The Welcome Back package is finally online, though I had to wait a week for the servers to stop smoking before I could actually download anything from them. Nothing says welcome back like giving your members free versions of games they probably already own. This annoying detail aside, I took their offer and sold my physical copies of Little Big Planet and Infamous. Of course I got less than $20 dollars for both of them, but hey, what can you expect from games that are nearly 3 years old. What eats me is that the second I'm out the door they get put on the shelf for twice to three times that amount. Corporate greed at its best.
I didn't walk away completely empty handed from Sony's plea for forgiveness though. Since I had my standard account, plus one for the EU store and one for the JP store, I actually got six games out of this deal, 2 months of PS Plus added to my main account and a free month for both the EU account and JP account. It's just a shame that my Credit Card and personal detail had to be plundered from Sony's servers to receive this deal. Makes me wonder what Sony would give me if my PS3 gained awareness and tried to strangle me in my sleep. Probably a free PSN mini...
Showing posts with label Sony. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sony. Show all posts
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Thursday, June 2, 2011
PSN is back and fully functional...No, for reals this time!
It's been well over a month since the hacker and corporate negligence caused outage began, and PSN is finally back and fully functional. With the return of the PSN we finally get our promised two free games and complimentary PSN+ subscription as part of the Welcome Back prog... Wait, you mean we're not getting them yet?
Oddly enough, the meaning of the term Welcome Back seems to have been entirely lost on Sony. I blame the language barrier. I realize that Sony is inherently a Japanese company, and that things are often lost in translation, but in this case they weren't just lost, they must have been abducted, shot in the back of the head and burried in an unmarked grave on the outskirts of town. Perhaps they should think of a new name for this program. Maybe they should use the one I came up with in my last blog post. It's certainly more accurate if nothing else.
Oddly enough, the meaning of the term Welcome Back seems to have been entirely lost on Sony. I blame the language barrier. I realize that Sony is inherently a Japanese company, and that things are often lost in translation, but in this case they weren't just lost, they must have been abducted, shot in the back of the head and burried in an unmarked grave on the outskirts of town. Perhaps they should think of a new name for this program. Maybe they should use the one I came up with in my last blog post. It's certainly more accurate if nothing else.
Monday, May 16, 2011
PSN is back
PSN is finally back.
So the PSN is finally back online, and soon Sony will be rolling out the "Welcome Back" program, though I personally think it should be called the "We're really sorry we stored your personal information on an unfirewalled and unencrypted rented server, and that it got broken into and spread all over the dark net" program, but I guess that's a bit long for a bullshit title.
PR departments make me sick. Backpedaling motherfuckers always trying to put a positive spin on their massive fuckups. It's like if after the recent disaster in their country the Japanese started touting Japan as periodically having the "Best surfing in the world! Come now and receive free unlimited chemo therapy!".
Monday, May 2, 2011
Oldfags and Sony
These days, wherever I go online, I'm constantly witness to an ongoing battle between old fags and new fags. One thing the old fags tend to do relentlessly is attempt to belittle the new fags by saying that they're greedy kids, and expect everything to be given to them on a silver platter free of charge. This pathetic argument usually rears its head on gaming sites, when people who spend $60 on software expect it to include what it was advertised by the development team as including. This is where the old fags come in swinging their dusty nuts and saying things like "When I was your age we payed $100 for an 8-bit game that was 2 hours long, and we liked it just fine!". The entire spectacle reminds me very much of that old Weird Al song where he goes on for several minutes about how rough shit was when he was your age.
This timeless, classic argument usually coincides with the new fags getting bitter over on disc dlc, or features that were advertised, then quietly removed before release only to be added in at a later date for a "small" fee. Though this "small fee" is generally 10% of the value of the "full" product. It pretty much all boils down to our old friend fanboyism. People standing up on their soapbox with their "I love big business" sandwich board and crying at the top of their lungs about how the greedy consumers are killing developers and console giants by demanding too much for their money. It's shocking the kind of things some of these people will attempt to defend. Just this week I saw someone on Kotaku telling everyone to calm down, because gosh darnit, Sony is really trying their best to fess up and make amends for having security that is akin to a piece of swiss cheese. When a company like Sony fucks up bad enough that someone gains access to their "secure" systems, resulting in the theft of over 77 million peoples personal information, and the best they can do is a halfhearted apology where the heads of the company bow for a few seconds, trying to defend their incompetence just makes you look like the corporate scrotum cleaner you are. I mean really, the heads of this company are Japanese, getting them to bow is about as difficult as getting a fast food attendant to ask if you want fries with that. Though to be realistic, it's likely that 20 million or so of those accounts were using fake info.
