The Officially Unofficial PSN Thread.

We get updates from PSN every week so I thought it was time we had a thread for them all.

First up -

Dishonored Preview: Cloak And Dagger

Some games have problems with bugs, but Dishonored has trouble with rats. Big, evil ones that prowl in packs and can rend a man's flesh from his screaming bones. But killer rats are the least of your worries in the dark world of Dishonored, an imaginative action-adventure from Arkane Studios and Bethesda coming to PS3 later this year. The game nimbly blends inspirations from a pantheon of modern classics: The oppressive atmosphere and paranoid politicking of BioShock, the graceful bloodletting of Assassin's Creed, the murky morality of Deus Ex, the stealth and shadow of Thief. This is a game about skulking in dark places, eavesdropping on secret conversations, setting up the perfect ambush and beating a hasty retreat.

You play as Corvo, an elite royal bodyguard wrongly accused of assassinating the Empress of Dunwall. Locked in a prison and left to rot, you're sprung by a shadowy benefactor and set loose to claim your revenge in whatever manner you see fit. Though Corvo is a convincing protagonist the real star here is the city of Dunwall, a crumbling seaport perched over a vast and malignant ocean on a planet that is definitely not Earth. Dunwall's decor comes from the art director behind Half-Life 2′s iconic City 17, and the attention to detail is palpable: Steampunk carriages slide down cobblestone streets as stormtroopers patrol atop giant biomechanical stilts. It's old and new, weird and familiar, beautiful and grotesque all at the same time. If you liked BioShock's Rapture, you're gonna love this.

Touched by an amoral deity called the Outsider, Corvo now wields an array of supernatural abilities, everything from teleportation and time dilation to summoning hordes of voracious rats and pushing projectiles back at enemies. One supernatural talent enables you to enter the body of a fish or rat, handy for infiltrating a building via a drain pipe or access panel. In combat, Corvo has little to fear, being a master swordsman and pistol marksman. Exotic ammunition types (explosive bullets, tranquilizer darts) and gadgets such as grenades and proximity mines further expand the possibilities. As in Deus Ex you can strike openly, spilling beaucoup buckets of blood in the process, or pull your punches by quietly choking out enemies and tucking their snoozing bodies safely away.
Whether you coldly kill adversaries or show mercy will have consequences on the game's story - the Outsider himself is curious to see which path you follow. It will also factor in the moment-to-moment gameplay: snuff out a guard and his buddy might alter his patrol route to cover the gap, potentially disrupting your carefully laid plans. But whichever way you play will be the "right" way to play - Arkane's goal is to put players in full control of the game's pacing.

As you unravel the conspiracy behind the Empress's assassination and an apparent military coup, you'll meet a host of sketchy characters, from members of a secretive resistance movement to spoiled aristocrats and plague-stricken townspeople. Some will become targets of your wrath and will need to be dealt with accordingly, while others will provide valuable information or services.
If Dishonored sounds like your cup of tea, check back early tomorrow for the next episode of Official PlayStation Blogcast and an interview with co-directors Harvey Smith and Raf Colantonio. Have questions about the game right now? Sound off in the comments and I'll pass along what I know!

PixelJunk 4am Beta Goes Live

We've started our early access PixelJunk 4am Live Beta, which available to all PlayStation Plus members now.
What is it?
4am lets you create your own music using a unique Virtual Audio Canvas to mix tracks, experiment with audio effects and control your composition using the PlayStation Move`s full range of motion. You can then stream your performances live to the world through PSN.
4am is kind of like a radio broadcasting station for PSN, except you guys will be making all the music! Those of you with a Move and a Beta code will be the first in the world to stream your music and visuals live across PSN.
We have limited this early access Beta to just one visualiser and one song. In the full release though, you can look forward to 7 songs and 6 visualisers with 38 variations, 10 events and over 190 different sounds to play with.
I don't have a PS Move, can I still join in?
Even if you don't have a PS Move, as long as you're a PlayStation Plus member, you can download the Free 4am Live Beta Viewer and stream everyone's Beta performances. It's a small taste of what you'll be streaming once 4am is released in May.
During the course of the Live Beta, we'll host some special live performances from around the world, including DJ Baiyon performing live from Japan. Keep your eyes on the forums for further details.
What do I do?
Seeing as we're using PSN in some radically new ways, we're asking all of you in PlayStation Plus for some help in ensuring everything works smoothly. We'll be testing the broadcasting over the next two weeks making sure that PSN doesn't explode when we try this. I kind of want a giant red lever to pull when we send this live for you guys. It feels dangerous... dangerously awesome!
Please file any bugs you find using the provided bug report guidelines.
Bug report form
Thanks guys for being a part of something revolutionary.

