Sony’s been making my brain hurt a little lately. After a few years of DLC conditioning at the hands of Microsoft my gray matter got used to the idea that a downloadable title was something that shipped in a bite-sized chunk and was something that wouldn’t warrant a disc-based release. Turns out my brain — and Microsoft — were dead wrong.

Despite the presence of select full-fledged PSP and PS3 retail titles on the PlayStation store, Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty marks the first real retail-quality title to be available exclusively online. So how do things hold up? Does it maintain all of the glory and grandeur of the original R&C: Future, or is it simply a stripped down follow up meant to milk the pocketbooks of the R&C faithful? Hit the jump to find out;

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If you’ve ever read my memoir Geek Like Me, you’ll know that one of the key components in any geeklife is the love of obscure and useless trivia.  Getting the opportunity to show that off is tantamount to nerdgasm.  When Jeopardy! hit the PSN late last week, it was a rallying cry for trivia-nerds everywhere.

The first of several big trivia releases this fall, Jeopardy! has the distinct advantage of being reasonably priced and available as a direct download.  At $14.99, you’ve got to wonder just how complete a package this really is.  So how did things play out?

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It should be said straight away that although The Last Guy is an awesome title for the game, it’s pretty inaccurate. There are in reality tons of people left alive, though it is left to you alone to gather them up and get them to safety. But then a ship flies in and it’s piloted by someone so you can’t even say that you’re The Last Guy to save humanity! But I digress…. we’re here to talk about how the game plays after all.

The good news is while the name might not be accurate the following statement is… The Last Guy is awesome. Continue Reading »

From Ye Olde PlayStation Blog, we learn that Criterion is going to be making the entire Burnout Paradise retail game available for download. I didn’t see that one coming. At least, not quite as quickly as this. It’s an extremely aggressive move into “full” digital distribution. From the blurb:

The download will be $29.99, but it’s not the disk version of the game we originally released back in January. This is an all-singing, all-dancing version complete with all the free packs so far. Here are some of the highlights. All new game modes, like Online Marked Man and Online Road Rage. Awesome new vehicles, including the Hunter Olympus and Nakamura Rai-jin Turbo. 70 all-new challenges featuring against-the-clock gameplay and leaderboards plus the in-game calendar and news page. Check the details on our website.

I’ve mentioned before how impressed I am with Criterion’s ongoing hyper-support of Paradise. This really is a steal. No mention of how big the whole thing will be in bytes – I’m guessing somewhere between “pretty big” and “fucking huge” – but hey, that’s what user-swappable harddrives are for, amirite?

What do you guys think of this move? The 360 will be getting the ability to install any game to the HDD in the fall as well, albeit with the disc still in the drive. Is this an attempt to mirror that functionality somewhat on the PS3 side, or is it part of a larger push on Sony’s part, to finally put the retail shops under the digital-distribution sword? Or, is it just Criterion kicking ass as usual, a unique one-off? Hit the comments and tell us your theory.

I wrote a slightly (ok, totally) rantish “open letter” to Dylan Cuthbert last night, bemoaning the difficulty levels in PixelJunk Monsters and Eden. If you have yet to try these games on your PS3 – run, don’t walk. They are wonderfully crafted, tight little experiences of both the Tower Defence and Platforming genres, respectively. There are demos for both.

Anyhow, Mr. Cuthbert had the good graces to respond, and he has confirmed the following:

• Monsters will be receiving a free patch that allows the player to progress through the game on Easy, Medium, Hard, or a new Expert mode (which I suggested he name simply “Cuthbert”); this will be available for offline play. Online rankings will maintain the existing difficulty level to maintain fairness.
• Eden will also be receiving a patch to enable some new modes of gameplay. He described the swinging mechanic as “much too fun to waste on just one set of game rules”. I agree. He also implied that Q-Games is looking into “a more namby pamby mode for the ‘lighter’ people out there”.

What a nice guy.

You can read my original letter here, and his actual response here. What’s also kind of amazing is that I wrote it to him at 1:25 am my time, and he responded within 25 minutes. He’s 13 hours ahead of me in timezones. I have received email from the future.

I won’t lie to you; when the Sony E3 conference came and went with nary a sign of Wipeout HD, I was dialling up my best henchmen. The game had already been delayed at least once before to add features, a laudable goal to be sure, but let’s go already, you know? So the E3 disappearing act was not well-received, especially with no word on exactly what the cause was. Eurogamer managed to get a quote out of Sony that described a very tricky technical problem, one that “no region has been able to solve”.

That particular wording made it sound like the bug was possibly related to networking. As it turns out, thanks to CVG’s persistence, we now know that the sheer quantities of awesome pouring out of the screen might literally do something bad to your brain.

Snippit:

Imagine our surprise when we were told that the game had failed epilepsy tests and has to be re-engineered as a result before it can be released to the public.

CVG has been told that WipEout “fails the epilepsy tests so much that it has to be re-engineered.” All that speed and flashing lights zipping past your eyes must be too much to handle.

No further details were available, such as how long this re-working might take but we’ve contacted Sony and are still awaiting an official response on the status of WipEout HD and when we can expect to see it launch on PSN.

Obviously Sony has sent out beta code to the various dev houses in each region, to see if one of their hotshots can solve the problem – perhaps with some postprocessing or filtering – rather than go back and re-build large parts of the game.

Is it bad for me to wish I could sign a waiver and buy the seizure version?

Sony’s been teasing their upcoming PSN game The Last Guy for awhile now, but they hadn’t really given away what the game would be about. At the same time they’ve been touting their love affair with Google. The addition of PS3 Google Search, the direct uploading feed to YouTube, the use of the Google Media Server — all awesome results of the Sony/Google love-in.

The Last Guy seems to be the first playtime experience to combine the quality of Sony gameplay with the sheer ingenuity of Google. The game has you guiding survivors of a zombie holocaust through the streets via Google Maps.

Even better, it’s only $5. The Last Guy will be hitting the Japanese PlayStation Store by the end of July and hopefully the US soon after. At 5 bucks I think I may have to cave and get a yen card so I don’t have to wait.