-Costume Quest (Full Game) – $7.49

-Costume Quest: Grubbins on Ice DLC – $2.49

-Stacking (Full Game) – $7.49

-Stacking: The Lost Hobo King DLC – $2.49

-Red Faction: Guerrilla (Full Game) – $9.99

-Red Faction: Guerrilla – Demons of the Badlands DLC – $4.99

-Red Faction: Guerrilla – Multiplayer Pack DLC – $3.49

-Red Faction: Guerrilla – Smasher Pack DLC – $2.49

-WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2011 PSP (Full Game) – $19.99

-UFC Undisputed 2010 PSP (Full Game) – $19.99

-MX vs. ATV: Reflex PSP (Full Game) – $14.99

-MX vs. ATV: Untamed PSP (Full Game) – $9.99

-WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2011 PS3 – WWE Discount Pack 1 DLC – $3.49

-WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2011 PS3 – WWE Discount Pack 2 DLC – $1.49

-WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2011 PS3 -Fan Axxess DLC – $4.99

-MX vs. ATV: Reflex PS3 – Track Pack 1 – $0.99

-MX vs. ATV: Reflex PS3 – Track Pack 2 – $0.99

-Red Faction: Battlegrounds (Full Game) – $4.99

-Red Faction: Battlegrounds Armageddon Pack DLC – $1.49

-Red Faction: Battlegrounds Origin Pack DLC – $1.49

-Saints Row 2: Ultor Exposed DLC – $4.99

-Saints Row 2: Corporate Warfare DLC – $3.49

-UFC Undisputed 2010 PS3 TUF Pack DLC – $0.99

-You Don’t Know Jack: Jack Pack 1 DLC – $2.49

-You Don’t Know Jack: Jack Pack 2 DLC – $2.49

-You Don’t Know Jack: Jack Pack 3 DLC – $2.49

-You Don’t Know Jack: Jack Pack 4 DLC – $2.49

So get crackin’…..it’ll be August before you know it!

“Sony were very approachable and very developer friendly (are you reading this Nintendo?!) with us, and with other developers I spoke to. Hell – they even loaned us the PSP dev-kits!” said Hill-Whittall in the post. When I emailed Hill-Whittall and asked about differences in development between PSP and Nintendo, he said that the submission processes for Sony and WiiWare are very similar and even obtaining dev kits for either platform isn’t the problem. “Nintendo are just not very switched on when it comes to downloadable titles – especially Wiiware; I think essentially they are living in the past and applying old defunct ideology to the development and publishing of download titles.”

Further to this he added “They do not make anything of the key features of digital downloads – such as regular updating, price drops, sales, promotions – instead they designed this super rigid system that is even less flexible than retail!” He also voiced his scepticism when asked about WiiWare’s future as a platform. “WiiWares (sic) future? Pretty much none unless they make some big changes, which they won’t.”

In contrast to the harsh criticism of WiiWare, Hill-Whittall mentioned in his blog post that the profit margins for the company’s Minis titles have been mostly exceeding expectations with the only exception being Soccer Bashi which has been deemed “a total failure” selling only 420 units in PAL territories and 600 units in NTSC territories. “…the losses we’ve made with this are frightening. Moral of the story I think is don’t do a retro block breaker unless you really revolutionise the genre or make it really cheap!”

In closing, Hill-Whittall responded to my questions regarding the future of Minis games and the experience of working with SCEA and SCEE. Within his post he said, “There also seemed to be a marked difference in approach and enthusiasm for the Minis program between SCEE and SCEA, with SCEE very positive and pro-active with Minis and SCEA much less so.” When asked whether he could provide additional details regarding Icon’s relationship with SCEA and SCEE, he said “I won’t really comment on SCEA – but SCEE were great; They leant us the PSP dev kits which was a big cash-flow help, they promoted the games well before launch, they were always very prompt and responsive with any help requests and they were just very positive about Minis which made it really exciting to work on them.”

Regarding the future of Minis, Hill-Whittall added, “The Minis on the other hand have a much brighter future [compared to WiiWare]; such as Vita emulation. I’d say there’s a fair bit of life left in Minis.”

Considering the $20 million investment initiative that Sony announced previously, the future of Sony offerings, including PSP Minis, could be very bright indeed. Also here’s hoping that Richard Hill-Whittall continues to be this outspoken with respect to platform development.

