Portable Gaming Revolution

I have many happy memories of coming home from school to plop down in front of the tv to watch some Transformers before dinner. Unfortunately, this is one of those iconic shows that doesn’t hold up well to the test of time. I recently tried to watch the old cartoon but ended up shutting it off in disgust, it might have been better for me to remain ignorant of the truly bad quality and just remember it in the hazy golden glow from childhood.

From the looks of things, this game will not be following very closely in the footsteps of the old ’80′s cartoon series, instead being based on the news series currently being shown on Cartoon Network. The graphics look pretty amazing, and from what I’ve read, the game play sounds like it’ll definitely be worth checking out.  It’s a side-scrolling platform game with some racing scenes thrown in for good measure. You get control of one of four different Autobots: Optimus Prime, Prowl, Bulkhead or Bumblebee and are able to switch between them instantaneously as the puzzles in the game demand their different skills.

Check out the press release after the jump.

Re-blogged from our sister site, Nukoda.com

Continue reading ‘Transformers: Animated for the DS’

Having just recently jumped onto the microblogging bandwagon myself, I know just how addictive it can be to want to comment on every single thing and thought that you do/have throughout any given day. There are several popular social networking websites out there, including both Plurk and Tumblr; the biggest, by far, is Twitter.

There is some pretty exciting news on the homebrew front for my fellow addicts, BadBoy has written an application for the PSP which will allow you to post text updates of up to 140 characters and send it directly to Twitter, provided you have a working WLAN connection for your PSP.

The app, called p-twit! is still in beta, currently sitting at version 0.02. With this newest version, anything sent from your PSP will indicate that it was sent “from p-twit!” once it appears on Twitter, instead of the generic “via web” that would normally appear. The only thing to keep in mind if you choose to go ahead and install this application is that it doesn’t currently support IR keyboards, although this may be coming in the future.

I’m more of a Plurker than anything else, but this is a good step in the right direction if only to make sure that everybody can keep up-to-date with my daily goings-on, even when I’m on the go. Maybe somebody could come up with a p-plurk! app?

Download: p-twit! v0.0.2

Re-blogged from our sister site, Nukoda.com

Popcap Games has finally put rumors to bed about their bringing the insanely addictive game, Peggle, to the DS. They’ve gone and paired up with Q Entertainment, who brought us such puzzle games as Lumines and Meteos. Q Entertainment is a good partner, as they are adding several brand new features that don’t appear on the Mac or PC versions of the game. We still don’t have any word as to what these additional features may be, but we don’t have that long to wait, with an anticipated launch date this winter.

For those of you who haven’t been bitten by the Peggle bug as of yet, you can think of it as an extremely pumped-up version of pachinko, with a few elements of pinball and pool thrown in for good measure. You shoot a grey ball from the top of the screen, trying to ricochet it off of the different colored pegs to eliminate the orange ones, all without running out of balls.

Check out the full press release after the jump.

Re-blogged from our sister site, Nukoda.com

Continue reading ‘Peggle Coming to the DS’

So it looks like the GPS unit will finally be coming to a PSP near you… sometime.  Unfortunately, we don’t have an actual date to pass on.  There is some good news though: after all waiting patiently since the gadget was first announced by Sony back in 2006, the folks over at IGN have actually SEEN it!  The GPS made it’s appearance at this years Comic-Con in San Deigo.  Here is what they have to say, after playing around with it a little bit:

From the main menu, there are four options for you to dive into — Find and Go, Explore Map, My Data, and Settings. I’m assuming you’ve been in a car in the last few years and are somewhat familiar with a GPS system. Find and Go acts as the PSP ap’s most basic GPS function — you choose a city and state before entering a location and getting step-by-step directions. Once you get the data in, you can just explore the map if you like and see what all is around. The default view is a top-down Mapquest POV, while the secondary look anchors the lower part of the map at the bottom of the screen and tilts the view at an angle. Explore Map lets you jump around at will, and My Data has you set up to 32 favorite places; search by hotels, airports, and more; view saved routes; and track logs.

Well that sounds like a little bit of all right!  Apparently the unit will even give different directions, depending on whether you tell it you’re traveling by car, bike or on foot.  All that Sony has indicated is that it should be released sometime in the next nine months.  

