the PlayStation Experience

[Thruster2097]

Sony are holding their first ever public games show at Earls Court, London, England on the 29th, 30th, and 31st of this month (August). I will be there at the afternoon session on saturday 31st.

If you are planning to go, let me know so we can get a little mini-tournament arranged....


...and despite what SCEE say, I WILL be taking my digicam with me!

[Bob Todd]

My dad and I are going on the morning session on Saturday. Our tickets are numbered 29 and 30; we got in there fast!
He's not much of a gamer besides Spyro and Sheep though; I'll probably have to explain everything to him.

[stin]

how long does it take from birmingham to london? cos i`m in the ryder cup to watch the pros!

stin :-?

[infoxicated]

Couple of hours, maybe less by car - you're best off getting Virgin train from Birmingham to London Euston, hopping on the shabby Victoria line down to Victoria before getting the Circle line direct to Earls Court.

Be warned that tickets are not available on the door - you have to order them.

[Hellfire_WZ]

I'll be there. Don't know what date yet, but I'm aiming for the 29th.

[infoxicated]

Of course, by Circle line I meant District line. :oops:

Hey, I haven't lived in London since January - you tend to forget what they're all called. :)

[Lance]

.
Rob, see what happens when you hit 30? the longterm memory goes.






just kidding. :D

cheers
.

[infoxicated]

Heh!

Like I needed reminding of that one - today in a lapse of concentration I managed to wipe the entire forum contents from the database at work. Fortunately it was recovered from a backup from the night before, but I felt like a smegwit all the same! :) :oops: :o

[Lance]

.
uhoh, that means that the ultra-shortterm is going, too. that just leaves regular shortterm, and mediumterm memories. ::gleeful eevil::

so many of you are in process of joining me in la-la land. i could use the company. maybe if everybody puts the few little memories they have left together with those of everyone else, there would be enough to simulate one functioning human.

Socrates said that true wisdom consists of knowing that one is ignorant. i am getting wiser every smegging day.

;)

.

[infoxicated]

LOL :D

[Spaceboy Gajo]

you're best off getting Virgin train from Birmingham to London Euston,

Is there no stopping Richard?

Next thing you'll see is that he'll probably want to bring back the Zepplin.

By the way, how has his Cola done?

spaceboy gajo

[Lance]

.
i am really hoping that the zeppelins return. airships of any type are very cool, but zeppelins especially so

i know many people probably don't like Richard Branson, but i like his willingness to try something different or to try to make ordinary things better
.

[infoxicated]

Hey, I think Richard Branson is cool - he's as mad as a hatter, and I like to think that if I had his money I would do some mad stuff with it, rather than just being the stereotypical rich dude who turns up at F1 races and anything else that regular people cant afford to enjoy nowadays.

Hell, actually, I probably would turn up at F1 events, but only if it didn't clash with my attempts to skateboard across the great deserts of the world ;)

Oh, and I'll be going to the PlayStation experience on Saturday.. not sure which session yet, but I'll definately be there if anyone fancies meeting up :)

[Spaceboy Gajo]

Why not make your own F1 team and be one of those rogues on the circuit.

Some one like what Mark Cuban is doing in the NBA.

spaceboy gajo

[Lance]

.
Rob, you mUst take a video crew with you when you skateboard across the Gobi. i wouldn't want to miss that!
besides, you might make archaeological discoveries to exceed those of Roy Chapman Andrews!

very few rich people know what to do with money other than to continue playing the moneymaking game. Branson is one of the few exceptions; even in moneymaking he takes a different path. the late Malcolm Forbes [Fortune Magazine founder} was another one who knew how to spEnd money. motorcycle treks, hot air balloons, french chateaux, collecting late 19th century toy ships, etc. if only there were more cool rich people. if only i were one of them. sigh....
.

[Thruster2097]

Rob - I am sending you a text message with my new phone number - if youre going saturday afternoon, gimme a call and chances are I`ll meet you at the door.

