Sony seems to be making a lot of good decisions regarding the PlayStation brand recently. Firstly, all the funky redesigned consoles (PS3 Slim and PSPgo) and secondly, better games. Further evidence of this good decision making is Gravity Crash from Just Add Water (Developments) Ltd. Not only will this excellent game be available for download via the PlayStation store but there’s a version being developed for the PSP. Yay.

I’m proud to announce that one of the contributors to this very website – Tikipod – is the graphics artist on Gravity Crash. Mmm, notice how he’s not written any posts for ages, yep, working hard on Gravity Crash. Definitely. Yeah, it takes time to create all those lovely light blurs, heat haze and refractions :-)

Back to Gravity Crash. Well, it looks quite a bit like Thrust crossed with Defender. In total there are 40 single player levels and 5 major boss battles and a level editor. I’m told the level editor is really easy and quick to use. Once your level is created you can upload it for others to play. Think of it like LittleBigPlanet’s level editor, just simpler.

Here’s a trailer for Gravity Crash, featuring awesome in-game music from CoLD SToRAGE.

You can also buy some of the music from CoLD SToRAGE’s band camp page for £1.59. Gravity Crash also features multiplayer modes including local split-screen so you can get your butt kicked by your boy/girlfriend.

Gravity Crash currently doesn’t have a release date or price for either the PS3 or PSP version. Boo!!!

The Gathering Hall has welcomed its first Hunters, announced the The Gathering Hall Twitter account. See, look at at the happy, comfortable hunters.

It’s open to the public from 12pm tomorrow (3rd July 09). You can find all the details on my previous Gathering Hall post.

Here’s a shot of The Gathering Hall being made to look cool!

Don’t forget if you are going to The Gathering Hall you MUST have a UMD of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite and a PSP to play it on, otherwise you will be refused entry.

Happy hunting!

Just 9 days to go before the opening of London’s first Monster Hunter Gathering Hall. According to The Gathering Hall Twitter account the following is taking place:

• 1st July – Secret preview session
• 3rd July 12pm – The Gathering Hall opens to the public
• 3rd July26th Jun 2pm – Meet up in HMV Oxford Street

To sign-up for the secret preview session go to the forums on http://capcom-europe.com

Also check out the http://www.encyclopedia-gigantica.com for lots of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite game info.

Finally, if you are going to The Gathering Hall you MUST have a UMD of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite and a PSP to play it on, otherwise you will be refused entry.

In what is probably a first for London, if not the UK, a dedicated Monster Hunter gaming centre – called The Gathering Hall – will open on the 3rd July 09 (from 12pm).

The Gathering Hall aims to be the ultimate destination for Monster Hunters. In it you will be able to meet other hunters, download exclusive quests, attend tutorial nights and meet the developers (when they are in the UK).

It will be open 7 days a week and free to enter if you have a PSP and a copy of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite. At the moment I don’t know how long it will open for, so take advantage while you can! Also The Gathering Hall has a Twitter account – http://twitter.com/GatheringHall.

The Gathering Hall can be found at: 121 Charing Cross Road, London (see below for the Google Streetview of the location).

Update 12th Jun 09: The Gathering Hall will be open for 2 months only, from the 3rd July. So use it while it lasts! Here’s a trailer for the game too.

After a 2 year hiatus – ok, it wasn’t really a hiatus as business was done, but behind closed doors and without the need for a giant game/company related stand dripping with glamour models (possibly NSFW) – the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is back.

In keeping with a classic tradition of the games industry – cramming lots of stuff into a short period of time (e.g lots of games and the Christmas period) – the E3 of old (pre-2007) used to squeeze practically all console and games related announcements into just 3 days every year. Then it was made boring for 2 years in an effort to distribute the announcements throughout the year and help reduce games companies marketing budgets. Yeah, that didn’t work very well.

The main E3 2009 expo takes place between the 2 – 4th June 2009 in LA. Actually, you need to include the 1st June 09 as well as some of the major players hold their big keynote addresses before the show actually starts:

• Microsoft keynote – 1st June 18:30 BST
• EA press conference – 1st June 20:00 BST
• Ubisoft press conference – 2nd June 01:00 BST
• Nintendo keynote – 2nd June 17:00 BST
• Sony keynote – 2nd June 19:00 BST
• Konami press conference – 3rd June 23:00 BST

If you want to follow all the of the E3 news and announcements (this will be a lot!) then check out E3Feed which pulls together all the E3 related news from the major gaming sites.

Here at TAG we will be be bringing you just the super tasty bits of E3 for you to digest. Yummy.

