Based on Norse mythology, Riviera sees Ein battling demons in a quest to seal the Accursed. While previously a Grim Angel, Ein sacrificed his wings for his weapon, Einherjar. He’s joined by the familiar Rose and four companions – Fia, Lina, Serene and Cierra. Depending on how Ein interacts with a companion, they can forge a relationship which leads to different endings.

The gameplay is also unique because Ein isn’t freely moveable in areas. Instead, you must investigate in Look Mode and use Trigger Points for different events. In combat, there are two formations – Attack and Magic – and depending on the items and who wields them, you can employ different abilities.

Riviera: The Promised Land was also released for PlayStation Portable in 2007 and featured full voice-acting, improved visuals and more than 50 “reworked” scenes. Time will tell which version the remaster will follow, so stay tuned.

https://twitter.com/sting_pr/status/1679007687294500864

First up is Syphon Filter: Logan’s Shadow for PS4 and PS5. First available on the PlayStation Portable, it sees Precision Strike operative Gabe Logan return and features new mechanics. You can lean from cover, blind fire and even use humans as shields. There’s also Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light, a PSP action RPG developed by Hit Maker in 2006. It’s also playable on PS4 and PS5.

Bigbig Studios’ Pursuit Force from the PSP era will also be available on PS4 and PS5 and focuses on the titular elite unit engaging in high-speed chases and vehicle-hopping to take down criminals. All three PSP titles will support custom video filters and up-rendering while allowing players to quick save and rewind.

Finally, Ghostbusters: The Video Game Remastered on PS4 will be available. Though it doesn’t have online support, it sports visual improvements and voice work by the original film’s actors.

Check out the range of titles coming to both Extra and Premium:

• Adventure Time Pirates of the Enchiridion (PS4)
• Ben 10: Power Trip (PS5, PS4)
• The Escapists 2 (PS4)
• Evil Genius 2: World Domination (PS5, PS4)
• Far Cry 5 (PS4)
• Far Cry New Dawn (PS4)
• Far Cry Primal (PS4)
• Gigantosaurus The Game (PS4)
• Judgment (PS5, PS4)
• Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor (PS4)
• Middle-Earth: Shadow of War (PS4)
• Mortal Shell (PS5, PS4)
• The Pedestrian (PS5, PS4)
• Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire – Ultimate Edition (PS4)
• WWE 2K22 (PS4)
• Yakuza 6: The Song of Life (PS4)
• Yakuza: Like a Dragon (PS5, PS4)
• Worms W.M.D (PS4)

Some heavy hitters include Judgment and Yakuza: Like a Dragon, playable on PS5 and PS4. Far Cry 5 and New Dawn may also be worth jumping into, while Far Cry Primal offers a prehistoric spin on the series’ open-world gameplay.

Premium subscribers also get new Classic titles this month, including Pinball Heroes and Ridge Racer 2 on the PlayStation Portable. Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus on the PlayStation One and Ninja Theory’s Heavenly Sword on PS3 are also being added. For more details on the free titles offered with PlayStation Plus Essential, head here.

PlayStation Plus Extra is available for $14.99 monthly and $99.99 yearly. PlayStation Plus Premium costs $17.99 monthly and $119.99 yearly. Stay tuned for more details on future additions to both tiers in the coming weeks.

Sony has reversed its decision to cease PlayStation Store operations for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita, which was originally slated to happen this Summer. Sony Interactive Entertainment president and CEO Jim Ryan said on the PlayStation Blog that, “Upon further reflection, however, it’s clear that we made the wrong decision here.” Of course, commerce functionality for the PSP will still end on July 2nd.

Ryan notes that the decision to close the storefront for PS3 and Vita was “Born out of a number of factors, including commerce support challenges for older devices and the ability for us to focus more of our resources on newer devices where a majority of our gamers are playing on. We see now that many of you are incredibly passionate about being able to continue purchasing classic games on PS3 and PS Vita for the foreseeable future, so I’m glad we were able to find a solution to continue operations.”

On March 29th, Sony announced that the PlayStation Store for PS3 and PSP would cease operations on July 2nd (with the PS Vita’s support ending on August 27th). Due to the number of games that aren’t backwards compatible on newer hardware, such as classics from the PS One and PS2 eras, they would essentially be lost to history. The decision was met with backlash especially in the wake of Ryan’s statements on backwards compatibility in 2017.

