Los Havros

I suppose after my previous aside, this particular post shouldn’t be surprising to you.  I.e. I’m currently spending most of my time on Warhawk as a rocket-riddled corpse rather than a living, breathing soldier.  In case you’re wondering, yes- it’s soul-destroying.

Reverse gear
Let’s recap shall we?  I now possess Warhawk because I did indeed go down the download route and snagged the game off the PlayStation Store for £19.99.  Bargain or what?  There’s a couple of drawbacks: first, the game can only be played from your PSN account that you bought it with, and secondly, you must be signed into the PlayStation Network to play the game.  Seen as this game is online-only, I didn’t think this was a major problem.

I also bought all three expansion packs, which probably brings my total spend to nearer £30, but that’s still not too bad.  Headset?  I’ll probably acquire the official PS3 headset when it comes out.  Before I continue, It is worth noting that the install size is under 800MB.  Seriously.  That’s some really impressive compression

The friendly skies?

Earning my wings
Before I was going to take to the skies online, I thought I’d go through the new training scenarios that have been added in the new v1.5 patch (which included trophies).  I progressed well through ground combat and vehicles, but when it came to piloting the Warhawk I found evading constant missile attacks to be a bit tricky. Sure, everything’s simple when you have chaff, but that’s not always to hand so evasive manoeuvres are required.  I half considered that this may be a problem if I were to venture online.  Hey, I got about 4 trophies for completing the training anyway.  Yea!

Crash and burn
On the ground, I’m not too bad; I shoot people, I man the turrets and have managed to take a few planes out of the sky, and I’ve dealt serious damage in a tank.  As soon as I step foot inside a Warhawk though, I’m toast.  Within a few seconds several missiles have locked onto me and before I can think of what to do my burning corpse is flying through the sky- sans aircraft.  A few times though, I have managed to shake off quite a few missiles, but they come so thick and fast that eventually I get hit in the end anyway.

Lessons?  Well, I’m pretty sure that I’m not quite ready for the online world and so I’m going to hopefully play a few local games to get my flying skills up to scratch and then I shall take my place amongst the hardened warriors and do battle, rather than take my place amongst the fallen.  I’ll post more updates on my Warhawk experiences as and when.

Does anyone have any similar experiences of joining a hardcore group of players online?  If so, I’d like to hear from you!

Tags: deathmatch, download, expansion, packs, Warhawk

Whilst the good-old USA gets to have a vote on which cover (out of 3) they’d like, apparently SCEE has already chosen for Europe.  It’s this one:

Resistance 2 Collector's Edition, European cover (image from IGN.com)

My thoughts on this cover?  Erm, not too keen, but it’s good enough I suppose.  Totally clashes with the first game’s cover to be honest.  But beggars can’t be choosers?

Tags: box art, cover, Europe, Insomniac, Ony On PlayStation, PlayStation 3, PLAYSTATION Network, PS3, Resistance 2

A quick look at what’s going on in the crazy world of the Official PlayStation English Forums:

Your Next 5 games?- Not sure if I can list 5!  Possible future blog post?
How Awesome Would It Be…- PlayStation Home, sackboy.  Wonder where this is going?  Find out!
Anybody on Habbo (UK)?- Whatever floats your boat.
Your biggest gaming disappointment- A depressing topic, but actually funny and interesting.
Your aquarium setups….- This is funnier than it should be.  Checkout the lolcat!

It sure is a strange world.  Well, that’s it for this week.  Tune in next week for more of the same: only different.

Tags: aquarium, debate, discussion, English, English Forums, forums, Habbo, Home, Official, PlayStation, PlayStation Home, sackboy, thread, threads

No matter how good online news and entertainment services get, there’ll always be a special place for magazines in my life.  It’s the textured feel of holding a magazine in your hands and the fresh smell from the printing press as you tear open the plastic cover.

For a long time I subscribed to both ComputerActive and the Official PlayStation Magazine (then the Official PlayStation 2 Magazine). I suppose ComputerActive gave me a good grounding in how computers work and what you can do with them.  I’ve stopped getting all PlayStation magazines as they are quite expensive for what they are, and in the era of downloadable demos on the PlayStation Store, who needs demo disks anymore?  I’m not paying £5.99+ for that!

However, I am now diversifying in what I’m reading.  I’m still subscribing to ComputerActive, which must be a good 8 years or so now!  Yet I’m now thinking it may be time to cancel my subscription as I’ve really outgrown what it has to offer me.  For the past couple of years I’ve been getting .net on an ad-hoc basis as I’m really into my web design these days and online culture in general.  With .net’s issues being very useful, entertaining and informative time and again, I plumped for taking out a subscription which has probably been one of the best decisions I’ve made!

