sgd07 posts (Subscribe to this feed)

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.

Get the podcast:
[iTunes] Subscribe to the Joystiq Podcast directly in iTunes (MP3)
[RSS] Add the Joystiq Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator
[Digg] Like the show? Digg it.
[MP3] Download the MP3 directly

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!

PSP Fanboy offers the latest and greatest movie and game trailers, formatted for the PSP in this new weekly feature. Check it out every Saturday. PSP owners can download files wirelessly via m.pspfanboy.com.

Instructions: Save all movie and thumbnail files to the VIDEO folder. These high resolution 480x272 videos require firmware 3.30 or above. (Note: OE custom firmware will also play these videos.)

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]

Top Stories

• New Ratchet and Clank gallery proves very promising
• LittleBigPlanet gallery shows off creative talents
• Lair gallery shows little new, but still awesome
• Heavenly Sword gallery shows in-game footage
• This Uncharted gallery defines next-gen

Almost-but-not-quite-top Stories

• How about a delicious Warhawk gallery?
• Wii Sports-like bowling game for PSN
• Super Stardust HD gallery shows how planets survive
• Conan clobbers us with new screenshots
• New SOCOM screenshots, drab environments, nice detail
• New Singstar gallery shows off features, menus
• Pain announced for PSN, first gallery available
• A few NBA '08 screenshots to get your game on
• TimeShift confirmed on the PS3 + gallery!
• Dark Sector screenshots eviscerate you
• Some fancy screens of Baseball action from MLB '07 The Show
• Folklore gallery shows off colorful environments
• Stranglehold gallery will grab hold of you
• Eye of Judgment gallery to tease and envigorate
• Devil May Cry 4 gallery
• 2 new The Darkness screens are like a chainsaw to the heart
• Ninja Gaiden: Sigma screenshots - eight of them
• Four new Hellboy screenshots
• Home - living area screenshots
• Home - features screenshots
• Home - public spaces screenshots
• Rainbow Six: Vegas screenshots are gorgeous

Go ahead. Dive in.

Sony revolutionizes the games industry yet again by introducing a sports game that detects your motion through the controller! Instead of pressing buttons, one can hold the controller and move it as if it were a real bowling ball. We love the idea!

But in all honesty, we think that the SIXAXIS may not be as well-suited for this type of gameplay as other consoles. Joystiq's Kevin Kelly tried the game, and as we suspected, didn't have the easiest time with the game: "You literally flip the controller on its side, hold it with your thumb between the analog sticks, and then sweep your arm gracefully along an arc while holding and releasing one of the buttons to send your ball down the alley. Sound simple? Well, it is and it isn't. Holding the SIXAXIS like that feels really, really weird. It's like we're wired or programmed to hold that controller with both hands, and doing something like that makes our gamer genes cry out in pain. Although, in all honesty, once we got the hang of it, it wasn't all that bad."

So while not truly revolutionary, High Velocity Bowling should offer some motion-sensing fun for the Wii-less. Because it's coming through the PLAYSTATION Network, this experiment in copycat design should, at the very least, be affordable.

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.

D3 Publisher is sending PSP owners more puzzle fun this summer. One part Cube, another part Hot Brain -- this puzzler attempts to find the "Practical Intelligence Quotient" of its players. The game keeps track of the moves and speed of the player and uses Infrastructure mode to compare the intelligence of the player to others around the country, and the world. (It's developed by Professor Masuo Koyasu of Kyoto University ... so it has to be good!)

PQ2 will offer more than 250 puzzles for players to solve. And, if that weren't enough, a level editor will allow users to create their own puzzles for sharing through Infrastructure. Finally, the game wants to share the love: the game supports Game Sharing so that friends can experience ten levels of brain-squeezing fun.

Check out our screenshots below. The game releases June 12th.