Whether you agree with me or not, I’d say that there are two kinds of popular racing game styles out there. One is the arcade style and the other being a true-to-life simulator. Your favorite maybe somewhere in between, but if memory serves me right, it didn’t win the crowd’s vote.

There’s no doubt Superstars V8 Racing is closer to a racing simulator. The game is based on the Superstars Series, which originated in Italy. The game mimics real tracks from Europe with real racers from around the world. Only V8 engine cars are allowed to enter the race, so now you know where the name came from.

Now, I’m not a hardcore racing simulator fan. I did enjoy the Forza series, but not as much as I enjoyed Burnout, Dirt and Sega Rally series. So, where does Superstars V8 Racing stand? I say right in between, and for the good reasons.

There are game modes that will satisfy almost every racing game fan. Besides the typical “Championship”,  ”Training” and “Quick Race” modes, there’s a “Race Weekend” mode with which lots of licensed hobby racers can relate to. It has all the features of the Championship mode, like two practice sessions with one qualifying session before the race, but instead of touring Europe for the trophy, you just race for a weekend. And if you’re sick of racing with other cars, there’s a mode called “Superstars License.” Basically it’s a series of challenges that players can attempt within the certain parameters given. It’s nice to have variety, yes?

Between game modes, you will see tons of tweaking options to make Superstars V8 Racing feel like a true simulator. Well, at least that’s my answer as a typical arcade racing game fan. If you ask racing simulator fans, they will say that the game doesn’t even come close to being a true racing simulator. This is one of the reasons why I cannot give you a straight answer about this game’s realism as a simulator. It feels like a racing sim made for arcade racing fans. It has enough features for casual racing game fans to enjoy the title as a simulator, but it probably won’t satisfy hardcore racing sim fans.

So is it a good thing? Sure. The game might not have all the true-to-life ingredients, but to its limit the game represents racing experience very well. The default game option disables the Tire Wear and Car Damage, and it does a fine job for arcade racing game fans. You can turn those options on, and realism kicks in and shifts the game experience enough to please many players out there. In simple words, it has enough options to overwhelm typical gamers, should they choose to utilize them.

One other thing we’ve noticed is the graphics. It looks great on most parts, considering the price being $20. Our favorite was the wet road condition. While the gameplay is affected by the weather as it should be, the reflection of the beautiful clouds in the sky on the wet road was great. If you’re very picky about graphics, you might notice low-quality reflections from cars, but we’re guessing that it’s the gaming console’s limitation, not the developers.

More positive things we want to talk about is the replay, sound and controller vibration. SoundFX and BGM is definitely above average in my opinion. Also, devs did fantastic job on vibration on PS3 controller. The feedback emulates just right that it is very believable. During or after the race, you can replay your performance with almost every possible camera angle you can think of. Very rich in features indeed, but oddly it lacks of saving the replay which is a bummer if you wanted to show them off online or to your friends.

The one thing that irritated us the most was the stutter. Actually, it’s more like a whole-second pause in the middle of driving, and though it only happened on a couple of tracks, it does affect gameplay a lot. Maybe it’s our PS3 SKU, or maybe it’s a bug, but we found at least one other player who experienced the same stutter/pause on certain tracks. Imagine you’re in ahead of everyone else and suddenly you’re off the track because of this one-second pause on your screen. It’s a huge minus.

Another thing is the menu navigation. It’s well built but every time the player exits from the current race or menu, the game loads content twice, then saves the game, then loads the content again. These annoying steps will usually take 15 seconds at least. Each Championship game has two practice sessions, with one qualifying session and a race, so even if you’re in a hurry and skip the practice sessions, you would have to watch the loading screen for a good minute or so. There are texts to read on the loading screen, but they are so small and pass by so quickly giving you time to only finish a couple of sentences.

Another mixed bag is the way the game system works. Instead of choosing cars, players choose racers around the world, and the car comes with the racer; you cannot change that, ever. If you picked a racer with a BMW M5, you will have to use that car for the whole championship. And there aren’t that many cars and drivers to choose from. Well, you can always tweak the car settings and all, but it’s a weird setup for sure.

But our complains aside, when Superstars V8 Racing does its job by providing a good racing experience. There are enough modes to keep players busy for awhile. Online Multiplayer mode is also fun, runs smoothly with voice-chat support. And though I said that hardcore racing simulator fans won’t find this game much fun, I know for a fact that they will play Superstars V8 Racing anyways because of the value-price and for their love of cars. We just wished that there were more choices with less annoyance.

Our Score: 6.5 /10

A racing simulator that probably won’t satisfy racing simulator fans, but will satisfy the rest.

