New Peripherals Update: Wireless Keypad and AC Adaptor

New Peripherals Update: Wireless Keypad and AC Adaptor– I thought that these peripherals wouldn’t be released for months in the UK, but they are actually available now!  They’re even reasonably priced, on Play.com anyway.  As my bro is playing Santa this year, I’ve asked him if he could snag the wireless keypad and bluetooth headset for me.  Players of Warhawk, you have been warned.  I am coming!

Warhawk Diaries: First Assignment

“Because every soldier keeps a diary, right?  Right?!”

Sure, Warhawk has been on the market for about 12 months, but its online community is thriving.  The servers are full of veteran players, but the addition of trophies and the brand new expansion packs have kept the game fresh and interesting.  I’m a new Warhawk player and these scribblings are my experiences of being a rookie (I play on the green servers) in the unfriendly skies.  So grab a coffee, and read on, why don’t you?

You may (or may not, actually, if you’re a new reader) recall that I wrote some mixed thoughts called ‘Getting toasted in Warhawk‘.  To gain some perspective, that was written within hours of my first proper go on Warhawk, and I was truly rubbish!  But now, things have changed baby.  Things have changed!

Tanks a lot
Playing my first few games, I quickly realised that I was not going to go anywhere fast in a Warhawk.  My solution?  Ground vehicles.  I scanned the area around me, and quickly laid eyes on a tank.  Perfect!  Out I trundled in my luxurious 60 Ton (at a guess?!) personal safety vehicle, right into the middle of the warzone!  I must have blasted about three Warhawks out of the sky within a minute.  The power- it felt good.  Real good.  But… they all kind of ganged up on me and turned my tank into an elaborate metal coffin for me.

Man the turrets!
A good map for me has been the Ruined Capitol (correct me if I’ve got the name wrong).  Rather than get caught up in the huge bloodbath in the centre of the map, I opted to protect our home base.  I wasn’t hoping for peace and quiet though, as I knew an enemy player would fancy their chances at capturing our base.  I didn’t have to wait long.  From the top of our tower, I had a great vantage point in my rocket turret and could spot an enemy jet from quite a distance.

Sure, I took down my fair share of enemy aircraft, but they had a surprise in store.  Unbeknown to me, an enemy aircraft had flown in low and had not crashed as I had assumed.  We’d been boarded.  After admittedly being killed by the intruders a couple of times, I eventually managed to gain the upper hand and defeat them.  After doing this, I received a couple of trophies: ‘anti-camper’ and ‘revenge’.  Not too bad for one night’s work.

Till next time
I hope you’ve enjoyed this account of a new Warhawk player fighting the good fight, but that’s all for now.  Tune in next time to read my triumphs and mishaps in the various game modes, and find out which mode is my favourite!

Official Bluetooth Headset for the PLAYSTATION 3

Official Bluetooth Headset for the PLAYSTATION 3– I’ll be picking one of these beauties up at some point.  I’ll be using it for Warhawk and it’ll be interesting to get some online chat going (with the PLAYSTATION Eye as well).  Bring on the goodness!

Getting toasted in Warhawk

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?
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!

Trophies: The Hunt Is On

(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!

Burnout Paradise becomes a PSN download this Fall

Burnout Paradise becomes a PSN download this Fall– Cool, the PlayStation Store could do with more full PS3 games (that go to retail stores as boxed versions) as digital distribution is the way forward.  Seriously, what’s the harm in doing both?  Warhawk and Gran Turismo 5 Prologue are great examples.

Home has great potential

From Kotaku:

Sony is apparently pitching features like these to developers to extend the lives of their titles, using strong first and second party development showcases to prove that Home can effectively market outside of traditional means. We hope they take them up on their offer, because we’re definitely excited about the prospects.

Kotaku has examples of extra Home integration with Warhawk, Resistance: Fall of Man and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune.  If developers add this extra functionality into their titles then the PS3 could leap ahead of the Xbox 360 for sheer richness in online offerings.  As of yet, the Xbox 360 is quite far ahead.