Sources: Icon Games Blog Post and Gamasutra

According to Spanish police, one of the men had a computer server in his apartment in the northern city of Gijón. Using this server the group launched attacks on PSN as well as two Spanish banks, BBVA and Bankia. The list of hacks also includes the Italian energy company Enel, and government sites in Spain, Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Iran, Chile, Colombia, and New Zealand.

Police also stated that their investigation lead them to analyze more than 2 million lines of chat logs since October in an attempt to identify Anonymous’s leadership in Spain. At this time there is no information regarding whether these three guys are tied to the group known as Lulz Security, which is responsible for the Sony Pictures site hack that occurred this month.

If these accusations prove to be true, these three are looking at some serious jail time and a mountain of fines. More on this as it develops.

Source: New York Times

Of course the news isn’t all bad for Sony, as the company has recently stated that its projected profits for fiscal year 2012 will be $975 million. Sony has also reported that the Japanese earthquake has resulted in $274 million in charges with an additional $63 million in sales also lost during that period. Some of those costs will be covered by insurance says Sony.

Even with these hard numbers its still difficult to say what will happen to Sony long term with respect to consumer confidence in the brand. While Sony is expecting a downturn over the next year, how severe that slide is remains to be seen.

Source: Mashable

Rather than summarize these I’ve decided to reprint them in full because I think you’ll all be able to better appreciate the impact they’re going for:

-          The game will be released in July 2011.

-          An original Grip Games’title, exclusive to the PlayStation® Network.

-          As epic game as minis games can get.

You know I hate to say it, but Grip is certainly leaving a lot of room for disappointment here. I mean, with such gratuitous use of the word epic in this context this game had better be nothing short of spectacular. Man, had to prevent myself from saying epic there and using ellipses. We’ll update you as we find out more.

The memo also lays out a tentative store update schedule. As you all are probably aware, PSN has missed a few weeks worth of store updates which also includes the release of content from developers. Rather than update the store with all of the content at once, Sony is going to be releasing that stuff in chunks with the first chunk to coincide with the re-opening of the store. Additionally, Sony is prioritizing the list based on the importance of the releases and is willing to do this on a “case by case basis” as stated by PSN content manager Jack Orsorno in the memo. According to the memo, the first content drop will send out everything that was originally scheduled for the April 26th store update. On May 27th the second batch of content will be uploaded to the store to make up for the May 3rd missed date.

I for one couldn’t be more excited to finally be able to redeem my online pass for MK and maybe also download some new characters for the game. Also we will probably all have our chance to go nuts on the Welcome Back stuff which Sony will release at somepoint. What have you guys been looking forward to buying once the store comes back online?

Source: Gamasutra

You know this whole PSN outage and hack incident is approaching the level of “Leave PSN Alone!!!” internet meme territory. Eurogamer has reported on a hack which was demonstrated to them live and first reported by gaming website, Nyleveia. The hack takes advantage of an exploit in Sony’s password recovery architecture. Basically, all a hacker would need is your email address and your date of birth in order to hijack your account. The good news is that Nyleveia has already contacted SCEE about the exploit and the account servers have been taken offline presumably to fix it. I must admit that this is actually a bit confusing so I’m going to link to both the Eurogamer and Nyleveia articles. Additionally, Nyleveia has posted several updates to the story with the most recent being a list of commonly asked questions.

UPDATE 5: Okay, due to the email response I felt i should answer some general common questions regarding the topic.

Q. If I already reset my password am I safe?
A. The exploit was possible on any account the email and date of birth was known for, regardless of if the password was changed or not, or what region the account was tied to.

Q. What if they don’t know my Date of Birth or Email account?
A. Then the average user would not be able to take your account, however due to the database being illegally accessed in April, it’s safe to assume that someone, somewhere, has access to a large number of users details, which include date of birth and email addresses, this alone should be reason enough to change your email.

Q. Are you sure this is real?
A. Yes, it was demonstrated to one of our empty accounts, then we were able to repeat the process ourselves after figuring out the method, this was additionally confirmed when a twitter user provided us with his data and requested that we change his password as proof.
We have since emailed him his new password, and no other data on his account was changed.

