Latest News On Playstation Home
STAR TREK Avatar competition
Heres a bit of fun for you and the announcement from Paramount Pictures International, who are running this competition, tells you everything you need to know:
Paramount Pictures International announces STAR TREK Avatar Contest in PlayStation Home
Paramount Pictures International announces a unique in-world competition in Sony PlayStation Home (SCEE only). In the run up to the highly anticipated worldwide release of STAR TREK on May 8th 2009, Home users are invited to create look-alike avatars for leading characters Kirk, Uhura, and Sulu using the character customization tools and the official Starfleet uniforms now available for free in the Threads Store in PlayStation Home.
Three competition winners, one per best avatar likeness of each character (Kirk, Uhura, and Sulu), will be announced on Friday May 8th 2009 on the PPC Silverscreen blog and the SCEE PlayStation Home forum. On the same day, there will be a celebration at the STAR TREK Party in Home where all attendees wearing the Starfleet uniforms will have a chance to grab some exclusive STAR TREK gifts.
HOW TO ENTER
1. Collect the STAR TREK Starfleet uniforms now available for free in the Threads Store in PlayStation Home.
2. Create a look-alike avatar for only one of the STAR TREK leading characters Kirk, Uhura, or Sulu using the character customization tools in PlayStation Home.
3. Using a digital camera, take three pictures of your avatar on screen: one close-up headshot, one side-on headshot and one full length body shot.
4. Upload your three images to Flickr, tag them "Star Trek Avatar Contest", make sure to fill out the picture descriptions with your PSN ID, and submit them to the following Flickr group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/startrekps3homeavatars/. Once approved, they will appear in the group pool and you are officially entered into the competition.
5. Entrants are asked to submit one entry (Kirk, Uhura, or Sulu) by the deadline of 7pm GMT, Friday. May 1st 2009. A winner will be chosen for each character and announced on Friday May 8th 2009 on the Silverscreen blog and the SCEE PlayStation Home forum.
Terms & Conditions - http://www.theppc.com/silverscreen/competitions/startrek/terms.html
Thanks - Home Community Manager
24-04-2009 04:47 PM
SCEE Home Q&A update
We have a community Q&A scheduled for this week where one chosen member of the community will fire 10 questions at myself and drexl, SCEE's Home boss.
drexl has had to go away on business for a few days so we're pushing back our planned date from this Friday, the 24th, to next week.
When we're ready we'll announce it two days in advance to give you time to make suggestions for questions. However, to avoid placing a serious burden on an individual member of the community we're asking them to write their own questions first and use the suggestions as a sanity check. Otherwise they'd have to sift through and juggle what might be hundreds of suggestions and we've all seen how some of the threads go in this forum. I get paid to do it, they dont!
This will be the first Q&A, not the last, and we'll have a new host each time and we'll allso be doing this with each of the language communities. We're aiming to keep this as informal as possible as the last thing everyone needs out of this is some form of contrived pseudo press release. The overall goal is to maintain a useful dialogue between us.
More news next week once drexl is back.
NEW EA Sports Complex
. 23rd April - News update
This week we have quite a range of new stuff for you to play with and discover
so without further delay lets walk through them.
ENTER THE UNDERWORLD!
Have you looked into the manhole in Home Square? Press X and you’ll be teleported to the
Maintenance area, the underbelly of Home. It’s all part of Xi, our Home-based adventure, which has already brought you a pan-European jigsaw puzzle, deadly space robots, and rumours of some very strange fish.
Want to know more? Find the Xi graffiti on the wall in Home Square. Your world will never look the same again...
EA Sports Complex
Following on from recent dialogue with the community we are releasing this much anticipated new space in SCEE simultaneously with SCEA. Please think of this as as an English only beta within SCEE, there are bugs and, obviously, no localised text for our non-English speaking communities.
The space is being fully localised and it will be updated in the coming weeks. However,
overall we felt you would like to see it within SCEE now, even in its incomplete state.
** To clarify. The EA Sports Complex is actually the American version,
complete with American content and wording. The SCEE Version will have
content more appropriate to our audience and will be in English, French,
Italian, German and Spanish.
STAR TREK boldy goes... to PlayStation®Home!
