DLC - May 8th

Lots of toys to play with this week, so let's get to work. As always, let's start with the links.

IGN PS3
PlayStation.Blog
Three Speech - 2nd Update of the Week
QJNet

[Note] Europe received an update on Tuesday for PlayStation Day hosted in London, and this update doesn't reflect that. If you'd like to check out that update please check out links here, and here. [/Note]

Add-Ons
Finally the PixelJunk Monsters expansion arrives and I am happy! Despite my sister's crazy violent tendencies, she's really been taken to PJM. Now she already beat the snot out of Unreal III, but instead of going straight for Heavenly Sword, Warhawk, Resistance or any other "kill everything that moves" title she started playing the HELL out of PJM. I knew I'd like it, and I have enjoyed it, but she plays so much she admitted to dreaming about it! She was even more excited about the release of the expansion than I have been, and I got geeked when heard the rumors.

With this release we pick up a whole new island, with 15 new stages, and the addition of the Ice Tower as "standard equipment" instead of just Cannon, Crossbow, and Anti-Air Towers. I've only really touched two of the new stages and they appear to be simple lay outs but with multiple paths mean you really have to plan your defense out or they could sneak in the back door and completely ruin you. I know I've gotten more than $7.99 worth of enjoyment from PJM, so $5.99 for 15 new stages to an already great game is all worth it!

What the world do with out Rock Band content once a week? Ren and I once commented on the price of Rock Band, but honestly if you're still playing this game like crazy, that initial $180 you dropped HAS to be worth it! This is the game that never ends! Three new songs and corresponding packs, and we have a limited time discount on previously released songs as well.

Over the past few weeks I've seen a lot of articles on the Guitar Hero III Muse pack, and it drops today for $6.95. I wonder if GT III will start to release more songs to attempt to catch up to Rock Band, or if they're just going to go with Add-On discs to get more content to their audience.

Demos
Bourne Conspiracy Demo starts when Jason Bourne enters the embassy in the first movie. First cut scene looks really good and then the actual graphics of the game drops 3 or 4 notches. Fighting is nice and fast and frenzied while a camera stays in close on you so you get to really see and enjoy each take down. Randomly you see little timed button mash mini-games that often surprise you. One objective is to take out senior officer who's surprisingly the world's greatest hand-to-hand combatant in all the world. I'm some how supposed to charge a kick while this guy is playing my face like some bongos. I manage to pull one off and the guy ducks out of the way like I warned him ahead of time and then a slow down in the action says to mash a button. If you miss you find yourself tossed to the floor or socked in the mouth. To keep you honest the button changes each time and occurs at different points in the action so it's not as if you can truly be ready for it. In order to take down most enemies you require the timed up take down, problem is you have to build up adrenaline in order to perform the take down. To add insult to injury, when you fail to defeat somebody and "die" it takes quite a while for the game to load back to the last check point.

I almost didn't even finish this demo because of the first segment, however the second "level" isn't so bad while the final driving level seemed completely pointless. I enjoyed the Bourne books that were actually written by Ludlum (First two.), and the movies didn't do bad as a purely action movies but all this game succeeds in doing is putting the action right there in your face.

GRiD Demo is brought to us by the same group that made DiRT. One thing that really stood out for me in DiRT was the presentation. As you loaded from menu to menu or menu to race it would show you random tidbits about playing the game. Miles traveled. Money earned. Races won. Win percentage. Stuff like that, and it was a very nice touch. GRiD has the same thing but seems more sim oriented than DiRT did. I wasn't paying attention to the track map and just slammed into the back of another driver doing 150 mph and the damage to the front of the car was so severe I couldn't drive straight with out fighting the left handed pull. The other CPU racers AI is really good as well. They didn't fight to keep that one single line like so many other racing games. Each racer seemed to jockey for position in the pack, and a few of these bastards even tried to block my pass attempts. If you spin off the track and then gun it to get started the care behaves like a high torque race car would and you find yourself turned around even worse. This may just be a pretty damn good racing sim to try out.

