Sorcery is running on a heavily modified version of the Unreal engine, and the art direction has progressed by leaps and bounds since its last showing. The game now skews a bit older, with nastier monster designs and edgier spellcasting combat. Watch the video, read our full Q&A, then let us know what you think of Sorcery in the comments!

PlayStation.Blog: I’ll cut to the chase: Why have we had to wait so long to see Sorcery again?
Brian Upton, design director, Sorcery: Coming out of E3, we knew there were some things we weren’t happy with. We really wanted to re-tool the game’s look, its world. We had the gameplay we wanted, but it just wasn’t ready for public consumption.

PSB: Tell me a bit about the character and quest. What’s changed since the original debut?
BU: The hero is Finn, he’s a sorcerer’s apprentice and a real hothead: he’s always trying to learn things he’s not ready to learn yet. When the game starts, your master’s magical talking cat, Erline, dares Finn into venturing into the realm of the dead. Finn, being the guy he is, can’t resist.

In the realm of the dead, you accidentally unleash something very, very bad. The consequences are dire for you and the entire world, so the quest is to undo the trouble you’ve caused. You also begin to realize the Erline is much more than a magical talking cat: she’s central to the whole problem that you’ve created. You’re cast somewhat in the role of Erline’s protector, you’re trying to get her from the human world to the heart of the faerie world to fix this problem.

PSB: Once I got my hands on Sorcery, I was particularly surprised by the intensity of the combat. What does spellcasting bring to combat?
BU:We noticed that with a lot of motion-controlled games, it works a bit like Simon Says: you’re told to do something and you do it. But that’s not how action games work. Action games let you be creative, to craft your own solutions to the problems you face. So we wanted a game that taught you easy gestures, which became tools that you can use in combat. You can use basic spells in a variety of ways, but you can also layer them on top of each other to create more complex and powerful spell effects.

PSB: I noticed that when I combined the cyclone spell with the fire wall…
BU:Yeah, the Firenado is great. It’s one of the more powerful spells in the game. But there are lots of clever ways to use it: you can pick an enemy up with a cyclone and push it through a campfire to create a Firenado. Or you can cast a fire wall, shoot arcane bolts through it to create fire bolts, and aim them at a whirlwind to suck your enemy in and incinerate him. There’s a whole array of ways to inflict damage in this game.

PSB: Tell me about Sorcery’s approach to motion controls. What’s your philosophy?
BU: We wanted something very accessible, something you can pick up quickly. The very first spell you learn, arcane bolt, is very simple to use because you just flick it forward. It’s like throwing stuff at your enemy. As you keep using it, you start to realize its depth: you can curve bolts and arc bolts around obstacles. When you start using ice magic, you can slow down enemies, or freeze them repeatedly and smash them with another spell.

PSB: How do the gesture-based puzzles fit into Sorcery?
BU: We don’t want you fighting all the time, partly because it’s a gesture-based game and you’d get tired. So we try to mix up the intense combat with puzzles to solve. The gestures are pretty simple: You mend things, move them around. It’s less a question of figuring out how to do something; you might see something you can get on top of, and you’ll wonder how you can get up there, what you can rearrange. They aren’t intense brainteasers, but it does change the pace in the overall game.

PSB: I noticed that Sorcery employs an automated camera, a bit like God of War. How does it work and why did you take this approach?
BU: We want to keep it simple: If you have to do camera maintenance all the time, it really sucks. We’re not a shooter, but we do learn a lot of lessons from shooters. In a shooter, on a basic level, you want to establish an interesting shooting gallery and let players be absorbed in it. When you encounter a new group of cameras, the auto-camera will shift to focus on them. It’s a function of trying to streamline the game as much as possible.

PSB: Will there be any RPG elements? Will Finn be able to upgrade his abilities over the course of the game?
BU: There’s an alchemy system. As you travel through the world, you’ll discover magical ingredients and you can use them to research new magical potions. There are roughly 56 magical potions in all, and every time you drink one, it gives you a permanent upgrade. You’ll have about a dozen opportunities to do it, so these potions basically become your build tree, your stats, the way you customize Finn. Do you boost your health or your ice powers? Or maybe make your shield bash more damaging?

