Hell yeah! PS3 firmware v2.40 makes dreams come true

In game XMB! Finally! And playing music from the harddrive while gaming - awesome! Now just release the damn thing already :-D

Face the pain

Two of my favorite things, the UFC and the PS3, united at last. This is going to be awesome. I'm sure of it.

Getting older is a bitch

I just had my ass handed to me by what I'm guessing is a 14-year old kid.

During five grueling minutes I was utterly humiliated in an online game of "Mario Strikers Charged Football" on the Wii. I was run over, dazzled and crushed by this kid with the kind of lightning fast reflexes and tremendous skills that only someone that has yet to finish puberty and has too much free time on their hands can ever possess.

I'm not a bad gamer in any way. I've played endless hours of various games, both online and offline, on my own and against others, with great success. But being over thirty with a job and every day life going on, I don't have six hours every day to devote to every new game that hits the market. I'd like to, but I don't and I never will. This is why from here on as soon as a new game comes out and I decide to play it against others online I'll surely find myself being destroyed by teenagers again and again.

I'm pretty much at peace with this fact though. I just wish that there was some secluded area online where us old timers could graze and play amongst ourselves without having to deal with the angst of combatting hyperactive teeny gamers. Maybe there is such a place, and I just don't know about it. If so, someone please enlighten me.

Too me, it's no longer as much about winning as it used to. It's more about experiencing the games and enjoying them for what they are - exquisite works of digital art. If I get my ass handed to me by another gamer, I don't mind as long as it was a fair fight and I enjoyed myself.

Speaking of which, I just bought "Warhawk" for the PS3 and I look forward to getting my ass kicked time and time again.

GlaDOS - pwned!

Die chimera, die!

And they did...

Yes, you guessed it. I finished "Resistance: Fall of Man". Awesome game. I'm so coming back for more very soon!

Praise the demo-downloads!

One feature that I've found very nice on the PS3 is that I can download playable demos of games from the PlayStation Store. When games cost as much as they do these days it's really a great thing to be able to take them for a little test drive before forking over my hard-earned cash for the real deal.

Yesterday I downloaded the demo for "Conan", and oh boy am I ever glad I did. You see, if I'd paid actual money for this piece of crap I'd be livid!

First of all: the graphics. Hello? Isn't this supposed to be an HD-capable console? I've got PS2 games several years old that look way better - "God of war" and "Killzone" to name a few.

Secondly and probably most importantly: the gameplay. You have basically no friggin' moves and the game seems to respond very slowly so combat is both frustrating and a bore. The minute elements of puzzle-solving that was featured in the demo was also laughable.

Thirdly, the demo is way too short for an action-adventure game. I mean really, I played through it completely in minutes and afterwards I wasn't one bit interested in seeing more since the demo left me thinking that this was what the game was like, only longer.

So thanks Sony for helping me steer clear of this turd of a game.

Demos I have been enjoying though and that made me wanting to play the game for real are "The Club" and "Uncharted: Drake's fortune". Now those left me salivating slightly and definitely wanting more!

The free download of "Lemmings" (full game!) also put a big smile on my face. What an awesome game in all of it's simplicity and how missed it ever since I played it ages ago on the original GameBoy.

I've also download "Kane & Lynch" and "Stranglehold", but I haven't gotten around to trying them out yet.

66.666%

The following is taken from the latest newsletter from J!NX and makes me even happier that I went for a PS3 and not an Xbox360:

As a public service, we'd like to provide this brief rant: Nine people in the J!NX Office ponied up a hefty wad of female deer for an Xbox360. Of those nine, six of us now have a broken Xbox360. For the math-impaired, that makes 66.666% (repeating, of course) bitter J!NX gamers. So sad... We have consoles from 20 years ago that still work perfectly, apart from a few cartridges that need a blow now and then... (heh, blow...)

The Xbox360 has the largest amount of awesome games of any of the next-gen consoles, but this whole thing with them breaking is just embarrassing. There's no other console in history that has as bad of a track record from breaking as the 360.

And now when I think about it, I've never even heard of a PS3 breaking without someone doing something pretty stupid to it.

Eating my own words, and loving it!

Yes, it's true. Only a couple of month after my latest spewing of foul language over the PlayStation 3 I went and bought one for myself and you can view it in all it's expensive glory to the right of these words.

