So, after waking up and deciding to take a dump for half-hour, whilst playing Phoenix Wright (I wanted to get up but my arse kept shouting OBJECTION!!! and making me sit back down, eating lots of meat makes for huge poopies) I decided to play on the PS3. I had free time and thought, why not take a quick spin of PS Home,

'What, are you that desperate and stupid, go fuck a donkey and /wrist yourself', might be the very thing running through your head at this moment in time. It's partially true to the is situation, I didn't want to have intercourse with a donkey, but I did want to /wrist myself after what happened next.



I booted up Home from the XMB bar and noticed it needed a update, oh cool I thought, maybe it's the one with the shrinking potion, and the game launching feature that makes Home dangerously close to being relevant. So after 30 seconds or so, the update was downloaded and I looked forward to shrinking my digital self, oh man, I was wrong.

Just after the press start screen, it froze on initialising, not even the XMB button worked, so a reset was in order. ‘Ok, just a minor hitch, let’s try that again’, went through my mind.

Initialising again………………………………. bam, froze, same gig, had to reset it.


I wanted to shoot demons with my boomstick at this point.

But, the third time, that was a doozy. The reset button didn’t work, even after a minute of putting my finger on top of it. Needless to say I was pretty worried, and thought I kinda bricked my PS3, but I had to turn it off and boot it back up. Luckily all my stuff was safe. At this point I decided pulling out my own eyeballs, cooking and then eating them were far more preferable to loading up Home and running the risk of wiping out my hardrive.

I have a 40 gig PS3, so maybe this issue is to do with the mode, or the crappy servers PS Home is on, regardless, be wary of installing the new update for it, I certainly don’t want other people putting up with the dire possiblilty of damaging your PS3 over Home.

Maybe you had the same problem, I dunno, but thanks for reading this heads up, now a song for y’all to enjoy:

(WARNING: This Blog can be considered as TL:DR material, so you if you can't be bothered reading this, go play some awesome videogames)



As any PS3 owner who turned on their black obelisk today would know, firmware update 2.7 has been released and the reaction has been interesting to say the least. It seems many, many people had high expectations that the firmware update would prove to be substantial, and it wasn’t, to them anyway.

The reason for the high expectations stemmed from rumours stating that sony would incorporate features like cross-game voice chat, faster trophy synching and even access to the internet browser on any game whilst playing it! Even I was excited about the proposed features, especially the in game browser access. Who wouldn’t like their trophy hunting escapades made easier by having instant access to the browser? Voice chat across games? Cool. Hell, it takes ages for the trophies to sync and load, and any improvement to loading speed would’ve been great. I think I wouldn’t be out of line to say the proposed features were the stuff of dreams of many a PS3 owner. Many expected at least one of the features I stated above to be included in the 2.7 firmware.

However, they were just possibilities. As far as I know, and I think I have a good grasp on keeping up to date with the game industry, there was no real hype generated by sony to do with this update. Thus insinuating that the update would likely be 'mediocre'. We must remember, sony did kick up a fuss with the update which enabled trophies, long giving hints and generating a little hype before it was available. We all knew that trophy support would be included, simply because Sony wanted us to know. There was no such hints regarding if this update would have 'worthy' features. In an industry where hype is unimaginably important, you’d think Sony would pull out the proverbial trumpet and cause a fuss over 2.7 if their was a very important feature included. The truth is they didn’t.

When did Sony actually let on that this update would include any ‘cool’ feature? I do not recall any statement from Sony regarding if the rumours, in the least, were true. I do not recall any word from Sony even if the features are being developed for the PS3. Where is the promise of Sony stating they will deliver these features? If there was some sort of official word or hint from sony about this matter, I wouldn’t be writing this blog, and on the bandwagon criticizing Sony. But all we have are rumours, rumours that caused a lot of anger.



Yes, I admit, there were rumours, which leads me onto my next point.

I read the impressions of Dtoid’s very own spelling and grammar master, Samit Sarkar, on firmware 2.7, I noticed a lot of anger and rage towards Sony in the comments. Many commenters seemed pissed that sony would release an update that didn’t include voice chat, basing their anger on rumours. That’s it, rumours. I believe what comes with being a long time gamer is a degree of cynicism. We all had the experience of a publisher or developer lying about their game, in either previews or trailers. Sadly, most of us know the disappointment of a game being underwhelming, despite all of the marketing pizzazz saying otherwise. I’ve been ’had’ by a game before, I’m sure you have to. So it was saddening reading the angry comments, at what point did our in-built common sense fail? When did we start believing rumours?



