Playstation Plus

I’ve got a few good things to say about Sony’s Playstation plus, however a lot of bad things. Granted it’s still in it’s infant stages, but it’s so lacking at the moment, especially when you compare it with the Xbox Live service.

When firmware 3.60 was release, with the online storage option, I finally took the plunge and dropped £40 on a Playstation Plus subscription. I’m in a fortunate position where I have 2 PS3′s, (one in the front room, and one in the bedroom), and the idea of being able to save to the “cloud”, then pick up again in another room really appealed to me. I also like the idea of the automatic download feature, that basically downloading the updates to the games while the machine is switched off. This would fix one of the things I find most annoying about the PS3 over the Xbox, size of the updates, for some reason updating a game on the Xbox takes literally seconds, where the PS3 takes minutes….sometime even hours (Currently updating GT5 as we speak)

Now maybe I should have read up on this first, or at least spent some time in the forums reading peoples impressions first before dropping the £40, but was what I was hoping for.

• The ability to save directly to the cloud, and pickup on another PS3 (just like the Steam Cloud)
• The ability for the PS3 to download my updates while I slept (this way I never had to see again the “There is an update, do you want to download it” screen)

What I actually got….

The ability to manually backup my save games to the cloud (the same functionality we used to have with a USB stick……). Unfortunately non of my games recognise the cloud storage, so it means I have to manually download my save game, then remember to re-upload it once I’ve finished playing. This has already caught me out a number of times….I fired up a game of the other PS3, only to have to quit to the XMB to copy the save game local….or even fire up the other PS3 to copy the game to the cloud :s

On the subject of copying, Sony really don’t make it easy. Probably like most people, the first thing I did was to copy all my save games on to the cloud storage, this I had to do once save at a time !…..there is a “group saves by game” function, but you still have to go into the grouped folder and manually copy each one across….took me an evening to back everything up.

Next the storage size…..150Mb ?….in this day and age…..when each one of my later Fallout 3 saves were over 5Mb each….obviously I didn’t have room to fit them all on, come on Sony, if the likes of Dropbox can offer us 2GB for free, 150Mb is a joke.

So, once I’d back up all my saves, I thought…ok time for the automatic download setting. Once I’d finally found the setting, I selected my 2 hour windows of “when to download” and left it too it. I then went to the 2nd Ps3 to set up the automatic download on that, in the hope to select a different 2 hour windows, but was politely told that I already have automatic download setup on my account, and I do have it on this or the other 1, but not at the same time …….really ?

Now if my understanding is currect, the automatic download feature is useless if you use the cloud storage, as it uses your local save game files as it’s base of “what to download”, if there are no saves on the PS3 (which on mine there aren’t as they’re all in the cloud), then it doesn’t download anything !….*clap, clap, well done Sony*

Ok, so finally the content, and what you really get for your £40 a year. Now I agree, you do get benefit when you have a plus subscription, but are they worth it.

Below is the list of what I downloaded from the Playstation plus “benefits”

Sonic the Hedgehog (not HD’d up, just added trophies), looked and sounded horrible

Astro Tripper, Pix’n Love and Enigmo (all mini games, played once, and deleted)

inFamous 2 Dynamic theme (does look pretty cool, I have to say)

All apart from the theme have now been deleted, this was from the below list of possible downloads for the month of March

2 March to 5 April 2011
All titles are for PlayStation 3 unless stated otherwise.

Games
Sonic the Hedgehog – one month exclusive for PlayStation Plus members
Astro Tripper
Pix’n Love Rush (minis) – two weeks early for PlayStation Plus members
Enigmo (minis) – two weeks early for PlayStation Plus members

Full Game Trial
Prince of Persia

Special Offers
PlayTV Live Chat – 25% off until 6 July 2011
Fat Princess – 50% off
Fat Princess (PSP) – 50% off
StarDrone (PS3) – 50% discount on day of launch
Premier Manager – 50% off

Dynamic themes and Premium Avatars
EyePet Avatars
inFamous 2 theme
Sega Mega Drive Classics theme
MotorStorm Apocalypse Urban Avatar
MotorStorm Apocalypse Burning Avatar
MotorStorm Apocalypse Rookie XMB theme

Maybe I’m just disappointed as I was expecting more, I was hoping for Steam Cloud type storage, I was hoping to never see a “Update is available” screen again, but currently this isn’t the case.

Maybe now they have the Cloud storage backbone in place, developers will release updates to their games to allow saving directly to this. I do however think that if they get their butts into gear and get this working properly before the NGP (Sony’s Next Generation Portable aka PSP2) comes out, then saving a game on the PS3, then continuing on the NGP ticks all my boxes. I know that Microsoft attempted to do this Windows to Windows Mobile to Xbox….but it’s not really happened yet.

Personally if anybody is planning on dropping on the PS+ subscription, I don’t think it’s worth it yet, give it a couple of months and see if developers start to implement the “direct to cloud” saves.

Tags: Astro, bedroom, cloud, Download, Dynamic, feature, firmware, fortunate position, functionality, game, games, Impressions, infant, infant stages, machine, option, pickup, Pix, Playstation, plunge, Princess, PS3, reading, reason, screen, Size, sony, steam, steam cloud, storage option, time, xbox, xbox live, xmb

Xbox 360 Kinect

I’ve been interested in the Kinect ever since it was announced at the 2009 E3 show, under the name of Project Natal.

