Perhaps the biggest news is that it nows support H.264 video thanks to the upgraded Flash player in FW3.0. The full list of changes is as follows:

• Shortcut to iPlayer under TV section in XMB (this is where PlayTV also lives, and if you haven’t got PlayTV yet, at £40, then why not?)
• Video now uses H.264 codec for higher quality
• Hardware accelerated full screen playback at 25fps, presumably also thanks to the new Flash player. No more striping!
• 1500Kbps SD video for near broadcast quality

Additional fixes and features are coming soon, perhaps because PS3 is now the second most popular platform for iPlayer behind Windows, and ahead of Mac.

What if you could have Alternators versions of your favourite movie designs? And what if those Alternators also came with a figure of that robot’s human buddy to ride inside? Say, Sam with Bumblebee or Lennox with Ironhide?

What if your movie was also so successful that it’s toy line was still filling shelves two years after it came out? And if you could be sure that even if you double the number of toy designs and duplicate characters across different size classes, you could still sell them all?

Then you could get away with a whole extra line of toys that at first glance don’t differ so much from the cheaper Deluxe and Voyager lines, but give something really special to collectors and the most enthusiastic new fans who dream of having their own robot car.

So Human Alliance Bumblebee is the first of a new line to take advantage of this opportunity, and a great excuse for an entirely new attempt at creating a definitive Bumblebee toy without being constrained by the existing, and very good, Deluxe design.

In car mode, Bumblebee reflect the new final Camaro design used in the ROTF movie, like the updated deluxe preview figure, and fits right in alongside your Alternators figures in scale and detail. Unfortunately no rubber tyres though. But apart from that, it definitely looks and feels like an Alternator, except perhaps for the quality of the plastic which suffers from the fact that Bumblebee has to be yellow, always the hardest colour to replicate in paint or dye. Remember that in Alternators, the only yellow car was Binaltech Tracks, as the yellow could not be adequately reproduced in the plastic version as the thin plastic required for Alternators designs would have been too translucent in yellow. Hence the car parts here tend to be thick and chunky, and there are some variations in tone between plastics used and yellow painted areas. The translucent windows are a nice shade of turquoise.

Transformation is less automatic than the deluxe figure with its automorph gearwork. As complicated as any Alternator, but ultimately a little dissatisfying as the resulting robot has more kibble on the back than the deluxe, and other aspects of the robot too, notably the legs are less accurate than the deluxe to the CGI model. It is however stronger in the chest area, where the hood bends forward and inward. The distinctive forearm armour plates are reproduced here in the form of the vehicle chairs, and while some effort is made to detail them like the cgi model, being chairs they are ultimately oversized and a little ugly. Robot mode Bumblebee is however suitably ‘chunky’ to look like he could stand his own in a giant robot deathmatch, carrying the weight of a stocky brawler or indeed boxer. Poseability in the neck, shoulders, elbows, waist and knees is sufficient for a variety of poses although the range of motion and location of joints is not always as much as we would have liked, especially in the knees. The robots wide three toed feet make balancing easy

Like the remolded preview Bumblebee, the right hand is molded into Bumblebee’s pulse cannon. Unfortunately the designers did not see fit to use the larger size to include a dual mode arm with both hand and cannon configurations. Once again a missile launcher gimmick gets in the way of making the perfect toy. The missiles provided (two, although there’s only one launcher) stow away when not in use, clipping to the wrists, which leaves them unnoticeably under the chassis in car mode.

The headmold is probably the most accurate of any Bumblebee toy so far, and includes large blue light piped eyes.

Pegholes in Sam’s feet and back allow him to be securely attached to Bumblebee’s hand, chairs/forearms or the footplate hiding in the back. They’re slightly too small but the plastic is soft enough to force it. As well as riding in either front seat in car mode, Sam can be ‘held’ in Bumblebee’s left hand, or ride in his forearm/seats, one of which has a weapon of some kind to hoist over Sam’s shoulders or use the footplate to ride on Bumblebee’s back. To represent attack mode Bumblebee has a rectangular shoulder mounted grenade launcher (not really matching it’s more rounded appearance) and an overhead firing cannon. Completing this is the battle mask that slides forward.