A selection of magazines I read

What about games, you might say?  Well I thought I had that covered.  Who needs to buy a games magazine when you’ve got everything you ever wanted to know already up online, often a week or two before they appear in magazines?  I was wrong.  By chance a copy of Edge magazine caught my eye and so I bought it (the price was quite reasonable too, for the amount of content it had).  Inside were pages upon pages of really good in-depth articles about everything and anything gaming-related.

So it seems I will be subscribing to Edge magazine in the near future!  Best thing is, as it is a multi-format magazine I can keep my eye on the bigger picture within the gaming world, that I might otherwise overlook whilst browsing more PlayStation-centred sites online.

Oh, I almost forgot.  On the subject of music I’ve occasionally bought a copy of Kerrang! but it hasn’t been consistently good enough to warrant getting it regularly.  I guess I get my music info from the papers and online, with some recommendations from friends.

Well, that’s my little focus on magazines and which ones I enjoy reading.  Are there any magazines that you can’t live without?  Are there possibly any magazines you simply can’t stand?  Let me know!

Tags: .net, ComputerActive, demos, disks, Edge, freebies, gifts, Kerrang!, magazines, newsagent, Official PlayStation Magazine, subscription

(Note: I was originally going to call this post “Gentleman, start your engines” but due to equality issues and the phrase having nothing to do with trophies, it was scrapped.  That’s your dose of trivia for the day!)

Well, enough games are now out there that have trophy support.  First I had a ‘blast’ on Super Stardust HD, which was the first PS3 game to have trohpy functionality, and now I’m engrossed with PixelJunk Eden (need to complete those gardens!).  My next target will be another play-through of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, which I am really going to relish.

I suppose my future targets will be Warhawk and LittleBigPlanet, which I both like, really need to buy!  This is especially true for Warhawk, seen as it has had several free updates.  I’m one of these people who try to hold out on buying certain games till they come down in price!  Several games I want though are stubbornly remaining at quite a high price.

That’s besides the point though.  What I really want to say is good luck to all trophy hunters!  I’ll be collecting trophies myself, though not at the frentic pace of some of you.  I’ll probably mention something more about trophies a few months down the line.  Till then!

Tags: firmware, LittleBigPlanet, PixelJunk Eden, Super Stardust HD, trophies, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, update, Warhawk

A few months ago I got myself Patapon shortly after its release and quickly became addicted to it.  What I began to realise though, was how nail-bitingly hard it could be in certain places of the game.  One easy example, is the difficulty many people had in figuring out how to cross the desert.  Once you know how, it’s quite easy.  But in the game itself, you are more or less left to try and figure it out for yourself- if you can.

This probably explains why the PlayStation.Blog team had to lend us a helping hand.  Also equally frustrating is the ease at which you can lose the beat.  From my own personal experience, this has made me want to throw my PSP at the nearest wall after trying to complete the same level 5 times in a row.  So I left the game and vowed to return to it once I had calmed down…

What I have been doing for the past couple of years now, is taking my PSP with me on holiday and having a quick gaming session before I go to bed.  Last year I took LocoRoco and completed all levels (not all quite 100% yet though!) and this year has been Patapon’s turn.  Yes, about 4 months after I had last touched the game, I decided to revisit Patapon and see how far I could get this time.

Surprisingly, I found that I wasn’t losing the beat as easily, but I think this was down to a new technique.  Heard the advice (includng my own) about tapping with your foot to the beat?  Forget about it- repeating “pata, pata, pata, pon” or whatever drum beat you’re doing, in your head, in-between your turn is very helpful in keeping the beat.  Why is it otherwise so hard to keep the beat in fever mode?  This is because the fever mode music can trip you up, especially when the music starts.  I have found this to be THE most unhelpful feature of any game- ever!

Let my little story not distract you from the main point- this game is fantastic!  You just need a lot of time and patience as Patapon is amazingly deep.  Think you’ve done it all?  Well, you haven’t.  There’s just so many rare Patapons, weapons and materials to collect.  Get frustrated at time?  Give the game a rest and then get back to it, feeling refreshed.  Some games are like a fine wine: they get better with age.  That is why, although I’ve never actually reviewed Patapon, I’ll give it a 9/10 just because it deserves it.  If you haven’t picked it up yet, you need to!  Its essential for your PSP.

Tags: difficult, difficulty, gameplay, help, LocoRoco, Patapon, PlayStation Portable, PSP, tips