Review: Sony Playstation 3 launch title roundup

Also among the launch litter are two more Sony-published racing titles.

Formula One Championship Edition is a fairly average F1 racing simulator that has been polished up to look nice and shiny thanks to the PS3’s HD graphics, but the real star of the show is Motorstorm.

This dust-blown, off-road arcade racer looks absolutely stunning and is about as addictive and exhilarating to play as games of this type get.

Motorstorm really shouldn’t work, but it does. There’s a limited number of tracks, virtually no customisation and no split-screen multiplayer (although you can compete online).

But there’s really nothing quite like the thrill of driving a dirt bike or dune buggy along a razor-thin ledge only to have the ground disappear beneath you as you leap from one side of a rocky canyon to another.

Motorstorm aside, some of the PS3’s better titles are those for sale online at the Playstation Store (Sony’s equivalent of the Xbox Live Marketplace).

Flow, where you play as some kind of deep sea plankton and use the PS3’s motion-sensing controller to move about, is a particular highlight, although GripShift (a driving puzzle game) and Blast Factor (a variant on the Geometry Wars theme) are both highly addictive too and cost less than a fiver a piece.

Gran Turismo HD, meanwhile, is little more than a showcase, but it’s completely free to download and well worth signing up to the Playstation Network for.

In addition to Sony’s own titles, there are some promising early releases from other publishers – Ubisoft’s Elder Scrolls III: Oblivion and Sega’s Virtua Tennis 3 have got a good track record on other platforms and are bound to look good and play well on the powerful PS3.

But with a retail lineup largely populated by aging ports and underwhelming first-party titles, Motorstorm is the only real stand-out game. It’s hardly the most profound gaming experience, but it’s going to be the one that PS3 owners keep coming back to once the novelty of those high-def cosmetics wear off.

Scores:
Formula One Championship Edition : 3/5
Genji: Days of the Blade: 2/5
Motorstorm: 5/5
Resistance: Fall of Man: 3/5
Ridge Racer 7: 4/5