PSB: Is Sorcery a shooter? And if not, what is it?
BU: As a designer, I used a lot of the principles of shooter design. I have a shooter background: I worked on Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon. Coming from that shooter background, I learned a lot of lessons about how to build an encounter. But Sorcery is not a shooter. Your fire rate is much lower, you have to deal with Mana limitations, you can curve and arc your shots…we used shooter gameplay as a touchstone, but then we took it way beyond what shooters do.

PSB: Earlier you mentioned a shift in the game’s tone since E3 2010. Could you shed any light on that?
BU: What we showed at E3 was largely organized around a dungeon crawl, and we realized we didn’t want that. We wanted a full-blown fantasy world, not a series of tunnels. A lot of our re-tooling involved moving the action gameplay into a more free-flowing space. The E3 version also had a much younger hero, and the enemies were a lot more cartoonish. We though, “you know, we have a game here that would appeal to a hardcore PlayStation gamer…and it looks a little bit like Spyro!” [laughs] We didn’t want people to get the wrong impression, so we wanted to bring the visuals in-line with the gameplay.

The Bearded Ladies are back to full capacity after last week’s unacceptable sickness. (This european gamocracy should really have better universal healthcare ).

So this here is a little of what we have been up to this week:

“Programmer admits error”

The week began with me admitting to a mistake. This is the first and last time this will happen .

The mistake(bug) in question broke old maps if new tiles/entities were added to the worlds in a certain order. This was discovered a few weeks ago but I pushed it aside claiming that we weren’t really going to make any real maps for a few weeks anyway.

Sadly those few weeks have gone and the art department (Kalle) was showing its fangs. So I had to spend the first part of the week rewriting large parts of the map and editor code which was a drag; but, like always, this allows you to add a few new features as well (iterative development ftw!).

After this “boring” part it really got much better. We nailed down some core design decisions (which we will show next week) and I got to play around with the winning entry from the last challenge: “The Magnet Hand”. I implemented the core features of the Magnet Hand and have working on level designs to complement it. I think it will work out great and we have some nice plans for it. One thing we most likely will drop however is the “swinging” part of the hand. We feel that the bouncy head already has the mechanics for most challenges where this would be used and restricting the magnet hand to vertical movement will complement the head better.

“Art Department is right… again!”

Apart from finding bugs, I spent most of this week creating art assets for the first world in the game. At the moment it includes rooftops, streets and a subway tunnel. All the sprites can be combined in lots of ways to build different variations of the buildings. That way I can easily add a new type of window or wall-detail to a building later on. The levels feel a bit empty as I still need to make the background art and more “stuff” to put on the streets to make the city really come alive.

Making new art is fun… if it wasn’t for that .txt file where every single sprite (276 at the moment) needs to be manually labeled with coordinates and other data. I can’t recall that in the job description!

Taking of my whining-hat for a brief moment, I’m really looking forward to improving the H7 animations (and tweaking the design a bit) and starting working on the art for the jungle world.

Don’t forget to keep the submissions coming in – you can enter and check out everyone’s entries over at your local official PlayStation forum: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Polish, Scandinavian languages. You can also get involved by casting your votes over at the Bearded Ladies facebook page.

We realize it’s not entirely fair that only the press gets to see what’s new, so we wanted to make sure we brought it here to the PlayStation Blog as well.

Resistance 3

The Resistance 3 demo takes place in Haven, Oklahoma. Our new hero, former Sentinel Joseph Capelli, has taken up arms with his fellow Haven citizens to defend the town from Chimeran forces. The fighters are trying to buy enough time for an evacuation of Haven, as a Chimeran terraformer is closing on the city and threatens to wipe it off the map. As the battle wages on and the terraformer nears, you see the wind begin to pick up… and then the Chimeran Brawler arrives to turn the tide of the battle.

Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One

Ratchet, Clank, Qwark and Dr. Nefarious must cross through a dangerous Seaside Village on Planet Magnus to reach their next destination. The fearsome foursome will have to use several weapons in their arsenal, including the returning Combuster, and the Warmonger rocket launcher. In All 4 One, when players combine to use the same weapon, such as the storm-cloud generating Thundersmack, they can create even more devastating effects. But players can also specialize and use different weapons, such as when one player uses the Arc Lasher kinetic energy whip to stun an enemy while allies blast it with their own weapons. The choice is up to you and your friends in All 4 One as you explore and try to unravel the mysteries of the Creature Collector.

That’s all for now – we hope you enjoyed this updated look at what we’ve been working on. Be sure to follow us on twitter or become a fan of us on Facebook to catch the latest on both Resistance 3 and Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One, and a whole lot more.

JS

P.S. remember to check out eu.playstation.com for all the latest information on Resistance 3 and Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One.

It gives me great pleasure to share with you information on a very special group combat alert. We’re letting you loose on where Superman grew up; Smallville.

Check out the below video where Chris Cao, Game Director of DC Universe Online, takes us through Smallville as you’ve never seen it before.

As Chris said, this is a fierce and ferocious fight so make sure you come prepared.
Until next time, see you in Metropolis!

This week I am pleased to let you know that Resident Evil Afterlife is available to download in the store. If you buy the HD version, you also get an SD version to watch on your PSP. If you fancy watching any of the earlier movies, we have these too:

• Resident Evil: Apocalypse £6.99 to buy or rent for £2.49
• Resident Evil: Extinction £6.99 to buy
• Resident Evil: Degeneration £6.99 to buy

Also available are the following new releases:

To Buy

• Resident Evil Afterlife (HD)
• Dinner for Schmucks

To Buy & Rent

• The Switch (HD)
• Jonah Hex (HD)
• The Girl Who Played with Fire (HD)
• Catfish (HD)
• Devil (HD)
• The Last Airbender
• Baaria
• Death Wave
• The Hole
• Outcast
• Control (HD)

With 24 different film parodies, see if you can spot them all. For those of you outside of Britain, Channel 5 is a terrestrial TV station that shows loads of great movies every evening and weekend afternoons; these sponsorship spots are also shown on Fiver and Five USA. For the next year, those films will be sponsored by PlayStation, so you’ll be seeing flashes of LBP2, Killzone 3 and more at the start, the end and during the breaks.

Can you work out what each of the films are? Most of them are pretty easy but ask me in the comments if you can’t figure any out.

We at Vitamin G Studios are excited to introduce you to our new game, coming to PSN this winter.

The UnderGarden is about exploration. It’s part game and part experience, with a little bit of puzzle solving mixed in. The game takes place across different worlds of windy tunnels, dark places filled with fog, and areas where electricity turns large rock gears endlessly. As the player, you float through these dark caverns, and fill them with colour and music. You’ll need to collect pollen to grow beautiful flowers and exotic plants. Some of these plants bear fruit, used to manipulate doors, levers, gears, and other contraptions you find along the way. There are also special items to collect, and new flora and fruit to discover, and as they bloom the lighting and animations make the entire environment spring to life. Music also plays a huge part in the game, and almost everything you touch makes different musical tones. As you fill the world with music, you’ll run into the musicians, who play different instruments and will keep you company on your journey.

The game supports drop-in/drop-out co-op play, so a second player can join in and play along for the whole game, or just a level or two. We wanted to make it fun for two people to play together, even if they aren’t both at the same skill level. In co-op, the second player is there to help the first gather pollen and solve puzzles. So you don’t have to worry about getting lost or left behind: they always get pulled along and you’ll always be close together. The second player can even just float around making everything colourful and musical while the first player does the heavy lifting: it’s up to you. We think it is a great way to get a friend or significant other into the game, especially if they don’t usually play games.

Many games are really fast-paced and full of tension. The UnderGarden is pretty much the polar opposite of that. It is about creating rather than destroying: you can’t die, you can’t really fail, and you play at your own pace. In the right state of mind, it is a nice relaxing experience. You can pour yourself a beverage, shut off the lights, and just float around the world. If you are a fan of games like Flower, or Flow, then you’ll be right at home here. Even if you spend more time playing shooters, The UnderGarden is a great change of pace to help you unwind afterwards.