I’ve never been a fan of GPS units, having never seen the need for one.  But having one that is portable and that will go anywhere with me and my PSP might just be too good to pass up!  I’ll keep you all posted as more information is released! 

Kratos is stunned: there isn’t a flock of identical zombies…

After the short and sweet opening cinema detailing the you-whomp-‘em-Persian-guards objective, you’ll become immediately aware that the tried and true hack-‘n-slash formula is in full, familiar force in Ready At Dawn’s God of War: Chains of Olympus. Fortunately, that means loads of enemies on screen to catch the business end of Kratos’ blades in the neck, eyeballs or frequently bisected torso. In true God of War fashion, Chains of Olympus flows at a smooth pace as players progress through mythological Greece as a tormented and violently angered, hopping from one legendary location to another.

Unfortunately, the amount of backtracking required to progress to a new setting limits the amount of scenic routes to about a half dozen. Puzzle solving on COO, while equally satisfying and tedious, requires hiking it through entire temples or caves, which are shockingly huge and completely devoid of load times. Navigating Kratos from one end of a city to another, through buildings, over bridges and vertically towards rooftops, is seamless and without framerate drops.

The scope of this game is as impressive as its art style and visual design. Epic views of a crumbling town, complete with a look-out of your future path, compliment the great character models and beautiful textures. Facial and combat animations are spot on, and the dialogue – while irritatingly pretentious – is well delivered throughout the entirety of Kratos’ six hour, vengeful adventure, which will requre you to do nothing but rapidly beat the hell out of your square button to succeed.

Continue reading ‘God of War: Chains of Olympus Review’

So you really want to play God of War on your PSP, huh? Maybe you don’t have the money to buy it, the parents cheaped out, or perhaps you’re just incredibly cheap. Lucky for you Nukoda and PGRevolution are here to hook you up like two topless and randy Greek vixens.

We’re giving away a free copy of God of War: Chains of Olympus because we liked it so much and want to spread the love. Our review copy was so good to us that we want it to share its gruesome, gritty Greek-God action with the readers and listeners of the Bmashers network. How do you get in?

Check it after the jump.

Continue reading ‘Win God of War: Chains of Olympus!’

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with a preview build of FlatOut: Head On for the PSP. I have to say that I was genuinely impressed with how this racer is shaping up for it’s March 11th release date.

Racing games can basically be distilled down into two key types; the Arcade Racer and the Simulation. FlatOut thankfully has always accepted that it was the former and pushes that envelope. Any game with a driver high jump event as a challenge can’t be taking itself too seriously after all.

Head On is the latest in the series of games that started out on the previous console generation and most recently made an appearance on the Xbox 360 as FlatOut: Carnage. FlatOut: Head On was based on that 360 version and places heavy focus on its predecessor’s Carnage mode. Carnage is a perfect fit for the quick pick up and play gaming habits that us portable gamers tend to develop. Instead of trying to finish first in a race your goal is to cause as much damage as possible while running the race. Think of it as a cross between Burnout’s crash mode and a smash up derby and you’ll have a good idea what I’m talking about.

Continue reading ‘FlatOut: Head On Preview’

With weapons-based combat titles such as Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden largely coming out of Japan, it was great to see a western touch on the genre when SCEA dropped God of War for the PS2 in 2005. The differences in these games were quite noticeable, most poignantly that God of War required less skill and encouraged heavy amounts of button mashing as opposed to learning combos, parries and evasion, as Japanese action games did.

Despite this, the game was a roaring success, and with the third iteration of the God of War franchise hitting PSP’s in early March, the series looks to be embracing its success.

God of War: Chains of Olympus, the third edition of the gruesome Greek gore-fest, is one of the most impressive handheld titles ever created.

Even critics of the game’s simplicity and ease will be converted at the immense technical capabilities that the game offers. While it still retains its square-square-square method of fighting, Chains of Olympus manages to be an impressive and fun button masher, and an absolutely incredible tribute to the console series.

Continue reading ‘God of War: Chains of Olympus Preview’

At the recent Destination Playstation event held by Sony in Arizona two new bundles were announced. The one announcement that peaked my interest was of course, the God of War PSP Entertainment Pack shipping in June. This bundle contains a new blood red PSP and a copy of the God of War: Chains of Olympus game (full package details below). I so want this bundle, but there is one odd thing about it. The bundle hits in June, but GoW:CoO hit the streets on March 4th!? If you can hold off on picking up God of War: Chains of Olympus until then you will be able to play it on this sweet new PSP, but if you wait you’ll end up with a second copy of the game. Also announced was a 80gb PS3 bundle shipping with MGS4 and a Dualshock 3.