Depressingly, we are connected to an industry that perpetuates the importance of rumours, and even lies. One thing I have learnt in this generation is the terrifying power a lie can have over gaming society. That’s why I was confused as to why many people were angry at Sony. Rumours in the industry should always, always, be treated like petting an animal at a zoo. Unless the animal handler says himself says it’s okay to pet, and not your fuckwit family member who just wants to see the animal get scared and lash out so your white pair of underwear changes colour to that shade of brown, don’t pet the damn animal.

I came to the conclusion that as long as there isn’t solid, concrete evidence to back up an industry rumour, don’t believe it. In this case, there was no actual rumours permeating from Sony HQ, rather from ‘insiders’ who conveniently know ‘someone’ who works for Sony. Yes, there are cases where industry rumours are true, but they are too far and few between that, by now, the average ’hardcore’ gamer should know to take them with a serious pinch of salt, even if the rumours, as the venerable Yojimbo puts it, are ’rampant’.



So it’s a shame to see Dtoiders fall under the spell of rumours, because not only are we a community of gamers, I believe we are a community with a megaton of gaming knowledge and experience. I cannot fathom why such a number of gamers are not resilient to the pitfalls rumours can have. Indeed, you may say that it is a minority of gamers the have the problem of believing a rumour to be true, but it is still disheartening to see. Not only that, I believe the amount is bigger than just a minority.

The answer is not becoming jaded towards the industry, the answer is to ask yourself if the rumour is from a credible source. A closer inspection of a rumour and a re-think is all it takes from saving yourself the hassle, anger, disappointment and frustration of it turning out to be fake.



I understand the anger against 2.7, the list of features are underwhelming, but then again, we have features we did not have before. Someone, somewhere, will find text chat useful, we cannot say that the feature is, as many a gamer put it, ‘shit’. The ability to now use the actual disc itself to search for information about the game on the browser, rather than typing in the game name, is welcome. I do not own a wireless keyboard and find typing even short phrases or words into the search bar cumbersome. Hell, I don’t like typing messages simply because it takes ages with a controller. When I sit down to play a game, I turn off my computer because I like to focus on just the game, and not be distracted by the internet. I’m sure many a PS3 owning Dtoider has Destructoid saved as bookmark, so to save them the possible hassle of going to their computer to keep up to date with this wonderful website. I know I do.


Not my TV, by the way

Yes, the update is kinda low on features, but today we have features we did not have yesterday. Though I will use text chat rarely, I know for sure I will be using the game name search feature. The people that are angry have no one but themselves to blame, they brought into the rumours, they brought into the lies, lies that Sony did not spread. Instead of being angry and frustrated, as I know some of you are, ask yourselves this, would you ever be angry at this update and it’s features if the rumours did not exist? Would you ever say the text chat feature is completely useless if the voice-chat rumour was non-exsistant? I don't know about you, but having a feature I did not have before on my PS3 is a bonus, even if I will use it rarely.

Everyone has a right to right to voice thier dissapoinment and thier opinion on a matter, no matter what the opinion is, no matter what the subject is. In all honesty, I'd die to protect that right, because it is a right I excercise myself. But when the opinion is formed by rumours and possible lies, I cannot help but feel saddended.

There is a reason why Destructoid puts rumours under the ‘Industry Bullshit’ category, because rumours are just that people, bullshit.

Go change your avatar, now!!

Another week, another PSN store update, the highlight of the week is of course:





From the people that brought you flOw, comes Flower. Despite me not liking flOw as much as I thought I would, this game looks more promising, and a looks a lot more worthy to 'play'. It's already garnered an impressive 88 from metacritic, and is downloading right behind me.

I was already tempted to buy it from the preview videos, but it seems it is a lot better than flOw, and the praise it's getting in reviews was enough to warrant a purchase off of me. However, this game won't appeal to all gamers, but, if you want a totally unique, original experience, go download it. Surprisingly, the download weighs in at 627 MB, must be all the amazing graphics making the file size bigger than one would think!

Price: 6.29 GBP



Wow, it takes a full minute just write the Godforsaken title, but, supersonic acrobatic rocket powered battle cars is now available to download, both in demo and full game form. I'm really interested in this game, all of the preview vids I've seen so far has done nothing but further deepen my interest in the game.

