Playstation 3 Videos

flOw

2007-03-03T01:48:00.001-08:00

Published by: Sony Computer Entertainment

Developed by: thatgamecompany (TGC)

Genre: Action
Number of Players: 1-4
Release Date:
US: February 22, 2007
Europe: March 23, 2007

MSRP: $7.99

With simplistic but beautiful and unique visuals, a haunting soundtrack (THX-certified, no less) and a "let's see what's next" design approach, flOw is all about exploring the unknown and seeing what lies deeper in the game's seemingly infinite fluid.
If you've seen the trailer, you should already know exactly what flOw is all about. When the game starts up, it gives you four simple instructions that explain how to move, how to boost, how to pause and that other players can jump in at any time for some co-operative play. They're simple directions for an extremely simple game, one that gives you only what you put into it. You simply eat other creatures in order to evolve your creature, and move up and down vertically-stacked levels by eating certain objects in order to progress.

flOw's controls are extremely straightforward in setup - the Sixaxis' tilt controls are used for movement while any one of the buttons acts as an action button. Movement is controlled in more of a steering fashion rather than "pushing" your character, and the direction you input is based on the angle of the Sixaxis, not how you turn it. This sounds confusing, and there is a bit of a learning curve involved in getting used to the controls, but after a bit with the game movement becomes second-nature.
One cool thing about flOw is that the action that you perform is determined by which form you're using. With your starting form, pressing a button will boost you forward, but with your second you perform some sort of spin attack. Another form can poison other creatures, and so on and so forth. By the time you've "finished" the game you'll have come across six different forms of evolution, each of which you can swap back into at any point. Swapping forms resets your evolutionary phase and starts you at the beginning of their level, so you're not able to perform some sort of combo-attacks on helpless amoeba, but it's cool that you can go back and play with whatever creature you'd like.
This brings up one of flOw's bigger draws in that you'll keep playing in order to simply see what's next. As you eat the organisms around you, you'll grow and morph into bigger and more complex forms. A simple and small claw-mouthed organism may resemble a long, segmented and winged snake at the end of its evolutionary cycle. Some of the forms that you'll take on are so large that they don't even come close to fitting on the screen, their tail dragging behind and out of view. The designs for most of the creatures are rather similar, obviously pulled from the same few basic designs, but each are beautiful creatures in their own unique ways.
One of flOw's greatest strengths is its presentation and just how smoothly everything works together. For instance, there is no pause screen. Pressing Start simply takes your character to an empty level where it wanders about on its own until you press Start again. Similarly, you can't actually die in the game. Should you lose all of your health segments, you'll be taken up one level so that you can eat and replenish yourself before diving downward again.

The downside to this is that there really isn't any sort of a challenge here. Some of the battles can get a little hectic as you speed to and fro, attempting to gobble up as many segments as possible while not losing your own, but there isn't much of a penalty for performing poorly.
The other downside is that though it's an extremely peaceful and fluid experience, there isn't a whole lot to do. You're simply eating things to evolve, and in a very linear fashion to boot. Whereas something like Spore promises all sorts of variety and choice in how you play the game, flOw is about as straightforward a game as they come. You don't have a choice in how your creature will evolve, so once you've played through each form once you'll have seen just about everything there is to see in the game.

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Virtua Fighter 5

2007-03-02T04:04:00.001-08:00

Published by: SEGA

Developed by: SEGA-AM2

Genre: Fighting
Number of Players: 1-2
Release Date:
US: February 20, 2007
Japan: February 8, 2007
Europe: March 23, 2007

MSRP: $59.99

February 20, 2007 - If you like beating people up then SEGA's Virtua Fighter 5 is the game for you. Developed by the black belts at AM2 (Fighting Vipers, Fighters Megamix), VF5 is a true gameplay showcase that deserves more mainstream attention than it will probably ever get. Then again, proper timing can make a big difference in a title's success, and with the PlayStation 3's void of compelling software since last December, Virtua Fighter's chance of grabbing North American eyeballs is better than ever.
And let's face it, our attention should be grabbed. After all, one of the universe's biggest mysteries is why SEGA's excellent franchise has never reached the same American commercial success as its competition. Soulcalibur and Tekken both, for example, are lucrative post-arcade endeavors that see strong sales and good word of mouth years after their release. Virtua Fighter, on the other hand, gets labeled as "the hardcore alternative" and sees most of its action at tournaments or in Asian markets (it's huge in Japan); domestic appearances are usually relegated to diehard neighborhood get-togethers and occasional competitions.

