Sunday, March 14, 2010

Blur Beta Code Giveaway

[Update: Okay, that's it! Using a random number generator, I've selected denniservanvittig. You should get the code in your email very soon. Thanks everyone!]

Quick contest here: I have an extra code for the Blur Xbox 360 beta and I'd like to give it to one of you.

All you have to do is leave a comment below with your email address and I'll randomly select someone tomorrow afternoon.

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Review // Darksiders

I'm not a big fan of how stale the Legend of Zelda series has gotten in recent years. It's the same old story, same old dungeons, and same old progression every single time. I've been craving a Zelda game that feels fresh, that takes me somewhere new, that shakes things up. It just turns out that Darksiders is that game.

A Zelda Game Through and Through

Monday, March 1, 2010

My PS3 Y2K10 Experience [updated]

[Update: Okay, it's over now, and thankfully, pretty much everything is back to normal. But man, that is a scary situation when paid content starts deleting itself. Just goes to show that Calendar Man is not one of Batman's villains you should take too lightly.]

Before I start catching up on reviews and features, I'd just like to comment on how ridiculous this global PS3 meltdown business is. Here's been my PS3 experience today:

  1. Couldn't play Dante's Inferno because an "error has occurred" that caused the game to crash every time I loaded it.
  2. Noticed that all record of having suffered through Dante's Inferno is now gone from my trophies list.
  3. Tried to play a host of downloaded games, all of which failed to load.
  4. Taking me by surprise, WipEout HD Fury loaded and even downloaded a patch, but once it finally got into the menus, it reverted to the trial version, deleting my trophy data with it.
  5. Just realized that my Flower dynamic theme, that I paid for, had been disabled this whole time. Went to the themes list and it was listed as "corrupted data," then it deleted itself.

Now I'm near terrified even to turn my PS3 on, much less try to play a game. I've had trophy data deleted, paid content revert to trial versions, paid content delete itself, I can't sign into PSN, and I can't play games. My PS3 has literally become a $499.99 paperweight.

Apparently it might be caused by a bug related to leap year and only affects older PS3s. I find this to be a wholly unsatisfying reason for my PS3 (the fatter, more expensive one) to completely stop working and start deleting things I paid for. I just don't understand how the calendar is so powerful in these devices. Remember the Zune apocalypse in 2008? Seems like the exact same issue.

Not to mention that Sony's newly revamped US PlayStation site came with newly revamped portable IDs, which look awful and have no option to revert to the dark, older versions. What a great day for PlayStation.