Tyris Flare. One my many childhood girlfriends is coming back this year. Countless hours have been spent in my 1980s playing Sega Genesis with Tyris and company riding beasts and doing that double sword slash, double sword hilt skull crack, kick combo. And if you were feeling particularly cheeky you’d pick them up and bodyslam them into the dirt. Not only that but you could kick little gnomes around and they’d drop magical potions that you’d collect to unleash your super elemental attack of destruction. Really. Be it lightning, earthquakes or my personal favorite: Tyris Flare’s dragon summon that set all in view into an incinerating pyre.
The joys of my youth return this year in next-gen bliss with Golden Axe: Beast Rider. You can have your Halos and your Marios and your GTAs. Dibs on Tyris. The horrendous internet rumor that claimed that Beast Rider was a 360 exclusive was thankfully debunked and the official website even sports a Playstation 3 logo found here. Tyris is looking a little more hardcore this time around. I think they updated her look to keep her from appearing too Red Sonja. Now it seems they’ve injected her with a little God of War in playstyle and aesthetics, which sounds like a good thing to me. Tyris, you’ve come a long way, baby.
Tyris Flare circa 1989
The title is going to rock some M-Rated content with plenty of politician provoking sexploitation and ultra-violence. As any good barbarian themed entertainment piece should. I began to see what direction they were going to take the game when I saw the following screenshot. There is like, a person fountain standing there missing half of their body parts. I am thoroughly and decidedly stoked.
Oh yeah, RUMBLE SHOCK! At least that’s what I’ve always called it. DualShock as you probably know it is back now on the Playstation 3. Among some gripes about some development decisions over at Sony, the choice to omit DualShock at launch for their next-gen, now current-gen, console was one of them. Rumbling always was a welcome surprise that added that extra sensation when getting stabbed by a faceless nurse in an abandoned hospital hallway. Or when your buddy lands that 8-hit combo and you see your character’s ribs get pulverized accompanied by tumultuous controller tremors. All fears are now alleviated this April in Metal Gear Solid 4, Devil May Cry 4 and more to be announced all in force feedback righteousness.
Now it would seem that the perfect videogame controller is within reach. My decision to purchase a PS3 over its competitors came down to a factor as simple as controller design. It had nothing to do with Sony fanboyism or Microsoft hatred. Neither of which I hold. It was simply a matter of a superior control pad. During every generation of videogame consoling, most developers take their controllers back to formula in effort to reinvent the wheel in futility. There’s a reason the Playstation controller has stayed essentially the same ever since generation 1. There’s not much room for improvement when it’s near perfection. Maybe make them black…with rumble…and wireless with a USB charge. I give you the Dualshock 3.
Images are pouring in along with a look at tons of extras for Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots scheduled to launch June 12, 2008. Last week Konami announced that some key features had to be removed because the game could not fit on a 50gig Blu-ray disc. This week was the annoucement of a special Limited Edition ‘Steel Green’ PlayStation 3 and matching Dualshock 3 control. There is no SIXAXIS standard controller in this package. So it’s clear to say that MSG 4 will be full rumbling goodness.
At this point everyone should be well aware that Soul Calibur 4 is going to be a Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 exclusive game. And most controversial is the exclusive characters for each version. While Playstation 3 gamers get ready for a June, 24th release and get to wield the powers of the dark side they are sad left in the cold with no Yoda love. Or are they… (more…)
Nintendo’s release of Super Smash Bros. Brawl made it a truly Nintendo weekend. It came to no surprise that Sony would release their tentative title list with dates reaching as far ahead as 2010. Note that these are tentative release dates and are subject to change. Release dates change on a daily basis, so be sure to call your gaming store to make sure the game you’re looking for is available (TBA means no release date has been determined yet). (more…)
SCEA(Sony Corp. Entertainment America) has announced the all the good stuff including a full vehicle roster, track Listing, and much more. With this announcement came the price point and release date. You will be able to purchase and download the game from the Playstation store on April 17th for $39.99 or on Blu-ray. (more…)
Recently Terra Soft released Yellow Dog Linux v6.0 for the Sony PS3 (and other products). Yellow dog was built upon the CentOS foundation, a popular derivative of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Yellow Dog Linux v6.0 supports:
- Sony PS3.
- Apple PowerPC G4, G5.
- IBM System p (JS2x, 510, 520, 540).
- 802.11b Airport auto-configuration; Extreme with configuration.
- Audio on all tested machines.
- Sony PS3 Sixaxis game controller.
- Cell phone internet connections with configuration.
Yellow Dog Linux v6.0 key features:
- E17 & Gnome installed by default, KDE included.
- Gnash, the Flash work-alike.
- Ekiga VoIP, Pidgin IM/IRC, and Fluendo codec installer.
- kernel v2.6.23, gcc v4.1.1, gblic v2.5, and Eclipse v3.2.2
- The only Linux distribution to include by default Cell SDK v3.0.
- IBM iRT (interactive raytrace) demo available via YDL.net Enhanced.
The release also gives you some information about installation and default apps…
The YDL installer enables anyone to install Linux. Post-install, the default application set includes the Firefox web browser, Thunderbird email client, Pidgin IM/IRC client, Ekiga Voice over IP phone application, OpenOffice, gThumb and GIMP, RythmBox Music Player, games, multimedia applications, and a suite of personal accessories. Development and server tools are available from the custom installation menus.
Yellow Dog Linux v6.0 is available via YDL.net Enhanced accounts which you can get at their store.
Wait… did I just say install time… the PS3 is a console correct? Well, it appears that in order to play DMC4 your required to install roughly 5GB of data onto your hard drive the first time you boot up the game.
Chris Kramer recently posted over at the Capcom blog about the unexpected 5GB install for DMC4. In his post he says that the data is needed in order to play the game, but he says that it’s just the one time install and will result in “near-Super Nintendo speed load times”.
If you don’t want to watch the “Previously, on Devil May Cry…” portion of the install process, go make a sandwich and grab a soda, then come on back. You’re going to be spending some serious time with this game, and we don’t want you going hungry. Low blood sugar will make you dizzy and you’ll need to be focused like an Alan Parsons Project to defeat the enemies in this game.
Wah! The game takes 20 minutes to install the first time. Wah! Have you ever played a PC game? At least we aren’t making you shuffle multiple discs into a ROM drive, or continuously click “Yes!” on a series of endless Windows dialog boxes. Installing on a console may seem like a weird idea, but there’s a real benefit. Unreal Tournament also has an option to install files onto your PS3; I’ve done it and it makes a great game even better.
Personally, I’ve not played DMC4 yet… but when I do you won’t hear me complaining. Sure you’ll spend 20 minutes of install time in the beginning… but how much time are you going to save if the load times are as fast as Kramer says they are? In my opinion… much more than 20 mintues.
So, what are your thoughts on having to install 5GB worth of data to your PS3 hard drive?