But you can blame us for that. It's a popular misconception among the press that Virtua Fighter's mechanics are too complicated for the laymen. That's a myth. What makes VF so compelling is that it's as multifaceted as you allow it to be. Two beginners can hook up and execute a minutia of combos with fairly little knowledge of the system, but pit those same players against an expert, and they'll see things they never thought possible. Therein lies the stumbling block of the media's (and as a result, the uninformed public's) view of Virtua Fighter -- a depth of gameplay that rewards skill is misinterpreted as "too complex" for general audiences. Hell, I'm no pro myself but I can still see how brilliant the system is from the very start.
Hopefully, Virtua Fighter 5 will open eyes and prove that VF is an all-access beast. As one of the few exclusive (at least for now) PS3 titles in the first quarter of 2007, it has the opportunity to grab consumers it wouldn't normally reach, and it deserves plenty of recognition. Why? Because though it isn't a huge leap over the PS2's Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution, it does offer a number of everyone-friendly improvements that make it the most accessible installment yet. Faster gameplay (think "DOA fast"), reworked combos (several of which chain more naturally), and hearty customization options should get people hooked and fast.

Virtua Fighter's satisfying gameplay can be attributed to one major factor: character balance. Unlike the competing 3D titles mentioned earlier, Virtua Fighter has done a stand-up job of giving users a legitimate chance with every last warrior in the lineup. Sure there are some overpowered moves here and there, but they're minimal at best and are easily recognized after a couple of matches. This means that 90% of the time, good Akira players match up well against good Pai Chan users and advanced Aoi users won't dominate advanced Vanessa players. From a mechanical standpoint, there's nothing more important in a fighter than that.
When playing against another human being, Virtua Fighter 5 is incredibly satisfying. Even when getting your ass handed to you by a superior player, the smooth controls and deep combat compel you to play more. Unfortunately, brawling with the AI isn't nearly as gratifying since the CPU is actually quite tepid. In fact, unless you crank the difficulty all the way up, the majority of your opponents are surprisingly lazy and offer little retort to a series of fists in their face. Constant hit-and-run tactics combined with quick rush/ throw techniques will take out most sub-elite rivals, and will still deal serious damage on even the heaviest hitters.
The weak AI is softened a bit by the inclusion of the addictive Quest mode which simulates the practice of traveling to various arcades and challenging the world's best players. It's surprisingly engrossing, throws hundreds of AI-powered foes at you and serves as the primary way to gain new items for character customizations. The sheer number of modifications that can be made to a single fighter are immense (specific items for 17 different characters with four outfits each mean plenty of unlockables), and the fact that you can save up to 30 unique characters per PlayStation ID means that you can expect an abundance of variety.

Despite my affection for Virtua Fighter 5's gameplay mechanics and customization, however, there are a number of design choices that still leave me scratching my head. The most obvious, of course, is the lack of online support (yeah, like you didn't see that one coming). Though latency concerns were probably this feature's biggest adversary, it's still baffling to see that a next-gen game of this magnitude (on a system built around the idea of network processing) doesn't support an option that several PS2 fighters have had for years. This is an especially painful reality when considering how weak the AI is. Why settle for a CPU-driven Quest mode when there's nothing stopping you from doing it for real?
There are a couple of other concerns I have as well. Versus matches have an abundance of arbitrary menus, for example, and unless you want to load your customized character before every match, you'll have to select "play without data" for each bout. Using a character ID is a bit of a pain too, because you can only save one character per name and don't have a "Master ID" that keeps track of a single player's performance with multiple combatants. The strangest hitch of them all, though, is that players can't take their characters to a friend's house and play against another created character. Plus, you can't save replays from every match type and the music and audio isn't very memorable.

