Grand Theft Auto IV Playstation 3 preview!
I am really hyped for Grand Theft Auto IV, it really sounds amazing with all of the things you can do in the game. I’m a big fan of “interactive” worlds like those seen in Shenmue (Sega), Yakuza (Sega) and Bully (Rockstar). I’ve never actually finished a GTA game before, liked playing them, but they never really compelled me to finish them. I think things will change with GTAIV.
Latest Film Watch
To continue watching the Die Hard series I watched parts two and three. Both of which I found really entertaining and it was almost like watching them for the first time again because it had been so long since I had watched either of them, maybe close to a decade. By the third film John McClane is almost a super hero and can do some impossible feats but if you’ve stuck with the series that long I don’t think it’s going to bother you too much. Bruce Willis fashioned a very memorable charactes. It’s about time we got an Irish action hero. 
I have come to realize that I REALLY like these Die Hard films. I haven’t seen Live Free or Die Hard yet, it’s due to come from Netflix on Blu-ray any day now so I hope it turns out good.
The Orange Box PS3 getting a patch? Let’s hope so!
It seems that evidence is mounting to prove a patch for The Orange Box for the Playstation 3 is in the works. If you recall many reviews stated specifically that Episode Two (one of five games included in The Orange Box) has framerate problems which is probably the biggest of the apparently many “bugs” within the game.
Word on the street is that the port was rushed to get it out in time for Christmas. Valve didn’t do the porting either, an EA team got the honors, but will Valve handle the patch themselves? Maybe, judging by the words of a Valve employee on their official Steam forums discussing the Playstation 3 version of the game.
Below I’ve posted a couple links to news posts on other blogs featuring the quotes from the Valve employee, addressing a patch for performance issues, and to fix the sound bug where Dolby Digital Surround doesn’t output via an optical audio connection (I wondered why I only had Dolby Pro Logic avaialbe).
Latest Film Watch
According to impressions read online, I thought this was supposed to be better than Casino Royale? It’s not. This isn’t even the best Bourne film, the first two are much better as “film”. This serves as acceptable fan service, giving us some more insight into Bourne’s past, however this comes at the end of the movie and it’s filled with too much of things we’ve already seen from the previous films. I liked it, but overall The Bourne Ultimatum is “meh”.
Being on Blu-ray it looked pretty good in HD and sounded excellent, though it’s not as high quality as other HD transfers I have seen. I imagine it being filmed in the 80’s and not much care taken with the source material over the years and probably not much money put into doing a really high quality transfer.
The good thing is that the film is still great to me, a lot of action and pretty funny. It’s hard not to imagine a bearded Snape when watching Hans Gruber though. :p
Here’s another that looks and sounds good being on Blu-ray, but the image quality is really hit and miss. Some scenes look good while others show a lot of “noise” and don’t look very good. One positive however, is that this is the uncut version of the film, basically what is on the Criterion cut of it.
Robocop is another favorite of mine, and the themes used have held up over the years with privatezed services and over commercialization. Also, seeing “Red” from That 70’s Show play the bad guy is a treat.
Lost – Season 4 Promo video!
It’s been a long hard road of TV without Lost these past several months, thankfully that is about to change early next year! Right now I have Lost Season 3 on Blu-ray to get me by while I wait for Season 4 to start up.
New Visualizer for PS3 in latest update
Yup, Sony loves to give us hidden things in the firmware updates, which on one hand might be annoying if you don’t know where to find out about them, but on the other hand it’s kind of cool like finding really neat presents or easter eggs!
One of the few undocumented udpates this time around is a new audio visualizer which you can activate by listening to any audio file and then pressing the square button to cycle through the visualizers. This happens to be a realtime render of the Planet Earth in space, complete with the Sun that rises and sets. Really cool and I can’t help but think about 2001 A Space Odyssey while watching it! Put it as the backdrop to some classical music and you have something really spcecial to impress your more sophisticated friends. Besides a new visualizer they also did a minor update to the web browser and updated the PS2 game backwards compatability, all of which were undocumented.
The new Earth visualizer truly is beautiful, take a look at some pictures by clicking here.
Dark Mist (Playstation Network game)
Dark Mist looks to be like a “Zelda” type dungeon game with a big arsenal of weapons to take down your foes. This looks to be a fun game and will no doubt look great in high definition. It will be available via download from the Playstation Store soon. Europe gets it December 20th, I don’t know when North America will be able to “mist some darkness”.
Check out some gameplay here:
Blu-ray titles releasing today
Thanks to High-Def Digest
December 18, 2007
- Blade Runner (Complete Collector’s Ed.) (Warner)
- Blade Runner (Ultimate Collector’s Ed.) (Warner)
- Shakira: Oral Fixation Tour (Sony BMG)
- The Simpsons Movie (Fox)
- Sunrise Earth: American Sunrises Vol 1 (Discovery Channel)
- Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (Warner)
- That’s Entertainment: Complete Collection (Warner)
- Underdog (2007) (Walt Disney)
Sony Playstation 3 Firmware Update! (2.10)
From the Official Playstation Blog:
+ Posted by Eric Lempel // Director, PlayStation Network Operations
Firmware Update v2.10 is now live. This new system update enhances media playback on the PLAYSTATION 3 in a number of ways that the PS3 community has indicated are important.
We are introducing a much-requested video playback format with this update: DivX and VC-1 (WMV) videos become playable in the Video section of the XMB. This update also brings the PS3’s Blu-ray drive up to Profile 1.1. “Picture in Picture” and other enhancements become available on Profile 1.1 compatible Blu-ray discs.
A voice changer feature is added, enabling you to change the tone of your voice during voice or video chat.
As always, we’re committed to enhancing PLAYSTATION 3 functionality, and we’ll continue to post firmware update details on the blog as they are released.
Awesome update! And with the website Stage 6 you will have endless amounts of divx content to watch on your PS3, downloadable straight from the PS3 web browser.
| Instructions for downloading the divx videos from Stage 6 straight to your PS3 via its web browser is easy, all you need to do is edit the link.
Go to the page where the movie should appear, this is what the URL may look like: http://www.stage6.com/*USER*/video/*NUMBER*/*VIDEONAME* Change that URL to look like this and include the specific number for the movie: Next press the START button. Voila! The divx file will now start to download right to your Playstation 3! |
Bionic Commando: Smash and Throw!
Capcom has issued out a new video of their upcoming game Bionic Commando (which is actually a continuation of a much older game they made for the NES) which shows just what the title suggests, smashing and throwing!
Old game:
By watching the video you can tell the game has been given a huge overhaul to the graphics and gameplay thanks to next-gen hardware! There was another Bionic Commando in the works by a Capcom studio for the Playstation 2, however this never came out due to the studio being closed down that was developing it. GRIN, a relatively new gaming company who has worked on the PC versions of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter is developing this version for Capcom.
I think that the video looks good and shows some promise but will it truly be worth $60? I’ll have to see more to answer that question. Though to be honest I think I’m looking forward to this more than the expanded version of Lost Planet by Capcom due out for the Playstation 3 next year.
