including Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children in October).

Here then is the official Australian PSP game release schedule:

September 1st:
Ape Academy
Everybody's Golf
Fired Up
MediEvil: Resurrection
Ridge Racer
WipEout Pure
World Tour Soccer Challenge Edition
Formula One Grand Prix
NBA Street Showdown
Need for Speed: Underground Rivals
NFL Street 2: Unleashed
Tiger Woods PGA Tour
Darkstalkers Chronicle: The Chaos Tower
Dynasty Warriors
Virtua Tennis: World Tour
World Snooker Challenge 2005
Colin McRae Rally 2005
Metal Gear Acid
V8 Supercars 2
Untold Legends: Brotherhood of the Blade
Tony Hawk's Underground 2: REMIX
Spider-Man 2
Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition
Lumines
Archer Maclean's Mercury

25 games. Not bad for day one.

On the horizon:
Burnout Legends - September 26
Pursuit Force - October TBC
WRC - October TBC
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories - October TBC
X-Men Legends 2: Rise of Apocalypse - October TBC
Coded Arms - October TBC
Rengoku: Tower of Purgatory - October TBC
Namco Museum: Battle Collection - October 15
Madden NFL 06 - October 24
Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects - October 24
World Poker Tour - November TBC
Frogger: Helmet Chaos - November TBC
Star Wars Battlefront II - November 7
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - November 14
Need for Speed: Most Wanted - November 20
The Sims 2 - November 21
Death, Jnr. - November 25
Crash Tag Team Racing - December 1
Peter Jackson's King Kong - 2005
Ys: The Ark of Napishtim - 2005
Smart Bomb - 2005
Free Running - 2005
Top Spin 2 - 2006

PlayStation Meeting 2005

2005-07-22T10:44:00.000+10:00

Sony's annual PlayStation meeting for 2005 has kicked off in Tokyo and some details are beginning to emerge. Aside from the serious business end of things, Sony laid on drinks and entertainment and staged their 2005 Playstation Awards, acknowledging the best selling titles of the last financial year. Among those honoured, Hideo Kojima picked up a gong for Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (pictured with Ken Kutaragi).

Getting down to business, Sony outlined the path ahead for PS3 development kits, beginning with the already released Cell evaluation unit and the soon-to-be-released PS3 evaluation tool. By December, Sony plans to have rack-mountable PS3 reference tools available to developers that will contain the final PS3 components.

Details on PSP's future were also anounced, with firmware version 2.0 to be released in only a few days (July 27). Version 2.0 of the firmware incorporates the long-awaited wireless web-browser into the OS, adding another main icon to the PSP's XMB menu. Full HTML4.0 support has been confirmed, but details of Flash support are sketchy so far. Many other small improvements have been made in v2.0, including increased picture file support (TIFF, BMP, GIF formats added), an option to customize backgrounds, and the ability to play videos off the memory stick at PSP's full 480x272 resolution (at last). There's also a new function to share photos between nearby PSPs wirelessly, and support for the more secure TKIP wireless encryption standard. Since the 2.0 announcement, Sony reps overseas have confirmed that the Euro/Aus/NZ PSPs will come with version 2 firmware at launch on September 1.

UMD sales have been rising steadily since the PSP's release (as shown in the graph above), and while UMD video is selling well in the US (back row), it hasn't really taken off in Japan and Korea (where UMD movies are considerably more expensive). The Ceramic White PSP is now confirmed for release and will be available in Japan soon.

PSP Piracy Ahoy!

2005-07-05T12:54:00.000+10:00

PSP pirates hoist sails, set to take wind out of game sales?

It's now possible to run pirated PSP games off the memory stick. A few days ago a launcher was released allowing Lumines to run from the memory stick. The floodgates opened soon afterwards, and it became possible to run about half a dozen games (including the high-profile new FPS Coded Arms) from the memory stick without the original UMD. It looks like the release of a single universal game launcher is only days away.

I'm deliberately not reporting this in much detail or providing any links, as I personally see this as a disaster for a game platform that hasn't even launched in half the world yet. Homebrew didn't pose any real threat to the PSP (it may have even helped hardware sales), but this kind of piracy could be a critical blow to Sony's handheld. Developers will certainly be wary of investing large budgets into PSP game production when they know that most PSP owners can simply run pirate copies without any modification to their console. Unlike most other methods of console piracy, this PSP method requires no modchip, and no technical knowledge. It's entirely "warez kiddy" friendly. Even Sony's recent mandatory firmware updates in new release games don't stop this method from working. (This method works under v1.50, which so far no games have required the firmware to be upgraded above.)

In the short term, I imagine Sony will make a bit of extra revenue from a boost in sales of their overpriced memory stick duos, but they must find a way to curb this kind of piracy if PSP is to be a success in the longer term.

The KXploit - no more swapping

2005-06-22T20:41:00.000+10:00

Spanish PSP-Dev team member, Killer-X, who recently released the "swaploit", has just released a new and improved method of running homebrew applications on PSPs with the v1.50 firmware. The new technique (dubbed "KXploit") still involves converting homebrew programs using a PC application, but once they're on the memory stick duo, you simply select the icon in the PSP menu and press a button to run it. No swap required. It's a far more elegant solution, that will no doubt lead to many more people running emulators on their PSPs. The emulation scene is still going gangbusters, with the first release of a GBA emulator for PSP today, and rumours of a PSone emulator in development.

The other factor that may lead to increased take-up of homebrew on PSP will simply be the lack of official PSP games being released. There's a noticable black hole in the PSP release schedules between now and September, with very few titles coming out, and even fewer worth getting excited about. Emulation should provide a welcome distraction for PSP owners until the second generation of PSP games are released.

If you're interested you can download the KXploit pack here.

By the way, thanks for the 50,000 hits everyone.

v1.00 Firmware PSP Compatibility List

2005-06-17T12:39:00.000+10:00

As I've mentioned before, Sony are trying to put an end to the practice of running unencrypted PSP programs (ie. homebrew) by way of mandatory firmware updates in new PSP games. While running homebrew is now possible with v1.50 PSPs (via the "swaploit"), it's still only really user-friendly with the original v1.00 Japanese PSP. Many v1.00 PSP owners have already bought a second PSP to play new games on, allowing them to keep their first PSP in its original state. If you have a v1.00 PSP, you might want to know which games you can play that won't try to update your firmware.

To that end, I've compiled what I believe is the first complete list of all PSP games that will run on the original v1.00 firmware. So if you have a version 1.00 PSP and want to keep it that way, you won't be playing any games on it that aren't on this list. Sad but true.

List of PSP games known to work under v1.00 firmware:

Japanese:

AI Igo (JP)
AI Mahjong(JP)
AI Shogi (JP)
Armored Core: Formula Front (JP)
Bleach: Heat The Soul (JP)
Derby Time (JP)
Doko Demo Issho (JP)
Eiyuu Densetsu Gagharv Trilogy: Shiroki Majo (JP)
Higanjima (JP)
Kollon (JP)
Kotoba NoPuzzle Mojipittan (JP)
Lumines (JP)
Mahjong Fight Club (JP)
Mahjong Takai (JP)
Metal Gear AC!D (JP)
Minna no Golf Portable (JP)
Mobile Train Simulator + Densha de Go! (JP)
Namco Museum (JP)
NFSU: Rivals (JP)
Piposaru Academia (JP)
Popolocrois Monogatari (JP)
Puzzle Bobble Pocket (JP)
Rengoku (JP)
Ridge Racers (JP)
Saru Getchu P (JP)
Shin Sengokumusou (JP)
Shoutokou Battle (JP)
Tales of Eternia (JP)
Vampire Chronicle: The Chaos Tower (JP)
WipEout Pure (JP)

US:

Ape Escape: On the Loose (US)
Archer Maclean's Mercury (US)
ATV: Offroad Fury (US)
Darkstalkers Chronicle (US)
Dynasty Warriors (US)
FIFA Soccer (US)
Gretzky NHL (US)
Lumines (US)
Metal Gear AC!D (US)
MLB (US)
NBA (US)
NFL Street 2 Unleashed (US)
NFSU: Rivals (US)
Ridge Racer (US)
Smart Bomb (US)
Spiderman 2 (US)
THUG 2 Remix (US)
Tiger Woods PGA Tour (US)
Twisted Metal: Head On (US)
Untold Legends (US)
WipEout Pure (US)
World Tour Soccer (US)

Korean:

Everybody's Golf (K)
Glorace - Phantastic Carnival (K)

That's it. If you think I've missed anything, let me know.

PSP v1.50 exploit goes live

2005-06-15T21:12:00.000+10:00

In what is sure to be music to the ears of many US PSP owners (and many Japanese PSP owners for that matter), the rumours I mentioned in my last post have turned out to be true. The exploit allowing unencrypted homebrew to run on PSPs with version 1.50 firmware (not 1.51 or 1.52) has been released. If you want it, there are plenty of download mirrors here. Spanish PSP-dev team member Killer-X is the guy who discovered this exploit.

I haven't tested it myself (as I don't have a v1.50 PSP), but from reading through the documentation, it's clear that for end-users, running homebrew on v1.50 is not quite as simple as it is under v1.0. On version 1.0 PSPs, it's as simple as pushing a button. Not so with v1.50 I'm afraid. Indeed the new trick has been dubbed a "swaploit" as it involves swapping memory sticks. Yes, you'll need two Memory Stick Duos for the magic to work, with special files on both. The first stick is for the loader. The second is for the homebrew software you want to run. Using a provided PC program called "MSwap Tool" you can create the files to put on both sticks (as the homebrew software will need to be specially converted to run via this method). Then it's a matter of booting your PSP with the first Memory Stick Duo (and no UMD) in, highlighting the loader icon, and not pushing the button yet. Get your second stick ready, hit the button and as soon the program starts running, you need to swap out the first Memory Stick Duo for the second one. Sounds dicey I know, but apparently that's how it's done. Voila! Homebrew running on v1.50.

It may not be the simplest, most elegant system, but it is functional. For now at least. Sony have already begun releasing games that will refuse to run without firmware updates, so it seems obvious that they'll make updates beyond v1.50 compulsory in future games. And so the eternal game of Pong between the console manufacturers and the hackers continues...

Brew O'clock for PSP

2005-06-14T21:59:00.000+10:00

Most of you probably would have read my earlier write-up on how the PSP is currently underclocked to a maximum of 222MHz, and how it's full 333MHz clockspeed will be released by Sony in future. Well, Sony have been beaten to the punch.

I'm pleased to report that the clever coders at Japanese dev site PSPWiki have worked out how to adjust the PSP's clockspeed, and that knowledge is currently spreading through the unofficial PSP development community. Lucky folks who still have the version 1.0 firmware on their Japanese PSPs can now enjoy the benefits of the PSPs adjustable clockspeed up to its full 333MHz potential. The PSP homebrew scene has continued growing at an amazing rate and there are now emulators available on PSP for over a dozen different game systems, including SNES, NES, Megadrive, Master System, Game Gear, GameBoy Color, NeoGeoCD and even MAME. Most of the systems can now be emulated with full sound support and 100% speed thanks to the PSP's adjustable clockspeed. At this rate, the PSP looks set to take over the GP32 as the best handheld emulation platform.

Rumour has it that a method of running homebrew applications on the much more common version 1.50 firmware (that the US PSP's shipped with) has been found and will be publically released in about eighteen hours. Stay tuned.

World War E3

2005-06-01T11:19:00.000+10:00

The dust is settling on what has been widely regarded as a somewhat unsatisfying E3. The next-gen console announcements stole the show, but the lack of real playable code on the show floor for any next-gen games has led to people coming away feeling empty. The focus on the next-gen despite the lack of solid content not only stole attention away from the current generation, it pre-maturely heralded the current generation's impending death.

Microsoft's marketing spiel was very slick, but given that they claim to be launching Xbox360 in November, it was disconcerting how little they had to show. Their demo pods were being driven by Mac G5-powered alpha devkits, not real Xbox360 hardware. Sony's scarcity of next-gen content was more understandable, as they're not expected to have the PS3 on the market for another 12 months. Nintendo aren't expected to debut Revolution until late next year, and their decision to show essentially nothing of their next-gen console was no surprise to anyone.

Some of the soon-to-be-released games shown for current-gen hardware proved there's still life in it. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Gamecube) was the standout game of E3 2005, with people waiting for up to four hours in queues just for the chance to get hands-on with a few demo levels. Okami (PS2) from Capcom's Clover Studios wowed attendees with its traditional Japanese woodblock print and brush-art visuals. Burnout Revenge (multi-platform) looks certain to be another massive hit for Criterion's series, and behind closed doors, Criterion showed VIPs more of their deliberately mysterious (and apparently extremely impressive) Black FPS project for PS2. Nintendo's forthcoming game line-up for DS looked strong, while the PSP's showing was relatively weak.

What was shown at E3 itself may not have set the gaming world on fire, but it has signalled the official start of the next-gen war. Microsoft have been going to great lengths to play down PS3's apparent hardware supremacy over Xbox360, telling anyone who will listen that the two consoles' capabilities are essentially the same. Certain gaming news sites *coughIGNcough* even went so far as to publish Microsoft's technical rebuttal pretty much verbatim, as if it were fact. Sony are taking the quietly confident approach for the most part. Nothing is cut and dried at this stage. While PS3 looks like the clear winner on paper, the difference in real world performance between Xbox360 and PS3 may well be much less distinct than the numbers suggest. Most people are basing their opinion on the much vaunted Teraflop figures alone - 360 can do one Teraflop, PS3 can do two. Here's a sobering thought: PS2's Emotion Engine CPU can do 6.2 Gflops, XBox's CPU can do 2.9 Gflops. Did PS2 turn out to be twice as powerful as XBox? You do the math.

Japanese newspaper Asahi Shinbun interviewed key players in the next-gen war last week. Allow me to steal a couple of good biting quotes:

Robert Bach (Microsoft Senior VP):
"The other two companies' presentations weren't surprising. Sony's capabilities are the same as ours. Nintendo is aiming for the niche market. [snip] The next-generation disc standard hasn't been solidified yet. Sony is taking a risk [with Blu-ray]. We will become the market leader with our next-generation console."

Ken Kutaragi (President of Sony Computer Entertainment):
"Microsoft is trailing behind us, they are not a threat. [snip] Beating us for a short moment is like accidentally winning a point from a Shihan [Karate master], and Microsoft is still not a black belt. Just like with their operating systems, they might come out with something good around the third generation of their release."

Satoru Iwata (Nintendo President):
"It's questionable what the horsepower of the two other companies' consoles will be used for, such as fast calculations and high-definition resolution. Creating game software in high definition will require everything from the models to the background to be redone, and it will bloat up development costs. And yet, it has no use for people that aren't playing with a high-definition TV set. [snip] Nintendo is a company that likes to see smiles on the faces of people that love entertainment. We're not about selling new kinds of TVs or taking control of the living room."

Game on.

All three at E3

2005-05-18T10:56:00.000+10:00

So the biggest annual event in the gaming world, E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) is upon us once more. E3 2005 is currently underway in Los Angeles and is sending shockwaves across the world. The big three have all unveiled their next generation consoles: Microsoft X-Box 360, Sony Playstation 3 and Nintendo Revolution have all been shown in some form.

X-Box 360 was first to show, with a pre-E3 special on MTV and the first of the official E3 press conferences. Featuring a slick silver-white concave design and total processing power of 1 teraflop (that's one trillion calculations per second), the 360 made more than a few jaws drop. It's clearly a generation ahead of the highest-end PCs (and Macs!) available on the market today. The teraflop of power comes from the combination of a custom-designed 3.2GHz three-core Power PC based IBM CPU, and the first ever Unified Shader Architecture GPU (custom-built by ATI) which can push around 500 million polygons a second. 360 comes with half a gigabyte of RAM onboard, a removable 20GB harddrive, 9GB capacity standard DVD-ROM based media, built-in Wi-Fi, limited backwards-compatibility, three USB ports and support for four 2.4GHz cordless controllers as standard. All 360 games will support interlaced hi-definition (1080i) display and surround sound. Impressive.

Next up was Sony, who showed off their silver convex design PS3. All those who were previously blown away by the X-Box 360 went into a state of numb disbelief when Sony laid out the PS3 details in their press conference. PS3's total processing power weighs in at 2 teraflops. That's twice the power of Microsoft's 360. PS3 is the first consumer electronics device to be announced that will use the amazing new Cell chip co-developed by Sony, IBM and Toshiba. As the PS3's CPU, the Cell runs at the same clockspeed as X-Box 360's CPU (3.2GHz), but due to it's ground-breaking architecture is capable of far greater computational power. NVidia designed the new GPU for PS3, which Sony have dubbed the RSX (Reality Synthesizer). Touted as being able to produce cinema quality CG in real-time (we've heard that before...), the RSX certainly does appear to be the most powerful real-time graphics hardware ever built, and is capable of some stunning shader effects. No official poly-count figures for PS3 have been announced.

