Despite the date showing on the post, I didn't really start anything about 11:30AM Friday June 6th, but honestly I couldn't do anything last night anyway. See Thursday's update wasn't released until early morning on Friday instead of the usual 5:30PM EDT. No clue what took so long, but when I checked at 1AM this morning I still didn't see any of the new items.
On top of no items last night the Store appeared to run extremely slow. Nearly as slow as it was when the new Store design was released back in April, and continues to do so this morning. I started the some 3Gb worth of downloads at 10AM and at 11:35 the first item on the list still hasn't finished downloading. I guess this post will be done in spurts.
IGN PS3
PlayStation.Blog
ThreeSpeech - European Store Update
QJNet - European Store Update
Add-Ons
Qore Episode 001: June, 2008 drops today and I've picked up the Annual Subscription. It opens up with a trailer for Hulk - which I will be seeing - and then gives you the Qore intro. Once inside you can basically go from menu to menu and check things out. For those like me who bought the 13 episode yearly subscription you're treated to an exclusive Qore SOCOM: Confrontation theme, Calling All Cars full game and an invite to the SOCOM: Confrontation beta when it becomes available. Currently I'm downloading my "free" game and theme, so I'll get to comment on Calling All Cars finally.
After the skipable - but honestly who wants to skip Hulk goodness - opening movie trailer that's also available in side you get a nice interface to work with. Loads pretty quickly and displays a SOCOM background with 6 options on the left side.
Going into some of the menus does display some advertising - that cannot be skipped - which I don't have a big problem with but if just spent $25 for this why am I seeing advertisements? This will bother some, and no so much others. Some of the things you'll find are for Soul Calibur IV, Afro Samurai, SOCOM, Secret Agent Clank, and Star Wars Unleashed.
So far the service is nice but you can't rewind or fast forward the clips. I hit the controller on accident and the clip stopped. I was half way through and had to re-watch half of it again to catch up and see the rest, hopefully this is something they will adjust for future episodes.
11:43 - Guitar Hero III drops some goodies today and one of which is absolutely free. Guitar Hero III - GOW Add-On offers up a theme from God of War II to be played and is something Ren will probably enjoy. (Make sure you check out his recent Guitar Hero III post at Knight of Ni.)
Along with the free goodies, GH3 dropped three songs from Motorhead as well, and they'll run you $6.25. Not bad really, 4 total songs for $6.25 or 1 song for Eff-Are-Triple E!
11:50 - Rock Band, as always, rocks out with 6 total tracks, two bundles including the 6 tracks, and a host of newly discounted songs that will be $.99 until June 12th.
Demos
19:04 - Now I can finally start playing the demos after having started all the downloads this morning at about 10AM. This is crazy retarded, though I must now admit that part of it was my network and entirely PSN slow downs. After I'm done playing demos and finish up this post I get to hit NewEgg to order some network equipment. YAY!
Civilization Revolution Demo goes back to all the fun that usually is Sid Meier's Civilization. Hours of lazy easy fun, just time it's a little prettier. If you don't care about all the extra crazy voice acting or cartoony style just try out Free Civ. Either way the demo took me a while to get through and it's definitely enjoyable, just for me the free version gets the job done.
Well after playing the Battlefield: Bad Company MP demo I can't say I feel any different about this game. It did have some potential for a moment though. Story starts out with some interest, but the graphics are extremely grainy and the controls are bad. Any slight movement of the L3 analog stick and you're over tracked on your target and been shot. The guys who are in Bad Company with you have their own personalities in the story but in the battle field they often feel useless. This seriously had some potential but they dropped the ball on pulling it together. It is a demo, but honestly the game's coming out soon so this isn't far off from the release build. I can only imagine what IGN PS3 will say about these graphics.
I really dislike NASCAR, but I went ahead and played the demo anyway. It's an EA game so there's a lot of recycling, but they do offer a lot of different features and modes that may turn out to be a lot of fun for the guy who wants to side down and rive in a circle all day. (Would it kill them to put in a right turn every now and again?) Either way NASCAR 09 has a wealth of features and challenges for most any racing fan but presentation is very lacking. Honestly this game only appears to be a slight graphical bump up from a PS2 game, and if you take the pole the lone race is boring as you're always in the lead. I couldn't delete this demo fast enough.
Games
Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3 ($9.99)
NOVASTRIKE ($9.99)
SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo 2 ($15.99) (also downloadable via PS3)
Videos
13:52 - No movie trailers or BD trailers this week. I can't remember a time when there wasn't at least one movie trailer at the store.
Guitar Hero III - God Of War Add-On - Same video linked above. It's in Standard Def and looks stretched, but the song looks like it would be fun to GH3 fans.Themes
Resident Evil 5: Spring Trailer 2008! - Slightly updated trailer than the one that got everybody stirred up last year. Looks great, but after the first game.... I don't play Resident Evil. *shudders*
Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3 Trailer - Similar to the trailer shown above, and I'm still on the fence with this one. Seems like a Metal Slug like game, with online co-op. I'm just playing so many games right now.... (I have a horrible life don't I?)
LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures launch trailer - I WANT! I WANT! I WANT!
Dead Space Story Trailer - Was hoping for part two of the Dead Space digital comic they started last week, but instead we have a trailer most have seen online some place already.
Fracture Trailer - I'd forgotten about this game, but is has a pretty awesome premise and the technology under the hood is going be amazing. Hopefully it ends well.
Fracture Behind the Scenes “Story” - This is actually the first "how it's made" dev clip that was interesting. This game could very well be worth it all.
Hail to the Chimp: 3:00 AM - Most of these trailers are funny as hell, but now I'm starting to see this is a stab at a game like Mario Party. PS3 needs some party games, so I hope this one pans out.
SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo 2 trailer - Looks like same trailer I've already seen, with excerpts from the demo I played recently.
SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo 2 TV Spot 1 - I don't watch much TV, so I haven't seen these yet, but it seems as if they'd only attract SOCOM fans.
SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo 2 TV Spot 2 - Same commercial with just slightly more polish.
11:36 EDT - Retro Theme is definitely retro. Going back to the days of Number Crunchers and the original Prince of Persia for the PC. Green tinted background of an old OLD skool monitor and even an attempt to show the curved nature of the monitor. Nostalgic but ugly. Plain old pixels, no sounds, but that's pretty much how computers were then. It's a nice touch but considering how many quality themes the PS3 has I don't think many will use it for very long.
15:40 - SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo 2 wallpapers have pretty good detail but they're basically 2 wallpapers with slightly different logo placements. I think they should have just released a theme for the PSP instead of the wallpapers honestly.
Music
14:55 - More music this week, and it all comes from the PSP title SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo 2. Some of them sounds like they were tailer made for a chase sequence in a movie, some sound like the climatic sounds leading up to a big explosion, but all have that action packed excitement behind them save the title track. Title track sounds like a mixture of a Navy TV spot and the music you hear on the main menu of a DVD. All sound nice, but you'd have to be a real serious music buff or huge SOCOM fan to really appreciate and/or keep listening to these five tracks. Still a nice touch to give people a taste of the game though.
22:36 - Now as you look at the times listed before different sections to show what time I wrote that section you'll notice they're not in chronological order, however that's about the order in which I usually do the different sections. Often I actually do the basic link work while still at work so when I get home I just have to download and watch or play. Since yesterday's update was so delayed and the PSN isn't as fast as usual with downloads this post has taken the better part of 10 hours to complete; but I did spend like two hours or more playing the Civilization demo.
But now that this is completed time to play Calling All Cars and Mario Kart Wii that picked up earlier in the day while I waited for stuff to download!
