Signed, Sealed And Dated

So it falls upon me to divulge a bunch of new dates for multiple games, packs, and so on. Thankfully this was a great week for finding out some high profile release dates, as well as some that people have been itching to get their hands on. But we might as well as start off with the release we've got the most deets on; Tomb Raider: Underworld for the PS2.

Europe

UK, Italy, BeNeLux - 23rd January
Scandinavia - 26th January
France, Germany, Spain - 30th January

US

Everywhere - Early March (we'll update you guys when we know more.)

But that's not where all this Tomb Raidery goodness stops, oh no, we've got something more. You know the two new chapters that's coming up for the Xbox 360 as DLC, Beneath the Ashes and Lara's Shadow? Well, here's a sneak preview of what they're working on, deduce from it what you will!


The release date for the first chapter, Beneath the Ashes is February 10th, and alongside it comes six new outfits and 125 points worth of achievements. The next chapter, Lara's Shadow, will come a month later on March 10th. Warning: both will bring new awesome places to raid, (possibly tombs.)

Now as you may have known, other dates have cropped up over the Internet, but here's the ones that we'll be keeping our eye on (coz they're for Europe!).

Flower (PSN) - February 12th 2009
[Edit (Octopus)] Nobi Nobi Boy - February 19th 2009
Killzone 2 (PS3) - February 27th 2009
Red Alert (PS3) - March 2009
Fat Princess (PSN) - March 2009
I Am Alive (PS3) - April 2009

Jeez. I'm going to love the next two months.

-AW

Patience

Well, it seems that the LittleBigPlanet downloadable content that was supposed to be starting again tomorrow has been delayed. Whilst the new content wont now appear until next week, we have been told what to expect in the coming weeks.

On Monday 26th, there'll be free male and female Chinese New Year costumes available (picture above) on the Store. These costumes will only be available for 10 days so grab them whilst you can. In next week's Thursday update, there'll be a free Groundhog Day costume (which will be around for a week) and two God of War-themed downloads - a pack containing a bunch of stickers and the Minotaur and Medusa costumes, and seperately the Kratos costume that was previously available with pre-orders.

The following week (the 5th of February) a special Valentine's Day will go up (for 2 weeks) and will be followed the week after (the 12th) by the Ape Escape and Toro the Cat costumes that were previously only available in Japan. On the 19th, a WipEout-styled pack of costumes and stickers will be up for grabs. Oh and judging by the tease on the PlayStation Blog last week, our hunch may have been right, and some Killzone content will be around at the end of February too.

Can you wait a week?

(Source: EU Forums - more pictures there, via TheSixthAxis)

Unexclusive: LBP Killzone 2 Pack

Okay so we have no inside information on this one, but seriously, we've already seen the actual costumes way back - surely they would've been released already if they weren't being held back for either a costume pack, level pack or both to coincide with the game's release this February.

Please be true!

WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2009 Ft. ECW DLC

As the main wrestling "fan" around here, I do feel somewhat obliged to give some proper coverage...

• Evan Bourne - playable Superstar (Injured part-time partner of Kofi Kingston)
• Ted DiBiase Jr. - playable Superstar
• Charlie Haas - playable Superstar (Used to be part of the World's Greatest Tag Team with Shelton Benjamin)
• Chris Jericho - alternate attire

And on PlayStation Network, the pack will also include these exclusives:

• Masked Kane - playable Superstar
• Mario - Christmas-themed attire
• Edge - alternate attire
• MVP - alternate attire

TWP Awards 08: Best Post-Launch Support

A big leap has occured this year in terms of extending the fun to be had with a particular game, largely through patches and downloadable content. The nominations for this award have all had a lot of content added this year, and one stands out for the sheer quantity and quality of the additions.

Winner: Burnout Paradise (PS3/PSN)

Burnout Paradise was released in January this year, and since its launch, Criterion Games (based here in the beautiful UK) has added a previously-unheard-of amount of content. And any EA-published game that does not charge for new cars or wait for the next years release to add features such as motorbikes, dynamic weather or a 24-hour clock should be approved of. Whilst this year has featured some excellent DLC, next year plans to be even better, with a series of new car packs, an offline multiplayer party mode and a whole new island coming to the game. And after being given so much for free so far, I don't even mind paying now.