Lately, during this security clusterfuck, I've even seen some people that think all the fuss is about not having online access to their games for over two weeks. These people are likely mentally incapacitated, or twelve, and don't realize the gravity of having nearly all your personal information short of your sin card and picture ID stolen. In all fairness, though, Sony is offering all basic PSN customers a free month of PS+, and they might even grease their palms with a free PSN mini! This totally makes up for having to get your credit card replaced, and the knowledge that no matter what you do, some pale, malicious fuck out there has your full name/date of birth/country/city/street address/zip code and PSN ID.
Hmm, I seem to have gone off on a bit of a tangent there. Where was I? Oh yeah, old fags should shut the fuck up.
This timeless, classic argument usually coincides with the new fags getting bitter over on disc dlc, or features that were advertised, then quietly removed before release only to be added in at a later date for a "small" fee. Though this "small fee" is generally 10% of the value of the "full" product. It pretty much all boils down to our old friend fanboyism. People standing up on their soapbox with their "I love big business" sandwich board and crying at the top of their lungs about how the greedy consumers are killing developers and console giants by demanding too much for their money. It's shocking the kind of things some of these people will attempt to defend. Just this week I saw someone on Kotaku telling everyone to calm down, because gosh darnit, Sony is really trying their best to fess up and make amends for having security that is akin to a piece of swiss cheese. When a company like Sony fucks up bad enough that someone gains access to their "secure" systems, resulting in the theft of over 77 million peoples personal information, and the best they can do is a halfhearted apology where the heads of the company bow for a few seconds, trying to defend their incompetence just makes you look like the corporate scrotum cleaner you are. I mean really, the heads of this company are Japanese, getting them to bow is about as difficult as getting a fast food attendant to ask if you want fries with that. Though to be realistic, it's likely that 20 million or so of those accounts were using fake info.
Lately, during this security clusterfuck, I've even seen some people that think all the fuss is about not having online access to their games for over two weeks. These people are likely mentally incapacitated, or twelve, and don't realize the gravity of having nearly all your personal information short of your sin card and picture ID stolen. In all fairness, though, Sony is offering all basic PSN customers a free month of PS+, and they might even grease their palms with a free PSN mini! This totally makes up for having to get your credit card replaced, and the knowledge that no matter what you do, some pale, malicious fuck out there has your full name/date of birth/country/city/street address/zip code and PSN ID.
Hmm, I seem to have gone off on a bit of a tangent there. Where was I? Oh yeah, old fags should shut the fuck up.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Mortal Kombat 9
You know, I swear some games use subliminal advertising or something. At first I was completely underwhelmed by Mortal Kombat 2011. Even after watching a few trailers I thought the fighting looked stiff and unnatural. But now, after visiting some MK sites and playing the demo I have caved and even accepted the absurd $69.99 price tag. I preordered this very day from BestBuy.
One thing that is still eating away at me, though, is the way Amazon.ca is handling the preorders. While Bestbuy is offering the Sub Zero Klassic skin and fatality, Amazon.ca has claimed that the preorder bonus available through Amazon.com is exclusive to them, and Amazon.ca can't offer it. Not only that, but despite the Canadian dollar currently being higher than the American, we still get to pay $10 more than the Yanks and we also miss out on the $10 off your next game purchase bonus. Thing is, I don't even want the Sub Zero Klassic skin, since his updated one is much better. Reptile, on the other hand, looks like shit in his updated skin and his Klassic skin is only available through Amazon.com. See the issue? Also, Amazon.com will not ship the game to me since I live in Canada. I'm not sure if this goes for all games, or just Mortal Kombat due to the controversy revolving around its copious use of violence, but it's still a pain in the ass.
Well, maybe I should say a little something about the game instead of the annoying process of trying to preorder and not get ripped off.
This is the 9th Mortal Kombat game, and unlike the last 3 has done away with the 3D fighting and side stepping combat. The game now controls solely on a 2D plane, the same as the first 3 games. The game is rendered in 3D and uses the Unreal 3 engine. The most notable addition to the combat would be the X-ray moves. These brutal finishers are a type of super move that can only be preformed when your special gauge is full, and involve the character preforming a combination of hits that rupture organs and shatter bones. As the name suggests, you can see the damage happening inside with a X-ray like view. There are three section of the special bar. When the first bar is filled (and with every subsequent bar), you can preform an EX variation of one of your special moves. These usually make the move cause more damage, or add follow up hits. And while the X-rays are incredibly brutal and fun to watch, seeing Sub Zero's move makes me skeptical about the research put into the accuracy of the X-rays by the Devs. When Sub Zero starts his move, the first thing he does is reach inside you, grab an organ, freeze it, then crush it. Some have called it "The Liver Crush", but that's not the liver. It's in the center and not on the right. The spleen is on the left, so that really only leaves the possibility of the bladder, or on the female characters, maybe the womb. One might argue that it could be the Dantian, the "center" in yoga and martial arts, but the Dantian isn't an actual physical organ, so I'm just gonna go ahead and say Nether Realms Studios knows sweet fuck all about anatomy.
