Digit(al) Distractions

Finger & Thumb Fun

Following on from Flow & Flower, thatgamecompany's next PSN game is Journey and it looks quite cool.

Mmm Minecraft just moved into beta - a friend has developed quite a passion for this intriguing game. Doubt it'll ever get a console release but I can amuse myself with the insanely geeky creations already on offer.

ITV & 4OD have arrived on the PS3 media bar - both appear to have a limited selection compared to the Virgin portal but it's a good start.

Moving Pixels have a nice Top 5 Flash Games of 2010 - good to see Adult Swim's bonkers Robot Unicorn Attack features but the rest are equally as inspired. Loved and Coma are definitely worth a look.

Sony are releasing their PSP/Phone thingy in April next year. Wonder if it'll have PS3 compatibility ?

Apparently Demon's Souls has moved to Pure White until the 28th - guess it's time to return to the Leechmonger's Archstone.

Brave nerds confront notoriously grumpy director David O Russel to demand Nathan Fillion gets cast in the upcoming Drake movie.

My inner Sony fanboy was delighted to read yesterday that Braid's creator Jonathon Blow thinks PlayStation are more likely to support artsy games than Microsoft. Sadly it turns out he's not very happy with CVG's creative editing of the interview.

Japan loves video games and also very fancy toilets so it's unsurprising they've mashed the two together and invented a urinal interface video game with a selection of 4 different pissing challenges. Presumably they're already working on a jobby based follow up? Don't recommend googling it though.

PS3 @ E3

Surprising but very good news that Portal 2 will be getting a PS3 release - via Kotaku

Sony still aren't giving much away about the forthcoming subscription service apart from the price - it'll cost $50 per year or £18 per quarter.

GT5 release date is November 2nd apparently, pinch of salt and all that though. via Joystiq

Thatgamecompany have a adventure title called Journey scheduled for 2011 and it looks rather nice - apparently you'll be uncovering the history of an ancient civilisation. via Eurogamer.

Shiny box news

John Hillcoat, director of The Proposition and The Road, has made a 30min machinima film from Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption and it's getting aired on Fox this weekend.

According to BoingBoing eurozone PS3ers are going to get a rather classy looking film streaming service called MUBI in the near future.

There's also news of HBO getting a slot but I guess that'll be just for the Yanks though.

Sony are going to unveil their premium PSN subscription offer soon, probably at the upcoming E3 thingy, not sure what they could offer me that would make me open my wallet each month but will wait and see.

Team Ico are rumoured to be bringing Ico & Shadow to bluray disc early next year in the stylee of that recently released God of War Collection.

Duh the insanely delayed Gran Turisimo 5 is being held back yet again by Sony this time for PlaystationMove compatibility and 3D gimmicking. Surely they could've just released patches for these instead ?.

PS3 Pish

Demon's Souls has been the only game in my PS3 since the turn of 2010 and now it's finally getting a European launch in June. I'm not sad I spent 50 notes importing my copy as it's a fantastic game but I could really have done with the Strat guide as this is one of the most challenging RPG games I've played in a decade. I imagine there's plenty of people who've never got past the first couple of hours, especially those who're used to the hand holding offered in contemporary games like say Uncharted 2. For examples of it's teeth grinding toughness consider that there's no pause button, no mid level checkpoints, an obtuse and unexplained upgrading system and those first couple of hours, blimey, I think I did 15-20 times at least.

Still it's probably in my top 5 games for PS3 and here's why - the combat is visceral and combined with the difficulty level it forces you to fight carefully, thoughtfully, shield-up always, forever peeking round corners till you've memorised the entire level just in case some red eyed Knight takes your head off with one strike. Doesn't sound like fun but the feeling of achievement once you've killed the first boss makes all that pain worthwhile. Moreover this game has one of the most interesting, innovative online setups I've seen in a game: playing while connected to the net means you'll see real time wispy "ghosts" of other players that are playing the same level, there's blood splatters on the floor which will reveal the actions previous players have made shortly before dying and there's a smattering of messages across each level left by players that offer(mostly) good advice about how to proceed. Not only that but you can assist other players in their level by placing a stone on the floor ingame & there's also another stone you can place that allows you to forcibly invade another players game so you can school them proper and steal their accumulated souls.

Film critic Roger Ebert gets back into the debate about whether video games can be considered as art or not.

Sony are feeling the 3D fever apparently there's a 3D gaming patch coming soon and one for playback later in the year. Personally I'm not that fussed but Super Stardust HD in 3D is tempting.

8 Bit Worship

Awesome vid - reminds me I must order 3D Dot Game Heroes

Monday PS3

Uncharted 2 done and dusted finally, it's a real blast I just couldn't be bothered with the multiplayer and looks like I'm not the only one getting tired of being hammered online by potty mouthed teenagers with an interesting article from Wired. I'll rejoin the kids when 'Splitters 2 finally gets a PSN release in the meantime here's where my money went.

