PlayStation News, Articles and Information for the UK and Europe

Do you remember Far Cry? It was an incredible semi-open-world game that let you run around absolutely beautiful tropical islands shooting at mercenaries and apes. It was then followed up by Far Cry 2, a multiplatform sequel that seemed to miss the mark with many fans and critics. Now Ubisoft are hoping to pick up the momentum again with Far Cry 3, set for release on PS3, Windows PC and Xbox 360 some time in 2012.

This time around you’ll step into the shoes of Jason Brody, the usual brave loner type who’s managed to get himself stranded on a mysterious tropical island. Building on the setting and gameplay from the original Far Cry, in Far Cry 3 you’ll be able to forge relationships and shoot the crap out of the potential allies and enemies scattered throughout the fallen paradise. Read more

Portal 2 came as a bit of a shock to PlayStation 3 owners; many were expecting a weak 3rd party port , and some were even expecting the game to skip PS3 altogether. Then at E3 2010, Gabe Newell came out with the shock announcement that not only was Portal 2 headed to PS3 directly from developer Valve, but that it would have Steam integration and would be the definitive console version of the game. That’s a pretty big claim, especially considering that Valve had never developed a PlayStation 3 game before. Then again, this is Valve we’re talking about – and Valve know how to make unbelievably brilliant games. Read more

Remember PlayStation Home? It may have had some pretty significant changes since you last visited it, and as luck would have it along comes the perfect opportunity to revist the misunderstood social gaming hub: Sony’s press conference from this year’s E3 Expo will be broadcast, live, through PlayStation Home.

You may remember the E3 presentations being watchable in PlayStation Home last year, but they were recorded footage. This year marks the first time that the footage will be broadcast as it happens, on June 6th at 5pm Pacific Time (which equates to midnight in the UK). So far this news has only been confirmed on the US PS3 blog, so it’s still possible that this will only be available to those of you with a US PlayStation Account (they’re free to sign up for). If we get any confirmation from the EU blog we’ll let you know.

Last year more people explored the virtual booth than the real one

PlayStation Home will once again provide access to the PlayStation Home E3 Virtual Booth, allowing you to walk around a virtual representation of the conference centre and check out brand new videos and demos, as well as collecting exclusive virtual items for use in PlayStation Home.

After the recent security problems Sony has faced, we’re hoping that Sony are going to use E3 2011 as their springboard back into the spotlight by unveiling some pretty exciting games and promotions. By broadcasting their press conference live, it’s a good indicator that Sony is preparing to do all it can to make this year’s E3 the best ever.

Play. Create. Share. That’s the ethos behind LittleBigPlanet. The sheer number and quality of user created levels for LittleBigPlanet is astounding, but if you’re not into user generated content, don’t worry – the single player campaign is equally brilliant and the levels come with the inherent benefit of being consistent in quality.

The plot of LittleBigPlanet doesn’t really matter but it provides a fun, abstract storyline to progress you through the game. The world of LittleBigPlanet is created by eight Creator Curators, each with their own unique style. The naughty eighth Creator Curator, called ‘The Collector’, kidnaps the others after stealing their ideas. It’s your job, as a Sack-boy or Sack-girl, to rescue the missing Creator Curators and confront The Collector. Read more

Sony’s PSP Go handheld console has officially been discontinued and is no longer in production. The poorly received console was criticised across the board for being too expensive and for not having a UMD slot – making it a download only device. Launching at an eye-watering £229, the expensive nature of the console was compounded by the fact that the only way to buy games is from the PSN Store, most of which were more expensive than they physical UMD counterparts.

It’s always sad to see a console die out so early – aside from the pricing issues, many gamers were enthusiastic about the design and features. With the as-yet-untitled ‘Sony NGP’ handheld coming out at the end of this year in Japan, perhaps it’s a good time for Sony to draw a line under the PSP and start moving onto its successor.

Source – IGN

The wheels on the Skyrim hype machine are turning again, and they’ve produced another set of eight lovely screenshots for you all. Among other things, they show a bad-ass Shelob-like spider, a Khajiit (Tigra from Thundercats) and part of a Norse-looking town called Riverwood. Really, if you’re not hyped about Skyrim yet then you need to start now. If you want to know more, there’s a great preview over on Games Radar that is well worth reading. Either way, enjoy the new screenshots:

This week sees the king of bloody fighters Mortal Kombat sitting proudly at the top of the list, and quite rightfully too. After years of stretching the franchise beyond breaking point into an absurd mess of awful jokes, ridiculous fatalities and more retcons than a Star Wars expanded universe novel, Mortal Kombat is finally returning to its roots and rebooting the series and reworking the story from the first three games. What’s more, the pre-order prices are starting to come down and they’ve settled around the very affordable £30 mark – and if you pre-order with Amazon here you will be sent special codes to unlock Sub Zero and Reptile original character costumes and classic fatalities, plus Kitana’s original Mortal Kombat ninja outfit – bonus!

