DLC - July 24th

It's Thursday, and it's been a busy day for me. Took the day off and took the time to upgrade my PS3. Went through and upgrade from the 60Gb HDD to a 250Gb HDD. I took pictures, video, and plan to post about it later but right now the PS Store update has dropped and I'm going to get it knocked out before 1AM for once!

The Links!

PlayStation.Blog
ThreeSpeech - European Store Update

**SALE**
On top of all the other goodness in this week's update, we also get 5 previously released PSN games at a discounted price. For the next week the following 5 PSN offerings will be $4.99.

• PAIN
• PixelJunk Monster
• High Velocity Bowling
• High Stakes on the Vegas Strip: Poker Edition
• Rocketmen: Axis of Evil

That's a pretty good list, and I'm going to take advantage of it and pick up PAIN for $4.99. Please keep in mind that a number of these games have available DLC that is NOT included in this package. So none of the extra characters for PAIN, no PixelJunk Encore (Which I recommend by the way!), or whatever expansion was released for the not so enjoyable Rocketmen game. But for just under $5 that's a heck of a bargain in most cases.

Add-Ons
Guitar Hero III: Guitar Virtuoso Pack brings in 3 songs from 3 different artists for $6.25. I noticed a few people who were big fans of these artists/bands get really excited about today's selection. I'll have to confess to having never heard of any of them.

On the Rock Band side of the street, we see 5 new songs and a bundled pack. Two songs from Shinedown ($1.99 each) and 3 songs - included in a pack ($5.49/pack & $1.99/each) - from Nine Inch Nails. I wonder if we will see songs for those of us who aren't big fans of "rock" in Rock Band 2.

Demos
My sister and I play a LOT of PixelJunk Monsters, my sister more so than me. She just commented on how she played 10 minutes of Burnout and for the past 4 months all she's played as been PJM. Well today the demo for PixelJunk Eden (PJE) drops and it's amazing. I've played games that weren't this addicting and didn't have this level of replay value than this demo!

Graphics are simple but beautiful. Music fits the game very well and is everything you need it to be. Chilled. Amped up. Soothing. You name it. I don't know that I'll be playing anything else for a while after I get this. I'll have to try and fit in my other games this week in between play time with this demo before next Thursday. I just put $10 on my wallet for this so it's primed for next week.

Now on Trophies in the demo like everybody has been asking, and no YouTube support, but the full game will offer both. No hint at customized soundtracks but honestly the music is good enough that I wouldn't change it. Tossing in different music may change the feel of the game. PixelJunk has done it again, I can't wait to see what they're going to work on next.

Games
Siren: Blood Curse drops today with a number options for purchasing. The whole game with all the episodes is $39.99 while 3 bundled packs are $14.99. I played the Japanese demo back several months ago when I posted about my "Japanese PlayStation & Me" post. The game's freaky and scary, and I don't play games like that. Call me all kinds of names if you like, I'm completely fine with it! Either way a lot of people like horror movies and horror/survival games like this. My only problem with the game is that nobody can find a flash light that works in these games. Well the EU community has been all excited about this game... at least that was until it came out today.

I've decided that the EU gamers enjoy complaining more than they do gaming, as is evident today in the comments to their ThreeSpeech Store Update today. Not enough games, too expensive games, have to wait for games, games are too big. Yeah, you read that right, games are too big. The FULL 12 Episodes game is just under 9Gb. For me that doesn't seem too big for a game with 12 episodes and that looks as good as it does. (That is when your flash light works.) But they needed something to go with their cheese, so this is what they whined about today. I've yet to see a single complaint about the file size at the PlayStation.Blog comments yet.

1942: Joint Strike makes it's appearance at PSN today and I'm going to pass for now. If there was a demo for this I'd know tonight if I was going to buy it or not. But no such luck so I'll have to wait. IGN XB360 gave it a 7, while the PS3 version doesn't appear to have been reviewed yet.

Videos
Light on the videos today, but all of them are rather good.

Games
Bionic Comando: Rearmed The Making of Part 1 - A quick dev interview about the game and how it got to where it is. I want this already!
PixelJunk Eden Trailer - Showing off some of the features and game play mechanics for today's demo and next weeks full release. MORE TROPHIES PLEASE!
Street Figher IV: E3 2008 Gameplay Trailer - Over four and half minutes of game play and I'm now sold. I'll have to pre-order this next time I'm in GameStop or Ebgames.
Street Fighter IV: PS3 Special Trailer - Shows of the art style and looks great but after watching the first video I just wanted to go watch the other one again.

Themes
Street Fighter IV Summer 08 PS3 Theme is probably one of the worst themes to date. For a game that is so artistic, and trailers that look so amazing, they don't seem to have even tried here. Absolutely no change at all to the icons, sounds remind me of menu sounds from a PSone game. The background the chose isn't even that great. Of all the art I've seen for this game they could have selected something much better. They could have used the same brush stroke theme they're showcasing to make icons but they're just the default ones. Almost as if somebody didn't finish the job and it was released anyway.

Siren Blood Curse PS3 Theme shows of some eerie icons look like blood smeared metal, while the background shows off the various characters from the game a silhouette of the ton in the background. Seems like they only put in half of the sounds though. Opening and exiting a folder sounds like a bang on the side of a metal drum but that's all the is in the way of sounds. A more scary background would have done better here, but I'm sure the blue and red tinted background ties into the game some how.

In the wallpaper department we have 12 images available for download.

First few are all for the LucasArts game Fracture. The Fracture logo looks great but the other images provided don't look as good as the game play videos I've seen circulating. They look very rough with lots of "jaggies."

Now the two Killzone 2 images look amazing! One of them shows what appears to be a flying fortress of some kind with the clouds in the background and looks beautiful. Second one shows a soldier in the middle of a fire fight and detail is amazing. Some of the textures on his gloves and elbow pads look I could actually feel them.

One lone PixelJunk Eden background but it's vibrant colors and simple artsy feel lends itself well to a background actually.

Lastly we receive 5 wallpapers for Siren: Blood Curse that could be used for the additional backgrounds with the Siren theme. Dark, blood tinted locales on two of them while the other 3 showcase a character from the game in the same red and blue color scheme shown in the Siren theme.

Now that this is finished, back to PixelJunk Eden. Oh, and don't be surprised if next weeks store update kind of sucks because I will be playing PJE!