After yesterday's title line-up for Gamer's Day, I was anxious to see how PlayStation could out-do itself. I mean, come on, Navy SEALs rappelled from the ceiling yesterday. Where are you going to go from there, right? I love it when I'm wrong.
Day two of Gamer's Day started strong with PlayStation showing its ace early. Real-time 3-D networked community HOME™ has been on the forefront of the PlayStation showcase for a while now, but because the beta is currently underway, I finally got a chance to get my mitts on it. The first thing that I noticed when looking at HOME is how clean it is. The backgrounds in the areas that I visited are exquisite, with serene nature settings that could almost be national parks. More impressive in the foreground are the fully customizable characters to choose from. Of course, there is a default selection of clothes and body types, but users can hand-adjust the length and width of body and facial characteristics, so players can don't have to worry about running into their doppelganger. Add a scoop of purchasable clothes, furniture, and other content available from PLAYSTATION®Network, and you'll have a purely personalized HOME experience. One thing that I'm really excited about is how players will be able to make their own apartments any way they want. From there, players can invite anyone they meet to show them how their apartments reflect their personalities. Eventually, you'll be able to show pictures and videos from the PS3 hard drive. I can't wait to invite my current buddies (and the new ones I'll make) to hang out and watch whatever we please. And while I was getting a chance to play the beta for HOME, I was able to chat with some of the current players. They've already started small communities of friends, some of which are international players from Europe and Canada. Best part about Home is that it's free. Oh, and a word to the wise: get a keyboard or a headset.
PLAYSTATION Network has got its own selection of games available which offer more than just in-game content. Games on the PLAYSTATION Network are shorter and more simplistic than some PS3 titles, but they aren't lacking in fun. The first game that I tried was Calling All Cars™, which was the idea of Dave Jaffe of God of War® fame. Featuring some of the most crisp cell shading I've seen, Calling All Cars is in an arena level setting and lets the player control a police car with the objective of capturing an escaped convict and bringing him in. There are three entrances to the police station, and utilizing the more difficult ones will not only require using the interactive level, but will also reap more points. This sounds easy enough, but there are bounty hunters in other cars that will try their darndest to keep you from roping in their meal ticket.
One of the more fun PLAYSTATION Network titles previewed was Idol Mind's PAIN. PAIN provides an outlet for those who still love to see someone get popped in the junk. The premise is that after deftly adjusting the trajectory of your character, Jarvis, he is hurled through the city via gigantic slingshot in hopes of causing the most damaging and cringe-inducing acrobatics. The character will ricochet off of the highly interactive buildings and objects throughout the city grabbing things along the way to cause more damage or change the direction of the fall. After playing this game for five minutes, I realized that there are subtle nuances to the art of casting someone through the air, hoping to inflict property and bodily damage to everything in the vicinity. My favorite move involves posing during extra air time before grabbing an exploding bomb box and carrying it with me, only to crash and detonate a propane tank that sends me careening towards a cyclist upon which I drop the bomb box, whose explosion rockets me into a passing truck full of glass. That took me ten minutes to master. Oh, and you can play "Horse" with friends.
Next from the PLAYSTATION Network was the Advanced Research Add-On Pack for Blast Factor™ which has a bunch of new specimens, enemies, bosses and music. If you're not familiar with Blast Factor, it is a pretty addictive, fast-paced, overhead shooter. The ship you control is inside of a cell with enemies that must be eradicated using both analog sticks. The left stick is used to move the ship and the right stick will shoot in any direction it's pointed, giving the pilot extra smooth handling. After the cell is cleared, the cell rotates to reveal a new and different set of enemies that are faster and adjust to the player's strategy. The most enjoyable part of Blast Factor is the pace and how excellent the explosion effects look. For shoot-em'-up fans, this should be your first PLAYSTATION Network purchase. Also, for players looking to utilize PLAYSTATION Network, add-on packs for MotorStorm™ and two new maps for Resistance: Fall of Man™ are on the horizon.
The biggest pleasure of the day was finally getting to see what God of War® looks like on the PSP® system. The team responsible for Daxter™, Ready At Dawn Studios, is developing God of War®: Chains of Olympus. I was excited to see how far Ready At Dawn has pushed the PSP. The result is a God of War game on the PSP that, while not as shiny, still stacks up the PS2 versions. In fact, people will be glad to know that excluding two new great-looking attacks, Kratos' move set hasn't changed and still looks beautiful in motion. Expect the same awesome aerial attacks, grapples and individual death animations. The first thing I looked for was slow down during heavy combat with multiple enemies, but there wasn't any! The only thing that's changed is that Kratos does not have the same magic skills because Chains of Olympus is a prequel that takes place during the ten years after "the church incident" that got our boy's feathers all ruffled. What I appreciate is that Ready At Dawn only made visual cutbacks in unimportant areas to make the important ones look great. For example, the levels won't have as much detail in the breakable boxes and item chests, but Kratos and the enemy bosses he fights look brilliant. God of War has been successfully adapted to a hand-held system with attention to detail and minimum sacrifice of backgrounds and gameplay, which is really all you could hope for. It's all most a guaranteed purchase for anyone with a PSP system.
And just one of my all around favorite titles at Gamer's Day was SingStar™. SingStar is a game that originated in the U.K. and gives any music game with a microphone a run for its money. Securing actual rights for official songs and music videos, SingStar for the PLAYSTATION®3 will have a great starting library of multi-genre songs to pick from on the disc, but the game really shines because a large number of songs will be available for download from the PLAYSTATION Network, and the selection will continue to grow. Compared to other games, singing to the actual music videos sung by their original artist somehow brings out the passion for the song that other titles can't offer. It's worth checking out, it's worth buying immediately, and you should throw a party just for its release. In fact, Gamer's Day ended with a special video strung together from videos taken through SingStar by the PS3’s Playstation Eye from the night before of tipsy developers and guests singing horrible renditions of songs that they'll no doubt be mocked for until next year.