With an April 19th release date for North America, this is shaping up to be one brutal game. Replay value seems to be through the roof, with the return of the Krypt, a 300 mission challenge tower, and a robust story mode that seems to cover the events of the first three games, along with some twists as this is one of those convoluted "Travel back in time to change history" kind of plots. There is also a fatality training mode for those that can't pull them off consistently. Oh, and there is also tag combat now.
Things are looking up for the Mortal Kombat franchise, and after the pile of steaming excrement that was Mortal Kombat V.S DC Universe, it surely needs it.
Friday, February 25, 2011
inFAMOUS 2's Moral Choice Blunder
The first inFAMOUS had it's flaws, but was a good freeroam superpower sandbox game with an above average story. The moral choice system, however, was shallow and flawed. Well, inFAMOUS 2 has decided to change that, but whether it's for better or worse remains to be seen, but after watching this video, I'm betting it's the latter.
Okay, you've seen it, now let me chime in with this week's rant.
This is the first I've seen of the moral choice characters introduced for inFAMOUS 2, and I'm not impressed. The choice of good and evil won't even feel like a choice to me, because the black chick is so incredible stereotypical that I'll be forced to side with the white chick just so I don't have to listen to her.
Now I'm sure some moral fag is going to jump on this post and go on about how I'm racist and discriminatory and need to be more tolerant of ethnicities other than my own, but fuck that. Discrimination is simply the act of liking one thing over another, and if you're given a choice between siding with a woman who is bland, and one who makes you cringe every time she opens her fucking mouth, of course you're going to choose the former, no matter how overwhelmingly bland she is.
As has been asked in other threads, posts, tweets, and various forms of internet communication, why does evil now equate to a Haitian person with dreads and excessive amounts of tribal tattoos who looks like they practice voodoo?
This seems to be something that is all too common these days, developers adding token black people to movies, games and T.V shows so no one calls them racist for having an all white cast of characters. If this isn't the reason for the character's addition, then kindly forgive my paranoid assumptions, but she's still unbearably fucking grating to my eyes and ears, and probably sense of touch as well since this is a PS3 exclusive and you just know Sony is going to cram that shitty motion control gimmick of theirs in somewhere so they can justify the existence of the Sixaxis and Move tech.
I swear to god, if at any point during the story she waggles her finger back and fourth while moving her head from side to side and says "No you didn't", I will personally travel to Sucker Punch headquarters and smother the character designer responsible with a moist towelette soaked in Tabasco.
(Disclaimer: I have no intention of traveling anywhere or doing anything to any member Sucker Punch or anyone else on this planet. This message has been written to appease the Coalition of Uppity Naive Tossers, or C.U.N.Ts as they are more commonly known.)
Okay, you've seen it, now let me chime in with this week's rant.
This is the first I've seen of the moral choice characters introduced for inFAMOUS 2, and I'm not impressed. The choice of good and evil won't even feel like a choice to me, because the black chick is so incredible stereotypical that I'll be forced to side with the white chick just so I don't have to listen to her.
Now I'm sure some moral fag is going to jump on this post and go on about how I'm racist and discriminatory and need to be more tolerant of ethnicities other than my own, but fuck that. Discrimination is simply the act of liking one thing over another, and if you're given a choice between siding with a woman who is bland, and one who makes you cringe every time she opens her fucking mouth, of course you're going to choose the former, no matter how overwhelmingly bland she is.
As has been asked in other threads, posts, tweets, and various forms of internet communication, why does evil now equate to a Haitian person with dreads and excessive amounts of tribal tattoos who looks like they practice voodoo?
This seems to be something that is all too common these days, developers adding token black people to movies, games and T.V shows so no one calls them racist for having an all white cast of characters. If this isn't the reason for the character's addition, then kindly forgive my paranoid assumptions, but she's still unbearably fucking grating to my eyes and ears, and probably sense of touch as well since this is a PS3 exclusive and you just know Sony is going to cram that shitty motion control gimmick of theirs in somewhere so they can justify the existence of the Sixaxis and Move tech.
I swear to god, if at any point during the story she waggles her finger back and fourth while moving her head from side to side and says "No you didn't", I will personally travel to Sucker Punch headquarters and smother the character designer responsible with a moist towelette soaked in Tabasco.
(Disclaimer: I have no intention of traveling anywhere or doing anything to any member Sucker Punch or anyone else on this planet. This message has been written to appease the Coalition of Uppity Naive Tossers, or C.U.N.Ts as they are more commonly known.)
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