With the RSX, PS3 not only goes one better than 360 by supporting true high-definition output in progressive scan (1080p), but it actually supports dual HD output. If you happen to have two high-definition panels handy (Ha!), then the PS3 can render two different full 2K x 1K progressive scan HD signals to both screens in real-time. (If you're not that lucky, you can use a PC monitor or non-HD TV for a second screen instead.) As examples, they mentioned that you can play a game on one screen and watch a hi-def movie, or surf the net, or video chat live with other players at the same time. Alternatively, you can simply slap both hi-def widescreens side by side for a single massive panoramic game display. While there has been no talk of it whatsoever, it seems clear to me that Sony have left the doors open for a high-definition stereoscopic VR-style headset peripheral in future. You can't tell me that with dual real-time HD output, this idea hasn't crossed their minds.

PS3 has half a gig of RAM, supports seven Bluetooth wireless controllers simultaneously, uses 54GB capacity Blu-Ray disc media, and is backwards compatible with PS2. It supports most removable media types, including memory stick (standard and duo), compact flash, SD cards, 2.5" removable hard-drives and up to 6 USB devices. PS3 is designed to be an always on, always connected device, and it seems you'll be able to remotely control the PS3 wirelessly via PSP when you're away from home. Very nifty indeed. Some of the tech demos shown in Sony's 2-hour press conference (including new Eyetoy applications) have left my brain in a state of near meltdown. It's truly difficult to comprehend the full potential of Sony's PS3.

Nintendo revealed very little in their press conference regarding Revolution. They showed a prototype of their black angular console in their press conference, but as expected, have not revealed Revolution's new controllers (believed to be wireless, gyroscopic and touch sensitive), or whatever other revolutionary tricks they have up their sleeves. Revolution is rumoured to be about three times as powerful as Gamecube in terms of processing power, which leaves it way behind 360 and PS3. Nintendo have said all along that they're not taking part in the processor speed race, choosing instead to implement innovative new features to "expand gaming". Whatever they're up to on that front, they're not telling yet.

Revolution also has half a gig of flash memory, built-in Wi-Fi, uses an undisclosed type of 12cm optical disc-based media (standard DVD-size), and features optional DVD playback as well as complete backwards compatibility. Sure to win over many retro fans, Revolution will play Gamecube, N64, SNES and even NES games. Now that's old school. Nintendo also revealed "GBA Micro" in their press conference - the smallest Gameboy Advance yet (just bigger than iPod mini), looking like a small NES pad with a backlit screen. New footage from the forthcoming Gamecube game "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess" also pleased the crowd.

Nintendo's conference was rather intriguing. There were no Revolution controllers shown and there was no mention of the forthcoming GameBoy Evolution at all. Co-incidence? They seemed to be talking in riddles at times, with careful choices of words as if they were presenting a puzzle to be solved, challenging us to use our "right brain". There may be further revelations from Nintendo before E3 is over.

X- Box 360 will be launched late this year and PS3 and Revolution will debut in 2006. Games developers certainly have unprecedented power to start taking advantage of in the coming generation, and while some early trailers show promise, I think it'll be a long time before we really see it put to good use. Exciting times ahead.

Play GameBoy on PSP

2005-05-11T11:21:00.000+10:00

Progress in the PSP homebrew scene certainly has been rocketing along since the recent discovery of the v1.00 firmware exploit. Much to everyone's surprise, the first working GameBoy emulator was released for PSP a few days ago, and has already been superceded. RIN v0.8 is the current release from Mr. Mirakichi, and it allows classic Gameboy games (like the original B&W Tetris) and GameBoy Color titles to be played on PSP.

There's no sound support yet and the display looks tiny on-screen (as it is not upscaled), but emulation speed is excellent. RIN v0.8 emulates at full speed, which is a huge improvement over its sluggish initial release. It will only run a single GB/GBC rom that has been renamed "ROM.GB" and placed in the same directory (PSP/GAME/RIN/) on the memory stick as RIN itself. As such, a sidekick PSP application has also been released (and updated) that will rename and copy roms to that location so games can be switched on the go (ie. without having to connect to a PC to perform the file transfer).

The delicious irony of Mirakichi's particular homebrew app is that it plays classic Nintendo Gameboy and Gameboy Color games which Nintendo's own latest handheld cannot. Nintendo's DS is only backwards-compatible with GameBoy Advance games, featuring no support for GB or GBC games. Nintendo can't be particularly pleased about their logo popping up on PSP screens. You have to wonder whether some people at Sony secretly find this amusing.

Sony are taking the threat posed by the recent exploit discovery seriously. They have confirmed (via their Japanese PSP site) that firmware updates will be mandatory for some future game releases and that firmware updates will be included on the game UMDs. They have also just released firmware version 1.51 for Japanese PSPs. This time around they're not even claiming that there are any functionality improvements in it. It is apparently only a security update over version 1.50, and they ask for everyone's co-operation in updating their Japanese PSPs to this latest version. It can only be assumed that Sony are plugging holes that they are aware of in the v1.50 firmware before anyone can discover and exploit them. As there is no discernable benefit to the user, I can't imagine too many people voluntarily applying this update. There are certainly plenty of people kicking themselves at having applied the v1.50 update already.

While other homebrew PSP programs are emerging (like Portable Tetris, PSP's first true homebrew game), it is clear that Sony are taking practical steps to ensure that the small number of people still capable of running them on the original v1.00 firmware will continue to dwindle. The speed of progress in the PSP homebrew scene is nothing short of astounding right now, but whether it will continue at this rate as it's audience dies off remains to be seen.

Twisted Metal: Head On

2005-05-07T23:02:00.000+10:00

Heads online, Tales you lose.

You could be forgiven for thinking that every second title in the PSP's launch line-up is an old Playstation franchise revisited, though as the new incarnations of Ridge Racer and WipEout have proven, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

The path of the Twisted Metal franchise has been a long and bumpy ride. Ten years ago, developers SingleTrac established the vehicular combat genre with the original hit Playstation game. SingleTrac's 1996 follow-up, Twisted Metal 2: World Tour, was also hugely successful and is still fondly remembered by many as the peak of the series. After TM2, Sony handed the rights to the franchise over to 989 Studios, who produced Twisted Metal 3 (1998) and Twisted Metal 4 (1999), both of which were disappointing affairs. The introduction of a more realistic physics engine (TM was never about realism) was one of many mistakes that detracted from the gameplay in 989's sequels. Luxoflux's rival franchise, Vigilante 8, rightfully took the vehicle combat crown from the crumbling TM series.

Meanwhile, SingleTrac produced another vehicular combat game called Rogue Trip (1998), that was as close to an unofficial Twisted Metal sequel as they could legally get. It was enough to prove they still had the winning gameplay formula up their sleeve. Much to the relief of TM fans, Sony gave the franchise back to the members of the original development team, who formed a new game studio called Incog Inc. (aka Incognito) as part of Sony Computer Entertainment's Santa Monica studio group. Incog reclaimed the throne and ushered the series into the next generation with Twisted Metal: Black (2001) on PS2. As the name implied, Black was a much darker take on the Twisted Metal universe, featuring tortured characters with disturbing storylines set in a gritty post-apocalyptic dystopia. The fact that all FMVs related to character plots were pulled from the PAL releases is indicative of just how gory and twisted Black was. Incog also released a final Twisted Metal game for the PSone in 2001 that went almost unnoticed. In sharp contrast to the decidedly adult Black, Twisted Metal: Small Brawl was a childish game based around kids with remote control cars. It went unnoticed for a reason: it was rubbish. 2002 saw the release of Twisted Metal: Black Online, a cutdown online-multiplayer-only version of Black that Sony offered as a free redemption game with US PS2 Network Adapters.

Are we there yet? Yes. That long and winding road brings us to Twisted Metal: Head On for PSP. The first thing that strikes you about Head On is that it is clearly not a sequel to Black. Head On's brightly coloured cel-shaded intro movie sets a distinctly different tone, setting the stage for a return to the quirkier, more comic feel of Twisted Metal 1 & 2. Indeed, Head On feels very much like a true sequel to (or contemporized version of) Twisted Metal 2: World Tour.

Once again, the mysterious Calypso organizes a tournament of vehicular destruction wreaking mayhem across the globe, promising to grant a single wish to the victor. All the usual vehicles and drivers return to fight their way through the arena battles and conquer the game's three boss stages. As well as Story mode, TM:HO provides Challenge and Endurance modes, as well as a swag of multiplayer modes and options.

The graphics, while not quite up to Black standards, do not disappoint, with detailed vehicles and environments and visually satisfying weapon effects. The game engine's draw distance is impressive, always allowing you to see the far side of the game's huge arenas, with only the faintest hints of texture switching and small detail pop-in. Aside from the first two stages (Stadium and LA) which are rather simple and sparse, the level design in the other stages (which include locations such as Paris, Egypt, Tokyo, Greece, Russia and Monaco) is excellent, with large interesting arenas peppered with hidden areas and plenty of destructible scenery. The frame rate is solid and the game cracks along at a frantic pace.

The game is easy to pick up and play, but like it's predecessors, features quite a bit of depth. Each vehicle has it's own special attack and machine guns, and there are loads of different weapon pick-ups throughout the stages, each of which also has a unique environmental attack. Through the use of directional and button combos, a wide variety of extra moves can be performed, such as rear fire, jumping, turbo, shield activation, cloaking, freezing, dropping mines, etc. The controls are very responsive, almost too responsive. The analog controls are so touchy that chances are you'll be swerving around madly unless you stick to the d-pad for steering. Even if you can get used to analog steering, you'll still find the overly sensitive analog control will lead to you regularly executing power moves accidentally. Exclusive use of the d-pad is recommended. By defeating opponents, players can pick up power-ups to upgrade their vehicles special attacks, guns, armor, turbos and such. The upgrades will carry over from one stage to the next, but are lost whenever your vehicle is destroyed.

Each stage in story mode contains an optional mini-game, which can be used to score a lot of easy weapon pick-ups, and should you perform well enough, you can unlock more hidden characters and deathmatch arenas too. These mini-games range from fun to frustrating, but provide a welcome diversion from the (ultimately repetitive) drive-and-shoot gameplay. The music for each stage is inoffensively generic and has been flavoured to suit each locale.

The AI displays a respectable amount of strategy at the Hard difficulty setting, and the bosses present a real challenge. I'd go so far as to say the last two bosses are cheap, but hey, this is essentially a tournament fighting game after all, so that's par for the course.

Despite the core elements all being intact, somehow Head On never really manages to be as satisfying or have the same impact that TM2: World Tour did. It's difficult to determine exactly which magic ingredient is missing. The formula is undoubtedly getting stale after a decade and may be more fun for the uninitiated than for veterans, but Story mode's lack of story is certainly one area in which Head On falls flat.

Whereas Black had three movie sequences for each character in Story mode (a beginning, middle and ending), the characters' storylines in Head On are virtually non-existent. Most people will miss the story altogether, as you actually have to press square on the character select screen to read a brief outline of their background and motivation. Once you're in the game, Story mode is identical for every character until their ending "movie". There's a short in-game intro cutscene from Calypso and a couple of even shorter boss intro cutscenes, but no real feeling of a story taking place at all. I used quotation marks around the word "movie" because it's more of a storyboard than a movie. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that these are in fact the storyboards of the ending movies that never got made. It's apparent from the impressive cel-shaded intro movie that 3D models of many of the characters had been built, and similar cel-shaded ending movies are what you'd expect to be rewarded with upon completion of the game. Instead you'll be subjected to a just barely animated hand-drawn storyboard of an ending sequence. The characters' lips don't even move when they speak. The weak characterization present in the uninteresting endings is really far too little and too late by then. Shabby Incog. Very shabby.

I expect the pressure to have Head On out for the US PSP launch had something to do with Story mode's obvious under-development, but whatever the reason, it really hurts the game. Without any kind of personality or story to hang onto, there's little motivation for players to complete Story mode with all 17 characters. Admittedly there are two branching points in Story mode, where you will have to choose one world location over another, but this still means that after playing through Story mode twice, you could potentially have seen pretty much everything it has to offer.

Fortunately, multiplayer is where the game really comes into its own. Head On supports wireless multiplayer in three forms: Ad Hoc, Infrastructure LAN and Infrastructure. This means you can play multiplayer with up to five other players by directly communicating with nearby PSPs, or with PSPs within range of one local wireless access point, or true wireless online with players across the globe. PSP has been lacking in true online titles, and Head On proves that it can be done very well.

Setting up or joining an online game is very straightforward and feels much like you'd expect from a home console. After accepting an online EULA, you pick a lobby room, see what games are on offer (or start your own), and you're up and playing in no time. It's been implemented exceptionally well. You can even chat in the lobby (a feature that was missing from PS2's Black Online), though PSP's mobile-phone keyboard interface is less than ideal for creative trash-talking. As well as the standard Deathmatch mode, there's Last Man Standing, Fox Hunt, and Collector modes (all available as individual or team-based versions), as well as 2 player co-operative Story mode.

There are a wide range of options for customizing the multiplayer modes, so there's plenty of scope for fresh match setups. As well as tweaking the settings for weapons, vehicles, health pick-ups and environments, the Power Relics from Twisted Metal: Black can be included to add an even broader range of special powers to multiplayer matches. If the host of a match quits, the game doesn't end; another player is automatically chosen as the new host. All the teething troubles reported with the TM servers when Head On was first released have been resolved. I've never dropped out or been kicked off, and I have always found games with minimal lag to join at any time of day or night. I have experienced occasional frame rate drops in online matches, but nothing significantly detrimental to the game experience.

Taking part in solid, good-looking, hectic six-player carnage with players across the globe on a handheld console is a pretty amazing experience. That's where Head On is head and shoulders above the pack right now. If you have a PSP, wireless internet access, and even the vaguest interest in the genre, then Twisted Metal: Head On is definitely worth checking out. Looked at solely as a single-player experience, it's good, but repeated play in Story mode soon becomes tedious.

Head On is neither a Rolls Royce nor a flaming wreck. With the latest Twisted Metal, Incog have rolled out a nice new model of a vehicle that we're already comfortable driving. Cruising round the same old streets may be starting to lose it's thrill, but taking this baby for a spin on the superhighway shows there's still some gas left in the tank.

7/10

PSP Hacked Already

2005-05-06T10:19:00.003+10:00

It has begun. Less than six months after its japanese debut, the PSP has been hacked. A guy going by the name of nem has posted the first homebrew PSP binary over at ps2dev.org. Nem's HelloWorld program proves that it is possible to boot unsigned code from the PSP's memory stick duo. It's worth noting that the code was reportedly written entirely from scratch (ie. legally - without the use of Sony's SDK).

This marks the start of the PSP's homebrew scene, which I anticipate will take off rather quickly. Given the PSP's similarity to the PS2, and the highly evolved nature of the PS2 dev scene, I suspect we'll be seeing unofficial movie player software (that allows movies on memory stick to play at PSP's full native resolution) and emulators like MAME on PSP in the not too distant future.

There is a catch of course. For now, homebrew code can only be run on PSP's with the original version 1.00 firmware. Only the original Japanese PSP's were shipped with this firmware and many of these have already been updated to v1.50 via the Network Update function. The US PSPs all shipped with v1.50 and the new Japanese PSPs now on sale come with v1.50 installed. There is no way to downgrade an updated PSP back to version 1.00. As such, most PSPs in circulation right now (and all PSPs sold in future) will be unable to run homebrew code via the current method. It's likely that Sony will make firmware updates mandatory in future game releases to try to stamp this out. Homebrew code in-and-of-itself doesn't really pose a major threat to Sony, but some of the possible implications of running unsigned code on PSP are going to be causing a few sleepless nights at SCE right now.

Most notably, legendary cracking group Paradox have cracked the UMD format, allowing them to dump the contents of UMD games to ISO files. They have released several ISOs of launch games already, but currently have no means of making them playable. You don't have to be a genius to work out that making these ISOs playable off memory stick duo is going to be a high priority in the underground dev scene.

Interesting times ahead.

Australian PSP Launch Details

2005-04-29T18:35:00.000+10:00

Just a quick post to mention that Sony Computer Entertainment Australia have finally announced an official launch date and price for the PSP. From the 1st of September 2005 (which is also the Euro launch date), the so-called "PSP value pack" (which includes the PSP and soft-case, 32MB memory stick duo, headphones with remote, AC adaptor, wrist strap, cleaning cloth and non-interactive demo UMD) will be available in Australia for AU$429.95. The standalone (non value-pack) PSP will not be available down under.