Runner Up: LittleBigPlanet (PS3)

LittleBigPlanet has added a new costume or a few every week now since the game was released, and has also recently launched the Metal Gear Solid pack featuring costumes, levels and creating tools. Unfortunately the sparcity of new content that arent costumes, and the disappearance of the supposedly-coming co-op creation patch and Import Image tool have led to LBP only recieving runner-up here. Maybe next year.

Runner Up: Warhawk (PS3/PSN)

Warhawk has been another game frequently updated with new content. Although this year saw the development team release less patches, enhancements and content than previously seen (presumably as more resources move to whatever their next project is), there was a substantial and surprise pack released around E3.

Runner Up: Pain (PSN)

PSN downloadable Pain is only a runner up here not due to the quality of added content, but because it came so late. The main game was released way back in 2007, but more content for the game only arrived this year. The two new levels are great fun though, and rumours suggest there is much more to come, with two new packs for early next year.

Runner Up: PlayStation Home (PSN)

I really wanted Home's open beta launch to come with a bang, but unfortunately all we saw was a whimper. The game spaces for Warhawk, Socom, Uncharted and Far Cry 2 all have yet to appear, and the Red Bull space has been delayed until next year. The teams in London and elsewhere really need to get new stuff in there to keep the comunity occupied before the Home Square becomes a ghost town. And for God's sake get the EU Home up to scratch with elsewhere!

Store Detectives: 12/12/08

Well, here's a nice surprise! A new PSN game, that is pretty sweet, has trophies, and Aquatic had already bought for me to take. In all honesty though, this week's new game "Astro Tripper" is really good, and absolutely worth it for the low-low asking price of £3.19 (yes, that's right, cheaper than a PSone game).

Speaking of PSone games, Jet Rider 2 is good, but not really enough of an improvement on the original to warrant buying if you bought 1 the other week. If you don't have either, I'd still go for one, if you're gonna buy a retro game, it may as well be the most retro one of the two. Puzzle Quest is apparently good, but unfortunately I have no desire whatsoever to buy it. Generic to the max?

So, to DLC. The Street Fighter costumes available now for LBP are so great, and guaranteed to be cuter than their PAIN equivalents whenever they come out. And even if you know nothing about Street Fighter (like me), the guy with lots of facial hair would sure be a good start for a Mr T sackboy. I'm liking the teasy Christmas costume too (for those out of the loop, half of the Santa costume is out now, with the other half coming next week). The Tom Clancy pack, I am told by those with the game, is hideously overpriced for what's included, which amounts to very little actual playable content, and would be much more attractive at a £3.49 price point. For those without the game (me included) it is now down to £25 at a lot of sites.

Out of the trailers, the Crash Commando one is hilarious, the Prince of Persia (theatrical) one is epic, and the Soldner-X one is meh. Seriously, I don't know what people like about this game, it looks so generic! This week's Shoot film "Prison Food" is also pretty good, starring two criminals who retreat into their imaginations for Sunday dinners. There's no "Hands"-style twist, but it's good nonetheless. Although the GTi Club wallpaper is nice if you have nothing better to put there, the EndWar ones are quite nice, but if you choose to keep the plain XMB you'll see it get progressively paler to reach its snowy white later this month.

This week I recommend Astro Tripper and the free LBP DLC for download, as well as the EndWar wallpapers. If you're a Street Fighter fan longing for SSF2THDR, maybe the costume pack will tide you over to more inevitable disappointment next week.

Store Detectives: 05/12/08

Well well, it's gonna be a short post this week. Not because there's a small update, but because so much of it is shit.

To begin with however, there is one good thing here: Sony are keeping up with the whole releasing classic PSone games on the store. This week, both are quite good (Red Alert Retaliation and Jet Rider), and neither cost £6 (in fact, it seems £3.99 is the new price point). I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank EA for their support of the Store and in particular the PSone Classics thus far.

Unfortunately, that's about all the good content this week. Even trophies couldn't make me buy GTi Club+ (read Aquatic's hands-on here), and Brain Challenge looks even worse. Unless of course you go for that sort of thing. In which case, the incredibly boring trophy list should stop you in your tracks. The Lego Batman demo is marginally more exciting, in the same way being shot in the crotch and having your eyes gouged out with a spoon made of pain would be more interesting than being shot alone. It's just like all the other Lego games, just more stale.