But VF5's presentational elements aren't all bad -- the visuals are more than impressive with cool cloth physics, nice special effects, and some cool background views. The character models look pretty good too and even when running in 1080i (the box only claims 720p, but it goes higher), the animations are smooth and fast.

Closing Comments
Virtua Fighter 5 kicks a whole lot of MMA ass. It offers one of the most intuitive and robust fighting systems ever assembled and the customization options and quest mode are great fun. Granted, its AI isn't very good, it has a couple of interface issues and the lack of online is a major negative, but the mechanics here are so amazing, that it doesn't hurt the overall package as much as it would in other games. Grab a buddy (or five) and play it... a lot!

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Motor Storm

2007-03-01T04:26:00.001-08:00

Published by: Sony Computer Entertainment

Developed by: Evolution Studios

Genre: Racing
Release Date:
US: March 6, 2007
Japan: December 14, 2006
Europe: March 23, 2007

MSRP: $59.99

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Fight Night Round 3

2007-02-28T03:57:00.001-08:00

Published by: Electronic Arts

Developed by: EA Canada / EA Chicago

Genre: Sports
Number of Players: 1-2
Release Date:
US: December 5, 2006
Europe: March 30, 2007

MSRP: $59.99

ESRB Content Descriptors: Blood, Mild Language, Violence, Suggestive Themes

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Gripshift

2007-01-11T02:15:00.001-08:00

Published by: Sony Online Entertainment

Developed by: Sidhe Interactive

Genre: Racing Action
Number of Players: 1-4
Release Date:
US: January 4, 2007
Europe: March 30, 2007

MSRP: $9.99

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Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom

2007-01-09T04:53:00.001-08:00

Published by: Sony Online Entertainment

Developed by: Sony Online Entertainment

Genre: Action RPG
Number of Players: 1-2
Release Date:
US: November 15, 2006
Japan: December 31, 2007
Europe: March 30, 2007

MSRP: $59.99

ESRB Content Descriptors: Blood, Violence

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Need for Speed Carbon

2007-01-08T03:37:00.001-08:00

Published by: Electronic Arts

Developed by: EA Black Box

Genre: Racing
Number of Players: 8 online /2 split-screen
Release Date:
US: November 14, 2006
Japan: December 21, 2006
Europe: March 30, 2007
Australia: Unreleased

MSRP: $59.99

ESRB Content Descriptors: Violence

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Full Auto 2: Battlelines

2007-01-07T09:31:00.001-08:00

Published by: SEGA

Developed by: Pseudo Interactive

Genre: Racing Action
Number of Players: 1-8
Release Date:
US: December 12, 2006

MSRP: $59.99

ESRB Content Descriptors: Violence

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Tony Hawk's Project 8

2007-01-06T04:09:00.001-08:00

Published by: Activision

Developed by: Neversoft Entertainment

Genre: Extreme Sports
Number of Players: 1-2
Release Date:
US: November 7, 2006

MSRP: $59.99

ESRB Content Descriptors: Alcohol Reference, Blood, Crude Humor, Language, Mild Violence

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Ridge Racer 7

2007-01-05T11:20:00.001-08:00

Published by: Namco Bandai Group

Developed by: Namco Bandai Group

Genre: Racing
Number of Players: 1-14
Release Date:
US: November 13, 2006
Japan: November 11, 2006

MSRP: $59.99

ESRB Content Descriptors: Mild Language, Mild Suggestive Themes

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Marvel: Ultimate Alliance

2007-01-05T11:14:00.001-08:00

Published by: Activision

Developed by: Raven Software

Genre: Action RPG
Number of Players: 1-4
Release Date:
US: November 7, 2006
Europe: March 30, 2007

MSRP: $59.99

ESRB Content Descriptors: Mild Language, Realistic Violence

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Resistance: Fall of Man

2007-01-05T06:15:00.001-08:00

Published by: Sony Computer Entertainment

Developed by: Insomniac Games

Genre: First-Person Shooter
Number of Players: 1-40
Release Date:
US: November 13, 2006
Japan: November 19, 2006
Europe: March 16, 2007

MSRP: $59.99

ESRB Content Descriptors: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language

Intro and gameplay:

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