Still cool, but I really don’t understand the method to Sony’s madness on this one. Package details follow from the official press release:

In June, a new PSP Entertainment Pack will be hitting stores, featuring the famous face of the Ghost of Sparta — Kratos. Here’s what you get in the bundle, which will be available for $199.99 (MSRP):

• Limited-Edition “Deep Red” PSP with Kratos silkscreened on the back
• God of War: Chains of Olympus
• Superbad on UMD video
• Voucher to download Syphon Filter: Combat Ops from PLAYSTATION Store for free

God of War: Chains of Olympus still arrives for PSP on March 4, 2008

Reblogged from our sister site Nukoda.

At Sony’s Pre-E3 press conference Sony spent an unusual amount of time talking about our favorite little handheld, the PSP. Announced at the conference was a new version of the PSP (nicknamed the slim, but no official name was given). This new version of the PSP will be 19% slimmer and 33% lighter, but still have the gorgeous 4.3″ screen. This new version will have greater battery life due to new battery technologies, and feature video out!

During the conference Kaz Hirai demoed this video out and it looked pretty simple. To output your games, movies or images to your TV you just have to plug in the video cable to the headphone jack and hold down the display button for 5 seconds. This is a feature that we were all begging Sony for when UMD videos were still viable, sadly it took Sony this long to do it since the UMD video format is nearly dead.

Also announced were a pair of new coloured systems releasing as bundles. The first bundle contains the PSP, a 1GB memory stick, the game Daxter, and the UMD movie The Family Guy Frickin’ Sweet. This bundle will sell for $199 US. Chewbacca joined Jack Tretton on stage to show off the second bundle, The Star Wars Battlefront edition. This bundle will come with a sweet looking white PSP that has a nice Darth Vader image on the back, and will come with a copy of the exclusive PSP title Star Wars Battlefront Renegade Squadron. This bundle should drop in October for $199.

All in all I was underwhelmed with the new PSP. The new size and built in video-out is nice, but I was really hoping for built-in flash memory and a tie in to the Sony Online store. The rest of the great PSP game announcements at the show left me feeling better though.

Its finally here! If you decided to update past the 3.03 firmware and missed the downgrader, you probably kicked yourself. Well kick yourself not anymore; the 3.50 downgrader has been released.

People are skeptical when they downgrade as they fear of making their PSP “bricked” or non-functional. Well the Noobz team have made sure this downgrade is as simple as simple can be. At no point should you feel stuck in downgrading. As long as you can read and understand English, own a PSP with firmware 3.50 or below and a copy of Lumines (Any version such as platinum ETC), then you can downgrade. You may also want to try out the ‘Illuminati Hello World’ homebrew that you can try on a 3.50 PSP to get the feel of downgrading. You can see ‘Illuminati Hello World’ below:

With this new downgrader, it detects which motherboard your PSP has and downgrades it to that type. This way, its safer than just guessing. You may want to ask, ‘But all this downgrading must break PSP’s?’. Well thats were you are wrong. The Noobz team say that if your PSP breaks then you either didn’t follow the instructions 100% or you are one of the unlucky percent that just break.

Overall, I think anyone who has a PSP should take a look into the homebrew scene as it offers a wide scale to view your PSP from. I know that everyone that I helped to downgrade said that they fully enjoy their PSP’s now and it brings a whole new life to the PSP area.

Hope you enjoyed this as I am really exited for you guys as I want you to join me into the homebrew scene and take full advantage of your lovable handheld’s

Cheers
-Matt

As we view the ‘Most Wanted games this Summer’, we just can’t help but notice that more and more games are being put on hold or canceled. Manhunt 2 has been crossed off the summer games list. Not only will Manhunt 2 not make the July ship date that Take-Two promised, but development for the game has been put on hold altogether.

A Take-Two representative reveals, “We continue to stand behind this extraordinary game. We believe in freedom of creative expression, as well as responsible marketing, both of which are essential to our business of making great entertainment.”

Lets just hope this game will be on our shelves soon.