The latest issue of UK magazine PSM3 features a massive twelve-page exclusive preview of Grand Theft Auto IV. The preview contains four new screenshots which have never been seen before, and new character illustrations of Little Jacob and Vlad. All the screenshots in the scans are from the PS3 Version.

- The preview was based on the PlayStation 3 version of the game. This is the first time that the PS3 version has been seen by journalists.

- The faster you tap X, the faster Niko runs. He doesn’t appear to get tired.

- Major collisions on motorbikes cause the helmet to fall off. You can see it fall onto the ground.

- Niko gets in trouble with 10 bikers in a street fight, some of them had knives, Niko runs away and a police officer sees him getting chased by the biker gang, the police officer thinks Niko is an innocent pedestrian and helps Niko out and shoots at the bikers.

Hit the jump to see the new screens and read this exciting preview!
Updates:
- The PS3′s version seems to be exactly the same visually as it’s 360 counterpart
- The frame rate on the ps3 version is extremely smooth
- Niko’s clothes get bloodier after you take more and more damage
- You can ring 911 to get the police, ambulance or fire brigade
to create a diversion or simply steal their car and anything else you can foster up
- When you fail a mission, you receive a text message asking whether you want to replay the mission, even a ‘skip trip’ feature is included
- Multiplayer will be accessed from the phone
- The phone can also be used for messageing, photos, reminders and music.
- R1 will be the ‘into cover’ button for the ps3, many variations of getting into cover apply
- You can dangle from Helicopters, just like vans and trucks
- When your about to die it fades into black and white, just like in gears of war and uncharted.
- Ne-Yo and R Kelly were heard on the radio
- 18 radio stations available
- Niko is able to ask the cab driver to change the radio station
- Niko pays the cabbie double (which adds up to $39) to speed up
- Bums on the street ask for money, you have the ability to give them money
- Niko raises his arms when cops try to ‘bust him’ out of say a car, but he can move freely and can run or retaliate

See the scans here!

http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=311011

If you don’t have a Playstation 3 yet, perhaps now is the time to get one.

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.

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).

Rumor: Orange Box patch might be on the horizon

More Hints At Orange Box PS3 Patch

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.

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.

Check out some gameplay here:

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)

+ 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.

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.