The Sam figure is by the way far more posable than anyone would expect at this size. Ball jointed hips, chest and shoulders, and neck and knee joints. The likeness is pretty good too, although the angle his eyebrows are painted on it makes him appear to be in a constant state of shock and awe. The scale is not quite right in vehicle mode but passable, and noticeably smaller compared to robot mode, where the figure is closer to being the right size for a deluxe robot.

If you enjoyed Alternators you’ll appreciate this line even despite the small steps backwards in accuracy. Confirmed to come in future waves are Epps with Sideswipe and Mikaela with both Skids and an Arcee figure, which sounds like tremendous value. It’s not yet announced who, if anyone, else we might get. Would it be fair to have Skids without Mudflap at this scale?

One limitation of the Human Alliance concept is that only Autobots have human alliances right? Here’s a concept to consider though, instead of human alliances, use the larger toy size and price point to enable more sophisticated versions of the symbiotic Decepticons - Barricade with Frenzy, Blackout with Skorponok, Soundwave with Ravage, and maybe Sideways with Pretender Alice?

This toy is still somehow not quite the perfect definitive Bumblebee, but it will certainly do until the inevitable third movie, and the line concept is great, including the high quality of the human figure, so deserves much support. It’s in scale with Alternators, and does not look out of place alongside Leader class figures at least, such as Prime and the forthcoming Leader Starscream. Alternators + Movie designs + Human figures is a big win and more than enough to outweigh the small limitations in this figure’s design. The packaging states that additional figures are sold separately, one wonders if this means that we might see a legends or scouts class multipack with some other figures such as John Turturro’s Simmons?

Updated: Hasbro confirmed today at Botcon that there will indeed be a Human Alliance series Barricade with Frenzy figure! We called it first!

The PS3 has loads more doesn’t it? There’s Motorstorm, Resistance, Ratchet and Clank, inFamous, Singstar, Metal Gear Solid, Killzone, Little Big Planet, Buzz, God of War, Ridge Racer, Wipeout, GT5, Uncharted, SOCOM, Warhawk and not even counting Flower, Pain, PixelJunk games and the dozens of other unique PSN titles.

• Wave 1 Scouts - Detour, Ransack, Knock Out,Dirt Boss
• Wave 1 Legends - Prime, Jetfire, Bumblebee, Springer
• Wave 1 Deluxes - Sideways, Rampage, Sideswipe, Breakaway plus non-preview packaging preview Bumblebee.
• Wave 1 Robot Replicas - Ironhide, Starscream, Ratchet, possible others. They look even worse than the first movie ones.
• Wave 1 Voyagers - repaint Prime, repaint Ironhide, awesome Starscream, Demolishor
• Fast Action Battlers
• ROTF Superion (Energon repaint)
• Bumblebee helmet.

The Entertainer in Westfield Shopping centre has:

• Leader Optimus Prime, Megatron - £45
• Voyager Optimus, Ironhide, Starscream, Demolishor - £22(?)
• Human Alliance Bumblebee - £30
• Deluxe Breakaway, preview Soundwave, preview Bumblebee, Rampage, Sideways, Sideswipe - £13
• Scouts Ransack, Detour, Dirt Boss, Knockout, Rollbar - £8
• Fast Action Battlers

You can also find loose Movie 1 legends Prime, Megatron and Barricade for £1.99 each but Buy One Get One Free at the counter.

Note that they are not shelved near the existing Animated and Movie 1 toys, but hidden in the girls section!

So unlike most reviews where we compare the toy’s accuracy to the on screen model, we can take the time for a more in depth discussion of the overall movie Soundwave design. The most obvious similarity and, simultaneously, difference to Soundwave’s of christmas past, is the blue and grey colour scheme, present here but reversed to a primarily grey with blue as a secondary colour. Additional bright and clear blue sections help redress the balance and give Soundwave a more ethereal quality, suggesting weird and wonderful electromagnetic radiation signals.

