Hope you’re all having a good weekend and are looking forward to E3. Before we kick off our week of coverage from the show floor, let’s enjoy a leisurely Sunday stroll through some of the news, reviews, oddities and other great PlayStation coverage that’s caught our eye over the last few days.

The PSB.Europe weekly reading list (Week of 25 May)

• Wired preview: Red Dead Redemption
• Sackboy tee
• NZGamer.com – MAG: Massive Action Game Preview
• Sony Ericsson launch PS3 Remote Play phone | PS3 Attitude
• Kotaku: European PlayStation Blog Open For Business
• Josticq: European PlayStation Blog now live
• Interview: Inferno Pool | TheSixthAxis
• News: VidZone – exclusive footage – ComputerAndVideoGames.com
• Heavy Rain Blow Out; Digesting Everything We Know – PushSquare.com
• E3 2009 Build Up – Most Anticipated #1; Heavy Rain on PlayStation 3
• Get Your FREE inFamous Home T Right Here – Feature
• http://geekcrafts.com/5-amigurumi-sackboys-by-causticmuse/
• EGTV: Rock Band Unplugged interview
• 2 Player Productions’ inside look at Sucker Punch raises dev diary bar
• Media Molecule – we make games. » Blog Archive » 2000AD Costumes – Johnny Alpha
• GameSetWatch – Girl Has a Lucky Week, Reaches Mars
• inFamous – Spong Review
• Ghostbusters creator Dan Aykroyd discusses videogame | Film | The Guardian
• IGN: Infamous Review

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Thanks everyone for all of your warm welcomes over our first few days in the blogosphere. Like Chris and Jeff in the US, we’ll be posting these weekend retrospectives every Saturday, to help make sure that you haven’t missed any juicy morsels of PlayStation news.

PlayStation.Blog.Europe Weekly Content Recap

• Welcome – You’ve Been Waiting – A hearty welcome from everyone at SCEE to our brand new shiny PlayStation.Blog
• inFamous Unleashed! – infamous hit stores across Europe and in the UK and Ireland this week. We gave you some of our favourite picks of the superb inFamous artwork, and maybe oh-so subtly hinted at a secret code for the minigame…
• Crash Commando Patch And Trial Version – Olof from EPOS provided our first developer update on the blog! Check out his post for full details of what’s in the new patch for Crash Commando.
• This Week On The SingStore – An Ultimate Queen songpack plus more than 30 new tracks including Britney, Gorillaz, Evanescence and more.
• Playing At The Final – An Update From The UEFA Champions League – Find out what happened at the finals in Rome of our grassroots ‘PlayStation Freestylers’ competition.
• PlayStation Store Update – 28 May – Dress up Sackboy as Judge Dredd or other 2000AD characters, and grab free demos of Crash Commando and Rock Band Unplugged. What are you waiting for?
• Buzz! Comes To PlayStation Home – Announcing the upcoming Buzz! HQ space and lobby for PlayStation Home, where you can take part in fun multiplayer quizzes with loads of other folks in PS Home.
• Red Faction: Guerrilla Community Day – Find out what happens when 25 gamers descend on PlayStation HQ for a day of Red Faction multiplayer mayhem.
• Countdown To E3 – A look ahead to our coverage next week of one of the biggest events in the gaming calendar.
• MotorStorm: Pacific Rift – Third Game Update: Speed And Adrenaline Rush — Jed Ashforth from Evolution Studios grants all of our MotorStorm wishes for new tracks, modes and fresh rides.

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As ‘Stormers worldwide continue to collect their FREE Signature Liveries every week, all eyes are turning towards the coast of the setting sun to see what’s in store next. We’re well aware of what you’ve all been wishing for – Tracks, Modes, fresh Rides and a few surprises on the side. All wishes, we’re very happy to report, that we’re about to make come true.

If you’re one of the fortunate 40,000 attending the LA conference centre on June 5/6, and you’re a MotorStorm fan, then you’ll be able to count yourself amongst the first in the world to witness our 2 new major downloadable content packs, ‘Expansion : SPEED’ and ‘Expansion : ADRENALINE’. Rammed bumper-to-bumper with new content, you’re going to need to set aside some serious time to investigate them both fully.