PS3 must-haves on the horizon

Fallout: New Vegas, due this autumn, has it's first teaser here.

Salivating like a Pavlovian mutt for The Last Guardian too but still no release date, bunch of screens and that on the new official site.

Mixed bag of Crazy

American weapons from a particular company have secretly inserted bible references into weapon id numbers. Mmm America + dullwittedness + guns + bizarro-jesus + available targets that's a sweet bitches brew of corpses. Maybe Beck/Palin's juju is on the money?

It's ok Haiti the Scientologonks are coming, leading the way is chubby can't-actor Travolta who has offered to fly some lunatics into the site of a devastating catastrophe because tiresome half-assed, made up by a scifi author, pseudo scientific beliefs are exactly was these people need right now. What a guy.

Dennis Hopper, a unique individual I'd think we'd all agree is apparently approaching his end, eek, and he just divorced his wife mmmm classy, regardless he did provide us with many great things over his long career in a number of fields and here's a great spread of his photos from the Selma March via Vanity Fair appropriately enough for MLK day in the US.

Ocean of liquid diamonds on Uranus? or maybe even Neptune? well some well smoked boffins have pondered about recent revelations bout the results of melting diamonds.

Cartoonish megalomaniac Chavez has continued his campaign against video games with his latest well thought out criticism of the genre being that they are "poison" particularly Sony Playstation, guess he's a Xboxer then. Anyways he's, err, an odd one to say the least, if he's started making statues of himself I'd hope the populace are getting scared and not cause of the visage.

Awesome image of China's interweb censorship via Guradina's Datablog sire, via Information is Beautiful.

Feel for author when discussing errors in his newly published book, that's shitty, won't put me off buying one of the books, the blog is amazing, I'm fond of Weed-as-super-drug Chart, totally convinced me.

2 X PSN = happy hours wasted

Discs and otherwise

Finished Arkham Asylum couple of nights ago, was ok, hope the next one is free roaming though. Bought Uncharted 2, so far so good actually living up to the hype, also got Borderlands though I've only had a quick peek. I have managed a few films though;

House of The Devil, a1980's styled horror film that initially seemed quite good but totally failed to deliver. Some cash hungry student shows up for a babysitting job and things aren't quite right from the get go, it manages to build some tension but fritters it away in a badly handled, mostly bloodless, final third. I remember 80's stuff having the decency at least to have buckets of blood and gore.

Astroboy was a pretty enjoyable 90 mins of cartoon scifi I guess. Based on the enormously popular mangas by Tezuka the plot revolves around a grieving scientist who tries to recreate his dead son as a powerful robot child thing, needless to say it doesn't really work out all that well and robo-kid leaves Floating tech-city to find himself, returns and kicks badguy ass to save the day.

This Gun for Hire is one of a pile of film noir's I've not watched - after Kiss Me Deadly this was a little disappointing sadly. It is a great film though, tight, nicely scripted and funny in bits but there was something amiss along the way or maybe it was Ladd's performance, I wasn't too impressed with his reminiscences towards the end, I dunno. Veronica Lake was great though.

Sony separates me from another £250

Got my 2nd YLOD on Saturday night, rackin' frackin' shitebags, didn't think it was worth getting it fixed again so bought a Slim on Sunday. Think I'll sell the carcass on ebay once I've extraced my Bioshock disc. I got an extended warranty this time around but this one better last. On the up side I redownloaded all my psn purchases and finally managed to play Trine which is great, a real old school sidescrolling fantasy romp.

PS3

Missed last night's Watchdog on the YLOD, guess I'll watch it on the embedded iplayer on my XMB. Needless to say Sony aint best pleased and it's started a fanboy flamewar across the webby forums It's a shame they employed Iain Lee though, he's a massive tit and is rather fond of slurping Microsoft coqs.

Hopefully the Beeb and Sony won't be at war for too long - they've plenty of reasons to be cheerful

Got Trine last night and will be picking up Katamari Forever this weekend - I really need to keep pushing through lovely Rapture as Fallout DLC has finally got a release date too.

PS3 woe

PS3 failed last night - horrified by the deal offered by Sony so gonna try and get it fixed, if not guess I'll be buying a slim once I've found the cash. Most annoying as I'd just got to the last fuggin level of Dead Space.

Gaming

Still haven't finished Dead Space, got myself in a bit of tricky ammo situation, my own fault of course. Anyway I must push on with it as I've barely touched Bioshock and Valkyria Chronicles, thank god the Fallout 3 DLC has been delayed for the PS3.

Hats off to these guys, The Speed Gamers, who're doing an awesome Final Fantasy marathon.

This looks great, hope it's coming to the PS3. Shame about the name tho.

Prayers Answered ? Now we just need FFVII