Following hot on MK’s heels is Portal 2, the other massively exciting game to be released this week. If you haven’t played the original Portal game you can pick it up as part of Valve’s Orange Box compilation. Portal 2 is tremendously exciting for PS3-owning fans of the original because this time around Valve are developing the PS3 version themselves, rather than letting EA port it like they did last time, and also because the PS3 version is the first console game to include ‘Steamworks’ support. This means you can tie the game to your Steam account, which you can use to play co-op with your Steam friends, unlock Steam achievements (as well as PSN Trophies) and most brilliantly of all you can unlock the full version of Portal 2 on PC too.

New entries to the chart for this week include L.A. Noire, which is currently set for release on 20th May 2011, and Battlefield 3, which is set for release much later in the year around November – it’s a measure of how excited people are about Battlefield 3 that it’s hit the Top 10 so far in advance of its release. Although we’ve had several failed ‘Call of Duty killers’ recently, if ever any game were to steal CoD’s crown as the top FPS it’s probably going to be Battlefield 3.

01 – Mortal Kombat

02 – Portal 2

03 – FIFA 11

04 – Shift 2 – Unleashed

05 – L.A. Noire

06 – Battlefield 3 – Limited Edition

07 – Red Dead Redemption

08 – Call of Duty: Black Ops

09 – Mass Effect 2

10 – Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Having only just brought up the question of Final Fantasy VI appearing on the EU PSN Store, it appears we already have a tentatively positive answer! On the Japanese Square-Enix Members’ Twitter feed, an update has appeared with the following text:

配信情報第２弾です。多くの皆様からリクエストがありました「FF６」のゲームアーカイブス化が決定しました！

If your Japanese is as feeble as ours, then fear not as IGN have used kindly translated it for everyone:

Final Fantasy VI is coming to the PlayStation Network on April 20th due to the amount* of requests they’ve received from fans.

This is very encouraging news for Final Fantasy fans, as although this is only confirmation that a Japanese PSN version is in the works, it could be the first step on Final Fantasy VI’s journey to the EU PSN. Square-Enix has already been successful in getting several Final Fantasy games across to the EU PSN, so let’s hope they can continue with their good work.

*Presumably their English isn’t that good however, as in this case it’s correct to say ‘number’ of requests, rather than ‘amount’

Just a heads up incase you missed the official EU PSN Update post yesterday, Final Fantasy V is available right now on the EU PSN Store as a PSOne classic, which you can play on either your PSP or PS3.

Final Fantasy V was originally released nearly twenty years ago for Nintendo’s SNES, and only available in Japan. Since its original 1992 release, Final Fantasy V has been re-released several times, notable as part of the Final Fantasy Collection in Japan in 1999 and as part of the Final Fantasy Anthology, released in North America in 1999 and Europe in 2002.

The EU PSN Store now boasts PSOne version Final Fantasy V, VII, VIII and IX. The question remains, will Final Fantasy IV and VI ever see the light of day on the EU Store?

Vancouver-based developer Hothead Games have only been producing games for a few years, yet they’re already starting to build up a reputation for quirky, original gaming titles that fill in the gaps between big blockbuster game series like Modern Warfare and Gran Turismo. Their latest game is Swarm, a puzzle/platform/action game that requires you to work your way through ten levels of carnage controlling a swarm of creatures known as Swarmites. What makes Swarm stand out from many other games is the nature of the creatures you control – as well as thinking and operating independently, they also move as one entity through swarm behaviour, which is where you come in.

Although at first Swarm looks like a puzzle game, it really is much more of a platform game than anything else. You control the swarm and have to guide it through each level picking up points and bonus DNA sequences, while trying to keep at least one Swarmite alive all the way through the level. The Swarmites die very easily but it’s not usually much of a problem as you can top up your swarm with more Swarmites at checkpoints along each level. In fact, the game encourages you to kill off some of your swarm, just to see how many ways they can die, and often the fastest way to progress is by sacrificing part of your swarm. The challenge of the game doesn’t come from saving your swarm but actually from picking up enough points through each level so that the following level is unlocked. As you collect points you increase your point multiplier, which is then lost if you lose all of your Swarmites. It pretty quickly becomes obvious that the only way to rack up enough points for the later levels is to make sure you don’t kill off your whole swarm at any stage – if you do you can restart from a checkpoint but seeing as you’ve lost your multiplier it’s much more effective to just restart the level. Read more