Well it's Thursday and I'm saddened. (Wow that looked so horribly spelled!) See I was all geeked up because a puzzle game I've truly enjoyed over the years, and has made the purchase of my PSP absolutely worth it and more, was said to be released today for the PS3. It was to come with all sorts of goodies. Trophies. PS3 exclusive skins. Ability to make your own tracks. All around everything I would have hoped for a new game in this series, and alas it's not here. For those of you who don't know, the game I speak of is Lumines Supernova. As soon as I heard this game was coming to the PSN I busted out my nearly forgotten PSP so I could practice. I actually got in bed with the intent of going to sleep and instead played Lumines II for two hours when I should have been sleeping. (Man that day at work really stunk!)
Well the whole store update wasn't a complete waste, and the today itself isn't all bad for PS3 owners. In case you have been hiding under a rock for months, you should have heard that PlayStation Home was released to open beta to the masses. And the masses immediately got hit with problems. Checking the post over at the PlayStation.Blog resulted in elventy bajillion comments of connection errors. Seems the sudden influx of millions of people around the world attempting to connect has resulted in connection problems. The post in question received 700 plus posts at last check and I think 650 of them were "I'm getting a connection error." I'm currently waiting for mine to update, but when I logged into Home last - three nights ago I believe - everything was as smooth as could be expected.
Well enough about my whining (Lumines Supernova I long for you.) and everybody else's whining ("Errors: D35 C-931 C-991 and so on") time to get on with what we do have today. The Links foo'!
IGN PS3
PlayStation.Blog
ThreeSpeech - European Store Update
Add-Ons
There's nothing quite like Christmas cheer as far as I'm concerned, so when you get to traipse around in some of your favorite video games as good Ole St. Nick, I say it's a good time! Lots of new costumes for LittleBigPlanet this week, and the Santa pants and coat are all lined up. If you progress far enough through the game, there is a Santa hat and an appropriate beard for the whole ensemble.
Some people have complained about the pay costumes for LBP, and so far I've had fun with them and have bought all of them. Today, to go along with the recent Super Street Fighter Turbo II HD Remix we can also dress up as some of our favorite Street Fighter characters and kick butt in LBP. Here's the full list of today's available costumes, make sure you pick the free stuff!
- Santa Coat and Trousers - free
- Zangief - $1.99
- Guile - $1.99
- Chun-Li - $1.99
- Ryu - $1.99
- Street Fighter II costume kit - $5.99
High Velocity Bowling seems to have quite a following, and to say thank you for said appreciation the guys over at SCEA San Diego continue to give out new content. Today you lucky Bowlers pick up a new ball pack - that will run you $0.99 - and Tiff’s Big Zero Trick Shot Pack for free. I'm not sure if, like the name implies, you will now have a Trick Shot option for the game or what. What I'm sure a lot of those Bowlers would really like to see would be Trophy support! NEED MOAR TROPHIEZ!
Tom Clancy’s EndWar was a game that I thought was an amazing idea for a game, and if implemented properly could be a damn fine game. Sadly I haven't had time to even play the demo that was released a while ago, but either way here's some new content for those who do. The Escalation Expansion Pack will run you $9.99 and brings in 4 new missions and 3 new units to get in the mix. The 4 missions appear to be in different areas spread across the globe and across the various alliances in the game itself. Considering how much content appears to be in this game, and now the content added in this pack, I don't think owners of the game will have an issue with it's $10 price tag.
STAR WARS: The Force Unleashed, as promised, releases new missions. The costumes itself didn't seem that interesting or worth the price for this game, but the mission is something I was interested in. For $9.99 there's a new mission that takes place inside the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. I don't know all the lure, but I didn't think the temple would really have any use this far after Order 66 was executed at the end of Episode III. Either way I'll eventually get this and play through it, but for now I'm saving what's left of my money not being spent on Christmas presents on Lumines Supernova and likely Crash Commando.
