[PS3] PlayStation 3 Discussion Thread

The PSN (calling it that now, since it seems to be semi-official) store looks really slick. I like that there's free demo versions of the downloadable games, too.



...Those have to be some of the most random gamer icons ever haha. It's cool though. I wonder how many there are to choose from, or if we can upload our own...

How ya doing, buddy?

I'm not understanding how watching football at 1pm hinders pre-ordering a system earlier on in the morning

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Yeah I was gonna say, I can excuse the repetition of the PS3 photos if only for the girl holding them

The one with the reflected floorboards was also pretty artsy.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Visited the EB yesterday that I preordered the system from. Got it clarified that you don't need to pay it in full to absolutely get your system, just pay the rest when you pick it up on launch day. Also set in stone (preordered) my two launch titles, Resistance and RR7.

It was kind of amusing... the noob clerk to the experienced one:

"Hey, do we preorder PS3 games?"
"PS3?"
"Ye-"
"Of COURSE we do, let me bring up the SKUs"

(To me)"Alright, that was Resistance and what again?"
"Ridge Racer 7"
(To exp. clerk)"What's the number on Ridge Racer?"
"For what?"
"PS3"

*me shaking my head*

Meanwhile there was some random guy in a suit returning FFXII, complaining that the battle system made him feel like he was watching a movie. And the experienced clerk agreeing, that she hated that. I had half a mind to step in, but thought I aught to just get my receipt and head out.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I'm hoping so, Soldier. Not resolution so much as better transfer to an HDTV. Especially since I'm playing with S-Video, I'd certainly anticipate a much better image when I switch to HDMI cables.

And yeah, expected Genji's score also. Same with Tony Hawk P8, though it's unfortunate that the PS3 version was totally skimped on. Guess they had to rush it to make launch, which seems to be a trend with launch games anyways.

I'm predicting Resistance will be in the 9's, and RR7 in the 8's. Or high 7's if someone's feeling spiteful that the game plays nearly the same to other RR's. Zomg not next-gen enough!

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

There's a potential issue I'm hearing about... It was brought up by Jonnyram over on GAF, which is that apparently you can only use one of the three outputs on the system at once. That is to say, if you use HDMI, you use that only. That's a big problem for me, considering that I always hook up my sound outputs to a mixer that leads to my speakers. I honestly had no idea HDMI contained sound data as well, so considering that my monitor has no speakers, I honestly don't know how I'm going to handle hooking up sound while still keeping the awesome resolution...

How ya doing, buddy?

In reply to the folks that pointed out the sound solutions, thank you so much

I was totally freaking for a while last night while tired. I'm glad I don't have anything to worry about.

Problem solved, hype back in action

How ya doing, buddy?

So I dropped by EB today to trade in an old Xbox game to put towards the PS3 since I don't have anything better to spend it on...

Guy at the counter recognized me from when I put in my preorder. Wanted to let me know that they have absolutely no idea how many consoles they're getting in, and that he's going to call the preorderers later this week to let them know if they're gonna be able to get one on Friday...

They'll be going in order of the line, so if they get at least 5 in, I'm golden...

In other news, Target was right next door so I went in to check out the PS3 kiosk (Best Buy, EB and Gamestop all didn't have them up).

XMB was smooth, loved the colour scheme and how responsive it was. Easily was able to select the game section, which was loaded with 2 demo videos and 2 playable demos, NBA07 and Motorstorm. Pretty obvious which one I chose.

Game had a bit of a loading time once you selected a race, but it wasn't too major and they have plenty of time to clean it up. Plus, it gave me time to check out the controls. There were two setups you could choose from, both were Raingod Mesa. However, one had cars only, and the other included bikes as well.

When I first picked up the game, some guy let me continue his race. He had a car, and it felt somewhat chunky and medium speed but as a plus could survive things pretty well and plow over certain barriers. I also totally destroyed a bike in front of me once, and rammed another car off the track. Suuuuch a satisfying feeling.

