It’s an incredibly exciting time to be a budding developer in the UK and with the imminent launch of PlayStation Mobile small development teams and even bedroom coders can create great games for the platform.

It’s with the arrival of PSM and our continued commitment to finding and nurturing new development talent that, in conjunction with Creative England and Birmingham Science Park, we have established PlayStation Pioneers. The initiative will give smaller developers the opportunity to win £25,000 for a games concept and the opportunity to work alongside Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios Europe External Development Studio (XDev).

With the PlayStation Mobile development studio freely downloadable, taking part in PlayStation Pioneers could not be easier and this is a great opportunity for smaller developer’s with little or even no PlayStation experience to make a great new game for PlayStation. It is equally a great opportunity for XDev to meet passionate and talented teams within the UK and for us to hear all about your great ideas!
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Hello again, my name is Steve Hunt and I’m the developer of the music driven shooter Beat Hazard Ultra. Now the game is out on PSN here’s some exclusive insider gameplay, tactics and trophy tips. Use this sort-of-secret knowledge to help propel yourself up the leader boards in no time!

Beat Hazard Ultra – The Basics

Beat Hazard Ultra is a twin stick shooter that is powered by your music. The game turns any piece of music in to a level. Everything in the game is powered by the music in some way, from your weapon power to the type and formations of the enemies, and all accompanied with intense visual feedback!

Copying Music to Your PS3

Before I start, here’s a quick tip about copying music to your PS3 using a USB memory stick. On the XMB go to Music->USB Device. Then press TRIANGLE and select ‘Display All’. From there select ‘Copy Multiple’. This will ensue your PS3 will find and copy all the music on the USB stick.

The Bad Guys

Aside from basic fodder, you will come across the following bad guys. And here’s how to deal with them:

Pulsar Pack: These bully boys form a ring and try to close in on you. Not much of a threat though.
Best Defence: Don’t waste powerups on these. Kill with standard weapon

Bulldog: These form a line and chase you down. Medium Threat.
Best Defence: A well aimed Ultra Beam blast can take out 4 or 5 at a time

Miner: Drops homing mines that stop you firing if you hit them. These can be very dangerous if left for too long. You can soon be swamped by mines.
Best Defence: Standard weapon or Micro Missiles if no direct line of fire

Stalker: Use a powerful tractor beam to pull you in. Range proportional to music intensity.
Best Defence: Micro Missiles. Shield will neutralize pull force

Repulsar: Use a powerful repulse beam to push you around. Dangerous in packs.
Best Defence: Micro Missiles. Shield will neutralize push force

Reaper: Releases a hail of homing missiles when destroyed. Number of missiles proportional to music intensity.
Best Defence: An Ultra Beam will kill the ship and most of the missiles. Kill with shield to convert missiles to your side!

Mini-Serpent: Head & Tail are invincible so shoot from the side. Flips between chasing and random movement.
Best Defence: Micro Missiles or Ultra Beam to the flank

Perks

Ultra has 23 unlockable & upgradeable perks. A perk is unlocked each time you level up. Each perk must be purchased and upgraded using in game cash.

To start with you should unlock the ‘POW POW POW’ & ‘Pump Up the Vol’ perks. Enabling these will give you more firepower at the start. And when fully upgraded you will start with maximum firepower and the Beat Hazard weapon activated.

After that I would recommend unlocking Micro Missiles followed by either Ultra Beam or Reflect Shield. These will give you a lot more fire power and allow you to tackle harder difficulty levels.

Once you’re a badass, you can start to focus on the scoring perks. Enabling these in any combination will massively increase your scoring ability – remember Beat Hazard Ultra uses a non-linear scoring system, so you can quickly go from scoring a few thousand per song to a few million! So don’t feel bad if your scores seem low compared to those on the leader boards.

Perk Loadout Tactics

Perks split into two categories, scoring and firepower. Scoring perks increase your ability to score points in various ways, for example ‘Score Booster’ adds a percentage to any points you gain. Firepower perks enhance your ability to kill / survive the onslaught of bad guys.

Choosing the correct loadout can massively change your survivability and potential score. You need to get the balance just right to get the highest score for any particular situation. You can go in armed to the teeth but might not score much, or die a horrible death in the middle of a tune through lack of adequate weaponry.

