Earlier today at GamesCom Sony unveiled the newly designed Playstation 3, the PS3. Sitting 33% smaller, containing a 120Gb hard drive, and now less wallet busting at around £250. It will hit the shops in the first week of September.
Pictures of the PS3 Slim:
Not only are the pictures now all over the internet, there is also a video on YouTube of the guys at GamesRadar unboxing it!! Oh, and to save you clicking a link we have the video here as well!!
Strategy games have always been a “take it or leave it” style of game. The PC people always lap these things up and have made them a staple part of the personal computer repertoire for many years, with Command and Conquer and Age of Empires being two of the most remembered in the minds of the mouse wielders. The consoles have tried, with admittedly varying degrees of success, to implement these titles onto the current gen. systems. The one thing that always seems to hold them back is the control method. One controller simply doesn’t have the same amount of intricacy as the keyboard and mouse combo.
Titan Studios and Sony Santa Monica have come along with their own interpretation of RTS, but instead of trying to engulf us with frantic stick movements and mashing of dials there is a much more simplified take on a brain taxing genre. Instead of controlling the whole army and building every single thing from scratch, Fat Princess brings you into the fray with a fair bit of your base (castle in this instance) already up and you simply being in control of you, with everyone else being either manipulated by AI or other humans, but we’ll get to that later.
The story behind the game is a basic one. You are a servant for your beloved king and all things are peaceful and well. Your high exulted one is father to a lovely, sweet angelic little princess who whilst one day walking through the forest comes across a huge slice of cake growing out of the ground (I know I said it was basic, I never said it made any sense though). Obviously cake plus princess equals a rather overweight successor to the throne. To make things interesting, as well as giving you something to do in the game, there are two castles with opposing kingdoms in the same predicament, and with a “handsome” prince coming to wed either one of these dashing brides, the race is on to win his hand by fair means or foul.
There is a definite cel shaded lean to Fat Princess. It looks great in its own comical style, not to mention a fair bit of gore and violence, which for something this cute is quite refreshing. It’s very colourful too, which helps hike the striking visual quality even higher. In terms of comparison to other PSN titles available to download it can certainly hold its own nicely. The music is also suitably cartoon-like and minds its own business in a jolly and unobtrusive way, which is always good. As an audio/video package it can’t help to raise a smile, that’s for sure.
The basic single player mode is exactly that. There are a total of seven chapters, but in reality it’s really six because the last one is just a voiceover finishing the story. It is a VERY short effort and will only take you a maximum of two hours. It has a feeling of being a multi mission tutorial to give you all the different modes of the game and feature the varied locales within Fat Princess, but you still feel cheated with this. There is a definite feeling of a reliance on the multiplayer pulling it all through and making things all worthwhile. A rather silly soccer option and a gladiatorial arena for all the different types of abilities do dent the disappointment of the length, but only marginally.
It’s a bit of a shame really because the control system and the depth shown in these six missions are rather clever. There are five different types of army man you can be. The warrior is the all out brawn of the outfit, rangers have the distant offence taken care of with bows and arrows, as well as healing druids, wizards with mystic powers and woodmen who help to build upgrade units for your castle. The said upgrades allow your fellow soldiers to have their own abilities ramped up to make things a little easier, so it does edge you towards a team effort, with everyone banding together to reach the goal.
The best way to describe the tasks available in Fat Princess is likening them to your standard variants found in most first person shooters these days, but with a different viewpoint. The goals can change from the capture the flag style of the main aim, to team death matches with a “get to zero” lives left counter, as well as something similar to Battlefield 1943’s capturing of outposts. It’s a nice mix up of different genres and it does work, but it’s the sum of all parts that make a game either sink or swim and it’s a game that just doesn’t add up. Let me explain.
Creating a classic game is all about balance. Finding that right amount of online excitement and offline enjoyment is a paramount quality in today’s gaming market. If you can’t get both equally full then normally one side will pick up the slack of the other. Fat Princess seems to be lacking in both sides, which is disappointing. The offline mode is criminally short and is almost bordering on unforgivable; regardless of how many extra downloads they plan. You’re already paying £12 for this, so you expect something longer. The online mode does have the potential to work well, but on checking this out I had some major connection issues, with actions lagging out a lot and this just made the enjoyment slip away in favour of our old nemesis, frustration. If games like Battlefield can have 24 players on an intense and action filled island, how come there is latency on a title that even though it has 32 folk is just not as large, not to mention that the match I joined only had about 10 humans in it, as the rest of the regiment was made up of computer AI.
The other problem is nothing to do with them. Sony’s own online system has always been playing a bit of catch up with Xbox Live, but one of the major things is that with all the 360 machines sold to go online there was a headset to talk to people, which I personally feel helps to create a fun atmosphere (well, most of the time) and if that isn’t there, the game can suffer a bit. This is the case here, as even though there are official communicators available, not everyone has them and it just doesn’t help things any.