Second time around, I had a go at a bike. Wow, the things are like made of glass. However, for pure speed you can get such an advantage over the other racers if you do well and take advantage of the bike's physics. Given the lighter nature of the vehicle, you can rotate the thing and maneuver your tires in the air so that when you land into a big turn, you just keep on barreling forward. When I played as the car, I on a hairpin turn I had to take the turn much more carefully and slowly so as to not smash up against the rock wall. Of course, the bike is equally susceptible to large walls. But the in-air handling felt much better for nailing the turn.

More so than other racing games I've played, I think a lot of the strategy for Motorstorm will be memorizing the courses and knowing which paths are safer for which vehicles... as well as getting mastery over the physics of your specific vehicle class. Unfortunately, no ATVs, trucks, or bigdamntrucks were included in the demo. But next year couldn't come any sooner... I'll definately be downloading the demo like what.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

As long as it doesn't screw up: Vagrant Story, Xenogears, Valkyrie Profile and Final Fantasy Tactics... I'll be fine.

If it does, Sony will feel my wrath! Or something.

I'm mainly antsy to get my phone call from EB letting me know if I'll be getting one on Friday or not...

How ya doing, buddy?

I should point out that it wasn't Sony who said there'll be 150-200k units at launch, but rather an analyst. I think he was referring to the news about Gamestop's supply cut, though I'm not sure if any official word has been declared from the Big S about anything less than 400k units for NA.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Called EB, got the manager on the line, PS3 GET confirmed! Just gotta walk in and pick it up on Friday then. Teehee.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Here's an interesting question... considering that my widescreen monitor has DVI input, but isn't actually an HDTV, how would I go about determining what HD resolutions it supports? I understand now about Interlaced and Progressive Scan, though they aren't common terminology when it comes to computer monitors.

The monitor's native resolution is 1680x1050... so it doesn't seem like it would support 1080 by 30 bloody pixels. Would there be a way for me to tell then which 720 my monitor supported? (I don't want downgrade )

I was speaking idiomatically.

Okay finally I have access to the forums again... It wasn't showing up all of yesterday and this morning for me. Here's what I was going to post right when I got home.

No drama, no assaults, no loss of first born children. Just in, console get, chatting with other preorder people that showed up to pick theirs up, hopped on to the bus, and went home. No easy task, though. Thing's bloody heavy. I'm still feelin' it in my arm. Thankfully it's safely perched on my desk now, where it sort of rules over the other electronics with a reflecty all-encompassing presence.

Bullets:

- Touch buttons are awesome, has little beeps to acknowledge that you've succeeded in getting the console's attention.
- Effortlessly hooked it up to the monitor with HDMI->DVI, and it's running sexy in 720p
- Got sound routed through my old composite cable, just unplugged it from my PS2 and into the PS3.
- Wi-fi didn't work with my house's AirPort. It couldn't establish and IP address. So I ended up getting another ethernet cable and hooked it up directly. Internet works just fine now.
- XMB interface is totally smooth. I wish it could be brought up during a game, but hopefully that might come later.
- Loaded up a bunch of websites, including my own, which streams the music in the flash player perfectly. Yay!
- Playstation Store is well layed-out and easy to use, downloaded a whole bunch of stuff from the Motorstorm demo, to an HD trailer for House of Flying Daggers.
- Speaking of which, the Motorstorm demo is fantastic. I had so much fun, and will probably continue playing it until it releases.
- Resistance and RR7 are both very solid launch titles. The former being a a totally enthralling FPS that I want to get into more later. Really excellent sound design. Music almost has a bit of a Sakimoto flavour to it, straying just enough from the Hollywood sound to catch my ear as standing out quite well. The physics and control are also fantastic. I always struggled with Halo... yet not nearly as much with this, for whatever reason.
- The latter, RR7, is actually the first racing game with real cars that's actually held my interest. I picked up drifting and nitro usage pretty fast, though I've also heard that the AI ramps up significantly... We'll see how that works out XD
- Blast Factor, one of the downloadable games, is really nice imo. Some people weren't as impressed with it, but it's a lot of fun. Contrary to previous reports, the tilt control function of washing things to one side comes in handy when trying to clear out enemies quickly. The faster you clear a cell, the more difficult the next cell is. So a lot of it is about speedy shooting/clearing. Also, the wave exposes certain enemies weak spots whereas the time-slow "bomb" exposes other ones.