Expansion : SPEED will be the first off the start line, and screams into view fully tanked up with MotorStorm goodness; 3 brand new tracks (Quicksands, Engorged and Dark Fire Swamp), 3 brand new track variants, 4 sweet new vehicles (sporting 3 paint jobs each) and a whole brand new 48-event Mini-Festival, ‘Speed Weekend’, packed with unlockable rewards, trophies and Microbadges.

Expansion : ADRENALINE is racing along beside it, neck-and-neck, and bringing with it even MORE content! 3 MORE new tracks (Reefrunner, Brimstone and Hollowed Earth), 5 new track variants, 4 more exclusive new race machines (each with 3 liveries to choose from), 6 brand new characters (each sporting 3 different costumes), and a whole big fat stash of fresh new paint jobs for your existing vehicles.

Let’s look at those numbers for a moment – between these two packs, we’re almost DOUBLING the track count in the game, giving you plenty more locations for online races, plenty more Time Attack ghosts to chase, and plenty more settings for split screen fun with your buddies. And you’ve got to believe me guys, these new tracks and the new track variants are some of the best-looking, best-racing tracks we’ve ever made.

So if you’re attending E3 this year, make a mental note to unite with all the other lunatics at the SCEE PSN Stand and be part of the first wave of pioneers to experience all the new content. And if a weekend in LA just doesn’t fit in with your plans, try and make an appointment to call in on VIP.MotorStorm.com, where all the very latest news and updates about the new downloadable content will be breaking first.

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Hello everyone, my name is James and I have the exciting – and I’ll admit, slightly scary – task of reporting from this year’s E3 in sunny California. I’ve been writing for eu.playstation.com for some time now and am looking forward to cutting my blog teeth in the City of Angels as one of the contributing authors.

I’ll be bringing you the big stories as they happen, as well as providing an overall feel of the event and stirring up some epic conversation with you, the PlayStation Community.

Keep an eye on our Twitter and Flickr feeds for breaking stories and any juicy morsels that spring to mind from the show floor, as well as pictures – if I catch any Kratos and Nariko cosplayers canoodling in the cafeteria, you’ll be the first to know.

I’ll be posting video interviews courtesy of my new friends over at SCEA’s PlayStation Blog . We will be producing our own video content soon enough and they’re going to be helping us out while we get on our feet – we will be in their back garden, after all.

If you are making the trip to E3 then please come over and say hello, salut, tag, hola, ciao, ahoj, hallo, moi, yia sou, hej, cześć, servus, bună ziua or any other greeting I’ve forgotten; I’ll be the one with a camera and a nervous look, until the first E3 post goes live on June 1, at least.

Anyhow, SCEE’s PlayStation Blog is as new to you as it is to me and now I’ve introduced myself, it’s over to you. Post a comment telling us which games you’re aching to learn more about, or if you have any special assignments you’d like to see me take on, and I’ll do my best.

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Last Saturday, we teamed up with THQ to host our latest community day, where 25 members of the PlayStation and THQ communities were invited to PlayStation HQ in London to spend some quality time with Red Faction: Guerrilla, nearly 2 weeks before the game is released.

The main order of the day was to give our guests a chance to play the full multiplayer mode in some fast’n’furious LAN battles, or pass the pad in the immensely fun Wrecking Crew mode (lots of destructible buildings, explosive barrels, unlimited ammo and a time limit – I’m sure you get the picture! ) You can read their first impressions of RFG and write-ups of the event at CuriousOnion, NoodleGamer, The Lost Gamer and our very own PlayStation.com Forums (let me know if I’ve missed any, in the comments section!).

Our pictures from the event are here, with plenty more to be found on THQ’s Flickr page.

Congratulations to Miles, who was the well-deserved winner of the LAN tournament and soon-to-be proud owner of a very shiny brand new Sony Bravia 32” widescreen full-HD LCD TV as his prize.

Thanks to everyone who gave up their Saturday in the name of gaming – we hope you all had fun. We’ll be running more of these events in the future and will let you know here as soon as we have the next community day lined up.

In the meantime, you can grab the Red Faction: Guerrilla demo from the PlayStation Store, and the game itself will be out next week. Let the destruction begin!

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