Today in Sony’s Japan event the company announced a new PlayStation Vita model (PCH-2000), yes, you read that right, even though it only came out almost a year ago. The new model has:
1GB internal storage for save games
A – from what I understood – HD LCD screen.
A myriad of colors including grey, pink, yellow, and white!
A lighter and thinner profile (20% thinner and 15% lighter)
Stay tuned for more information as it’s announced.
Edit: NEW GOD EATER!
Edit 2: Soul Sacrifice Delta! This is not an updated version it’s a completely new game with new items and battles, along with a third neutral force. Releasing March 2014.
Edit 3: Phantasy Star Nova, exclusively for the PSVita in 2014.
CES 2013 kicks off on January 8th yet that doesn’t stop Nvidia from doing their press conference today, and sadly I didn’t know about it until a little towards the end of the press conference.
Nvidia talked first about a new software solution for the PC called GFE which was pretty interesting. What GFE does is evaluate your computer’s hardware and set the game video settings for you automatically so that you have a smooth 60FPS without fiddling with nasty video settings all the time. This is particularly useful for the gamer migrating from consoles to PCs and that has little to no experience with optimising their gameplay. You get an Xbox or a PlayStation game, you pop it in your console and you expect it to work just outside of the box, that’s not the case for the PC though, unless you have the absolute best of the best, chances are, you WILL have to fiddle with video settings in order to get a stable frame rate, GFE transports the console experience to the PC that way, it just sets everything for you, now I’m a little low on the details since I read a live blog of this part of the conference so forgive me for the lack of more details.
Next thing Nvidia talked about was Nvidia Grid, and this is basically their cloud gaming solution, didn’t read a bunch about it and didn’t catch it on the live stream, but I’m assuming it would be a more successful version of OnLive.
Onto the good stuff, Nvidia announced Tegra 4. Tegra 4 is Nvidia’s newest system on chip solution for handheld devices (phones, tablets, and whatnot -> “Whatnot” will be explained momentarily) it has a whopping 72 GPU cores along with 4 A15 ARM processors, that’s power right there! They showed off some tests and benchmarks with a tablet running Tegra 4 and other tablets, including Google’s Nexus 10 and the iPad 4, needless to say, the Tegra 4 tablet blew past everything.
Now to the REALLY good stuff. Nvidia built this up for a while in the press conference and it was damn worth it. Using the Tegra 4 as driving force, Nvidia unveiled the Nvidia Shield!
The Nvidia Shield is Nvidia’s attempt at a handheld gaming console, and a pretty interesting attempt at that. It runs pure Android, no skinning, they just didn’t mention the version though I’m guessing Jelly Bean 4.2, it is built around a Tegra 4 though no mention was made of other hardware specs, it also has a 720p retinal display mounted on it, and it’s shaped like a controller, which I think is pretty epic, I like the design a lot, reminds me of another old controller shaped gaming handheld, but that sadly didn’t make it big (Can you guess what handheld I’m talking about?).
Nvidia showcased Shield a bit, showing the software running, the Shield layer, though they said it was pure android so it must be just an application that connects to all the games and Tegra Zone, though it looks pretty clean. One of the things they showcased that was pretty amazing is how this handheld connects to TVs via HDMI, the Tegra 4 chip was able to drive a 4k resolution, and they showed that by running a few games on the handheld and on the TV simultaneously. They aslo demonstrated multiplayer via a game called Hawken which looked okay, frame rate was good, it ran smoothly.
What they showed off next though blew my mind! They connected Shield to a PC running Steam (After a while of trying to get Shield to recognise the PC, and failing, and trying again, but hey, they eventually got it!) and what they did next was pure magic, they streamed Steam onto Shield and from Shield to the TV, so basically, they eliminated the need for gaming consoles altogether. Imagine now yourself on the comfort of your couch, watching TV, when all of a sudden, you get the sudden urge of, oh, I don’t know, whacking random people with a thirty inch purple dildo, the conventional way of doing this was to get off your couch, go to your PC and start Saints Row: The Third, however, if you have a Shield nearby, you can just connect to your PC and you get all your Steam library on your Shield in the comfort of your couch, and if you connect your Shield to your TV, you can enjoy this PC gaming goodness on your TV without moving PC cases or anything! It’s absolutely beautiful! They showcased though Need for Speed Most Wanted and Assassin’s Creed III, both ran smoothly and amazingly!
No pricing has been mentioned, though if I were to guess I’d say a $300 price tag would be perfect for it hitting the sweet spot between gaming handheld and tablet, and since it runs Android, it will do what any tablet does, thus the advantage over your everyday gaming handheld.
Let me know what you folks think of this new innovation of Nvidia’s and whether you’ll be interested in purchasing one when it comes out or not!
UPDATE: Nvidia confirmed that Shield will run Android 4.2 Jelly Bean with an expected release of Q2 2013!