In general, the longer the song the more weapons and survival perks you will need. With short songs you can sacrifice all this in favour of a complete scoring loadout.

Weapon Tips

There are 3 unlockable weapons, Micro Missiles, Ultra Beam and Reflect Shield.

Micro Missiles: Fires a hail of homing missiles. Each missile will target the highest threat on-screen. Incoming enemy missiles are the highest threat followed by Bosses and then Mini-Serpents, Repulsars and Stalkers.

Ultra Beam: Fires a concentrated beam of death and destruction. With a good aim this weapon can do massive damage. You can take out a boss turret or a string of ships in one blast. Good for path clearing.

Reflect Shield: This is the awesome shield of awesomeness. Not only does this shield protect you from all impacts it will deflect any incoming projectile and turn it against the enemy! Used on a swarm of missiles can cause devastation to the enemy hordes.

BIG TIP: One important tactic to remember is that all three weapons are stackable. That is if you fire the shield 5 times quickly the game will stack 5 shields one after the other. Try it, it’s useful!

Trophy Hunter

Ultra has 42 challenges to complete. Each time you complete any 3 challenges you will receive a trophy. Complete all 42 to unlock all the trophies.

Here are a few tips on some of the more difficult challenges:

Don’t Panic: Don’t fire for 60 seconds (Tip: play on Easy)

Boss Slayer: Kill 8 bosses in 1 game (Tip: Easy when you play Boss Rush)

Brutal Boss Kill: Kill a boss before it fires (Tip: Easiest to kill one of the small bosses by flying over it quickly and setting off a lot of super bombs. You can get more super bombs by using the ‘Jamie likes big boom’ perk)

Pwnage: Get a 1,000 kill streak (Tip: Kill 1,000 enemies in a row without dying. Takes about 4-5 mins on Hardcore level. Probably easiest on Survival mode)

A Real Dare Devil: In Standard play get the Dare Devil multiplier 10 times (Tip: Play on Easy and just don’t fire for periods of time until you get 10 Dare Devil bonuses)

Survival Champion: Reach 20 Minutes in Survival Mode (Tip: Best done when you’ve unlocked Extra lives, Extra bombs and the Missiles, Reflect Shield & Ultra Beam Perks)

Perk MAXED: Buy all the upgrades for a Perk (Tip: It’s really cheap to fully upgrade the ‘Goodie Bag’ perk)

Ultra Beam of Death: Kill 150 enemies with 1 Ultra Beam blast (Tip: Ultra Beams can be stacked so you can use all your beams in one go and the time will add up. Also, unlocking the ‘Ultra Ultra Beam’ perk & the ‘Extra Ultra Beam’ perks will make this easier.)

Reflection: Reflect 150 projectiles with 1 Shield burst (Tip: Shields can be stacked so you can use all your power-ups in one go and the time will add up. Also, unlocking the ‘Stay Hidden’ perk & the ‘Extra Reflect Shield’ perks will make this easier.)

A Real Mine Sweeper: Collide with 50 mines in one track without losing a life (Tip: Mines are the round orange spiked balls that come out of the back of the Mine Ship. Just crash into 50 of these over the course of a song and complete the track without dying)

Tug of War: Have a 10 second tug of war with a Stalker (Tip: Play on easy & just hang out near a Stalker for 10s)

Boss Dance: Survive with 4 bosses on the screen in Boss Rush mode (Tip: Play Boss rush and try not to kill the boss completely)

Boss King: Get to Wave 30 in Boss Rush mode (Tip: Best done when you’ve unlocked Extra lives, Extra bombs and the Missiles, Reflect Shield & Ultra Beam Perks)

2 Player Tips

If you’re playing online or local head to head, here are some cool tips:

• Bosses are scored per hit, so don’t go for the kill, get as many hits are you can
• If your opponent dies, grab all his pickups before he re-spawns
• Hang out near the top of the screen to grab bombs and multipliers
• Steal kills with a well timed super bomb. E.g. when a ring of Pulsars are on screen
• Play chicken at the start. Try to build up your dare devil multiplier before the carnage starts
• The yellow Beat Hazard logo will be next to the score that is the highest. Useful for checking if you’re winning with a quick glance.

