After a short break marred by technical difficulties, Ludwig rejoins the podcast to go over the Halo 3 beta, the StarCraft 2 announcement, and Guitar Hero III. Song. By. Song. We also join up with Joystiq's Kevin Kelly who spent a couple days in San Diego at Sony's Gamer's Day event, to get the skinny on what Sony's got in store.

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Hosts: Christopher Grant, Ludwig Kietzmann, and Justin McElroy

Guests: Joystiq's Kevin Kelly

Music: "We Weren't Put Together" by David E. Sugar

Program:
0:05:10 - Halo 3 beta
0:13:41 - StarCraft 2
0:19:16 - Sony Gamer's Day 07 (see PlayStation Fancast for more detail)
0:21:08 - Little Big Planet, PlayStation Home, Pain
0:35:40 - WarHawk, Drake's Fortune, Heavenly Sword
0:44:35 - Socom Confrontation, Folklore, High Velocity Bowling
0:51:18 - Stranglehold, God of War: Chains of Olympus
0:57:58 - April NPD ("My Pokemans. Let me show you them.")
1:05:39 - PlayStation 3 1.80
1:08:44 - Guitar Hero III songs
1:22:05 - FIN

Waiting for John Woo's Stranglehold to hit store shelves is a bit like watching one of his movies; there's a lot of slow-motion, and plenty of bullets and destruction during the wait. We got our hands on the latest build at Sony's recent Gamers Day, and fired thousands of rounds in an effort to see how we were at controlling Chow Yun Fat.

Now, if you haven't seen a John Woo film, you need to rush out and rent one right now. Since Hard Boiled, which is the prequel to this game, comes on the Blu-ray disc, we'd recommend The Killer. Both of 'em star Chow Yun Fat, tons of guns, and a lot of over-the-top action. Hong Kong action cinema at it's finest.

One of the things we were most eager to do at Sony's Gamers Day was to transport ourselves inside of the PlayStation Home world, and see what was going on. We finally got our chance after the crowds dissipated on the last day. We swooped in, grabbed the Sixaxis, and tried to find our bearings.

While the PlayStation Home beta is going on right now, there weren't too many people wandering around, which is probably a good thing. For first timers, it sure would be hard to figure out what was happening with crowds walking through you, talking to you, and ... dancing. Yes, right now dancing is the most popular feature for groups to participate in, continuing the World of Warcraft phenomenon of cutting a rug when you encounter other players.

MTV ninja Stephen Totilo infiltrated the tooth-decaying sugar-fluff of Sony Gamers' Day and shoved his mic into High Velocity Bowling developer Scott Rohde's face, asking him the tough question: Dude, like, you know everyone's sayin' you just copied Nintendo ... so, like, you did, right? Maybe not. With the lens carefully trained on his San Diego tan, Rohde's fired back with a little-known factoid, "Before we knew that Wii Bowling was coming out we were building [High Velocity], absolutely." You sure about that, Scott? 'Cause Nintendo confirmed 'Bowling' back in September '06. "We started working on it, literally, right before that ... and we had a prototype up in place when [Wii Sports] came out," alleged Rohde.

But why argue about who was first to the gimmick? Considering price, Wii Sports and High Velocity are categorically different. Wii Sports is free, but as a PSN title, High Velocity will likely cost in the $5-to-10 range (and planned expansion packs could balloon the total price). If Rohde's statements are accurate, then High Velocity will end up more akin to Rockstar's Table Tennis or maybe the Outlaw sports series, as it will apparently feature a more robust physics engine than Wii Sports and pre-built unlockable characters. Wii's Bowling will ultimately be matched up against PlayStation Home's built-in bowling game, which is being developed separately from High Velocity, but, like the others, will probably incorporate motion controls.

One of the PSP games that we spent a little more time with than we should have at Sony's Gamers Day event last week was Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice. The game isn't leaps and bounds above the original title, but it's pretty addictive to jump onto each moving car and blast away at whatever you happen to be chasing. We're assuming that the "extreme" part in the title refers to the new four person multiplayer over ad hoc networks. There's 12 different vehicles in the new game, which should give everyone something to hop onto that suits their needs and / or desires.

No word yet on if you can hijack one of your fellow player's modes of transport or not, but we imagine there will be a fair share of leaping back and forth going on. Those Pursuit Force cops sure are agile ... not to mention pretty liberal with the whole "we need to borrow your car" thing.

Last week's Sony Gamer's Day gave us the chance to sit down with a lot of different games, and one of the highest "must play this or else" on our list was God of War for PSP. It was the first game we spotted across the motion capture studio where the event was held, and we edged our way through the crowd, wishing we had the might of Zeus to part the waves and get there faster.

Finally, there we were, sitting on a blindingly white couch, staring at the goodness that is God of War: Chains of Olympus on one of Sony's massive screens. They had a PSP wired up to it, and although the image was cropped a bit on-screen, it made us want to blow up everything we play to that size. We studied the control diagram, noted that it was all very simple, and reached for the controller ... denied!

Compared to the interpretations we're constantly exposed to in modern forms of entertainment, certain aspects of our society can seem a little dull. We're generally not entertained by the sort of justice dished out in a court by some gavel-wielding grandpa, and have to turn to more ... extreme measures. Pursuit Force returns to the American PSP this Fall with Extreme Justice, putting the kibosh on criminals and encouraging your over-the-top cop to keep his limbs outside the vehicle at all times.