Crappy camera pics:

Spoiler:

The loot



PS3 claims dominion over the electronics.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Yeah, HDMI->DVI works great. Totally crisp and shiny.

Like SOLDIER mentioned a few posts back though, HDMI seems to screw up PS2 games. At least FFXII. I switched to S-video to play it, and it looked okay... but still not as good as it does through S-video on my PS2. Oddness.

How ya doing, buddy?

Metal, mine's a 20" widescreen, hence it can support the HD resolutions. Anything that isn't widescreen may have issues with the resolutions. I don't know for certain though.

SOLDIER, I believe fullscreen is an option when you press Triangle in the browser to check out the options. It's in there somewhere, as I made it work. Text in normal size looks fine at my res though.

Wanted to mention, played a bunch of Resistance co-op today with my friend. Total blast, really loved it. I honestly do think there are quite a bit of things that couldn't be done on a PS2 We also tried out online, and unfortunately it was unclear if there was any way to have both of us online at once. Didn't seem like it though, which is really unfortunate. So we traded off on deaths, and played a bunch of capture the flag. Great fun there.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I noticed over in the Nintendo section, the "Wii Codes" thread. Should we have a similar thread for PSN usernames? Maybe there's not enough of us with an actual console But it would be good to have some peoples on my list.

Not sure what the technical term for it is, but the service is most definately PlayStation Network.

PSN Name: CobaltKatze

Edit: Oh, and I can vouch for monoprice's quality. Cable they shipped me is quite nice, s'very substantial and such.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I have the 24AWG version, and it seems like instead of having those large plastic lumpy things on either end of the cable, it has an extremely thick mesh-like cable instead, as opposed to your usual coating. Not sure what the technical differences are.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Hahah, yes, that double-melee was awesome. Good fun in deathmatch.

None of the games seemed to feature chimera though, guess that's an option set by the game creator. I personally like playing as them more than humans, if only for the nifty rage mode.

Inhert: Cool, I'll add ya anyways.

Most amazing jew boots

Unfortunately, co-op is only offline.

And yeah, I have a headset. It's Motorola bluetooth dealy, interfaces perfectly with the PS3. In Resistance, you hold down the L3 button (left analog click) to talk. Though I think that's only in free-for-all games. In team-based games, people could hear me all the time. Some dude was talking about capturing the other team's flag, but we were playing Breach... I'm like er, what flag? "You know what I mean..."

Though, maybe it's a setting chosen by the game's creator.

This one guy was whining about the textures for some reason, said his 360 could do it better. Uh huh.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

This is the one I use. Kinda pricey, but it came with my phone bundle.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Wheee... Had an awesome team deathmatch bout tonight. I got on a massive killing spree as chimera just rushing people in rage mode. Got the Assassin medal for 20 consecutive kills, woo Unranked games though. I aught to try a ranked one sometime.

Apparently you level up too, and can get new stuff to equip your human model with... Though I haven't progressed much on that at all yet.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Psh, you left before I got my killing spree on

FELIPE NO

If Resistance isn't any good, why am I enjoying it so much? I think it's dueling opinions here. I personally can't stand the CoD series, so hey. Halo was cool, but not too engulfing, likely because I never owned it and just played co-op/online at a friend's. So as far as console FPSs go, Resistance holds my attention and keeps me playing. It's a great game, but people are being overly negative for reasons beyond me.

As a game, I'm sure GoW is better regardless of 'genre', but again I can't be one to judge since I a) haven't played it, b) don't own a 360 nor will in the immediate future.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Haha, that meat must taste horrible with all the plastic it's cooking in But that's hilarious.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by SOLDIER

6. How many levels is Blast Factor, and how long is that $7.99 price going to last?

Blast Factor has 7 "Specimens", which is to say groups of 6 stages with a bonus round after the first 3, and a boss at the end. Each specimen also branches out depending on how fast you clear the stage, for a total of 12 stages per, potentially.

Thing is, the game's difficulty ramps up a bunch. I'm currently stuck halfway through the 4th Specimen. Pretty challenging stuff. A lot of it is a huge rush for a high score, which has a global leader board, with the added option to rank yourself against your friend list also. I'm something like ~300 globally? lol

There's nowhere I can't reach.