The new PS3 Slim is scheduled to be out in September 2009, which is about 10 days from now. Slimmer body, reduced power consumption and a nice price tag, there is no reason not to pick this a PS3 if you haven’t already.

For myself I will give it a pass. Lately my Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii have been pretty under-utilized. Adding another console to the current situation would be a waste. Having said that, I will probably rush out to get one if Square-Enix suddenly announce the release of Kingdom Hearts 3.

So what are your thoughts on the new PS3 slim? Will you buy it on the day of release? Or just stick with the current fatty PS3.

Cast your votes on my poll located on the right of the page sidebar. Love to know what you guys think.

Edit : apparently there’s some bug with the polling plug-in. Will try to get it fixed asap.

Most of you hardcore God of War fans would probably knew by now that Sony had unlocked the full CPU speed of the PSP (333mhz) and God of War Chain of Olympus is taking advantage of that extra speed. Looking at the value it doesn’t seem much, but the difference between the two is pretty noticeable. In fact to me that’s a HELL lot of difference. I will let the video do the talking and you be the judge. This is definitely a must play game for the PSP.

Daxter kinda reminds me of Rayman 3. It has the same colorful setting, the overall presentation is similar to each other and it is a nice platform game. Playing Daxter really makes me wanna go back and play Rayman 3 again. Hopefully I can find a copy of that game somewhere since its pretty old already.

Seeing that I’m not really familiar with Jak and Daxter universe, I went to Wikipedia to pick up some information about it. It seems like this game fills in the gap between Jak and Jak II, a few months before the events of the later game. Here, Jak is captured by Krimzon Guards and it’s up to Daxter to save the day.

During the start, most of the mission involves “bug extermination” where you go from one client to another and destroy bugs for them. Although it doesn’t seem to be related to the main story (saving Jak), it does provide lots of fun. So far I only went through three missions, so I can’t really comment on how the story will unfold. Thankfully from what I read, towards the end, the game will be back on track on its main course.

The mini games in Daxter are pretty interesting from what I can see base on the first one I tried. When Daxter takes a nap, you can choose different types of mini games to play. The first one involves Daxter being Neo from The Matrix and the scene is set in The Matrix 2 where Neo is whacking tons of Agent Smiths. Here you get to whack bunny looking like “Smiths” and you have to press the correspond keys that appears on screen in order to attack (ala Ouendan / Elite Beat Agents type). It would be interesting to see what other types of mini games are there in the game.

Overall I feel that Daxter is a great game. The personality and voice acting for Daxter really brings out the atmosphere. It’s pretty sad that not many games nowadays offer such quality for their characters. Half the time I either hear dull voice acting or voices that doesn’t suit the characters. If you like playing Rayman or you like platforming, you seriously can’t go wrong with Daxter.

I’m sure most of you have already heard about the recent issue faced by Sony. If you haven’t, click on the link below to read the full article. It’s actually pretty long therefore I’m not going to post it here.

Snips taken from this website
“Video games are being given a bad name yet again. Sony is in trouble for one of its top-selling PlayStation 3 video games, Resistance: Fall of Man. Apparently, the Church of England is calling upon Sony to apologize and withdraw the game as the company used the interior of the Anglican cathedral for a virtual gun battle.”

I don’t really know what to say. It depends on how your mind accepts this kind of situation. There are times where we should accept that games are just games, nothing more than just means of entertainment. Other times, we should be careful not to step into sensitive issues. Both Sony and the Church of England have their own strong points here.

Hope things can be sorted out peacefully.

This issue is actually nothing new, but I would like to share some thoughts of my own as a gamer. In forums we can usually see fanboy of (insert console here) vs fanboy of (insert another console here) arguing about which console is better. To a certain degree, this sort of argument is acceptable if we are comparing the power of a console with the same game. However when we start debating on the console itself, (e.g PSP vs DS) thus occurring “fanboy-ism”.

Let’s all take the example I mentioned above, PSP vs DS. In terms of functionality and raw power, PSP definitely makes a better cut compared to DS. However that doesn’t mean that PSP is superior when it comes to gaming itself. DS makes up for its weak hardware by making more innovative games which utilizes the dual and touch screen.

If you look at the bigger picture, you will see that both PSP and DS have its own different set of games. PSP is more towards racing, fighting and action. DS on the other hand is more towards RPG and platform as well as girl-appealing games such as Nintendogs. Therefore it isn’t logical that we debate whether PSP is better or DS is better. If you like to watch movies, music, and action gaming, take the PSP. If you are into role-playing games, platforms or the classic type (ala SNES or Sega 16bit), take the DS. If you like both sides, take both (like what I did although I admit its costly).

You might ask : “Which one will you choose among the 3 next-gen consoles?”. I will tell you honestly that I would prefer PS3 first, Wii second (for family entertainment) and Xbox360 third. Reason why I chose ps3 over xbox360 is not because I hate xbox360 or Microsoft for that matter (I played Gears of War and I admit its a bloody good game which any 360 owners should buy). It’s because (as to date) three of my favourite games are for the PS3 :- Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts and Metal Gear Solid 4. Those three games are enough reasons for me to take the PS3 over the other two consoles. However if they were to be released on the 360, I wouldn’t hesitate to change over to xbox due to lower cost.

My point is … buy / play a game because of the game, not because of the console. Being fans of Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo are cool but slamming other consoles just because they are not from the company you like is just plain stupid. If you don’t like it, avoid it or don’t buy it. At the end of the day, nobody is forcing you right?