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All this week I’ve been hooked on Hot Shots Golf 5 for the PS3:

Right now it’s a Japan-only title and that to me is most of it’s charm. Check out this video trailer and see what I mean. You’ve got the crazy looking characters, and even some cute chicks in non-LPGA short skirts and stockings but its the music and the manic Japanese voices that make it so much fun. The courses are gorgeous – ostriches were walking across the green yesterday when I was trying to sink a putt on an Africa-themed course – and the control mechanisms straightforward.

I’m really not sure what is going on outside the golf since all the menus and announcements are in Japanese but that’s it’s charm. The US version comes out October 1st and I think it’s a must buy, though I wonder what it will sound like in English. I’m told that previous versions did a great job but we’ll see.

I’ve had the PS3 a couple of weeks now, played it more than I expected but less than the price tag deserves. There’s no doubt that the graphics are slick, all the games look very nice in high-def (well, 720p anyway) and its clear that the machine can do a lot more than anyone is asking of it right now.

Resistance of Man: Great first person shooter, the atmosphere it creates is perfect and the online match making feature is great for finding people to play with. Probably my favourite so far.

NBA ’07: Only played this for 10 minutes, couldn’t get the hang of the controls and haven’t put it back in the machine since. I’ll give it another go but I wasn’t taken with it like the others.

Genji: Not usually my kind of game but the graphics are great. Sound gets real annoying during a long fight, though. Definitely better than I expected.

Blazing Angels: Lots of fun here flying old WW2 planes and taking care of Jerry. Some vertigo-inducing maneuvers to be had, great graphics on screen. Flying by the sixaxis controller motion was impossible, though. Probably my joint favourite with Resistance.

Worthy Mentions: The demo versions of Motorstorm and Gran Tourismo HD were very good indeed, the former being lots of fun, the latter just looked gorgeous.

Sony needs to fix two things fast, though. First, downloads need to happen in the background. It is no fun to be told the system needs to update and then not be able to play for the next two hours. Seriously, background downloading is old technology. Second, the algorithm for choosing the TV resolution needs to be changed to pick the best one available for the game. If you don’t have 1080p Resistance will look best in 720p but, unless I tell it not to, the PS3 chooses 1080i for everything. Can I tell the difference? Probably not, but its definitely something that should be changed.