PlayStation Move Mystery Game Datura Hits PSN May 9th

Countries: AE, AU, GB, IE, NZ

Hello, I'm Michal from Team Plastic and we are really happy to bring you Datura, which we can confirm today is coming to PSN on May 9th. Datura is a spicy mixture between an old-school adventure and a modern interactive experience. The game has a couple of interpretation levels, so it's up to you to experience it on your own and share your thoughts afterward with others.
From a technical standpoint, Datura brings you a novel gaming mechanics based on the PlayStation Move motion controller. We created a virtual hand that you can operate and touch nearly everything in the game. If you don't have a motion controller, you can still play with a DualShock 3 controller. For an even greater experience, Datura also fully supports stereoscopic 3D.
The game was designed to have a film like narrative and we encourage you to play through it in one session to really experience as one. We are excited about releasing it and will be happy to read your reactions afterwards.

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PlayStation Store Royale Contenders Sale
Countries: AE, AU, GB, IE, NZ

Following the announcement of PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, I thought it would be good to offer you some great discounts on games and downloadable content for characters featured in this game. So you can expect to see the following on sale when the PlayStation Store update goes live on Wednesday afternoon:

PS3 CONTENT

God of War HD
Was €17.99/£13.99/AUS$27.95 - Now €13.99/£10.99/AUS$21.95

God of War II HD
Was €17.99/£13.99/AUS$27.95 - Now €13.99/£10.99/AUS$21.95

God of War: Chains of Olympus
Was €17.99/£13.99/AUS$27.95 - Now €13.99/£10.99/AUS$21.95

God of War: Ghost of Sparta
Was €17.99/£13.99/AUS$27.95 - Now €13.99/£10.99/AUS$21.95

God of War Collection
Was €29.99/£23.99/AUS$49.95 - Now €22.99/£15.99/AUS$29.95

God of War Collection Volume II
Was €29.99/£23.99/AUS$49.95 - Now €22.99/£15.99/AUS$29.95

Kratos Pack (Modnation Racing)
Was €1.75/£1.49/AUS$2.95 - Now €0.89/£0.75/AUS$1.25

Kratos Costume - (LittleBigPlanet)
Was €1.99/£1.59/AUS$3.45 - Now €0.99/£0.79/AUS$ 1.75

Kratos - (Everybodys Golf)
Was €0.99/£0.79/AUS$1.75 - Now €0.49/£0.40/AUS$0.90

Killzone 3 Multiplayer
Was €0.00/£0.00/AUS$0.00 - Now €0.00/£0.00/AUS$0.00 (Yes that's correct, it costs €0.00!)

The Sly Trilogy
Was €24.99/£19.99/AUS$39.95 - Now €12.99/£9.99/AUS$19.95

Sly Raccoon
Was €9.99/£7.99/AUS$15.95 - Now €4.99/£3.99/AUS$8.45

Sly 2: Band of Thieves
Was €9.99/£7.99/AUS$15.95 - Now €4.99/£3.99/AUS$8.45

Sly 3: Honour Among Thieves
Was €9.99/£7.99/AUS$15.95 - Now €4.99/£3.99/AUS$8.45

Sly Cooper Pack - (ModNation Racing)
Was €1.75/£1.49/AUS$2.95 - Now €0.89/£0.75/AUS$1.25

Fat Princess
Was €9.99/£7.99/AUS$15.95 - Now €4.99/£3.99/AUS$8.45

Fat Princess: Supersize Anniversary Bundle
Was €14.99/£11.99/AUS$23.95 - Now €7.99/£6.49/AUS$12.95

