It seems Sony is having another one of those “Strongbad techno” moments. A great number of the old-model PlayStation 3 units (the ones released before the high-capacity “PS3 Slim” models) experienced an inability to connect to the PlayStation Network, and found out that a bunch of other items had been bugged (namely calendar dates and trophy data). Many suspect that it’s a date programming bug, similar to the big Y2K kerfuffle, but with a bad leap year count instead of a bad end-of-the-year count. New-model PS3 Slims and PSPs seem to be unaffected by this glitch.

Yeah, I’m aggravated by it, but I’m not getting too worked up about it. I do have a few other consoles, after all, so I’ll just keep playing with them until the smoke clears. The  SonyPlayStation Twitter is posting updates, and recommending that all users of pre-Slim PS3s (myself included) not turn on their consoles until a solution is found.

Category: Video Games
Author: WillyFourEyes
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Tags: glitches, playstation 3

And thus ends my journey through the world LittleBigPlanet. A shame that I had to cough up $10 to play a game I already owned in order to play it for three days and beat it.  At least now, I can worry about sampling all of the user-created levels once I get my own copy back.

Category: Video Games
Author: WillyFourEyes
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Tags: finished, littlebigplanet, playstation 3

For all of the crazy over-the-top fun Bayonetta can be, the PlayStation 3 version came out the box with one big problem…loading screens that seemed to take forever. Thankfully, Sega released a patch today that adds the option to install game data to the PS3, which reduces loading times by at least half, meaning that we won’t get stuck waiting for the item screen or pause menus to appear. Now, aside from graphical differences, the PS3 Bayonetta experience should be roughly on par with that of the Xbox 360 version, which I’m told never went through this to begin with.

Category: Video Games
Author: WillyFourEyes
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Tags: bayonetta, patches, playstation 3, updates

Oh…almost forgot about the Dark Void demo, which came out on the same day as the demo of Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond (but the actual game won’t be ready for one-and-a-half weeks).

This game puts you in control of a guy named Will, who finds himself in control of a powerful jetpack, but also trapped in a war of survival against an alien race that the humans thought they had already defeated. The demo lets you play around with the jetpack, and teaches you how to do aerial maneuvers, such as loop-de-loops and hovering (necessary to land; trying to fly to a landing spot like normal will get you killed).

The big draw to Dark Void appears to be how the hero can shift between aerial and ground combat with ease, setting it apart from most third- or first-person shooters which only let you do one at a time. Shooting down enemies in either mode is as easy as one would expect, but melee combat is a bit clunky, as you can only do one attack at a time, and your character repeats the same animation until the enemy has low enough health to be killed.

In any case, look for this futuristic sci-fi shooter to drop on January 19.

Category: Uncategorized
Author: WillyFourEyes
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Tags: dark void, demos, playstation 3, xbox 360

“Angel May Cry”. “Witch, Please!”. “Wheel of Torture”. Just a few of the rejected ideas I had made for this post about Bayonetta, but even for a guy with my dumb sense of humor, they all seemed too “high-brow”.

Anyway, after trying my hand at the demo a month ago, I went out and bought the game…probably the only good news to come out of that day. I’ve so far conquered the first level, which is indeed as frantic as I remember it. I still have to get the hang of the “not dying” thing, as I got beaten three times in Chapter 2, in spots where I should have known better. On the bright side, I got my first Platinum award (not a Platinum trophy, though that would be pretty sweet, too) on the tutorial level. Perhaps I ought to spend some more time in the early chapters looking around for secrets before proceeding, though. Easily avoidable death is not something I feel like dealing with this week.

Category: Video Games
Author: WillyFourEyes
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Tags: awesome, bayonetta, playstation 3