Once again, Sony opened up its trendy 3Rooms venue in Shoreditch, for a showcase of new and forthcoming PlayStation 3 games. As it filled up with the cream of Europe’s videogames press, we had little trouble finding stuff that had either come on a lot since we saw it at GDC or else was completely new.
For us, perhaps the most significant item of news on show concerned MotorStorm. Sony senior producer Pete Smith tore himself away from his LittleBigPlanet duties to unveil a raft of downloadable content for the barnstorming off-road racing game, due to arrive over the PlayStation network in the next month or so.
Smith said: “We want to make sure that we build a thriving online community, so we will continually put out new content – some premium and some free.” The first manifestation of this downloadable content (DLC) will be an update to version 1.2, which is essentially aimed at improving the online experience, with detailed updates of the interface and general tweaks to make it easier to set up games and friendlier when you play them. This free update is already sitting on the PlayStation Network, waiting for you to download it.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Admitting that: “We have had a bit of criticism because MotorStorm was light on its modes,” Smith announced a new mode which will be available for download: Time Attack. He said: “It’s more than a simple time-trial. It will have global leader-boards and about 250 cars will be stored which you can download and race against – you can download up to eight ghost cars for a single race.” So now, you’ll be able to measure yourself up against the very best MotorStormers. Time Attack will be downloadable for free from 25 May.
In June, the first Premium (that is, paid-for) DLC for MotorStorm will arrive, entitled Pack One. This will contain – hurrah – a new track called Coyote Revenge – which, Smith said, is based on a reversed Coyote Rage, but tweaked so extensively as to be unrecognisable. The pack will also contain three new tickets, collectively entitled Coyote Weekend, a new Big Rig and Rally Car (plus an unlockable car) and a new online mode called eliminator, in which you’ll have 20 seconds to catch and pass the person in front.
Developer Incognito’s Dylan Jobe was on hand to demonstrate WarHawk, which impressed everyone and has certainly come on a lot since GDC. Jobe began by highlighting the game’s customisability, which lets you extensively redesign the character you play as and even to develop colour schemes for aircraft, which are automatically adopted when you climb into them, and to set up colour schemes for AI enemy planes.
Next up were the online features, which seemed pretty comprehensive, particularly as far as stats are concerned – not only are details of your kills, death, ratios and so on stored, but you can drill down as deep as investigating how many people you have killed by running them over in jeeps. The ranking system was also revealed – as you improve in the game, your rank increases, with the highest being General: High Command, and there are countless medals, ribbons and wings to win, as you achieve certain challenges. You’ll be able to research exactly what you need to do to achieve any of those.
According to Jobe, there will be 25 battlefields across five maps at launch – which is impressive, as the maps are huge. A few gameplay details stood out, too: notably, the importance of levelling up your bases (by simply standing next to their flags), to gain extra power-ups and weapons, and generally reclaim areas of the map as your own.
We also saw some of the niceties of the flying: perhaps the best airborne power-ups are aerial mines that you can drop – Jobe suggested that the best place to put these was near to aerial health power-ups, as they explode when any planes get near to them. There’s also a stealth power-up for the planes (although you can’t fire missiles when you use it), and chaff for evading incoming missiles (although you get more kudos by pulling off aerobatic manoeuvres to shake them off). Jobe said that WarHawk will arrive: “End of summer/early fall,” and that at first, at least, it will be available as a download; apparently Sony still hasn’t decided whether it will sell the game on disk in Europe.
Next up was Snakeball, the PlayStation Network game whose existence we recently revealed. Snakeball owes something of a debt to the old Nokia phone classic Snake, but obviously, it’s an awful lot more sophisticated. Essentially, you drive around, collecting coloured balls which assemble themselves into an ever-growing tail. You have to deposit them in a goal, and the more balls you deposit at a time, the higher you score. AI enemies will take you out if you crash into them and they have bigger tails than you, and there are mines and so forth which you must avoid. The whole thing takes place on a very natty disco-floor, which cleverly communicates to you, using flashing colours, the locations of things you need to pick up or avoid.
Control-wise, Snakeball uses the Sixaxis’ motion-sensing for movement, which frees up the buttons for expending power-ups, such as missiles which you can guide. It has three game modes: Challenge (the main mode), Arcade Shooting (where the goals are defended by mines) and Frenzy, which is timed. Up to four people can enjoy split-screen action, and two PS3s can be hooked up to each other for four-versus-four action.
Although the same level of LittleBigPlanet was shown as featured at GDC, this time around, we managed to get some hands-on action, which was deeply exciting. 0So we can tell you a bit about the controls (which, hopefully, will stay the same when the game comes out). So, the square button brings up your various menus for customising your character, selecting objects with which you can build levels and selecting stickers to plaster all over the place. R1 lets you grab objects, X is jump, and if you hold down R2 or L2 and wiggle the left and right sticks, you can make your character wave its arms around.
And last up was Sony’s next game for the PS3 – SingStar. Which was pretty much as you’d expect – there will be 350 songs available for download at launch, although Sony would still not be drawn on how much they will cost. Each song will be a download of roughly 55 megabytes, as they have the videos embedded – but if you’re at a party, say, you can set them to download in the background while you carry on playing.
SingStar has gone to town on the MySpace-style community features, with a My SingStar area that includes SingStar Scene, in which you’ll be able to meet other karaoke fiends, and a Community Gallery, where you’ll find the highest-rated videos and recordings – in its default mode, if hooked up to an Eye Toy, SingStar will video you whenever you reach the chorus of a song, and take a load of still pictures over the duration of the song. You’ll also be able to manually video the entire duration of your song, should you wish to inflict your vocal talents on the rest of the world.
