Sustained Imagery

At the end of last week, rumours began circulating around the internet that EA had cancelled the Need for Speed racing series. After lacklustre sales and reviews (65 on Metacritic) of the most recent game, Undercover, EA had apparently finally realised that particularly in the current economic situation, the public aren’t willing to spend £40 on a game that has only a small list of enhancements over its precursor every year, and due to the short development time allocated to the annual refreshes, reviewers were ripping into uninspiring and buggy games.

EA have since denied these rumours, and claim that the series will continue, but the rumour could very easily have been an official press release. Undercover has been slated across the board, and although it is seen as a step up from last year’s horrendous ProStreet, it just shows a lack of real progression in the series, a problem that is currently affecting all of EA’s annually updated properties, such as the Sports games. I’m not saying that these games should move to a Burnout-inspired business model – supporting a game long after release, and putting in a decent-length development period. But clearly something does need to be done, as these solid sales bases are what have supported the company’s recent attempts with new intellectual property, such as Dead Space and Mirrors Edge.

My solution lies in a platform that already exists, and a concept that has already been tried. A couple of years back, Tomb Raider: Anniversary was released on the Xbox Live Marketplace as DLC for those who owned the Tomb Raider: Legend disk. The download contained the enhancements made to the Legend engine for the sequel, as well as the actual game content. Although obviously this would not be possible for sequels where the engine has been significantly reworked, but for franchises such as FIFA or NBA where quite minor tweaks make up the yearly releases, a downloadable version would make sense, and if appropriately priced (say £20) it might even increase sales. I’m not saying that the downloads would replace the disk outright, but right now, EAs annual updates simply are not selling as well as they used to at retail, as the public does not see the value in buying a barely enhanced game for full price every year. But will EA take the risk, in order to reap the rewards later?

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.

Store Detectives: 28/11/08

Hello again, and it's quite a big store update this week, so let's get going:

There's both a demo and full release for Capcom's Age of Booty. My advice is most definitely to get the demo first, because as much as the game intrigues me from what I've played, you'd need to really like it to justify the £8 price tag. But, if you feel like a gamble, there are much worse games than this on the Store. AREN'T THERE GTI CLUB? Yes, yes there are. I was willing to give the Club the benefit of the doubt at Eurogamer seeing as it was quite fun, but from reviews and the demo now available on the store, I would like to admit I was wrong (hear that women?), and in fact, the game is quite shit. There's also a Dead Space demo, which I downloaded, and which also only confirmed that I quite want this game.

Syndicate Wars is a difficult game to talk about. Before you ask, I haven't downloaded it and here's why: it's not the sort of game that ages well. Admittedly the same could be said on less of a scale for Crash Bandicoot, but Syndicate Wars, although being pretty amazing in scope and gameplay for its time (and the series still has a great plot), it doesn't hold up at all nowadays. Which is sad, because it was an awesome game. Good point: great quotes. Bad point: the story doesn't make sense because the original wasn't available for PlayStation and so isn't on the Store. Get it if you want, but my recommendation is to avoid.

To add-ons then! The LBP Chimera costume is awesome (although why its 60p more than the MotorStorm one, I don't understand) and if wandering around with a giant turkey on your head is your thing then go ahead and grab this weeks freebie too. No other content for any of the games we have this week, my copy of FarCry is only borrowed, but for the amount of stuff in the expansion, it seems well worth it. And did anyone genuinely buy G1 Jockey 4? Why is there even a 4?

Oh, guess what? This week's Tomb Raider video is still shit. And the fact it is labeled "Enemies #1" scares me into thinking there'll be more next week. I'm pretty sure everyone that wants the game now has it, although with the amount of 360+Underworld advertising going around, I don't even know if people are aware its out on PS3. The two Resistance videos (one the regular TV spot, and one a new action trailer) really sum up the atmosphere of the new game in comparison to the old. Basically, less British. As much as I loved the original, the sequel seems a bit generic in amongst all the new and interesting games this month, maybe I'll pick it up later on. The Naruto trailer interests me even less - it looks just like all the other anime-based games around.

Oh Shoot, why must you ruin it so quickly? After a fantastic film last week, this weeks (by a Frenchman - double gah) is pretty rubbishy. Here's hoping for next week eh? Oh and the HVB theme is ugly as sin. Don't Sony realize people only use nice-looking themes?

PSP-wise there's the marvelous LocoRoco 2, continuing Sony's promised streak of Store-released new games, and Super Stardust Portable also appeared earlier this week.

