LOS ANGELES — Blast Gaming Editor Joe Sinicki and Blast Editor John Guilfoil are in The Los Angeles Sports Arena for Sony’s press conference. Stick with us for up to the minute updates.

We open to a rather long video, then Jack Tretton shows up, he’s talking about the PSN hack. He days you’re welcome to the press and thanks well…pretty much everyone.

Consumers are the lifeblood of the company. He apologizes for the hack.

Triton encourages those who left or who are afraid to embrace it as a result of the hack to open up to the brand.

Sony will soon be offering free access to cinema now.

Naughty Dog is now on the stage to talk Uncharted 3. Its new footage not seen anywhere else. A boat level where Drake is constantly swaying and yes, it’s gorgeous.

Water effects are fantastic.

Like previous Uncharted games, the scale on this game is astounding.

As you’d expect, very cinematic, very cool.

Multiplayer beta begins June 28.

New contest will give people first access to entire game.

New level features Drake scaling an airplane as it takes off.

Marcus Smith from Insomniac is up to talk about Resistance 3.

Were seeing new footage from the St. Louis section of the game.

It, like most other games in the lineup is on 3D. Not completely sold on the tech, but it works well here.

Were now talking PlaystAtion move. Were getting a bundle with everything you news for the move, the sharpshooter and r3.

God of war, ice and shadow of colossus are getting 3d treatments.

Two new 3d products, one a 24 inch display. It will be able to let two people see two distinct 3d images. Were also getting a more affordable pair of 3d glasses. There’s also a bundle with the monitor, glasses And resistance for $499.

2k sports is now up to talk NBA 2k12 with the move.

NBA on the move will allow easy play with move controller.

Kobe Bryant is here. He’s going to show how easy it is to play with the move. He doesn’t seem to be doing so well.

Kobe calla the game so realistic it’s frightening. It comes out October 12.

Were now seeing medievmoves, a new move game from the team that made sports champions.

No inventory system, what weapon you use depends on what motions you use.

This reminds me of sorcery from last year. Wonder what happened to it.

It features pretty impressive 1-1 motion.

It’s available this fall.

Were looking at infamous 2. Yeah, we know it comes out tomorrow.

The game gets user created content and move support this fall. Little big planet 2 gets further move support as well.

Starhawk is up next. Great reaction from the crowd.

Jack is now talking about a return, it better be… It is…. Sly Cooper is back!

Sly Cooper: thieves on time coming next year.

Dust 514 only for PS3. Will combine with Eve Online.

The ability to create one persistent world is awesome. Dust looks great too.

Closed beta hits this fall.

Bioshock infinite is shown. Incredible.

Looks so much different than any other game on the series.

Ken Levine talks about the move and his doubts. He talks how Sony has made him a believer by allowing new people to experience his games.

Yes, Bioshock infinite will feature move functionality.

Bioshock is also coming to the NGP.

Saints row 3 will feature brand new ps exclusive content. So will the new Star Trek game.

New phaser peripheral coming.

At an alpha stage. The game looks impressive.

SSX will feature exclusive content, as will need for speed: the run.

Battlefield 3 on PS3 will include bartledie 1943 on ps3 only.

Kazuo Hirai is up to talk about NGP.

Playstation suite will allow ps content to be available on android smart phones and tablets.

It’s official. It’s PlayStation Vita. It’ll be working with AT&T for 3G versions. The crowd laughed and booed at that.

Near is a streetpass like system for vita.

Uncharted Golden Abyss is being demonstrated.

So wait, is there only touch controls for combat?

The game is very heavy on touch control.

Next were talking about Ruin, a social action rpg compatible with the vita and ps3. So far…kind of underwhelming.

Saves will work on PS3 via cloud tech.

Mod Nation Racers is coming to Vita.

Where is Kevin Butler?

Mod Nation Vita will feature a cool track editor that you can trace with your fingers. Even the lighting can be changed.

PS3 tracks will work with Vita Mod Nation Racers.