Sony hasn’t indicated whether the storefronts for PS3 and PS Vita will be shut down at some time later or remain open indefinitely. Whether the web versions of these stores will return also remains to be seen. Stay tuned for more details and updates in the meantime (especially with Sony rumored to be working on their own Game Pass-style competitor).

The game was released on September 24th 2013 in North America and on September 27th in Europe for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation Portable, Wii, Nintendo 3DS, iOS, Android and the PC. The game was also released on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Given the power differences between the last generation of consoles (PS 3 Xbox 360 etc) and the current generation consoles (Xbox One and PS4) the game will be running on two separate engines, named Impact and Ignite respectively.

• 1. Development
• 2. Career Mode
• 3. Gameplay
• 4. Limited Edition

Development

Over the years the developers of the FIFA series have been trying to create a realistic football sim. The developers have stated that they have included a variety of new elements with FIFA 14, like precision movement, greater midfield build-up and team intelligence. The precision movement brings more dynamic momentum and foot planting, as movement is calculated which each individual step.

Senior gameplay producer Aaron McHardy stated in an interview that, “We’ve been able to change the way the acceleration curves work in the game to be more accurate to the real world and preserve that momentum better. So that’s going to feel fundamentally different when you’re running around with any player on the pit. The game is more like a chess match of creating opportunities building up to the midfield than it was in previous years, which was more about running down the wing and hoping that someone was open for you to pass the ball to. Now it’s a lot more strategic. We want you to think football a lot more than we did in last year’s game.” [reference]

Team intelligence allows AI players to make better decisions and really force the player to play smarter. In an interview they stated, “One of the most memorable moments from the 2006 FIFA World Cup occurred when Argentina strung together 24 passes before scoring a fantastic goal against Serbia and Montenegro,” EA Sports revealed. The attackers knew exactly where they should be to open up the opposition and they executed flawlessly. With Teammate Intelligence in FIFA 14, players will have better decision-making and teams will play smarter on both the attack and defense to bring the beauty of the game to life.” [reference]

FIFA 14 won’t support Kinect. As Electronic Arts Sports boss Andrew Wilson stated in an interview; “We feel the evolution of that will do more for gamers this year [than motion]. We’re not quite at motion yet. We’re running some prototypes, but as yet we’re not seeing anything that universally enhances the core sports experience. Right now we’re still in a position where we see voice as the feature of Kinect that’s most relevant to FIFA. And that’s how you’ll see it this year. We did voice last year. There are new capabilities of voice recognition in the new Kinect the team is trying to utilize to make sure we take that to the next level and give you an even greater level of control through voice in the game.” [reference]

Ignite, the new engine that will be used exclusively for the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One, will not be featured on the PC. Steve Frost the Global Communications Manager for EA Sports stated in an interview that. “Ignite will be the engine that drives our sports games on PS4 and Xbox One. It will not be used for FIFA 14 on PC.Ignite will also run NBA Live 14, EA Sports UFC and Madden NFL 25 when EA Sports announced it during the Xbox One reveal. The video uses assets pulled directly from the in-game engines, and was rendered to create this first look multi-product trailer. It’s representative of where we expect our games will be when they launch.”

EA Communications Specialist Brad Hilderbrand also commented. “Yes, given the timing and planning required for the Xbox One reveal event the EA Sports Ignite video was developed in a pre-rendered video format. We’ll be showing off the game using in-game assets at E3.” [reference]

A petition was started to feature female players in FIFA 14, but despite more than 10,000 signatures, FIFA 14 producer Sebastian Enrique stated in an interview that it won’t be happening. “It is something we have talked about but there are no plans at the moment”. For the game to feature female players, “there are lots of things we would have to change though, like the physics would be different, it would affect collisions. There are lot of things that are involved”. This included “new models and hair styles”. [reference]

Career Mode

Career mode has been retooled this time around. It includes a Global Scouting Setup through most countries. You can now search for talent all season long using the same scout, and pick from various clubs around the world as players compete in various football tournaments and battle against the best.

Gameplay

New features coming into play with FIFA 14 include the Pure Shot and Real Ball physics. New shot types include off-balance and rushed shots, with Real Ball now defining ball routes for players to kick with relative force from a distance. With these enhancements, one can now search for the best angle and approach for making shots.

