No doubt you’re already aware of (and excited about) the latest firmware updates for PS3 and PSP. We’ve just had some information on both updates in from SCEE, so please click through to find out more and let us know what you think about all the new functionality.

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Keri Allan takes us through the new technologies being put to use in Force Unleashed…

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Steve Boxer is back to cover another of the latest, tastiest offerings on the PSN. This is one which has been knocking about for a little while, but we thought it was worth revisiting the game on the strength of its innovative weirdness…

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Here we go people…

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Chris Burke gets hands on and communicates with the world…

ARABIAN NIGHTS IN: PRINCE OF PERSIA HANDS-ON

If you played the Sands Of Time series back on the PS2 you’ll know what to expect. Except you won’t. On the one hand the game elements are familiar – a 3D platformer involving acrobatic combat and death-defying leaps – but the look of the game has been completely reworked, and essentially the story ignores everything that went before it. The way developers Ubisoft explained it to ThreeSpeech is that this new chapter is like one of the 1001 Arabian Nights stories (to which Prince of Persia owes its themes); each story is a different take on the same popular myths and tales.

So, where your girly companion in Sands Of Time was a princess called Farah, in this one, that’s the name of your donkey. And it’s in the search for your mislaid and treasure-laden ass where the story begins. The first major thing you’ll notice is the graphics. Cell-shaded yet fully three-dimensional, it gives the game a striking and unique look. The backdrops are stunning – deep ravines, Persian palaces etc – and provide a suitable playground for your character’s high-flying antics.

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Enjoy.

Michael De Plater is the Creative Director of the upcoming Tom Clancy’s EndWar game. Three Speech writer Keri Allan caught up with him on a recent trip to the UK to discuss the introduction of speech recognition technology into the console strategy genre arena, and how this technology could revolutionise how we play games…

TS: So how did the idea of the voice recognition in the game come about?

MDP: Basically no-one has successfully done strategy on a console before: it’s like the last big genre that hasn’t moved from PC to console. So we knew we had to do something different on the interface, and also we wanted to make the experience different for the player. In essence we wanted to make you, as the gamer, the General.

Generally there’s been a big trend in games towards more natural inputs, whether it’s motion sensors, steering wheels with driving games and instruments with music games – like the guitar in Guitar Hero. We’re trying to let you play the role of military commander, so if you look at what an actual military commander does, its speech!

So we began to look into it, and started by looking at a game called SOCOM that came out about five years ago. It was a tactical shooter that had a level of voice command that worked pretty well.

We assumed that the technology has got more powerful over the last five years, as had the new consoles, so we decided to take voice control to the next level, solving the UI (user interface) issues whilst making strategy as a genre, work on consoles.

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A bumper crop of cool games are being released for the PS3 in the next month or so, and Three Speech has been busy checking them out for you. Here are just a few to wet your whistle.

RESISTANCE 2
The sequel to the PS3’s launch FPS sees you fighting the Chimera in the US of A. It’s looking mighty impressive, too. Where the first game had you engaged in street fights in the narrow streets of Blighty, the sheer size of America’s mid-west landscape means the battlegrounds are massive. There are also more enemies on screen, and a greater variety, including awesome bosses. You’ll also be able to play a parallel story cooperatively with two players locally or up to eight online. It’s out 28 November.

BIOSHOCK
It’s been a long time coming, but it’s looking like it was worth the wait. A truly original and immersive FPS that blew Xbox gamers’ socks off, now PS3 fans can look forward to the best version yet. The underwater city of Rapture has never looked so beautiful - you’ll spend hours just wandering around looking at the water effects. As well as ramping up the visual look for the PS3, makers 2K also promise a whole heap of exclusive PS3 content. Out 17 October.

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Steve Boxer gets his mitts on The Last Guy for Three Speech…

The Last Guy: Hands On

While excitement builds as a slew of massive releases is readied for the Christmas market, there doesn’t seem to be much hype around for the next crop of games due to be uploaded to the PlayStation Network. So it’s a good job we’re here to let you know what they’re like. The latest PSN game we’ve been playing is The Last Guy, created at Sony’s Japan Studio. It turns out to be deceptively simple, agreeably quirky and thoroughly diverting: just like PSN games should be.

In The Last Guy, it’s up to you to save the world – a post-apocalyptic world, that is, in which giant zombies and monstrous insects roam the cities and surviving humans cower inside their houses and civic buildings (which seem to have survived whatever cataclysmic event took place completely unscathed). There are 14 main levels (plus some bonus ones), each set in part of a real city (among which are London, San Francisco and Washington DC), viewed from directly above as if from a satellite.

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Jonathan Porter, whose blog The Clockwork Manual, we linked to last week re: LBP, got in touch with his thoughts on Mirror’s Edge. Nice work.

Mirror’s Edge Preview: I don’t believe we’ve been introduced…

Not many games manage to stand out from the crowd when mentioned in passing, but Mirror’s Edge manages this with ease. First person parkour game was all the information needed to get gamers everywhere excited, but it’s hardly a bad thing that everything shown since has wowed audiences on near every level.

Picture a familiar level of Uncharted, Ratchet and Clank, or Jak and Daxter and try and imagine running through it from an entirely first person perspective. Suddenly a huge leap from one platform to the next becomes a much more physical experience; rather than being removed from the action by a good five or six feet of physical space (between the protagonist and camera) you’d see every detail through their eyes; see the fear as they make a jump by mere inches, or fail, plummeting down into the depths below. With that image in your mind, you’d be getting some idea of just what Mirror’s Edge is all about.

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