As I say, it is a real shame. Fat Princess itself does play well and I’m sure there will be more downloads as time goes on, but when your offline mode is practically non-existent and the online area is bereft of atmosphere and laggy, you find that even the best ideas are doing the equivalent of climbing a greasy pole. It looks quirky, sounds fun and plays well, but the content in other areas is a bit short. It’s in the “wait ‘til it comes down in price” section, as there are other titles out there at the same price that can offer you more for your money. As it stands though, there just isn’t enough there for your hard earned.
VideogameUK verdict: 6.5/10
Yep, Sega have released a new trailer for Aliens Vs. Predator. So close the curtains, turn the lights out and watch!!
Infinity Ward has posted multiplayer footage of Modern Warfare 2 on their YouTube channel. It not only gives us a glimpse of some of the multiplayer maps that’ll be available, but also one of the perks, the “AC130 killstreak reward”, which after 11 kills in a row gives you the chance to man the gun in a AC130 Gunship!!
Storylines in games these days are getting a little bit repetitive. Most of them are all about lost loves being chased by their other halves in a desperate bid to save them, or maybe something to do with WWII or modern day terrorism, perhaps. The point I’m trying to make is that all games these days seem to follow a set path when it comes to weaving a tale to entice people to buy their wares and hopefully keep them gripped. I wonder what Gamecock and Wide Load were thinking when they came up with the basis for Hail to the Chimp.
The premise is pretty much that humans are replaced by animals and it’s the run up to the presidency and the candidates are a group of strange looking, bull talking individuals who will do anything to become the next president of the USA (presuming that will be the United States of Animals). Ten different species ranging from a jellyfish who you can’t understand to a squid who is a master of martial arts are desperate for your vote as you help them through multiple levels of clam collecting and signpost changing.
Hail to the Chimp is the first major piece of work from the guys behind Stubbs the Zombie and it couldn’t be further away from their original calling, which was a part of the Bungie team when Halo was starting to make a name for itself. This game sides more towards the Mario Party/Crash Bash side of things and although it works ok with a single combatant, it’s really meant to be played either on or offline with another 3 people. Now, there aren’t a lot of these about on either PS3 or Xbox 360, so it should be a creditable addition to the PSN downloadable market, or at least that was the theory.
It’s not that it doesn’t have its good points though it has to be said. The humour in the set pieces, namely the GRR news Sound bites and fake ads, which do manage to raise a genuine chuckle when you hear them. The only fear would be that once the initial originality laugh has been and gone that the 3rd or 4th time would begin to grate, which is a shame, as some of these are really rather funny. You can unlock more of these as time goes on, but your desire to do this all relies on how Hail to the Chimp plays.
It’s not too bad in a playability sense, but where it falls down, quite badly to be honest, is in the variety of what it offers. There may be many different types of game, but they are all based around the same basic principal of collecting clams, regardless of how much you try and sugar coat it. This starts a chain reaction where initial fun leads to niggling annoyance and then from there to boredom before you eventually just don’t want to put anything into it, either emotionally or physically.
It has a nice cel shaded look to the game and everything is very colourful and there are enough moving parts in each level to take away that monotony for a while. I’ve been a fan of this type of look for a while now and I feel it works well in a lot of things, this included. It’s just a shame that it’s part of a game with such a lack of actual character and more importantly depth. It’s a victim of it’s own idea in a way because even though it’s a great looking title for the kids, they won’t really grasp the undertones of the more adult humour and political subject matter hidden within, which HTTC needs to be a full package.
Sound wise is where it delivers a decent performance. The music is upbeat and quirky and with the vocals having a real comedic and in some cases rather professional feel to it you can be seen to believe a lot of effort went into this to make it funny and in part that is why a lot of the video cut scenes are just that. The sound effects do their job, but they’re lost in the wave of one liners and tunes that you don’t really notice them.
There is an online mode to it also, which does manage to keep the vultures away for a little while, but once you have exhausted all the originality and variety the player themselves can muster it is then that the aforementioned boredom really begins to set in. Once that starts to happen there is no hope of you wanting to play this that often, regardless of the amount of spare time you have. Mario Party does this better with more mini games and much better choice, as does Crash Bash and many other party games of this style. Ok, some of them may not have the comedic value of Hail to the Chimp, but they will last you longer in the long run. The price doesn’t really help its case a lot either. At £11.99 it is a fair bit of money to pay out for something like this. You could pick up Battlefield 1943, as well as many others, for a bit less and get much more enjoyment out of it.
It’s a little unfortunate that this game fails to deliver what some had hoped it would, especially when you remember how good Stubbs the Zombie actually was. There is a definite feeling of missed opportunity and failing promise here and you can only hope Wide Load will learn from this and hopefully produce something a bit better. As it stands though it just sits 50/50 in the polls. At least there’s one thing you can say about it and that is it does have a lot in common with politicians. Both of them aim to deliver so much when they’re desperate to get into the hot seat, but usually fall short once they get there.
VideogameUK verdict: 6.5/10