Arguably one of the most innovative game of recent video game industry, Portal, is coming to PS3.
The better news is that they’re not bringing the years-old game; Valve actually is developing the sequel of series –Portal 2– to the PS3 console!

Umm.
Wow. Just wow.
Our guess would be that now Valve is really going after the video game console market.

A truly shocking news of the day!

Any movie buffs out there? I think I’d consider myself one. I love movies. Let me ask a different question: Any film buffs out there? I want to be one, but it’s sometimes hard seeking out good independent films. There are a lot of films out there, and let’s face it; there are many poorly made, overly artsy films. But PS3 has come to the rescue… at least for PS3 owners in Europe… for now.

Sony just announced a partnership with MUBI, an online film library. This will be a free, downloadable application that gives you access to an ever-expanding library. Sound suspiciously like…Netflix? Well… it is. From what we can tell, it’s almost exactly like Netflix, except for one crucial difference: it’s library.

MUBI boasts a treasure trove of independent, foreign, award-winning and classic films to stream. They will also have restored shorts by some of the most obscure archives. These movies…err films, will be available, some as free-to-watch, pay-per-view for a week, and of course, the all-you-can-watch monthly subscription.

I feel like this is Sony’s attempt to reach an even wider audience in terms of cinema lovers. I think it’s awesome, but as far as how well it will do, I’m not sure. I think it was a smart move to start off in Europe, but we’ll have to see how well it does there, and see if it makes it to the US. I can only keep my fingers crossed!

When I first saw the screenshots of Wakeboarding HD for PSN, I was somewhat interested because of the water-effects; it looked freakin’ sweet.

Then when we downloaded it for the review, we were surprised with the game size. It was less than 190MB! Granted, it was probably a compressed file but seriously, take a look at the screenshots and see if you could guess that the game was under 190MB.

Cool visual for a game that can fit into a compact disc.

Whatever TikGames did, wow.

So, is this game fun as it looks?
We thought we could answer this question rather quickly as we played for the first 30 minutes. Then, something changed our opinion as we delved further into the game. We’ll get to that part later.

The gameplay is very simple. The player follows the objective while wakeboarding. Sometimes it requires the player to do tricks while at other times you can just forget about tricks and concentrate on something else like collecting items. For the first few stages, we didn’t notice anything special or even fun. The gameplay mechanism seemed so basic that it reminded us of the good old 16-bit gaming era.

Simple gameplay doesn't mean easy though..

We gave it a try anyway, because other than the gameplay, nothing really looked bad. It actually looked pretty good. Wakeboarding HD is colorful and vibrant, and awesome water-effects that I’ve never seen before, especially from a game that could fit into a compact disc media. The basic arcade style gameplay with audio, and BGM was particularly enjoyable for such paced water-sports game. The music sounded right, but not enough songs are there for us to notice. Just a few songs playing over and over again. At least the music sounds good.

WOOOOOT!

As we progressed through the game, somewhere after 6~7 stages, things started to pick up. Same old objectives like collecting items and doing tricks, but the challenge level was gradually increasing, and most importantly, they were enjoyable. Despite how we felt about the game at the beginning, Wakeboarding HD didn’t feel repetitive. Maybe it was the beautifully designed stages set in different environments, or just the right combination of objectives, but it did make the simple gameplay system a bit more fun. We had to play a couple of stages again and again just to beat it, but it felt like we accomplished something for a good amount of fun.

One particular stage was about collecting items while the boat speeds up. The main fun of this stage is that the boat goes so fast, everything on the screen becomes a blur. It just looked and felt so damn cool while playing it. Since the game supports two local multiplayer, we tried the very same stage to see whether it was too much for PS3 to handle or not. Again, we didn’t notice any huge slowdowns or FPS getting choked up. Nice!

As quick as a flash!

This is definitely not a Wakeboarding simulation. And even though challenges are fun, some of us are probably very used to this type of gameplay for years. However, it’s definitely an arcade-style fun, with no deep learning curve to enjoy it. Simple controls, colorful visuals, good mixes of stage objectives and supporting offline multiplayer, this game can provide you hours of fun, without stressing your brains out.

Our Score: 7 /10

Easy gameplay with waves of fun.

Great news for alien, predator and marines lovers alike! An updated version of the Alien vs Predator multiplayer demo is available now.

The original demo released on 2/4 had a few issues with matchmaking, resulting in some players not being able to get into matches. SEGA and Rebellion claim that that has been fixed, and in addition, players will be able to create their own matches and browse for any available ones to join.

I’m sure this news will delight many. Enjoy folks.