So who are you and why are you here? Your name’s Ludwig and you’ve been described as everything from a floating baby to a space monkey. But who you really are, and what this place is, are things you’ll have to figure out on your own, so you’ll have to use your imagination there!

Over the next few weeks, we’ll talk about some of the ideas behind the game, and the music as we get closer to release.

We hope to see you in The UnderGarden soon!

It’s time to roll up your sleeves, grab a PlayStation Move motion controller and step up to the oche: Top Darts will be available on PlayStation Store from tomorrow, 22 December, at €7.99/£6.29.

Today, we’d like you to meet a true darts legend and a very good friend of ours: the one, the only…SID WADDELL!

On 30 November, Mark McGinley (Senior Producer at SCEE), the film crew and I braved the arctic winds, minus temperatures and fought through the snow in order to make our appointment in snow-covered Leeds with Sid.

Armed with a box of chocolates, two pints of milk and a box of PlayStation goodies for Sid and his family, we were somewhat cold but more than ready for a fun filled interview with the man himself, and also may I add made extremely welcome by Sid’s lovely wife Irene – thank you for the tea and coffee, Irene.

As you may or may not yet know, Sid weaved his magic and provided all the in-game commentary for Top Darts. The in-game script was specifically written for him and Sid brought the VO to life in a way only he can.

Sid is fondly known and well respected in the world of top flight (excuse the pun) Darts and we couldn’t wait to sit down and question the silver-tongued cavalier about his love of Darts and ask him a load of questions about the game and his experience working with the Dev team.

For an insight into the man behind the mic and to get all the inside track from the great man himself, take a look at the full interview above.

Building your custom super hero (or villain) is no easy task with all the choices on offer, from your stature to your suit, powers, movement type and weapons – this is your chance to become the ultimate superhero.

Your vision may be inspired by one of the legendary DC Universe superheroes or villains, but it is the choices you make along the way and the storyline that you follow that ultimately shapes your look and builds your legend.

Check out the below trailer of Character Create in action:

The DCUO BETA is available now to download for all PlayStation Plus subscribers. Click here to find out more.

DC Universe Online will be available on PS3 and PC in early 2011.

You may have already heard, but PixelJunk Shooter 2 has the most insanely fun online Versus mode that has ever been created. Rather than just do a simple battling-type system, we created a special cat-and-mouse type game which has you and the enemy take turns as cat or mouse, either scouring the stage for the other player or running away from him. The trick being that the “mouse” is invisible to the other player unless he views you directly, so you can sneak around collecting the survivors and transporting them to your base. Each survivor that goes into your base is an extra point. But watch out – when it is the other player’s turn to play mouse they can steal them back if they are cunning enough.

Carefully laid out on top of this really addictive core game is a league system that earns you “money” that you can use to buy crazy and special items for use in battle (you only have to buy them once and you can use up to three types at any time per battle). The ultra-slow but ultra-smart homing missile is one of my favourites (it doggedly tracks the other player and is difficult to shake off!), as is the “Time Slip” item that rewinds the positions of both players for a few seconds. There is a limit on the number of uses of certain items within a battle, so a lot of strategy is involved and it has a seriously good “just one more go” factor — if you win, you will climb into new leagues to get bonuses so you can buy even cooler weapons (with 20 to choose from!) and more maps to play on. I can see many, many late nights being caused by just this part of PixelJunk Shooter 2.

But on top of all this we have created a whole new set of three worlds with new liquids, puzzles and some brilliant new enemies and bosses, packing even more fun into the regular adventure mode too! So PixelJunk Shooter 2 is not only our first true sequel in the PixelJunk series, it’s also our first PS3 online title and the combination of these two things means it is simply bursting at the seams! Oh, and remember to look forward to the new “suits” for your ship, of course!

Anyway, no more chit-chat. Check out the trailer above and see what I mean!

Rather than write a blog post telling you what it is and what it does, I decided to fire up Killzone 3 and give it a try for myself, and you can follow that voyage of discovery in the video below.

While we don’t have a firm release date yet, I can assure you that the PlayStation Move Sharp Shooter will be in Europe in time for Killzone 3.

