The Playstation

The Playstation 3 “Greatest Hits” program (or “red label” titles) includes titles that have been on the market for 10 months and sold 500,000 copies. These editions sell at the excellent price of 29.99. At that price, it’s hard to go wrong, but with almost 100 titles currently available on the label, ThePlaystation decided to list our favorite Greatest Hitsso consider this the Greatest Hits Greatest Hits collection, if you will.Prince of Persia (2008): After getting progressively darker during its time on the Playstation 2, Xbox, and Gamecube, the series lightened up a little for its first edition on next-gen consoles. The gameplay is both old-fashioned and new, the magical companion of Elika is bewitching, and the storyline concerning the battle between two powerful gods is appropriately epic.Call of Duty: World at War (2008): Like most Call of Duty games, you’ll need to have your PS3 connected online via Ethernet or wireless internet service to get the full experience with this game. Set during WWII, the game includes co-op for up to four players online for the first time in the series. Of course, you can always just do competitive deathmatch or capture-the-flag as well. Read the rest of this entry »

The upcoming platforming game Explodemon! could best be described as the video-game equivalent of a Quentin Tarantino movie. Like the director’s films, Explodemon! is a homage to its classic forerunners, many of which come from outside the U.S. These include platformer adventures like Mega Man and Super Metroid, the fighting game Street Fighter II, and more recent games like Halo and Half-Life 2. The developers, Curve Studios, say that their game will pay tribute to aspects of all of these, including the bad translation when applicable.The game is scheduled to be released this winter. In preparation, Curve has released a one-minute trailer, showing off the game’s 2.5-D graphics, physics-based puzzle-solving, fast-moving gameplayand of course explosions. Lots of explosions. The trailer ends with the Explodemon! logo, which includes Japanese kanji, just like the games of yesteryear. Read the rest of this entry »

What makes a game sell? Is it the development team, the marketing, or the attachment of a recognizable series name? Sometimes, even all that isn’t enoughand sometimes, a hit can come out of nowhere. I check in with a few popular series and try to find out what’s next.

• BioShock: Take-Two admitted that the sequel to their original smash-hit FPS didn’t move as many copies as they expected, but was still a success for the franchise. Speaking from experience, a too-short single-player campaign and a disappointing multiplayer feature could have hindered sales. Still, there are big things in the water for the sci-fi series, which follows the events of a civil war in a utopian underwater city called Rapture. A film is currently in preproduction.
• Final Fantasy: Game director Tetsuya Nomura has announced that the script for Final Fantasy Versus XIII is now complete. The game takes place in the same universe as Final Fantasy XIII, a world a lot like ours but with a science-fiction slant. Nomura has said that the game will incorporate third-person shooter aspects, and will even have some blood, as opposed to earlier games. Unlike FFXIII, Versus is currently PS3-exclusive. Read the rest of this entry »