Just a quick one to say that we can now confirm Phil Harrison will be attending the Three Speech event at the 3Rooms venue in London on March 13. A presentation/Q+A of some form will take place - we’ll confirm exactly what as soon as we have more details!

Apart from the Sony-published games, the PlayStation 3’s launch line-up has received criticism for relying too heavily on games that have already appeared on other platforms, and that’s certainly something which is true of Vivendi Universal’s F.E.A.R (which stands for First Encounter Assault Recon), which has been out on the PC and Xbox 360 since last year. Nevertheless, there is one ray of optimism: F.E.A.R is one of those games which didn’t make the US and Japanese launches, but will be on sale on March 23.

In case you’re such a die-hard PlayStation fanatic that you’ve never come across it before, F.E.A.R is a properly hardcore first-person shooter, with a 17+ age-rating (it doesn’t stint on the blood or swearing) and a supernatural twist. You’re a raw recruit to a sort of supernatural SWAT team, hunting down a rather unpleasant guy who appears to enjoy eating human flesh, and has an extremely sizeable private army at his command. Even though you’re the newbie on the team, you’re sent in as a solo point-man because of your exceptionally quick reflexes, which manifest themselves in the game as the ability to slow down time for short periods, much like the Max Payne games.

And boy, do you need to make the most of that ability, because F.E.A.R is seriously hard. Not only are you constantly beset by waves of soldiers, but those soldiers have some of the most fearsome AI ever seen in a game. They won’t stand there while you fill them with lead, but they’ll take cover, jump over barriers to outflank you and generally act like real soldiers. One of the few differences I could discern between the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the game, then, is a welcome one: on the PS3, F.E.A.R has four levels of difficulty, rather than three, and even the second of the four will tax you. That does give the game an extra element of replayability, though, as you really feel that bumping the difficulty up a level and starting again offers a whole new challenge.

F.E.A.R was always one of the best-looking games on the Xbox 360 but the PS3 version’s graphics are a bit disappointing – compared to those of Resistance: Fall of Man, they look a bit muddy, the game’s textures are rather unadventurous and there is none of the photo-realism that games like MotorStorm prove the PS3 can produce. But the physics are impressive, and particularly the particle effects – empty a machine-gun clip into a room and it will fill up with smoke for a while, and often, you will think you’re safely behind cover only to be hit by ricochets.

The gameplay is fairly typical first-person shooter fare – taking out enemies in drab, mainly indoor areas, interspersed with the odd bit of light puzzle-solving (which generally involves getting to inaccessible areas) and the occasional, truly creepy paranormal vision, many of which remind one of the infamous river of blood scene from The Shining (an impression reinforced by the presence of a truly scary little girl in a red dress). In terms of atmospherics, F.E.A.R is unimpeachable.

The game is heavily checkpointed, which is just as well in view of its difficulty and while you do occasionally come across health packs (and can carry up to ten at a time, not that you ever find that many), you have to scavenge ammunition from the soldiers you have killed. The weaponry is particularly fine, with a variety of machine-guns and sub-machine-guns, the ability to dual-wield pistols and perhaps the best shotgun since Doom, which can take a generous 12 cartridges. If you’ve got a number of enemies close to you, pulling the left bumper to slow down time, then fragging them in slow-motion explosions of gore is deeply satisfying. The shotgun loses its effectiveness at a distance, but there’s a decent sniper rifle. And plenty of explosives – using up on the D-pad, you can switch between grenades, disc-shaped proximity mines and remote-controlled sticky bombs. The latter take up your right hand, as a trigger device replaces whatever gun you were holding.

As with the other versions of the game, F.E.A.R’s control system is exemplary – smooth, well fettled, logical and accurate. You can jump back into levels you’ve completed, there’s an Instant Action mode (new for the PS3), which pitches you into some of the fiercest battles of the game, to see how long you can survive and, hurrah, Multiplayer. Unfortunately, we haven’t had a chance to play it online, but you will be able to do so in March.

F.E.A.R isn’t going to win any prizes as a top PS3 game, but it does at least give PS3 owners a hardcore, challenging first-person shooter as an alternative to Resistance, and it will please those who love first-person shooters and don’t own an Xbox 360. Solid rather than essential.

By Steve Boxer

Three Speech bounces back to PS3’s 3Rooms venue in east London on March 13 (early evening onwards). Post the Games Developers Conference in San Francisco and just prior to the European launch of the PS3, there should be plenty to discuss and show off.

We’ll load up more details of the event as soon as they’re pinned down. Meantime, we’d like those who’re interested in attending to drop us an email. Travel and accomodation costs will be covered for those coming from outside of London (sorry, but only for those within the UK). Those who didn’t attend gthe previos Three Speech event will have priority this time around.

blog@threespeech.com

Here’s the vid from our last event -

Play Quicktime version

Yup, as per the rumours, the first 500,000 people who register their PS3 in Europe will get a copy of Casino Royale on Blu-ray (a 50GB dual-layer Blu-ray disc encoded in 1080P High Definition AVC, to be incredibly precise!).

Explaining the offer, Darren Carter, VP Brand and Consumer Marketing said, “The PLAYSTATION®Network unlocks the broad range of interactive entertainment features of PLAYSTATION 3. It’s easy to set up, offers free online gaming, has great tools for staying in touch with friends and family, and includes a wide variety of content for download through the PLAYSTATION®Store.”