Whilst the LittleBigPlanet is gorgeous as ever (love the Japanese) and free, from friends with the other games with DLC this week, it all seems very little for extortionately high prices, something which is apparently most relevant to the Force Unleashed bits and bobs.

Whilst the Skate 2 trailers are quite nice, they don't really excite me that much (re-release Pro Skater 4 for PSone please), but this weeks Shoot short film is fantastic. "Hands" is very clever, and I actively encourage you to go watch it yourselves. Oh and Sony, sticking the Resistance 2 trailers on the release list doesn't make them new - they came out the other week. The Undercover wallpaper is quite nice, as are a couple of the EndWar ones, but the rest of the 'papers and themes are fugly as ever.

So, you know what, this week you don't need to spend anything at all! Unless you want the PSone games, which are pretty nice, but don't you have enough games to be playing now anyway? It's nearly Christmas.

Fallout 3 DLC and G.E.C.K

Recently, I have been raving about L4D mostly, so now for what else I have been playing.

Fallout 3, recently described to me as having the weirdest and most disturbing opening of any game played, is amazing. Yes it has been out for a while, but thankfully, Bethesda have announced the release of Downloadable content.

And more importantly, the G.E.C.K (or software kit) which allows the modders to finally appear from their holes and give us amazing custom content just like Oblivion before.

The G.E.C.K is due December.

The DLC will come in three batches as of going to print, in January, February and March. These will provide new locations and a continuation of the main quest.

Confirmed locations are: The Pitt (based in Pittsburgh) Anchorage and Alaska

These should be good.

More on Fallout 3 as it arrives and possibly a short story on it.

Pan.

Store Detectives: 21/11/08

Hello again internets, Octopus back with this week's Store Detectives. And you know what, I wish they'd stop just chucking us DLC all the time, kinda defies the objective of the posts when we can't actually judge the content. Which is our way of saying "we're ignoring the music game content now".

First and foremost, however, I must address what I hope and pray is not the start of a worrying new trend. EA: we will not buy old PSone games for more than a full PSN game like Eden or PAIN. Simply isn't happening mate. Drop it to the usual £3.50 though, and the game is actually pretty decent should you wish to grab it.

There is one other point of contention for me in this weeks list, and it's...oh yeah, EA again. They do it every year with their Need for Speed games: have all the unlockables that you should get for progressing through the game, available for instant purchase on the Store at release. Since I because less of an occasional gamer and more of a completist, this has bugged me more, as you see people online with content waaay out of their achievement level. Grrr!

This week's LittleBigPlanet (which is purely cosmetic) is fantastic as ever. The Sack-In-The-Box costume was created by the winner of the US costume design contest (how apt) and even features a dangly power cable! The LocoRoco costumes are just as awesome - and cheap, seeing as it was the Wanderer's turn to buy costumes this week - with heads, antennae that match your cloth colour and pattern, and awesome little LocoRoco toys that attach to your wrists for some random reason.

I am assured that the Challenge Rooms are a worthy addition to the world of Bioshock for those of you that have worked your way through everything the disk has to offer (you've done Survivor mode? Seriously? I don't believe you), and from those I've spoken to, I get the feeling that more of these arcadey challenge add-ons would be well received.

In other stuffs, there's the Linger in Shadows soundtrack up for free (all three tracks of it), and it really is awesome. There's trailers for the Bioshock and recent PAIN DLC, as well as MotorStorm behind the scenes vids that are noticeably more exciting that the never-ending Tomb Raider ones (those TR themes are ugly, by the way). The Naruto (bad caps lock) and EndWar videos are also worth a peek in general and particularly if you want either game.
But there is of course one more addition to the EU Store this week: Shoot! (their exclamation mark, not mine). The first of the short films is now available, "Bitter", made by Brits Joel Campbell and Jamie Wilson, and is all about the meeting between a father and his daughter's new man, with an amusing twist. It's well worth a watch, especially considering its free, and shows that along with the summer's "Movement" show, SCEE is dedicated to exclusive content for Europe. There's also a Making-of video, an interview with the creators and a Pitch video to grab.

That's it for this week, and under my calculations...*cogs turning*...you should be spending £8.68 this time round, on the LBP and Bioshock content, and make sure you get the Shoot film too.

Life in Paradise

Yesterday, I reviewed Burnout Paradise for the PS3 and 360. But the content on the game disk is nothing compared to how the game stands now, 10 months after release. Criterion Games has been the forerunner for post-release support up to this point, and it doesn't appear that this will change anytime soon.

