RidgeRacer7
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Crime and punishment: Thieves make off with Sonic the Hedgehog
Though the choices that lead one down a path of crime are rarely considered to be wise, the weekend actions of an unknown number of thieves seem to imply that one bad turn often leads to another. The Argus reports that UK police were called to "Currys" after £1,700 worth of PlayStation 3 games were discovered to have illegally departed the store, presumably tucked inside someone's jacket, pants or some other article of clothing that would result in awkward movements. Police expect the kleptomaniacs to cash in on current PS3 euphoria and either attempt to gain refunds elsewhere or sell the game to unsuspecting folks. Sadly, it looks like crime might not fully pay on this occasion, as the robbers' loot included three copies of Splinter Cell: Double Agent, two copies of Ridge Racer 7, four copies of World Snooker Championship 2007 and, err... four copies of Sonic the Hedgehog. Being unable to sell those to any normal human beings, said ne'er-do-wells will likely attempt to play the game and then promptly turn themselves in. You get what you pay for, lads. [Via PSX Extreme]
FlOw, Q-Bert and a Ridge Racer demo coming this Thursday
Playstation 3 owners will have something other than Virtua Fighter 5 to choose from this week as Sony will be releasing two new titles for their online service and a relic from the past in demo form. The long awaited aquatic enigma FlOw will be making its way to the Playstation Network with a price tag of $7.99. Joining it will be the perpetually-hopping, foul mouthed, not to mention terrible roommate known as Q-Bert. We may not have anything nice to say about the guy, but his game is a classic and will be available for $4.99. And in case you passed it up at launch, a free demo of Ridge Racer 7 will be made available and capable of that magical resolution of 1080p.
Keep going fast with no load times for Ridge Racer 7!
Fast, fast, fast... fast cars, fast food... fast load times? Whaaat? How about no load times? Yeah, right! Right? Wrong. The PS3 makes a fantastic idea come to life with the announcement that Riiiiiiidge Racer 7 can be loaded completely and neatly onto your hard drive. That means absolutely no waiting to get your race on. How hot is that? To quote the producer of the game, "This is not necessary in order to play the game...you can have everything read off of the Blu-ray disc. It's just an optional user-friendly feature, because when you want to race, you don't want to wait!" So no worries mate, if you'd rather keep that hard-drive space for something other than an entire game, you can.What we want to know is this: will this become a normal feature? Will we be able to load an entire game onto our hard-drive, eliminate load times, and erase it (but not the save!) when we finish it up? Perhaps that's part of why Sony has been addicted to finding security features to prevent copying, etc. Personally, this sounds like a great idea. Sure, you can only have a few games at once on the drive, but it's easy to pick the ones you'll play the most (be it online or otherwise) and leave 'em sit on the PS3. This should be an option for every PS3 game. How is it a bad idea? Oh yeah... storing the game, then selling the disc back as used. But is that bad? You already paid for the game and if you run out of space and delete it -- your loss. Although it does make those next-gen game prices a little bit better. Give us your thoughts on this issue, we're really curious to see your take!
PS3 Ridge Racer: 9 minutes too long?
The Nintendo Nsider Forums are lighting up with glee (and spilling onto Digg) at how horribly terrific it would be if Ridge Racer 7 required a 5 GB install on PlayStation 3's hard disk drive. Some generous (in favor of Sony) math calculates that the install would take 9 minutes and 46 seconds. The assumption is most PS3 games will require HDD dumps, forcing users to constantly install, erase, and reinstall -- these data chunks would fill up the drives fast; certainly the 20 GB model.Here's what we know: Ridge Racer 7 will have an optional 5 GB HDD installation feature that's in place to speed up load times. Currently, Ridge Racer 7 and Genji (4 GB install) are the only games known to include this option. While this will almost certainly change, there's little reason to believe that HDD dumps will become a PS3 standard (unless you buy Sony's "it's not a console, it's a computer" mumbo jumbo).Anyways, waiting 9 minutes and 46 seconds for data to install isn't as agonizing as we'd sometimes like to believe; especially if it's a one-time (or once in a while) procedure. On that note, let's wait this conundrum out for a while longer, watch how it develops.
PS3's graphics critically analyzed -- verdict is "niiiiiiiice"
Let's first get this out of the way: the guy who wrote the original article (Dean Takahashi) is a graphics freak. Loves them. "A kind of obsession," he says. The PS3, he says in that regard, doesn't have perfect animation but "it's pretty darn good looking." He also says (not us! He said this! Don't shoot the messenger!) "If you'll recall, Microsoft had high hopes that Sony's first-generation games would look cruddy." I bet they were hoping that, because, you know, it's not the gameplay that matters. Not at all (sarcasm).Mr. Takahashi continues to say how the PS3 games are looking quite nice, even for first-generation games! He even went so far as to say, "by and large, the games I saw looked BETTER than Xbox 360 games." Oooh, that's a pretty lofty claim. But, he said, not all the games were necessarily worth the price difference in the consoles. Ridge Racer 7, he says, looks far better than Ridge Racer 6 for the 360. Also looking better than the competition is Resistance: Fall of Man. Falling short of expectations was the build of Virtua Fighter 5 -- not quite as pretty as DOA4 for the 360 (and with those ladies, who'd argue?). Lair is also looking good, but Takahashi didn't focus on graphics, possibly because it's way too early to decide. Anyway, overall, we can get pumped up for the PS3 (again...) and know that we'll get a few very enjoyable titles at launch and early next year.
Some more Ridge Racer 7 screens and a tiny bit of info
Let's talk about the information first, because there's a little bit of everything and it's not easy to connect it all to a common theme. Ridge Racer 7 has taking a strong focus on the machine customization function lately. Namco promises an almost unlimited customization, stickers, color rings, etc. Also, this will be the first time that a Korean manufacturer's (Sinseong Motors) car will make an appearance on the Ridge Racer tracks. Nitro kits will be making an appearance as well. You can even modify the nitro kit.Now for the screens. There are what appear to be a couple of concept cars, at least, cars not seen as gameplay in these eyes. Then there are a couple of in-game shots of a certain automobile. It's not breathtaking, but it's not ugly. Maybe it's a bad screen. Maybe we're blind-ish.
TGS: Ridge Racer 7 demo attracts loyal fan
It seems all that burning rubber and gratuitous nitro boosting in the Ridge Racer 7 demo took its toll on a lone PS3. Kotaku snapped this picture of a Sony rep bravely averting disaster by pointing some sort of advanced cooling mechanism into the console's compartment. System anomalies crop up at trade shows all the time -- we salute the fan-man for his keen sense of practicality. He probably doesn't lock his dog in the car while he's out shopping either. [Thanks AK and mupwangle]
First PS3 Ridge Racer 7 screens surface
Fear not all you PlayStation 3 fans. Despite taking a few shots to the gut, we've got some positive content for you: the first Ridge Racer 7 screenshots. Of course, you'll have to check after the break to see every single morsel.For those not in the know, RR7 for the PS3 will have 40 different cars available to race on more than 22 different tracks. There will also be the obligatory exterior and tuning customization we've come to know with recent racing games. So, after looking at these screenshots, what do you think? Is it worth $600+ to play?
