The BIGS should be sitting on store shelves today.  Why should you be excited about yet another sports game?  Well the fact that The BIGS boasts a small learning curve and delivering some of the best animations out there. 

“With The BIGS, we really wanted to put a whole new spin on baseball while still staying true to America’s favorite pastime,” said Greg Thomas, President of Visual Concepts, a 2K Sports studio. “We took all the big action plays intrinsic to the game and made them happen much more often, creating a hero-like presentation of the players and the sport. The BIGS will give gamers spectacular wall catches, dramatic diving grabs, acrobatic double plays and many more dramatic highlight reel moments to deliver a truly new, exciting brand of baseball.”

The BIGS allows players to use turbo and power-ups, which they claim adds a unique level of strategy to the game (of course Fusion Frenzy 2 promised the same thing with the use of “Cards”, and we all know how that turned out).  Now pitching, batting, or playing the outfield can utilize these modifiers to make momentous plays.  Of course real life Baseball has power ups, they are called Steroids. 

All kidding aside this looks like a great game that all sports fans should check out or at the very least give it a rental, and with the easy to learn game play try to get friends and significant excited about the all American pass time of Baseball.

Via Press Release

Kaz Harai the new captain of the Playstation ship is out promoting the Playstation 3.  Many consumers and gaming enthusisansts are saying that one of the major reasons for not purchasing the PS3 is fact there are not allot of games, and there is a sever shortage of exculsive gaming titles for the console.  Hirai stated that there is a major effort to bring new content to the PS3 platform, to the tune of 380 new offerings.  Kaz is talking about having 180 PSN titles, and 200 retail games available to consumers by March of 2008.  While this sounds like an almost impossible feat, we will have to sit back and wait to see if Sony can make good on Kaz’s promises.

While churning out hundreds of crappy movie based games and cookie cutter RPG’s may not be exactly difficult, I would actually be more excited to seem the produce a smaller amount of high quality games like Resistance: Fall of Man, MotorStorm, Heavenly Sword. I would actually be more excited if Sony were to concentrate on producting 20 to 50 unquie new games that were very high quality, instead of the possiblity of hundreds of average games with only a few spectacular games.

If Sony wants to sell more consoles I agree that getting more great games out there is key, but getting rumble incorprated back into the Playstation platform, and maybe a little price drop would also huge factors in getting those sales numbers up. PSSST, Sony look what happened when you dropped the price of the PSP? The price goes down the sales go up!

Via Play.tm

Eric Lempel the Director, Playstation Network Operations jumped on the Playstation Blog and let us all know a few details about the 1.82 firmware update. First of all it will be coming “in the next few days”. But most importantly it will now support playback of AVC High Profile (H.264 & MPEG-4) files. He breifly mentioned additional PS2 game support.

Eric promised to get back on the Blog and let us all know when the update is ready for us to download. So keep checking back because as soon as he lets us know, we will let you all know.

Via Playstation.Blog

At first when I read this article I thought this was going to be a game about the current American President. But it turns out it is about the an animal kingdom political race. So basically it will help you to see if you have what it takes to be the King of the Jungle.

”No one has attempted to bring an over-the-top party game like Hail to the Chimp to next-gen consoles, much less one with biting political satire,” said Rick Stults, Console Chief for Gamecock Media Group. ”Keeping with its reputation, Wideload is going to give gamers something truly original.”

Hail to the Chimp begins after the Lion is deposed as King following a series of embarrassing scandals. The rest of the animals decide it’s time to give democracy a try and hold an election for the next King giving even the lowliest of animals (the Clams) a say in things. The election quickly becomes a chaotic multiplayer free-for-all, with each candidate using a combination of brute force and dirty tricks to turn out the Clam vote. Ten animals will compete to become the next King. During the game, all ten candidates will need to form, and break, alliances with their rivals to gain the upper hand. Multiple game types and hazard-filled arenas keep the action flowing nonstop as the shifting loyalties, truces and vendettas build up to epic proportions.

Look for this Spring of 2008, this promises to be a much more interesting political race then the United States Presidential Election.

Via Press Release

Today only Amazon.com are selling Final Fantasy XII for the Playstation 2 for $22.99, reduced from $39.99 with free shipping if you add another $2.01 to your cart

Final Fantasy XII is the latest installment is Squares long running RPG series, the game is about half a year old and has received rave reviews from pretty much every publication that has reviewed it. Definitely a keeper for any RPG fan.

