Following on from the most recent review of Three Speech’s event over at 3Rooms, here’s another piece put together by Ben Fernaux (www.red-riot.net).
Last Tuesday I went on a LittleBigAdventure.
It’s been a very long time since I had such faith in a failing product. Up until GDC’07 it was very hard for me to find a reason to want a PS3, yet more than anything I wanted to want one. At the best of times in the last two years the Sony PlayStation PR division has been tying themselves in knots. The lawsuit with Immersion left Sony battered and looking for ways to lick their wounds. Whether SIXAXIS was a by-product of a creative team frantically looking for ways to innovate or not, it’s here to stay. Steep prices, modified hardware, contradicting messages and launch shootings aside, things got off to a very bad start for the PS3.
When I arrived in London last December I was expecting a lot from the first 3Rooms event. It was my first hands-on experience with the PS3, and as you expect, I was hoping to be blown away. I left London that December feeling contented, yet deflated and worried. The event was a true spectacle, the setting perfect and I had a great time but I missed ‘my rumble’, the games were average and there were few extras on the side; making it a most expensive pill I was not willing to swallow. I simply wasn’t ready to buy a PS3.
Metaphorical boxing gloves pulled up to my elbows, with eyes pressed permanently into an icy frown, I gritted my teeth and with the stance of a veteran rugby player I knocked on the doors of 3Rooms with unease. “I really, really want to like it” I thought to myself, seriously who really wants to be the kid at school who doesn’t like ice cream? Inside we were promised the future of PlayStation and who better than Phil Harrison to deliver it.
LittleBigPlanet is everything I have been ranting about for the last three years. This is the game I have created in my mind over and over a million times, so finally to see it actually exist is probably one of the most creatively exhilarating experiences I’ll ever have. PlayStation Home is a fantastic extension of the player and can be as big or little part of the PlayStation experience as the user wants. In my case it’ll be a big part, just look for the guy in the Home Lobby dressed in a red cape dancing like a robot to Russian pop music. It’ll be me. LittleBigPlanet as a game will be great, it will be huge and it will be more fun than senselessly punching virtual prostitutes to death because ‘that woman at work earlier’ annoyed you by paying for everything with stamps.
Video games have been regarded as a form of escapism ever since the ‘3D Generation’ emerged with it’s guns blazing and heart pounding for more Nazis to dispose of. I have and will defend my right to do what I like in games, and on a regular basis I thoroughly enjoy partaking in actions that could be considered morally ambiguous. I would never stab a man dressed as a hot dog in real life.
Forget escapism and stop wasting all that built up energy on Guile, just what did he do to you anyway? We are fast approaching the real next-generation, some call it Game 3.0, I’ll call it Creationism. With the release of games like LittleBigPlanet and services like Home, the games industry will reshape into a more approachable and energetic medium. And who knows, maybe it’ll even get the widespread respect it deserves and become free from being a bedroom sport. Admitting you have a passion for video games is like announcing you masturbate, you get a funny look and assume your place at the bottom of the social food-chain.
Creationism, however, is sexy, it’s fun and it’s a lot more stimulating than any gaming experiences that’s been on the shelves in the last ten years. You don’t need to be artistic either, you’re only required to express yourself in whatever fashion you like. That being said, you can still fulfil your sadistic side in new and increasingly delicious ways using all the new toolsets available to you. And if you don’t like the sound of that, then remember GTA4 is still coming out in October, that hooker won’t run over herself ya know.
Immersion has settled with Sony and we can safely assume ‘SHOCKAXIS’ is coming. Frequent firmware updates are adding more and more innovative functionality for free. SIXAXIS functionality is adding depth to existing game mechanics and will no doubt serve as a fresh extra for the PS generation. Services like Home and games like LittleBigPlanet are coming this year, with Sony riding the Game 3.0 horse right underneath Nintendo and Microsoft’s worried little noses. I’m now ready to buy my PS3, I pre-ordered last week and so should you.
So who wins? The gamers win, we win, you win.
great review, just wish i was able to attend sounds like it was a great time
Comment by mee — Mar 19, 2007 @ 6:31 pm
Quite rightly put on the main page here, it’s a very nicely written piece.
Furneaux, you owe me £20
Comment by Pete Cullen — Mar 19, 2007 @ 6:40 pm
I hope .PNG’s with transparency are supported in LBP so you can easily produce quality looking sprays/stamps/tags.
Comment by Shin-Ra — Mar 19, 2007 @ 6:47 pm
Nice review. I too have renewed confidence in the console after 3rooms.
Comment by Ricky — Mar 19, 2007 @ 8:12 pm
Or maybe guys should wait until ‘Game 3.0′ has arrived when the PS3 is likely to be cheaper.
Comment by Joakim Hagdahl — Mar 19, 2007 @ 8:15 pm
great review, just can’t wait, 5 days to go…
PSN: TheDirector
Comment by thedirector — Mar 19, 2007 @ 10:07 pm
To bad Capcom now made Devil May Cry 4 for the 360
Comment by Carl — Mar 20, 2007 @ 8:39 am
Right big exclusive flying to X360, that is sad but that’s business life…Anyway major games are approaching for our very soon Euro PS3!!
