Looks like our European masters have decided to do April 1st two months early as the European Parliament decides that “Parents should have a “red button” to disable a game they feel is inappropriate for their child” in an official press release.

It seems that to encode videos for the PS3 in Ubuntu you need to use ffmpeg, however when I tried to do this the first time I ran into problems because I was using the version from the hardy-proposed software repo. To get it working you need to use the packages from medibuntu.org.

First let me note that I haven’t played this game with multiplayer yet so I can’t comment on that.

However this game is pretty good just with the single player campaign. The basic premise is that you’re a group of soldiers gone AWOL trying to chase down a load of trucks containing gold.

Along the way you get to handle trucks, armoured cars, patrol boats, tanks and even the occasional helicopter while you literally blow away the enemy.

This game is the best racing game so far on the PS3, not because of the physics of the game (the GT series are top for that) but because it’s really fun to play.

The graphics are fantastic, damage is semi-realistic and the number of different racing styles that you can play is huge.

The crashes are pretty good too, not just when you crash but when another AI car makes a mistake and causes a five car pile up which you juuuusst manage to avoid adding to.

This game is supposed to be like the Bourne movies, always on the run and always moving forward.

However the way that the game achieves this is to get a group of mini-games and string them together.

For example, you may be running down a corridor, turn a corner and run smack into a security guard… prompt the ‘fight’ mini game which is basically press block, wait for them to attempt to hit you and then mash triangle and square until Bourne does the coup de grace on the opponent.

You’ll then run off, go through a door and enter and ‘press the button on the screen God of War style’ mini game.

This is annoying because you never feel that you’re in charge of where the game is going, it feels like a 3D platformer.

I’ve never enjoyed a car racing game this much since Need For Speed: Most Wanted.

I preordered Assassin’s Creed a month before it came out and my expectations of the game were not disappointed.

The detail in the maps are incredible and the ability to climb pretty much everything will have you roaming the cities for hours on end.

However, if you try to get through the storyline fast (it’s very tempting as the plot is fascinating) you will find some of the info gathering missions repetitive. This won’t effect you too much as unless you try to do all of them they won’t take too long.

Overall it’s a well thought through game with amazing attention to detail and the graphics and locations are breathtaking. The rumors of freezes on the PS3 are not as bad as is made out (I had it freeze about 3 times total) and Ubisoft have released a patch for it which seems to have fixed the problem.

9/10

Had an interesting day paintballing just south of Manchester on Saturday.

It was very cold and very, very wet. A lot of the equipment freezed up and wouldn’t work and setting up the site took a long time. However we got a lot of paintball in once we got going.

Last night following a couple of guides (including this one) I installed Ubuntu Gutsy on my PS3.  It’s working fine and loads ok, but the graphics mode and the wifi aren’t correct yet.

Finished Bladestorm last week.

It starts off well (a particularly amazing opening movie) and the rpg element is ok but it drags on and is reeeaaallly repetitive. The ending scene is disappointing as well.

6.5/10