The Playstation Informer

PS3 Firmware 2.36 Released

2008-06-18T15:52:00.006+02:00

Just another new update with nothing useful added. The system stability has been improved, but I don't think this will make any noticeable difference.

Sony understands that what we want right now is in-game XMB, that is why FW 2.40 will include in-game XMB and trophies, according to the Sony blog. They have promised things before, but have they given us all they promised? Not everything, that's for sure. Even though they have officially confirmed that FW2.40 will include these features, who knows when it's coming out? It might not be the next firmware to be released. There's always FW 2.37, 2.38 & 2.39.

Again, all we can do is wait and see. Just don't get your hopes too high up.

Sony - "This year is the year of parity, next year is the year of differentiation"

2008-06-17T18:46:00.006+02:00

We said it, statistics & analysts said it, and now Sony's saying it.

"This year has been the year of parity...", says Shuhei Yoshida. It's true. Analysts said it and we felt it. 2006 was a disaster, early 2007 was the running start, and late 2007 was the leap which almost balanced the PS3 and 360. And as 2008 progressed, the two consoles balanced. No one can say that the 360 is better than the PS3 anymore, especially with the release of the final Metal Gear Solid. But what are we expecting now?

"...next year is the year of differentiation." Sure Sony makes mistakes, but at least they don't lie about it. Next year; the 360 will be past it's peek. 360 fanboys say that they don't believe it, yet most of them shudder as they read it.

"Next year will be the year that third-party development will favour the PS3". A new console needs time to understand how it works, but after everything is understood there's no need to whine about how hard it was to code for it. So we can expect less porting from the 360 to the PS3 and, of course, fresh exclusives. Perfect proof of this is the amount of delays resulted till now. All the good games suffered from delays. Why? Because third-party developers didn't really understand how the PS3 works, and so they thought that they where close into finishing the game, when actually they where not.

All we can do about this is wait and see. But looking forward; we can expect the best now.

The Getaway & Eight Days - Cancelled for shit

2008-06-16T19:43:00.010+02:00

Remember how hyped we were after we saw the first the Getaway trailer. At first it just showed us a street, normal life, cars passing by and pedestrians, all in great detail. Then the perspective moves inside a house slowly until you see a guy holding a gun from which smoke is coming out. The perspective continues to change slowly, until you see a guy dead against a wall on the floor.

And Eight Days. Hell I could have sworn that was an action filled movie trailer. From car shootouts to showdowns. Just search it on GTTV and be amazed. These are the kind of exclusives we dream of having on our console. But no. Idiots are in command.

Now ask this to yourself. Which do you prefer? Those two games, or LittleBigPlanet, Singstar & bullshit Buzz!? Yeah, that's right. The reason for which these two would-have-been-oh-so-fucking-awesome games got the axe was because they where singleplayer games, and had no online content unlike those three crappy superfluous titles. So they canned them to work on the other three.
Hell why didn't they cancel Uncharted while they where at it, at least then they would have left no doubt that they are in fact bloody shitheads. Way to go Sony. Keep your LittleBigPenis and shove it up your ass.

Resistance 2 - What's so new about it?

2008-06-16T18:55:00.006+02:00

Well, a lot. If you're interested in Resistance: Fall of Man, by now you should have watched all three gameplay video releases posted exclusively on GTTV.
If you have watched them you can clearly note that Insomniac has worked their ass off to make sure that the flaws in Resistance: Fall of Man will not be repeated in this sequel.

First of all: the narration. Did you enjoy the soft-voiced narration of Parker in Resistance? Exactly. No one did. That voice was fit for nursery rhyme narration and definitely not for Resistance. According to Ted Price, Insomniac President, Parker has gone to England and will not show up in this sequel since Resistance 2 will take place in American locations. Good news indeed.