And as for virgin Cola....
new advertising campaign and new mini bottles, but just seems to have gone back to the obscurity from where it came.

[Spaceboy Gajo]

I am wondering, does Virgin cola taste any good?

I think it crossed the Atlantic States side but never here in the Great White North!

spaceboy gajo

[infoxicated]

Thrusty - I'm going to the morning session on Saturday - the afternoon was all sold out.

[Bob Todd]

Rob, I was at the morning session yesterday as well. If you saw a short-haired girl wearing a goldenrod t-shirt with the Tigron logo and slogan on it, that was me!

The following is my take of the PlayStation Experience which I wrote for some other boards I visit:

Wheee! pretty much sums up the PlayStation Experience.

Earl's Court looked spectacular; the ceiling was awash with turquoise lasers and dry-ice smoke, and virtually everything was a soothing blue or grey, and there were squillions of screens showing goings-on in other parts of the hall.

Unsurprisingly, males vastly outnumbered females, and a lot of the bollockless ones looked like reluctant girlfriends that had been dragged along, or had only come to see Blazing Squad (who are rather a tasty lot, I have to admit) and So Solid Poo. The majority of them did look like genuine gamers, though, which I was pleased to see.

The first thing Chris (my dad, who at 51 was probably the oldest person there) and I headed for (I pretty much dragged him round the whole time, plus I had to tell him what everything was) was the Eye Toy area. Eye Toy is a webcam-based technology that lets a player interact with things on the screen. It uses colour recognition, such as skin tones, or coloured balls or gloves, from the real world to place objects on the screen so that they appear to interect with the person (who also appears on the screen) being filmed by the webcam. It is, to put it crudely, a highly evolved form of lightgun technology, and at the moment it is still in its infancy, but some simple games have already been developed for it (although they're not on sale to the general public). On show were three games; a window-washing game in which players held yellow sponges and had to wipe off all the soapsuds off a pane of glass on-screen (you hold the object and move it around, and your doing so instigates happenings on the screen); a fighting game in which players donned yellow boxing gloves and punched small flying creatures on-screen, and a rhythm action game in which players tapped at images of CDs in time to music. Chris and I played the window-washing game and were so good at it that the dude supervising it asked us if we had played it before!

At 11:20 I wanted to go and watch the GT Concept challenge, in which players competed to win a limited edition coloured PS2. It got pretty exciting; the GTC race was followed up with Tony Hawk's 4 and Tekken 4 challenges, which were both very entertaining to watch; there were some great moves from the Tekken players. There was a bit of a contraversial decision with the THPS4 challenge... one dude got a 200,000 score within the time limit (the challenge was to score as many points as poss in one combo), but the next dude got an even higher score, but it ended outside the time limit, and nobody was sure to whom the prize should be given. Eventually the commentator lady gave it to the dude with the bigger score, as she was a hardcore player of all the games and had been impressed by his skills. She ended the challenges after the Tekken 4 one, but told us there would be a new set of tasks at 12:10, and read off a list of the games that would comprise them. I was really hoping she would say WipEout Fusion or SSX Tricky; I'd've had a new PS2 in the bag if I'd had the chance to compete against somebody at one of those.

There were some good acts on the main stage... soon after we got there we saw a Japanese couple playing Dancing Stage - Party Edition on one of those dancing machines one sees at arcades. They were bloody good; neither of them missed a single arrow! Hours later on, two men did some great energetic dancing to some tribal music, and then there were some hip-hop dancers doing some very impressive breakdancing along to DJ Hooch ('who?' I thought). The music was so loud that all I could hear was the thud-thud-thud, but it had that really good vibration-in-the-sternum feeling that music played through a huge woofer has. A little later two blokes came and kicked footballa around and balanced them on various parts of their bodies. It was excellently choreographed, bit like all the stuff in that silly Nike ad. And Romeo and some woman from So Solid Crud came and sang, but I pretty much tuned off while they were on. After he'd finished singing, Romeo said 'who wants a free PlayStation?' and everyone cheered and put their hands up, to which he replied 'well, I ain't goh one, so don' look a' me!'. Which was pretty funny.

