Well last week was pretty much a bust due to the PlayStation Network going down, and there were also not many interesting new releases.

Sure there is The Conduit 2 on the Wii which the prequel received quite a lot of media attention, and then there is that PC game called Darkspore developed by Maxis which is like a darker version of Spore except there are some RPG-ish elements tied to it. However I think these games will probably slip past many people’s radar.

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Here are new games/DLC we have played:

Project DIVA Arcade

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New Releases

• CLANNAD (PS3 / X360)
• Patapon 3 (PSP)

Playstation Store Updates

Games

• Arcana Heart 3 ($29.99)
• Fancy Pants Adventures ($9.99)
• Neutopia ($5.99)
• Sonic The Hedgehog 2 ($4.99)
• Puzzle Agent ($9.99)

Demos

• Virtua Tennis 4 World Tour Demo
• Fancy Pants Adventures Demo

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A word about the PSN Outage

Zenical: Just last week just as I was about to play some Dungeon Hunter with guuzen, it noticed that people started having problems connecting to PSN. It is not known when PSN will be up though there have been rumors floating around the net that PSN might be up sometime this week. There has be a lot of speculation that the attack was done by Anonymous – the group has denied this and there isn’t any proof of whatsoever. To be honest few weeks back when Anon first launched an attack on Sony, their servers were compromised, resulting in some downtime(not as major as this). After that I realised I can’t access the official Playstation Blog for some reason. Is this Sony’s doing? Have they taken certain measures to block off a range of IP address which are suspicious (including mine? >_>) A few of my other gaming comrades have this same problem too.

It is also not known whether our credit card numbers stored on the PSN account is safe – I can only hope it is for I have forgotten to delete them off :(

I have nothing to review this week since the PSN is down. I was thinking of getting Portal 2 but I changed my mind as I spent my money on something more expensive than that :D

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Project DIVA Arcade

Developer: Sega
Publisher: Sega
Project Diva Arcade IC Card purchasable

Guuzen: Project DIVA Arcade (PDA) came to Singapore in early 2011, though some people already got their hands on it during AFA X. So this plays just like the other two Project DIVA games on the PlayStation Portable where the notes come flying onto the screen from all directions. PDA uses the X, ♰, Δ, O buttons as well, but they are aligned horizontally instead of the PlayStation’s usual button placements. This will take some time to get used to even for Project DIVA PSP veterans. Other than the new button layout, the rest is pretty much the same as the PSP game. For newcomers, you have quite a steep learning curve to overcome.

So how does Miku look in the Arcade version? Stunningly beautiful (in high definition!). I want to say that it looks even better than the PlayStation 3’s Dreamy Theatre, but I could only base my judgement off YouTube videos since I don’t have it in my console. The contrast is definitely better in PDA compared to its PSP counterparts probably thanks to the difference in visual quality. However there are still some songs that has way too many animations going on in the background which can be really distracting.

PDA, like a lot of those Bemani rhythm games out there, have it’s own IC card that keeps track of your performance and progression. Registration is done on the machine itself, though Aime registration has to be done on a proper web browser (Aime helps to save your profile data “on the cloud” if you happen to misplace your IC card). There is a level system, but it doesn’t seem to do anything other than revealing how much time you have on your hand. The more important thing in this game is Vocaloid Points (VP). You will earn them as you play songs after songs and challenges after challenges. It allows you to purchase new costumes for your favorite Vocaloid characters and also in-game frames over at DIVA.NET. They can cost as low as 50 VP and go as high as 1000 VP.

That may sound like a pretty small amount but trust me, you do not earn much from each song played. The amount you earn varies depending on both song difficulty and performance. I believe the lowest I have earned from a single song is 2 VP, and the highest is 7 VP with full combo on either easy or normal. After about 15 plays, I have only earned 124 VP (I believe they give some VP for free for newcomers).

My main complain about PDA is that it costs $2 SGD per game and it only allows you to play two songs (arcade rhythm games usually last for three songs). To be fair, some songs are pretty long so if you choose wisely you can play up to 7 minutes or so. But the idea of “one song for $1 SGD” is really bumming me out. Sometimes Sega may open up “Contest Mode” where you can play up four songs and stand a chance to earn contest exclusive items, though I doubt they will be doing it too often.

I have to say if you are a Miku fan, you should at least give this a go. However if you have a tight allowance you may want to think twice about investing too much into it and just stick to PSP version if you have it. After all, they are pretty much the same underneath all the pretty visuals.

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