This announcement places the PSP at more than twice the price of Nintendo's DS. More significantly, it means that Australians can import PSP's more cheaply right now than they will eventually be able to buy them locally. Given that a PSP bought anywhere in the world can play games from anywhere else in the world, the region coding concerns that usually prevent casual gamers from importing consoles are not an issue for the PSP.

You can read SCE Australia's official press release here.

Bleach - Heat the Soul

2005-04-20T10:20:00.000+10:00

Bleach is PSP's first 3D fighting title.
Is it to dye for? Or just a whitewash?

Fighting games and handhelds traditionally don't mix. That's not to say they haven't been done, they just haven't been very successful in the past. Handhelds simply haven't had the power or screens to do the fighter genre justice, and the fact that handheld gaming hasn't been readily conducive to multi-player gaming hasn't helped either.

Of course, things are changing rapidly in the handheld scene, and genres once bound to the loungeroom, like racing, fighting and first-person shooters are starting to go walkabout. Sure, the GameBoy Advance tackled all of these, but let's not kid ourselves, none of the GBA renditions could hold a candle to their home console counterparts. Handheld gaming is only now emerging from the shadow of the home console, becoming a truly comparable portable experience, rather than a poor imitation. (Well, until the next-gen hits at least...)

Capcom's PSP launch title, Darkstalkers Chronicle: The Chaos Tower (aka Vampire Chronicle in Japan) was PSP's first fighting game. While it was a well executed distillation of Street Fighter's little-sister franchise, it failed to really excite the public. As a port of a decade-old 2D arcade fighter, it just didn't have mainstream appeal.

While the PSP community eagerly awaits the announcement of Tekken PSP (or something along those lines), SCE have jumped on a hotly contested game licence to bring the first 3D fighter to the PSP's screen. Bleach - Heat the Soul is the first game based on Tite Kubo's popular Bleach manga series. The Bleach manga is now being serialized in English in Shonen Jump magazine. (If you're interested you can read some online here.) To be more accurate, the Bleach game is actually based on the anime, which is based on the manga. More on that distinction later. Currently only available in Japan, the chances of a wider release for Bleach on PSP probably hinge on the anime's success in western markets.

Bleach is the story of Ichigo Kurasaki, a 15 year old japanese schoolboy with orange hair (presumably explaining the title) who can see ghosts. Thanks to an encounter with a mysterious girl named Rukia, Ichigo gains Shinigami (Death God) powers, and protects the innocent by fighting off corrupted souls called Hollows. Supernatural, comedic and romantic hijinks ensue.
Disclaimer: I freely confess I am not a Bleach fan. That's not to say I dislike it, I just haven't been exposed to enough of it to have any extensive knowledge or appreciation of it.

Considering this is the first attempt at a 3D fighter on PSP, Bleach certainly looks very impressive. The detailed screen-filling characters are all cel-shaded, making them visually consistent with the anime. The look is reminiscent of the Naruto games on Gamecube (or the recent DBZ games on PS2), though the outlining is perhaps not as solid. The environments are non-interactive rectangular 3D arenas that feature invisible, or otherwise improbable walls (you can't fight beyond those witch's hats!) and they sport a decent amount of background detail as well as some occasional fog and lighting effects. The dynamic camera and variety of physical, supernatural and weapon-based attacks ensure that the game stays eye-catching. On the whole, it's bright, good-looking and faithful to the look of the anime. This Bleach is colour-friendly.

The framerate isn't perfect, but it doesn't hamper play either. The intro sequence looks great, and apparently features some new animation not in the anime's intro. Story mode is fleshed out by mostly static anime cutscenes between stages, voiced by the original anime cast (all in japanese, with japanese subtitles). The music is surprisingly good, both in-game and during cutscenes.

No-one will confuse Bleach with a hardcore fighting game. It's unashamedly lightweight, featuring about 30 simple combos per character. Nothing tricky whatsoever. The button layout features two attack buttons, one jump button and a special button, plus the left trigger allows side-running dodges. Filling up the power gauge allows execution of a special move. Most characters have only one special move, and all but one have some kind of ranged attack. The mechanics are very accessible. Beginners will be chaining combos in no time, but fighting game veterans will be left wanting more depth. Match progression is based on a slight variation on the usual best-of-three rounds system. Combatants begin a match with two power bars. Losing one results in a "crush". The battle then continues, with the winner of the first bout still on their first power bar, retaining any remaining health left. Knock off both your opponent's power bars to "break-out" to the next stage.

Modes include Story mode, VS CPU, Survival, Time Attack and Soul Versus (the wireless Ad Hoc 2 player mode). Unfortunately, I haven't been able to try out multiplayer. Being able to fight human opponents wirelessly would certainly add a great deal to this game's appeal. Bleach also has an Appendix featuring unlockable extras, such as artwork galleries, music, sound and voice archives, and a theatre mode featuring TV commercials and the intro and end-credit movies. The unlockables are driven by the Appendix's card shop. Playing in the main modes earns points toward the purchase of cards (identical to the japanese Bleach collectible game cards) from the shop. Collecting more cards unlocks more extras, including one extra character, his story mode, and eventually a bonus Arkanoid-style mini-game that supports two players on one PSP.

Unfortunately Bleach suffers from a number of issues that prevent it from reaching its potential. First and foremost is the character roster. You start with five characters selectable. There's only one more to unlock. Six characters is not nearly enough. Given that the game is based on the anime (which is far behind the manga in terms of story progression), it could be argued that there simply weren't enough other developed characters in the anime to justify inclusion in the game. That's not really a believable excuse though, as there are glaring omissions, like characters in the intro sequence that aren't playable in the game. The characters included are all certainly distinctive, but the game mechanics don't offer enough depth to make the small roster feel sufficient. Each character has only the mandatory two outfits (1P&2P) and there's only half a dozen arenas in the game. Characters don't have ending movies, they only have a final cutscene and some voice-over on the credits. It smacks of being rushed onto the market. The basics are there, but more development time was needed to fill out the content.

Load times are also disappointing, with a 20 second load between stages. On a home console, a 20 second load feels long. On a handheld, it feels even longer. The game is import-friendly, with all the menus in English, but story mode's (skippable) japanese cutscenes will be lost on many. If you have no familiarity with the Bleach manga/anime, you'll have no idea what's going on.

If on the other hand you are a Bleach fan, you'll get a lot more out of this game than I did. Much like the first Naruto game which only featured a handful of characters, I'd say there's a strong likelihood that this game is paving the way for further Bleach games that will address the shortcomings of this one. PSP's first 3D fighter shows enormous promise for the future of the genre on handhelds, but lets the potential slip through its fingers.

Bleach may appear stainless on the surface, but it isn't long before it's dark roots start showing.

6/10

Watch the Bleach - Heat The Soul promo video here.

Unlocking PSP's future

2005-04-08T22:32:00.000+10:00

The general perception of PSP games right now is that they look pretty good. Pretty damn good. You probably wouldn't be surprised if I told you that PSP games are going to look considerably better in the future. It stands to reason that over time, games look better and better across a console's lifespan as developers become more accustomed to the hardware and learn to exploit it more effectively. The first-generation games might put just as much strain on the system as the late-generation games, but the tangible improvements come from much more efficient coding. The console's capabilities don't improve, only the software does. Such is the case with all consoles.

What if I told you that PSP was different? What if I told you that as well as enjoying the benefits of steadily improving software development, the PSP would, at some stage in the future (and without any modification), become capable of a hardware performance increase of fifty percent? That would be somewhat more surprising, wouldn't it?

Well, that's what I'm telling you. At this year's busy GDC (Game Developers Conference) in San Francisco, lots of companies gave lots of presentations. On Friday the 11th of March, between midday and 1pm, Sony Computer Entertainment America staged four different presentations simultaneously. Mark DeLoura, SCEA's manager of developer relations, delivered one of them: a rather dry and technical presentation called "PSP Advanced Software Overview". It seems that with so many talks vying for attention, this particular presentation may have slipped under the radar of the mainstream gaming press. What was revealed in that presentation however, is very significant.

DeLoura explained that the PSP's CPU and bus have software-configurable clockspeeds. The CPU core is currently locked to a maximum clockspeed of 222MHz, and the bus (typically operating at half the CPU speed) is locked to a top speed of 111Mhz. The GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) operates at bus speed, in other words, up to the 111MHz cap. The advantage of having configurable clockspeeds in a portable device is that power consumption can be controlled by adjusting the clockspeed to the demands of the software at any given moment. When the PSP is rendering complex in-game graphics at around 222MHz it will necessarily chew up more power than it would need to when displaying a simple menu screen running at say 5MHz.

The hardware specifications of the PSP were released last year. Since then it's been known that the PSP CPU's top clockspeed is 333MHz and the bus and GPU's top speed is 166MHz. See what's going on? Sony have deliberately locked the PSP's operating speed at exactly two-thirds of it's actual potential. They have an extra fifty percent of it's current performance ability simply waiting in reserve to be unleashed at a later date.

As I pointed out in my PSP Lowdown back in January, the graphical performance exhibited in PSP's launch titles looks like it's somewhere between PSone and PS2 standard. Now I understand why. The PS2's Emotion Engine (CPU) runs at 294.912MHz and it's Graphics Synthesizer (GPU) runs at 147.456MHz. While the PSP is clearly a more powerful device on paper, it's currently being restricted to a sub-PS2 standard of performance.

Of course, this begs the question: why? Why would Sony choose to cripple their own hardware? Well, the most obvious answer is that they needed to maintain an acceptable battery life. In the lead up to PSP's debut, it's battery duration was often quoted as it's single biggest potential problem. Had they launched the PSP with games running at a fully unlocked 333Mhz, the battery could have been dead in less than two hours. That just wouldn't do. Through capping the PSP's clockspeed (and enforcing other power-saving guidelines) Sony have achieved a respectable 4-6 hours of gameplay from a single charge. It now seems apparent that Sony have actually delivered a portable console whose capabilities are too advanced for current battery technology. Once that technology improves, it seems inevitable that Sony will release a higher capacity battery and unlock PSP's full potential.

The current performance cap may have other benefits in the long run. Rather than letting developers wastefully chew up the whole of PSP's hardware capability from the get-go with inefficient code, the restrictions essentially force them to code more efficiently from the beginning. Consequently, when the ceiling is eventually lifted, the developers will be ready to put the extra power to good use.

It has been theorized that the clockspeed cap is in the PSP's firmware, and will be removed by a firmware update. A developer at the gaming-age forums recently disclosed that this isn't the case. The restriction is actually being imposed at the game development stage, by way of limits in Sony's PSP libraries. The PSP devkits allow developers to constantly modify the CPU clockspeed settings from anywhere between 1 and 333MHz (or 0.5-166Mhz for the GPU and bus), but the current software libraries simply won't go above 222MHz (or 111Mhz for GPU and bus).

Initially restricting certain features of a console is not as uncommon as you might expect. As an example, the PS2 was restricted from displaying progressive scan for many years, though usually such restrictions are handled by the TRC process, not by a software restriction. The TRC (Technical Requirement Check) is the console manufacturer's checklist that games must pass before being published. Any developers who try to hack the current PSP libraries to exceed the clockspeed limits will undoubtedly have their games rejected at the TRC stage. Sony probably felt it would be easier to simply restrict the libraries than to ask the developers politely not to go above 222Mhz, and have to later issue a wave of TRC rejections. Sony will provide developers with new software libraries when they are ready to remove the restrictions. Games developed after that will be free to exploit all of the PSP's processing power. Ridge Racers' associate producer Hideo Teramoto recently confirmed in an Edge magazine interview that unlike the underclocked Ridge Racers, Namco will release PSP games in future that run at 333MHz.

When the time comes, consumers won't need to do anything. No firmware update should be required. Old games won't run any faster than they ever did, because the restrictions are in the game software, not in the PSP itself. The new games will simply push PSPs harder than ever before. Sony will have much improved high-capacity batteries on the market by then, but you won't actually need to buy one. The latest and greatest games will run on your old battery. Of course, the speed at which they'll drain your old battery should be incentive enough for you to rush out and buy a new one.

The tangible difference in the games should be very noticeable. Example: Right now, the PSP has a maximum fillrate of 444 Mpixels/sec. After the restrictions are lifted that will become 664 Mpixels/sec. Games will be able to feature more complex models with higher polygon-counts, more fluid frame-rates, better physics, you name it. We are talking about an across-the-board fifty percent performance increase after all. PSP's hardware supremacy over the PS2 should become evident. It's even possible that when the new battery is released, the PSP's fourth screen brightness setting (uber-blinding strength; currently only selectable when the PSP is plugged into mains power), will be available all the time.
PSP's future certainly looks bright.

WipEout Pure

2005-03-30T22:55:00.000+10:00

The original WipEout and it's follow-up, WipEout 2097 (aka WipEoutXL) were instrumental in establishing the public's perception of Sony's Playstation as a new breed of games console. The intoxicating blend of futuristic techno-industrial design, hypnotic visuals, incredible speed and killer soundtracks from the cream of the UK's early nineties electronica scene encapsulated the feel of the burgeoning electronic culture that the Sega generation had grown up into. WipEout was a real cultural landmark.

The WipEout franchise has certainly lost much of it's cultural significance over time, and it's widely acknowledged that the last outing, 2002's WipEout Fusion, did not live up to expectations. The fact that Sony didn't even bother to publish it in the US (it was eventually picked up by budget publisher Bam! Entertainment) seemed to signal the death of the series.

Nevertheless, here we are in 2005 and Sony are once again releasing a WipEout game alongside their new console. Fortunately for Sony, WipEout Pure on PSP marks a return to form. WipEout 2097 is popularly regarded as the peak of the series, and the fact that Pure is set in 2197 is significant of Studio Liverpool's desire to bring the game back to its roots. For the most part, they succeed.

Pure certainly looks the business. The intro, menu systems and in-game graphics are all beautifully polished and very reminiscent of the WipEout of old. The overall design takes a more stark stripped-back approach than that acheived by tDR (the Designer's Republic), and successfully plants the old WipEout look within a contemporary future style (if that makes any sense whatsoever).

The in-game graphics are beautiful, featuring lushly detailed craft and courses, liberally sprinkled with impressive lighting and particle effects. The environments can be truly breathtaking at times, such as the Sol 2 course that weaves through the sky high among the clouds. It's the best looking WipEout yet, but the beauty comes at a cost. In racing games based around outlandish speed, the framerate is everything. Sega and Nintendo's comparable uber-fast hover-racing game F-Zero GX springs to mind here. In my experience, it's framerate was always an absolutely rock-solid 60fps even when there were twenty other competitors on screen. Perhaps I've also been spoilt by Ridge Racer on PSP whose silky framerate never faltered. I'm sorry to say that WipEout Pure suffers in this regard, never seeming quite as fluid as Ridge. It's framerate can drop significantly when there's a lot of action on screen, and it's at those exact moments (like when you're flying through an explosion into a corner in between other craft) that you need every frame your eyes can soak up. It doesn't cripple the game by any means, but it's a disappointment nonetheless. WipEout Pure is being hailed as the best looking game on PSP so far, and I don't disagree, but I would have happily sacrificed some background poly-count for a locked 60fps framerate.

The all-important soundtrack line-up fits the bill. Artists include Tiësto, Freq Nasty, Aphex Twin, Röyksopp, and some returning WipEout veterans like Photek and Cold Storage. On the whole, the soundtrack stays true to the feel of the earlier WipEouts (particularly Photek's brilliant "C-Note"), but it just doesn't have the same resonance it once did. The BGM is exactly that - background music; lacking the pounding stand-out tracks that were the signature of the first two games.

Pure offers competitive racing in Single Races and Tournaments. The craft tuning options of Fusion are gone and the game is better for it. The AI is solid and the varied range of weaponry on offer is effective without feeling cheap. There are no more pit lanes. Instead, Pure now gives you the opportunity to either use or absorb any pick-ups to restore a little shield energy. This really improves the gameplay dynamic, so you never feel like you're trying to complete a lap by limping carefully back to the pit lane. The focus stays squarely on speed and rivalry.

I don't want to sound overly critical, but I have to say as a portable console game, Pure could have handled tournament progress better. Despite the fact that your profile is auto-saved at the conclusion of each race, if you shut down the PSP mid-tournament, your tournament progress is not saved. Namco's Ridge Racers on PSP handled this perfectly. I can't imagine why Studio Liverpool didn't take the time to implement the same system in Pure. There's always sleep mode of course, but using sleep mode to maintain tournament progress means you can't listen to MP3s or do anything else with your PSP until you complete the tournament.

