Buying from the PSN

I swear the PS Network Store is going to kill me or at least make me broke. I have never ventured into the Xbox 360’s store even once and was never tempted. The way they do the pricing by having you buy points always put me off. I want to know how much I’m paying up front and not some arbitrary point amount MS has assigned to thhe game.

The PSN Store got me a few months back with the additions to Dead Space. From that moment on I was truly addicted.  Every Thursday I check the store for what’s new and worthy of my attention. And almost every week there’s some game that’s been released that I want. And unlike the xbox 360 store, I actually kniw how much I’m paying for the game I’m buying.

Last week saw me give way to my carnal desire for yet another puzzle game and Zuma got downloaded. I also grabbed Asteroids on crrack, Super Stardust HD.  Me and City were istantly addict4d to Stardust and played it most of the weekend.

This week sees me Numblast, another puzzle game, and Topatoi The Great Tree Story, a 3D platformer, have both found their way onto my PS3 somehow. It’s really hard to say no to games when they cost less than a tenner. This of course is always my excuse.

As I sit here writing this I’m very impatiently waiting for Numblast to finish downloading so that I can play it before I have to start working.  I fear I may lose my life to this simple little game though. Puzzle games are seriously going to be the death of me.

Patapon 2 = Digital Only

As mentioned here, Patapon 2 will be a digital only release in North America. Now while I can understand the irrational attachment to having a physical UMD disk, I really do think this is the way forward. I have an irrational attachment to my physical disks, but I’m trying to let that go and embrace digital only releases. I like the idea of being able to just pay and poof I’ve got my game. No more waiting for the postman and hoping it doesn’t get lost. No more cursing at the cost of postage or hunting down a site that doesn’t charge me postage.

I actually have several small games on my PSP and PS3 that are digital only. And ya know what? I’m actually rather happy with them. They’re on my HDD or mem stick and if I like I can download them again whenever I like should I lose them. So all those people bitching about losing it forever if they lose their memory stick can fuck off. And those saying that memory sticks are exensive, they can fuck off too. I paid £20 for my 4GB memory card for my PSP. That’s cheap.

I do think digital only prices for major release games should be cheaper than what buying them physically. Here in the UK Patapon 2 is £20 from the PSN. I can buy it from Game for £18. Not a huge price difference, but it’s enough for me to buy it from Game instead of buying it directly from the PSN digitally.

Besides, if people hadn’t noticed, this is the future. Memory and HDDs are getting cheaper by the day. There’s really little reason these days to have a hard copy pther than an irrational attachment to it.

Rise of the Argonauts

The review for RotA is up and has been for a little bit. I’m not terribly happy with the game. It really could have been so much more story-wise.

Rise of the Argonauts

More Games

Got 2 more games in today for review. LocoRoco 2 for the PSP and Rise of the Argonauts for the PS3.

I’ve actually been playing LocoRoco 2 since I bought it so that’ll be easy to write. Brilliant game. I love it.

I’m not so sure about Argonauts. I love Greek mythology and I know this is going to be a terrible butchering of it. If I can get past that then I think maybe I can enjoy the game.

Broken Computer and gaming awards

My computer has been having “issues” this last couple weeks so that’s my excuse for no content. It’s still broken though so I’m posting this from work when I should actually be working.

In lieu of content though I suggest you go visit Ready Up and vote on the Game Awards

To Trophy or Not

So I’ve got a PS3 now which means trophies. Anyone can look and see just how poor my Xbox 360 gamer score is.  Racking up the points really isn’t a big deal to me. I know there are plenty of gamerscore fanatics out there, a friend of mine is one. He’s not happy if he doesn’t get every single point out of an Xbox game. He’s even been known to borrow/rent crap games jsut to get the easy score out of them.

I understand the fanatic competitiveness that having the highest score on a leaderboard. That’s essentially what the Xbox gamerscore has become, and everyone wants the highest score.There’s even functionality within the Xox 360’s interface to compare your score with your friend’s.

The PS3 has trophes. It’s a similiar system generally speaking, but you don’t really have an overal ranking gamer score like on the Xbox. The caveet is that not all games have trophy support, be they old or new. Why developers aren’t releasing games with trophies, I don’t know. It can’t be that difficult to put them in since they have very likely done the achievements for the Xbox. What do I know though. Maybe it’s hard to do.

Here’s what I don’t understand though is this. Why the hell would someone decide to completely not buy a game that they are really interested in just because there are no trophies? I jsut don’t get that. If you really like a game why would you not jsut play it? Why are trophies so fucking important that you’d deprive yourself of something genuinely fun that you want to play?

Anyone who knows me will know that this hasn’t come from nowhere, but something has gotten a hair up my ass. This time it was numberous comments on the news post on PS3Trophies.org regarding the announcement of Fallout 3 getting trophies.  Amid the bullshit are many comments regarding the purchase of the game vs it having trophies. One comment even said they had no plans to buy it, despite really wanting to play it, until this announcement was made.

Fuck gamerscore and trophies. Play games because you want to.

ME Review is Up

The Mirror’s Edge Review is up. Overall it’s an okay game when it really could have been amazing. Small things annoyed me and kept the game from being the wonderful thing I was hoping for.

Mirror’s Edge

Promo copy of Mirror’s Edge came in the post today. Two hours into it and I want to scream. Seriously, there is only so many times you can miss a jump and fall to your death before it really starts to piss you off. And it isn’t like I’m crap at platform games, cause I’m not.  Stupid game is driving me batshit crazy.

After playing for a mere two hours I just quit out of the game. I haven’t a clue how to save or when it saves so when I turn it on again I’ll be in for a surprise; probably one I won’t like.

I’m really disappointed,, but will play more before final decision time. Right now though it isn’t looking good.