Trophies on PS3

Last night I bought Super Stardust HD off of PSN. It is (I believe) the only game that has already been patched to include trophy support. I beat the first 2 worlds and ended up getting 3 trophies for it. The game itself is really cool, and much more fun than the demo suggests. I think once trophies catch on playing games on the PS3 will be much more attractive to people who are currently "Achievement Whores" on Xbox Live.

by Kyle on July 3, 2008 at 10:11 am | Tagged: PS3, PSN

2.40 Train Wreck

After the update hit last night at around 10:30 CT reports of bricked systems began to trickle in. The symptom is that after the install the PS3 starts and hangs on the ribbon without progressing to the XMB. To me it sounds like the install fails for whatever reason and you're left without a functioning file system so the PS3 sits there and waits for one to appear. The solution that people have found is if you pull out the PS3 Hard Disk and format it on a computer then put it back into the PS3, and reformat it. This of course will get rid of all your save files and DLC.

Luckily my 2.40 PS3 is working fine.

by Kyle on July 2, 2008 at 6:45 pm | Tagged: PS3

Zero Punctuation - Webcomics

This week's Zero Punctuations rips apart web comics, and more specifically Cntrl Alt Del and the recent pregnancy/miscarrage story that has been going on and the response to it. Honestly, not his best one.

by Kyle on July 2, 2008 at 3:36 pm | Tagged: Zero Punctuation

Playstation 3 Firmware 2.40 is live!

go download it right now! Trophies, in game XMB, and in game system music are yours for the having!

Well, I downloaded it and it works and everything. Unfortunately none of the games I own support trophies yet. Burnout Paradise is said to be adding them retroactively at some point, but not yet. If you've got Super Stardust HD that is already patched but its not retroactive, so go start earning. Here is a list of games that are slated to have trophy support:

• BUZZ! Quiz TV
• LittleBigPlanet
• MotorStorm Pacific Rift
• NBA 09 - PS3
• PAIN
• PixelJunk Eden
• Resistance 2
• SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation
• Warhawk

I imagine that this list will keep growing as more games get closer to release, and already released games get patched.

by Kyle on July 1, 2008 at 10:55 pm | Tagged: PS3

Best Buy!

On my way home from the Korean Supermarket the other day I saw a sign that said a Best Buy was coming to that area soon. This is awesome for me because all current technology stores are a bit of a trek. This one will be walking distance/1 train stop. I wonder what their definition of "soon" is.

by Kyle on July 1, 2008 at 7:08 pm | Tagged: life

Disgaea 3 Gets a U.S Release Date

According to 1up.com NIS America has announced that Atlus will be the distributor of their 3 upcoming games, Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice, Disgaea DS, and Rapsody: A Musical Adventure.

I could really care less about Rapsody, and Disgaea DS, but Disgaea 3 is something I'm really looking forward to. It will be $50, and available on August 26th.

by Kyle on July 1, 2008 at 3:23 pm | Tagged: Disgaea, release date

PS3 2.40 Walkthrough Parts 1 & 2

Over at the Playstation Blog they've posted a video detailing some of the upcoming features in PS3's 2.40 firmware.

Part 1 talks about in game XMB, messaging, custom soundtracks, date/time display (on xmb screen), and a few other features. Part 2 will talk about the PS3 trophy system and whatever else they have for us in 2.40. Oh, and he says that the update is scheduled to come out "very soon".

Part 2 talks about the trophy system and some other cool stuff available.

by Kyle on June 30, 2008 at 6:49 am | Tagged: PS3

WALL-E Movie Review

So I saw WALL-E today. We got to the theater only 10 minutes before the show started, so we ended up having to sit in the third row. During the previews I thought it was going to be a pain in the ass seeing anything. Once the movie started it wasn't that bad as long as there wasn't text or anything on the screen. If this movie was subtitled my head would have exploded.

As always, Pixar's CG was insane. As someone who does CG as a hobby, I'm floored every time I see their work. WALL-E was a very cool character, and was surprisingly expressive for a robot that wasnt all cartoony.

Overall I thought that the movie was fantastic, but for me, there were a few negatives. First, I didn't really like some of the lecture-like messaging in the movie which essentially boils down to "dont screw up the environment, and dont get fat." Second, I didn't really like the awkward addition of live action on the screens in WALL-E. It just kind of took me out of the fully 3d world.

Aside from that, it was a fantastic movie. Among the best they've produced.

by Kyle on June 29, 2008 at 10:52 am | Tagged: movie review

PSN update 06/26/2008

This Week's PSN update has some pretty decent stuff. I decided not to include all the downloadable songs for games. I am downloading the Hot Shots Golf demo right now. For t he full list of updates from the playstation blog hit the jump.

Hit the jump for more »

by Kyle on June 26, 2008 at 9:43 pm | Tagged: PSN

Kratos in Soul Calibur IV?