In satellite mode, Soundwave retains the blue energy “nodes”, but the grey/silver colour is even more predominant. The instructions and official photos show one particular configuration, whether this is movie accurate remains to be seen but the various antenna and solar panel like structures are highly articulated and can be arranged in a wide variety of configurations. An angular visor shape hints at Soundwave’s being covered by some kind of blast shield, but still watching over the battlefield from a very safe distance.

The third official mode bears more than a passing resemblance to various cybertronian space cruiser designs (especially Vector Prime), as well as to Megatron and The Fallen’s jet modes, while carrying the more intricate detailing seen in the movie style. It’s not a complete afterthought by any means, as the rear engine and wings do lock into each other in order to hold correctly in place. However it remains to be seen if it’s really a mode Soundwave uses.

Soundwave includes a jet black missile and obligatory launcher gimmick. The intricate detail on the missile however makes me think - could this actually be Ravage in reentry mode? In that case, kudos for finding some small way to have Soundwave include an ejectable Ravage!

At this time it’s unclear whether Soundwave takes on an earth mode of any kind, whether traditional satellite, pickup truck or something else so it’s not yet possible to say how accurate this figure is or whether there will other versions of Soundwave at Deluxe or other sizes. While it has some playability limitations, it is, despite the heavy modifications of the movie stylisation, still immediately recognisable as Soundwave. If you only pick up one of the preview wave of figures, then this is the one to get.

Like the various repaints of the original figure, the body is molded in grey rather than black which helps to show off the detail but would still have benefitted from some more paint applications, and not just premium figure allspark blue. Sadly the Camaro logo on the door is not brushed with silver as per the original version of the figure, and that lack of attention to detail and attention to cost cutting reflects that this figure is really just a filler until the main event.

The automorph features remain as does the spring in the collar joint which still seems to serve no purpose. The new weapon is not as good as the first version of the figure, but at least the missile can be stored in it in vehicle mode, you just might want to remove it during transformation and put it back again after.

The new headsculpt is more movie accurate but can’t help looking goofy, maybe it’s the eyes. At least he will fit in with the Twins figures now… The photos show comparison to the original figure, and also in vehicle mode to the Trans Scanning and vintage Camaro versions.

In our review of the earlier figure, we suggested several ways this figure could yet be improved upon, the good news is that most of those enhancements will be in the Voyager sized Human Alliance Bumblebee due out later in the year. But it means that little attempt to address these for the deluxe version was made.

Whether you pick this one up or not depends if you really want the updated front fender and headsculpt or now. Given the poor missile gimmick on offer here, the original version is really the superior toy. If you’ve got any of the previous versions, this version is not recommended.

Let’s face it, the designers of the first movie Starscream figure had an uphill battle making the movie’s highly intricate designs into toys and still have them transform let alone articulate or stand up unaided, and none more than Starscream who has to transform from insect-chicken-bot to sleek smooth state of the art fighter jet. The first figure didn’t look half bad in robot mode, but the jet mode sucked, looking more like a shipping container-cum-flugtag flying machine made from cardboard boxes. And still the robot mode could have done with a better head sculpt, better proportions and without the ridiculous arms crippled by yet another needless missile firing gimmick.

Perhaps because Seeker molds get so much reuse (and the first movie Starscream will even get repainted for the ROTF line as Ramjet and Skywarp) the design team were allowed a second stab and this time they very nearly nail it. This version of the figure definitely warrants a second serving, hopefully of the premium kind with some authentic USAF paint and decals rather than Starscream’s funky tats. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

The stroke of genius here is in making the jet canopy the focal point, and folding the design around it, rather than the more traditional design using fuselage as the core of the robot body. This eliminates the need to slide the canopy up and the associated intricate mechanisms taking up lots of space. Whoever thought of this should win some kind of design prize.