Adding 3 more playable characters to the mix and a new array of vehicles to leap on, over and between in high-speed chases, Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice hopes to make good on the promise the original game showed but delivered in pieces. Let's hope it's transported in an armored van this time.

The application for the Warhawk beta is available now. The beta is reportedly set to start next week, so you better sign up soon if you want a chance to get on some pre-final space shooting action.

Our worrisome siblings at PS3 Fanboy fret that the beta, initially announced only to members of the exclusive Game Advisory Panel and the RLS, will remain exclusive to the two aforementioned groups. The beta for PS Home was predominantly GAP members and it appears the same situation might happen here. Regardless, it never hurts to try.



[Via PS3 Fanboy]

SCEA president Jack Tretton has reiterated Sony's intent to launch some semblance of a 'PSP Store,' but his statements provide little assurance that the project is a priority. "I think the advent of a long awaited and quite frankly long overdue ability to deliver a downloadable service for the PSP will help us out a great deal," Tretton said during an appearance at Sony Gamers' Day. "Hopefully we'll have it out there by the fall."

Tretton gave no further insight into the proposed venture, leaving us to wonder if he was merely referring to SOE's Station Launcher, a forthcoming service that will offer downloads of PSP-formatted movies directly to the handheld device (via PC). Of course, there would be obvious benefits to launching a portable counterpart of PS3's PlayStation Store, complete with PS1 games, demos, and trailers -- and, dare we suggest, full e-Distribution titles. All with just the flick of a WLAN switch. If only...

[Via PSP Fanboy]

Sony's Gamer Day 2007 event in San Diego drew one of the most anticipated PS3 titles out of hiding, LittleBigPlanet. Out of everything being shown off here, this was what we were most looking forward to. They only had one demo station set up, and we couldn't shoot video of it, but ... wow.

The extreme amount of detail in this game, down to the stitching on the characters and the photorealism of some of the painted cardboard backdrops is amazing. It's oddly juxtaposed with the fact that it feels like such a little kid's game ... but the kind of little kid's game you can never put down, sort of like Lite-Brite or Barrel of Monkeys.

Or as we like to call it -- God(dess) of War III: In True HD. Okay, all jokes aside, there is simply no denying that the PS3's Heavenly Sword is a beautiful game. The characters, the weapons, the settings, and even the effects like dust and blood are visually stunning. They'll blast onto your retinas and curve your mouth into an "O" face that'll last awhile. Yes, it's really that pretty.

The level demonstrated during the Sony Gamer's Day event happens right after what was already seen on an episode of Heroes. The game's protagonist, Nariko, starts running down a massive rope towards some enemies. They aren't too thrilled with this, so they start chopping the ropes off the platform they're tied to. This forces you to pull off some fairly easy Dragon's Lair type moves as the screen tells you when to run faster or jump to a side. Eventually she makes it down and lands smack dab in the middle of a fight, which is what we were waiting for.

While we've talked about Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (which we now decree shall be referred to as Uncharted from here on in, to save on all the typing) before, this is the first chance that we've had to spend any time actually playing the PlayStation 3 title.

At Sony's Gamer's Day, we watched a trailer that was extremely cinematic in nature, and the game actually looks like it could be a movie starring people like Paul Walker and Jessica Alba. Oh wait, that was called Into The Blue. Okay, change the girl, tweak the plot, throw in a search for El Dorado, and that's about the theme of Uncharted.

While the Buzz! franchise of PlayStation 2 games has been extremely popular in Europe, even invading classrooms in the UK, we've never seen a version of it here. Well, that will all change soon since Sony just announced that Buzz: The Mega Quiz and Buzz Jr. will be crossing the pond and encouraging gamers to keep their hands hovering over large red buzzers.

The producers told us that we hadn't seen this game here yet because the gamers were resistant to buying a new peripheral ... but how would they know that if we haven't been offered one? Gah! Anyone, Buzz! uses a special Sony PS2 add-on that plugs into one of your USB ports, and splits into four different game buzzers. That means you can have a total of eight gamers (two USB ports, and an extra set of Buzzers) playing at one time.

The adult version of the game features over 5,000 questions that are trivia and time based, and the Jr. version is most about fun and clowning around for kids, while remaining educational. We played a few rounds with both, and it's actually more fun than you'd think. Plus, it helps you pretend you have a bar trivia machine, right in your own home.

The sixth Syphon Filter game, Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow (nearly one per year since 1999, dang) is coming to the PSP this fall, and it is offering up some new features like 360 degree underwater combat, a cover system with blind fire, Havok physics (on the leetle PSP? Nice!), and a contextual combat system that adds some new and unique melee attacks, from neck snaps to knife kills.

What's cooler though is that they are opening this game up on a global scale as Logan travels the globe trying to unravel the mystery behind the disappearance of his long-time partner, Lian Xing. Story was penned by comic book writer extraordinaire Greg Rucka, who you'll have to forgive for writing the novelization of Perfect Dark. He does a good job with Queen & Country thought, so we're willing to let it slide. The game also features an original score from Azam Ali, who also composed some of the music for 300.

Check out the pictures from the gallery below. The last Syphon Filter game was one of the highest rated games last year for the PSP ... this one might just top that score.