Battlefield 3 Beta Dates And PS3 DLC Exclusivity

This is Tommy Rydling from DICE, coming to you, the readers of the PlayStation Blog, with two exciting pieces of news.

First, we are very happy to announce the dates for the eagerly awaited Battlefield 3 Open Beta. The Beta is open to all and will run from September 29th to October 10th. You can join it by simply going to the going the PlayStation Store and navigating to the Demos section, followed by the Latest PlayStation Demos option – from there you’ll see the link to download the Battlefield 3 demo!

Prepare for battle in the bombed-out metro tunnels on the outskirts of Paris in the upcoming
Battlefield 3 Open Beta!

Alternatively, if you have redeemed a Medal of Honor: Limited Edition or Tier 1 Edition Online Pass, you will receive early access via a personal email invitation from DICE that includes 48 hour early access, which allows you to start playing on September 27th.

The Open Beta is your chance to play Battlefield 3 early, try out our free social platform Battlelog, and give your valued feedback directly to those of us at DICE. You participating in the Battlefield 3 Open Beta means that you are not only helping us load test the servers, but more importantly helping us fine-tune the final components of the multiplayer game.

During your time in the Open Beta, you’ll be playing on the map Operation Métro – a map you might have seen coverage of from E3, where we won the Best Multiplayer Game award.

But that’s not all for our PlayStation fans! You’ll be happy to know that, starting with our first expansion pack Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand (released later this year), all full-blown upcoming expansion packs for the game will appear one week early exclusively on PlayStation 3!

As you may or may not have heard, Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand is a themed expansion pack containing four of the most loved maps from Battlefield 2, boldly reimagined in the Frostbite 2 engine. It also features new weapons and vehicles, unique in-game dog tags, new persistence, and new Trophies.

Be sure to stay tuned for more on the PlayStation version of Battlefield 3 and all things related. And do let us know what you think of the Beta once it’s up and running. For more stories on Battlefield 3, feel free to check out the official Battlefield blog where I post from behind the scenes under the name “H Brun”.

I also wanted to say thank you for your continued support for DICE and Battlefield 3. Meeting our fans in person is always very rewarding and exciting. We went to GamesCom with the PS3 co-op mission Exfiltration, and at Tokyo Game Show we let visitors play the single player mission Operation Guillotine. The response so far has been overwhelming, and we look forward to showing you more action from Battlefield 3 before the European launch on October 28th
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Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One Luminopolis Trailer

Just Continuing on your reading ~

One of the frequent questions we get is how the evil Dr. Nefarious ended up with Ratchet, Clank, and President Qwark. We actually explain this at the beginning of the game: Ratchet, Clank and Qwark have arrived on the planet of Luminopolis so that now Galactic President Qwark can pick up an Intergalactic Tool of Justice Award. Of course, there is no such award as it’s all an elaborate ruse by Dr. Nefarious to lure our heroes into a trap. Dr. Nefarious’s plan goes awry, and when your plan involves a giant light-eating Z’Grute, you know it’s going to be bad. Nefarious realises he has no choice but to begrudgingly help our heroes to save his own skin.

As part of our gameplay series of videos, we wanted to show you some of the spectacular bosses and co-op moments that you’ll find when you play Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One. This video shows you the sequence starring the Z’Grute, as it terrorises the city of Luminopolis.

We hope you are as excited as we are about Ratchet and Clank‘s first four-player co-op adventure. It’s only a few weeks away, so to stay up to date on all the latest news

Burnout Crash!

Hi All,
This is Dan McDonald, Producer at Criterion Games. By now you should have heard about the new game from our studio, Burnout CRASH! and I am sure some of you are scratching your heads a little wondering what we have been up to… well let me tell you… Burnout CRASH! is a spin off from our much loved Burnout series but this time focusing solely on the Crash Mode gameplay which you may remember from previous Burnout games.
A lot of games take themselves too seriously, sometimes all you really need is to just kick back, relax and blow stuff up. With that in mind we designed Burnout CRASH! with a tongue in cheek style, harking back to the arcades we all used to hang around in. Our inspirations were manic Pinball gameplay, over the top Game Show style presentation, all tied up with our favourite music tracks from yesterday.

But I hear you ask, “I loved the original crash modes, will I like this?” But of course! We have kept the spirit of the original Crash mode alive, with its simple gameplay of drive into a junction and smash as much traffic as you can – layered with deeper puzzle elements to work out the highest scoring strategies. The perfect game to sit on the sofa passing the pad back and forth with your friends, showing action that is as fun to watch as it is to play.

Looking back at previous versions of Crash mode, probably the single biggest request from our fans was to keep the crash going for longer… so that’s the first thing we did, giving you much more than the single crashbreaker of old. This in turn lead to many more scoring opportunities and craziness, so just a like a pinball table it’s easy to play but you need to know your stuff to rack up the really big scores. As well as the standard scoring methods of smashing traffic and multipliers, we have made all of the buildings destroyable, get smash chains from hitting street furniture, added lots of different skillshots, explosion combos and many more crazy new features. Some of which help rack up your score such as the Lightning storm and some of which get in the way like the Bulldozer clearly a path for other cars to escape through.

Of course, this being Criterion we couldn’t leave out Autolog, as first seen in our last hit game Need for Speed Hot Pursuit. Autolog adds that essential element of personalisation to Burnout CRASH!, as your high score tables (Crashwalls) will only be populated with your friends scores.
We still have the Autolog staples of Recommends based on what your friends have been doing, with Friends Recommendations to help build up your PSN friends list.

We’ve also taken the social competition one step further with the new Autolog Challenges. This is a much more direct mode of play where you can select any of your PSN friends and challenge them to a one on one challenge. You each get one go on a level, with the winner taking the cup. Sounds simple but it works a treat… I have been battling some of the other guys in the studio for some time now, the trash talking alone is gold (Doug I am coming for you)! And of course one of the Trophies is for beating a friend 3 times in a row in Autolog Challenges.
If you like having pure mindless fun, then come and check out Burnout CRASH! out now on PSN £7.99 / €9.99