Aliens vs Predator is scheduled to be released on February 16th in America and February 19th in Europe, on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.

On February 4, North American PS3 owners will be able to download the demo of Battlefield: Bad Company 2. This demo will feature Port Valdez, a vehicle focused map set along the waterline towards an oil industrial landscape in the Alaskan mountains. Players will be able to compete against a maximum of 24 players in the game’s Rush multiplayer. With five land and three air vehicles including Main Battle Tank, Quad Bikes and Mobile Armored AA, this demo is sure to give you a taste of the game’s detailed, sandbox environment as well as the vehicular warfare, destruction, and squad play. 

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 will be available in stores March 2, 2010 in North America, and March 4, 2010 in Europe for the X360, PS3, and PC.

Although these aren’t from the Demo itself, enjoy the screenshots here from the single player compaign.

I hope you were able to check out the CES galleries posted by ClassicMoments. Suffice to say, it was fun. The last booth we visited was none other than Sony.

There were several stations set up exclusively for gaming; Gran Turismo 5, some stations for PSP downloads, etc. There wasn’t anything eye-popping, but there was a little demo for the newest PS3 hardware/software: EyePet.

So EyePet is basically one of those games where you own and take care of a virtual pet. Only this time, you’re not gonna be using a stylus to care for it; you’re gonna be using your hands. With the use of the Playstation Eye Camera, you can use your hands to interact with the vitual pet inside the game. This was actually pretty cool.

So for the first portion of the demo, I had to wash the pet. With the use of a special card, I’m able to move the shower head over the pet, and rinse him down. Then at the top right-hand corner of the screen, you can change the shower head to shampoo, and soap him down. By putting my hands together in front of my pet, I was able to scrub him down and wash him. The whole process was pretty cool. But that’s not the coolest part.

The second half of the demo involved drawing. I was told to select from a list of general categories to draw of: planes, robots, etc. I chose a robot. So the lady gave me a blank sheet of paper to draw my robot on. So I did. And then magic happened. I put my drawn robot up to the camera, and with a few angle adjustments, the camera picked it up. Once the camera picked it up, my pet began to draw the same robot, and the robot comes to life! You can use it as a toy to play with the pet. Depending on what drawing you create, you can interact with your pet differently. A robot lets you play with other toys, and even play baseball with your pet, while an airplane lets the pet ride and fly around in it.

So overall experience, it was pretty fun. Looks like the title is still in the testing stage, but in every convention/expo, we see them so we assume that they’re investing lots of time and effort to make this work. Though it was suppose to be released in 2009, looks like it’s been pushed to 2010. We’ll let you know more when the news comes.

Sony has joined the motion sensor remote/controller band wagon. Tentatively called the Motion Controller, this motion sensor controller will be released in the Fall of 2010 in Asia, North America and Europe/PAL territories along with a series of software titles utilizing the Motion Controller and Playstation Eye Camera. And apparently, Sony will be vigorously promoting this Motion Controller, along with the DUALSHOCK series as the de facto controller for the PS3 platform. No pics yet, but we’ll get’em up as soon as we get them.

I don’t personally know how I feel about this. I don’t have anything against motion sensor controllers. In fact I think they’re awesome. I just hope they don’t make games that rely entirely on the motion sensor element and are slim on the actual quality of the game. We’ve also heard the Motion Controller will require the use of the Playstation Eye camera to get the full benefits. Hmmm. That’s not too promising… but we’ll definitely keep our eyes peeled!

Possibly the best looking baseball game of current generation gaming, MLB 10 The Show screenshots has been revealed!

It just looks better and better as they release the next version, and sports game fans rejoice once again. Too bad this is PS3 exclusive. Or is it?

We haven’t received anything of features list or release date, but we’ll let you know as soon as we get them!

Anyone could predict the partnership between Sony PlayStation 3 and Netflix, but not this soon.

Do we go well together?

The Official PlayStation Blog today announced that if you’re the current Netflix member, you won’t have to pay a single fee to steam it to your PS3. This includes TV series and movies. They also provided a link for a sign-up already.

http://www.netflix.com/ps3

Once you sign up, the pS3 owners will receive a disc that enables the free streaming from Netflix. It’ll be delivered within couple of days.

Sony has been aggressive since PS3 slim launch, and looks like they’re really trying hard to expand their market share. So now, PS3 can do online gaming for free, and won’t cost you anything if you already have Netflix account. With all the video formats supported, PS3 is now a very strong contender to becoming the central home theater + gaming system in the living room.

It also puzzles us though, because we know that Sony has their own VoD service for PS3 through PSN. Does this mean that now Sony is giving up on their VoD service?