2 days ago, SingStar for the PS3 was finally released. I can honestly say it's the most fun I've had with a console game in years. The Singing part of SingStar is still as good as it ever was, only this time with a lusher GUI and slick, simple menu systems; combined with a built-in easy to use SingStore for downloads - it's pretty much perfect.
But the cherry on the cake are the community features. As you play the game, with the PSeye (a web cam) plugged in, SingStar will automatically record media for you like photos, videos and audio. This is great, as you can then save them and embarrass yourself at a later date showing off you SingStar party shenanigans. But go to 'My SingStar online' and you'll be able to upload those, where people can then rate them or comment on them via your MySpace-style profile. It's all utter, utter genius.
The built in SingStar community features, as far as I know - are unrivalled in any other game. They're just awesome. My SingStar Online embraces the community who love SingStar so much and reward them with the ultimate platform for showing the world their talents (or non-talents).
I've just spent the morning making chin-videos of singles by R.E.M, Blink 182, and er, that song 'Total Eclipse of the Heart'. Not to mention, donning an Afro-wig and using my Rock Band props to jump around like a raving idiot to Chelsea Dagger by The Fratellis. Around the time I posted this, I had 2 videos in the top 10, rated 4.5 stars!
SingStar PS3 is an absolute triumph and will be keeping thousands of people entertained for many years to come. It was worth the wait!
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Oh and a big shout out to the guy with a beard dressed up as Macy Gray. You ROCK!
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No sooner was I back from my holiday in Malta but my U.S, region free copy of Rock Band for the PlayStation 3 turned up.
It's a busy week! I've only just got Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock and Uncharted: Drakes Fortune (amazing game) and then Rock Band turns up. Then SingStar. And next week it'll be Unreal Tournament III. Not to mention the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare double XP weekend tomorrow. MotorStorm's Devils weekend pack is also available and I still have not given Eye of Judgement a run for it's money.
Too many games at the moment! Sigh...
Still, suffice to say: Rock Band is amazing. A game where you can sing, play drums, play lead & bass guitar *and* do all those things with four people in your lounge. Or online!
Drums are most certainly the new best thing ever!
Caroline and I have been giving it a proper thrashing, her on vocals and myself hammering the drums.
I went to Malta last week for my Mums birthday. A small family holiday. It was great. Weather was a bit mixed and I managed to almost cut a finger off whilst trying to rescue some wine but I had a good time.
Here are some photos.
That hurt! It looked alot worse the day before though...
I recently had the chance to spend a week in Korea as part of NCsoft's 'Global Stars' program. Aha - That overtime did pay off!
It was an absolutely great week, spent enjoying the food & drink, discovering Seoul, visiting the G Star games expo, and generally learning about Korean culture. Here's a few photos from the trip...
Seoul - Lots of tall buildings, you find yourself mostly looking up...
...not all buildings are tall thankfully.
Thought this was cool. A little service area for your Nintendo DS, complete with clearning solution, screen wipes and dust blowers.
Life is THIS happy! Korea is full of cute things, this is part of a booth at G Star.
The inevitable booth babe shots. These gals are promoting upcoming NCsoft title, Aion.
Pretty feathers.
They start 'em young in Korea.
Percussion freaks!
Wow, the XBox360 has a Karaoke title!?
The upcoming game Punch Monster had some of the cutest characters I've ever seen.
The toilet was a new experience. No longer is there just a button for 'flush'.
Well it's taken some time but my love of dressing up as a zombie has finally, er, blossomed. For the past two years on Halloween, I've been dressing up as a zombie and wondering around the streets of Brighton with other zombies, in an event called Crawl of the Dead (Pub Crawl, with zombies). It's great fun.
So I decided to work on a community site for like minded zombies around the world, and it's complete. CrawlOfTheDead.com is alive! Yay!
Whilst reading Eurogamer’s coverage of Sony’s TGS show, I noticed that they report this:
One feature that already exists to harness the PlayStation 3’s connectivity is Remote Play - a PSP function that allows users to operate their home consoles remotely. A portion of the speech was dedicated to demonstrating the free software, which can even be used to turn a PS3 on from standby remotely, and Sony’s director of product planning took the stage to illustrate its potential. In the future, gamers will conceivably be able to use a PS3 as a host platform for multiplayer sports games played out on their and their friends’ PSPs, while other users spectate.
Did I read that correctly?! It seems that Remote Play will be getting a very decent upgrade soon, that enables it to switch the PlayStation 3 console on and off remotely, from anywhere in the world. Great news. I can now officially keep all my PlayStation store downloads in check from wherever I am (without leaving my PS3 on at home and worrying that the house will burn down if it overheats…).