BUT, you will need to download the 'trial' version in order to play the full game, which in my opinion, is a good thing. Saves you the worry of spending your hard earned cash on a game you may not even like. The download size is a meagre 180MB.

Price (for full version): 7.99 GBP

Demos

Only two this week, and one of them is on the store already, well kinda.

Resistance: Retribution



PSP game, I have no idea what its like, sorry!


Motorstorm Pacific Rift Demo 2.O



This is a cool, but challenging racing game, and the demo is already on the PSN store. But, it seems that this version is quote 'definitive'. I haven’t had a chance to download it yet, so I don't now how its been improved over the previous demo.

File size is a decent 637MB


DLC Packs

More LBP DLC!!! Nice to see it get supported so much for it, shame the BETA made me feel the game was'nt worth forty quid, I'll get it when it's cheaper.

Ape Escape costume: 1.59 GBP

Tora costume: 1.59 GBP

All star weekend 2009 has a FREE, yes free DLC pack out, it contains jerseys and a court for you playing pleasure. I for one think it's surprising to see EA of all companies put out free DLC, what happened to nickel and diming us, EA??

Videos

Tekken 6 new year trailer- oooh, yes, as a fan of tekken I'll be downloading this tonight.

SDTV flie size- 43MB

HDTV Size- 104MB (720P)

Inside FIFA Interactive world cup 09 trailer is now available, supposedly if you want to know how to be the best at the game, check it out as it has tips and tricks from the pros and the producers of the game.

Flower Trailer- Still not sure if you want to buy this? Then check the trailer out.


Themes

Seeing as I am complete theme whore, I'll be downloading these, and if they are terrible to look at, delete them!

Need for Speed undercover theme.

Pain: Hasslehoff theme- hehehe, this one actually has some staying potential, it is the Hoff after all!


All in all, not a bad week, I was anticipating Flower a lot, and I hope a lot of you were as well. Sony is stepping up the amount of stuff added each week in the lead up to spring, let's hope they continue they keep their word and further strengthen the PSN store.

Ciao, for now.

Only a few days ago, I had the bittersweet (confounded screws!) pleasure of upgrading my hard drive in my PS3, and was over the moon because of that. Now that the HDD space was gargantuan between my PS3 and laptop, the next logical step was to move some stuff off of my Laptop, and onto my PS3. Before I began on that arduous task, I checked how much space I had left on my Laptop HDD:



‘Whoa’, I uttered. During the past few months, my torrenting did increase significantly, but I did not know it reached this kind of level, for the year I owned this laptop, only today did it reach the fifty percent full mark. After a little investigation, it was the HD movies I downloaded that were the real gig eaters, and combined, they totalled 30-35 gigs. The rest of the used gigabytes fell into music and games, as expected. I decided to transfer a few movies onto my PS3, but fully expected it just to be a back-up device, not a movie player. So, I decided to use my old, but gold memory stick:



Now that the surrogate mother was decided (wink) FF:Advent Children was copied onto the memory stick. On Insertion into my PS3, as expected, it allowed me to copy the file and I did, a black square representing the icon for it. At this point, I just thought that it was the default icon for file types the PS3 did not recognize, and was a little deflated. I really wanted to watch the film on my big HDTV, rather than my 15 inch laptop screen. Yeah I didn’t even realize their was info at the side of it, detailing what file type it was and how long the film was, I too busy, ridiculous, ey? I copied Ironman, and then this came up:



The icon played about 15 seconds of the movie, and I was shocked. Yet again, I said whoa, pressed X and the movie started. It was safe to say at that point I uttered a word that rhymed with grit, and was both flabbergasted and joyful that I found this feature of the PS3, however the best was about to come. When the movie played, I noticed immediately that everything looked a lot sharper, and a lot more colourful than on my laptop. Yup, the file was upscaled, thanks to the PS3. Though Ironman did look a little rough:




However, FF looked amazing, maybe due to it being CGI, but the PS3 did a wonderful job of the upscaling:



I was overjoyed, but thought it was extremely stupid of me never to do this before, the thought never crossed my mind, and the free space of my laptop never dropped below 80 gigs. Even though I was overjoyed, a doubt came into my mind, a real annoyance of the PS3. When playing a DVD, the PS3 automatically signs you out of PSN, and you can’t have the pleasure of watching a movie whilst waiting for something to download off of the store. Why hasn’t sony released a patch to sort this out, I do not know, but it’s an annoyance that can be sorted out easily enough. So, I hesitantly pressed the PS button, expecting a black screen with the option to quit playback, what I got made me smile like I have rarely smiled before:


Ironman looks a little better.