EGM's Quarterman has unveiled a rumor that Kratos, God of War's protagonist, may be appearing in the PS3 version of Soul Calibur IV. That's pretty cool. Kratos feels like he'd fit in with the other characters a lot better than Darth Vader or Yoda. Hopefully an official announcement will be made soon, with some screen shots perhaps?

by Kyle on June 25, 2008 at 6:50 am | Tagged: PS3, Soul Calibur

Developers Blogs/Podcasts

A lot of video game developers have been trying to be more open with fans. Being someone that is extremely interested in the goings on behind the scenes at developers, I'd love to see more. Some really good podcasts/blogs include Criterion Games [podcast], Insomniac Games [podcast], and until recently the Kojima Productions Report [podcast - now discontinued?]. Listening/Reading these, you can really tell that they care about not only marketing their game, but also the video game landscape in general. Insomniac Games Full Moon Show is fantastic. In addition to talking about Ratchet and Clank and now Resistance 2, they interview other developers and talk about the roles of various members of the team. They also talk about other games that they've been playing and are interested in. It's great to see openness and honesty like that. In the end, it works as a marketing tool as well. I wasnt really interested in Resistance 2, but after hearing them talk about it, and how excited they are it made me at least want to see it in action and give it a shot.

It upsets me when you can tell that a developer starts a blog or podcast soley to push their wares. In some recent entries like the Team Fortress 2 blog, it seems like they are just hopping on the wagon in a kind of "us too" marketing effort to extend their game's life. I mean, I love TF2, but they havent really posted anything for the past few days since the day of their blog's release and it makes the blog seem kind of stupid and pointless. If you're going to do a press release every 3 months Kotaku and Joystiq will cover it. You dont need a blog for that.

by Kyle on June 23, 2008 at 9:42 pm | Tagged: videogames

CJ7 Movie Review

I've been meaning to post a review of CJ7 for awhile now. I got the Bluray disk awhile back. The first thing you notice about the movie is that the visual fidelity of the CG has been improved enormously over Stephen Chow movies like Shaolin Soccer. I was kind of nervous that better CG would lose a certain ridiculousness that his other movies had posessed. Fortunately, this wasnt the case. They more than made up for it in other areas.

The story was pretty hilarious, though it makes you feel bad for CJ7 for the whole movie. There is definately the stephen chow token serious moment, which feels familiar, but not in a bad way.

Stephen's screen-son was pretty good too, with the notable exception of his attempt at crying. His comedy was spot on, though. It was also great to see people from his other movies making cameos like the foreman at his job, and the son's male teacher. The female teacher was pretty cute too, so that didn't hurt matters.

If you are a fan of Stephen Chow or are willing to give HK comedy movies a chance, I'd say this is a good one to try. I'd say its better than Kung Fu Hustle, but not as good as Shaolin Soccer.

by Kyle on June 22, 2008 at 7:27 pm | Tagged: movie review

Color Profiles in Photoshop CS3 and Windows

For awhile now I've been running into problems with color profiles. I'd be working in photoshop and go to save for web and the colors would be completely different. Annoying. Later, I realized that tapping ctrl + Y to enter proof color mode would display the real colors that would save out.

Just tonight I found this blog post that completely put all of my color issues to bed. Man, what a relief.

by Kyle on June 22, 2008 at 12:57 am | Tagged: life, photoshop

This week’s 1up show

This week on the 1up show there was a dude that Shane was interviewing in the Kojima signing line at the Metreon in San Fransisco. He had claimed to have beaten MGS4 by "marathoning it". When shane asked what rank he got he said "Er... well... C". MGS uses animal rankings so unless this guy has the memory of a goldfish and cant remember a single MGS game since 1998, I'm fairly sure hes never played one. You've just made yourself look like an idiot for the whole internet. Grats!

by Kyle on June 21, 2008 at 10:49 pm | Tagged: 1up show, idiot

Get Smart Movie Review

I've read some reviews that are shitting all over Get Smart for being more about action than comedy and not sticking to the strictly comedic blundering spy formula of the 60's television show. I gotta say, I couldn't disagree more. This movie's comedy may be slightly less slapstick than the show, but its smart, and funny. Don't get me wrong, there is slapstick. Like Steve Carell skewering himself with his pocket knife's harpoon gun trying to escape from ziptie handcuffs, or a blundered trip through a room full of lasers.

In addition to the purely slapstick, Get Smart has a much smarter variety of comedy going on in the background. Liz and I both laughed out loud when the director of the good guy spy agency "Control" yelled, "Nuclear!" correcting the President's "Nucular" which is always something that annoys her in movies and she has me noticing now.

The story is pretty standard spy fare, but  Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway really sell it. Carell is pretty much the spy version of Micheal Scott from his show The Office, which is awesome. The rest of the cast is all pretty good with some pretty great people in cameos and other minor rolls.

Get Smart is a great summer movie, and delivers comedy and action in one neat little package. Sure its no action epic like Indy or Batman, but I think in a summer brimming with big names Get Smart can hold its own.

by Kyle on June 21, 2008 at 10:15 pm | Tagged: get smart, movie review