MotorStorm RC has very humble beginnings. It started out as a simple concept we were playing around with during lunch times; a pet project to challenge each other to set the fastest times, originally using post-its on the wall as a low-fi leaderboard!

Through a lot of love, care and attention RC has been transformed into the most exciting and addictive racing game we’ve ever created and it gives me great pleasure to finally be able to share that experience with you all — MotorStorm RC is available now for both PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 3 from the European PlayStation Store, and if you pay once you get both.

See how much fun it is for yourself by picking up the free trial on the PlayStation Store, and check out the extremely rare vehicles while you’re there, if that sort of thing takes your fancy.

See how much fun it is for yourself by picking up the free trial, and take a look at our MotorStorm RC launch trailer:

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We’re happy to announce (remind) everyone that the Starhawk Multiplayer Beta is open to ALL COMERS tomorrow, February 22nd only on PlayStation Network! You don’t have to “like” us on Facebook, you don’t have to “accept a special offer” and you don’t have to sign up for any service (that is, except for the PlayStation Network free service)! Everyone is welcome to join! Just check the PlayStation Store and prepare yourself for a good time.

In the coming weeks we’ll be upgrading the Beta a lot. You can expect a new map, new vehicles, new weapons, 32 player max matches and more. Remember, this is STILL a Beta, not a Demo. We are actively finding and fixing problems – and we need your feedback.

The Starhawk Beta will not last forever. When we’re done testing it will go “bye-bye”… and so I wrote a poem to illustrate my point…

The Starhawk Serenade
If you don’t try Starhawk you’ll be sad,
While your friends are having fun you’ll be mad,
It’s such an easy download,
Your head may explode!
There’s so much d&*#*! fun to be had!

You WILL be sad if you miss out! Don’t be sad Live a little! Do it….dooooo it…

For you new players here are a bunch of handy tips…

• You can post your bug feedback by logging into the Starhawk Beta forums using your PSN ID
• Check the fan-made Starhawk wiki for info
• Check the Lightbox Beta news for updates and tips

We realize that a lot of new players will be jumping in. Here are some tips to help you along:

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Let’s get right to it — Retro City Rampage is coming to PS3 and PS Vita! I couldn’t be more excited to finally share the news. For those not familiar with RCR, it’s an over the top open-world crime game that combines everything you loved in classic games and mashes them up into a “toon town” of nostalgia and parody. Steal cars, and then jump on pedestrians for big shiny coins. Collect power-ups and outrun the law while rampaging the city, shooting a light gun or swinging your bionic arm.

Fans of Grand Theft Auto will feel right at home with RCR, but the missions extend far beyond driving and shooting. They fuse classic gaming and modern mechanics to span virtually every genre, from stealth to platforming, adventure, rhythm and more—there are even underwater levels. What I’m most proud of is that everything flows together using the same mechanics and visuals. Even missions inspired by ’80s coin-op games seamlessly take place in the open-world. (more…)

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Recently we gathered select members of the media and swept them off to Hong Kong for a special preview event. These lucky journalists had been flown half way around the world to see the brand new game from Square Enix, Sleeping Dogs.

While you’ll start to see their previews pop up online shortly, we thought we would give you an exciting glimpse of what’s to come by walking you through the action-packed mission “Mrs. Chu’s Revenge”. This is not for the fainthearted…

Mrs. Chu’s Revenge

You play as Wei, an undercover cop trying to infiltrate the Hong Kong triads. In this chapter of Wei’s story you start off in a Chinese restaurant owned by a distraught and saddened Mrs Chu. In the back of a grimy kitchen she sits hunched at a table, alone in the dark. A close relative has been murdered and she wants you to deliver her the man responsible.

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In the last weapon blog I introduced you to the three weapon classes in DUST 514: Heavy, Light and Sidearm. In this blog I thought it would be fun to pick a few weapons that really changed the way that the development team played when we added them to the game.

Sometimes people don’t realise how long it can take to get a weapon from the drawing board to being fully functional and kicking ass in the game. It needs to be concepted, built, textured, animated, weapon logic needs to be engineered, audio systems put in place, sounds created, various values set up, tested, debugged, and tweaked. As you can imagine, all this takes quite a while, which means you spend a lot of time playing your game with a limited set of gear. Over time new weapons are added to the game and they can radically alter the balance of play because they open up all new possibilities in combat. Below are some examples of this.

Heavy weapons for heavy armour…

To begin with, we have the Minmatar MH82-BCR Personal Autocannon. This is a heavy weapon and as such can only be fitted by the heavy dropsuit. As well as being simply devastating in its own right, this weapon really opened up the heavy dropsuit class once we added it to the game. For some time the heavy dropsuit wasn’t very popular on the dev team. It may have had a ton of hitpoints and access to the deadly Forge gun but it was slow and easy to outmaneuver. This saw it primarily being used in specialist anti-vehicle roles (where it excelled) but not much else.

This came abruptly to an end when the autocannon made it in to the game. Suddenly you didn’t have to fight the other dropsuit classes on their own terms with weapons ill-suited to the heavy’s slower movement. Now you could outlast any other class in a head-on firefight (though smart players can still outmaneuver the slower heavies), you had more armour and a lot more firepower; enough to destroy light vehicles as well as infantry. The introduction of this weapon unlocked the full potential of the dropsuit and gave us one of the game’s most satisfying weapons to fire. The camera shake, VFX and RoF make firing the weapon incredibly visceral. You feel unstoppable, like you could take on just about anything, and sometimes for just a few bright moments you can.
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