Executive Producer for FIFA 14 David Rutter stated in an interview, “FIFA 14 will play the way great matches are contested with build up through midfield, tension throughout the match as chances are created, and incredible finishing. Opportunities in FIFA 14 will be rewarding and great goals will look stunning.” [reference]

Limited Edition

The “Ultimate Edition” from Amazon UK will receive 24 Ultimate Team gold packs, one per week. Each gold pack features a mix of 12 items including players, contracts, healing, badges and more, along with a special item such as a strong, valuable player or longer contracts.

The Ultimate Edition will include historic kits, Virtual Pro Boosters and an All-Star Team sponsored by Adidas with Barcelona and Argentina star – and cover man – Lionel Messi.

The Limited Edition will feature the same perks as the Ultimate Edition, but will have 2 additional rare items with the gold packs. The Limited Edition will be available to pre-order until August 1st, midnight. The Collector’s Edition features all of the above content along with a special edition Adidas EA Sports glider football, and it will be available till September 26th midnight.

Toukiden is an upcoming exclusive PlayStation Vita and PlayStation Portable title that is being developed by W-Omega Force the creators behind Dynasty Warriors series. However, this time around they’re making a ‘Monster Hunter’ genre-type title for the PlayStation Vita and PlayStation Portable exclusively for Sony. The game looks quite promising and a lot more beautiful than Monster Hunter 3 on the Wii U and 3DS thanks to the PlayStation Vita’s capabilities. With that being said, they have released two new videos and plenty of screenshots to gaze upon.

Feast your eyes on the media blowout below

Gameplay Video

Game Introduction/Commercial (In Japanese)

Toukiden Screenshots:

According to the trailer/videos the game will be available on June 26th in Japan. It is currently unknown if the game is coming to North America and Europe, I am deeply hoping that it does at one point. I loved Monster Hunter personally on the PlayStation Portable, and this would be the perfect way to play PlayStation Vita and would totally help the hardware pick up more sales.

Let us know if this game intrigues you in any way and if you’re hoping for a North American and European release sometime in the future in the comments below.

Amazing Graphics

One of the top Baseball game franchises is back and continues to dominate the gaming world of baseball in some eyes while competing in others, the game is MLB 11: The Show of which I am speaking of.  It is hard to top this franchise with it graphically being so good and the sense of realism MLB 11: The Show brings to the table.  One thing I just want to get out of the way the that the game has been released for the Playstation 3, Playstation 2 and PSP.  With this Playstation 3 exclusive, right on the front of the box it says Playstation Move compatible and it is definitely a lead on as you can only use the Playstation Move Wand in the Home Run Derby Mode which is tons of fun, but that is where the PS Move Compatibility ends.  Moving on there are not any other major differences than the last, but rather an improvement on all the aspects of the game even adding a new optional stick control mode.

The graphics of the game are just astonishing making you feel like you are right there in the game, sometimes so much that random things happen like a person falling onto the field trying to catch a foul ball.  Each player in the game is so perfectly resembling themselves in real life down to a mole, a haircut, a build, a batting stance and even down to the actual players statistics making bad or good moves resembling their real life game.  You can even start up Exhibition Mode and let the AI go at watching how closely each player resembles their real life counterpart in looks and in gameplay.

Online Menu

A new addition the the franchise is the ‘Pure Analog Controls’ which you can switch to play with these controls with batting, pitching and throwing or individually use the new analog feature with batting for example while keeping original controls for pitching.  This new analog feature is very hard to get used to but at the same time really adds a new element to the game in which mastered gives you more control than ever in a baseball game, it’s just a shame it is so difficult to use.  When it comes to pitching you hold the right stick down until the indicator climbs down and back up again to a gold bar where you want to release the stick at.  Releasing the stick on that exact point will give you a pretty perfect pitch while curving the stick left or right afterwards will sway the ball in the direction.  Now batting in my opinion is a little bit more difficult, as the easy way to describe it is to pull back on the stick once the ball leaves the pitchers hand and push up on the stick to hit the ball, but unfortunately it’s not that easy.  You see in between all that you still have to get the timing down right and make sure ball is being thrown inside the strike zone and know what kind of pitch you are getting which is a lot in such a short time frame to grasp.  If you can get that down, well bless your soul because you will be home runs like crazy.  Now throwing on the other hand is nice and easy to get down, once you have to the ball down on the stick throws home, right to first base, up to second and left to  third.  You can even fake throw just adding that much more realism to the game.

