Either the levels need a certain amount of time in the system before they are available to search for or the search needs a LOT of work. I’m leaning toward the later. You can’t even search by author or the full title of the level. I hope they fix this soon, it’s very annoying. Rant over.

Tags: PS3, PLAYSTATION 3, LittleBigPlanet Search

Sonic Unleashed is a game full of duality. The Hedgehog levels are a lot of fun, and the controls accentuate that. On the flip-side, the Werehog levels are riddled with frustratingly boring combat and gameplay. It never helps that the game can’t let go of its ridiculously dumb story.

They completely removed the health bar and the ammo/weapon management. There are no maze elements to navigating the levels and the game purposefully doesn’t let you back-track so that players don’t get lost and frustrated. They loaded the game with tons of auto-checkpoints that neatly separate the action into distinct battles so there is almost never any forced replay. They also loaded the game with variety (the visuals, enemies, weapons, and combat change quite a bit throughout the game) to eliminate complaints of repetition.

All of these changes were made very purposefully and probably came from extensive user feedback studies and focus group testing. The problem is that all of these changes really dumbed down the experience. I felt more like I was passively moving through a scripted semi-interactive tech demo than actually playing a game.

Resistance 2 was still a lot of fun, the giant fire fights didn’t have this overly scripted feel to them (they’re still linear, but they felt very interactive), and this game isn’t the only one with this problem. Call of Duty 4 (single player), for example, was worse. It felt every bit as blatantly scripted and forced and linear, but lacked many of the cool highlights of Resistance 2. (BTW, I feel more comfortable criticizing Insomniac’s games, because I’ve been such a big fan, where CoD4, I didn’t want to rain on everyone else’s parade.)

Also, Uncharted, Bioshock, Ratchet & Clank, Dead Space, God of War, Manhunt (only mentioning PS2/PS3 titles): these are some of my favorite games from the past few years, but they all fall into this category: heavily scripted, produced, and completely linear experiences. Even as the developers are getting better and better of making this style of game, and as much as I love the mentioned games, and admire the work that went into them, I feel like the general structure and formula is really wearing thin.

So what else should games do? From the little I’ve played of Far Cry 2, that’s a good example of what I don’t want: the same linear game play with a repetitive quest/hub/navigation system thrown on top of it. Games need to develop new hooks: something that makes them fun and addicting beyond merely shooting/dodging and clearing gorgeous levels.

So what do you think? Are you fine with bigger and better versions of games like Uncharted and God Of War or are you getting a little tired of that formula (or a little of both)? Do you think this type of game has passed it’s peak?

• 10 new levels
• Map reverse - press X while playing
• Best jump record - when jumping in the air - jump length will be count.
• Car skins - dress car in some nice skin(skins can be easily add by user )
• 2.5 D - no more flat 2D we are going in 2.5D

As if releasing the soundtrack to the new Street Fighter HD Remix for free weren’t enough, now Capcom has revealed another juicy bit of Street Fighter paraphernalia for you fans out there. Apparently, some DLC for Little Big Planet is in the pipeline now which features some adorable Street Fighter costumes for your little sackboy/girl. There will be four costumes modeled after Chun-Li, Guile, Zangief, and Ryu. No word yet on whether the costumes will grant you special “Shoryuken” or “Sonic Boom” powers.

The costumes are cool enough, but what I really can’t wait for are the inevitable Street Fighter-based levels that will have you pitting your sackpeople against each other. Sure, they’ll last about ten minutes before the copyright gurus strip them down, but oh, what a wonderful ten minutes that would be.

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Related Articles at Gaming Today:

• Homemade Sackboy From Little Big Planet is Adorable
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• Avoid Wheels of Doom in Little Big Planet At All Costs
• Street Fighter 4 Scans Reveal Mysterious Female Character
• New Street Fighter Action Figures

Runwalker has updated the Runes of Magic website with a detailed entry on the crafting system. The categories are what you expect for an MMO with both hunting and gathering professions as well as crafting professions. Each profession has four levels of mastery: apprentice, craftsman, specialist and master. What puts a spin on the regular MMO crafting systems is that players are entitled to learn any and all professions before choosing one to master. Here’s the break down. You can be an apprentice of all trades, craftsmen of six, specialist in three and Master one.

Advantages given to crafters are the ability to find recipes for epic items and improve items by adding runes or jewels. For the minute details read the full entry on the Runes of Magic website.

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Related Articles at Gaming Today:

• Runes of Magic Devs Open Registration for Closed Beta
• 'Runes of Avalon' Ported To Linux Finally
• LotRO Draznar's Crafting Guide & FAQ
• Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis Announced For PS2
• Warhammer Age of Reckoning Craft System Revealed

Surrender your sanity to Jason Nelson in IMTYPTWAE originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 01 Dec 2008 11:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I know what you’re thinking: Super Stardust HD is a dual-stick shooter, right? Well just how in the heck do they plan on bringing that type of gameplay onto a system with a single analog nub? And furthermore, playing Stardust at 1080p on my PS3 for extended sessions is akin to staring directly into the sun for a few hours. How can my retinas possibly withstand a similar assault from the PSP’s questionable new screen?

While we here at TVGB are very accurate mind readers, we’re unfortunately not qualified to offer advice on retinal care. We can, however, provide some details on how Super Stardust’s gameplay translates to the PSP. Over at PlayStation.Blog, the lead programmer on Super Stardust Portable discusses the decision to map ship movement to the analog stick and shooting to the face buttons, with the game interpolating the shooting direction when needed. The controls are also completely configurable, so you’ll have the freedom to experiment if the default control scheme isn’t to your liking.

Super Stardust Portable will be available on the PlayStation Store this Thursday, Dec. 4th. Click on for a list of features exclusive to the PSP version.

From PlayStation.Blog:

• A completely new mode: Impact. In impact mode you cannot shoot, just bomb and boost. The boost is a bit different in this mode in that when you boost through something, you receive more boost energy and your multiplier goes up at the same time (max 100x), so the key to high scores is to chain your boosts into as long as you can and to collect points with huge multipliers.
• A new final boss: One complaint on the PS3 version was that the final boss was way too easy. I should warn you that your first meeting with Professor Schaumunds’ new machine of destruction could leave a bit of something in you pants.
• Even more intense gameplay. We still have a casual mode that is suitable for everyone, but one thing we found out about the PS3 version is that for the best players it takes hours and hours to complete the arcade game. For this version we have upped the difficulty curve too after a few of the first difficulty levels. This is a portable game, you shouldn’t have to play a day to get challenged in the game even if you are that good.

EVE Evolved: Exploring New Eden originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 30 Nov 2008 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Left 4 Dead movie posters available from Valve originally appeared on Xbox 360 Fanboy on Sun, 30 Nov 2008 18:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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