Game Power Australia

Sony’s PlayStation 3 has been, from the media and analyst community at least, under siege for some time. The games are mediocre at best, they’re relying on third-parties too heavily and there just isn’t anything big, a defining PlayStation game the way there are definitive games for the Xbox 360 (eg Halo) or the Wii (Wii Sports). Nothing to identify it properly, because Polyphony are allowed to deliver when they’re done (damp squibs like Prologue don’t count with the great unwashed) and Killzone 2 is still miles away.

Oh, look. Crisis over. LittleBigPlanet has just emerged from its offices in England and has it emerged in a big way. For the aforementioned geese who thought the battle was won between the X360 and PS3, they should probably look up ‘backtrack’ in the dictionary. Because LBP is going to get a lot of people excited about gaming and for someone who hasn’t updated his site in over three months, it has got me excited about gaming again. In a big way.

A long way back in the mists of time was a terrific game called Abe’s Oddyssey. Produced by OddWorld Inhabitants, it became the sleeper hit of 1997 (yep, 1997). It was a side-scrolling platformer that spawned two sequels (Abe’s Exoddus, Munch’s Oddysey) and changed the way people thought about video games. It was a platformer alright, but without the inanity of Mario Bros and the violence of everything else. It had a darker, sophisticated sense of humour than anything else on the market and even gave Lara a run for her money, back in the days when the PSOne was synonymous with the blockily-large-breasted-one. It was, frankly, brilliant and you knew it within about twenty seconds, from Abe’s first, buzzy-voiced ‘Hello…follow me.’ A masterpiece, in other words.

Abe was weird-looking, his mouth was partially sewn shut and he was green. His voice was the ugly side of cute and he ran like a girl (or, more specifically, like me). He farted. He said ‘oops’ when stuff went wrong. He laughed at his own farts and would get frustrated and growl when things went wrong, just like you do.

Like the hero of Oddworld, Sackboy is immediately engaging and is something for any gamer on the planet to connect with. There’s something about both games that connects the two, even though Oddworld has a Californian accent and LBP has an English one. Stephen Fry narrates the tutorials and says words like ‘bally’ but you don’t once feel alienated from the game, no matter where you’re from. Sackboy is a creature of even fewer words than Abe but has a winning smile and a funny walk.

The gameplay too, is similar. There are way more gadgets and things in LBP, but again, the two of them are so similar in the inventive ways the designers came up with killing you. Abe’s too, was clever in the way it handled the platform genre - everything was rendered in 3D despite the side-scrolling action so it looked terrific. LBP is slyly 3D, flipping the side-scrolling genre slightly off-centre, with a camera that occasionally changes its angle ever-so-slightly to add drama or better vision to what’s going on.

Little Big Planet is like the Play School prop room poured into a PlayStation 3 - it’s utterly brilliant. Abe’s Oddysee changed the way people thought about gaming and had Oddworld Inhabitants had access to a platform like the PS3, I have no doubt that there would have been something like the build-your-own-level of Media Molecule’s genius creation. Who knows, perhaps Media Molecule’s success will push Oddworld Inhabitants to revive Abe and together they can conquer gaming and make the PS3 a stronger platform to better take the fight to the family gaming market, a market who aren’t interested in the blood and guts of Gears of War or the twee, gimmicky stylings of the Nintendo Wii (and its crap graphics and rubbish catalogue..and and and…)

Little Big Planet has immediately taken its place in my mental gaming pantheon beside the Oddworld creations and anyone who knows me will know that a game has to be pretty special to do that. LBP is seriously special and its instant success coupled with a renewed confidence from Sony will help shape the gaming future of the console and the kids who will play and love this game to bits.

Playstation Lifestyle have come out with some exciting, but empty news.

They have set a countdown up to reveal what they consider to be the best thing to comeout on the PS3, and whats more, its an exclusive. The reveal date is the 3rd of August with more hints coming on the 26th of this month.

You be the judge if its fact or fiction by following the link here.

The team over at Kotaku have got some news to make Wii fans jump for joy.

In a slip of tongue, Simon Jeffery revealed that Resident Evil 5 will also hit the Wii on its release. This piece of news is sure to keep the hype surrounding Resident Evil 5 high as its release saga drags on.