In jet mode, Starscream is a sleek and correctly proportioned F-22 Raptor jet, which from most sides captures the profile of the real F-22 very accurately, including the common attribute of stealth-y jets that they tend to look more sleek from above than from the side, where they tend to look more like birds with a narrow tip and more stocky middle. There is a fold down landing gear under the nose and in the fuselage (well, the robot’s elbows) for display. On the downside, the missiles included for the obligatory pointless missile firing gimmick clip to the bottom of the wings, when any fool knows that an F-22 has an internal weapons bay that can open, launch a missile and close again in a fraction of a second in order to avoid those nasty stealth defying complex edges. The missiles can always be left off however. What can’t be removed is the robot hands, which poke out rather creepily at the back of the jet by the engines, and that’s a real shame as even the engines are accurately molded here, including use of orange plastic to suggest they are ‘glowing’ hot. Starscream’s paint scheme is not very robot-in-disguise-y as he’s acquired the aforementioned cybertronian tattoos since his escape from earth at the end of the last movie.

Transformation to robot mode is fun and relatively complex, as it should be, and not prone to too much in the way of joints popping off, although be careful with the vertical stabilizers ball joint. The plane fuselage splits in two and folds arounds the canopy - the upper fuselage becomes the legs, the lower part the arms. The wings kind of just fold up smaller.

In robot mode, Starscream is even more poseable than the original version of the figure with multiple arm and knee joints. The head sculpt is far more accurate (although bizarrely the light piped eyes are painted over), and the wings, while a little larger than they should be, mostly go where they are supposed to. Sadly there was still no way with this design to feature Starscream’s robot mode jump jets on his back. Overall proportions are accurate to the CGI model, in that he still has disconcertingly broad shoulders and chicken legs, so there’s nothing to complain about specific to the toy itself in that regard. The arms and hands however suffer, albeit not as badly as the earlier figure, from yet another useless missile firing gimmick. When will they learn? The hands, while detailed, are molded as one piece with zero articulation, and the elbows can only bend in one direction (the wrong direction), fine for weapon aiming poses but otherwise pretty limited. The vulcan cannons on the wrists are the missile launchers.

When folded and connected together correctly (sockets on the tailfins connect to sockets on the jet engine intakes), turning Starscream’s head causes gears molded in orange to rotate. This is the “Mech-Alive” feature and as gimmicks go it doesn’t do a half bad job even if it makes the tailfins a little thicker than they should be. It’s a nice nod to the ‘living machines’ look of the movie CGI animations, but it also means the head has no vertical articulation, which would have been nice since Starscream is normally shown hunched over and learing forward. The totally unnecessary missile launchers on the other hand, while nearly movie accurate, are molded onto the forearms and presumably the reason for the limited hand poseability and inability to hide them away during transformation.

Despite the complaints above, this is definitely a must buy figure, for the awesome jet mode of an awesome looking jet, and an ingenious transformation into an accurate movie Starscream robot, that’s possible to pose to match a lot CGI renders of the character. The good news about the forearms is that they are one piece that could be modified without affecting the rest of the figure - not only would we like to see a premium paint job version of the figure, but the chance is there to remold the forearms completely, removing the missile launcher gimmicks and hopefully building hands that fold away while also offering the opportunity to mold in the two different weapons Starscream uses - the vulcan cannon and the ‘crossbow’ missile launcher. If not for the Revenge of the Fallen line, then hopefully for the inevitable Tranformers 3 version of the figure, plus all the seekers. If they were to do that, we’d buy at least two more of these. Roll on the premium version with authentic F-22 paint job please.

Update: And you can read an interview with TakaraTomy’s “Mr. Starscream” and get insight into the design process in the first of 5 interview s appearing on TakaraTomy’s website, and translated into english over at TFW2005!

After the brilliance of the independent City Commander armour, it almost seems like the Hasbro/Takara designers wanted to prove they can do that too, and do it better (albeit in this instance a smaller scale), providing Prowl with an upgrade straight out of the cartoon, first seen in the episode A Fistful of Energon, and again in the Five Servos of Doom, and all while fixing or enhancing what was already a great figure to being with.