This original and refreshing title has been available exclusively from PlayStation Store since 24 November. Using the PlayStation Move motion controller or a DUALSHOCK 3 wireless controller you can freeze time, stop the action (gravity too) and even rewind to re-arrange and place the available items to facilitate your fast escape.

Check out the trailer:

Play Diego, a super-powered Rat willing to escape from an experimental lab. Your mission is to make it through the final lab gate by crossing over pits and overcoming obstacles. 81 levels and 10 worlds await you!

It’s not easy though, trust me! This game will keep you busy for hours even if you are the most hardcore of players. Collecting pills on your way out will help you to get rewards, medals and trophies. If you perform perfect runs, you’ll win platinum rewards.

To cut a long story short, Funky Lab Rat is worth the investment.

That’s right! If you’re in Europe, then you can download your way into the action on 8th December. We know it’s been a long time coming, and we’ve always wanted to get this game to you before the last of the leaves hit the ground in 2010. So, as soon as it’s officially too cold to practice your kung-fu moves outside, you’ll get an indoor option that will also transport you to a far off land of street thugs, ninja assassins, and four story-tall giants looking to bash your brains in.

So, with the launch of Kung-Fu LIVE now just a few weeks away, we wanted to brief you on a few simple things to keep in mind before you get ready to play. First off, remember, you’re going to need the PlayStation Eye camera in order to play Kung-Fu LIVE. You will also need a SIXAXIS or DUALSHOCK 3 Wireless Controller for some menu selection, and you can use up to four controllers to get your friends in on the five player multiplayer that pits one brave on-screen fighter against the rest of the players in the room.

The other thing you’ll need is a little bit of space. Remember, Kung-Fu LIVE is unlike any other game to come before it on a home gaming system. You’ll need about 7×9 ft or 2.5/3m of space to play comfortably if you’re more of an extreme fighter. Think of it like setting up a virtual ninja fighting amusement park ride in your house! Our FreeMotion technology will need to track your entire body in plain view, so you’ll also want to turn on those lights to get ready for action. That and, oh yes, you’ll want to stretch before playing to prevent aching muscles afterwards. This will truly be a workout unlike anything you’ve experienced, and will DEFINITELY be a great place to start shedding those holiday pounds. Our lean and mean QA testing team can certainly attest to that!

Thanks again to all of our friends here at the PlayStation.Blog for giving us the chance to bring you these updates, and thanks again to all of YOU who’ve been showing your support over the last few months. This project represents years of independent computer vision research and technology from our team here at Virtual Air Guitar Company, and your enthusiasm to see us finish our crazy idea for the ultimate full body motion fighting game was just what we needed to help get this game completed.

Look for Kung-Fu LIVE on PlayStation Network this December and please be sure to ‘Like’ us on our Facebook page. And before I forget, I wanted to mention our unique image export feature. You can take pictures of yourself inside the kung-fu comic book world can be export them as images straight to your PlayStation 3 photo folder, and then used anywhere you like! We’d love to see you in our game, so please feel free to post those to our Facebook page as well! Remember, our company’s motto has always been: “Serious fun for people who don’t take themselves too seriously.” When you finally get a chance to leap into the world of Kung-Fu LIVE this December, we hope you get a better idea of exactly what we mean. Have fun, play safe, and remember, “Sweep the leg!”

If you’ve already spent some time with GT5 or are planning a good old-fashioned all-nighter, feel free to share your first impressions here in the comments.

My hands are still a bit shaky after gripping my Logitech Driving Force GT for several hours straight, but I’ll need to keep them steady tomorrow. That’s because I’m going to be in Madrid for a lavish launch event which you can follow here on the blog via a live photo gallery that will be updated throughout the evening. I’ll also be keeping you up to speed in the comments and furiously tweeting from @PlayStationEU.

