It’s a proud week for us here at Zipper Interactive as tomorrow marks the 8th birthday of our first-ever PS2 game and the title that started a huge multimillion-selling franchise, SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs. To celebrate the eight-year mark, we’ve put together a special video for our fans.

In it, you’ll experience the gamescom 2010 SOCOM: Special Forces demo in its entirety with commentary by lead designer, Travis Steiner. This is the first time anywhere that you’ll see the gamescom demo played all the way through and in high-definition, making it a “must watch” for anyone even remotely interested in what we have in store for 2011.

Let us know what you think below, and please accept our sincerest thanks for making the first eight years of SOCOM as great as they have been. Here’s to many more to come!

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For those not already sick of my blue T-shirt, here’s another video interview direct from gamescom. I managed to get five minutes with Zach Wood, Senior Producer of Sorcery, which is being developed between SCEA‘s Santa Monica Studio and The Workshop.

Sorcery is an action adventure, designed specifically for the PlayStation Move motion controller, where you control a young apprentice wizard forced to master his newly-acquired skills deep in the Faerie Kingdom.

You use PlayStation Move for just about everything in the game, including positioning your wand, casting elemental spells towards your enemies and shaking and drinking bottles of potion that provide unique abilities, such as transforming into a rat to access new areas.

If I was a wizard, I would create clones of myself so I could sit at home playing Pandemonium 2 while they run around Cologne filming interviews (or maybe I already did)…

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Hello, it’s great to be back on the PlayStation.Blog!

When my three friends and I first got together as Hello Games and started work on Joe Danger, we could only dream of the success it’s already achieved.

More important than any of that is the amazingly supportive response we’ve had from the PlayStation community. That’s why, for the last couple of months, we’ve been trying to cater to as many requests from the community as we can. Lots of people asked for a trial, so we put a huge one together with hours of gameplay, for those people who still can’t decide if Joe Danger is awesome or not. As of Tuesday, it’s now available worldwide.

Yesterday we also released something we call the “People’s Patch”. It answers pretty much every piece of feedback we’ve had from the community. It’s something for fans to get really excited about, and if you haven’t played the game before, you’re in for a treat. It’s totally free, and all you have to do is boot Joe Danger up to get all this new cool stuff.

For instance, now you can save, playback and upload your greatest stunt spectaculars to YouTube. After all, what’s the point of being the world’s greatest stuntman if you can’t show your friends?

Here’s something else we’re really excited about – we’re going to be showcasing the very best user created levels at joe-danger.com. Go there now to find out more and enter our level building competition.

Also, there is a totally new, free level made by Hello Games available for download right now.

Here are some of the key new features:

• Level sharing and more levels
• Replays and YouTube support
• Custom soundtracks
• More multiplayer levels
• New level editing props
• Costumes
• Downloadable tours
• Hidden stuff!
• Lots more

Hello Games wants to genuinely thank the community again for their amazing support. We really hope you enjoy the new features or just take the time to try out the trial. Go and spread the word

You can keep up to date with Hello Games and Joe Danger on our blog, follow us on Twitter or even just send us a mail!

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For the past couple of months I’ve tried to become an elite jetfighter pilot: dogfighting, bombing targets from amidst the clouds, shadowing stealthy enemies – I’ve done it all. Not in real life though, I’m actually Sorin Muresan, a Community Developer working at Ubisoft Romania. In doing my job I get to rub elbows with the devs and talk with the fans, write news, capture screenshots and videos, organize events and, hardest of all, I have to play a lot of games. The one I’ve been working on and enjoying lately is H.A.W.X. 2, an aerial combat game that put me through a rollercoaster ride with fireworks going off all around.

From the first cinematic, I got a glimpse of the Tom Clancy storyline: I was in the middle of a world conspiracy with terrorists threatening to use stolen nukes against whoever doesn’t meet their demands. So I got comfortable in my chair and ready to dispense some justice and peace with my trigger finger.

The first mission started me off easy, with a take-off from an airbase to inspect the area around. Piece of cake! Full throttle, pitch up and the sky was the limit! But I would later find out that landing is not a piece of said cake, especially when attempting it at night on an aircraft carrier, even with the onboard computer helping me a little. And it seared a mental note into my brain: always make sure to lower the landing gear before attempting to touch down. I still have no idea how I simply forgot to do this. Twice.

I guess I’ll just blame it on not having had any other aerial combat game to play for quite a while. Nevertheless, there I was, back in the cockpit, refreshing my aircraft piloting skills. While I recognized a lot of the planes from the first HAWX, the way they behaved felt different. With a much more life-like physics engine, I had to scrap some of my old tactics, like flying inverted to have a better view of the ground targets. When I tried this in H.A.W.X. 2, the plane would fall towards the ground and I had to constantly correct the flight path.

But I quickly adapted and evolved so I was flying better and better, ever so close to the edge of control. This was a must during dogfights against some pretty cunning and agile enemies. They evaded my missiles, would often outmaneuver me and seemed to find those sweet spots where I couldn’t get a lock on with the heat-seeking missiles and I had to chisel away at their planes with the cannon.

Even with a more cunning AI, I still got many opportunities to use all of the missiles, rockets and bombs in my arsenal throughout the scenarios. In some missions I got radar guided missiles with which I safely took out enemies from afar. While in other missions, I quickly cleared out entire tank squads with some cluster bombs. And I had some FPS-like fun with the stand-off missiles that I could guide right up to the impact point through their onboard cameras.

As a change of pace, the game also had me fly silent Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs) in covert surveillance missions. I marked the ground targets and later on I got to take them out from high in the sky. Those insurgents never saw my precision bombs coming. And in other missions, when the allied ground troops were in trouble, I was dispatched to provide close air support in the AC-130 gunships from which I was operating some very powerful cannons and clearing paths for the advancing squads.

And the more I played, the more I got in return. You’ll know what I mean if you join me in a Team Battle multiplayer match and see how I customized my plane’s weapon loadout through the new Plane Mastery system. The demo’s out already for the PS3, so get it now and practice a little! The game will be cleared for launch in 2 weeks and I’ll be waiting for you in the game lobby.

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Just a little word to shout about South African “New Age Hip Hop/Electro outfit” Locnville (pronounced Lokenvill for those of you who don’t already know). These guys completely rocked gamescom to its foundations and are set for something special so we decided we should give them a special artist spotlight feature.

We have feature footage that tells you all about the twins this week as well as the video for their first single “Sun In My Pocket” and next Thursday, 2 September, we have the footage from gamescom so you can see the foundations tremble for yourselves.

We are really interested to see what you think about these guys so get over to your PlayStation 3!

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