Time Trial modes are also available of course, as well as the reworked version of Fusion's Zone mode. Zone mode is WipEout at it's purest. No competitors, no pick-ups, just you and the track going faster and faster until you explode. The zen-like Zone experience is made even purer by taking place on dedicated highly stylized tracks. The real-world scenery of the racing courses is cast aside in favour of ultra-slick minimalist futurism. Thankfully the framerate is much more solid in Zone, as there's much less going on.

In terms of unlockables, Pure is probably the deepest WipEout yet, with extra classes, courses and even a gallery of artwork to unlock, and Studio Liverpool are promising a variety of extra content over the coming months via the (now notorious) download function. If you didn't already have a reason to buy a bigger Memory Stick Duo, this is it. Extra courses are expected to eat up 8MBs of stick space each. Other impressive features include the ability to broadcast and share your records tables wirelessly, and the ability to choose skins to alter the look of the menu system. Despite the ground-breaking interent downloads, Pure's multiplayer is supported in "Ad Hoc" mode only (ie. local multiplayer, not true online).

WipEout Pure reveals it's true nature over time. Your first few races in Vector class will seem painfully slow, but it won't be long before you start cursing your mere mortal reflexes in Rapier class. Right now the gaming press is awash with reviews hailing WipEout Pure as the second coming, and in one sense, it is. Pure has given the WipEout franchise a second lease on life. It's an extremely good game that makes up for the failings of Fusion and delivers what fans of the series have been waiting for. Just try to keep your expectations in check. The new WipEout may be Pure, but it ain't perfect.

8/10

WWWipeout

2005-03-27T21:52:00.000+10:00

PSP web browsing via Wipeout!

The recently released PSP game Wipeout Pure is capable of downloading extra content from the internet. No downloads are currently available, but some clever folk decided to packet-sniff Wipeout's wireless transmission to determine where the PSP was looking for updates. They then set about fooling the PSP into accessing a different web page, spoofing the location of the actual Wipeout download site.

They found that through a PC-based DNS hack, Wipeout Pure can be tricked into accessing different locations, such as this custom-made web portal to spring-board out to the web. Surprisingly, it appears that Wipeout Pure (or perhaps the PSP’s own firmware) contains a functional web-browser. Despite the lack of a cursor, the D-pad can be used for navigation, and the X button works just like a mouse click. Upon entering a text box, the PSP pops up its built-in “mobile-phone” keyboard interface to allow input. Javascript is supported, though many HTML features (like frames) are not.

Thanks to this simple piece of PC trickery, wireless web-browsing on PSP is a reality already. So now the question is how long until Sony offers an official web-browsing solution?

More details and pictures here and here.

Bland Turismo: The REAL McLaunch story

2005-03-20T13:15:00.000+11:00

Last week saw the Australian launch of the 4th installment in Polyphony Digital's Gran Turismo series. Since the first Gran Turismo on PSone, the GT series has redefined driving games, delivering the most realistic car racing simulations available on home consoles. The GT series appeals to a broad range of people, including car enthusiasts who may not have any other interest in gaming. Despite its lack of online play or car damage, Gran Turismo 4 is easily the most comprehensive and realistic racing game to date. The launch of Gran Turismo 4 really was one of the most anticipated game releases of recent times. So it was with great interest that I attended the official midnight sales launch last Wednesday night.

The 24-hour McDonalds on Parramatta Road, Stanmore is reportedly the most frequented McDonald's outlet in the southern hemisphere. It's also known as a place where young car enthusiasts like to drive-through and "be seen". No doubt these are the reasons why Sony felt the Stanmore Macca's carpark would be the ideal location to stage their public GT4 launch event.

There was a large customised GT4 trailer set up in the middle of the car park, loaded with copies of GT4, PS2+GT4 bundles, force-feedback steering wheels and other accessories. Beside the trailer was one of those large light-up roadside signs usually used to indicate roadworks, displaying a running clock to let people know when it was finally midnight. There were about about twenty sales and promo people on hand decked out in GT4 t-shirts and caps. The area around the trailer was blocked off by large plastic barricades presumably to keep the people under control, and a handful of security guys were also around to keep everything orderly. Only one thing was missing: the punters.

When I arrived shortly before 11:30 there was no-one waiting. I thought it would pick up as midnight approached. Five minutes before midnight, only a handful of potential customers had shown up. One of the promotions girls called out to the security guards who were sitting smoking cigarettes across the carpark: "Hey, aren't you guys trained in crowd control?" "Yeah", one responded, "Where's the crowd?"

Midnight. Sales began. The JB Hi-fi sales staff quickly served the dozen or so people who were waiting, and then went back to chatting amongst themselves. It was clear the event was not having the expected level of impact. At any given moment, at least 90% of the people there were Sony and/or promotions people easily recognisable by the laminated passes around their necks, which presumably gave them exclusive access to...err...the carpark. Very few civilians were about. Given that they weren't real busy, I took the opportunity to have a chat with one of guys from the promotions company.
"It probably could have been promoted more", he said rather obviously.
"I think it was promoted on a website."
That may have been something of an overstatement. As far as I know, the only promotion of the event was a single pinned topic that had been online for 6 days in the GT4 forums on the Australian Playstation site. I politely agreed that the promotion of the event had perhaps been a bit too low-key. I went on to explain that much of the thunder had probably been stolen from the event by the fact that the release date had been broken, and that I had been offered a cheap copy of GT4 earlier that day. "By who?" I didn't say, of course.

Many of Australia's die-hard GT fans had purchased their copies of the game long before Chris Constandinou 'officially' became the first person in Australia to buy the game that night. Despite threats of being given the lowest priority on future releases if they broke the release date on this one, a number of stores had started selling their copies of GT4 as soon as they got them. Everyone likes a store that breaks release dates. Everyone but the store's competition and suppliers anyway.

Sony's official take on the event was that the atmosphere was "electric" and provided an "unforgettable" experience. Hmm. I've got to hand it to the photographer from the official Playstation magazine though. He did his best to get some shots that gave the impression of genuine public interest, by gathering up all the promotions people and having them pretend to be clamouring to buy the game (see below).

Only seconds after he had taken his photos, the tumbleweeds returned (above). Some dudes turned up at the drive-thru in a convertible Merc. The photographer quickly saw an opportunity and handed them a few cardboard GT4 dummy boxes. "Come on...you're excited!" he said. They weren't that excited though. In a stroke of genius, the photographer summoned the two girls in the tight JB Hi-Fi T-shirts to get in the car with the dudes. Suddenly, the dudes were more enthused. They were encouraged to say "Titties!" instead of "cheese" just in case the ploy had been too subtle.

I hung around for a couple of hours just to see whether it got any busier. While many of Sony's people were having a good time across the road where Spiderbait were playing at the Annandale, the carpark remained pretty barren. Wednesday nights apparently aren't a big night for Stanmore McDonalds. I had three strangers approach me at different times and ask what was going on. Two of them had never heard of Gran Turismo before. The other one was a stoned teenager who knew what I was talking about and was clearly amused by the unnecessary barricades and security people. "Sucked in" he said as he wandered back off into the darkness.

I decided it was time for me to wander off into the darkness too, as I had a plane to catch in the morning. I actually felt sorry for the promo and sales people, some of whom were clearly wondering what the hell I had been doing there the whole time, given that I hadn't bought a copy of the game. Despite having turned down the offer of a copy of GT4 earlier that day, I went and bought a copy of the game before I left. And a Quarter Pounder.

Densha de Geek

2005-03-02T11:43:00.000+11:00

Mobile Train Simulator + Densha de GO! Tokyo Kyuukou Hen (PSP)

Ever wanted to give up your day job and become a train driver? No, me neither, though the thought of getting paid to drive a vehicle that you don't even have to steer doesn't sound too bad. Add to that the ability to sound a mighty airhorn every so often and the slight possibility that you might derail or otherwise smash into something with an incredible amount of momentum and it all starts to seem more attractive.

Apparently the prospect of driving a train is a great deal more appealing to the people of Japan. No doubt this has something to do with their incredibly efficient rail system. Evidently train driving is popular enough in Japan to support its own genre of games, dominated by the long-running Densha de GO! (Let's go by train) series. There have been over twenty different variations of the Densha de GO! games in arcades and on consoles since the original 1997 title. (Like Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter, it appears that last year's Densha de GO!: Final was not as final as the title suggested.) Getting a train from one station to the next doesn't sound like a great basis for a game, but it's not quite as straightforward as it sounds.

What challenge could such a simplistic gameplay concept offer? Well, I'm glad I asked. There are really two parts to the Densha game mechanics: driving and stopping. Precision control of the throttle and brakes is what the whole game is about. Your ability to control the train is reflected in your score. You have four levels of throttle and seven levels of braking at your disposal, as well as the emergency brake and the ability to throw the train into neutral.

The challenge of driving is to make it to the next station on time while obeying the signals and staying within the speed limits on each section of the line. Sounds simple in theory, but the forces of changing track gradients, varying signals and the sheer momentum of tons of moving steel mean that you'll be constantly tweaking the controls to maintain the optimum speed required to stay on time. And then there's stopping.

Stopping is the real challenge. You're going to need to start breaking hundreds of metres before you even see the station, and then you'll need to smoothly slide in to stop the train dead on the mark. The precision of your stopping position is measured in centimetres. Pull up too late and you'll overshoot the platform. Pull up too early and the doors won't open. Mastering smooth accurate stopping takes a lot of practice. I don't know how many times I've started braking too late and had to resort to slamming on the emergency brake to try to salvage the stop. This inevitably leads to my passengers falling over and my train overshooting the platform anyway. Result: complaining passengers and loss of points.

As it's title suggests, this latest train game on PSP brings together Taito's Densha series and Sony's Train Simulator series in one package, and covers at least three complete lines from Tokyo's Kanto region. You can play in either series' game modes, though the differences appear to be are mostly cosmetic (the HUD is displayed differently). The Train Simulator mode also allows you to sit exams and unlock new lines.

At a glance you'd be forgiven for thinking that this game looks better than Gran Turismo 4. It looks absolutely realistic, because it's graphics are in fact real footage. The entire length of the train lines has been captured on video. The game speeds up and slows down the footage to reflect your speed. This works surprisingly well, rarely looking obvious or choppy. Where previous Densha games used 3D graphics, this game lets you take in the real scenery of Tokyo, and being able to watch the traffic on nearby roads, the live people on the platforms, or other trains passing by, adds enormously to the game's appeal. It looks fantastic on the PSP screen, though some of the subway (ie. underground) sections are admittedly less than awe-inspiring. Games based around live-action FMV are usually an absolute disaster. Not so in this case. This genre couldn't be more perfectly suited to it, and it's been implemented very well. It's all the more impressive to see it in action on a handheld console.

All the sounds of the Tokyo train system have been faithfully reproduced and there's plenty of speech in there too, including on-board announcements, complaining passengers, and tips from the anime conductor girl. You can sound the horns, though depending on the game mode, you may be penalized for improper usage. The game becomes increasingly difficult and throws in new elements (such as level crossings and trackside works) that you'll need to adapt to. While it's quite jap-heavy, it's still reasonably import-friendly to pick up and play. The database sections are full of technical detail on all the different trains and the intricacies of the signal system, though these are totally unintelligible to the non-jap fluent (like myself). Chances of an english language release are slim to nil.

So it looks great, sounds good, and the gameplay is actually challenging. There's just no getting around the fact that this game is extremely geeky. If you can handle that, then you might enjoy this opportunity to see the sights of Tokyo without flying over there. The ability to drive the 8:00am train to Shibuya while you commute to work on the other side of the planet has gotta be worth something.

I'd give this niche title a solid 8/10. It's not for everyone. Hell, it's not for the vast majority of people, but what it sets out to achieve, it delivers with flair. Only you can decide whether this unique PSP title is just your ticket or too off-the-rails. Could this be PSP's first sleeper hit?
(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

I highly recommend watching the official (and superbly zany) japanese promo videos for this game here.

Touching Down Under

2005-02-24T15:08:00.000+11:00

Ahead of next month's European launch, Nintendo's DS has been launched onto the Australian retail market today, bundled with a Metroid Prime Hunters: First Hunt demo cartridge. Electronics Boutique outlets were very busy today with people picking up pre-orders, though the Sydney CBD store I visited gave the distinct visual impression that no games were available for it yet. Every DS game on the shelves was a dummy copy with a "Coming Soon" sticker and no price tag. I had to ask a salesperson which of the games displayed were actually available. Unfortunately, Sega's Project Rub (aka Feel The Magic) and Metroid: Hunters are not available yet.

Among the day one titles were Mario64 DS, Warioware: Touched, Asphalt: Urban GT, Tiger Woods: PGA Tour, Sprung, Ping Pals, Zoo Keeper and Spiderman 2. Ridge Racer DS was notably absent. Perhaps Nintendo know what's good for them. As a port of an N64 game that's over five years old that inevitably draws very unfavourable comparisons with the all-new (and gobsmackingly good) Ridge Racer title on PSP, Ridge Racer DS is a title best shelved and never spoken of again. The EB salesperson asked me if I had pre-ordered a DS. When I replied that I'd had a DS for three months she looked at me like I was mentally deranged. The nearby Games Wizards store didn't have any DS games on their shelves (dummy cases or otherwise) and had none available except pre-orders.

If you are interested in buying a DS in Australia, I'd recommend going to BigW. BigW are retailing the DS for $188 and games for $58.82, which makes them significantly cheaper than their competitors. True bargain hunters could even go to K-Mart and demand they price match BigW and take off a further ten percent of the difference.

Australian DS gamers can get together and chat about their new consoles and games on the unofficial DS Australia boards.

PSP seasonally adjusted

2005-02-21T14:33:00.000+11:00

PSP's Australian launch date has slipped again. Until now, Sony's only official word on the launch date had been "first quarter 2005", with everyone expecting a late March debut. Today the official line on the Australian Playstation website changed to "Autumn 2005". That's somewhere in the range of March to May. Realistically, it suggests May.

No doubt the delay has a lot to do with how many PSPs Sony are capable of producing right now. They can't service all the world's markets at once yet. The impending US release will certainly provide demand for a large number of units. Sony are expected to have half a million of them ready to sell in the US on March 24. Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Asia will have to wait until Sony can produce sufficient stock to launch the PSP successfully in those regions. Despite huge demand, Sony have still sold just under a million PSPs in Japan, where the console has now been available for almost two and a half months.

The delay will probably lead many eager gamers to import a PSP. While there's been no official word on price, current estimates put the PSP's Australian RRP at around $400. If this turns out to be true, then importing a PSP from Canada would be a cheaper option.

All of this is good news for Nintendo, whose DS goes on sale in Australia for $199 this Thursday. Sony's delay should translate into better sales for the DS in the short term, allowing the DS to build a stronger user-base before the PSP hits the market.

Rumble Roses

2005-02-15T09:57:00.000+11:00

Konami, is that you?

Women in videogames tend to be significantly more buxom, pouty, and provocatively dressed than the majority of their real life counterparts. You don't need to be a genius to work out why that is. Most gamers are men. Most men enjoy looking at buxom, pouty, scantily clad women. You'd be hard pressed to find a woman character in a videogame who doesn't flaunt her sexuality to some degree. It's all a matter of degrees though. Some games can maintain a modicum of subtlety and class in this regard, even going so far as properly contextualising the character's behaviour and motivation within the plot (such as Silent Hill 2's Maria, or Metal Gear Solid 3's Eva).

On the other hand, there are games that seek to do none of this, offering shameless titillation without concern for plot, or even decent gameplay. In Japan, this kind of game is a genre unto itself. Japanese budget game publisher D3 has released a whole slew of games centred around women in bikinis doing stuff. Fighting, snowboarding, posing, playing mahjong, dismembering zombies, competing in wacky game-shows, growing to enormous size and crushing cities godzilla-style, etc. It's an established and accepted genre in Japan.

In the Western world, games like these have never really taken off. The notable exception is Tecmo's Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball (XBox) which was less of a volleyball game, and more of a boob-simulator. Tecmo's DOA fighting-game franchise was always better known for its cast of busty women and jiggle-dynamics than its core gameplay. Cashing in on this, Tecmo saw fit to release a game focussed on the girls of DOA bouncing around in swimsuits. It sold massive numbers all over the world, not because its target-market wanted to play volleyball, but because they wanted to see these virtual girls jiggling about in increasingly skimpy bikinis. Ironically, DOA:XBV is, in my opinion, one of the 'girliest' games ever made. Behind the eye-candy, the game is really all about shopping for outfits and accessorizing.