Nice free goodie-bag upon leaving, too.

GAME REVIEWS:

Ratchet and Clank:
This was the first game I wanted to go and play after going on Eye Toy. The graphics are ace; they look exactly like Jak & Daxter's. They must've nicked the smegging graphics engine, the style is so alike. Which is no bad thing, as the landscapes and scenery are gorgeous. It's a lovely-looking and well-polished game, just like Spyro was. The controls are also very similar to Spyro's; the main character can even glide (once he's bought a helipack, that is), and they are very intuitive. And there's a skateboard challenge... where have we seen that before?
Ratchet, a furry squirelly biped, is the main character, and is a mechanical expert. Clank is his little robot mate, and rides around on his back, turning into a helipack when Ratchet needs to get across a chasm. However, he only makes his presence felt in cutscenes, when he gets off Ratchet's back and says stuff. There's a missed oppurtunity for him to make Daxter-like quips during gameplay.
Ratchet can buy (using Bolts, the game's currency, which are lying around oh-so-conveniently on the ground, in boxes and on the ground vacated by vanquished foes) many different weapons and gadgets, which are all great fun. Me being me, my favourite is the flamethrower. The Swingshot, which can propel Ratchet over certain gaps, is also very satisfying. The furry dude can do a myriad of stuff just with his own body, too: backflipping, sideflipping, swimming, pinging between two walls, and he has three different ways of using his spanner as a weapon (chucking it Thor-stylee, clouting things with it or jumping up and smashing foes on the head with it).
It's wizzo fun, but there is one very difficult challenge in the early levels, in which you have to outrun a rising water level or drown, which I think is a mistake. There is no margin for error whatsoever, and it got very frustrating. I did it eventually, though, and found Captain Qwark, for whom my mission was to search, at the end of it (only to be told I'd have to meet him somewhere else. Git).
And I would like it to be more obvious when there is a checkpoint, and there was a glitch in which I fell through some water as though it was air, and ended up drowning. Hopefully these will be ironed out by November.

First opinion: 8-9/10

Sly Raccoon:
I didn't enjoy this much at the event itself, because there was no list of controls and I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. When I fired up the demo disc at home, however, I was hooked. The semi-cel-shaded graphics and muted nighttime atmosphere are lovely, and I love the way Sly Cooper (the raccoon of the title) moves. The game is on an intelligent learning curve with plenty of places to explore and to try out moves, and Sly learns a new move every level, provided you find all of the clues needed for Bentley (a Q-like tortoise) to crack the code for the vault found in each level. The vaults each contain a page from the Thievus Raccoonus, a book that belongs to Sly's family but has been stolen by bad guy Raleigh, and contains tips on how to be a master thief. Needless to say, Raleigh's wreaking havoc with it, and stealing lots of money for his wicked self, and Sly has to sort him out. Platformers never have been renowned for their gripping plots.
By contrast with Ratchet's huge arsenal, Sly's watchword is simplicity, and his only weapon and tool is his crook, with which he hits things and hooks onto overhead ropes and rings. He also dies after taking only one hit, which sounds frustrating, but enemies are few and death is only ever due to the player being careless and not coming up with a strategy. Sly can, however, carry up to two lucky horseshoes, each of which grants him an extra hit.
The sniper binoculars are super-dope, and let you observe goings on safely from a distance with their superb zoom facility. Sometimes I get them out and play with them just for the hell of it. The best move that Sly can perform, in my opinion, is the Matrix-like slow-motion jump. He jumps up as normal, but comes back to Earth at about a quarter of his normal speed. I've yet to find a use for it, but it looks so groovy.
This is deffo my most anticipated PS2 game. Just superb.

First opinion: 9/10

Ape Escape 2:
More of the same, but with better graphics. Not one jot of the counter-intuitive controls have changed, and the gameplay and gadgets are very much the same. So no points for innovation, but it's bound to be as much fun as its PSX older brother.