Kratos is as crazy as ever in God of War II for the Playstation II, for players of the the original game this will be recognised as more of the same, if you are new to the series, now is a really good time to jump in and start ripping off some heads. The God of War series started just a couple of years ago and turned out to be a real gem, it’s always nice to play a great action adventure game where you can semi mindlessly kill hundreds of dudes in some fast paced action. God of War delivered it and now God of War does the same, new creatures, new weapons, more killing. It’s not all about Kratos’ rage though, often you’ll find a door you can’t get open, or a ledge you can’t reach, this is where the puzzle elements come into play to slow you down and give you a short break before the killing resumes. People who would avoid the Zelda series for it’s puzzle nature need not fear this element of GOWII’s gameplay, puzzles are brief and simple usually involving you pushing a block onto a switch or just testing your timing so you avoid some spinning blades. These pauses are pretty infrequent and short and play a lesser part than they did in the first GOW, the balance feels about right and any puzzles are usually solved long before they become frustrating, although I seem to have some problem in identifying walls that can be climbed.

Large amounts of enemies are no problems for an angry Kratos

One of the improvements over the first game is the graphics, there are some new effects and what feels like a slightly improved art style. The first game was definitely not bad to look at, but when you put the high def cheat on the game looks more like a current gen title rather than last gen, the PlayStation 2 is really pushed to it’s limits. The high def mode is a strange one, you have to hold down a series of buttons as the game starts to activate this and it’s not available in the European version as the space on the disk is required for the extra languages available. Not having the high def in Europe is a shame, but it shouldn’t deter anyone from experiencing this game, the graphics still look great without it. GOWII also features the same style of cinematic cut-scenes as the first, with similar high quality. The overall graphical presentation is a high class package all the way.

Magic powers will be unlocked throughout the course of the game and leveled up

Boss fights come at you throughout the game, you’ll find that on average you’ll have one of these fights every hour or so throughout the 13-14 hour game. Right from the get-go you’ll encounter the Colossus of Rhodes this is one of the largest and most impressive boss battles of the game, it really helps set the pace for the whole experience. The other battles vary from single one-on-one battles to other large scale battles like the giant Kraken. These battles vary as much in impressiveness as they do in difficulty, playing through on medium I often found I fell to some bosses 4-5 times before I claimed a victory, it wasn’t overly frustrating and felt to be the right degree of challenge. When you’re not fighting bosses or solving puzzles then the minions will be keeping you busy, these vary as much as the bosses, some can be ripped up with just a couple hits, where as others you’ll need to use a little strategy and slowly work them down until you can finish them with a few context sensitive button presses.

Fighting some of the larger creatures can be tricky, epically when there is more than one

A few RPG elements appear in GOWII as they did in the original, these are noting major but rather than the same endless fighting the character improvement system does make it feel like you are achieving a goal rather than just furthering the plot. You’ll start with just the ability to just improve your Blades of Athena, but as you earn new weapons and skills you’ll be able to upgrade them also. This includes new attacks, more damage, combos, and with the skills you’ll collect you’ll be able to drop more balls of lightning or just in general increase the effectiveness of your magic. This also increases re-playability since you’ll keep your red orbs (that are used to level up) when you start a new game, so you can play through with a different strategy and different weapons. As well as testing out new weapons you may find yourself crawling through the game a second time to find the 6 hidden urns which will grant new abilities and cheat like skills, such as infinite magic.

The scale of some of the areas is just fantastic

Overall GOWII improves on it’s predecessor, fans of the original will love it, and fans of this game type will find it one of the best of it’s class.

Graphics 10 Gameplay 9 Sound 9 Length 8 Overall score 9

Great graphics Fast action gameplay Huge levels and bosses Battles can get repetitive

Today only Amazon.com are selling Marvel Ultimate Alliance for the Playstation 2 for $12.99, reduced from $29.99 with free shipping if you add another $12.01 to your cart.The Marvel alternitive to Justice League Heroes, in my mind it’s also a heck of a lot better

Today only Amazon.com are selling Justice League Heroes for the Playstation 2 for $12.99, reduced from $19.99 with free shipping if you add another $12.01 to your cart.

A pretty solid game, epically for comic book fans, although the game is usually only $8 more, so if you have to pay for shipping it’s not really worth it

Today only Amazon.com are selling Sony Playstation2 Guitar Mania Wireless V Guitar (Red) for the Playstation 2 for $25.00, reduced from $49.99 with free shipping.

For all you Guitar Heros/Maniacs out there Amazon are offering 50% off a 3rd party wireless guitar, as long as it’s red. The big snag is it’s not compatible with GHII without a $9.99 adaptor from theguitarmania.com

EDIT: My readings skills are not what they once were, this guitar does include an adaptor to make it compatible with GHII already

Today only Amazon.com are selling Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles for the Playstation 2 for $27.99, reduced from $39.99 with free shipping.

I myself am not a Naruto fan, perhaps I would be if I ever caught the program, from what I’ve heard people who are not fans of the series should probably give this action/fighting game a miss.