YES!!! I thought, finally I can watch movies and not sacrifice the ability to download a game or video whilst watching. I quickly shuffled over to the download management screen and breathed a sigh of relief, Bionic Commando Rearmed was still downloading.


So, there you have it, even after a year of owning one, I’m still discovering the awesome features of the PS3, and you’d think after a year of owning a console, you would know it inside out. Not in my case, seeing as I use my PS3 as a media machine as well as playing games, this feature will make my movie watching that much sweeter, sony might being killing themselves with the awful advertising of the PS3, but it seems the people who make the tech/software at sony are still doing a damn fine job.


Have a nice day/night, guys/gals

When I brought PS3 last March, (a GTA4 bundle), my thoughts were that a 40 gig machine would suffice for a long, long time. ‘Nope, no point getting a 60 gig PS3, I already have a pristine PS2’, kept running through my head when I was weighing up what PS3 SKU to buy. The fact that the 40 gig one came with a free game (Burnout Paradise), AND, was a hundred pounds cheaper, sealed the deal. I whipped out my credit card, paid for my black beauty and set off for a year of wonderful gaming.


Fast forward a year later, and this is the reality:



You might think eight gigs of space is enough, but what you don’t know that 10 minutes prior to this picture, the amount of free space was less than a gig, the reason? Well, we have the wonderful, yet absolutely-glitched-to-the-smucking-eyeballs Fallout 3 to thank for that. After amassing a fortune of, about, ten thousands caps just by tracking down ninety-nine locations, adding them to the Geomapper module, it’s safe to say I was one happy crazy-ass Muslim. ‘One more to go‘, I thought.


Once I tracked down the final location, I was greeted with an inordinate number of blasted Deathclaws.
Yeah, I discovered Old Olney, host to the biggest clusterf*** of Deathclaws you’ll ever see in the game. After I uttered the words BOLY SMIDT (but in a stronger, more foul term) in seeing my danger indicator light up with red bars, I prayed to God (Allah in my case) and shot off like a cheetah with a rocket up it’s arse in the opposite direction, hoping that no Deathclaws were behind me. I was so, so, so wrong, they were a total of FOUR GODFORSAKEN BEASTS behind me, and yup, I was wearing the slow as hell power armour, that‘s what being safe gets you in the game. ‘Fmusck it’ (nope, not a typo, *wink*) I said to myself, out came the flamer and I dealt absolute fiery justice.



Glad with myself for not dying a terrible death, I decided to fast travel to Tenpenny tower, (third play through, busy being a evil badass) and get some well earned rest and change my equipment. I slept, changed my stuff and prepared to face the unforgiving waste land once again. When upon seeing the wooden elevator doors, I cracked a smile and looked forward to the fact that thousands of caps were just minutes away, approached the doors, pressed X and, walla, the loading screen came up.


BOOM, the loading screen froze, ‘Aw, great, stupid glitches’ I thought. If you have played the game, then you’d know how the game freezes and then un-freezes a hell of a lot of times, and in this case I thought the game screen would just load up as it always has done. Nope, it didn’t, so I re-booted the game, and went to my save once again, same thing, it froze: third time, same, fourth time, same, fifth, six, up to twenty times I did this, with no avail. There I was, stuck two hundred feet up, last manual save twenty, yes TWENTY hours ago, facing the certainty that I just wasted 80 hours of my life.

Yeah, I nearly was crying, like this:




At that point I was seconds away from smashing my head onto my coffee table and ending my suffering, instead of doing that, I decided that the game crapped out it’s final glitch and ended my time with it, permanently. Pressed the PS button, quitted the game and deleted the vile save data from my HDD. I wasn’t angry, far from it, just annoyed and disappointed at Bethesda somehow riddling such an awesome game with so, so many bugs.

