Amid considerable excitement at Three Speech, we’ve been able to get our hands on some more complete versions of many of Sony’s launch PlayStation 3 games, which means we can give you some rather more considered and informed reports on them. Of course, now that the PS3 has launched in Japan, you’d hope that it would be possible to acquire finished PS3 code. Anyway, here are our latest impressions.

RESISTANCE: FALL OF MAN

The arrival of final Resistance: FoM code reinforces our conviction that it is, by some distance, the best PS3 launch game. While it does not reinvent the first-person shooter (fps), it certainly brings it into the next-generation age. One particular aspect we hadn’t previously appreciated is that it’s pretty meaty, with a storyline that takes you all over a fictional 1950s UK, which has become over-run by aliens called the Chimera.

The storyline, presented in commendably bite-sized chunks which don’t interfere unduly with the gameplay, unfurls seamlessly as you play US Sgt Nathan Hale, the sole survivor of an American force sent to help us plucky Brits fight the Chimera. Hale survived by possessing an immunity to the virus which turns humans into Chimera, which means that (once he is infected, after the initial stage), he can regenerate a quarter of his health at any time by merely staying out of the line of fire for a while, and can heal himself by drinking the Sym-Bac serum that sustains the Chimera - who are a bit like drug-taking athletes, in that they are prone to overheating.

Hale’s powers of recuperation mean that he has to take the lead when he hooks up with Brit soldiers; there are also solo missions and boss-battles aplenty, with 11 varieties of Chimera, ranging from bugs to Half-Life-style head-crabs, great big mutants that are best taken down with a shotgun (and who explode satisfyingly and messily when you kill them) and enormous but paradoxically weak Grey Jacks. Plus there are (again reminiscent of Half-Life) mechanical crawlers, which have a weak spot at the rear; since they can walk in one direction while firing in the other, they are buggers to outflank.

The most imaginative aspect of Resistance: FoM is its weaponry. You start off with a pretty useful Carbine as it has a decent amount of stopping power and a zoom which is almost as good as that of the sniper. Its Chimera equivalent is the Bullseye. This lets you fire Tag bullets into enemies, which you then auto-target. Because the Bullseye takes 70 rather than 50 bullets, it’s more use than its counterpart in confined spaces. The Rossmore 236 shotgun is excellent (its alternate fire lets you blast both barrels), as is the Auger, which fires energy bolts that penetrate cover. As you progress you discover a third type of grenade (after the frag grenades and the exploding arrow-spheres invented by the Chimera) called the Air-Storm, which are essentially sticky, super-powerful Molotov cocktails. And you have to dodge radial mines which either require you to jump or duck when they explode.

Resistance: Fall of Man is a proper fps, with varied levels (taking in exterior and interior settings, and often pitching you in high-adrenaline fire-fights), good bosses, a decent storyline and some of the most satisfying weaponry you could imagine. A must-buy when you get a PS3.

MOTORSTORM

We now have Japanese MotorStorm code, and it is mighty impressive especially when running in 1080p. Perhaps wisely, it eschews any attempt at a storyline and keeps itself simple in structural terms all Evolution Studios attention has been lavished on the courses and the physics.

MotorStorm is really about the latter. Initially, you can play three levels two around the same course but with first a heavy and then a medium-weight machine, and the third around an impressively long course (all courses are set in Monument Valley) with the machine of your choice. Which might be a truck, a Paris-Dakar-style 4X4, a rally car, a Yank tank, a quad-bike, a jeep or a motorbike. On a bike, you can punch your opponents; in a truck, you merely drive them off the road.

The physics rather like in Burnout extend to when you crash, at which point your vehicle will explode spectacularly. The racing is all about making judicious use of your boost - which will overheat if you use it too long, causing you to explode. An alarm sounds when that is about to happen.

With modelling that includes different types of mud, MotorStorm is fantastic to behold and feels like a proper next-gen effort when you play it. As a game, it’s pretty basic, but satisfying.

LAIR

Lair is perhaps the most innovative of the PS3’s launch games it makes full use of the PS3’s motion-sensing controller, and puts you at the helm of a dragon in an amazing-looking mediaeval fantasy world.

As you would expect, it kicks off with a (perhaps too perfunctory) tutorial, in which you learn the controls by flying through transparent hoops, and then engage in some dragon-combat. Which essentially involves getting close enough to a dragon to target it (using L1 or R1), then jerking your controller in the direction of the enemy dragon until you can attack with some random button-bashing, then performing a couple of killer blows by either button-stabbing or jerking the controller when red appears around the edge of the screen.

Mid-air combat works pretty well, although we found our flying style to be uncomfortably jerky; actually working out where you need to be in order to engage enemy dragons is quite tricky, and the game could perhaps do with some sort of radar.

You can also land (by pressing triangle when near the ground) and engage all manner of opponents, from troops (which burn satisfyingly in your dragon-breath) to minotaur-like creatures. Lair looks absolutely incredible, but for us, the jury is currently out because it is a touch fiddly.

FORMULA ONE CHAMPIONSHIP

Sony now has the sole licence for official Formula One games, and this effort, made in Liverpool, does exactly what it says on the tin, sporting stunningly realistic visuals (although the colours are perhaps a bit over-bright, adding a slightly cartoonish feel) and realistic physics- which are turned off by default when you start, although you can make things more realistic and consequently more difficult for yourself.

Our code is a demo which only lets you participate in Quick Races at either Monza or Indianapolis, so we don’t know what Championship mode will be like. But you can set the following: overall difficulty, opponent AI, crash damage, fuel use and tyre wear, component failure, weather and penalties. The petrol-heads should enjoy Formula One Championship, although one suspects it will motivate few people to actually buy a PS3.

RIDGE RACER 7

No Sony console would be complete without a launch version of Namco’s legendary power-sliding racer, and RR7 is definitely the best version yet of the game. It offers few surprises as ever, it’s all about getting totally sideways around corners and thereby building up your boost in readiness for the straights but does sport some insane visual effects that verge on the psychedelic when you hit the boost.

Our version is a demo, so we don’t know whether there are any structural alterations compared to past versions of RR7. Nevertheless, we immensely enjoyed playing it.

Steve Boxer