WW3 with MW3

You may have heard about this small game that is in the works for 11/08/2011 called Modern Warfare 3. Now normally I would let IrishPride report on this as it is not my type of game, but this one looks a bit interesting.  Also I felt that we should actually say something about what is bound to be one of the most anticipated games of the year. This time it looks to take place all over the world in American and European cities during what is (lets see if you guessed this one) World War 3.  The trailer does look pretty awesome, so give it watch, and then let me know what you think.

 

Xbox Bricks?

Microsoft is preparing their consoles to take a new disk format. This can mean great things for the 360. More space on a disk would be great.  This could prevent more 3 DVD games from being released.  Probably what Microsoft did not expect was to brick a small number (whatever that actually means) of their player base. Microsoft has even said "Following a recent update to our system software, we have become aware of an issue that is preventing a very small number of Xbox 360 owners from playing retail game discs".

But they are willing to make up for this to the people it happens to.  Eurogamer has stated that if you have the issue to contact Xbox support at www.xbox.com/support/contact to verify it has happened.  Once they have verified the issue then you can be your system replaced with a nice shiny Xbox 360 S complete with a 250 GB hard dive. Not too shabby.

Sony Customer Appreciation Program (Bribe)

Sony North America has come up with what amounts to a bribe for the massive failure of their online service, and it is not too bad. For those that are fast enough Sony is offereing ALL Playstation Network customers 2 of 5 games.  You have 30 days to get those game and once you grab them they are yours forever.  Your choices are:

This deal is great, unless you are a very avid fan boy and you already have all 5 games. I guess you can at least get two of them to live on your hard drive then. PSP owners are getting a similar deal from the following list:

This is the permanent stuff you get to keep as a "my bad" gift.  And hey, if you have both a PS3 and a PSP that is 4 free games. They also have some things that are going to be nice, but seem more like a marketing gimick, which I guess it really needed at this point given all the not so great press they got the past few weeks.

  • A selection of “On Them” rental movie titles will be available to PlayStation Network customers over one weekend, where Video Service is available. Those titles will be announced soon.
  • 30 days free PlayStation Plus membership for non PlayStation Plus subscribers.
  • Existing PlayStation Plus subscribers will receive an additional 60 days of free subscription.
  • Existing Music Unlimited Premium Trial subscription members will receive an additional 30 days of free premium subscription.
  • Additional 30 days + time lost for existing members of Music Unlimited Premium/Basic subscription free of charge for existing Premium/Basic members.
  • To welcome users Home, PlayStation Home will be offering 100 free virtual items. Additional free content will be released soon, including the next addition to the Home Mansion personal space, and Ooblag’s Alien Casino, an exclusive game.

I do like how they are giving people that were already paying for some of the services such as Qriocity and Playstation Plus an additional 30 days over everyone else.  Makes you seems a little more special.  So does this bribe work for you guys?

Portal 2 Review - PC and PS3


Welcome to Aperture Science, where the future is now. Or at least it was until you destroyed the megalomaniac AI that was running the place. This was a little over a hundred years ago and the place has not seen any real love. You start the game being brought out of stasis by Wheatly, the AI that is supposed to be in charge of all the humans. Too bad you are the only one left and the others are "bloody vegetables". So now you two are going to try and escape this place before the management comes down and knocks some heads.

Click here to continue reading...

PSN - Its On (Mostly) (EDIT)

Kazua Hiraj has announced that Sony has begun a region by region activation of the PSN today.  It is suggested that after you turn on your PS3 and update your firmware you immediately change your password for the PSN (like they have to tell you that).  They are slowly getting to each city and state and are saying it will be "several hours to restore PSN throughout the entire country".  As of this writing at 8:53 PM MST only 7 Northeast states had their service restored and given their estimate, we should be seeing a nation wide return to coverage by Sunday morning.  This is assuming they work on it all night.  If you would like to see the status on the return coverage check on the source link.  Good news is now you can start get Portal 2 on your PC for those that have it on PS3 and Mortal Kombat can start to see the online play it deserves.

EDIT: We now have a full return of the PSN.

Erik Wolpaw Talks Portal 2 at NYU

So you may have heard of this small game called Portal 2. It is the sequel of the lesser known game, get this, Portal. Well, if you were one of the few people that actually played this game you may be interested in having gone to the lecture that the writer, Erik Wolpaw, gave at NYU recently.  WHAT!!!! You don't live anywhere near New York and don't have the money to just fly out to New York for a video game lecture.  Well lucky you then, NYU just happens to have posted the video online in its complete glory for those of us not fortunate enough to live near NYU. So set some time aside (1 Hour and 21 Min to be almost exact) and give it watch.

 

Game Center Lecture Series- Erik Wolpaw from NYU Game Center on Vimeo.

 

Portal Turret

Ok, I make the update about the PSN, was getting ready to go to sleep for my early morning, and then I found this and had to share it. Someone made a model of the Portal turrets.  The thing is complete with a laser eye, motion sensor, and line spouting.  As if the soundboards were not creepy enough saying "Are you still there?" this guy has a full-sized turret to say it.  Check out the man's Filcker page at Portal Turret to see more pictures. Watch out though, that thing may not be loaded but I still don't trust it.

PSN Back by 05/31/2011

Sony has been out of the online gaming for almost 3 weeks now, and it will not be back fully for a few weeks more.  They plan to have the system back online in all its (hopefully) unbroken glory by the end of the month.  They plan to slowly bring things back up, including functionality such as home (really?) and chat. No word on the store and Qriocity but we should hear more soon. Most likely we will see a firmware update with the return of the PSN.  Until then you can go ahead and turn your 360 back on and play games on its fully functional network.

SOE - No Breaks for You

Man, Sony cannot seem to catch a break.  Sure you know that the PSN was broken into user information was stolen.  Sure you know that you may have lost your credit card that was used to buy games on the PSN to hackers.  But did you know that the same thing happened to all of the Sony Online Entertainment services?  This includes games such as Everquest 2, Free Realms, DC Online, and Clone Wars Adventures.  They found out May 2 (in Tokyo time) that the information was stolen around April 16th while doing a security audit in response to the PSN outage. And if you are out of the country things can be worse.  In addition to:

  • name
  • address
  • e-mail address
  • birthdate
  • gender
  • phone number
  • login name
  • hashed password

10,700 users in Austria, Germany, Netherlands and Spain may have had their dreict debt accounts breached.  This would give the hacker access to:

  • bank account number
  • customer name
  • account name
  • customer address

Not a good week for Sony.  So now SOE is down in addition to PSN (which should be up later this week) is down.  Sony is working on a "make good" plan for its users and at a local level will work with their users to get them in identify theft programs.  Hit the link for the full press release and check then check with your bank to make sure you don't have any unwanted charges on your accounts.

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