Little Big Planet Vita is coming. Will revolutionize portable gaming. Rather cool ways that the features work with already in game mechanics. It will allow you to use textures from pictures as well as the PS3 game.

Sf x Tekken is coming to Vita.

Cole from Infamous joins the game.

Vita will be available this holiday. Wifi only retails for $249. The 3G model goes for $299.

The PSN store is fast becoming the premiere testing ground for smaller indie games. For every Limbo that Microsoft throws into the spotlight, Sony usually has three other strange, yet lovable little games available that you should also be playing. Such is the case with Hoard, the latest to hit the PS3 download scene.

Essentially a cross between a strategic, dual-stick shooter and a board game, Hoard pits up to four dragons against each other over a medieval landscape in a contest of wealth and plunder. The gameplay is, at heart, pretty simple. You fly around an overhead map, attacking villages, caravans, castles, and other human constructions, pick up the gold left behind from the attack, and bring it back to your lair. The dragon with the most gold at the end of the game wins. Easy-peasy.

There are variations on the theme, of course. One game mode focuses on kidnapping and ransoming princess, for instance. Anytime you put a royal damsel in distress, the pesky humans will send out knights (aka, fried food) to rescue her. Hold on to the gal long enough and the humans give up and just provide the ransom instead. As it turns out, this is an incredibly lucrative career choice, as those princesses are worth lots of gold.

The interaction with towns is an area of particular creativity in Hoard. Sure, you can go around blindly burning everything to the ground, but as is so true in life, if you merely hurt them just enough, the humans will give up and start working for you. So long as you don’t destroy their town center, a conquered town will stop attacking you (while their archers will continue to attack your opponents) and send a steady stream of gold-laden caravans to your lair in what can only be presumed as a pre-Mafia, fantasy protection racket.

Letting towns prosper also makes the pay offs far more substantial. Caravans might start out carrying a few hundred gold, but as the game progresses, will end up containing three or four times as much. Beyond merely attacking towns, caravans, and princesses, the board offers several other creative obstacles. Wizard towers offer tons of gold and even special gems, but are absurdly well protected. One blast from a tower will send your dragon straight back to its lair to regenerate health.

Giants will often appear later in a game and start rampaging against both humans and dragon kind. If you attack one hard enough, it will get distracted and follow you instead of attacking a village. From there, you can potentially lead the idiotic brute to towns protected by other dragons, or just set it off to terrorize the hillsides. There are a lot of little touches like this that affect the gameplay in minor ways, but add up to a level of strategy that will please RTS-centric gamers without completely leaving casual players or newcomers behind.

While there are certainly some layers of depth to Hoard, the game is, at heart, built around the same sensibilities of a board game. There’s no persistent level building from game to game. You build up your dragons stats within a single game, but nothing remains past that. The maps vary in size, but are all fairly small and don’t change in any fashion beyond buildings falling and rising. The whole entertainment value of the game relies entirely on its pick-up-and-play design. Matches last about ten minutes, and then the game kicks you back out to the main menu.

The visuals are more utilitarian than beautiful. Hoard looks fine for what it offers, but the maps are rather bland looking, with simplistic representations of buildings and human units. The single player games consist purely of tutorials or bot-matches, so anyone expecting a story-driven campaign or anything beyond simple multiplayer will be out of luck.

For about $15, Hoard offers a distinctively fun and creative multiplayer game. It’s one of the few games that works equally well whether all players are in the same room or across the globe. Hoard is sure to draw in non-traditional gamers who want a game that mixes easy action with more strategic, slower pacing. That’s not to say Hoard is slow—it’s still all about gathering up as much gold as quickly as possible.

Blast Factor: Hoard is a pretty narrow game. It’s not epic or particularly deep, and is mostly just for players who want a quick match of something different. That said, the game goes about giving players a creatively fun multiplayer experience very well.

SEATTLE — Who didn’t ever wish to be Godzilla at one time or another and destroy a whole city? This game is all about that.