In August, the 'Cagney' update was released, which aimed to enhance the online component of the game. To the online races, it added online versions of the Stunt Run, Road Rage and Marked Man events, as well as adding more Freeburn Challenges. Other additions included new cars, new paint jobs and custom soundtracks for the PS3. Adding such a large amount of new content so long after a games release was unheard of up til this point - but Criterion wasn't done yet.


In mid-September, they added the 'Bikes' pack. For the first time ever in a Burnout game, bikes were available to play with, and although the crashes aren't quite as vicious, to offer such a game changing update in a game (particularly an EA game) for free is a first. At the same time, more big changes were made - the addition of a day and night cycle, as well as a changing weather system. At for the bikes, 70 new Freeburn challenges were available (half of these timed) amongst various other fixes and enhancements. A week later, a trophy patch was released, and the game became the first full made-for-disk retail release to become available on the PlayStation Store.

Having had the game since I got my PS3 in May it was at this time, as I was becoming a trophy whore, that I decided to restart Burnout Paradise and play it through to the end. And it became the first racing game I've ever completed, mostly because of the sheer fun - even when some of the races were becoming stupidly hard. At that time, all that was known for the future of Paradise was that at some point there would be a whole new island released that added more freedom than ever to the game to drive wherever you wanted. But then, in October, Criterion announced they weren't done just yet.


Over four consecutive weeks, Criterion will announce more new packs (excluding the Island) to be released in Spring 2009 - well over a year after the original release of the game. The first of these is the 'Party' pack, which adds a pass-the-pad multiplayer mode with plenty of challenges to complete, as well as a new party-themed UI and brighter in-game colours for the mode. The next two packs are 'Legendary Cars' and 'Toy Cars'. The best addition coming up in these? The DeLorean-alike Jansen 88 Special that can fold up its wheels and hover, and pressing boost leaves fiery strips behind you. Who knows what the next packs will be?


For more on the packs, head over to CriterionGames.com, but for now I think it's appropriate to re-review Burnout Paradise with all it's new content (downloadable now as updates, or on a new disk called the Ultimate Box in Spring 09), and I think it deserves a 95%.

Store Detectives: 15/11/08

Apolgies for the delay to this weeks Store Detectives, unfortunately it was out of our hands. Anyway, this week was a bumber update, but with no new games or demos, it is very much an "if you have this game, get the DLC" week.

Neither of us have Guitar Hero, Rock Band, SoulCalibur or Star Wars, so all that DLC is wasted on us. I grabbed the PAIN bits, Aquatic avoided the Dead Space stuff, our friend with Everybody's Golf reports that the character pack is pretty overblown price-wise, and another with Civilisation says the map packs are very cheap for a lot of content. The new PAIN expansion pack adds a whole new level, and although its not as interesting as the Abusement Pack at first glance, spend some time messing around with all the interactive elements, as well as the three launcher positions, and you'll find there's a lot of depth there. Oh and Hasslehoff has some fantastic lines. The Wanderer's reasoning for not getting the Dead Space costumes and weapons is that he doesn't want to cheapen the game by using an easier/tougher suit. Everybody's Golf wise, the costumes are kind of meh, and on the CivRev front, the continual flow of DLC is apparently keeping the game surprisingly fresh. LBP costumes this week include the free competition winner one, and four quite cheap anmal costumes available either together in a pack or separately (none of them are as good as last weeks).

Video-wise there's a lot going on this week: trailers and the first of the Shoot content. Shoot is a series of short films (made in HD) created by some upcoming directors from across Europe, and backed up by leading filmmakers such as Jerry Bruckheimer. This week there's a trailer for the whole series, as well as very interesting trailers for each film, that talk a bit about the premise, the style and the people involved. Elsewhere, the Bioshock 2 trailer looks even better on TV than the internets, the SWS trailer isn't that exciting, SoulCalibur is still boring, Tomb Raider behind-the-scenes are still tedious, and the EndWar and MotorStorm vids are both pretty sweet if you're on the fence about getting either game.

There's also some pretty awesome FarCry 2 wallpapers, and a kind of plasticy-looking GT5 theme. My reccomendations this week are to grab whatever free DLC is applicable and for paid bits get the CivRev, PAIN and LBP stuff if you have the games, everythign else is a bit rubbishy. Here's hoping for some demos or games next week.