“All this, and more, will enable users to experience a whole new world of interactive entertainment, and that is why we are offering the phenomenal incentive of Casino Royale, on Blu-ray disc, to PS3 owners who register on the PLAYSTATION®Network. Casino Royale not only makes the most of the features and capabilities of the Blu-ray format, but is one of the most exciting and entertaining movies to debut on Blu-ray this year.”

And here’s some more info that will be of interest -

* Don’t assume that because you’ve pre-registered via the website for Player ID that you will automatically be signed up for the Casino Royale Promotion. To get Casino Royale you must connect your PS3 to the network and register your console.

* There will be no extra copies of Casino Royale available if demand exceeds 500,000.

* If you live in France, Italy or Benelux you’ll receive your copy shortly after the movie is launched in your particular territory.

Thank you Tom Eccles for your overview of pre-order availability…

Places taking pre-orders NOW:

- Play.com - Bundle with 3 games @ £549.99
- Gamestation - £424.99

*Please note these two have been available for quite a while - therefore it is likely that there may be a large queue.

- HMV.co.uk - 5000 bundles on sale, PSP (2 games and 4gb memory stick) + PS3 pre-order = £674.99 (HMV are also taking pre-orders in store! £100 deposit required).
- Argos.co.uk - are now taking pre-orders! £424.99.

Places taking registration for pre-order notification:

- HMV.co.uk
- Currys.co.uk
- PCworld.co.uk
- Dixons.co.uk
- Game.co.uk
- Amazon.co.uk
- Argos.co.uk
- ToysRUs
- Littlewoods.com
- Comet.co.uk
- Gameplay.co.uk
- Woolworths.co.uk

Let us know if you hear of anymore!

There was some debate yesterday on Three Speech about whether or not Sony has any comment on the current “solid” rumors by Luke Smith from 1UP and CVG regarding Killzone being shown at GDC next month, possibly with a playable demo. The response is:

“No, Killzone won’t be at GDC at all,” stated SCEA Manager, Ryan Bowling, in a conversation with IGN held yesterday afternoon. “The time for that game is coming and we’ll have new information about it in the future, but not at GDC.”

Full article: http://uk.ps3.ign.com/articles/762/762629p1.html

The PS3’s launch day is getting close. So close that retailers are discovering how many units they’ll have to sell. And that means that they’re beginning to offer forward thinking customers the chance to pre-order a machine, so they have a good chance of getting it on or close to the magic first day of release.

And it also means that the bundle is coming.

Taking advantage of low stock and high demand, many retailers use console launches as opportunities for selling as many related products as they can. HMV.co.uk announced on an email sent out to its customers last Friday that the only way they could pre-order a PS3 is by buying its special PSP bundle, costing £674.99. You get a PSP, a 4Gb Memory Stick, two games, and a PS3. With outcry from other retailers, HMV has now opened up pre-orders without bundles.

Meanwhile, Play has announced its own bundle, again, the only way of pre-ordering the PS3, costing £524.99, which includes three games – Formula One, Genji and Resistance: Fall of Man.

The PS3 launch in the US saw some much more – shall we say – imaginative deals. The only way to pre-order a 20Gb PS3 at GameStop in mid-November was to buy a bundle that included an extra controller, six games, a one-year product replacement plan, a year subscription to Game Informer magazine and a Resistance strategy guide for $994.28 (plus tax). That’s a lot of stuff that you might not necessarily want.
Read more…

It may strike you as being a niche product that doesn’t sound as though it would be one of the killer games the PlayStation 3 so desperately seeks, but Formula One Championship Edition is nevertheless one of the very best launch PS3 titles and dedicated petrolheads, at least, should start to get pretty excited about it.

After our visit to developer Sony Liverpool, we posted video showing the game’s most obvious talking points – its lush rain and dawn lighting effects, the next-gen AI and the jump-in multiplayer games – but what is it actually like to play?

Structurally, it offers few surprises, which is what you would expect from a Formula One game; after all, you want the experience to be as much like the real thing as possible, and because F1CE is a next-gen game, it offers more realism than you will ever have experienced in an F1 game (even those made by the legendary Geoff Crammond). So when you jump into the game, you can opt for a Quick Race, a Time Trial, a Grand Prix Weekend, a World Championship or a Career.
Read more…

For all those that have been desperate to get your hands on a PS3 before launch, perhaps you’ve been looking in the wrong places… Sony are sponsoring a production of Puccini’s La Boheme and will have a PlayStation 3 in the foyer of the London Coliseum for attendees to test out the latest games. For those a little confused to why, here’s the explanation:

“We don’t want the PS3 to be pigeon-holed as a video game console,” Carl Christopher from Sony PlayStation UK, told The Times. “We want people to look at PlayStation as a brand in a different way.”

We’re pretty sure it will offer a new dimension to Resistance Fall Of Man.

For the full article: http://gaming.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=7802

Negative Fanboyism - time to give it the boot?

It’s human nature to favour the things we admire most in life, whether it’s a particular make of car, a rock band, a certain operating system or a football team. Most of us are fanboys of something or other, even if we don’t always admit it. And there’s nothing really wrong with that. After all, it’s only a positive thing, and something companies fight hardest for - brand loyalty, the holy grail of marketing.

The gaming community has often been the setting for fierce brand loyalty – largely, it has to be said, dictated by sheer economics (let’s be honest, not everyone can afford to own all of the next-gen consoles at the same time). Over recent years, this has turned the market into an increasingly tribal arena, giving birth to what we now see on almost every gaming site you go on, ‘negative fanboyism’.
Read more…