In Eat Them, you start by creating a monster. They give options for its upper body, lower body, arms, legs and head. So your monster could have three legs, or just one big one. Your monster can have a claw, or a circular saw for a right arm. You can be Godzilla or Robot Godzilla.

The game starts with you in a city with your monster. The goal of the game is to wreak as much havoc as monstrously possible. The level is played with the PS2 controller, with a different button for each type of attack, one for his head, one for each of his arms and one for his legs.

I was also told you can actually pick up the people in the city and eat them, but I was unable to get the game to do that.

It was incredibly satisfying smashing the buildings and stomping on people and vehicles. As the game progresses they send more and more police and military after you to stop you. This starts with a couple of cop cars, than goes up to helicopters and tanks. The more they throw at you the harder the game gets, but your score is based on dollars of damage and casualties, so you want to destroy everything. The game has a red outline of where in the city you can go and that line moves when you destroy enough of the city.

The details in the game are well done, with people streaming out of buildings before they collapse, and the different building styles, and even train tracks in the demo that I got to play. The game features comic book graphics and style — simple but effective.

I thought the game was a lot of fun, if you are feeling frustrated, or angry you can take your anger out on virtual buildings and level a city that you shouldn’t attempt in real life.

SEATTLE — Kung Fu Rider will be coming the PlayStation Network, and it will use the Move Controller. The game features an office worker in Hong Kong riding less traditional "vehicles" down the busy streets.

It was described as similar in style to Crazy Taxi, and we wholeheartedly agree. The demo that we got to play was with an office chair. The character sits on the office chair, backwards, using the seat back as a steering wheel. The final game will feature a variety of weird vehicles.

The movements are fairly simple. You move the controller up and down to go faster, quick upward jerk will cause the chair to jump, so you can leap over objects and grind on rails if you land correctly. They also use two buttons on the controller, one to lean the character back, to duck under objects, and another to do a round house kick. This makes the controls very simple. The game was very arcade like also with the graphics very cartoonish.

The animations in the game when you’d lean back, kick or jump or even when you’d get knocked off your chair were hilarious. Getting knocked off your chair happens in slow motion, with an exaggerated fall backwards.

The object of the levels was to get to the bottom within a time limit, and falling off would punish you by losing time and speed. They have money scattered throughout the level to collect for points.

I thought it was a fun, and quick game. It’s not going to be a real deep story line game, but if you want something quick and fun, you’ll like Kung Fu Rider.

Kung Fu Rider is for 1-2 players and comes out this month.

Game features:

• Find the best routes of escape while racing through 27 exciting courses in six unique areas of Hong Kong.
• Slide solo in single-player mode or have a friend use a PlayStation Move motion controller to aim a "target" around the screen in order to collect items and fend off enemies in the offline multi-player co-op mode.
• Unlock 12 new vehicles that will help you make a speedy getaway through the streets of Hong Kong.
• Check out the tally screen at the end of each race to see your reactions captured by the PlayStation Eye camera during your most extreme wipeouts.

Regardless of the turmoil between Modern Warfare 2 developer Infinity Ward and publisher Activision, MW2 is still out there and is a hugely popular, chart-dominating online shooter.

And it’s likely to get even more popular today, as Activision and Sony today will release the first batch of the game’s downloadable content, the “Stimulus Package,” for the Sony faithful on the PlayStation Network.

Even at its steep $15 price point and its inclusion of two CoD4 map remakes, the DLC sold heaps and heaps on Xbox Live. Wonder how it’ll fare with the Sony crowd?

Read the full announcement on the PlayStation Blog and keep you eyes fixed on Infinity Ward creative strategist Robert Bowling on Twitter @FourZeroTwo for information on when exactly the DLC will go live.

Frantic, frenetic combat racing on the PlayStation Network just got cheaper today.

Sony, this morning announced a slew of price drops happening on the PSN, but the best one is definitely a temporary 50 percent price drop on combat racing title “WipEout HD,” effective immediately and running until next Wednesday.