What I've also noted is the difference in the appearance of the Chimera and huge inclusion of new & improved enemies. Grims, the new 'undeveloped' Chimera, have no weapons and can only attack by rushing towards you and giving you a whack with their long arms. These shouldn't be hard to eliminate, but when a horde of Grims rush towards you (as shown in the video) you're gonna need some explosions. They can also attack you without a sound as you are focusing on something else, so we can expect a couple of shocks. Speaking of shocks, a new Chimera (not shown on videos yet) called the Chameleon, will be an invisible enemy and will only become visible as he's charging at you and is at a close distance. Also he has these huge claws that will kill you with one hit. But really it's not much of a problem, as they growl before they even start charging at you. When you hear the growl, take out your shotgun.
We will also be fighting against mechanisms such as flying Chimeran aircraft and turrets, so expect boss battles to get much much harder. Speaking of bosses, near the end of the Chicago gameplay video, you can see a giant 300 foot Chimeran walk in the distance.

The way Chimera take damage and die has also been enhanced. They react more realistically now to give you a better feel as you shoot at them. They react differently depending on where you hit them. I saw Hale snipe a Chimera in the guts, he dropped his gun, held his belly dropped on the floor with an outstretched arm then died with one last growl. Beautiful.

The weapons. The old 'circle' weapon system has been ditched and similar to other games we will now only be able to carry two weapons in our arsenal. This will make us think wise and plan for what's coming next, and not just grab two random guns and rush towards the enemy since it would result in a frustrating death. So this should be an improvement, if not to the game to our common sense in gaming. From the gameplay videos I have seen the M5A2 Carbine assault, a shotgun (it looked a bit different than the Rossmore), Bullseye (which has been greatly tweaked in appearance - giving it more 'Chimera' to the feel), Auger, Fareye sniper, a new Chaingun and a new scoped rifle. In terms of grenades I saw the frag and hedgehog.
Explosions and fire (Car, Frag..etc) look much better now as well.

The new health system. Yeah, we all hated the Resistance health system for it's great in amount of annoyance. They have placed that aside for Resistance 2 and added the now-famous 'screen gets redder and bloodier' health system, meaning that we don't need to look around for stupid yellow health packs anymore. Now we don't need to worry if our health gets too low. Just take cover and wait until the screen gets normal again. We all did that in Uncharted.

The crosshatch aim system has changed as well. We don't get a fixed crosshatch, instead it changes in accuracy depending on what you are doing during aiming. If you're standing still it's accurate, walking - less accurate (crosshatch spreads and distance becomes greater). What's new is that as you shoot, the crosshatch spreads with every shot to give you that feeling of recoil. Shooting will never feel as good.

The team mate's AI. This has definitely been improved as you can note from the Grim's gameplay video. They took cover good enough to ensure that they don't get hit by enemies and actually helped you. In Resistance: Fall of Man they barely did anything except wait to be pummeled and shot to death by Hybrids. In fact I didn't see a single teammate die in any of the Resistance 2 videos.
Also we will be getting a similar to COD4 help system using some headset Hale uses. You will be informed with any sight of Chimera and any other important information that you might need to help you beat the mission. Also Hale will have conversations with your teammates as the mission advances (without the use of cutscenes).

The graphics have obviously been improved. You can note from the gun Hale holds that it's not as 'boxy' as they seem to appear in Resistance and give a better reflection effect. And the environment looks much more real.

Multiplayer will be simply amazing. You just have to see the video to know what I mean.

You don't really need to like Resistance: Fall of Man to like this game. So much has been improved that it feels like it's a totally new game. And with at least half a year for it to be released we can expect even more improvement and add-ons.

Old site deleted. New site set up.

2008-06-16T10:21:00.001+02:00

Well we all saw the old site deletion coming. I didn't post on it for a whole year, and the title was just crap. I never actually posted any material of my own, it would have been better named PlayStation News Portal, cos thats what I did.

Now this is different. Here I'm gonna post the news I like and just how I feel about it. No simple porting, it's gonna be my material.

I don't know about updating. I might not update this as much as my old site, but at least instead of copied shit, it's gonna be my shit.