All this pre-amble brings me to the latest wrestling game from Konami. "The first and only all-women's wrestling game on any platform": Rumble Roses (PS2). Konami, the very same company that gave the world the Silent Hill and Metal Gear games, has shockingly released the new pinnacle in boob-powered videogames. Make no mistake - Rumble Roses hits the player over the head with overt T & A like no other game I've ever seen. It's all presented in a fairly light-hearted manner with no nudity whatsoever, and yet it seems more confronting than ever due to the lifelike animation. The fact is that in games that bother to animate breasts, they're typically more reminiscent of large globes of weightless jelly than any real body parts. Not so in Rumble Roses - its evident that a lot of time was spent perfecting the physics and motion of the Roses' bodies, such that they move, bounce and, dare I say it, sag in a very weighty and realistic fashion. And then there are the mud matches - that's right: women in bikins wrestling in mud. Another dubious first for videogames.

I asked myself how Konami could stoop so low as to produce one of these tacky pervert games that sacrifices gameplay and production values for the sake of cheap smut. Well, hang on a minute. It may look like a duck, but it doesn't necessarily quack like a duck. Konami developed this game in conjunction with Yukes, the undisputed masters of wrestling game design. Despite my view that (and I may be struck down for saying this) wrestling games don't rank too highly up the foodchain, I have to admit the gameplay mechanics of Rumble Roses are solid. It's slightly less complex than Yukes' Smackdown games but is just as well balanced and no doubt was simplified to make it more accessible and fun. Performing the usual wrestling moves fills meters, alowing each character to execute special killer, lethal and humiliation moves. Some of these are truly spectacular. The production values are actually very high; the graphics engine is impressive and the wrestling animation and motion capture work is top notch. There is actually a plot. A ridiculous one, to be sure, involving the use of a legendary dead wrestler's DNA in an evil scheme to produce cyborgs, but its better than nothing. Each character has a storyline, played out in cutscenes between matches. Each character also has an unlockable alter-ego, which is more than just a mere palette-swap or alternate costume. The alter-egos have their own distinct personalities and storylines. The voice acting is dire, but the soundtrack is very good, from the rocking cover of David Lee Roth's Yankee Rose, to new tracks from Konami's respected composer Akira Yamaoka. This game has Konami written all over it, from the character design, to the music and the billboards throughout the game promoting other Konami franchises.

Konami are not ashamed. Perhaps they shouldn't be. While they have produced an outrageously blatent T & A game, they have also made the first game of this type that actually plays well and is technically a quality production in almost every respect (attrocious voice acting aside).

Is it a great game? Certainly not.
Is it a good game? Yes, strangely enough it is.
Will it succeed? It has the potential to sell bucketloads.
Will it help change the popular perception of gamers as sexually frustrated geeks who need to get out more? No.

Rumble Roses will be released in Australia this Friday.

The Hard Cell

2005-02-08T10:45:00.000+11:00

Sony, IBM and Toshiba delivered an in-depth presentation at the ISSCC (International Solid State Circuits Conference) in San Francisco on Monday, revealing their Cell processor for the first time. The Cell is the culmination of their joint research and development work that began in March 2001 at a design lab based in Austin, Texas.

The Cell processor is a 90nm chip that incorporates 234 million transistors and features a breakthrough multi-core architecture and ultra-fast communications capabilities. Initial hardware testing indicates clock speeds well above four gigahertz and (incredibly) over 256 gigaflops. That's over 256 billion floating point operations per second. According to a list maintained by scientists at the University of Mannheim and the University of Tennessee as recently as June 2002, that level of performance would rank the 2 centimetre wide Cell chip among the 500 fastest supercomputers in the world. The Cell is operating-system independant, and is capable of running multiple operating systems simultaneously.

William Zeitler, senior VP and executive of the IBM Systems and Technology Group, said "Today we see the tangible results of our collaboration: an open, multi-core, microprocessor that portends a new era in graphics and multi-media performance." Ken Kutaragi, the "father of Playstation" and president of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc, added "With Cell opening a doorway, a new chapter in computer science is about to begin." Masashi Muromachi, corporate VP of Toshiba Corporation and president & CEO of Toshiba's Semiconductor Company, said "We are proud that Cell, a revolutionary microprocessor with a brand new architecture that leapfrogs the performance of existing processors, has been created through a perfect synergy of IBM, Sony Group and Toshiba's capabilities and talented resources. We are confident that Cell will provide major momentum for the progress of digital convergence, as a core device sustaining a whole spectrum of advanced information-rich broadband applications, from consumer electronics, home entertainment through various industrial systems."

Bold statements and very impressive specs, but performance in real world application is all that matters to the public. This of course, is entirely dependent on how well any given software is written to exploit the hardware. IBM claims that the Cell supports a number of programming models that should make programming for the chip relatively easy. Heat is always an issue with super-fast processors, but Cell will apparently rely only on air-cooling and is capable of running at five different power states to reduce the heat it produces.

We'll have to wait a while before we see the Cell in real-world devices and can start to get an idea of its true potential. Sony's PlayStation 3, expected to launch in 2006, will likely be the flagship Cell device. XBox's successor will almost certainly beat the PS3 to the market, gaining some advantage in early sales. Whether Cell's sheer power will allow Sony to dominate in the next generation remains to be seen.

Resident Evil 4

2005-01-18T16:02:00.000+11:00

You are dead. Three words that many people believed could be applied to the Resident Evil franchise, after Capcom's many renditions of its Romero-inspired zombie games. What with Resident Evil 1, 2, 3, Zero, CVX, Outbreak 1 & 2, and the three Gun Survivor games in all their various editions and director's cuts, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Capcom were flogging a dead horse by releasing Resident Evil 4.

Well, I'm pleased to report that that horse has risen from the dead and angrily trampled over all who doubted Capcom's ability to reinvent the definitive survival horror series. Resident Evil 4 is an entirely new experience.

Resident Evil 4 catches up with Leon Kennedy six years after the whole exerimental-bioweapon-viral-outbreak-leads-to-whole-city-becoming-flesh-eating-zombies affair that he dealt with in Resident Evil 2. The evil Umbrella corporation and their zombie-spawning T-virus are long gone. This time, Leon is sent to a small village in a forest in Spain, to rescue Ashley Graham, the President's daughter. It appears she has been kidnapped by the leader of a regional religious sect as part of an elaborate plot to put an end to "America policing the world". The Spanish locals go about their country-folk business until they notice you, and then they drop everything and try to kill you en masse.

They aren't zombies as such, but they don't appear to be entirely human either. When you shoot one in the head and they just wince and keep coming toward you, you know something isn't right. They're not the slow lumbering undead, rather they're fast, intelligent and organised. They talk to each other, they lay traps, they use a wide variety of weapons, they'll do their best to surround you, and they have no qualms about taking your head off with a chainsaw at a moment's notice. The first time you face a large group of them running toward you, it's quite intimidating. When you draw your gun, take aim and they suddenly dodge, weave and duck out of your line of fire, it starts to get really frightening. It's about then that you'll get hit in the head with a flying axe. The enemy AI in RE4 presents a real challenge.

The quality of the graphics is astounding. Resident Evil 4 has been developed from the ground up for the Gamecube, and it shows off the power of the machine like no other game has. Unlike the other RE games, RE4 is presented entirely in real-time 3D, featuring no pre-rendered backgrounds or movie sequences. It's displayed exclusively in letterboxed widescreen format, which not only lends a suitably cinematic feel to the game, but no doubt helped Capcom to maintain a constant framerate (30fps) even in progressive scan. The environments are dripping with rich detail and show off some of the best weather effects ever seen, while the villagers and numerous other enemies look and animate very convincingly. The overall effect is extremely realistic and immersive, which makes the game all the more terrifying.

The Gamecube's audio capabilities have been pushed to new heights with Resident Evil 4 too. The whole game is encoded in Dolby Pro Logic II, and you'll want your surround sound system turned up to really get the most out of it. The atmospheric soundscapes really play a huge role in creating an ominous, oppressive feeling. On more than one occasion, my neck has been saved by one of the rear speakers alerting me to the presence of an approaching enemy. By the way, if your grandmother speaks Spanish, she probably won't be impressed by what she hears in this game. In another departure for the series, the voice-acting is actually very good, and is properly lip-synched.

Most of the game system has been overhauled, though the gameplay is unmistakably Capcom flavoured. Leon now has a wide variety of context sensitive actions he can perform. Defeated opponents will sometimes drop ammo or money that can be used in 'shops' to buy upgrades, new weaponry, or items. While the mission (or chapter) objectives are linear, your path needn't be, and there are many extra battles, side-quests and hidden treasures to be found. It's an evolution of the gameplay that Capcom have been developing in many of their other games like Devil May Cry and Onimusha. Sure it's formulaic, but it's one of the most satisfying gameplay formulas around.

You may find the inventory system a bit frustrating. There are no more item chests - you can only carry whatever you can fit in a single attache case (though bigger cases are available). You won't have room for more than a few weapons, so you'll need to plan carefully. You can discard or sell items that you no longer want to carry. Having to make potentially compromising decisions about what to keep and what to discard is all part of the survival horror experience.

The difficulty curve builds in harmony with your skills and the atmosphere keeps getting thicker. Just wait until night falls and you're being persued through a graveyard by a lynch mob (complete with flaming torches) in the middle of a torrential thunderstorm. Boss battles are intense, spectacular and peppered with fresh ideas that keep the fear factor up. Even the cutscenes will have you on your toes. Every now and then you'll need to do a bit of impromptu button mashing during cutscenes to avoid certain death. The challenge grows even greater when you find Ashley and bring her with you. Turn your back for a second and she'll be carried off by the village people - and they aren't taking her to the YMCA.

There's so much more I'd like to say about Resident Evil 4, but I don't want to spoil anything. You need to play this game for yourself, whether you liked the earlier Resident Evil games or not. This is not just the best survival horror game yet, its one of the best executed games I've ever seen. Every aspect of it is of the highest quality. I should mention that Capcom have confirmed that RE4 will be ported to PlayStation 2 in 2006, though it is inevitable that the game will suffer badly in the process. Gamecube owners rejoice: this is the title that shows how good Gamecube really is. Non-Gamecube owners: go and buy one now. Resident Evil 4 is probably the best game you'll play this year.

Lumines the Rezurrection?

2005-01-14T10:58:00.000+11:00

Back in the heyday of the Dreamcast, an odd little game emerged from Sega's United Game Artists called Rez. On the surface, the game was a simple shooter, but at its heart, it was a unique and hypnotically beautiful synaesthetic experience that explored the evolution of human civilisation and technology. The game developed a cult following and is still regarded by many as one of the must-have titles for both Dreamcast and PS2.

Fans of Rez have been waiting patiently for another comparable game experience. Industry legend Jeff 'Yak' Minter (who has been coding great games since 1982's Andes Attack on the Vic20) looked like he was going to deliver the goods with his much-anticipated Unity project for Gamecube. Seemingly the culmination of years of development on his "lightsynth" programs, Minter's Unity was to be published by recent OBE nominee Peter Molyneux's Lionhead studios. Tragically, the Unity project was cancelled with little explanation a little over a month ago.

So attention turned back to Tetsuya Mizuguchi, the designer of Rez (as well as Sega Rally and Space Channel 5), to provide a fresh gaming experience. Mizuguchi has since left Sega and established his own new studio. The first product from his Q Entertainment studio is a PSP title called Lumines (apparently pronounced "Loo-min-ez"). Is it the next Rez? Well, not quite.

That's not to say it's a bad game though. On the contrary, it's really very good, and does share notable similarites with Rez. Lumines is a puzzle game which clearly borrows from the Tetris tradition, and at a glance it could be mistaken for yet another clone in the sea of Tetris-derivatives. When you play it however, you realize that it's quite a fresh and original game. The basic premise is simple. 2x2 blocks made up of 4 small squares fall from the top of the screen. The squares are randomly either coloured or uncoloured, and you need to arrange the blocks to produce solid areas of 2x2 squares or larger that are coloured or not. A vertical 'beatline' constantly passes across the playfield from left to right, clearing the solid areas as it goes. It sounds too simple to be compelling, and yet, like Tetris, it is extremely and immediately addictive.

The main similarity with Rez is apparent in the way that the gameplay affects the audio-visual experience. Mizuguchi has enlisted the talents of Mondo Grosso and Nobuchika Eri to provide an immersive soundtrack that shifts and evolves as you play. Clearing areas of different sizes produces satisfying noises that fit in with the music and remain in time with the rhythm thanks to the timing of the moving 'beatline'. Shifting and dropping the blocks also produces sounds that become part of the music. The more you clear, the more the music grows and you eventually move on to new levels without any break in the gameplay, though the whole audio-visual style changes as the game continues. Each level (or 'skin') has it's own colour-scheme, animated background and distinct soundtrack, just as Rez did, while maintaing an overall style of abstract futurism.

The apparently simple gameplay mechanics feel almost instantly familiar and make the game easy to pick up and play. Of course you'll begin to discover the inherent complexities hidden in the system soon enough. The fact that the completed areas do not disappear immediately, but only when the beatline passes over them, introduces a whole new level of strategy to the game. It allows large combos to be chained, but can also create havoc if you complete an area at the exact moment the beatline is passing over it. Part of the area may be cleared, but part of it may remain, leaving an unexpected mess to clean up. The addition of special squares that will take all connected squares of the same type with them when cleared gives the player the occasional opportunity to reduce built up problem areas. In addition to the standard single, VS CPU and multiplayer modes, there are time attack modes and devious special challenges in which you need to build increasingly complex shapes. It's an ideal game for the PSP, as it's versatile modes can cater to a sixty second bash or a session lasting hours. It's also very power efficient, as it only loads data from the UMD briefly as the levels change during play.

With Lumines, Mizuguchi has delivered an engrossing puzzle game overflowing with uber-cool presentation that is uncharacteristic of the genre. It lacks some of the wow factor and all of the philosophical and anthropological exploration that elevated Rez into a class of its own, but stands as another brilliantly conceived and executed game in its own right.

DS hits a new low and Evil flies high

2005-01-12T14:52:00.000+11:00

Two quick updates:

In a surprise move, Nintendo Australia announced yesterday that their DS handheld will be available in Australia from February 24th for only $199. This is not only earlier than the expected late-March launch date, but also much cheaper than anticipated. At the current exchange rate, this makes the Australian price cheaper than the US retail price. Nintendo Australia are obviously keen to replicate their huge early sales success in both the Japanese and US markets, and are hoping to establish a solid user-base before Sony's PSP launch. While Sony Australia were as shocked as anyone by the DS' Australian launch price, it remains to be seen whether they will counter with a lower than expected PSP RRP.

Yesterday also saw the release of the long-awaited Resident Evil 4 for Gamecube in the US. If early reviews are anything to go by, this could be one of finest games ever made. It's average review score (as tracked by gamerankings.com) is currently sitting at 96.4%, putting it in the league of the established all-time greats such as Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Soul Calibur. The game is currently being shipped to eager importers across the globe (myself included). Expect impressions of the game here shortly.

PSP: The Lowdown

2005-01-04T10:51:00.000+11:00

Sony's PSP has been getting a lot of attention on the internet of late. It's been the subject of much hype, fanboyism, derision, ridicule, adulation and speculation. Well, I'd like to tell you about the PSP, without predjudice and without rose-coloured glasses. I'm not in Sony's pockets or anyone else's. In this comprehensive (and admittedly very long) PSP feature, I'm going to cut through the hype and tell it how it is. Let's start with the big issue.

Battery life.
A crucial factor that portable devices live or die by. This is certainly a bone of contention for PSP, as solid figures have been conspicuously scarse. Sony haven't helped the situation by offering wildly varying reports of what kind of battery life users can expect. The PSP's own battery information, as accessed through the system settings menu, is sketchy at best. It offers a reliable percentage indication of power remaining, but couples that with a much less reliable estimate of hours and minutes remaining that can change dramatically based upon recent usage patterns. This ambiguity is unavoidable really, as the PSP can chew up a lot of power very quickly, or use very little, depending on which combination of features are in use.

Playing back MP3s all day through the headphones with the screen off is all well and good, but what the gaming world really wants to know is how long a PSP will run when playing a game - and a good game at that; one that takes advantage of the PSP's strengths. So I decided to put it to the test, running Ridge Racers at full brightness and mid-volume. For the record, mid-volume is loud and full brightness is really very bright. You could easily play at mid-brightness and much lower volume without feeling at all like you were compromising your experience for the sake of power saving.