HAZE Demo is supposed to be the entire first level of the game, and right off the bat is puts you in the thick of things. Controls are quick and crisp, graphics in your immediate vicinity look great but in the distance you start to notice the detail decline. First mission is short and can honestly be completed in 5 minutes on your first time through. What's nice is you can do the mission with 3 other friends online using voice chat. I'll have to make my previously mentioned violent sister try this one out!

For the PSP we pick up a demo for SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo 2 which released a while ago. I've always stunk at these games, so my limited play of the demo earlier today I took a while to "adjust" and progress. For those SOCOM fans out there, I imagine it's not a bad portable option for their favorite series. I hear the online play for it is pretty damn good for a hand held system.

Games
Rocketmen: Axis of Evil is a pretty horrible cel shaded game that was released in demo form back a few months ago. After you play the game you have the option to buy the full version and continue playing. Well now you can actually buy the full game out right instead of downloading the demo and buying from there. So if you must torture yourself, for $9.99 you can do that.

Videos

Games
WipEout HD Trailer - 60fps. 1080p. Dobly 5.1 Surround. Huge fan favorite. This game will sell like hot cakes.
PLAYSTATION 3 “What You Need” Video - An extremely long possible TV spot. Decent concept but I don't care much for it.
Mirror’s Edge Gameplay Trailer - Believe it not, this is an EA game, and it looks amazing and is actually completely different than anything we've seen. Gawk over this trailer and show your friends!
Mercenaries 2 Payback Trailer - Seems like it'll have a good story, however nothing about the game play seems to stand out. I may rent it just to get the story.
Overlord Raising Hell Trailer - Looks like a hack & slash RTS. Intro looked great, but game footage didn't look so hot. Not a game for me.
The Wheelman Trailer - Years ago I head Vin Diesel was getting into video games, well I guess this is it. Seems more like "go watch Fast & The Furious" and Pontiac commercial though.
TNA iMPACT! Gamers’ Day Trailer - I stopped watching wrestling after Wrestlemania 3, but wrestling games are often a lot of fun. Game looks pretty good, may actually turn out to be good.

Movies
Indiana Jones: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Teaser Trailer - Looks like the same trailer I've seen online and at the movie theater when I saw Iron Man on Tuesday.
The Love Guru - I guess Mike Myers can't do another Austin Powers, so let's make another crazy character instead. Looks like it will be "rental funny."
Iron Man Trailer 2 - First off, go see this movie ASAP! And then come watch this trailer. Having seen the movie this shows a number of smaller clips of some pretty important scenes. See the movie first and then come love this trailer.

Themes
Two themes this week, one for PJM and a Sports Theme. I've been surprised we've not had more "generic" themes. The first few themes released after the update including them were very generic. Not tied to a game, and didn't provide any masculine choices.

The PixelJunk Monsters Theme #3 has a pretty nice looking background with the same icons and sounds taken from the last theme. The background is nice, however the lava flow down the middle of the image can wash out the names in the sub-menus. This is why I wish they would pay closer attention to the icons in the sub-menus instead of using slightly modified default icons.

The Sports theme however is pretty darn good. Background changes and shows some sort of turf, ie golf course, football field, soccer pitch, etc; The icons appear to be painted on to the turf of choice and whatever sport is being showcased that time displays the ball or cup - so far I've seen tennis, football, soccer, and golf. Sadly they didn't do anything with the sounds, I wouldn't have minded hearing a ref's whistle, or the sound of a golf ball falling into the cup, or the "thwack" of a tennis racket. All around it's pretty nice.
Sports Theme

Two PixelJunk Monsters wallpapers for the PS3, but nothing special about them. Personally I just think there are much better looking options out there for a wallpaper if you're not going to use the wallpapers that come with a theme. I wonder if Sony's going to release a theme maker for the PS3 like they've done for the PSP.