If that’s not enough GT5 discussion for you, there’s always the Official PlayStation forums. Here’s a list of current topics, courtesy of MusterBuster and the team:

• First Impressions
• The “My copy has been dispatched” thread
• “She’s my baby and I’ll always love her!”
• How to take a photo and export it to a USB stick in GT5
• Installing GT5 – the options

Sydney’s hottest party of the year – and we were there! The ‘Take 40 Stars of Summer’ party took place at Sydney’s exclusive ‘Point Piper’, with 250 celebrities and guests partying the afternoon away at a harbour-side mansion to performances by Jamiroquai, DJ Havana Brown and Dane Rumble – all thanks to SingStar!

The headline performance by Jamiroquai was set on a specially created perspex stage over the pool. The ‘hatted’ one was in fine form, performing tracks from Jamiroquai’s latest album ‘Rock Dust Light Star’ (as well as a few golden oldies). In Australia to promote the album, singer Jay Kay said “I gotta say, when we come down here… we dig it. The crowds are always great.” Everyone was certainly blown away by the performance, including celebrities Natalie Imbruglia, Sneaky Sound System’s Damon Downey, Erica Heynatz and Tom Williams.

PlayStation 3 launched new SingStar games at the party – SingStar Dance and SingStar Guitar , with plenty of guests grabbing their chance to try out the new games and give their own ‘rock-star’ performances! Among the long list of celebrities kicking back and enjoying the party were Kirk Pengilly, Justin Hemmes, Erin McNaught, Gracie Otto, Pip Edwards and Charlotte Dawson. Alex Dimitriades also rocked the event with his own DJ set which got the crowd jumping!

The event will be broadcast on free-to-air TV and subscription TV so the rest of Australia can soak up the glamour from the ultra-exclusive party.

Catch the extraordinary performance by international superstars Jamiroquai on GO! on December 12; Channel [V] on December 12; and Channel Nine on December 16. A must for Jamiroquai fans!

We’ve also updated the game website at www.lordofarcana.com with more info on the game, the monsters you’ll face and the arsenal of weapons at your disposal. Take a look if you’d like to find out more.

We’ll have lots more news to share with you very soon about LORD of ARCANA, so stay tuned to the blog in the coming weeks!

A few weeks ago, I was invited to London Studios to see first hand how the new SingStar titles, SingStar Dance and SingStar Guitar, were shaping up, and chat with some of the awesome team who bring us the ultimate party game!

During my time at London Studios on the wet and soggy Thursday afternoon, I was given the opportunity to chat and pose questions to Mike Rouse, Senior Producer of SingStar and was shown how the new versions of the game functioned by Charlie Hasdell, Principal Designer of SingStar. This was before being given the chance to prove my worth against Charlie and some of the developers of the game!

Of course, this was all captured on video for your enjoyment, and my embarrassment

What can I say about the new versions of the game? Well I have been a fan of SingStar from the first instalment, and having been lucky enough to get a sneak preview of the new titles; it’s made me even more impatient to get hold of them on release! They both bring exciting new elements to the game, which is brilliant if singing isn’t your bag, you now have the option to have a little boogie or pick up your guitar controller and strum along! I for one am looking forward to seeing the community uploaded dancing videos on SingStar online!

Now let’s all sit back, watch the nice video and let the mocking of my dancing and singing skills commence!

We shot this video as soon as the first delivery of Signature Editions arrived at SCEE HQ and, before you ask, no I haven’t played the game yet. I argued that I should get to keep it, seeing as I’ve already taken the box out of its plastic and breathed my DNA all over it, but that didn’t seem to work.

If anybody else thinks that I should keep that Signature Edition, fight for me in the comments.

YES WE CAN!

Edit: as FULLMETAL56 pointed out in the comments, you can win your own Signature Edition by entering the competition at eu.playstation.com/psn/competitions.

So up to this point besides working on the game we have also worked to get in touch with our fans. For that we have launched an official website and forum and started a Facebook page. Feedback has been great and we cannot wait for the day when the game is on sale.

But getting an RTS feature-packed game on PSN was not our only goal, we also wanted the bring out the big guns and give our fans something extra. So I am proud to present the Under Siege intro.

It was made by the nice folks at Axis Animation (who you may remember as the creator of the Killzone 2 intro) and it gives you an introduction to the world of Under Siege. Hope you like it.