So there was this big football game released yesterday…I’m sure you’ve heard of it. For those of you who haven’t contracted “Madden Fever” (or have built up an immunity to it over the years), the PlayStation Store has pushed out two noteworthy demos this week, in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (PS3) and Valkyria Chronicles II (PSP).
In the latest PS3 update (3.40), the big news was about it being made to accommodate the new PlayStation Plus service (membership for discounts on games, free demos and all that). The update has also incorporated a rating system for all of the games on the service, in order to help players recommend games to other players. In an effort to prevent forced up-voting and down-voting, you can only give the game a rating if you’ve actually played it and bought it from the store. So, what are the PlayStation Store shoppers buying and playing?
I was surprised that when Sony decided to add trophy support to the PlayStation 3 (their form of video game achievement points, popularized by Xbox 360) that they hadn’t done more to spread it around. While there have been countless applications designed to track a player’s Xbox 360 Gamerscore (and later Steam and World of Warcraft achievements), PS3 trophy tracking has been pretty slow to catch up.
As promised, I’ve kick-started the Overlord: Raising Hell liveblog, having uploaded the first four parts of it yesterday. While I’m not wholly fond of the “silent protagonist” trope, it does allow for interesting experiments, like this one. I’m used to playing the part of a hero, but sometimes it can be satisfying to try to create a voice for a villain who doesn’t say much of anything. Writing in first person isn’t something I’m accustomed to doing, either, but I think I can handle it.
Looks like my PlayStation 3 is still having selective connection issues. ModNation Racers, a solid kar tracing game, has the unfortunate habit of dropping me from the central network almost every time I take it online. Without fail, whenever I go on there for two minutes, the connection craps out on me. I got lucky and was able to race in a few online matches on Monday afternoon, but after that, nothing. This obviously isn’t happening to everybody…I’ve seen a lot of drivers with his XP scores, and the game’s only been out for a week. It’s frustrating when you’ve got an itch to race, but can’t because you’re at the mercy of the server. I hope that this upcoming patch will help resolve some of those issues. I wanted to challenge my brother last night, but couldn’t reach him.