Q. Can Sony fix it?
A. Shortly after containing SCEE, the online forms connected to login and password recovery for the PlayStation and other linked networks was shut down and placed in a maintenance mode, I can only assume this is a direct response to our detailed reports to SCEE, with that said, I assume that when services resume the exploit will be patched and everyone’s data once again safe.

Q. If Sony fixes the hole should I worry?
A. I would suggest that everyone, regardless of if they have been affected or not, create a new password and change their account email to one they do not use anywhere else, and will not be sharing with anyone else just for additional security.

Q. Will you give us more details on the exploit?
A. Until we have confirmed that the security hole has been patched we will not release further details on how and why the exploit was possible.

Source: Nyleveia

According to Eurogamer’s follow-up with Sony, this exploit affects logins to PSN accounts via websites. Therefore, logging into your account on your PS3 or PSP should still work fine, but anyone trying to change their passwords via the web will be unable to do so as the servers are offline.

“Unfortunately this also means that those who are still trying to change their password via Playstation.com or Qriocity.com will be unable to do so for the time being,” Sony said. “This is due to essential maintenance and at present it is unclear how long this will take.”

The representative from Sony further added, “In the meantime you will still be able to sign into PSN via your PlayStation 3 and PSP devices to connect to game services and view Trophy/Friends information.”

More on this as it happens.

“This was an unprecedented situation,” said Stringer. “Most of these breaches go unreported by companies. Forty-three percent notify victims within a month. We reported in a week. You’re telling me my week wasn’t fast enough?”

At the moment, its difficult to verify the statistics which Stringer is quoting. Regardless, Stringer’s comments to reporters represent an about-face from the tone of his open letter to Sony customers posted May 5th on the Playstation Blog. Stringer also took the time to address issues regarding Kazuo Hirai’s future within the company as well as the financial cost to Sony.

On the subject of Hirai Stringer said, “”I think his leadership has been very helpful and very demonstrative and I’m endorsing him.” He added “This is his environment, his people, his intimate relationships with PlayStation subscribers and they like him.”

As to the amount that this is going to cost Sony, Stringer was unable to give an estimate.  ”There’s a charge for the system being down … a charge for identity theft insurance. The charges mount up, but they don’t add up to a number we can quantify just yet.”

Source: Reuters

I’m delighted to report that ClaDun x2, the sequel to one of my favorite PSP games, will be coming stateside this summer. I spent upwards of 20 hours playing the first game and enjoyed every minute of it. Truth be told, there was still an infinite amount of gameplay to be had, but my website duties required me to shelf it in order to move on through other titles. One of the game’s coolest features was its pixel-by-pixel character creator, which led me to create this guy. X2 will improve upon the character editor by allowing you to change not only the head but also the body of your characters. You can also edit weapons and, what sounds like the coolest feature yet, the background music to the game. The first person to create a Guile’s theme loop and send it to me will get whatever I have to give away. Check out some concept art of the different classes in the game. That sword-wielding mage looks pretty sweet.

Along with an entirely new campaign through an alternate version of Arcanus Cella, there are Ran-geons, New-geons, and Tri-geons to crawl through for dozens and dozens of hours on end. It looks as if the Magic Circle system is back, which is good news. However, it looks like X2 only supports 2 players as opposed to the 4 that the first one supported.
Here’s what looks like your cast of core characters:

I guess Crosstine, the cat of noble bloodline, has been replaced by a dog this time around. I’m sure this game is going to be great. Look for more info in the coming months. I’m looking forward to it like whoa. There’s a demo on the JP Store. If the PSN Store ever goes back up, hop on and check it out!

That’s right, the next Worms game will be released through the PlayStation Network for the PSP. Worms: Battle Islands is more than a portable version of the same old Worms action. The game has a bunch of new features, including a new multiplayer mode: Tactics.

In Tactics Mode, the player takes control of their very own Secret Island Base made up of many different islands, each island imparting a tactical advantage for the player to use at the beginning of a game. For example, the player could recon a battlefield before the war commences, or snipe an enemy worm to gain the upper hand; each one of the 16 islands available in game can be used to compliment the player’s individual play style. Take the fight online and, should you be victorious, you will have the opportunity to steal an item from your opponent’s island for your own personal use!

A few other features include a highly detailed weapon editor, a player ranking system and experience-points based unlockables.

Take a look at the screens we got for the game.