Enhancements to the main Prowl body include ball jointed hips for even greater poseability, a more show accurate head, albeit a skinny one, and an extended cowling which stands more vertically upright and better covers his waist joint. There are also some detrimental changes which really serve just to differentiate this figure from the previous one or serve the new accessories. These include use of electric blue transparent plastic for the windshield and police lights, which looks very cool but is slightly less show accurate. The designers haven’t skimped on little touches however, and the handlebars and kickstand are still present on the figure. The biggest reason to still pick up the original Prowl is to get hold of the ninja star hubcaps. They are still there on Samurai Prowl, and are still removable, but they don’t fold out, don’t have the gearing system and are molded as one piece. If anyone knows if the flash can be cut to allow the blades to folded out, please post in the comments. Apart from pointing up the cowling, Prowl transforms the same way as the original figure. The remolds are also just enough to mean the armour piece can’t be used with the original figure, as the fixtures are not present and some parts such as the head are not the right size. The remolded forearms do also unfortunately have the chevrons pointing the wrong way.

The new sidecar piece unclips from motorbike mode to become Prowl’s Samurai armour upgrade and has more than enough folding of its own required to rebut any claims that Samurai Prowl is a parts former. Only the wheel detaches to become the sword/shield for Prowl’s forearm.  The rest of the sidecar converts to a pack for Prowl, clipping on to the back (using slots on the redesigned cowling) and folding under and up around the shoulders and over the head, and staying on very securely. The jump jet air intakes on each side of Prowl’s waist are molded on but difficult to see as they are not painted although the jets themselves aren’t there.

Except for his head/neck joint being restricted by the helmet, Prowl is no less articulated or poseable with his armour on than before, and only slightly back heavy when posing and balancing.

Samurai Prowl is an awesome revision of a not very old figure, but sufficient changes to warrant purchasing again even if you already have the first version. The best transforming motorbike figure is also now the best (official) figure with add-on armour, easily beating early G1 efforts such as Powermaster Optimus Prime and both G1 and Classics Jetfire, and even giving City Commander a run for its money too.

Lockdown is tall, something like 50% taller than your average deluxe figure, yet he doesn’t feel lanky or our of proportion with himself. The way the legs extend and bend are yet another ingenious example of the great engineering going into the modern Transformers figure. His upper arms are a little skinny but the only real fault in the design is that Lockdown’s hands can’t extend straight out.

Lockdown collects and regularly swaps weapons, hence while Blazing Lockdown still comes with the EMP stolen from Ratchet (and which attaches also to the Ratchet figure) but his hook weapon is replaced this time by a chainsaw, which unfortunately cannot be hidden in car mode, making this version ultimately inferior to the original green/black version. As something of a nemesis for Prowl in particular, and as a shelf filler regularly available at a discount, either version is a necessary purchase in order to provide a foil to your Prowl or Samurai Prowl figure, and since Prowl is a must purchase whether you like the rest of Animated or not, guess that means you’re going to have to buy Lockdown too.

Get your PlayTV 1.10 update using the Software Update command inside the PlayTV menu (or About screen for those of you still on 1.00)

Meanwhile more Transformers Animated concepts, and manga sketches, can be found at the blog of character designer Brianne Drouhard.

Update: Derrick Wyatt is interviewed over at http://www.coolshite.net/feature/2009/05/14/transformers-animated-interview-derrick-wyatt/ for more insights into the Animated character design process.

See Mark III, War Machine, Stealth and Underwater Armor concepts here, as well as designs for Tony Stark’s Malibu house.

Get this, he has wheels instead of feet (a bit like Bonecrusher)

via ROTF Sideswipe Figure Details and Headshots!

Update: The full figure is now revealed here!

This much improved mold more closely matches the movie prime design, and manages to be much more lean and slender and packs in the enhanced headsculpt and energon sword of the premium Prime. The only question right now is where does the bulky sleeping compartment go? Here’s hoping it’s not all back kibble like the first Voyager Prime.

