This Week on PS3 – July 12th, 2011

The summer doldrums continue, with not a whole lot in terms of new, compelling content for the up-to-date PS3 user. Personally, I'm no where near lacking for games to play after Steam's annual summer blowout, and PSN is following suit with something similar this week to help tide you over.

In Stores
Two new games hit store shelves this week, the interactive adaptation of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, and NCAA Football 12, the game for people who don't think one football game a year is enough. Actually I don't know, some people seem to like the NCAA games more than the pro ones. They can be pretty different sports in some cases. I can't say much about either of these, but they're certainly going to be in stores in great numbers.

On PSN
No new games on PSN. but you can now download Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood in its entirety, and that's a game I can vouch for the quality of. With Revelations soon to be the third new Creed game in as many years you might not feel a burning desire to play this, but the series has been able to find a great balance between a unique style of platforming and entertaining melee combat that works quite well. The insane overarching plot of the series advances a decent amount, and it's certainly a worth entry in the series.

Demos
Dead Nation came out a while ago, but you can finally try it before you buy it if you want, assuming you didn't pick it as part of PSN's Welcome Back Program. You can also check out Atlus' extremely bizarre-looking puzzler Catherine and the online battle mode of Pixeljunk Shooter 2. All three of those are probably worth a spin.

Add-Ons
What I'm looking forward to is definitely Reefer Madness, the final announced downloadable case for LA Noire. I mean, it's called Reefer Madness. That's a pretty great start right there. There's also some vehicles for Dirt 3, the regular assortment of content for LittleBigPlanet 2 and Rock Band and a few other bits and bobs.

Also
A Summer Sale begins on PSN this week, with bargain basement prices if you're a PS Plus user and discounts even if you aren't. Some of the games on sale include Pixeljunk Shooter 2, Scott Pilgrim, and the Back to the Future series. It looks to be a great sale in general, just a bunch of neat looking games for cheap. Snatch up the ones you don't have yet while you can.