As you may have seen in the gaming press in the last week or so a selection of
STAR TREK merchandise, e.g. Starfleet Uniforms and T-Shirts, is now available for
free from the Threads store.
MySoti
Community driven T-Shirts!
MySoti.com is a rather clever site where you can design and sell your own T-Shirts
and we have partnered with the MyStoti team to extend this service into PlayStation®Home.
Every couple of weeks the MySoti team will be choosing a new series of shirts
from their own "Most Wanted" range and these will then appear in Home for sale.
And yes, the designer will get a cut of the proceeds from both real and virtual world sales.
The website is in English only but the T-shirts are available to all.
The Original V-Store
The classic Indian T had a fantastic take up (and a special thanks to John Van Hamersveld for
letting the Original V-Store use his cult classic design.) Today sees the release of the first
20 designs from a number of V-Store partners including Billabong,
Worn Free, Island Records and Teetonic. Classic T's coming to PlayStation®Home
Thanks by - Community Team Leader
Latest news on Playstation 3
If you think you know LittleBigPlanet, think again - there's a world of new goodies coming your way, so dive into the fun.
April and May 2009 will see a bumper batch of LittleBigPlanet content to download from PlayStation Network and enhance your LBP experience. Why not take a look and see what's in store?
April 9
Rag Doll Kung Fu costumes
To coincide with the release of Rag Doll Kung Fu: Fists of Plastic on PlayStation Store, there are some great costumes and themed stickers from the wacky beat 'em up, including:
• Hero costume: Hero hair, jacket, trousers, skin
• Master Hip costume: Master Hip trousers, shirt, hair, skin
• Master Sin costume: Master Sin hat, jacket, nails, trousers
• Master Tang costume: Master Tang hat, moustache, jacket, fish, trousers, skin
• Sung Ling costume: Sung Ling hair, top, trousers, skin
• 36 Rag Doll Kung Fu theme stickers
Patapon costume
PSP rhythm action adventure Patapon 2 has hit the streets, so it's high time that Sackboy gets with the beat with this costume:
• Patapon costume: Patapon skin and head-dress, Patapon Axe, Patapon Bow, Patapon Sword
April 16
Monkey King costume
The costume competition winning design from Asia - the Monkey King. This contains:
• Monkey King costume: Monkey King Crown, clothes, tail, staff, skin
1.12 Cornish Yarg update
This is an update which enhances the game with a number of features, including:
• A new music player which lets players choose their own music from the Home Menu to play during Create Mode and in their Pod
• Improved decoration mode makes it easier to customise your Sackboy
• An option to cycle between various level information when viewing community levels on the earth
• Japanese and Korean Input Method Editor (IME) support for text chat
• LittleBigStore improvements
• The option to select whether to automatically collect community prizes and photos
Download the update and see the full range of improvements that await you.
April 23
Heavenly Sword Mini-Pack
A tribute to the sword swinging action adventure Heavenly Sword, starring Nariko and Kai. This contains:
• Nariko costume: Nariko sword, wig, dress
• Kai costume: Kai hat and hair, dress, gloves, boots, skin
• 27 Heavenly Sword theme stickers
Creator Pack 1
A collection of new tools and functions to help aspiring creators:
• An infinite lives checkpoint
• A visibility tweak option on certain joint objects (to hide these in Play mode)
• A global settings object (to trigger lighting changes)
• A tetherless jetpack
• An angle range proximity switch (additional functionality on proximity and magnetic key switches)
April 30
Egyptian Mythology Mini-Pack
Inspired by Egyptian mythology, this pack has costumes for Anubis and Sekhmet along with ten stickers to help you add some Egyptian flavour to your levels. It contains:
• Anubis costume: Anubis mask, Anubis robes
• Sekhmet costume: Sekhmet mask, Sekhmet robes
• 10 Egyptian theme stickers
May 07
Norse Mythology Mini-Pack
Continuing the mythological theme, this pack contains Thor and Valkyrie costumes, and Norse themed stickers:
• Thor costume: Thor's helmet, beard, belt and wristguards, legs, Thor's Hammer
• Valkyrie costume: Valkyrie helmet and braids, Valkyrie jerkin and cape, Valkyrie boots
• 10 Norse theme stickers
Don't miss out on all these sterling LittleBigPlanet downloads - keep an eye on the Events Calendar at eu.playstation.com and stay up to date with all the latest and greatest downloadable content.