It’s available now, barely a year after it’s theatrical release, for only £3 in most of the new year sales, such as Amazon and Zavvi, so now’s the time to get it if you’re a completist. That only gets you the 1 disc cheapo edition, with a DVD menu so badly done you can’t see what option you’re selecting. Who knows how they managed to fill a second disc in the 2 disc edition, but I can’t be bothered to find out.

Fortunately the AVP series has given the folks at Hot Toys lots of opportunity to make some cool collectibles and we’ll be taking a closer look at those very soon.

G1 Prowl was always missing a personality, supposedly being the military strategist but really just being the least interesting. Animated Prowl takes a new and suddenly more interesting approach to the character, putting a martial artist (of the Circuit-Su discipline) into the main Autobot lineup for the first time, and setting a precedent for other characters such as the new Jazz and rumoured Dai Atlas in Animated. He also bears a passing resemblance to another ninja from Hasbro’s toy lines. Unfortunately in bike mode Prowl is a little too big for Snake Eyes to ride comfortably, unlike Movie Arcee. That bike mode too certainly seems to owe a lot to Japanese racing bike designs such as the Kawasaki Ninja.

So to match this new persona, it’s critical that in robot mode, Prowl be super articulated, and he is and then some, yet the figure still matches his animation design flawlessly. He can hold a variety of action poses, although the joint in the foot makes getting a stable base for balance a bit tricky. Prowl also comes with two kinds of weapon accessory. The first, a ‘nunchuk’ shaped like a traffic light on a string, with a small handle at the end that almost fits in his hand, can be put to one side or deliberately “lost”. If anything it looks less like a nunchuk and more like Ryu’s shoulder slung kitbag. More interesting are the ’shuriken’ or throwing stars hidden on his legs. These are a great touch, blending seamlessly to the wheel hubs, but detach them and fold out the blades, which are linked with an ingenious hidden gearing mechanism, and they become lethal weapons!

Prowl makes his way straight into the all time Transformers Top 10 because he is both the best example of Animated’s excellent work in matching highly stylised robot designs to real world toys, the best example of a transforming motorbike, and all round a great example of quality (the plastic used and paint applications are also of the highest order), articulation, transformation and playability. The kick stand is a great example of the attention to detail being awarded the design of these figures now. The worst thing anyone can say about Prowl is that his ‘nunchuk’ accessory is unnecessary, since he can’t properly hold it and especially considering he has his shuriken weapons. So the worst thing about him is he has too much added value!

Even if you aren’t a fan of Animated, it is worth picking up this figure. But you might want to wait a little longer. How can it ever be topped you might ask, but coming soon is the Samurai Armour Prowl figure which is based on this figure, but has a sidecar accessory that becomes an optional armour upgrade that really fits on the figure! Look out for a revised review when that figure ships next year! We’ll also get to see next year if the rumours of a Tranformers 2 Arcee can beat Prowl for title of best transforming motorcycle ever.

The problem with Hot Rod being the coolest character in Transformers the Movie was that his toy wasn’t very good at all. Personally I preferred Blurr, and the Rodimus Prime toy did at least have some extra parts to play with. Even the addition of a target master version later in the line (which honestly looked ridiculous with a big tank turret sticking out of the top of a sports car) couldn’t entice me.

This Classics Hot Rod however is a different matter, giving us the Hot Rod toy we all wanted 20 years ago, with articulation, transformation, style and proportion.

Although not the most articulated of the Classics figures, there’s plenty of detail here, and more colour than many of the others figures. But the attention to detail is very high. Hot Rod’s left wrist conceals a flip out ‘communicator’ clearly meant to be his saw-hand weapon used to free Kup from the robotic tendrils under the sea of the planet Quintesson, while the car mode is based on the real life inspiration for Hot Rod’s original design, an obscure car called the Dome Zero.

Classics Hot Rod(imus) was one of the figures that set a new high bar for Transformers and has in turn led to standouts such as Movie Concept Bumblebee and Universe Sunstreaker. Definitely a must buy for those of us who remember Transformers the first time around.