There are the usual modes that return to the game like Road to the Show, Franchise and Season with Exhibition getting you right into the action with up to 4 players that you can play with.  Upon starting Road to the Show you are giving an option on how you player with ultimately grow.  As you progress through the mode you will gain experience which has actually been changed in this years game making a little more sense and balancing things out.  There are also new training sessions available in Road to the Show where goals are set, while the better you do in reaching them the more points you get, but you can also lose points too, not too mention you’ll a rivals scores you have to keep up with. Franchise mode is just like real life, is fact as real as it can get, take trading players for instance, if you want a good you going to need to pay up or trade one of your best making it as real as ever.  Here is a curve ball for you as true baseball fans will be happy to know that the field stats of players actually matter now as oppose to previous games.  The better your fielders stats are the better the will do in the outfield, shortstop or base men.

Analog Pitching

New to this years game is the 4 player online co-op mode in which you can go up against an AI team3 of your friends or actually play another group of 4 players.  This is of course only playable in Exhibition mode to keep things simple with the new co-op play which can also be done locally.  There is also a ‘Challenge of the Week’ mode that lets you earn as much points as you can before striking out three times.  Unless you are willing to pay money you will have to wait until next week to try to rack up points again and even have a chance to win real prizes.  Win or lose playing online will get you XP, but unfortunately there are still lag issues while playing online after all the games released, some lag issues being more game braking than other, it is still there.

There is also a camera system that will even mimic angles seen on a television broadcast.  That combined with the stellar graphics make the game quite an experience.  These camera angles can of course be tweaked as there are many of them.  Creating your character is so in depth you can literally make him look exactly like you granted you have the hours to spend doing so, but the details of creating a character are endless.  There are so many different options in the game but I have not come across one to turn the announcers off as they were no pleasant addition to the after a while.  Other than that the sound of the was actually truly amazing hearing the crowd, I can’t imagine all the little thing the recorded to make you feel like you were in a real arena.  With the analog controls being the heart of the changes made in MLB 11: The Show, the game is basically the same as last years with small improvements in almost every aspect.  This easily makes the game the best in the franchise yet so true baseball game fans sure be sure to pick it up while other gamers might want to test it out to see if it has what they are looking for.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 3.

Uh oh. Well, this doesn’t sound too good.

As TheSixthAxis reports, a Japanese website is stating that Sony Computer Entertainment has halted all development on the next generation Playstation home console, colloquially referred to as the Playstation 4.

Apparently, the Playstation 3, which only just became profitable for Sony last year, has bled the corporation dry, and they are now looking at keeping the system relevant for as long as possible. Also, it seems that Sony seems to believe that the future of non PC gaming lies in the handhelds, and not in home consoles, as they are, for all purposes, betting on the NGP to become the next ‘mainline’ Playstation system. As the quote says:

‘Hiroshige Goto says SCEI suspended PS4 development. They were working on a PowerPC based system at IBM Rochester after the Larrabee fall out, then shelved it. They are betting the farm on PSP2 as they expect handhelds to displace consoles.’

This, of course, raises several questions. Just what was the Playstation 4 going to be? A PowerPC based system developed by IBM? That sounds very intriguing. Why was development halted?  Were the costs of R&D too high for Sony to afford right now, when they just became profitable after so many years of sustaining heavy losses? Does this indicate that the NGP may just be named the ‘Playstation 4?’

What will also be interesting to watch will be how Sony attempts to keep the Playstation 3 relevant to publishers after the gates to rampant piracy were opened following the Geohotz leaks. As long as Sony can keep piracy to a minimum, publishers will continue to support the system, as they are fully comfortable with its architecture by now, and as the system itself is well designed enough to last well into the twilight years of the current decade.

The Playstation line of systems is the bestselling hardware line of video game consoles in history. The first Playstation, released in 1995, sold 100 million units, whereas its legendary successor, the Playstation 2, recently crossed the 150 million units shipped mark. The Playstation Portable, Sony’s first foray into handheld gaming, has sold 60 million units so far, whereas the Playstation 3 currently stands at 47 million units sold.

Whether the Playstation 3, and the conspicuous lack of Playstation branding on the NGP and Xperia Play indeed indicate an end of the most successful hardware brand in gaming history remains to be seen.