Woo hoo, a UK based consumer gamer show! Don’t see them very often, and fortunatly we’ve got the day off work on Wed (29th Oct) to go to the Eurogamer Expo in London. As you can probably tell by the name the show’s organised by Eurogamer which is a good thing as they’ve packed it full of booth babes games. Check out this list of games to play (with):

• LittleBigPlanet
• Fallout 3
• Tomb Raider: Underworld
• MotorStorm: Pacific Rift
• Mirror’s Edge
• Far Cry 2
• Gears of War 2
• Killzone 2
• Resident Evil 5
• Left 4 Dead
• Call of Duty: World at Wa
• Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts

There are other games to play, so here’s the complete list of games and a floor plan for good measure.

At the moment all the tickets for tomorrow (Tues 29th) have sold out but there are still 240 tickets remaining for Wed which you can buy here. Oh, and the tickets cost £5 (which goes to charity) and you have to be 15 years or over.

Personally, I’m looking forward to playing Left 4 Dead (just pre-ordered this on Steam), Mirror’s Edge, LittleBigPlanet, Killzone 2 and Fallout 3. Looks like it’s going to be a busy autumn playing games :-)

Anyone else going?

Sony Japan has released the PS3 and PSP demos of Echochrome. At the moment theese demos are only available in Japan. However, if you’d like to play them now you can by following these instructions:

For the PS3 version:

• Create a PSN account as shown in this PS3 Japanese account creation video tutorial
• Log in on your PS3 using this account and download the demo from the PSN store (37mb)

The text is in Japanese but the dialogue is in English. I had no problems playing the game, but then again there aren’t many controls!

For the PSP version:

• Download the demo from PSPFanboy (3.8mb)
• Unzip it
• Create a folder called NPJG90019 into the PSP/GAME directory
• Copy the eboot.pbp into this folder
• That’s it. Now enjoy the demo

The PSP demo requires firmware 3.90 and above, so don’t bother trying unless you have this firmware version. Oh, and the triangle button pauses the game and the X button speeds up your character.

You can see a trailer for Echochrome here.

Echochrome is released in Japan on 19th March 2008 on PS3 and PSP. UK release in Q2 2008.

Age rating:

3+ (PEGI)

What is it?

Futuristic racing game, with lots of lovely weapons.

Is it fun?

Yes.

Is it worth the money? £22.99

Yep, every penny.

Why?

Like anything in life, practice makes perfect. So given that Wipeout Pulse is the 8th incarnation of the futuristic racing series does the same analogy hold true? I’m pleased to say it does. Everything that was good about Wipeout Pure has been built upon in Pulse with the following additions:

• More tracks – 12 new ones
• More teams – 12 teams in total
• New Mag-strip track surface – Tracks can now have loops and super sharp turns.
• New weapons – Repulsor, shurikens and cannon
• Team loyalty system
• Adjustable AI difficulty
• Custom soundtracks
• Custom ship skin creator – via wipeout-game.com
• New tournament structure
• Photo mode – Take your own pretty pictures, as I did for this review
• On-line racing

Yep, on-line racing is there for the first time. Now I get my butt kicked on-line as well as off line and I can see just how slow my times are via the wipeout-game.com site Yay, I think. It is a welcome, if slightly overdue addition to the series.

The adjustable AI (easy, normal and hard) opens up a lot more of the game to most people. In the previous games, increasing the difficulty by increasing the speed resulted in few people actually completing all the tournaments. Now, at least, the Wipeout tourist setting (aka easy) allows you to experience the whole game. However, it doesn’t prepare you for the harsh reality of on-line racing though. For that set the difficulty to hard. Well, technically you need an evil setting (aka human) to be fully prepared.

It’s not all sugar and spice and all things nice in Pulse. To my mind the balance of time trials to races during tournaments is a bit off. There are simply too many time trials and not enough races. I like races, time trials are just boring. Also enough with the Zone races. I know this was quite a cool addition to Pure but Studio Liverpool had gone a bit OTT with the number of Zone races you have to complete. Tons of them, again with the boring.

It seems Sony have decided to start squeezing every last drop of coin out of Wipeout. How? Well, the previously free downloadable content for Pure now costs money in Pulse. These expansion packs vary in price from £1.99 to £3.49 (4 have been announced – Mirage and Icaras are available now). It’s another case of micro transaction infestation.

Finally, it’s a Wipeout game without any CoLD SToRAGE music. Bad, bad, bad. At least I can now create a customised soundtrack (something also available in Wipeout HD) with lots of my own CoLD SToRAGE tracks, so it’s not all lost in a savage pit of mire.

In summary: The best Wipeout game so far on any system.

Screenshots:

Wipeout Pulse is available now on PSP