Currently Playing Roundup

Well finally my PS3 based investment starts to pay off with some serious play time. I've actually completely replayed Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction spending a touch more time exploring and making sure I had a variety of weapons powered up to 5 experience levels as well as full developed with 'Raritarium' and still couldn't do the final boss. Gave up after two attempts because ... well lifes to short and I don't have the patience.

Started Gran Turismo 5:Prologue at the weekend. It has to be said it's beautiful to behold. The front end is excellent with a lovely menu interface and 'Live' info from the GT universe and real world stuff as well. It's a little clunky to actually use and somewhat long winded too (after finishing an event you have to go back through another 3 menu screens to choose the next event cos it takes you all the way back to the front end). Rather disappointingly the first track you play is the 'High Speed Ring' which has been featured in every GT game since the first one. Having said that it does show what a leap it is.. The replays are truly stunning the cars surpassing anything seen in PGR4 or Forza 2 for photo realism. Having switched to 'Professional handling' and turning all the driving aids off it has a very satisfying handeling model to.. It soon get's very challenging just to keep the cars on the road. It's tough too. I've got as far as class A cars and it's proper hard. Sadly you can't tune or buy parts for your chosen automobile at this point in the game (always one of the best and deepest parts of the GT experience) and for me this rather shows up the still poor-ish AI of the competition. I've yet to try the online mode. Overall though solid value rather than exceptional but a great chance to show what the PS3 can do.. Should sell some machines if you're worried about that sort of thing.

Purchase Power

Picked up the solitary copy of Gran Turismo 5 : Prologue in WHsmiths yesterday. Couldn't find a copy of Everybodys Golf so that'll be a mission for today.

GT5:P is a mandatory HDD install which took a wee while to install followed by it wanting to do an update download. This got to the same long winded point (about 10 minutes into a total of 20 I'd say) before throwing up an error message. Switched the PS3 off and switched it on again and had another go to no avail. Played some of the game offline and then had another try from within the games menu options and third time lucky. You also have to have the option set on the PS3 to get the time and date settings from the internet (Not even an option I knew was there and I doubt it would've occured to me had it not been for some help from the EDGE Forum). I've often had X-Box Live update games I've just bought but crucially they've never failed to install.. seems the PSN has a while to go.

Great Expectations

Finally some light on the PS3 release schedule as both Gran Turismo 5: Prologue and Everybodys Golf 5 make Pal release on friday.

I really enjoyed Everybodys Golf on PSP and indeed on PSone. What with this years Tiger Woods being a little disappointing (Being at the same time to similar and yet harder) there's a Golf shaped hole in my life.

I've enjoyed nearly every Gran Turismo game I've played (4 somehow seemed a little dull after Forza (Itself not the most undull game)) but the last one seems like an awful long time ago now and while it did cause me a joypad casualty (The last one actually but maybe I've grown up a bit since then) I'm looking forward to 5, Prologue also seems to offer a reasonable amount of content too. Along with online racing. So looks like Friday could be expensive.