XIII Reboot

Seeing as remakes of older games are the craze today amongst developers (and fair play to Naughty Dog, The Last of Us Remastered was ace), why not go for the smaller titles? Plenty of underrated games out there that would look fantastic on PS4. Take XIII for example, that cel shaded FPS that many missed on PlayStation 2, and I have a feeling a remake would look fantastic on PS4.
Its all very well going for mega successful games like GTAV, they'll be money spinners afterall but why not take a gamble on lesser known videogames? A lot of people will skip the GTAV reboot simply because the PS3 version is still fresh in our minds. I know I won't be rushing out to grab a copy (especially in a month where brand new games are being released). But XIII? Now that could really pull in the punters. Sure I don't want the PS4 to be a console that simply polishes older videogames but my guess is that XIII is perfect remake fodder.

And if it happens? You read it here first.

E3 2013: Playstation 4

Playstation4

After the dust settles on the heels of the much anticipated Playstation4 reveal last night at E3, its time to do as a million other websites/blogs are doing and chuck out some initial thoughts on Sony's new beast. I'll be honest, im not entirely thrilled by the design of PS4 but then XboxOne is none too pretty either, both reminding me of 1980s VCR players. Still, I buy games consoles for how they look on my television and not under it so I ain't going to be spitting my cider drenched dummy out.
Where it counts, Sony (in my opinion) nuked Microsoft clean out of the waters; no restrictions on game ownership (lend or sale), no 'must be hooked to the internet 24/7' guff in order to play or authenticate games and best of all Playstation4 will be £350 compared to the XboxOne's £429. Oh and PS4 will not have a creepy camera watching you all hours and there will be no online fees (unless you sign up for Playstation+.) More exclusive games for Sony's box of tricks too. Bonus!
In short Sony just finished Microsoft with a lethal fatality move.

Playstation press conference



But its really all about the GAMES and believe you me, there are quite a few impressive lookers vying for your cash. Ready at Dawn (they made God of War: Ghost of Sparta among others) has announced a new game, The Order 1886, which is a Victorian era steampunk horror (see trailer below.) Looks interesting, as does inFAMOUS Second Son from SuckerPunch. But the three that gave me the biggest horn were The Division, Assassin's Creed:Black Flag and racing game The Crew where the ENTIRE USA is your playground. You can supposedly drive from New York to Los Angeles, which is batsh!t awesome!
You can check all the trailers below.


The Division


The Order 1886


infamous Second Son


Batman: Arkham Origins

Playstation 4

Ubisoft's Watch Dogs

Wednesday 11pm saw gamers huddle around their laptops,iPads,etc to watch the live announcememt of Sony's new console, Playstation 4. And as a fan who has been the Playstation since it first surfaced back in 1995, I expected to be skipping on rainbows of ecstasy like a giddy schoolgirl by the end of it (forgetting the fact im now 41.) I dont care what anyone says, there is a curious thrill about the unveiling of a new videogame console. I was stunned by Wipeout (PS1), KO'd by Resident Evil 2 (PS2) and even swooned over Motorstorm when that hit Playstation 3 in 2007. Im not ashamed by this, its what you get if you give a boy an Oric 1 for Christmas in 1983.
So it is with great sadness that after admitting all of the above, the Playstation 4 announcementleft me slightly cold. Not quite sub zero cold, (more like tee shirt in March cold) but I was certainly not overheating in anticipation of pixelated rapture. I think it was all the talk of "social media" and sharing on Facebook/Twitter that did it. Sorry Sony but I just want to play VIDEOGAMES, im not in the least bit interested in posting scores on Facebook or challenging Twitter followers to online races. I simply want to slip a game into the console and smite weird beasties to kingdom come. Balls to Facebook. Im old fashioned like that. Its nothing new of course, theres already a ton of places on teh interwebz that use social networking sites to share folks interests, and fine some people like that kind of thing but it doesn't boil my kettle im afraid. (Reading comments on forums and underneath news stories about PS4, im not alone either.)
As for the Playstation 4 being able to predict what game you might be interested in and downloading it automatically? I hope we'll be able to disable that nonsense. (Im being dragged into the future kicking and screaming Laughs Out Loud.)
Thankfully things start to look up on the gaming side of things. This is why we're here afterall! 'Watch Dogs' got me most interested (see the trailer above) as did 'Killzone: Shadow Fall'. I didn't notice a huge difference graphically to PS3 (even when a Evolution developer waffled about "even the suede on the car seats has a direction") but as time goes on, game designers will learn how best to squeeze the most OOMPH out of the machine. We didn't get to see any sports titles (or was I asleep?) and I can't wait to see how a NFL or golf game looks on Playstation 4.
Unfortunately we also didn't get to see what the actual console looked like either so fanboys will have to make do with gawking at the new DualShock 4 joypad, complete with touchscreen and LED tracker. Looks a little rubbery but I quite like it. The screen on the pads front reminding me of the Dreamcast's VMU. Speaking of older consoles, as a RetroHead backwards compatabilty is important to me so I was a tad miffed to learn that PS1, 2 and 3 games will be available via Playstation 4’s cloud service. So no using my original copy of Tombi or Yakuza then? Bah! Happy they will be available in some form though.
I realise this started on a downer with the Facebook sharing side of things but I am quite excited about Playstation 4. Its just (obviously) not the mind blowing transition I experienced going from Oric to MegaDrive to Playstation back in those wilderness years.

Here are some games that we got a glimpse of:

Watch Dogs (Ubisoft)
Killzone: Shadow Fall (Guerrilla)
Diablo III (Blizzard)
DriveClub (Evolution)
Deep Down (Capcom)
Destiny (Bungie)


DriveClub