PS3
Fat Princess – $7.49 sale; $14.99 reg.
PixelJunk Shooter – $4.99 sale; $9.99 reg.
Groovin’ Blocks – $7.49 sale; $14.99 reg.
Madden NFL Arcade – $7.49 sale; $14.99 reg.
Wakeboarding HD – $7.49 sale; $14.99 reg.

PSP
The Eye of Judgment Legends – $14.99 sale; $29.99 reg.
echoshift – $7.49 sale; $14.99 reg.
Patchwork Heroes – $4.99 sale; $9.99 reg.
Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars – $14.99 sale; $29.99 reg.
Lunar Silver Star Harmony – $14.99 sale; $29.99 reg.

minis
Tetris – $4.99 sale; $9.99 reg.
Dracula Undead Awakenings – $2.49 sale; $4.99 reg.
Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess – $2.49 sale; $4.99 reg.
Zombie Tycoon – $2.49 sale; $4.99 reg.
Bloons – $1.49 sale; $2.99 reg.

From the list, I highly recommend:
Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess – 3 words: Precision platforming excellence.
PixelJunk Shooter – After beating the game pretty quickly, I wasn’t sure it was lengthy enough to warrant a $10 price tag, but $5 is a definite pick up.
Fat Princess – It gets continued support and I’m looking to get back into it, so pick it up and invite me to a game.

I’m thinking about:
Groovin’ Blocks – I loved Lumines, and I love rhythm based games (currently playing Space Channel 5). However, I didn’t like Columns too much at all. I’m still thinking about picking this one up.
Eye of Judgment – I own the PS3 version and have never set it up to actually play it. A portable version without the set-up hassle sounds pretty good, but for $15?

Well then, what will you be picking up this week?

Some screens:

The game touts 35 challenging levels and a PSP-exclusive Survivor Mode. The in-game Level Editor is still present and allows players to upload levels and share them with others. Hopefully the game is as fun as its PSN counterpart.

[Source: Twitter ]

What I Liked:

• Great fun, with a price that suits the length

• Fantastic Atmosphere, and video that makes the game great
• Extra content, combined with a cliff-hanger ending that makes this game feel like part of a larger project.

What I Disliked:

• If you don’t like extended quick time events, and hate full motion video, you aren’t going to like this game

So, who here likes Dragons’ Lair? Just a few of you then? Well, you can stay, because you’re exactly the type of person who is bound to enjoy Hysteria Project, the third Mini from Sanuk Games. Hysteria Project feels like part of a bygone era, where games like Dragons’ Lair, Space Ace and… Night Trap ruled the gaming world. Whilst the genre (and the Sega CD) may have long since been relegated to a distant dream in recent memory, Hysteria Project bursts onto the scene with a great little tale about a man in a forest being chased by an Axe Murderer. So, business as usual then.

Hysteria Project is very much a guilty pleasure, as the full motion video, combined with the creepy atmosphere make it a game that you can get through in one sitting, in part due to the length of the game (roughly half an hour), and in part due to the fact that the game is just straight up fun. It’s certainly been a while since I’ve replayed a game twice in one sitting, and Hysteria project was just so good that I wanted to experience it over and over again.

The game itself may not be for everyone, but the price tag, combined with just how entertaining the game is, make Hysteria Project a Mini that I recommend you buy as quickly as possible. It’s just that good.

What I Liked:

• Retro graphics have some charm to them
• Music is all kinds of wonderful
• Control scheme serves the game well

What I Disliked:

• The game is far too short, considering it’s price tag
• No idea what is going on, story wise.

NormalTanks is an arcade shooter, featuring a top-down perspective and 8 levels in which you essentially blast your enemies to kingdom come, in a wide variety of settings. NormalTanks is the third mini from Beatshapers, the same folk that brought us minis such as BreakQuest and MelodyBloxx, and it continues their tradition of forgetting to put spaces in the titles of their games before sending them off to marketing. It also continues the tradition of their games being rather good, which is a far better tradition to follow, if you ask me.