FIFA 09 Ultimate Team competition
Identify these to footballers to win an AC Milan shirt signed by Ronaldinho, a PLAYSTATION 3 and three top EA SPORTS games. FIFA 09 Ultimate Team is a brand new game mode in FIFA 09, available for download now exclusively on PS3. It lets you assemble your dream squad of football glitterati by collecting and trading cards and test its strength on the pitch in online and offline tournaments.
With over 4,000 players to choose from, a deep understanding of the beautiful game is needed to get the balance between individual ability and team chemistry, and if you can prove your knowledge in this picture quiz, you could win an AC Milan shirt signed by two-time World Player of the Year Ronaldinho, a PLAYSTATION 3 and three EA SPORTS games of your choice to play on it.
To be in with a chance of winning, enter the surname of each player and the manager in the text box beneath their image, submit your entry using the button at the bottom of the page and enter your PlayStation Network ID when prompted. The correct entries will be submitted into a draw to determine the winner, and ten runners-up will win the EA SPORTS game of their choice.
Click here for the FIFA 09 Ultimate Team competition
Good luck, and download FIFA 09 Ultimate Team, at PlayStation Store and in-game.
Playstation 3 Latest Games
EA previously brought its take on iconic gangster movie The Godfather to PlayStation 2, and now its sequel gets the PS3 treatment in The Godfather II.
The action starts in Cuba as you take control of Dominic just as Michael Corleone asks him to stake control of the family after the death of Aldo Trapani. You return to New York on a mission to seize businesses from rival families in order to become the most powerful Don in America.
However, you must start on the streets. The Godfather II is played from a third-person perspective, like its predecessor, and you are free to explore the city and its many buildings, either on foot or by stealing any car that takes your fancy. You have an arsenal of upgradeable weapons at your disposal, ranging from handguns to rifles to baseball bats, although sometimes it’s more appropriate to let your fists do the talking.
You can only take over the city one business at a time and a dead manager is not going to help profits, so you have to rough them up to convince them to work for you. Holding the L1 and R1 buttons grabs an opponent by the scruff, and using the responsive Blackhand controls, you have a variety of sinister moves at your thumbs. Preesing the L3 and R3 buttons simultaneously, for example, applies a choke and if you are using a DUALSHOCK 3 Wireless Controller, you can feel their pulse gradually fade. Each manager has a weakness that will make them crack, be it roughing up their customers, destroying their merchandise or threatening to throw them off the roof.
The level of violence in The Godfather II is gratuitous and it is a game meant for a mature audience.
A Don is only a powerful as his family and you need to build an army if you’re going to run the city. If you see a character with a dollar sign above his head you can ask for his backstory and his specialty. Some are demolitions experts, capable of blowing up doors or entire buildings, while locksmiths are useful for cracking safes and robbing banks, and arsonists can light up a room of enemies. As you gain more influence, you’re able to recruit more men, and it’s always worth keeping your eyes peeled for stronger soldiers. If you’re carrying dead weight, you can mark one of your gang for death, then ‘accidentally’ shoot him during a fight or dispose of him quietly in a dark alley.
Taking out a rival family takes more than firepower, and you have to consider your strategy before wading in. Each business you own is susceptible to attack unless you employ guards. However, guards cost money, so having too many will eat into your profits. It’s worth stationing one of your crew members at a particularly valuable property, as they are much tougher than standard guards, or you could instruct them to take over a rival business on their own. If they succeed, then you’ve acquired a new property without breaking a sweat. If they fail, then you’ll be without their services for a while as they recover in hospital or serve a prison sentence.
There is online multiplayer for up to 16 players and an impressive range of competitive modes. Team Deathmatch is all about taking out members of the opposing team; in Demolition Assault, you have to blow up three of the opposing team’s buildings; setting barrels and propane tanks alight boosts your score multiplier in FireStarter; and in Safecracker, busting open a vault and defending it earns you points.
The Godfather II is a gritty representation of the classic film that is more about exploring its world, rather than following a linear retelling of the plot. It balances action with strategy and the varied abilities of your gang members means there are multiple methods to taking over businesses.
Pick it up and delve into a violent world of greed, revenge and, above all, respect.
