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November 27th PlayStation Plus Update

Bejeweled 2 (PS3 PSP)

50% off for Plus members (Regular price: $4.99, PS Plus Price: $2.50)

Match sparkling gems three at a time to make them burst in showers of color and points. Match four or more to create flashy power gems that boost your score and your mood with brilliant cascades and combos. For even more dazzling fun, bump up your brainwaves with multi-faceted Puzzles, or enter the Zen state of Endless play.

Cash Guns Chaos (PS3)

50% off for Plus members (Regular price: $2.49, PS Plus Price: $1.25)

A fast-paced top-down shooter featuring intense run and gun arcade-action across more than 15 levels as you battle a never-ending onslaught of relentless enemies.

Peggle (PS3 and PSP versions)

50% off for Plus members (Regular price: $4.99, PS Plus Price: $2.50)

Peggle features everything you’ll need for the ultimate pinballesque adventure! Take aim and shoot metal balls from the cannon to clear mazes of brightly colored pegs. Indulge your love for bouncing balls and amazing firework effects by becoming a Peggle Master through 55 levels and 75 challenges.

Sideway NY (PS3)

50% off for Plus members (Regular price: $4.99, PS Plus Price: $2.50)

Battle your way through a twisted graffiti world where your prowess in puzzle solving makes the difference between life and death! Jump into one of the most unique and visually compelling 3D game worlds ever created. Follow the twisted journey of Nox, through a fast-paced 2D adventure set in a 3D world.

Slam Bolt Scrappers (PS3)

50% off for Plus members (Regular price: $4.99, PS Plus Price: $2.50)

Build and brawl in this fast and frantic mash-up! Race your opponents to build the most powerful towers in Slam Bolt City while defending against deceptively adorable baddies and hugely epic bosses. Create weapons that shoot lasers, drills, missiles, and more to annihilate your adversary. Battle in four-player co-op campaign mode, or go head-to-head for more brawling and block-building awesomeness.

Swords & Soldiers (PS3)

50% off for Plus members (Regular price: $4.99, PS Plus Price: $2.50)

Blend ninja monkeys, attacking Aztecs and brutal Vikings with everything you love about real time strategy games and you’ve got Swords and Soldiers! Acquire resources, assemble your army, thwart enemies and dominate your opponents in single and multiplayer local and online modes. Choose from the Aztec, Viking and Chinese factions, each with their own missions, campaigns and abilities.

TerRover (PS3)

50% off for Plus members (Regular price: $4.99, PS Plus Price: $2.50)

Launch yourself into the surreal mash-up of unique cartoon graphics and 2-D physics universe that is TerRover. Navigate through over forty stages of puzzling arcade levels in five different vivid art styles including the icy vistas of Congelata, all-tech surfaces of Mechanica, strange vegetation and terrains of Acor and Aura, and the treacherous volcanoes and lava of Volcanus!

Untold Legends: Brotherhood of the Blade (PS3PSP)

50% off for Plus members (Regular price: $7.49, PS Plus Price: $3.75)

Choose from among four unique character classes and journey to the fantasy world of Aven. Experience on-the-go hack ‘n slash combat or join cooperative multi-player battles via wireless gameplay. Venture through dynamic 3D environments, discover rich treasures and unravel the mystery of an ancient planet.

Untold Legends: The Warriors Code (PSP)

50% off for Plus members (Regular price: $7.49, PS Plus Price: $3.75)

Untold Legends: The Warrior’s Code features an epic storyline brought to life through dramatic in-game cinematics, along with a completely new combat experience and enhanced 3D graphics. Players can now experience this action-RPG genre through an upgraded combat engine designed for strategic combat, a wider variety of combat moves and special abilities, and interactive boss battles with unique AI.

Pinball Arcade (PS3 and PS Vita)

50% off for Plus members (Regular price: $9.99, PS Plus Price: $5.00)

Pick up the core game at a great price, and watch for the monthly updates to get even more tables to play online tournaments and additional modes on.

We’ll be back next week with an all new free game to play. Until then, we hope you’ve enjoyed the content this month. To give us a good look back on November, let us know what you felt was the best update this month. As always, thanks for your feedback and we’ll see you next week!

Just a few weeks ago, we released Swords & Soldiers for the PlayStation Network, and the response has been overwhelming! The strategic action gameplay is being enjoyed by lots of gamers, offline as well as online. With 3 unique factions, 30 levels of gameplay, customizable skirmishes, 3 highscore arcade challenges and local and online multiplayer modes, there’s lots of game to enjoy.

Now there’s a whole new way to enjoy Swords & Soldiers… because we’ve added PlayStation Move support in our latest patch! Just connect a PlayStation Move to your PlayStation 3 and you will be able to navigate the menus and gameplay using the Move‘s cursor function. You can also mix control schemes on a single PS3 as well as face off against people online with different control schemes. So far we have been unable to find any advantage for one over the other, but if you find any, let us know!

Speaking of balance, we’ve also done a few small tweaks to the balance between the three factions. Most importantly, we’ve made the Vikings slightly stronger in the endgame and the Chinese slightly slower to start. Hopefully now we’ll see some Vikings holding their own near the top spots of the rankings as well!

We’ve also changed the trial version of the game. It now includes a few additional, more challenging levels. So if you haven’t checked out the trial, or felt it was a bit too easy or shallow: check out the new version to get a better taste of what Swords & Soldiers is all about!

So, a side scrolling strategy game, how does that work? Well basically it plays like a mix between an RTS and a fighting game. You build units and cast spells to try and push the opponent backwards until you’ve finally destroyed his castle.

Of course, getting there is not that simple. Each of your units has its strength, weakness and specific use on the battlefield. There are heavy melee units, fast moving poisoned dart blowers, enemy-confusing monkeys and lots of other units to choose from. You’ll have to carefully consider spending money on the right units and upgrades; especially since buying upgrades means not buying units which, in turn, gives your opponent more room to breathe and push onwards to your base.

Then there are the spells, your means of directly affecting the Battlefield. Say there’s this nasty Necromancer moving towards your base and your units can’t get to him because he generates Skeletons and sticks behind those. Will you use the Lightning spell to take him out? Or will you use a Snowstorm to freeze the Skeletons so your units can take them out and reach the Necromancer by themselves? It’s choices like these which you’ll have to make all the time if you want to get to your opponents’ base and trash it.

When you’re done trashing everyone in the room using the splitscreen multiplayer, you can take the battle online! It’s really simple, whenever you play Swords & Soldiers and you feel like humiliating some other humans online, just press select or choose ‘online’ from the main or pause menu. The game will then start searching for other players while you can still carry on your quest for that mind-bending pepper or play any other part of the single player content. Then when a player is found, your current game will be saved, you show that guy who’s boss, and then you’ll be returned to where you left off. So it’s all seamless, enabling you to show the world that the Aztecs are superior whenever you like. Or the Chinese or Vikings, whichever faction you prefer.

Swords & Soldiers will launch early to PlayStation Plus users on 9/21 and will be available to everyone on 9/28. In a few short days, it’s on! We’re looking forward to what tactics and strategies you guys come up with to break our defenses. So get online and join the battle!