Lastly, Some Nice Tricks/Tips

• Turn on the Shield and sit over the boss turret. Missiles fired will instantly change sides and go for the boss! (You can also do this with Reapers)
• Play Boss Rush and turn off weapon perks to collect lots of cash
  The Serpent boss will try to coil around you when he’s 70% dead. Watch out!
• The Octo-Boss will coil up when you get close. When coiled he’s invincible. Spread your fire around in a wide arc to kill him quickly.
• The Last Star Fighter Death Blossom looks nice, but it’s not an effective tactic on harder levels.
• Play Chill Out mode if you want to try weapons you’ve not unlocked yet.

Well, that’s it for now. I hope you enjoy the game and that this guide helps you kick some music butt!

I’ll be hanging out here on the blog so if you’ve got any other questions, fire away. You can also email me here, or follow me on Twitter here. Join the Ultra facebook fan page here or check out my website here.

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Recently, Ubisoft invited us to sample the first few hours of Assassin’s Creed Revelations for PS3. I learned a lot during that play session:

• The control scheme has been revised, pushing Eagle Vision to L3. This frees up the Triangle button for secondary weapons such as daggers.
• Altair comes into play via flashbacks following the thrilling Masyaf key retrieval missions, which are the successors to Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood’s Lairs of Romulus.
• The game map now has a Google Maps-style satellite view that I enjoyed while skipping around the sprawling city of Constantinople/Istanbul.
• The Den Defense mission brought tower defense-style sequences that are completely unlike anything I’ve seen in the Assassin’s Creed universe.
• I saw someone actually *use* the Apple of Eden.
• I noticed some different UI in the Animus, and started to wonder why the interface was different (and no, Ubisoft wouldn’t tell me).
• I saw Ezio stab a dude with a guitar – I think they called them “lutes” back then.

And I saw it all in 3D – those leaps of faith are now even more impressive. But it’s not about what I wanted to see; I went in to Ubisoft aiming to get answers to some of your questions. Read on to learn more about the dangerous world of Assassin’s Creed Revelations.

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My name’s Natalya Netselya and I’m an artist specialising in the medium of sand. I’ve been creating imagery in sand for almost five years now, but this is the first time I’ve created a piece inspired by a videogame. As Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception takes place in the Arabian desert, it provided the perfect backdrop for my sand art. It was fun for me to recreate an iconic character like Nathan Drake in some of the amazing settings from the latest game. I’m sure you’ll recognise some familiar sights from Uncharted 3, and I hope you enjoy watching me bring them to life in sand.

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It’s hard to believe that Resistance 3 is coming out next week! It’s been an amazing journey for those of us at Insomniac Games, we’ve spent the last three years ensuring this is our most polished, focused, and consistent entry in the Resistance franchise. We’re very excited to share it with you. As we get close to release, it’s time to show you our very last Dev Diary – this one focused on the high-tech weapons created or influenced by the Chimeran invaders. We were extremely pleased to work in collaboration with the PlayStation.Blog on these diaries, and we hope you love them as much as we do.

As you may know by now, the Resistance 3 Multiplayer Beta is winding down on September 4th, but we wanted to get one last blast of testing on our servers, so we’ve made the beta available to all on the PlayStation Store. We also wanted to acknowledge that while the R3 beta wasn’t always smooth sailing, we totally appreciated those of you who helped us test the game and stuck with us through the rough patches. We’ve announced a Beta Player Appreciation program – if you download and play a few rounds of the Resistance 3 Beta before it ends on September 4th, you’ll receive a couple of cool rewards for the final game. Check out our announcement about the Beta player appreciation program for more details. We’ll be continuing to update and tweak Resistance 3 with new patches and updates, as well as DLC in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

That’s all for now, we have a few more exciting things to show you here on the PlayStation.Blog in the next couple of days, so keep coming back for more. And in the meantime, check out all the latest breaking news on Resistance 3 by following Insomniac Games on Twitter, Liking us on Facebook, or joining the conversation at MyResistance.net.

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