So what made me change my mind? Well, a couple of things. First and most importantly, the games are finally starting to pop up. That has been my main problem with the PS3, the lack of good games. But now there's plenty of games worthy of my cash out there; "Resistance: Fall of man", "Uncharted: Drake's fortune", "Ratchet & Clank: Tools of destruction" and "Call of duty 4: Modern warfare" to name a few.

Secondly and also very important, there are even more awesome cames on the horizon. I'm speaking of upcoming masterpieces like "Dead space", "Killzone 2", "God of war 3" (OK, it's set for release in 2009, but it's "God of war 3" doggammit!!) and "Metal gear solid 4: Guns of the patriots".

Also, it's looking more and more like Blu-Ray is kicking HD-DVD in the ass and killing it slowly but steadily. So I decided that for my HD-needs, I'm taking my chances with Blu-Ray.

What finally tipped the scale completely was that I got quite a big lump of cash back on my tax returns so suddenly the high price of the PS3, which has been my second biggest complaint, was no longer a problem.

On top of that, I managed to procure one of the last remaining 60GB machines available in Europe. One of the many perks of working for a large retailer of music, movies and games I guess ;-)

I've only had my PS3 for about a day but I have no regrets what so ever. I've already played several hours of "Ratchet & Clank: Tools of destruction" and "Resistance: Fall of man", downloaded movie trailers, game demos and such and am enjoying my new expensive toy very much.

Unfortunately I'm not having much of an HD-experience so far since it turns out that the single HDMI-port (which has never been used before) on my Samsung LCD-TV is broken! I still have a year to go on the warranty on the TV so it's not a huge problem since I'll get it fixed for free. But while it is being fixed I'll be without a big-screen TV and have to settle for the 23" LCD-TV in the bedroom (which actually has a functioning HDMI-port) for several days, maybe even a couple weeks, and that sucks a bit of ass.

But on the upside of things, until I get my big-screen TV off to the repair shop "Ratchet & Clank: Tools of destruction" kicks some serious ass in 576i too I can tell you!

A hit but maybe not a very hard one?

If this article speaks the truth, the competition might stiffen even more for Sony and their unfortunate PS3. A "stronger" edition of the Xbox 360 is definitely a blow aimed straight at the jaw of Sony.

However, when examined a bit closer (and I don't mind 'cuz the Xbox 360 Elite looks totally sweet, and just made me sound like a surfer retard too...) it's not that much of a PS3 killer when you think about. At least not at that price.

With the PS3 you get not only a high-end gaming console but a Blu-Ray player. Sure, there's a pretty inexpensive HD-DVD player available for the 360 but it is not included in the machine out of the box. Not even in the Elite package, and this is important.

The 360 Elite has a harddrive twice the size of the PS3 Premium but everybody knows harddrives are relatively cheap hardware while a stand-alone Blu-Ray player will set you back somewhere around €700 (about $850) over here. And if I buy an Xbox 360 Elite and the HD-DVD player for it I've already spent a bit more than what a PS3 Premium would set me back.

Personally I don't understand what they're thinking at Microsoft by not including an HD-DVD player with this Elite edition or in upcoming Premium editions. That would really stick it to the competition, and would make myself seriously consider buying a 360. It really makes me wonder, just like someone commented on the article above - do they know something we don't since they don't seem to be taking HD-DVD seriously?

Nintendo, bodyslamming the competition

There really seems to be no stopping Nintendo these days. They are murdering the competition on both the handheld-market and as far as ordinary consoles go.

Microsoft is still in the race since the Xbox 360 is selling very well and let's not forget that it is a pretty sweet machine with a shitload of awesome games. But what is up with Sony? Are they even trying to compete or have they completely shot themselves in the foot, head and ass already? Sure looks like it to me. I mean, damn, even the GameBoy Advance, is outselling the PS3 in the US. Granted, there is quite a difference in price and probably very different target audiences but it's still pretty embarrassing for Sony to have their spanking new, state-of-the-art, seventh generation console be outsold by a six years old device.

It'll be really interesting to see what happens after this upcoming Friday when the PS3 is finally, however in crippled form, released in Europe. People over here have waited four months longer than in the US and Japan. Now let's see how many lost interest and bought a 360 or a Wii months ago.

In the short time that the Wii has been out it's sold an incredible 1.62 million copies in Europe and it is still almost impossible get your hands on one. There's no way the PS3 is beating that, that I am sure of. Even in the markets where the PS3 is available it is being hammered by the Wii being outsold two to one. Yay Nintendo!