I started my test by running the battery down totally and giving it a fresh charge. Fully charging the battery took two hours and five minutes. Before commencing play, the battery information indicated 100% charge (obviously) with seven hours, seventeen minutes remaining. I booted Ridge Racers, watched the intro and spent the next forty-five minutes completing seven races. I then checked the battery information again: 94% charge, 4:15 remaining. Back to the races. After another solid hour and forty minutes the battery information indicated 55% charge and 2:23 remaining. One hour and thirty-five minutes later, it was at 16% charge and 35 minutes remaining. I had now been playing for four hours, and it struck me that since the second time I checked the battery information (at 94% after I started playing RR), the estimates had been pretty accurate. I began racing again and the power light started flashing ten minutes later. I should mention that the power light is usually hidden by your right thumb when playing, which suited me, as I didn't want to have to look at a flashing green light until the battery ran out. I continued racing for the next eighteen minutes, and then mid-race, the screen went blank and displayed a flashing dead battery icon before shutting down.

So, grand total: four hours, twenty-eight minutes of solid gameplay from a single charge. Take that how you will. In my opinion, it's perfectly adequate. Of course, you could always buy a spare battery if you feel the need, and with the battery being removable, Sony have left their options open to release a higher capacity battery when battery technology improves.

Graphics
The PSP's graphic capabilities have been widely talked up as "a handheld PS2". Sorry to burst the bubble, but that's not quite what I'm seeing. The PSP certainly marks a revolution in handheld gaming graphics - it blows every other handheld game platform out of the water, but based on the current software, I'd have to say it's graphic capabilities lie somewhere between PSone and PS2. Ridge Racers looks great and features many impressive effects like real-time reflection mapping, sun bursts and particle effects, but its poly-count and texturing don't quite live up to PS2 standards. Anti-aliasing is notably absent too, though jaggies are far less obvious on such a small screen. The number of pixels the PSP needs to render in each frame is far less than the number a PS2 renders to a TV frame, so it has much less work to do in that regard. Compare Metal Gear Acid on PSP with MGS3 (or even MGS2) on PS2 and you'll see a world of difference. Metal Gear Acid bears a closer resemblance to MGS1. In any case, such comparisons are probably pre-mature, as this is the very first generation of PSP software, and there's certain to be a lot more potential in the PSP than the launch titles are exhibiting.

Bottom line: the PSP is a graphics powerhouse whose results are extremely easy on the eye, thanks to both its sheer grunt and its bright, sharp, high-resolution widescreen.

Design.
The PSP is a very slick looking device, particularly when you first take it out of the box. Take a good look, because chances are it will never look that good again. The glossy front panel shows fingerprints very noticably, even from clean hands, and wiping with a tissue or cloth has a tendency to smear them. The brightness of the screen means that you won't notice them too much when its on, but its disappointing that such a good looking device takes on a grubby look so quickly and doesn't wipe clean easily. The unprotected glossy front panel is also prone to scratches, and several people have reported that even sliding the unit in and out of the official soft case has resulted in scratches. I have been keeping the PSP in its soft case whenever its not in use, and if I look hard enough under the right lighting conditions, I can see very fine horizontal scratching on the surface, but it's not visible enough to be annoying. It does tend to suggest that scratches are going to be an issue across the lifetime of the product though. You'll need to handle your PSP with kid gloves if you want to keep it looking its best. Handhelds take a beating - Nintendo know that, and have designed their two latest handhelds to survive portability without damage to the screen or controls. Sony have chosen to sacrifice some durability for the sake of style. The PSP looks absolutely gorgeous, but having to treat it so carefully is kind of frustrating.

Yet another size comparison shot.

The 16:9 screen is outstanding. It's the best screen I've seen on any handheld device. It's exceptionally bright and sharp and can actually be viewed from most angles without losing too much contrast. At full brightness its easily visible in direct sunlight, and in a darkened room its practically blinding. It does tend to struggle when shifting blacks though. On a sunset course in Ridge Racers you'll find the rear tyres of the car in front of you leave a black blur behind them as they weave across the screen. That's no visual effect, it's the screen failing to lighten the previously black pixels fast enough. It's not a dealbreaker by any means, but if I had to find fault with the screen that would be it.

The rear of the unit is made of a textured black plastic that provides a welcome degree of grip in comparison to the glossy front. The battery cover and pop-open UMD door feel, well, a bit flimsy to be honest. They don't actually feel like they'll break, but they do feel very thin and lightweight. The memory stick duo slot is hidden behind a small clip that folds out on a flexible piece of plastic. If any part of the PSP is going to break first, this feels like it. Even with the clip fully open, it still gets in the way and makes inserting or removing a memory stick duo more of a hassle than it should be. The UMD door is secured by a metal catch and there's no way that simply flexing or twisting the unit would open the door and send the disc flying. The creator of the notorious flying UMD videos online must have been deliberately flicking the open switch.

The memory stick duo clip.

I should also mention that I have some reservations about the design of the UMD media in the long term. The clear underside of the UMD casing has a large open slot that leaves a portion of the disc inside exposed. The open area is plenty big enough to catch a whole fingerprint and without carrying around the UMD cases (which are significantly bigger than the PSP itself) it seems inevitable that dust will accumulate inside the UMD casing over time. A sliding panel or smaller exposed area would have been nice. No doubt some third party are already manufacturing small plastic cases to carry UMDs around in.

Controls
Sony's decision to stick with the Playstation control layout was a bit of a no brainer, and makes the system feel instantly familiar. Unlike PS2's dual shock, the PSP's buttons have no analog sensitivity, and due to size limitations, one of the best features of Playstation's controller, its four shoulder buttons, has been reduced to only two. The twin analog sticks have been replaced by a single analog control beneath the d-pad. I was expecting it to be something like the spongy, tilting analog nub that IBM use on their ThinkPad laptops, but PSP's analog control is a flat disc that slides in all directions without tilting and springs back into the centre. It has good analog sensitivity, it's textured for maximum grip and it's springiness provides effective tactile feedback. It's an extremely clever and space-efficient design for analog control on a handheld console. It's placement may irritate some people however. People with large hands may feel like the analog control ought to be another centimetre to the upper-right. It's not too hard to find a comfortable position for your hands, but it will take a little re-adjustment. The start and select buttons are within easy reach of your right thumb under the lower-right corner of the screen, while the other buttons beneath the screen (the home, volume +/-, screen and mute buttons) are all well out the way, so as not to be accidently pressed. The two switches on the lower side edges of the device (the power/hold switch and the wi-fi switch) are also well placed to be comfortable when needed but to avoid accidental use. I haven't had any problems with the buttons being loose, squeaky or unresponsive.

Loadtimes
Loadtimes are an inevitable disadvantage of disc-based systems, and it does feel strange to have to wait through "now loading" screens on a handheld after generations of cartridge-based portables. However, the loadtimes are no worse than what we've come to expect from Playstation. There's a loadtime of about fifteen seconds when first booting up Ridge Racer and a loadtime of around twelve seconds before starting each race. The loadtimes are roughly the same as those on Ridge Racer V for PS2. They're not long enough to be painful and considering the many advantages that disc-based systems make possible, it's a worthy trade-off.

Save files
At this stage, PSP save files are somewhat larger than their PS2 equivalents, with the average size weighing in at around one megabyte. Ridge Racers comes in at the lower end of the scale at 352 kilobytes. Despite online reports of PSP save files making use of video clips on the save management screen, I have seen no evidence of this being the case. The save files appear to use animated .png icons instead. This should relieve early fears that PSP save files were wasting precious space on video clips. The confusion seems to have arisen from the video previews that are displayed in the menu system when selecting the UMD itself. These videos are loaded from the UMD, not the memory stick. With any luck, the size of PSP save files will decrease as developers use compression more efficiently. Even if the save files remain significantly larger than those on PS2, it's hardly cause for concern, as you can buy half a gigabyte of memory stick duo pro for about the price of two 8MB PS2 memory cards.

User Interface
The PSP's menu system is based on the Cross Media Bar (XMB) that Sony utilize in many of their high-end AV devices. It's an aesthetically pleasing and intuitive icon-based system that is well suited to the PSP's functions. The menu is split into five main categories horizontally (Settings, Photo, Music, Video and Game), with sub-options presented vertically. The PSP's interface has a few niggling quirks though. When switched on, the system will always auto-boot the UMD if one is present. This can be a pain if you want to do anything other than play the UMD when you switch the PSP on. Of course, you could eject the UMD first to go directly to the menu, but that could be a little impractical if you're on the go. With the UMD in, you have to wait for the game to begin loading and then press the Home button, select Yes to indicate that you do want to quit the game, and then wait a few seconds for the XMB interface to load up. The trouble is, once the XMB has loaded up, you'll begin navigating your way through to whatever it is you want to do, only to have the XMB hijack your navigation and return you to the UMD icon a moment later when it finally recognises that a UMD is present. That's annoying.

Allow me to also mention that the background colour of the menu changes monthly. There's no option to choose the background colour, though it seems you can temporarily set a photo or video-still as your background by pushing select while viewing it. The XMB will be superimposed over the picture until you select your next category. It will then return to its monthly background colour. The same applies to music - by pushing select during music playback, you can return to the top layer of the XMB menu, but the music stops as soon as you select a menu item. This is also annoying. The XMB taunts you by allowing you to set a picture or music behind the menu but makes it pointless by cancelling it as soon as you do anything. Hopefully future versions of the system software will actually allow custom backgrounds and music.

The PSP's sleep feature more than makes up for these minor annoyances. To fully switch the PSP off, you need to push the power switch up and hold it for a few seconds. Otherwise, the PSP enters sleep mode. The next time you push the power switch, the PSP will instantly return to whatever it was doing before. That could be in the middle of a game, or playing a song or video, or just sitting at the top of the XMB menu. The return from sleep mode is truly instantaneous, without any loadtime. This feature is a godsend for a portable console, allowing you to stop everything at a moment's notice and pick it up again later at your convenience, without having to worry about saving your game first, or having to sit through the boot up or loading times when you resume. The PSP also enters sleep mode automatically when your battery dies, so you can pick up where you left off after you've had a chance to recharge. Obviously the PSP still uses some power when in sleep mode, so it may not be advisable to use this nifty feature all the time, or for extended periods. It's worth noting that this feature is essentially the same as the sleep mode that is activated when you close a Nintendo DS during play. It just seems more beneficial on PSP as it can be used to effectively side-step loadtimes (which is an issue the cartridge-based NDS doesn't have).

The system software isn't 100% stable. I've managed to crash the PSP three times in the last few days: twice in the XMB, and once in Ridge Racers. I wasn't doing anything particularly tricky either - I was just trying to zoom into a photo or delete a video when the system locked up. Before I had a chance to switch off, the PSP powered itself off. The third crash was shortly after I had resumed a game of Ridge Racers from sleep mode. I resumed to the car selection menu, selected a car and hit OK to start the race. The race never started loading. In that instance, I had to switch off manually. None of these crashes bugged me too much (what can I say, I work in a Windows environment) and I expect the software could become more stable in future versions which are available for download through the network update section of the settings menu.

Audio
The in-game audio is top-notch, as could be expected of a disc-based system. The sound out of the well-concealed on-board speakers is crisp and surprisingly loud, but its no match for a good pair of headphones. The PSP makes quite a good MP3 player (I haven't tried ATRAC), and when using the in-line remote with the screen off and the hold switch on, the PSP never needs to leave your bag or pocket. On-screen, the artist, title, album information and artwork (if any) are displayed. File transfers are simple - just connect your PSP to your PC via USB cable, or pop the memory stick duo into your PC's card reader. Then you can just dump all your MP3s into the Music folder. You can group your songs in folders, but be aware that you can only have one layer of folders - any sub-folders will be ignored. (The same folder limitation applies for photos and videos.) M3U playlists are supported, but seem to work only for songs in the main music folder.

Sorry about this picture. January's background colour is silver, which makes getting a clear photo of the MP3 screen difficult.

Video
The PSP is pretty picky about the exact type of MPEG-4 compression it likes. Japanese residents can purchase Sony's official "Image Converter 2" software to encode videos into an MP4 format that the PSP will play. I've been using the free 3GP software instead, which performs drag and drop conversion of most video formats into PSP-friendly MP4. At 1500kbps the quality is excellent, and the PSP provides all the playback options and aspect ratio settings you could want. Unfortunately, your own videos on the memory stick will never look as good as the videos Sony will release on UMD, which will be encoded to take full advantage of every pixel of the screen's resolution. The maximum resolution video you can play from the memory stick is 320 by 240. It may sound low, but widescreen video encoded to 320x240 and then stretched back to widescreen on the PSP looks fantastic. To really put it to the test, I encoded Faithless' "I want more" music video, as the sheer amount of moving detail in it would be more likely to produce bad compression artifacts than any other video I could think of. Played back in zoom mode (as the original is letterboxed anyway) it looked brilliant. Compression artifacts were barely noticable. To store whole feature length movies at good quality, you'll need a 1 or 2 gig memory stick duo pro, when they become available/affordable. Each video on the stick has its own icon showing a still from the start of the video. Given that most videos start with a black screen, the icon actually shows a still from three seconds into the video. Clever.

Photos
The Photo viewer is very well implemented. The jpeg decoding is not instant, it takes a second with large jpegs (like high quality digital camera photos), though if you're viewing a slideshow, you won't notice, because it buffers the next photo before displaying it. Rotating, zooming and panning are supported. The zoom works in a way reminiscent of satellite images in movies: you zoom in to a slighty pixellated image that sharpens up a second or two later.

Future Directions
It looks like Sony are planning to introduce games that are playable off the memory stick. There's already a menu option to access them. Whether these will be commercially available, or downloaded from PS2/PS3 games, or the internet is anyone's guess. There have been numerous mock-up accessories shown at Japanese trade-shows too, including a clear touch panel keyboard and stylus. I'm dubious as to whether any of these will ever see the light of day, though Sony could certainly score a checkmate if they were able to add PDA and mobile phone functionality to the PSP.

Overall
Sony have produced a very impressive device that is more than just a portable Playstation. It's a portable entertainment centre that competes with all the other portable MP3 and media players out there, and there's very clearly a big market for them right now. It just happens to play games too, at a standard never before thought possible. It's not without its faults, but most of these will likely be overcome with software upgrades, larger capacity memory sticks and advanced battery technology. At the end of the day, Sony have delivered an exceptional range of features in a stylish and compact package that will (eventually) be available at a very reasonable price. Move over iPod, it looks like PSP has won next Christmas already.

NYE with PSP

2004-12-30T14:38:00.000+11:00

Just in the nick of time - my 2004 ends on a high note.

I have just taken delivery of a beautiful PSP value pack + Ridge Racers. The PSP is truly a sight to behold. It's gobsmacking. From the moment I unpacked it, I felt like I was holding a piece of the future. The overall look of the unit and the unbelievably sharp and vivid images on the screen are jaw-dropping. The pictures you've seen online do not do the PSP justice. You need to see one for yourself.

Fingerprints are very noticable on the glossy casing, but that's the price you pay for such a slick design. Not a dead pixel in sight on my PSP's screen I'm relieved to say. I didn't get one of the limited UMD demo discs, but hey, you can't have everything. At least I got one of the first batch - likely to be the only batch made in Japan with the gorgeous Sharp screens. The rest will be made in China with Samsung screens. Now I just need to get a big Memory Stick Duo for MP3's and movies.

I've got to say I'm really very impressed with both Nintendo and Sony's handhelds - Nintendo have delivered on their promise of providing the opportunity for truly original gaming experiences, and Sony have done the unthinkable and delivered a handheld with capabilities to rival current generation home consoles.

Anyway, I'll be off now and I might return in a few days when my thumbs have been reduced to bloody stumps. Happy new year all!

DS: Dropped & Scrambled

2004-12-29T11:38:00.000+11:00

I awoke on Monday morning to a loud crashing noise. Something nasty had just occurred in my kitchen. Rather than assuming that a burglar had just fallen through my skylight, I figured my cats had just knocked something over. Again.

Indeed they had. Their latest bout of cat-wrestling on the kitchen table had ended with my Nintendo DS being KO'ed out of the ring and down onto the hardwood floorboards below. For good measure, they had also sent my chunky set of housekeys and a dozen eggs down with it. You heard me. A dozen raw eggs.

The egg carton did a pretty respectable job, having kept nine of the eggs intact. The other three eggs had formed a sizable raw omelette on the floor with a DS in the middle. Not my ideal breakfast. Exihibiting an uncharacteristic level of intelligence, my cats had fled the scene, narrowly escaping certain death. I pulled the DS out of the eggy mucus and set about carefully wiping it clean. Luckily, only the bottom of it had egg on it and it cleaned up pretty easily. Close inspection showed two very small chips out of the silver part of the bottom left corner of the casing, indicating it had landed on it's corner. That didn't fill me with confidence. I opened it up, found it mercifully egg-free inside, and momentarily stopped breathing as I pressed the power button. The familiar DS welcome screens and echoing piano note were followed by a sigh of relief. The DS was fine and had passed this unscheduled stress test with barely a scratch.