NormalTanks’ best asset is its retro charm, with great looking sprites combining with wonderful music to create the atmosphere of a lost retro treasure. And as with most retro games, the concept is devilishly simple. You play as a tank, and you have to reach the end of one of 8 stages, defeat a boss, and defeat an alien menace. Not that you’d know that there was an alien menace until the name of the last stage flashes up on screen. It seems that the developer elected to drop the player straight in to the action, rather that choosing to explain what was going on beforehand, you are treated to, upon completion of the game, a lovely text scroll, explaining that you have defeated the aliens, and that you are, of course, a hero. Lovely stuff, I’m sure, but I would have appreciated knowing at least some of this beforehand, though I suppose that’s just my personal preference.

NormalTanks plays exactly how the screen shots would lead you to believe. You control the tank (or, in stage 7, the mech) with the D-pad, whilst the face buttons control the angle of the gun, with the L and R triggers changing and firing your weapons respectively. That only leaves the analogue stick, which the game elects to use as a sort of manual auto-aim. Whilst that sounds completely bizarre, allow me to explain. You simply hold the stick in the rough direction of an enemy, and your turret will do the rest of the tracking. It works very well in practice as the digital control of the turret via the face buttons is all but useless due to the faster moving smaller enemies, but when I was playing the game on the PSP, my awkward hand position whilst playing the game made it hard to control on the portable platform. I then switched over to the PS3, and the game controlled as smooth as was possible, and I no longer needed to worry about either my hands cramping up, or in fact blocking the actual screen.

Not that I would have needed to worry for long. For its price, NormalTanks is a bit too short for my liking. The single player campaign can be completed in around 45 minutes, and there is nothing else waiting for you on the main menu apart from other difficulty settings. Some kind of survival mode would have gone a long way towards extending the replayability of this title, but as it stands, £3.49 is a little bit steep for only 45 minutes of fun. Unless you play it once on each difficulty level, you’re going to have a hard time getting your money’s worth from this game.

NormalTanks is a good game, but the lack of features and dubious playability on the PSP mean that it should only be recommended to those of you that particularly enjoy arcade top-down shooters, and are perfectly unfazed with playing £3.49 for less than an hour of fun. And the game certainly is fun, for the time that it lasts.

Click Here to purchase NormalTanks from Amazon.com

What I liked:

• Fantastic production values and style.
• Simple, fun gameplay.
• A nice assortment of content with a variety of unlockables.

What I disliked:

• A few snags here and there with the controls, but nothing major.

Patchwork Heroes is the very definition of an excellent portable game—fun in small doses, addicting enough to try harder levels “just one more time,” and a really fun design that looks unlike anything else out there. What a wonderful little game this is.

You play as a small resistance fighter defending your hometown by climbing on top of massive incoming enemy warships and sawing off enough pieces until it eventually crashes. There are multiple types of enemies, but among the tools at your disposal are using bombs, gaining “mojo” to be invulnerable for a limited amount of time, stopping time and so on. There’s not really too much to the gameplay, though the game throws an assorted amount of challenge to different levels such as protecting certain parts of the ship, rescuing prisoners, and so on.

This game is not easy, though it does have an easy mode (which I never touched.) What really strikes me about the game is how charming it is…the music, the graphics, even down to all of the features this game has. For example, every ship has a number of prisoners you can rescue. After rescuing the prisoners you can go to a section of the menu to read up on all of them…or go to the “graveyard” and pay respect to those you didn’t rescue or were killed during the mission (which goes so far as to allow you to place flowers on their grave, revealing their face in the sky as a heavenly body as you salute them. Why? Well, why not?)

There are a few nitpicks I have with the game, like not being able (as far as I could tell) to permanently toggle the long-view camera instead of holding down the L button. The view is perfectly clear to use, even on the PSPgo screen, so I’m not sure why it’s not a selectable option. And while the way the menus animate is just neato, it makes navigating them slightly clunkier than most. The separate Challenge Mode doesn’t really challenge in some levels like the Story Mode does, as I was able to beat a few of them easily on the hardest difficulty. And I really wish the game would auto-complete easier difficulty levels if you complete them on a harder setting- for example, beating a challenge on hard gave me points, but I had to beat it on normal and easy as well to fully complete it.

Check out the demo on the PSP store, and if you dig the gameplay knowing that it just gets harder from there, I can tell you that it’s absolutely worth the $10. Sure it’s a little bit short (3-4 hours beating the single player, without unlocking the extras) but man, what a fun little game to have. If you have a PSP, you must check out this game.

Click Here to purchase Patchwork Heroes from Amazon.com