So as I was idly looking through my twitter feed this morning, I noticed a post from IGN (and Gamespot as well) that Sony has purchased the cloud gaming giant, Gaikai, for, well, 380 million dollars, weird since Sony wasn’t making much in the way of money as of some recent console launch and them losing money and all…
Now this alliance was heavily rumored in the not so distant past, a little before 2012’s E3, now as to why I fear this will cause a LOT of gamers to turn away from Sony should they implement cloud gaming as the main medium in the next PlayStation is this: Basically, not everywhere has internet connections as fast as light, over here in Egypt, the premium is considered the 8 Mbit downlink connection, and while cloud game services such as OnLive state that the minimum is 4 Mbit, I had slight lag in Super Street Fighter 4 on a 20 Mbit connection in philadelphia, now imagine how an 8 Mbit connection can possibly do any better. And that’s the premium, most households here still run on 512 Kbit/s connections – 2 Mbit/s connections which is no where near what is minimum to smoothly stream a video game.
As to why I think Sony might implement this, at least partly (which will be a lot better and I’ll explain why later) is that rumors have been floating around a lot about a block of used games on next generation consoles, wouldn’t this be much easier to implement if the games were bought on the cloud as OnLive does? Certainly! You will never be able to trade in your used games ever again, your friends won’t ever be able to borrow a game of yours, or you borrow one of theirs, and the next gen console makers will reign supreme in their thrones made of money and wasted hopes of game sharing! Okay, that might have been a bit of a stretch, but the point stands. Because of the bandwidth reasons mentioned before, most people in Egypt, and other countries with similar internet issues won’t stand a chance. However, if Sony played this right and just implemented the system alongside the current one, it will prove very beneficial to them. Think of it this way, you get the choice of either buying and downloading a certain PSN game to your PlayStation, OR, you buy the game and stream it instantly! With no waiting what so ever! Wouldn’t that be nice? What would also be even nicer is if you buy a PSN game and you install said game on your console, however, let’s say you sold that console, moved somewhere with a really nice connection, with the same purchase, you can stream the game instead of downloading it! Kind of like getting to versions of the game without actually buying two versions of the game, since it’s essentially the same game, the same price, just a different delivery method! Of course this would also be extended to demos as well.
That’s basically my two cents concerning the issue at hand, let me know what you folks think below!
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, I’ll leave it to you guys to judge:
YOWZA!
I can wrap it up with only this picture, since it’s expressive as hell, but this is a review, after all!
I have personally heard thousands of craps on the game play from Bayonetta, how it’s a Devil May Cry rip off, how it’s stolen all the boss fights from God Of War (Dante’s Inferno, anyone?) how it’s so tacky, let me just start by saying that this game, is, hands down, the fastest hack and slash game I’ve ever played, and I’m a huge sucker for hack and slash games! It starts off with this incredibly hot nun “praying”, and some annoying guy screeching from her side, then BAM! You’re killing angels for a living! I personally liked how they just got you in the story fast like that, no boring “work-your-way-up” first, of course the game play rewards you plenty! The game has 5 difficulties, 3 available from the start, and two unlockables (Hard, and ∞ Climax), I only managed to finish it on the highest (available from the start) difficulty, which was the Normal difficulty (I tend to like a challenge every now and then).
Okay though, back to the game play! So you’re there, killing angels to honor some contract you made with hell (won’t go too much into details, wouldn’t want to spoil anything for anyone) and then you get nicer guns than the ones you already have! 4 to be more precise, two for your hands, and two for your legs, and you can just imagine from there the insane amount of combos that can be done throughout the game! There’s north of 50 combos at least to be learned! And that’s just for one weapon! How many weapons are there you ask me? Well, my dear readers, 15 weapons in total! including the alternate version models (when you get certain weapons, you can purchase another set to put on your feet). The game play is very addictive, you don’t really get bored playing Bayonetta, the dialogues are certainly nice, except for Enzo’s (he annoys me, for some reason), and Bayonetta’s perfect British accent is nothing short of amazing! Makes you fall even more for this character! As the game progresses, you get to learn more about Bayonetta’s past through flashbacks, and you get to know Bayonetta better, how (in spite of) being the hair-wearing dominatrix-like character she is, she’s also very sweet! Lastly, as far as the game play is concerned, the Normal difficulty was hard, REALLY hard! Especially with some boss sequences, where it gets ridiculously tough to beat a certain boss, and you’ll just end up dying on purpose just to repeat this part with a full health bar! I can’t start imagining how harder the other two difficulties will be!
The graphics to this game are nice, definitely no Uncharted, or God of War, but still, REALLY nice! the environments are heavenly (works well for the setting of the game!) and the character models are outstanding!
Music wise, this game owns! Seriously, sometimes you’ll just stand there and listen to the music (reminded me of Sonic Adventure’s soundtrack for some reason), if you have a chance at buying the game’s soundtrack, do it!
All in all, Bayonetta is a must have game for consoles! And I picked it up used for 8 Pounds which was an amazing price!
I’ll be leaving you all with (what I consider) the most enjoyable track from the game:
Metal Geek 