When succumbing to buy this after seeing it marked down to £24.99 recently, I realised I have bought every single MK game ever released - the original on Amiga, MK2 on SNES, MK3 and MK4 on PC, Deadly Alliance on PS2, Deception on PSP and Armageddon on Wii. So it turns out I’ve been fated to buy this all along.

The game engine brings 3D fluidity to what is actually closer to the original 2D MK than their recent 3D/changeable fighting style/weapons based games. Although the old sweep and uppercut isn’t as consistent as it used to be.

The highlights are the great way the DC characters have been integrated into this world, with special moves that fit right in. Some are straight ‘reskins’ of existing MK characters, notably The Flash, who is for all intents and purposes, Kabal, some are extremely close, The Joker as Reptile, Lex Luthor as Cyrax, while the likes of Superman and Captain Marvel deliberately avoid the lazy approach of simply copying Raiden’s moves. The result is that none of the DC characters feel redundant alongside the MK characters included here.

For the most part, MKVsDC is easy Trophy pickens, except for the incredibly frustrating Kombo Challenges. It seems it’s not enough to connect every attack in the correct order, but to do so to the beat of some illogical, rhythmless timing. I wish too that Boon and co. would understand that a COMBO is any COMBination of successful, uninterrupted hits, and not only some predefined order of strikes. If I string together my own sequence of punches, juggles, kicks and throws, I want to be credited with those 12 or 15 hits, not a sequence of 2 and 3 hit combos only.

If it wasn’t for addition of DC characters, and the good job done on integrating them into the MK fighting style, it definitely wouldn’t feel like a full price title, more like a download 3D remake of Mortal Kombat 2 or something. The PS3 version is a lazy Xbox port, with all the low-res, bland presentation that entails. In fact, outside of the game itself, everything is lazy and lacklustre - the arcade mode endings (although the ideas captured within are imaginitive), the menus, the options, the online multiplayer and presentation in general. Lets hope the promised DLC livens things up a bit. What MK on nextgen truly promises would actual photo realistic characters, looking for all intents and purposes like real people, fighting brutally and with realistic fatalities. If any title can get away with that, it’s Mortal Kombat, because it’s expected, having already been through the furore once and got away with it.

For Remote Play to work, it is important the Wifi MAC address is correct, as this is what is used to associate the pairing. Because of the repair, the MAC address the OS thinks it has may now be different from the actual MAC address of the Wifi chip, so remote play will no longer work as the pairing between the PSP and PS3 will be considered invalid - and even making a new pairing won’t work, as the PSP will report the wrong MAC address to the PS3.

If you are running custom firmware, you can use this tool  to reflash the OS to report the correct MAC address automatically: http://www.noobz.eu/joomla/component/option,com_remository/Itemid,0/func,startdown/id,24/

If you’re on official firmware then unfortunately you’re out of luck until you can get it reflashed with custom firmware.

Crash Commando looked pretty fun in the trailers, and there is some potential here, but as released, it is full of playability and design problems, not bugs, but poorly thought through features. Here’s a list:

• You always respawn in the same place, usually miles away from the action
• After slogging from one end of the map to the other you can then be killed with one hit
• You then have to wait up to 10 seconds to respawn, and take another 30 travelling back to where the action is
• All of the weapons are basically the same, and all can kill with just one clear shot
• Although you have an energy bar, you can die with only one shot from any of the weapons
• Buttons for the secondary and grenade weapons are way too slow to respond
• Many levels have areas you can fall or jetpack through that look like solid platforms, and others that you can’t passthrough that look like nothing is there
• Often, you fall through what looked like a perfectly good floor, and find yourself falling all the way to bottom of the damn map, and having to walk and jump all the way back up again. Then you die
• Your teammates can and will run you over in the rail-jeep or rail-tank
• You can’t kill anyone in a vehicle, even with a rocket launcher
• Often you’ll be the only person in your “multiplayer” game, which makes winning lots of matches and collecting lots of Trophies dead easy, if a little dull

OK so maybe that last one helps alleviate the pain, easy Trophies.

