Ones to Watch on PS3, PSP for June 2008

By Paul Munn | June 1, 2008

If you heard Podcast Beyond #41, you heard David Hayter growl out a little bit of wonderful Solid Snake voice work — albeit over a telephone connection to the show — and take the time to rather generously answer some questions while entirely avoiding spoilers about what’s coming this month in Metal Gear Solid 4. MGS4’s release also brings Metal Gear Online to the masses on June 12th and it’s strongly hinted that this is the end of Solid Snake’s story. It’s sure to be quite a ride if the more emotional scenes from Metal Gear Solid 3 are any indication, but don’t count out the power of prequels. The Metal Gear Solid universe has many untold stories and Konami, even if Hideo Kojima decides to distance himself from the franchise, could be giving us tours of its convoluted plots for years to come on a variety of platforms if the successful implementation of Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (a game I still need to finish) is any indication.

Is this the time for you to buy a PS3 now that MGS4 is out and you’re thinking Blu-ray movies would look awfully nice on your TV? If it is and you don’t have any qualms about shopping at Wal-Mart you can nab yourself a cool $100 gift card if you buy a 40GB PS3 from them right now. If you need some incentive to look the other way just remember that hardware margins for retailers are nearly zero. Feel better? Take a look here.

Battlefield: Bad Company rolls in on the PS3 on the 23rd along with Guitar Hero: Aerosmith on the 29th. GRID also lands on the 3rd this month after a well-received demo.

While LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Trilogy hits everything but a pocket calculator on the 3rd not even the Xbox 360 gets online play this time around. Reviews are still quite good, in the high 7’s into the mid 8’s so you’ll probably have no complaints from the LEGO gamer in your life.

The PSP gets Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee 2 featuring online play for the first time on June 3rd at a nice $30 price as well as Secret Agent Clank on the 17th. The golf game has already earned a mid-8, very positive review from IGN, making this game an easy one to jump on. I like Clank as a character quite a bit more than Ratchet, even though Ratchet did get his sarcasm toned down nicely in R&C: Tools of Destruction, but I didn’t like the controls in R&C: Size Matters, so I don’t know when I’ll get around to playing this one.

Data from the IGN and Gamespy release lists, image from IGN.