First opinion: 8/10

Treasure Planet:
A joint effort between Disney and Bizarre Creations, the company that made the kick-arse game Fur Fighters. For the reason of the latter party's involvement I expected it to be very good, but I've seen better. The graphics are of standard fare and the lip-sync is not impressive. And there's pop-up. In a PS2 game. Say it ain't so!
The game is a platformer with some race levels, which take place on a pretty cool-looking windsurfing device. The health-giving blue sparks look very like the small pieces of green Eco from Jak & Daxter, and they even make a very similar (but really irritating, 'cos it's at that pitch) noise. The power-ups, such as the cyborg arms, which let you pick up or throw heavy things, are quite nice though.
It's not shoddily done, it's not bad, it could be better.

First opinion: 6-7/10

Ty: Tasmanian Tiger:
This instantly reminded me of Croc 2 on the PSX. Candy-bright environments and twinkly things to collect. This is very obviously aimed at younger gamers, with Ty the thylacine drawn in very much the same style as Tony the Frosties tiger, and with that wise-ass snarling expression depicted by a white wedge at the side of the face. A nice, solid, platformer seems to be the description that'll best befit it, and I'm willing to bet my younger brother will enjoy it a good deal.
I actually had quite good fun playing this at the Experience, as I've always been a sucker for a cutesy platformer, and while this game is unlikely to earn a place on my favourites list, it'll probably satisfy that need.

First opinion: 7/10

Not proper reviews, just quick glances:

Primal: Would have preferred a better idea of what I was supposed to be doing, and to be able to play from an earlier level instead of being plonked somewhere to fend for myself. Very fun combat system; easy not to get hit if you're fast enough, and there are three different attacks. Like the switching from character to character, and like the way Scree moves. Still looking forward to it.

Stuntman: Didn't bother to play this much as OPS2 had already released a playable demo the month before. It is as frustrating as everyone says it is, but it's also as good as all the hype.

TimeSplitters 2: Huge queues for this at the Experience, so decided to play it on my free demo disc when I got home. Good graphics, but I played it for only five minutes, so frustrated was I by it. I really don't like FPSs because all you can see is the person's gun; I like to have a third-person view of whoever I'm controlling. I'm also unused to standard FPS controls; when I play Fur Fighters I always choose the Beginner controls, which are more like a platformer's than the Advanced and more FPS-like ones. I thought it was also ****ing stupid in TS2 that you actually have to hold down a button to see the crosshairs. I decided to give this game a go because OPS2 practically wet themselves when previewing it, but I think that this genre is still a no-go area with me.

Vexx and Kingdom Hearts: Didn't get a chance to play either of these, but suffice to say they're still looking impressive.

Goodie bag contents:
Most of it is just pages of advertising, but some of the stuff is good. The two demo discs, one containing Tekken 4 and one containing demos or videos of most of the games above, are smashing, as is the T-shirt. The said garment is black with a blue line forming the outline of a PS2 and the angular logo across the chest. Simple yet stylish. Also of merit is a very funky-dope pen with a PS2-blue light in it. Came with an extra refill and its own smart plastic case. The transparent stunt yoyo is nice too. The rest of the goodies are just postcards and stickers. There's a copy of OPS2 as well, but it was the same one I'd bought weeks before; I was hoping it'd be a special edition one.

[infoxicated]

Not much more I can add to this - Anna sums up the event pretty well, and I was only there for a couple of hours, sadly.

I notice we concentrated on different types of games, though - I went for all the racing games, looking at each for a good few minutes, going between Need for Speed Hot Persuit 2 and Burnout 2 just to check the playability differences between them and the use of textures.

I didn't play either, though! - I hate playing games at events like this - I think the only one I would have played would have been Madden 2003 (out of sheer anticipation), had it been there, as you're so aware that there's a crowd of folk right behind you all thinking you suck!

<kryten>
It's like trying to urinate in a toilet when there's a man 8 inches taller than you standing right beside you. It just isn't possible! :o
</kryten>

Maybe Thrusty's report will be a bit more in depth than mine :)

[Spaceboy Gajo]

I think the only one I would have played would have been Madden 2003 (out of sheer anticipation),

A Scot playing Football. American football.

