Did you hear the news? Sony’s Ad-hoc Party feature for the PSP is coming to North America this month! This awesome new service allows you to play Monster Hunter Freedom Unite ONLINE by enabling your PSP to play through your PS3. This is HUGE news for Monster Hunter fans as now they can play MHFU with their Monster Hunter buddies around the country! The new feature also allows you to use text or voice chat to communicate with friends, which is critical for coordinating those 4 player hunts and taking out those tougher Monsters.

Granted that Adhoc Party will actually bring lots and lots of OLD PSP games online, going back literally years with no patching needed, but it’s also letting developers off the hook to a certain extent. Keep in mind that your PS3 will have to be dedicated to this to work — no DVD, Blu-ray or Netflix use by someone else in your household while you’re online with the PSP — and that you need a hard-line ethernet connection to it so the PSP can talk to it via the built-in Wi-Fi chipset. It’s a great deal for existing PS3 owners at zero dollars and zero cents and no ongoing online service fee.

All of that said, the technical triumphs of things like the two excellent Syphon Filter PSP games from the Sony Bend Studio that included not just online play for a first-person shooter but also had voice chat proved years ago that it could be done, and done well, without having to fall back to another service. Yes, this is just like having Xbox Live to fall back on if you think about it, and yes, this might help boost sales, but there are side benefits to running your own servers.

Take Sega and what they’re planning for Phantasy Star Portable 2. The first game was adhoc only, but the sequel is adding online play. Why is this a big deal? Why not just use Adhoc Party? Maybe because they might use it to reduce used game sales by requiring you enter a code from your manual into the game to register it with their servers before you can play it online.

In the end, though, I can’t help but think this is a net positive for the little handheld that is still alive and kicking up against Nintendo’s incredible DS juggernaut. What older games do you have that you want to play online?

Ok here’s the thing: I don’t care about the huge military-themed, cross-platform shooter coming to the PS3 this month. It’ll get its spot of ink below, don’t worry, but I’m highlighting the three exclusive franchises returning to PlayStation platforms this month first.

The God of War Collection lands on November 17th as a new experiment: a reissue of two PlayStation 2 games in high definition on a single Blu-ray PlayStation 3 disc. The remastering of the top-selling God Of War and God Of War II includes the addition of Trophy support. Sales of this collection will be watched closely – it takes quite a bit of work to remaster games like this, but if it sells well we might see other Sony PS2 franchises reappear like this on the PS3. I’m a huge fan of the franchise, partly because of the brutally satisfying gameplay, partly because of the mostly-consistent mythological backdrop, so this is a must-buy for me. Of note: this is a $40 game.

The PlayStation Portable gets the PS3’s most recognizable mascot this month with its very own version of LittleBigPlanet. While you’ll be able to make and share your own levels in LBP on the PSP, you’re going to be playing them alone since multiplayer didn’t make it into this game. I’m being cheeky by mentioning this would be a $40 game as well since PSP games tend to debut at this price.

Also hitting the PlayStation 3 this month is Buzz! Quiz World on the 10th. I’ve become a fan of the original Buzz! Quiz TV on the PlayStation 3 and it’s just about the only game my non-gamer wife will play with me on the system. Of note: this also is a $40 game if you already have the buzzers from the first game, or $60 if you need the buzzers too. And in case you’re wondering the buzzers aren’t Bluetooth devices. They need a USB dongle to work.

What else is hitting the systems this month?

PlayStation 3

EA and Bioware are bringing a new fantasy franchise to market this month with Dragon Age: Origins on the 3rd, something some have theorized might have been a D&D game that never quite got the license. As a fully single player adventure it’s already got DLC lined up for it. As someone who’s still thoroughly enjoying Sacred 2 on the PS3 I might be interested in this game at one point, but not quite yet.

LEGO Rock Band also comes in on the 3rd, taking what should have been a filter in Rock Band 2 – the option for kid-friendly songs only – and putting it in a whole different game. Still, LEGOs are LEGOs and it could sell a few copies this holiday season. It’ll also add a whole different submenu to the already large set of PlayStation Store weekly update music game DLC menus.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed — Ultimate Sith Edition comes in on November 4th, and having spent some time with the original I’m not interested in this one. The controls and camera just felt too complex in this one, and since this only adds some additional missions as far as I can tell it’s not something I’ll be going after anytime soon.

That elephant in the room I mentioned is, of course, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The game’s going to have midnight retailer openings and throngs of fans waiting to ventilate each other online, and as I said I couldn’t care less. I’m all in favor of stimulating the retail and game development economy, though, don’t get me wrong, so go ahead and buy it with abandon!

I found the story and feel of the original Assassin’s Creed game to be slow and unwieldy, and it gave me a very strong Half-Life 2 vibe which made me think I knew where the story was going very early on. I quickly lost interest, so its sequel coming on the 17th doesn’t have my interest.

A former Xbox 360 exclusive, the Scene It franchise also comes to the PS3 this month (making me wonder if it did ok over there) with Scene It? Bright Lights! Big Screen!. More party games are always welcome on the console but I haven’t been following this one.

PlayStation Portable

The PSP gets some new blood this month with its first proper Jak and Daxter game, Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier. High Impact Games’ take on the franchise Naughty Dog previously took 3 runs at on the PlayStation 2 already has a demo on the PlayStation Store, so feel free to scoop that up and give it a look. It lands on November 3rd on both the PSP and the PS2, of all things.

Assassin’s Creed: Bloodlines takes the first game’s storyline in a new direction, apparently, and does it portably. We’ll have to see how it fares alongside its sequel bigger brother on the 17th.

