Nice new vid here from GameSpot, getting down to the granular details of LBP, talking about creative trends, community, telling stories and a load more besides. Looks like LBP mania is hitting full tilt now…

IGN have a total of 20,000 keys (yep, that’s 20k!) to dish out to UK/EU gamers. They’ll be making them available in batches over the coming days. Find out more here

Let’s face it, there are so many FPS’s around it’s going to take a lot to convince us to buy another one, especially with Resistance 2 and the new Call Of Duty waiting in the wings. But Ubisoft’s African adventure looks like being an absolute cracker. Chris Burke gets hands-on…

Landing at the airport of some war-torn African backwater, the game begins with a cinematic jeep ride through beautifully rendered African bush into a township policed by dodgy militia. You’re a mercenary – with the choice of playing as one of a number of characters - there to kill an arms dealer. But he’s managed to turn the tables, infect you with malaria and disappear leaving you alone, sick and in a world of hurt. From what we’ve seen, what follows promises to be a fast-moving FPS of breathtaking detail and believability.

It’s a lot less linear than many FPS’s, with the ‘sandbox’ qualities we’ve come to associate more with third-person games like GTA IV. A large area of Africa – towns, lakes, brushwood, savannah - is your playground, and this is evident from only the first hour of play. It’s filled with dangerous enemies, different factions in a bloody conflict, plus environmental hazards and dynamic weather.

The game is mission-based, jobs are undertaken for the various sides in the war, plus freelancers and agents provocateur. You get paid in diamonds, as currency is worthless in these parts. Handy cases of gems have been carelessly left around the place for you to collect too, and as a bonus you get given a tracker to find them. You’ll also have a mobile phone which you will use to build up employers and friends (another GTA IV-style touch) or you can just go to bars where ex-pats hang out and pick up work that way.To help get you around, you can drive old cars, jeeps and boats. Even if you wreck them, you have a handy ability to pop the bonnet and fix them. Your actions throughout have consequence, and how you play is entirely up to you. If you carry out a particularly brutal and bloody attack, it will affect that side’s morale, and you can play factions off against each other.

You can play tactically, using your GPS and a monocular to scope out enemy camps and plan your attacks, or just wade in guns blazing. We only had time to scratch the surface of its Heart Of Darkness (or Apocalypse Now)-style story, but it’s clear Far Cry 2 has depth and gritty realism seeping from every malarial pore.

Exciting news everyone…

Tony Buckley and the WipEout team at Studio Liverpool have deliberated long and hard over the various screenshots, and have decided on the winners. Over to Tony…

“There were some excellent screen shots to choose from and it has been a very, very difficult job narrowing it down to just five, but we have chosen five and here they are…

The first one in the list is the overall winner…

Great feeling of motion, the explosion in an abstract manner that mirrors the explosion with the lines of the track resulting in dynamic symmetry.

Shows good isolation of abstract shapes and composition, interesting use of the photo tool, striking colours.

Excellent composition, nice character shot of the ship and missile effect, great sense of speed with the motion blur effect, stunning background.



A dynamic environment shot emphasising the snaking shape of the track, good inclusion of mag effect and ship trail, the 3 elements of the shot work well, ship, environment and background tied together with nice colour scheme.

A simple beautifully framed shot, that draws the eyes into the elegant lines of the Piranha.”

So there we go. Winners, please email in your postal addresses. Exogen - you’d better tell us your t-shirt size as well…

Read more…

One of our readers got in touch pointing us to his blog, The Clockwork Manual, and a piece he’s written on LittleBigPlanet. We of course love LBP here at Three Speech and are counting the days until its release, so all comments/opinions/views on it are more than welcome. Here’s the first few paragraphs of the piece and if you want to read more click through to the rest of his article. Also, if any other readers are running blogs that you think we may be interested in get in touch here. So, on with the program…

LittleBigPlanet: It Will Not Be Stopped

Spore was interesting to me. Not because of the revolutionary methods of animation or the insane scope of what Will Wright was trying to achieve, but because it was one of the first games ever to give simple game design controls to the masses, stand back, and say “Show me.”

Admittedly it’s a bit of a stretch calling those tools ‘game design tools’ but it’s a fair observation to make; after all is making character, vehicle and environmental models not an essential part of any game’s development? Within a short time of the mere Creature Creator going up for download the Sporepedia (the EA created encyclopedia for housing Spore’s creations) was flooded with user-generated content - more than any other game in history - with many creatures that were, for want of a better word, brilliant. On that note, let’s move on to Little Big Planet.

Read whole article here.

Three Speech’s Chris Burke has been on the training ground with both Pro Evolution Soccer and FIFA, back once again to battle for PS3 footie supremacy, and we can report that this year it’s probably the most closely contested match yet.

Licensing is a big point of difference again. In PES (above) 2009, only Man U and Liverpool will be fully licensed, with everyone else it’s looking like Von Persil in defence for The Potteries - although it does have the Champions League. FIFA 09, of course, will be fully licensed and features a huge range of stadiums from the San Siro down to grotty lower division grounds, plus a huge range of fully spec’d up teams. On the plus side for PES, everything should be editable from player likenesses to kits, logos and even stadiums.

Both games have added a career mode in which you control only one player and attempt to take him to the top as a pro footballer. In both PES’s ‘Become A Legend’ mode and FIFA’s ‘Be A Pro’ mode, your customised player develops through matches, with high match ratings resulting in offers from bigger clubs and a rise up through the rankings. Controls in PES are lob, shoot, pass, hoof; in defence it’s foot-in, sliding tackle or pressure. But it’s not an easy game to play. Timing, direction and placement of player are tricky to master, but hardcore gamers will find it a more satisfying experience.

Read more…

Have to say, we are happy to read this one, as we have all been thinking the exact same. Sackboy it seems, is slowly turning into a PlayStation icon. As Sony’s Jonathan Fargher was recently quoted as saying, “It’s fair to say that Nintendo has got Super Mario and Sega had Sonic. It’s about time Sony got their own iconic mascot - Sackboy will be that character”.

It’s not our place to say why we think Sackboy is amazing but the fact that this character, pre-release, has created such a large following is proof enough that Sackboy is here to stay. (Excuse the above image being a re-post but it’s our favourite right now). Gotta love the little fella.

SingStar are launching a series of themed SingStar SongPacks and first up is the music of Queen. Now here at Three Speech we have to admit a sneaky liking for Freddie & co. From the hip-hop bassline of ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ to the ace ‘One Vision’, we can see this one being a whole lot of fun. SongPacks will feature five hit tracks to download at a cost of £4.49 each and appear in the store every two weeks. The Queens SongPacks will be released on October 2.

Queen SongPacks are as follows:

Ultimate Queen 1:
Bohemian Rhapsody
One Vision
Crazy Little Thing Called Love
Killer Queen
Bicycle Race

Ultimate Queen 2:
We Will Rock You
Another One Bites The Dust
Who Wants To Live Forever
I Want It All
We Are The Champions