I was able to pre-order back in September, so me being the early adopter I am, ordered it straight away.

Well todays the day, and it’s finally release day for the Kinect, and I have to say I’ve pleasantly surprised. I’ll be perfectly honest with you, I was extremely dubious of how good this would be, as y previous experience with any camera controlled titles, have been a bit rubbish to be honest. The most recent one I played was You’re In the Movies, and to be honest, it was utter rubbish.

First thing I have to say about it, is I didn’t realise just how big it is, it’s around the length of the next Xbox 360S.

Next thing I notices were all the cables in the box, there were loads. These however won’t be needed if you have one of the newer 360S console. If you don’t, don’t worry, you have a mass of cables to power the kinect, and extend the USB sockets of the standard 360.

So how was it…well let me tell you, pretty bloody good !

Once I’d updated the software for the Kinect, the Kinect Video and Kinect Adventures, we were good to go.

First of all you active the Kinect by waving at it, once acknowledged it fires up the kinect dashboard, which is different to the normal Xbox dashboard. I then started with setting up a Kinect ID, this essentially joins your Kinect ID with your profile. As part of the setup, the kinect has you standing in various poses, in different locations in your room. Once complete it has your height, build and face in stored against your profile. This is used later for jumping in and out of games.

The next step was the Kinect tuning. It ran through evening from lighting, to sending a test signal to each speaker to measure the background noise.

Next was the the voice control. I was shocked how good this was. Basically you say “Xbox….”, and a bar pops up at the bottom with all available controls, or you can say what you see on the screen. So basically if you want to watch the Sky Player, you simply say…”Xbox..Sky”. I tried this out with the Last.fm app, and was surprised it heard me over my Happy Hardcore station…but it heard the commands fine. I even tried a series of stupid accents, and it still understood me.

Finally I tried was the Kinect video. This is basically video calling on the Xbox, but with the added advantage of being able to video call your MSN contacts. Now this had to be one of the coolest features of the Kinect. If you start a video call, the Kinect tracks your face, so if you walk up and down the room, the motorised camera will follow and keep focused on you. I though this was cool, but not as cool as when I sat down on the sofa next to C, the camera panned out to focus on both of us !

So time for Kinect Adventures. As expected, this is essentially a tech demo, basically the Wii Sports for Kinect. There are only a 5 mini game, but they cover the full features of the controller.

First of all, Rallyball is a sort of handball on speed. You hit a ball at a target, while deflecting balls that are coming at you. You can use your hands, legs and head, so in that sense it truly utilizes the Kinect’s potential. But only in a limited way.

Reflex Ridge puts your avatar on a platform, where you need to react to avoid obstacles. You will duck, jump and dodge your way through a gauntlet to reach the finish line.

Space Pop is a gravity-defying game that puts you in a small room filled with bubbles that you need to hit to pop. The game uses depth in an interesting way.

River Rush is similar to Reflex Ridge, but you have more control. As you cruise down a series of rapids in a raft, you move left and right to steer, and jump to elevate your transportation while collecting stars along the way.

Finally, 20,000 Leaks is perhaps the simplest game of the bunch. Cracks appear in the glass wall that is holding back the ocean, and you need to plug them with your body.

Initially I played the games solo, but later C came to join me, the kinect automatically recognised her from the Kinect ID we had set up, and added her straight into the game.

Finally, there are a lot of discussions going on about space and lighting for the Kinect. I personally had about 1.5 – 2 metres of space in front of me, and the Kinect seemed very happy with this. As for the lighting, once I’d created my Kinect ID, I was able to switch off the main light, and just use my smaller side light. This picked up without issue.

All in all, a very good device, and can’t recommend one enough. At this moment in time, I’ll be more inclined to use the Kinect over the Playstation move, as I just think it works a little better, the only downside is I think the games will be limited to Wii type games.

As always, unboxing photos below.

Tags: background noise, cables, e3 show, early adopter, games, lighting, next xbox, rubbish, test signal, usb sockets, voice control, xbox, xbox 360, xbox 360s, xbox dashboard

How to hide items on your Facebook news feed

Ok, just a quick blog post, but some people may find this useful . If you are like me and have a number of friends of facebook that play a lot of the facebook apps such as Farmville, Mafia Wars, Cafe World, etc and tend to hit the publish button every time they fire up the game, or what seems like every 30 seconds, your Facebook news feed, like mine can get a little crowded.

You could un-friend them, but that’s not very friendly, and if they enjoy playing the games, and I’m sure they have other friends that may finds the post of interest (eg, if they are playing the same game), but for me, it just makes my News Feed unreadable.

The solution is simpler than you think !,  when you see one of the offending posts, just mouse over the top right hand corner, and click the hide button. This will hide this post, and give you the option to hide notifications from just this app, or from this user. Hiding the app, will hide all posts from this application.

I spent 5 minutes running through my news feed, hiding all the apps, and now my feed just has relevant information to me, it’s like the good old days of Facebook again.

edit : Just has a message from Chris, and apparently if you just use Lite version of Facebook, you don’t get any apps showing.

Tags: app, blog, button, cafe, Chris, facebook, farmville, feed, fire, game, games, hide, interest, lot, Mafia, mafia wars, mine, mouse, news, news feed, notifications, number, post, same game, solution, time, wars, world