To read the artcile, follow this link

With the Euro 2008 over and Spain triumphing for the first time in decades, is it safe to say that Euro 2008 was also as successful as its real-life counterpart, or has it failed to live up to its benchmark of the Fifa series?

For starters, the game includes a large number of European teams which does provide a good number of countries to choose from. However, like many tournament-based games, this does limit the game’s appeal and variety.

The number of modes is also pretty consistent with the latest Fifa game, however there is now the added “Captain Your Country” mode which is basically to be a pro, just over the course of the tournament.

Euro 2008 did attempt to improve the gameplay and make it more fluid for this installment, however its worth noting that the AI and controls have remained relatively the same, with only passes and movements appearing smoother, yet having a slower reaction time because of this.

With little added to the gameplay department, things take a turn for the worse in the commentating. Good old Tyler was not included in this game, and as a result the commentary not only sounds like the Fifa of old, but it also sounds mind-numbingly repetitive. Conversely, the soundtrack is once again top notch from EA, blending some well-known hits with some funky, lesser-known sounds.

The atmosphere is pretty much there with crowds chanting, and the ambient noises are as good as a soccer game can get without being there.

In the graphics department, well, it’s a bit of a hit and miss. On the consoles the characters look pretty decent, however they seem to be a bit misshapen and run oddly whilst in post-goal celebrations. It can also be noted that sometimes players and coaches look different compared to their real life appearance, even as far as being getting a players skin tone or hair colour wrong.

Overall, this is just an attempt to score something out of soccer fans following the tournament and once it’s over, the game looses any appeal it had as their is not much added to make it stand out from Fifa 08. On top of that, being a licensed product and having generated names for whole teams such as Holland is also another major let down.

Our Rating: 6/10

We’ve got your IP and, more importantly, we know exactly who you are.

Keep up the gutless work, BigPond boy. And as we always say, if you can do a better job, we’ll shut down and point our URL to your site. But you don’t even have the balls to send abuse under your real name, so we won’t hold our breaths. Swizzle dick.

You see, my provider doesn’t care what sort of flames I post. But BigPond certainly do. It’s good to have friends in high places.

Meanwhile, enjoy the fact you’re such an idiot that you pay Telstra for your internet access.

Play-Beyond has a human readable list of the new 2.4 firmware update for the PlayStation 3.

The net is already full of morons whooping about a few trophies like they’re the newest thing like totally ever (never seen an Xbox 360 Achievement, obviously) but hey, whatever floats your boat. In-game XMB, while not complete, is a fine addition to the PS3’s armory. The XMB is almost there.

Now let’s get Home and LittleBigPlanet and be done with it.

Read the list here.

In a bid to

a) rain on Sony’s party;
b) pee on Nintendo’s party (geddit?),
c) sell more stuff…

…Microsoft have dropped the price of the Xbox 360 Arcade to a rather cheap $349.00. I reckon that will mean occasional sales at the big boys for around $320. Woah, mama.

It must be remembered that the X360 Arcade is missing some vital bits. Amusingly, not having a hard-drive enables ‘the ultimate freedom to customise their console.’ Which means pay extra for a hard drive, component cables etc. But you do get three arcade games and a 256Mb memory module.

The pricing for the rest of the range remains suitably static, with the volume selling 20Gb at $499 and the black elite (insert joke about making the whole unit a giant heat sink by painting it black) selling for $649 with its 120Gb hard drive, HDMI cable and ever-so-generous 30 day trial of Xbox Live.

We will always applaud a price drop, however, and for $350 we reckon the Xbox 360 is the budget console of the bunch (with the exception of a PlayStation 2).

According to CNet, video games have leap-frogged movies as the front-runners of the entertainment industry.

Movies are still up there, but there is a definite rise in gaming sales now thanks to the longer and more in-depth stories and gameplay experiences being offered. Most notable through the likes of Metal Gear Solid, GTA, Halo and other large-selling franchise games.

Read the article here.

After appearing in a few Titles on both the Wii and PS3, Sonic returns with some more of his fellow Sega compatriots in Sega Superstars Tennis, and pulls of a reasonably fun, multiplayer experience.
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Combining the best of both worlds, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune comprises both similarities to the game Tomb Raider and the movies in the Indiana Jones series. Heart pounding non-stop action at every turn mixed with riddled hidden clues and wall scaling feats makes this game an epic adventure and a decent coming together of movie and gaming experience alike.
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