So when can we get it? My guess is that this next Remote Play feature will be bundled in the features for the magical PS3 2.0 firmware.
During the night at the Tokyo Game Show, Sony announced their new PlayStation 3 controller, the DUALSHOCK 3. Undoubtedly, their decision to bring out a DUALSHOCK enabled SIXAXIS was due to overwhelming demand from consumers (+1).
Phil Harrison once, 'famously' said: "Now, rumble I think was the last generation feature; it's not the next-generation feature.". Yes Phil, whatever you say...
The good news is that gamers 'upgrading' to a DUALSHOCK 3 SIXAXIS controller will get updates to let the best of their current games library work with rumble.
Let's have a look.
DUALSHOCK 3 Compatible titles:
The Darkness
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
Soldier of Fortune
BIOHAZARD® 5
Devil May Cry® 4
N-Cube
Warbit
Dark Sector
Turok
Highlander
Kane & Lynch: Dead Men
Burnout Paradise
FIFA franchise (title name TBD)
Legendary: The Box
To End All Wars
RAGE
WarDevil – Unleash the Beast Within
Dynasty Warriors 6
Fatal Inertia
METAL GEAR SOLID 4 GUNS OF THE PATRIOTS
Blacksite: Area 51
TNA Wrestling
Unreal Tournament 3
Wheelman
Cops (codename, title name TBD)
Planet One (codename, title name TBD)
Heroes over Europe
Condemned 2
Iron Man
The Club
The Crucible
The Incredible Hulk
Blast Factor (*1)
echochrome
Elefunk
Folklore (*1)
FORMULA ONE CHAMPIONSHIP EDITION (*1)
Go! Sports Ski (*1)
Heavenly Sword (*1)
High Velocity Bowling
MLB 08: The Show
MotorStorm (*1)
NBA 08 (*1)
PAIN
Rat Race
Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction
Resistance: Fall of Man (*1)
Snakeball
SOCOM: Confrontation
Super Stardust HD (*1)
TOY HOME
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune
Warhawk (*1)
WipEout HD
GirpShift®
NBA 2K8 Take
Destroy All Humans 3
Stuntman Ignition
Assassin’s Creed
BEOWULF
HAZE
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 (*1)
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas (*1)
Prototype Vivendi Games
The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
*1 Users will be able to enjoy the rumble feature through software update. *2 Actual titles to be released may vary among countries and regions.
Existing games like Resistance: Fall of Man and MotorStorm really stand out that list, along with WarHawk, Super Stardust HD and Heavenly Sword. Future games Uncharted: Drakes Fortune, Devil May Cry, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Haze are clearly going to benefit from having DUALSHOCK. Fantastic. But... where is GT5 (Prologue) on that list?
Engadget managed to get themselves a hands on with the DUALSHOCK 3, see what they thought.
Just got back after a few hours (and a few beers) at ThreeSpeech's ThreeRooms. or is it 3rooms? I can never remember...
Anyway, it was a good night, with full copies of Heavenly Sword to play around with on the nice uber-big Bravia TV's, as well as WarHawk (unfortunately the competition didn't quite work out) and fresh demos of Unchartered: Drakes Fortune and Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction (both awesoméz, by the way).
Heavenly Sword developers, Ninja Theory were also there to talk about development on the game and Andy Serkis just happened to pop in unannounced also, which was very nice of him. He gave a little talk on his role in the game and the importance of character performance within next gen computer games. Nice chap.
Anyway - to be perfectly honest I'm off to bed so here are a few snaps from the evening... And thanks to those guys at ThreeSpeech for the event.
This room is lovely. Big TV. Sofas that are actually beds, in disguise. And pillows the size of baby elephants...
Big shiny rounds thing, always a winner.
This is the pit of joy. A 50" Bravia. Comfy cushions. And awesome surround sound. Just look at those B&W PV1's tucked away either side of the stage there...
The new Ratchet and Clank game. Very slick.
Unchartered: Drakes Fortune. Another very good looking game upcoming on PS3... Plays well too.
It's a robot (in disguise).
Look! It's Andy Serkis. In one part of the photo he's a slobbering corrupt & evil king, and in the other part he's enjoying a glass of white wine...
The night wraps up with some friendly chit-chat and some magical tables possesing the very best in beer theft abilities (by the time I had finished taking this photo my beer [sitting on the table there] had vanished!)
Had a lovely weekend in Edinburgh, er - last weekend. Took a few photos...
Rather fun promotion for the Andy Warhol exhibition inside...
Great street performer called James James who did all sorts of clever magic tricks with Oranges and Melons. "Where would we be without humour?" Answer: "Germany".
The awesome watchtower at Edinburgh airport. A bit like a reverse Gherkin...