WipEout HD is on sale for $9.99 (regular price $19.99) Offer good through Wednesday, 4/21
Valhalia Knights 2: Battle Stance Permanent Price Drop (now $19.99, original price $29.99)
Tank Battles Sale (now $4.99, original price $6.99)
TV Show King Sale (now $4.99, original price $6.99)
UNO Sale (now $4.99, original price $7.99)

Can’t think of a better way to start a weekend off than by saving money and playing a great game. OK, maybe this is better, but where could you ever find that?

Source: The PlayStation Blog

Braid, the mini-adventure game from Hothead Games, is finally primed for a PlayStation Network debut.

After seeing release on the PC and the Xbox Live Arcade, Braid comes to the PSN in North America Nov. 12, followed by a “later date” for European markets.

Braid has a truly unique hand-drawn art style, an interesting game mechanic in controlling time, and now mass appreciation, sadly, it’s on my shame list of games I’ve yet to play.

Anyway, head on over to the game’s official page for more information on anything you can imagine, except rabid wildebeests.

Fate/Unlimited Codes is a fighting game which was initially released for arcades and the PS2. Capcom has developed a PSP version for fans of the original game and anime. Based on the visual novel Fate/stay night, Fate/Unlimited Codes collects these characters (divided into Masters and Servants) and has them fight each other in what is known as a Grail War. The winner gets to fulfill their hearts desire thanks to the Holy Grail. The game’s visuals match those of most anime and are consistent throughout the game.

In the vein of fighters such as Tekken, Fate/Unlimited Codes is a basic fighting game where you go head to head with other characters while trying to execute combo moves to beat the other player. The game starts with 14 characters, with all the main Fate/Stay characters from the anime present along with some original characters. You can also unlock three other characters as you fight through the Arcade mode. There are three initial fighting modes as well as an unlockable Survival Mode which adds to the amount of fun you can have. When you begin the Arcade Mode, the character you selected follows their own storyline in order to obtain what they want when they win the Grail War. This gives each of the characters a certain amount of depth and also rewards repeat game play since each character’s story unfolds as you fight through the Arcade mode.

When you begin the Arcade Mode, you start with a small cinematic introduction where the two fighters tough talk each other (a la most anime). The arena stages are instantly striking and visually impressive, but you’re only given as much room as in a regular fighting game. The soundtrack creates a tense mood which helps to get players into the fighting spirit. As fights progress, players can utilize special combo moves which can also trigger cinematic sequences which are seamlessly integrated into the fight. With each battle, more and more information and bonuses are unlocked. Once the Arcade mode is completed, you can also undergo numerous missions to unlock various other things. Mission Mode is where players are forced to show their fighting abilities.

Now, while these positive aspects exist in the game, the game is rather two dimensional. Fights can easily be won by pressing various buttons, even on the highest difficulty level. The A.I. controlling the opposing fighter is not very impressive and can’t really put up an entertaining fight. This reduces the experience of the Arcade mode to a series of button mashing sessions and robs players of the ability to truly display any level of skill against their opponent. Fighting, the main focus of the game, is where the game is lacking. The combos are easy to use but barely essential and the character graphics are lacking, especially considering the level of graphics available which have been utilized among other fighting games.

Another large detractor from the game is the fact that it is mainly in Japanese. While most of the pre-fight sequences are subbed in English for background, the cinematic preludes to the fights are not. It can be a little distracting to have to read while the characters speak in Japanese, and it can get downright annoying when coupled with the lousy fight put up by the A.I.

However, the game has an Ad Hoc multiplayer which completely removes the computer’s limited A.I. In the multiplayer, you and a friend can go head to head against one another in order to showcase your skills and see who is the better fighter. The gameplay on the Ad Hoc network gives the game a much needed boost in fun and is one of the highlights of the game.

Blast Factor: All in all, this game is acceptable. The lame‚  A.I., subpar graphics, lack of English voicework and limitations of the arena definitely bring down what could be an awesome fighting experience. Multiplayer is where the game shines, and the survival mode presents more of a challenge than the Arcade mode can at “Hard.” If you’re a fan of the visual novel or anime fighting games in general, then this game was made for you. If you’re just looking for a fighting game for long road trips, this game is entertaining enough with its plot to keep you interested.