It’ easy to overlook most of the glitches, because Fallout 3 is such a wonderful, incredible game. I sank over a hundred hours into that game, and loved every minute of it. After MGS4, and without a shadow of a doubt, it’s my most loved game of this generation, but that does not give it the excuse to simply stop working like that. I understand Bethesda made a game of epic proportions, and bugs are to be expected, but one so severe that it destroys your chance to play it? Sorry, truly, but in this generation, with the massive budgets and awesome technology, that should simply not be a scenario. I love to think that as a gamer, I deserve better and expect, at least, a game that works till the very end.

After a deep, calming breath, a nice glass of fruit smoothie, the next logical step in my Fallout 3 purification was to delete the game data. I thought it would be good to check how much space I would free up and went to check my system space.



(not me,btw)

Less than a gig, my jaw dropped, here’s me thinking that I still have four gigs free. My mind pondered about all of the possible reasons where those four gigs went. ‘CLICK’, a light turned on top of my head and on inspection of my music folder, realized that, idiotically, I forgot that I transferred my music collection onto my PS3. There and then I decided to upgrade my PS3. So, off I went to the internet, and placed an order for my future HDD.

Little text, lots of pictures time:





The new kid on the block. 320 gig, awesome!






The Oldtimer, like a certain bearded samurai here on Dtoid (JK, much love Jimbo)





My reaction after trying, very unsuccessfully for over four hours, to change the HDD. At that point, I decided that I’ll just go to a guy I know who owns a computer shop, and let him deal with the confounded screws.




52 inch HDTV,YES




Favorite theme redownloaded, YESSSSSSSSS





250+ gigs? YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS



Sadly, the PS3 only recognizes up to three hundered gigs, and then uses 20 or 30 gigs for it's own use, guess you can't win them all!

Now here’s a song that says just how happy I am, hope you like:

Daft Punk-Crescendolls





Have a nice day/night, guys/gals :)


P.S Sorry for not replying back to any comments, I'm probably be asleep when this is published, thats how tired I am.

Hi there ladies and gentleman, apologies for not being able to do a Dtunes post yesterday, there was some unfortunate ’personal circumstances’, that prevented me from writng a post. However, luckily those circumstances are now seemingly going away and we can crack on with the show.

First of all, thank you to all of the people who suggested songs, because now I can improve my post by delivering to you, the community, more music to sink your teeth into. I know it is quite a personal thing to ask for suggestions for this particular theme, seeing as we all went through a difficult time in our lives. The last thing we want to do is to dwindle on those times. So, to see multiple suggestions was actually quite nice and encouraging to see.


Today will showcase the talents two bands, both great, but one of them can be considered much more than that. Yes, today will feature The Killers, but also the hugely influential Joy Division.



Joy Division-Disorder



There really is no point even going into detail about the band, we all know who they are, what music they have done and of course, that the lead singer, Ian Curtis committed suicide. So, just listen to the startlingly beautiful song and appreciate just how incredible Joy Division still are. Oh, and they are English, *wink*


The Killers:




First formed in 2002, The Killers have achieved remarkable success in the past seven years. They formed shortly after the lead singer, Brandon Flowers, decided to leave the band he was currently in and move to LA. There he met a Warner Bros. music executive, then approached and gained the other band members.
What’s so unique is the actual sound of The Killers, being a short term fan of their work, I was astounded at what they offered as a band. From Synthpop to alternate rock, punk revival, and of course, new wave, they do have an extensive repertoire of musical styling’s. In my personal opinion, they manage to mesh and use these styles effectively, especially on Some One Told Me.




Interestingly enough, it can be said that the band has a strong influence from Joy Division, the name of the band is from a New Order song,( the band consists of the surviving members of Joy Division), and have done a cover of the song Shadowplay, which is available online. Some of the songs they produced have been favourably compared to the style that Joy Division. The band also has strong ties with England, they were first signed to an indie music label over here called Lizard King records, are fans of the country itself, and have gone on record as saying that they prefer playing here over anywhere else. Durng the release of Sam's Town, my college experienced 'The Killers' mania and nothing but thier album was dicussed for a good two weeks. They have released four albums so far, the last two being released just a year apart.

The spotlight was planted firmly on the band with the release of Sam’s Town, which managed to reach number two on the US billboard chart, and the single ’when you were young’ reached number two in the UK singles chart. The album landed them multiple awards and managed to shift a million copies in three months.A total sales figure for JUST the two first albums stands at a whopping twelve million. They are currently working on thier next album.

The Killers - Read My Mind




The Killers - Joy Ride




As always, suggestions are welcomed and needed, have a good day/night people. :)

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