It's good to know that the DS can take a fall without needing to be sent to the repair shop. It's inevitable that portable consoles are going to take a beating sooner or later. In this regard, the DS almost certainly has an advantage over the PSP. The DS has absolutely no moving parts, which stands it in good stead in the durability stakes. The PSP on the other hand, has many moving parts and is so densely packed that I can't imagine it taking a similar spill without ending up with a misaligned laser or worse. I'll just need to be very careful when I get my PSP. Leaving it on a kitchen table overnight could be cat-astrophic.

Jammin on the DS

2004-12-22T13:30:00.000+11:00

It would have been too predictable of me to follow my last post with a glowing report on Super Mario64 DS. The web is full of favourable reviews for it, so I'll just agree with them and leave it at that. Instead, I'll tell you about a far more obscure DS title that I've been playing:

Dai Gassou! Band Brothers.
(likely to be known as Jam With The Band when it gets an English language release)

It's a bemani game with a very steep difficulty curve and a surprising amount of depth. For the uninitiated, "bemani" refers to the musical game genre made popular by Konami's Beatmania series, where you have to push buttons to play the correct notes in time with the beat of the music.

Band Bros starts off easy with just two buttons being used and quickly develops to the point where all ten buttons (A, B, X, Y, L, R and the four d-pad directions) are being used in increasingly complex patterns. You'll sometimes need to touch the screen during songs too. Just when you start getting your head (and hands) around that, button combinations are introduced. Hardcore. There are loads of songs to play from many different genres (J-pop, TV themes, game music, rock, classical, etc.) and you can choose to play whichever instrument you like in each song.

Get up to seven mates with a DS each (Ha!...like that's gonna happen anytime soon) and you can download any song to them and you can all play different instruments together. Only one player needs the original game cartridge. You can also create your own songs by choosing an instrument, humming notes into the mike, or writing them in standard musical notation, and then start layering tracks.

The game has a cool visual style based on old rock posters which adds to the grungy studio feel of the game. While many of the music tracks are licenced from J-pop artists (you can expect that to change for the Western release), they're all synthesized in midi-style. All things considered, the songs don't sound too bad. There are no vocals in the songs, despite there being some speech in the intro. The game is best played with headphones, which is hinted at by the fact that the game came with a free pair of them.

Unlike so many other bemani games, simply practicing and memorizing songs won't get you through this game. Each time you enter the studio for a recording session (which are the real 'levels' of the game) you'll be handed a random set of songs to play, and the instrument you'll be playing is also chosen randomly. You'll need considerable skill and dexterity to unlock everything, not just a good memory. As such, clearing the increasingly difficult patterns is all the more compelling and satisfying. Dai Gassou! Band Brothers is easily the best handheld bemani game, and holds its own against its housebound counterparts.

Touchdown

2004-12-17T11:36:00.000+11:00

After a solid hour of gentle but persistent haggling with my import dealer yesterday, I managed to buy myself a Nintendo DS at a good price. I also picked up the japanese Super Mario 64DS and Sawaru Wario cartridges.

Sawaru Made in Wario (or "Touch! Warioware" as it will likely be named here) is tops. It retains the same feel as the original GBA Warioware, featuring around 200 mini-games thrown at the player in quick succession. Each game lasts around 5 seconds or less. It's almost entirely 2D and bright and cartoonish in its presentation. Don't expect this game to show off the graphical power of the DS. It doesn't, though for what it is, it looks brilliant on the screens. Instead it really explores the potential of the touchscreen for different methods of play. I certainly haven't seen all of the games on offer, but I have unlocked all the characters and tasted a sample of each of their gamesets. All the characters from the first Warioware return and I'm guessing that all the characters from the japanese GBA sequel Mawaru (Twisted) are in as well. There are probably a few new characters too - there's at least one new guy who I'll mention later.

The two screens are often used together as one large screen during cutscenes and many of the games. A few times I found myself instinctively (ie. stupidly) trying to use the stylus on the top screen when faced with a new game and mere seconds to work it out. Most of the games can be instantly worked out without the help of the one-word prompt (given that its in japanese!), though a few left me scratching both my head and the touchscreen. Slicing, tapping, rubbing, winding, drawing, dragging: if you can do it with a stylus, there are games where you'll have to. Each characters' set of games has a distinct feel, which is fine as the variety is kept up, except in the case of Crygor's games which all rely on winding or other circular motions. His set felt all a bit samey. Crygor's new buddy Mike the robot also has a set of games that are quite the same, but radically different from all the others. As his name suggests, Mike's games are played using only the built-in mike. These all involve blowing to create wind or inflating something. It works very well, but while I usually don't give a shit about what people think of me while I play games on public transport, I have to say that I draw the line at blowing a console in public.

Any complaints about the sameyness of those two characters' games cease to be relevent once you've cleared them and moved on to the final hectic sets of games in the elevators where everyone's games are thrown into the mix. These increasingly frenetic and unpredictable stages are the highlight of the game. There are lots of bonus mini-games and extras to unlock ranging from cool to utterly wierd. On the main 'lobby' screen where all the characters mill about, you can (and should) whack Orbulon's UFO as often as possible to have strange little extras pop out. Two player table tennis where each player gets a screen and a shoulder button is pretty cool, but some of the other extras are just wierd, like an old granny drinking a cup of tea. If I blow on her tea, she'll drink some and say something to me in japanese. Some of the bonuses are excellent mini-games, others are just plain odd.

Overall, it's great fun and that's what counts. Mario 64DS may look better, but its touch control system feels tacked on. Touch Wario is the launch title that really shows off the unique possibilities of the DS.

Touch and go

2004-12-06T15:12:00.000+11:00

I finally got some hands-on time with a Nintendo DS a couple of hours ago. It feels well built and the screens look very bright and sharp. I tried a Gameboy Advance cartridge on it and it looked great; much better than on a GBA. The screens look fantastic front-on, but the images tend to disappear when viewed from either side. That's no surprise really- the viewing angle is no worse then you'd expect from these kinds of screens. The touch screen is nice and solid. It looks no different from the non-touch screen and has no perceptible give to it. Overall, the DS feels slightly bigger than you'd expect. The top half is very slim, but the bottom half is quite bulky. The silver and black design disguises the size of the bottom half quite well, but its still considerably bigger than a mobile phone when closed. The stylus is tiny, but functional.

On first booting up Mario64DS, I spent a moment stupidly pressing all the buttons before I realised I had to touch the star on the screen. It's going to take some getting used to having controls beyond the buttons. Having instructions in English might help too. The 3D fly-around intro sequence to Mario64DS was beautiful. Very smooth - it looks nowhere near as pixelly as the screenshots seen around the web. The DS certainly has potential, but it isn't being met yet. The Japanese launch titles aside from Mario64DS don't excite me much.

Now more than ever, Sony's PSP really looks like a very serious threat to the DS. Having also seen a production model PSP running in English, there's no doubt in my mind about which is the more impressive device. The PSP eats the DS for breakfast. I originally thought the PSP would be significantly larger than the DS. It isn't. It's only marginally wider and is noticably thinner, though it's screen is huge in comparison. As a games machine, it's nowhere near as innovative as the DS, but I can't see that doing it any harm in terms of sales. It's a multimedia device, built for handling music, movies, photographs and games. The sheer graphical power they've crammed into the PSP blows every other handheld device off the map (including PocketPCs). While I don't believe that many people will start buying movies on Sony's UMD disc format, they won't have to - you can simply stick a Memory Stick Duo into the PSP with your own music, movies and photos on it. From its physical design to its user interface, the PSP looks smoother than a gravy sandwich.

As much as I like Nintendo, and applaud their attempts to move gaming forward with new ideas, there's no denying that from a purely visual standpoint the PSP leaves the DS looking like a tricked-out Gameboy64. It's encouraging to see that the DS is selling faster than Nintendo can produce them right now, but the tide will likely turn when the PSP is released. If the PSP can overcome it's only obvious flaw (its cripplingly short battery life) then Sony's dominance of the handheld market is assured.

The DS, PSP and GBA SP (bottom)

Still playing MGS3: Snake Eater. And it's still brilliant. Nevertheless, nothing tops Katamari Damacy as my vote for best game of 2004.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

2004-11-30T09:41:00.000+11:00

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is one of the most anticipated titles on PS2. It's not out in Japan until December 12 and won't be out in Australia for at least 4 months. However, the US version is out and I got my copy yesterday. Does it live it up to expectations? From my early impressions, the answer is a resounding yes.

MGS3 is set in the early 1960's, in a political climate framed by Yuri Gagarin's orbit in the Vostok 1 and the Cuban missile crisis. Snake's espionage exploits are ideally suited to the era of the cold war; indeed MGS3 is a return to the Metal Gear series' roots. The player does not control the same Snake featured in MGS 1 & 2, but rather the original Snake, also known as Big Boss, from whom the later Snakes were cloned.

The game drops you (via the world's first Halo jump) into the jungle in Russia. This is a stark contrast to the military-industrial complexes of the previous two games. It's hard to believe this game is running on a Playstation 2. The level of detail is staggering. Modern console hardware excels at rendering flat surfaces and geometric objects. Complex organic modelling on the other hand is quite a challenge, but MGS3 tackles it with style. You can distinguish each leaf on the trees and the way each blade of grass deforms as you move through it is very impressive. The way the light filters through the canopy and plays off every surface, coupled with the Dolby Pro Logic II surround sound, really immerses the player in the jungle atmosphere. I spent the first few minutes in the jungle just soaking up the surroundings. Konami have really pushed the PS2 another step beyond the graphical heights they reached in Silent Hill 4.

The jungle is alive with a wide variety of flora and fauna, and as the Snake Eater name suggests, you can eat all of it. Reticulated python is tasty - Siberian ink cap mushrooms and tree frogs are not. Hearing David Hayter's ultimate tough-guy voice exclaiming "Sick!" when you eat something particularly gross is well worth it. I haven't managed to poison myself yet, but I'm sure its just a matter of time. Camoflage is essential to success and choosing the right outfit and facepaint for the area is crucial. Your level of camoflage at any moment is indicated as a percentage in the corner of the screen. Crawling through dense ferns on the edge of a swamp and bumping straight into a perfectly concealed alligator makes you start to appreciate the camoflage of some of the wildlife too.

Hideo Kojima's sense of humour is alive and well - the codec dialogues between Snake and his Para-medic aid are made bearable by witty banter, and the mischeivous look in Snake's eye as he spies an enemy soldier patrolling directly underneath a buzzing hornet's nest is beautifully presented. Kojima can laugh at himself too - if you make the right choice at the very outset of the game, you can experience a great gag that pokes fun at the worldwide slagging Kojima faced after making players play as Raiden rather than Snake for the majority of MGS2.

Snake Eater retains all the game-mechanics of MGS2 and introduces much more. Aside from the camoflage system already mentioned, there is a whole new system involving food, stamina and health, and a backpack menu system which allows management of a much greater number of items. A new Close Quarters Combat (CQC) system has been developed to allow a broader range of options for handling the enemy when combined with various weapons. The camera system has been improved too. You can now move the camera view when in third-person mode and lock it into place, as well as being able to enter first-person view whenever you like (including during many cut-scenes).

The story seems far less convoluted and more coherent than that of MGS2, but this a Metal Gear game and things are sure to get complicated as the plot develops. Composer Harry Gregson-Williams returns and provides a suitably cinematic soundtrack with sixties overtones. This seems to be one of those rare games that gets all the elements right. The setting is good, the game system has improved and the graphics and surround sound are phenomenal. I haven't played more than a few hours into it, but I think I can safely say this is the best Metal Gear game yet.

The Soul Edge Tournament

2004-10-20T13:50:00.000+10:00

Last weekend I finally had the great pleasure of staging a SoulEdge tournament. This event was long overdue. I actually had invitations designed for the event about six years ago, but alas, it was simply not meant to be at that time (see The Stage of History post below).

With my beautiful SoulEdge arcade machine back in full working order, it was only fitting that I celebrate the occasion with a party and a tournament to see who among my friends would prove to be the ultimate SoulEdge champion. It was also a celebration of my birthday, my wife's birthday and our first anniversary, but that's beside the point.

Despite early concerns about the lack of serious players (with many of the original Newcastle contingent unable to attend), the turn-out was impressive and consisted of a mix of seasoned veterans, avid gamers and newbies. I devised a 'double-header' tournament structure that meant no-one could be eliminated in the first round. All the players who lost their first round battled on to eliminate each other, until the eventual winner of the first-round losers met the winner of the winners in the FINAL BATTLE. This proved to be quite a good method for keeping newcomers involved. As any arcade player can tell you, a button-mashing noob can be a real challenge. When fighting an experienced player, you can analyse their strategies and learn to anticipate their next move. When fighting a random button-pusher, you never know what's coming next.

Those in the know expected Mat Kelleher to take the gong. Despite not having played the game for years, he displayed a rapid return to form in the warm-up matches and was able to recall unblockable moves long forgotten by the rest of us. Mat's brother Dave and myself were also expected to perform well. It was with Dave K that I had originally spent so much time in the arcades playing SoulEdge back in the ninties.

Thanks to a competitive crowd and a lot of alcohol the matches were fiery and raucous. There were many upsets. Mat won his early battles as expected and the female contestants performed very well indeed. In fact the girls won nearly all the first heat battles. Mat was eventually knocked out of the competition by Anna (Dave K's gf) who played a mean Rock. Tara also put in a very solid psyche-out game. I was taken down in the opener in a third round ring-out by Robyn Chiles, and was eventually knocked out in the quarter final by the fluke-ridden style of Steve White. Despite being a self-confessed masher, Robyn beat Anna in the semi-final, before falling in the FINAL BATTLE to Dave K.

Joe, Loraine, Petras, Dan, Mick, Lucy and Emma all put in a good showing too.

The four finalists (Dave, Robyn, Anna and Steve) won lame prizes and the kudos and respect of the crowd. Anna was particularly pleased as she got to drink the champagne that Dave won as champion.

All in all, a great night.

The Stage of History

2004-10-20T09:02:00.000+10:00

Welcome to the stage of history. Many years ago, I was living a frugal life of leisure in my sprawling bachelor pad at Rocko Courts in Newcastle's West End. One fine day I saw an advertisement for an impending auction of jukeboxes, pinball and arcade machines several suburbs away. Despite my lack of motorised transport or disposable income, I knew that I was destined to attend the auction.

I managed to scrape up a few hundred dollars and took the long walk to the deepest darkest depths of Mayfield, where the auction was being held. I lodged my hundred dollar entry deposit, grabbed the lot listing, picked up my bidder's card and began my round of the floor. Ah yes, you can't beat a good auction. There were literally hundreds of items on offer - air hockey and pool tables, skill testers, stand-ups, cocktail cabinets and the kind of miscellaneous spare parts that only fat sweaty men in singlets could identify. Excellent.

The crowd was mostly industry - only a handful of game geeks were actually present, and we were trying desperately to look like we knew what we were doing. The auction finally kicked off and my heart sank - competition was fierce. Non-working cocktail cabinets from the seventies were fetching more than $1500, and some newer items were reaching well into five figures. Ouch. Fortunately, as the day wore on, the ferocity of the bidding wore off. The auctioneers had cleverly placed the highest-demand items at the start of the lot listing to set the tone.

By about halfway through the day, my hopes of picking up a cocktail cabinet had been dashed and I had been outbidded by the narrowest of margins on a large hydraulic sit-in helicopter game. Thank god. The damn thing never would have fit inside my house. There were still a few items I was interested in, most notably a 26-inch Leisure and Allied stand-up cabinet with my all-time favourite arcade game in it - Namco's 1995 3D weapon-based fighter SoulEdge. It was toward the very end of the lot listing and being a reasonably new machine, I figured it was well and truly outside my $400 budget. For reasons I honestly cannot explain, I bid $5 on a 28-inch spare arcade monitor and won it. Suddenly I was the bewildered owner of a spare arcade monitor. Given that I had no arcade machine, it seemed a bit daft at the time.

As the end of day drew near, the industry folk had pretty much blown whatever cash they could, and bidding had slowed considerably. The SoulEdge lot number was called and the bidding began at $150 from a young Chinese guy. I bid $200, he counter bid at $225. I bid $250 and he instantly upped it to $275. I wasn't feeling confident at this point - my Chinese opponent clearly had intentions on the machine, and with a buyer's premium of 12.5% (added onto the hammerfall price) I knew I was running out of room to move. I tipped my card in the air and called $300. My opponent's words never came - he simply looked at me, raised an eyebrow and dropped his bidding card to his side. The auctioneer called $300 again. There were still many bidders present, but all remained silent. Going once, twice, SOLD. I couldn't believe it.