Sweet Tooth Pack - (ModNation Racing)
Was € 1.75/£1.49/AUS$2.95 - Now €0.89/£0.75/AUS$1.25
PSP

Fat Princess: Fistful of Cake
Was €7.99/£6.49/AUS$12.95 - Now €3.99/£3.19/AUS$6.95

PSONE

Twisted Metal
Was €4.99/£3.99/AUS$8.45 - Now €2.99/£2.39/AUS$4.95

HOME

In additional to our PS3 and PSP content, we also have the Radec armor from PS HOME available, so dress up like one of the best and show your fellow homies who is boss!

Radec's Body Armour
Was €0.99/£0.79/AUS$1.75 - Now €0.49/£0.40/AUS$0.90

Radec's Combat Trousers
Was €0.99/£0.79/AUS$1.75 - Now €0.49/£0.40/AUS$0.90

Radec's Helmet
Was €0.99/£0.79/AUS$1.75 - Now €0.49/£0.40/AUS$0.90

Radec's Tactical Gloves
Was €0.99/£0.79/AUS$1.75 - Now €0.49/£0.40/AUS$0.90

Radec's Combat Boots
Was €0.99/£0.79/AUS$1.75 - Now €0.49/£0.40/AUS$0.90

This sale is for 1 week only, starting on 2nd May 2012, and it will end on 9th May 2012, so don't miss out!

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GOW 1 and 2 for me.

All Starhawk Beta Players Will Receive Free Gifts
Countries: AE, AU, GB, IE, NZ

After years of hard work on Starhawk, I am wicked excited to finally announce that Starhawk has gone gold and will be on store shelves in PAL regions from 9th May. GOOOOOAAAAALLLL....D!

Starhawk is not your normal off-the-shelf shooter. We've certainly taken some chances with this game, but it's gonna be worth it: The Build & Battle system alters the traditional shooter recipe in such a way that when you play other shooters, you may find yourself frustrated that you can't build bunkers, walls, outposts, and all the other stuff that Starhawk lets you build. So if you're a shooter fan looking for a change of pace, definitely pick up Starhawk!

Nothing ever comes easy though, and integrating Build & Battle certainly took a bunch of iteration and refinement, both internally during production here at LightBox Interactive, and also during our private and public betas. You guys were really great beta testers, so as a "thank you" for your participation, we're giving you two exclusive items.

The first is The Hand of the Founder. It's an exclusive character accessory for anyone who played in the BETA. It's a gold, glowing, atom-looking thing that is bonded to your right hand. It's intended to be a way to show off to your friends and everyone else online that you were one of Starhawk's founders. That you had a hand in its creation!
The second item is the Warhawk Paint Set. It includes two exclusive vehicle paint schemes that you can use to customize any of your vehicles in Starhawk. The Warhawk Paint Set is available to any Starhawk Beta tester who was *ALSO* a Warhawk player.

You get the olive-drab military look of Warhawk's Eucadians as well as the stealthy, black and gunmetal look of the Chernovans.
Both The Hand of the Founder and the Warhawk Paint Set are Starhawk Beta exclusives. In order for you to get the first item, we will identify your downloading of the Starhawk Beta; you will receive the second item if you've downloaded both the Beta and the Warhawk PS3 full game from PSN. If you have both, that means you will get both items! Please note that this will be the only way you will receive these items, and they are intended to be very special "thank you" items that will never be re-released or sold. This is the only way we can target you fans out there.

Like you heard me say in the video, the release of Starhawk on May 9th is just the beginning! We're going to be continuing to release updates and refinements to Starhawk to make sure the community is getting the best Starhawk experience we can provide.