But don’t despair, you don’t need to play all those games again. The Trophies are still stored in your online PSN profile. But you need to trigger a trophy synchronisation, by winning a new Trophy that you don’t yet have, and then the next time you check your Trophy list in the XMB, following the synchronisation, all your hard won Trophies are restored. Phew!

TROPHIES!

Update: Now that Christmas shoppers are returning to stores, it seems the discounts are over and normal prices resume - that’s £9.95 for Deluxes, and you’ll be lucky to find anyone other than Swoop, or maybe a Sentinel Prime.

In stock today, by the dozen, were:

• Sideswipe and Sunstreaker
• Prowl, Ironhide and Silverstreak
• Galvatron and Acid Storm

And from Animated:

• Prowl, Lockdown and BlackArachnia
• Deluxe Optimus Prime and Oil Slick
• Voyager Blitzwing

Find them Here at their new location off Kensington High Street, down Earl’s Court Road

Hopefully then this won’t be the only Bumblebee mold in the movie line, since we’ve already seen the Soundwave figure, could it be that these two are preview figures for the line?

See the pictures here Bumblebee Deluxe Remold Return of the Fallen Toy - Transformers News

Yes, PlayTV makes the experience of consuming television so deliciously lickable that we’ve even started watching ITV1 again.

What shows off the class of the product is the extra touches - the PlayTV install disk comes in a regular PS3 game box (inside the PlayTV cardboard packaging) and a stick-on overlay for the official Blu-Ray remote is included which shows how the extra PlayTV functions are mapped on that device. I’m particularly fond of the skip forward 1 minute key, that makes watching adverts a thing of the past. That includes the adverts cunningly disguised as trailers shown on the BBC.

Unlike other DVR solutions, most of the heavy lifting here is done in software on the PS3, and of course no extra hard drive is included, so some might look at the price and think it’s a little steep when the hardware is effectively the same as those Digital TV USB dongles sold by EyeTV, Hauppage et al. Considering the discounts on the £69.99 RRP that are offered by most online retailers however, it’s not so big a difference, and to be honest, and as weird as it feels to be saying this, the quality of the product is so high we didn’t regret for a minute purchasing one of these. And purchasing a 320GB hard drive to go with it.

The only bug at launch is something affecting most Freeview DVRs - to fully load the EPG, you need to switch through the certain master channels that contain each part of the guide. Before the patch, PlayTV wasn’t caching the TV guide across sessions so to browse every channel’s guide you had to channel hop through them all each time you restarted the app. This has been fixed in the 1.01 software released last week.

This patch is a good sign that future patches might contain additional functionality - we’re hoping for Freeview+ (formerly Freeview Playback) support that will offer season pass recording and support last minute schedule changes.

My PS3 is now a one stop shop for music, video, DVD/BD, internet, gaming and television. There’s one feature left I need to make it complete - media RSS feeds i.e. podcasts and vidcasts, like the PSP bizarrely got first.

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Equipped only with engineers tools, you must fight your way through dimly lit corridors, macabre infirmaries, engine rooms, breached bulkheads all the time watching out for the mutated, twisted corpses of the ship’s original crew, who frankly aren’t very well.

Dead Space looks great but if anything it’s the music that really sets the scene, giving you some, but not quite enough, of an aural cue that something nasty is about to eat your face. Sometimes the music seems even to lull you into a false sense of security, or make you think the next room is chock full o’ zombies when in fact it’s the harmless end of level restroom.

For such a rich multimedia experience, it’s also hard disk friendly, with no hard disk install required, and super fast load times neatly broken up by a bulkhead or elevator just taking a couple of seconds longer than you might expect to open up the next area. And why wouldn’t it, when the ship’s running on emergency power?

If I have one complaint it’s that the majority of the mutant-alien-zombie-human hybrids littering the ship are the least impressive models in the game, looking exceptionally polygonal and with muddied, blurry textures. This doesn’t impact on the fright factor though, because it’s the way they jump at you, scurry out of air vents or cast flickering shadows across the ends of dimly lit corridors that provides the scares.

Play Dead Space now if you dare.