Lastly, about a month later than its PS3 and Xbox 360 older brother, the PSP version of Tekken 6 comes in on November 24th. Tekken’s got a very good track record with Dark Resurrection on the PSP, so this could be a really stellar fighter.

That covers it for the big deals hitting PlayStation platforms this month. Did I miss anything you’re after? Let me know what and why in the comments below.

This makes me want TripleTags back so I can have a really great-looking Trophy card again instead of the sad-looking one available on the PSN. So why did it go under? Site owner Joshua “SectionZ” Hernandez (a guest of the Aeropodcast) posted on Facebook that he didn’t have time to maintain it any longer now that his new game software company Metamoorephosis is off to a great start with purcussONE and bitFLIP.

Will GamerDNA and Raptr get Trophy data back? I imagine they could continue to try and scrape it off of the site. I suspect this is what PlayFire is doing with the EU arm of Sony. But without an official connection it’ll be a losing battle.

November 4, 2008: Resistance 2 brought Nathan Hale further into the grips of his chimeran mutation and increased the first-game’s large-scale multiplayer while breaking it down into goal-oriented teams. It also sported a three-class co-op component that is still popular today. Metascore: 87.

February 27, 2009: Killzone 2 opened eyes wide and garnered a very strong following from the hardcore shooter crowd. Most critics said it didn’t do anything particularly new, but what it did it did exceptionally well. Metacritic Metascore: 91.

May 26, 2009: inFAMOUS brought a brand new super-powered comic-book-styled universe to life and let gamers take the goody-protect-the-innocents or fry-em-all-let-God-sort-em-out route routes for two different story arcs and some mission variety all in a very wide open city that doubled as Cole’s giant, climbable, stunt-friendly jungle gym. Metascore: 85.

October 6, 2009: Demon’s Souls is From Software’s crushingly hard game that Sony declined to publish, leaving Atlus to pick up the pieces and, with really high praise from critics and probably an equal number of tears of frustration from reviewers, reap the rewards. Just this week they’ve had to put out new copies of the game to meet demand. Metascore: 89.

October 13, 2009: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves brought back Nathan Drake and friends with new enemies in tow on a game that takes the great characters, chemistry, and realistic animation and from the first Uncharted game and kicks it up a few notches. Throw in a surprisingly strong set of multiplayer offerings, including some 3-person co-op and it’s a gem the critics adore. Metascore: 97.

Now I’m sure I’ve missed something along the way, so please correct me in the comments below, but next week we get Ratchet & Clank: A Crack In Time to sew things up for the year. That doesn’t cover the PlayStation Network offerings we’ve seen, either. While it’s true that not every game is for everyone, and not everyone will enjoy every genre, gamers just joining the world of the PlayStation 3 have quite a few meaty games to at least try out demos for, if not buy outright.

What PS3 game haven’t you played yet that you’ve been meaning to get?

It’s going to break games. Some small games, some big games, some games whose publishers won’t care enough to patch them. Some publishers who won’t be able to afford to patch them. Some publishers who no longer exist to even try to patch them. Such is the fate of gaming on Windows — some software will not run exactly the way it did on previous versions.

I don’t delight in shining a cold light on Windows 7 like this — frankly I wish it did do everything incredibly well, solved world hunger, and brokered world peace — but really, we’ve been down this road before, and the story never really changes. The bottom line isn’t the reviews and praise you hear from the press about the OS today, it’s about seeing how it does over the next year or more up against a plethora of hardware options and game software on those configurations. In other words, the jury is still out.

That’s a great deal for a whopping amount of storage. I’ve had a 4GB stick in my PSP for probably three years now and think that as more and more PSP games go download-only an 8GB will only be more useful.

The DS didn’t exactly blow its doors off, though. The DS sold 524k, the PS3 sold 491k, the Wii sold 462k, the Xbox 360 sold 352k, and the PSP (pre-Go, remember) chugged along at 191K. In last place, limping along, is the PS2 with 142k units sold. The 360’s number is nothing to sneeze at, but it looks like that PS3 price cut showed that consumers still really did want a PlayStation 3 after all this time. Does Microsoft consider that along with having sold a full 110,000 units less than the Wii this time a problem?

September was also notable for stopping a long slide of months where game sales were down significantly from the previous year. This is no small feat, even if this month just meant staying on par with 2008. New consoles on the market could have been a big part of that and if the holidays are good to those new console owners it could very well be a very happy holiday for all three console makers after all.

Seen at Gamespot.

It’s a nice touch, and it took me a little digging to find them, but it should drive the more hardcore players on to more goal-oriented gaming like a regular MMO. Some of them, of course, will remain out of reach to all but subscribers given that they are usually job-related and some jobs are only for paying members.

Along with trophies they’ve already rolled out lots of Halloween-themed items in the store, and they’ve put costumes you can wear during “freestyle” jobs like the Adventurer job front and center. The wheel now also features halloween-themed items to win. I think I won a trick-or-treat pail or something during one of my spins, and I’ve considered buying the full penguin costume, even though the game is still just Windows only.

That said, the mind was willing to make this purchase, but the wallet was weak. Well, it was weaker that it was when I started my day. I dashed out at lunch and opened my veins at Toys R Us to get Uncharted 2, Brutal Legend, and Batman: Arkham Asylum (for the PlayStation 3, of course).

I found the gameplay pretty easy to follow and the weapon variety surprising. When your hero starts getting badly hurt, notice how they treat death. She’s knocked down and an arcade-like message flashes for her to “Fight For Your Life!” Apparently, by doing enough damage as she’s down, perhaps on her knees, on the verge of death, she’s given a second chance. I could just hear Mick barking at Rocky on the mat: “Get Up Rocky Gaddamn You!”