No probs Z, anytime... As long as you got a fair idea of budget I'll behappy to help...

http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2012/05/02/the-unfinished-swan-is-coming-to-psn/#more-62853

There is a trailer on PSN for this upcoming and very strange looking game -

Posted on 2 May by Ian Dallas - Creative Director, Giant Sparrow
The Unfinished Swan Is Coming To PSN

Countries: AE, AU, GB, IE, NZ

If you've ever heard of The Unfinished Swan before, I'd like to start by saying I'm sorry.
Back in 2008, when we posted videos of the prototype online, a lot of people got really excited. And then 4 years went by without another word. So if you've been wondering "whatever happened to that weird black and white painting game?" thanks for waiting!

If this is all new to you, here's the gist: The Unfinished Swan is a first-person painting game that begins in a totally white space. You throw globs of paint to explore the world around you. In the game, you're a boy named Monroe who's chasing after a swan. The swan stepped out of a painting and has wandered off into a surreal, unfinished world. Here's what it looks like:

So what have we been doing for the last 4 years? Judging from our blog, mostly we've been having team lunches and then posing for photos. Which is partly true. But also we started a company called Giant Sparrow, and then signed a deal with Sony to make The Unfinished Swan for PSN.

For those of you familiar with Sony's relationship with thatgamecompany, it's the same kind of thing. Sony calls it an "incubation deal." In addition to giving us funding, they also provide office space, equipment and advice (often in the form of this cheerful graphics programmer from the God of War team). The best part is that we get to focus all of our energies on just making a game.
That's great because it turns out that making a game is hard. Like, the takes-you-four-years kind of hard. But it's almost done and we're super excited to start talking about it.

One of the biggest challenges we had was figuring out what the game was going to be about. The idea of painting a white world is pretty abstract. You could make all kinds of different games about that. A lot of people who saw it 4 years ago assumed it was going to be a horror game. And it totally could have been. But after splatting stuff for a few months, we realized what we liked most about it was the sense of wonder it created. We liked not knowing what was out there.

So we made a game about creating a sense of wonder. Our goal is to give players strange and beautiful experiences they've never had before. We want to give people genuine surprises, and then keep on surprising them the whole game. The painting a white world stuff is actually just the first 15 minutes. After that, things get really weird.

thanks Dela.
Will query in the stream thread when ready.
Probably along the lines of snarf build and price.
Z

Good topic Hunter, it does make sense to centralise all this stuff rather than create topics for almost every update. I am looking forward to Datura - didn't realise it was just a week away! - and have just been reading up on The Unfinished Swan on Eurogamer, which sounds like another unique art-house piece a la Journey. Sounds really intriguing; I love how I can rely on Sony to still fund new IPs and interesting downloadable games besides their usual triple-A blockbuster sequel types.

Out of interest, anyone know what's in the update today? We're due another Plus update, aren't we?

I thought it was reported last week in another thread. Awesomenauts and 8 other free games - something to do with Hamsters. And Max Payne from PS2.

No need to thank me Tel;) Copy and pasted from the other thread.

From May 2nd
PS3 Games

Awesomenauts - 100% off
You save £7.99/€9.99

Hamsterball - 100% off until July 4th
You save £7.99/€9.99

Wakeboarding HD - 100% off until July 4th
You save £11.99/€14.99

Mahjong Tales: Ancient Wisdom - 100% off until July 4th
You save £7.99/€9.99

Sky Fighter - 100% off until July 4th
You save £7.99/€9.99

Ricochet HD - 100% off until July 4th
You save £3.19/€3.99

Mushroom Wars - 100% off until July 4th
You save £7.99/€9.99

Magic Orbz - 100% off until July 4th
You save £7.99/€9.99

Smash Cars - 100% off until July 4th
You save £11.99/€14.99
Classics

Silent Hill (PSone Classic) - 100% off
You save £5.49/€6.99
Only available until 9th May 2012 - grab it before it's gone!