I’m very excited about it and hope developers will extract much power from inside (Unchartered Drake…, Ratchet&Clank, MGS4, GT5, LBPlanet, Home, Motorstorm, etc…many reasons to get one!)
Comment by MrFurious — Mar 20, 2007 @ 9:25 am
hey, i know this ain’t the right place to say, but i seen posts saying devil may cry 4 is no more a ps3 exclusive……. which ia really drag i must say………..
Comment by thedirector — Mar 20, 2007 @ 11:39 am
I’m not surprised about DMC 4 coming to the 360, but the PC is a bit of a surprise. Capcom want to make money like everyone else, and with the CURRENT low install base of the PS3 (because we all know it’s going to increase rapidly, hopefully) they have to go where the money is.
Like MrFurious said, there are still plenty other PS3 exclusives for us to enjoy. I still expect Capcom’s exclusivity deal with Microsoft is a timed one and we will see Dead Rising and Lost Planet appear on the PS3 before the end of the year.
Comment by Pete Cullen — Mar 20, 2007 @ 12:19 pm
Yea but that’s no bad thing, i’m sure Lost planet and Dead Rising will go the other way…
Sony have ICO team, so they’re fine in the exclusives department (but not in the price department where pride is going to come before a big ass fall)
What is bad news is that Ubi have held back R6vegas till spring and Graw2 till summer, oh and have held back Oblivion for Europe too….
Which is because no matter how many people buy games with their PS3 they still can’t sell that many, as they know Sony are going to be caught with pants around ankels over the next few months….
Add in the US NPD figures and the news will come that MGS4 will go multiplatform, unless Sony want to give Konami a sack of money it just doesn’t make business sense to do PS3 exclusives while it has a tiny userbase..
Interesting that none of that news showed up here but to be expected i guess….i just don’t think comign here gives customers a really balanced view of how they can spend their cash - for big fans of Sony it’s great don’t get me wrong..
Comment by Basil Brush — Mar 20, 2007 @ 12:22 pm
Littleplanet looks great…but £425 is a rip off plain & simple, so whilst you are correct in that this console is an incredibly exciting prospect (beleive me when Fumito gets coding i will follow) i can’t see how anyone in their right mind could reccomend the purchase of a UK PS3 at launch…
Unless you have a lot of easily disposable income, otherwise the comparison of a £170 20GB japanese model with emotion engine vs a UK £425 60GB model sans emotion engine just doesn’t stack up…at all (sorry but saying we’ve added VAT and offset exchange rates in our favour doesn’t cut the mustard for me)
Comment by Basil Brush — Mar 20, 2007 @ 12:27 pm
I find it very hard to see your reasoning that £425 being a rip off. Sony are LOSING MONEY on these systems! Blu Ray and the media capabilities (whether you want them or not) are more expensive alone. We get charged a lot more but that’s politics, economy and exchange, not Sony.
Comment by Ben Furneaux — Mar 20, 2007 @ 5:13 pm
What a poetic review.
You will generally find that if you really REALLY want to want/like something, you will inevitably find a way to do so. I see nothing in this review that negates all the PS3s downsides which have been talked about plenty (eg. backwards compatability, price, over-hyped power).
…and I would hardly say at this stage that Nintendo and Microsoft are worried.
Comment by BOrTaS — Mar 21, 2007 @ 2:45 am
love how much people bitch about the emothion engine, i mean seriously why on earth would you pay £425 to play PS2 games, i mean seriously take a look at your games collection and think when was the last time that you played a ps1 game one your ps2. backwards compatability has always baffled me, whilst it is a nice feature it is in no means needed and tbh the amount of backwards compatability that the PS3 is providing is still better than the 360’s. we managed for many many years with no backwards compatability before the arivial of the ps2.
as for the cost of the machine, £425 is cheaper than any blue,player that you can by at standard retail, cheaper than any PC that you could by with the equivilent power (an equivilent PC graphics card alone would cost you in the region of £200-£300), cheaper than an equivilent xbox360 (machine+HD-DVD drive+play and charge kit+wireless adapter = approx £500 and still isnt as good as a PS3 and has a smaller hard drive)
imho at the moment the biggest rip of console is the Wii, £180 for a gamecube with a motion sensor controllor, score.
Comment by jsar — Mar 21, 2007 @ 9:53 am
@Ben ‘We get charged a lot more but that’s politics, economy and exchange, not Sony.’
No - I think you’ll find it is Sony. I appreciate they’re selling at a loss but that’s the videogame industry - make a loss now and make it back off software liscencing.
So yes, they are making a loss when selling UK PS3’s, but they’re not making nearly as much of a loss as they do when they sell a US or japanese PS3s, hence compared to people in other markets we are getting a very raw deal
@Jsar
Nice cost comparison, at the end of the day though you can get a core 360 for £150 or a Wii at £179, i’ll stay away from your balanced appraisal of each needless to say in my opinion you couldn’t see value for money if it smacked you in the chops - backwards compatibility not a huge issue but it doesn’t make it any easier to pay more than other territories when the console contains less components
Comment by Basil Brush — Mar 21, 2007 @ 10:52 am
Home and Little big Planet made me also pre-order PS3. Funny how things can change so fast.
Comment by Polyphony_NL — Mar 22, 2007 @ 3:08 am
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