I paid up and returned home victorious that night, albeit without the machine. In the morning I went back and got it (and the spare monitor) thanks to my friend Shane and his mini-van. Many glorious days followed, well eight to be exact. My friends and I played SoulEdge day and night and I ate meals at their houses, as I no longer had money for food. My parents visited me and I somehow managed to cover and hide the machine from them as I knew they wouldn't approve of such a frivolous and expensive purchase at such a poverty-stricken stage of my life.

However, eight days after I got the machine home, my Dad dropped around and I figured I'd just show him the damn thing and get it all out in the open. I led him to the machine and flicked on the power switch. This was immediately followed by a loud zapping sound and the unmistakable smell of electrical components frying. Not real good. Needless to say, my father was not impressed. Nor was I: the machine appeared to be dead.

The monitor was blown and I knew enough to know that getting it repaired would not be easy. Arcade monitors can give off X-ray radiation and can store enough voltage to kill you even after they've been unplugged for many years. So DIY was out of the question. The $5 spare monitor which had become my coffee table was unlikely to fit into the cabinet, as it was apparently two inches bigger than the original. Buying a replacement monitor looked like it was going to cost about $600 plus installation costs. The non-working SoulEdge machine was essentially just a big money box. Of course, I could (and did) still switch it on occasionally and play a match or two based on sound alone. I could even still get a perfect victory on the first round. Somehow, (visually I guess) it just wasn't the same.

So I lugged the machine down to Sydney when I moved in with my girlfriend a few years ago. She was also not very impressed by it, or by the fact that it was too big to fit down the hallway, and hence had to remain as a prominent feature in the loungeroom. We got married, (I got ridiculed about the machine in the wedding speeches) and a year later, my wife revealed that she was making preparations to have Betty(as she refers to the machine) repaired for my birthday. Brilliant. I was floored by this incredibly selfless act. Video games aren't really my wife's thing - particularly when they're a huge ugly monolith that dominates the loungeroom and clashes with the decor. She knew how much this machine meant to me.

Sergio the friendly repair guy (his name had to be be Sergio, didn't it?) turned up and took a look at the back of the monitor. "Weird!" he said. That's never a good thing for a repair guy to say. It translates as "this is definitely going to cost you". Turns out the monitor was of a particularly obscure brand - one for which he had no spare parts. He took the chassis away for analysis. On his way out the door, I directed his attention to the $5 spare arcade monitor, which had been sitting out the front of our house for some time now. I told him it was no use to me and he could have it if he liked. He immediately opened up the casing on it. Despite having been rained on several times, it appeared to be in reasonable condition - and better yet - the auction listing had been wrong - this was a 26 inch monitor, not a 28, and as such could potentially fit into the SoulEdge cabinet. He took it away for further testing.

A few days later, Sergio returned. The existing monitor could not be repaired, but the $5 monitor had come up roses after some testing and tweaking. It wasn't an exact size match, so we built a new bracket and installed the monitor in the cabinet. After double-checking all the wiring, I powered it up. It looked beautiful. Sharp, vibrant and without a hint of burn-in. It was destiny I tell you. Somehow I knew to buy that monitor even before I had bought the SoulEdge cabinet. Destiny or dumb luck. One of the two. The repair came in way under the expected cost, my wife gave Sergio a tip for his excellent friendly service, and I smashed all my old records.
What a bloody fantastic birthday gift.

So that's the SoulEdge saga to date. Or How Betty Got Her Groove Back.

Sony thinks small

2004-09-23T11:22:00.000+10:00

Sony have finally come through with the goods, showing a truly handheld production model PSP uncabled and running under its own power. Looks very nice too. It's been difficult to get a sense of the exact size of the unit until now. Thanks to a side-by-side with the retro NES styled GBA SP, we can now see clearly just how small the PSP is. Sony unveiled this real PSP at a business conference held in Tokyo two days ago. They also showed the Universal Media Disc (UMD) in action, and announced over a hundred PSP titles in development.

On the local front, Sony Australia have announced a compact redesigned Playstation2, much like Sony's PSone was to the original Playstation. It looks remarkably like a PS2 that's been put in a sandwich press. The original PS2 was just shy of 8cm in width, whereas the new version is less than 3cm wide! From the pictures released so far, it doesn't look like standing it vertically would be a good idea, but I guess they know what they're doing. It comes with an integrated ethernet port (so no peripheral network adapter is required), and it's fairly obvious from its size that it will not support a hard drive. (Sony have officially canned the release of a hard-drive for PS2 in Europe and Australasia.) Strangely enough, Sony have not referred to the new unit as the "PSTwo", a name they trademarked some time ago, but appear not to be using.
The new PS2 will hit stores in Australia on the 29th of October.

The new and the old - Jenny Craig would be proud.

NDS, PSP, HDL and HDA

2004-08-12T16:10:00.000+10:00

Quick updates for the last few weeks:
The Nintendo DS design and name have been finalised. Nintendo were planning on renaming the device (the name "Nitro" was being used by developers), but it has become so well known as "the DS" now that a name change seemed counter-productive.
Check out the final design:

and closed:

This slick new look easily rivals that of the PSP. Given that the NDS won't be anywhere near as susceptible to screen scratching and will have a much longer battery life, it looks like Nintendo could really give Sony a run for its money.

The official PSP release date has slipped back from November to December. After growing doubts about the product, Sony have released a new streaming video apparently showing a working handheld PSP running under its own power. Upon close inspection, the footage actually shows a PSP that is cabled up to another unseen device and the demonstrator seems to be very careful not to show the back of the unit at all. Furthermore, the footage included Gran Turismo 4 running on the PSP screen - which may have been convincing had Gran Turismo developer Kazunori Yamauchi not publically announced that they have not even started porting the GT engine over to the PSP yet. The smoke and mirrors continues. I predict that the PSP will not be released anywhere in the world this year.

Underground PS2 coder Sjeep (of HDLoader infamy) has briefly re-surfaced in the wake of HDLoader's demise. A commercial product called HDAdvance that is a shameless rip-off of Sjeep's no-longer-available HDLoader has appeared on the market. When I say it's a rip-off, I mean it is literally the same software with a couple of cosmetic changes. Sjeep recently appeared on the ps2-scene boards under one of his other guises (FilterX) to freely release a cut-down version of HDAdvance. It seems that the very same people who cracked his original software are now retailing a knock-off version and Sjeep has returned the favour by cracking their version and giving it away free. The irony is that he is now effectively spreading a pirate version of his own software. If Sjeep can't profit from his software anymore, he might as well do his best to ensure that no-one else does.

Have been playing many wacky Japanese PS2 games recently. Highlights include:
Curry House CoCo Ichibanya - Undoubtedly the first curry-making simulator.
The Daijibin - Protect Japanese cities from the attack of the 500ft bikini girl.
Taisen Hot Gimmick Cosplay - Arcade mahjong with an anti-American misogynist streak.

HDLoader: Game Over

2004-07-29T12:52:00.000+10:00

Well, that didn't take long.
HDLoader is officially dead. The HDLoader site is gone, and Divineo (its makers) have posted a small news item on their main site indicating that the product will not be available ever again. Sony have been busy this month.

This morning I read an eleven page Stipulated Permanant Injunction filed by Sony Computer Entertainment America against Mr. Steven L. Filipiak through the United States District Courts. Mr Filipiak is one of many people in the rather unfortunate position of having their ass handed to them on a plate by Sony at the moment. We'll take a look at his case as an example.

Mr. Filipiak runs a business called The Console Corner (www.the-console-corner.com), which sells all kinds of videogame consoles, accessories, original games, and also sells and installs modchips. His business is still operating, and the court case has not yet begun, but Sony's injunction has already legally prevented him from "trafficking in circumvention devices", specifically HDLoader and PS1/PS2 modchips. Funnily enough, the exact nature of Sony's injunction actually allows Filipiak to continue selling modchips - though only for X-Box.

It looks like Sony are going to take Filipiak to the cleaners, and the action may not stop there. Their injunction states that "The parties will agree to a final judgement as soon as an appropriate damages amount can be ascertained based on the information provided by the Defendant, as described below." So what was the information described below?

Nothing short of every single physical or electronic record pertaining to the import, ordering, payment and delivery of every one of the devices including all the personal details of everyone involved, including even the details of all actual and "potential customers", "potential sources", "attempted shipments" and even "attempted payments" and "cancelled checks". For the sake of completeness, all Filipiak's computer hardware and disks will be handed over to Sony. Having been granted exclusion from the usual federal regulations regarding "discovery timing", Sony must be provided with all this in its entirety by 5:30pm tommorrow (California time).

Sony are going to end up with quite a data mine. Just how far they'll go with the information they extract is anyone's guess. One thing is certain, the crackdown is on. HDLoader was the last straw. It simply made piracy way too easy. Sony have found it difficult to get convictions based on modchip sales alone. Fortunately for them, there are lots of idiots around who will provide modchips and pirate software. The Australian courts (unlike practically every other developed nation) ruled that modchips alone were not illegal, as they could be used to allow geniune import software to be played on region-locked consoles. Circumventing copyright is one thing, circumventing Sony's international market-control is another. Divineo's continued sales of modchips despite their retraction of HDLoader illustrates the fine line they're treading.

Pre-empting the region-control argument, one of the Stipulated Facts and Conclusions in the injunction discussed above states that "The only function of the "mod chip" is to circumvent the technological measures [Sony] has implemented to protect copyrighted works." Filipiak has already signed the document, thereby conceding this point. Oops.

Sony have certainly gone on the warpath, but has the horse already bolted? Now that it's known to be possible, other software with HDLoader's functionality will undoubtedly emerge. I guess Sony are just trying to stop it from becoming mainstream. Had Sony not started crucifying people now, HDLoader or its successors could have ended up on the shelves in K-Mart.

Silent Hill 4: The Room

2004-07-15T09:20:00.000+10:00

I've been playing through Silent Hill 4: The Room (NTSC/J) since I got it last week and I figure I've seen enough to post some impressions. I might mention some details, but no major spoilers.

First of all - it's different. This is not just another Silent Hill game. While many of the hallmarks of the SH series make an appearance, the game is significantly different from the previous three games. You're not even in Silent Hill for much of the game. The game really centres around your apartment in Ashfield.

When you are in the apartment, you view the game from a first person perspective. Outside of the apartment, the game switches to the traditional third person view. This approach really gives the player a much more intimate connection with their home; one that is exploited as the game progresses. So you're trapped in your apartment, but are able to visit alternate worlds through a hole that appears in your bathroom wall. There is no more item screen, all item use or weapon switching is done on the main screen in real time (meaning that you may be getting mauled while you're at it). There are certainly loads of weapons to collect, though most of them are not terribly effective and many of them break after a while. The melee weapons feature a new charge up system, allowing you to wind up a really big swing. Without saying too much, weapons are not always the answer in SH4.

Voyeurism is the key theme explored in the game. While trapped in your apartment, you can look out through the peephole in your door, out the windows or even spy on your neighbour, though nobody can hear you no matter what you do. The voyeur theme is developed throughout the rest of the game too. Looking out the windows is very reminiscent of Hitchcock's Rear Window - one of many influences that SH4 wears on its sleeve. Japanese horror films The Ring and Ju-on (The Grudge) seem to have made their mark, and David Lynch and Stephen King also get a nod.

I've read many reviews of SH4 that have been critical of certain "flaws" in the game. In my opinion, many of those criticisms have been misplaced. You no longer have an unlimited capacity to carry items. You can only carry ten items and you can't combine them (ie- 10 bullets takes up one slot, so thirty takes up 3 slots). You can only drop items in the chest in your apartment. There are very few healing items. You can't save your game anywhere but your apartment. These are not flaws - they are deliberate changes to shift you out of your comfort zone. If you dive into SH4 expecting to get away with the same techniques you used in the previous three games you will get a rude shock. Right from the beginning, the game gives you clear hints that you'll need to play strategically. I can't say I have a problem with the new game mechanics at all. I've never even come close to using all my item slots.

There are far fewer puzzles this time around and IMO the game feels better for it. Surely the evil cult of Silent Hill had better things to do than go around setting up Resident Evil-style puzzles all day. That's not to say there aren't any puzzles - the Water Prison puzzle really did my head in for a while there. I thought I had solved it - I was wrong.

The graphics are at least the equal of SH3, so no complaints there. The game is almost entirely fog-free (and where there is fog, it isn't used to cover draw distance). The soundtrack is largely atmospheric and unobtrusive for the most part, creating a suitably ominous and oppressive feel. The action and puzzle elements take a backseat to the story and the atmosphere in SH4. I haven't finished the game, so I can't judge the whole story yet, but I like the way its developing and the little creepy ways in which everything is getting steadily worse and more messed up.

Silent Hill 4: The Room is a departure for the series, and a welcome one in my view. It looks like it will do little to develop the mythology around the SH cult (which is probably best left unexplained), but offers up another twisted journey into hell for those who want it.

Note that the screens above are all real-time rendered. Like SH3, there are no more pre-rendered scenes - Konami really have mastered PS2 graphics.

Honour Among Thieves

2004-06-24T14:52:00.000+10:00

A few posts ago, I noted Divineo's announcement of its forthcoming HDLoader software for PS2. I began the post by saying "The PS2 scene is about to change." I can now say it has changed, and much more profoundly than I could have imagined.

The product has only been shipping for about two weeks now, but it has caused absolute chaos in the unofficial PS2 development scene. Until now, the PS2 Dev scene was pretty straightforward - groups of coders all working together to get the most out of the PS2 hardware, by any means legal or otherwise. Exploits found and programs developed were offered freely to interested parties for further development and for the benefit of the scene as a whole. The classic hacker credo "Information wants to be free" springs to mind.

Then along came HDLoader. It was clear from the outset that it ranked among the most important unofficial developments for PS2. And it was not free. The scene exploded. The devscene forums were on fire. Who was behind this software? Divineo were distributing it, but someone had coded it for them. It had to be a known coder. Divineo had certainly had well-known coders on the payroll before (in the development of their modchip solutions), but that was different - chips are hardware, so they can't be freely distributed. HDLoader is software only. As one scene member put it, someone had "turned to the dark side" (gone commercial). Within days of the software being shipped, the code was analysed to find out who wrote it. By all accounts there were pieces of code from several corners of the scene in there (as would be expected of a free scene release), but all fingers eventually pointed toward legendary PS2 coder Sjeep (who has conspicuously disappeared off the face of the earth since HDLoader's release).
No doubt Sjeep knew he had written the PS2's new killer app, and he knew he could pay some bills with it. Good on him. Chances are he'll never show his face in the scene again.

The devscene was buzzing with excitement about the implications of the software. Predictably, as soon as scene members got their hands on it, a pirate copy of the disc started floating around the usual channels. Sjeep and Divineo weren't stupid - the pirate version would allow the installation of games onto a PS2 harddrive, but would not actually boot them. Only an original copy would make the games playable. The pirate copy was little more than a teaser.

Divineo and the other distributors of the HDLoader software could not have been happier. For years these companies have been sponsoring the sites where the sceners hung out, and suddenly they were getting more clicks on their banner ads than ever before, selling HDLoaders by the bucketload.

Then the inevitable happened - though no doubt much sooner than expected. A cracked version appeared online. Someone had cracked the protection on the HDLoader software and had made a fully operational pirate copy. Not only that, they had reduced the size of the software by more than seventy-five times. HDLoader had become free and its filesize was tiny (under 10MB), making it easily distributable on the web. It was now so small, that scene members were attaching it to their posts in forums for everyone to download. To make matters worse, the cracked version of the software had been clearly marked as having been cracked by someone from PS2ownz.com, one of the scene's most well-known sites. The revised title screen said it all: "Free HDLoader - no copy rights for those who don't respect copyrights". PS2ownz have since strongly denied any involvement with the cracked release. That was the day before yesterday.

All hell broke loose. Massive conflicts of interest arose. The people who run the websites where all this was happening are financially supported by Divineo and friends. The symbiotic relationship between the scene and the commercial distributors of 'unofficial console solutions' was broken. I watched yesterday as several prominant figures in the devscene were banned from the forums they lived in. Their posts were edited by the moderators. By this morning, all trace of them, their posts and even the whole topic threads were gone. Any record of the pirate release was being wiped out like it had never happened. Warnings were posted across the frontpages of the sites and 'stickied' in the forums to let everyone know that any posts breaching copyright would result in immediate banning of members and their IP addresses. This afternoon I watched the consolenews.com boards go offline completely. The hurriedly typed message "Slight Hicup we will be back!" is all that's left of them now.

Things certainly have changed. For my part, I'll be placing an order for the PAL version shortly. Sjeep deserves the money for delivering what Sony never would. Divineo have done all they can to stop the free distribution of the software. It probably won't be too long before Sony do the same for the commercial distribution.