Max Payne (PS2 Classic) - 100% off
You save £7.99/€9.99
minis

Velocity (minis) - 100% off and two weeks exclusively for PS Plus.
You save £3.99/€4.99

LA Gridlock (minis) - 100% off
You save £1.74/€1.99
Full Game Trials

Assassin's Creed: Revelations
Rayman: Origins
Driver: San Francisco
Borderlands
Red Dead Redemption
Episodes from Liberty City
GTA IV
Bioshock 2
Mafia 2
House of the Dead: Overkill
Sonic Generations
Medieval Moves
inFamous 2
PlayStation Move Heroes
Sports Champions
Red Faction: Armageddon
Darksiders

Exclusive Discounts

Zack Zero - 50% off
You save £3.99/€4.99

James Cameron's Avatar: The Game - 30% off
You save £5.00/€6.00

Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood - 30% off
You save £5.00/€6.00
Themes & Avatars

Mad Riders Plus-Exclusive Dynamic Theme - 100% off
You save £1.59/€1.99

OddWorld Plus-Exclusive Dynamic Theme - 100% off
You save £1.59/€1.99

Five Plus-Exclusive Avatars: Koala, Snake, Bunny, Frog and Chimp
You save £0.21/€0.25 per avatar
Still to come later in May:

Datura - Launch discount
Binary Domain - Launch discount
Mad Riders - Free day-one DLC pack available at launch

... And as usual, loads of additional Plus discounts on upcoming PSN Store Special Offers.

Please note: additional offers may become available throughout the month. Keep an eye on the Plus section of the PlayStation Store and the weekly Store update posts for more information.

Ah yeah, I remember that too. Cheers R.

"Binary Domain - Launch discount"

Cool. Hopefully they're launching it for £15 and offering Plusers 20% off then, right? Right?

More like £50 pounds rather than £59.99:-)

Nice to see a lot of free games but I'm not that excited for them TBH.

I saw a very interesting article on IGN last night, which hopefully isn't a rumour, that Sony have been sending out questionaires to PS+ people asking if they would like to see a new or additional pricing model. Get 10 or 15 full game titles per year for a monthly sub - that kinda thing. Cannot remember the exact details but it's on IGN - I think.

Carl just tweeted (remember Carl, had a ps3, supported Liverpool and was Paul Cliff's kryptonite) that "KZ3 MP is going to be FREE for EU from today in a 'PS All Stars Battle Royale' sale." Don't even know what that means really or if he's telling the truth but the word FREE draws me like a doo doo does to a fly.

Unfortunately it is the KZ3 MP trial which is free, and always has been since it was released.
It will still cost you if you wish to play past a certain rank (can't remember the rank).

http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2012/05/02/the-art-of-gravity-rush-on-ps-vita/

The Art Of Gravity Rush On PS Vita
Countries: AE, AU, GB, IE, NZ
Release date: 13 June 2012

With Gravity Rush releasing in June, I wanted to share how the artwork of this game came together as well as how the style of "Bande Dessinee" influenced the title's art direction.

Gravity Rush incorporates the theme of Bande Dessinee (BD), a popular Franco-Belgian comic book art style. There are various types of BD style and they can be perceived in many ways. We first approached an element of BD we thought would fit well into the pre-existing game art. One of the differences between realistic expression and schematic expression represented by BD is that BD exaggerates the information that author wants to convey to the audience. By doing so, it conveys more of the accurate information that the author wants to be recognized.

While considering the gravity mechanic in the game, we brainstormed with these elements in mind. If a player can move around freely, the level should not only be big horizontally, but also vertically. Therefore, we designed the city with multiple levels of layers and structures.

Additionally, the line drawing method was used to exaggerate buildings and allow them to be more easily recognized. The color of the sky was also enhanced to give additional sensory information to the players.

The direction we chose to use for the game's graphics conveys the necessary information with exaggeration that matches the player's sensation. Taking that into consideration, we also wanted to use line drawings, the characteristic of BD and the simulation of beautiful air effects. I think the broader the game art expression becomes, the more interactive a game becomes.

Another important factor is the concept of a "living background." This is the idea of bringing the game world itself to life so that users can actually `feel' it. Basically, players can interact with certain objects in the game and they can actually get into the scenery within the remote background. Environmental background is not a piece of a picture, but it actually exists within the game, and we can use that background with our gameplay. That was our ultimate goal. By combining the unique art style of BD and the idea of living background, we created a sensation that could only be brought to life with a video game.

As a special treat, I am happy to share this concept movie that we created during the early stages of Gravity Rush's development.