The Guildmasters

Yes the playstation store is finally back online so if you had any money in there you can finally check to see if it is still there. Mine is, not too much but it’s still money all the same, i’m glad to see it wasn’t missing.

There are a few error messages, in fact quite a few error messages, i’ve had to go back and try again probably more than a dozen times and that was just to get my free game. I chose Infamous and it was a mega download, over 7000 MB which actually took around 8hrs to download and after that I had to delete a bunch of stuff so I could install it.

Totally worth it for me as I rented the game but never got all the trophies so now I can, I was going to take Little Big Planet also but to be honest I don’t have the room on my old 80Gig so i’ll probably leave it.

Again I got errors when I tried to get the playstation plus 30 day free trial as I think that will be worth it but as yet it hasn’t let me get it.

So the store is back up but with many errors, unless of course it’s just my machine, which it could well be, let me know how you do.

Tony:)

Hi all,
Not good news i’m afraid, i’ve just posted this on the forum but thought I better post it here too.

It has just been announced on one of our news channels that Sony and the playstation network were in fact hacked and 77 million users ID information could have been accessed, that means names, addresses, credit card numbers and so forth.

I’m more than a little pissed off about this because Sony apparently knew about this 7 days ago, their first priority should have been to notify their customers so that at least we could have had the chance to stop any security breaches on our cards. 7 days is too late to notify that many customers of a possible ID theft. They should have been responsible and notified their customer on day 1. By not doing that they have given the thieves 7 full days to get away with…well you only have to think about the possibilities. Now we have to cancel our bank card tomorrow assuming we haven’t been cleaned out.

As far as getting back online, it could be as long as another week or more.

Tony:)

Well I decided to try a couple of the PSN download games and being a fan of pinball I decided to try this one, the full game is $9.99 which is a little on the expensive side for me but at least it is the full game and you can play online and it is trophy enabled.

First the machines, they are about as realistic as you could expect to find in a game, very smooth, lots of features once you understand them and where they are and very fun to play if you like pinball.

The one i’m concentrating on at the moment is El Dorado, because i’m going for the trophies it means really playing the machine, understanding the angles and knowing what the features are, i’ve only got two of the trophies on this one and there are at least four trophies that I know are going to be extremely hard.

Downside is it doesn’t look like there is a platinum trophy which is disappointing as if any game deserved one it should be this one. There are 24 trophies in all made up of bronze, silver and gold and i’ve managed to pick myself up 6 of those, all being bronze.

There are four machines in all and i’d say it’s only worth buying if like me your waiting on other games to come in the mail and you really want a go at some very hard trophies, it goes without saying you would have to be a person that appreciates the pinball game or your going to get fairly annoyed pretty quickly.

Overall this game is easily a 9/10 as it runs very smoothly, the balls act very naturally like a real pinball machine, the features are pretty awesome once you learn how to get them and it runs seamlessly, no glitches from what i’ve seen so far and a nice break from the norm, there is a free download demo of the El Dorado table and you can play that up to two and a half million points to give you a feel of how it plays if your thinking of buying this.

Zen Pinball: available from the playstation store on PSN

If anyone else has played this one i’d like to hear if you managed to get all the trophies, still waiting on Borderlands, seems by the time I actually get it number 2 will be out, lol, it’s obviously popular.

Tony:)

In recent weeks i’ve heard a lot of speculation about wether or not Sony will charge monthly fee for the Playstation Network.

My own thoughts on this is that I believe that would be pretty unfair, one the playstation network was one thing that kept Sony apart from other money hungry companies, Sony fans (especially myself) breathed a sigh of relief when signing up for PSN to find out it was free.

We know this could be a big extra profit for Sony should they go ahead with this idea but it isn’t necessary when you think about the amount they already make from game add-ons and so forth.

In the middle of a recession we are already switching to renting games instead of buying simply because we love playing the games but cannot afford them, you need to give something to loyal supporters that basically got you where you are.

I checked the playstation store out a few weeks ago and that great game fallout 3 had four add-ons, each was $9.99, that’s another $40 on top of the price of the game so you can’t tell me introducing yet another fee for PSN would be anything but pure greed and I never expected that from Sony.

When you visit PS Home you can already spend real cash at the virtual stores so there really is no need for a monthly fee, not to mention the amount of potential customers you’d lose by doing that.

For me there is nothing worse than paying for something every single month, I don’t like paying extra for add-ons on games i’ve already spent $50 or more on but without a doubt there is a market for it, even though I don’t like it i’ve bought add-ons myself.

Sony if your listening to your loyal fans that have stayed with you because you are the best ( i’ve had a ps1, ps2 and now ps3, as well as many other sony products) then please stay away from charging a monthly fee for PSN, it just makes sense from a business angle and from the view of playstation fans.

You can only get away with charging over and over again so long, sooner or later people are going to say enough is enough. You can’t get blood out of a stone people.

Well that’s my gripe for the day, and just in case a Sony man visits i’ll tell you this. I managed to talk all four of my sons out of buying the xbox360 and to go for the PS3, the deciding factor was simply the fee that microsoft charged for online game play, we struggled to afford the new systems and have to rent games before we buy so we don’t waste money, let’s face it who can afford to especially now, please bare that in mind when making your decision.

Feel free to add your pennies worth.

Tony