I think Scotland has an American Football team am I correct?

Puzzeled,

spaceboy gajo

[infoxicated]

Yeah - the Claymores.. although they've been a bit crap the last few years. :(

Roll on Sunday when the new NFL season begins! :D

[JABBERJAW]

infox, have you played both? How do you rate the games vs eachother. I heard that the sega game had a better two player mode but madden was better single player. Any thoughts?

On a side note for a discussion about egm ratings. It seems they pick a certain score that a game will fall in between based completely on hype. Some of these games may actually deserve the score, but some certainly do not. Mario for example they would not rate below a 9 no matter how it came out. As for metroid, my guess is between 8.5 and 9.5, but more and likely 9-9.5 unless something really went wrong. I bring this up because of the excellent scores they used to give nfl blitz(which is my favorite football game), but now they say it is always the same thing. When in reality, games like madden and nfl2k3(which are both good) do not add any more material each year than blitz does, but they talk about new facial animations and other bs like that. While these sims do have more stats and modes than blitz, the amount of NEW stuff they add each year is no more than what blitz adds. So my question is. Why do these reviewers not say that madden and 2k3 are basically the same game as the year before with some additions, or the same thing they say about blitz. It doesn't bother me that they don't like blitz, just the reasons why it gets 7.5 - 8.5, when these other games have the same problems.

[Lance]

.
this is the second negative comment about egm that i've seen today [and i wasn't looking for them. ;) ] ; so i'm wondering if they just have a staff that is unable to balance personal biases with consideration of other people's likes, or are they being influenced by the game marketers?
.

[Vasudeva]

Speaking about gaming mags.... *rant alert!*

I used to be a EGM and EGM² reader but they stopped selling it here in Belgium, so I went on to read Gamesmaster (a British gaming mag). It usually had games sharply judged and balanced the preview - tips - review trio nicely. However, over the years I find that it's come to contain *much* more pictures (which wouldn't be bad in itself), the reviews are getting more nonsensical each time and I also find some games hugely overrated. Point is that I'm looking for gaming mags that give actual information beyond the hype. And if even their reviews don't give actual information anymore, well...

To give you all an example. "Skies of Arcadia" for DC got 96%. I believe that's as much as FF7 for PS. Play SoA. You'll see that FF7 is still much better despite the inferior graphics. Look up their ratings for Tomb Raider games. The TR series - sorry Lara Croft fans - has no game that rivals the intensity and classy atmosphere of the first part, yet they kept giving them high ratings up until now. W'O"F also received about 90%. I wonder if that reviewer even bothered to play W3.

*rant alert over* ;)

Peace,
V.

[infoxicated]

Al, I haven't played both - I've only played Madden 2001 & 2002 and will probably trade up to Madden 2003 when it arrives here in a few weeks. I wouldn't know if Sega's game is better or worse - I'm just kind of used to the Madden style gameplay, even if pass defense and kicking the ball at the higher levels are a bit of a lottery.

I wonder why they make kicking the ball so hard?

Fair enough - make it hard for a fifty yard field goal in a blizzard, but I find it impossible to stop my kick-offs going out of bounds at All Madden level and I have Martine Gramattica - one of the highest rated kickers in the game, so my error margin is quite broad!!

I find I am absolutely thrashing the other teams in the league - I play at all pro level and usually score more than 50 points in a game, my opponants less than 20 (this is only due to exceptionally bad pass defense - I can generally hold them to less than 50 yards on the ground). I suppose it is in my interests to seek out NFL2k3 and see if it is a better play for my tastes than Madden is.

As for the whole game review thing - I reckon the first one to buy a game here should give it a brief review as a service to the rest of us. Make it brutal if you want - point out the stupid things and even the good things that a reviewer has missed in the two hours he messed with the "features unlocked" version.

Might save us some money in the long run - you just cant trust the mags!