Okay...so this week my recommendations are: the two LBP costumes of you have that game (if not, why not?), the FarCry content if you've got that, the Dead Space and Age of Booty demos, Resistance action trailer, and if you've got a PSP, both of the new full game releases.

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.

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.

Store Detectives: 07/11/08

Hello and welcome all to a new feature here at ThinkWithPortals, and one in which we offer a dedicated service to all you loyal PlayStation Store addicts out there. With Store Detectives, which will likely be up sometime each Friday, we shall take a look at the week’s Store update, and offer our (potentially helpful) thoughts on the latest selection of downloadable goodies.

(I’d just like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that we are talking about the European Store update here, not the US. /confusion.)

Firstly: what I won’t be talking about. Sorry Spin Jam, I don’t know you. Sorry Bayonetta trailer, but I watched one of you online and I cried of shittiness. Sorry Rock Band and Guitar Hero DLC, I don’t have either of your overpriced instruments. And sorry SoulCalibur DLC also, when you went all product placement you lost any respect I many previously have had for you.
Moving on to what I have grabbed today, and you know what, it says something about how good the Euro store updates have got over the past while that there’s actually more content that all I just pissed all over up above.

- Theme Park (PSone Classic) is a must-get for me, I loved the game first time around, and if it can maintain the charm like Theme Hospital (already on the store) has, it’s another winner from the days of PlayStation long gone.
- Thank God for the “skip this bit” feature on Alone on the Dark: Inferno. Because in the demo just released (that’s right, the demo, where you show the bestest bit of the whole game) there is one bit which is boring and another bit which the clunky controls deem impossible. One of those demos that make you less likely to buy the full game. Oh and having to press the right analog stick to blink? BAD.
- There's also Metal Gear Solid 4 demo. For once I agree with the general consensus on the internet: wtf. Little bit late maybe? Well not really. After doing its sales on release, Konami want it to do just as well this Xmas, so that explains that. The actual demo? Well, it's good. I can't really elaborate that much because I died a lot - I've never played a MGS game (and a way into the fourth in the series isn't a sensible place to start), and I suck at stealth. But you'll be glad to know you can play it reasonably well as an action game. Just until you have to sneak somewhere. Either way, everyone should at least play this game once to experience it for themselves.
- LittleBigPlanet DLC: yes, I bought it all. Even the £4 t-shirt. But I do have something to say: “Media Molecule, I bought it this week because I really wanted that shirt, but put anything else up (however rare) for that much, and you’ll be unlikely to see a buy from me”. Seriously, it’s mad - £4 for a t-shirt when a full outfit is 99p (MotorStorm) or free (Spaceman). All of the items look exquisite in-game by the way.
- I did get the Enlistment Pack for EndWar, even though I don’t have the game yet, because based on my hands-on at Eurogamer (which you can read shortly) it is a definite buy for me, and when the DLC is free for a week only, it’s nice to have to grab from my Download List when I do get hold of the game. There’s a nice trailer up too.
- The “Launching the PSP-3000” video is not really all that particular to the 3000’s features and is in fact just like any of the other PSP promo vids on the Store already.
- If I wasn’t hyped enough for this game already, the launch trailer for Bioshock would’ve surely pushed me over the edge. Note: it may be £40 at retail, but Play.com and Game.co.uk both have it for £30.
- Tomb Raider Underworld making-of videos. It’s like they want to make the game less enticing. So tedious. Again, Eurogamer hands-on soon.
- One thing I find so very odd about the game trailers that go up on the Store is their timing. Two Need for Speed trailers went up today, yet they are weeks old, and there are in-face at least 4 more recent ones to pick from around the internet.
- Pure trailer? Just looks generic. I recently got a chance to spend some time with the final game and this trailer really doesn’t do it justice. Unlike MotorStorm’s mayhem racing, Pure is a lot more about tricks and, therefore, has more of an emphasis on getting airborne. It’s just a very different experience, and not really all that comparable beyond them both being dusty racing games.
- Aaand finally, I come to you, Mr “I’m a paid Bioshock theme”. The EU store has yet to get a paid themes section like the US one, and so this was a bit of a surprise, particularly considering the Bioshock theme already on the store for free, and not looking to shabby. I would’ve downloaded you Mr Theme, but there’s no preview. Failure. Not gonna spend money on a theme when so many that get uploaded nowadays are quite terrible.

So this week, you need to spend a grand total of £5.58 - and yes that is just the LBP content. But free-wise, if you haven't played MGS4, grab the demo, and if you've got EndWar grab that free DLC cos you can't argue with free.