As I mentioned the TFU costumes, there's also a costume pack available as well. This week for $4.99 you're welcome to what appears to be a group of mystery costumes. I can't seem to find out the list of costumes included. It likely says in the description at the store, but that requires me to log out of echochrome and login to the Store. Sorry!
Age of Booty continues to help Capcom truly support the PS3 by showing up with two more Map packs. Map Pack 4 and 5 will run you a nice holiday spirit inspired free. Looks like 4 new maps, and each map has 3 different configurations to tailor it towards different battles. Pack 5 also has a new game mode called Triple Trouble included. 4 maps with different setups and a game mode all for free? Happy Holidays!
Guitar Hero World Tour starts out with some heavy hitters this week. Releasing three Nirvana songs and Nirvana Track Pack to go along with it. The other pack is dubbed European Track Pack and includes 3 bands I've never heard of before. Either way each individual song will run you the usual $1.99 and each pack rings up at the usual $5.49. Personally I have to think the Nirvana pack has to be worth it!
Rock Band comes in today and brings with it an albums worth of No Doubt songs. I swear every time I hear No Doubt I think of Chris Rock's most recent comedy special. If you haven't seen it, go do so now!) 13 No Doubt singles will run $1.99 each, but for $19.99 you can snatch up the The Singles 1992 - 2003 Album which includes all songs. Only draw back is that it appears that album pack doesn't include 2 songs off the actual album but 13 No Doubt songs has to be some kind of win!
Not wanting to be left out in the cold, Mercenaries 2 releases some free goodies today as well. Blow It Up Again Content Pack comes with, from what I can gather, some new game modes. With names like Urban Rampage, Death Race, Arms Race, and Mercs Blitz it sounds like a lot of explosions and mayhem and fun.
Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol Encore 2didn't want to get left out today so it shows up with 4 new songs of it's own. Each track is the usual $1.49 but does include "Over the Rainbow" and "Heart of Glass" which could potentially be fun karaoke songs.
Demos
No demos of any kind today which is odd because today's the first time I would have had time to spend with a new demo. Since the game I was expecting didn't show up I could have played a demo. I guess I'll just spend some more time with the echochrome Trophies.
Games
I don't think I've ever even heard of PowerUp Forever until today, and I over looked it for most of the evening because I assumed it said "Lumines Supernova." Once I started prepping this post I finally paid enough attention to see PowerUp Forever. From what I can gather, it's another Shoot 'em Up game. No clue if it supports Trophies, and I'm running into resistance trying to find game play footage. I think I'll stick to Blast Factor and Söldner-X for now.
Videos
Games
BRAIN CHALLENGE video - PSP
LOTR: Conquest Good to be Bad Trailer
Resistance 2 Accolades Trailer
Xam’d: Lost Memories Release Announcement Video
Xam’d: Lost Memories Exclusive Interviews
Movies
Batman Tech Video
Not Easily Broken
Paul Blart: Mall Cop Trailer
Step Brothers Blu-ray Trailer
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc Blu-ray Trailer
Themes
No pay themes this week, but we get almost a handful of free themes. The three Resistance 2 themes are nearly interchangeable. Similar icons, and the same R2 themed sounds for each one, just different backgrounds. They're not by any means, just not great either. I think the backgrounds could be a little crisper but again they're not bad.
- Resistance 2 Americana Theme (free)
- Resistance 2 Man vs. Chimera Theme (free)
- Resistance 2 SRPA Team Theme (free)
The Xam’d Lost Memories Theme is quite simple and is based on the PSN only anime that's released weekly. I've never seen the show, despite wanting to, mainly because of the pricing scheme of the show. But there are 2 videos released this week on the PSN that seem a lot like DVD~esque extras to give you a taste of what's going on.
On the wallpaper side of things we only have one and honestly it would have to be for the most extreme Mountain Dew enthusiast. But if that is you, make sure you download the Mountain Dew Wallpaper and put it to good use as I deleted mine already.
Well I guess here goes hoping that Lumines Supernova actually comes out next week, but until then I'm going to continue practising on Lumines II for my PSP.