Fate/unlimited codes is available on the Playstation Network for download at the cost of $29.99

Those who have been waiting, rejoice! Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 is now available through the Playstation Network. However, there is also a limited retail release of the game at Gamestop for $14.99.

People who buy the limited retail copy will recieve a code to digitally download the game from the Playstation Network and also a redemption code for a month’s subscription of digital comics from Marvel.com.

There are only 15,000 retail copies available though, so if you want one you’re going to have to be quick to get a copy. Curious about our thoughts on the game? Check out our review for the Xbox 360 version.

ZEN Pinball, the 3D pinball game which has been a hit on the PS3, will be receiving its first expansion pack on August 20, 2009. The expansion will be a Street Fight II Tribute table and will be available through the Playstation Network.

The new table will allow players to experience the arcade thrills of a realistic pinball experience combined with the awesomeness of the Street Fighter franchise. The soundtrack, sound effects and voices used for the expansion come straight from Street Fighter II. As you use the various ramps and orbit shots, you can fight through the World Warrior Championship until you beat M. Bison himself! This add on is a must have for fans of Street Fighter as well as anyone looking to have a more interesting round of Pinball on the PS3.

For more information, check out Capcom’s site for Street Fighter info and ZEN Pinball’s website for more information on their game.

Harmonix revealed today that a Bonnaroo-inspired track pack will be inbound next week, sporting the heavy-hitters of the annual Tennessee music festival.

It’s been a dream of mine to attend the show in person some year, but now if tickets fall through I’ll have both the chance to see the show broadcast on TV and play some of the tunes in Rock Band.

Here’s the track list:

Ben Harper and Relentless7 “" “Shimmer & Shine”
Coheed and Cambria “" “A Favor House Atlantic”
Coheed and Cambria “" “The Running Free”
Phish “" “Wilson (live)”
Shooter Jennings “" “Steady at the Wheel”
TV on the Radio “" “Wolf Like Me”

All tracks are master recordings and will be available next Tuesday (Xbox 360) and Thursday (PS3), priced at $1.99/160 MS Points a pop or $9.99/800 MS Points for the entire Bonnaroo Pack.

Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival 2009

Tired of teamwork, sharing, saving Sheva’s ass when she gets pinned? Ready to make some heads explode on your own?‚  Capcom feels your anguish and is offering up an online multiplayer mode to satiate that consuming thirst for blood of yours.

Resident Evil 5 ventures even further away from its origins with “Versus” mode pitting players against each other in a contest of survival.

Play as Chris or Sheva (or other secret characters) and either duke it out 1 v 1 or as a team in 2 v 2 competing in two very different game types:

Slayers Rule- is a point-based game that challenges players to kill of the games horrifying Majinis.

Survivors Rule- challenges gamers to track down and kill each other.‚  Classic slayer mode.

Versus will be available on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network “a few weeks” after the release of RE5 (tomorrow) with pricing set at 400 MS points and $4.99.

Sony confirmed today via the official PlayStation website that somene may have used a PC to access and expose user data on the popular Playstation Network online system.

In a web posting, Sony warns that some users could be victimized, their personal infomration viewed and games and downloads charged to their credit cards.

“We have investigated the extent of unauthorized access and possible alteration of passwords that could have occurred before corrective measures were taken, and are directly contacting customers who may have been affected by this incident,” Sony said in a statement Thursday. “In order to verify that your account is intact, we strongly suggest that PlayStation Network users sign in to the service. If you can successfully sign in with your pre-set password, your account is not affected by this incident.”

It is important to note that while the Playstation Network does store user credit card information for purchases, this data is not visible to anyone (including the user) after entered.

So, presumably,the hackers can’t use people’s credit cards for anything other than PlayStation Network downloads.

While Sony has said that they will be contacting users effected by the breach directly, they encourage anyone who believes they might be experiencing problems that can not be resolved from the methods listed on the website to e-mail them directly.