Earlier today several news sources(that’s right I cited the Christian Science Monitor, what you gonna do about it?) began reporting that a very bad bug had crept into the old “fat” (as in, not slimline) PS3 consoles that caused some major problems when it came to connecting to the PlayStation Network, syncing trophies and generally playing games.

** UPDATE ** Apparently all is well now, Heavy Rain here I come…

Sony got around to doing an official announcement soon after and to be fair to them have been pushing Twitter and other updates out to try and keep people happy.

So what are the facts?

• Firstly this problem only effects the old fat black PS3’s and most reports have focused on the original launch ones being more of a problem.
• Yes that’s all of GF:UK!
• Upon trying to sign in to the PSN you will receive the error “An error has occurred. You have been signed out of PlayStation Network (8001050F)”.
• Launching any game with trophy support will result in the error “Failed to install trophies. Please exit your game.” and even worse may remove any trophies you had earned for this game.
• The clock will reset to Jan 1, 2000
• If you try to change the clock you will get, “The current date and time could not be obtained. (8001050F)”
• You won’t be able to playback rental content from the PSN Store.

Basically if you have a fat black PS3, don’t turn it on for the next 24 hours.

OK so there are definitely some serious issues here with a majority of people getting this error not being able to play games at all. Especially annoying considering that Heavy Rain has just come out and Final Fantasy XIII is out in 9 days!

Negative stuff aside this is actually no where enar as bad as some people are making out. I’m no console fanboy and no matter what this is a major fuck up for Sony however comparing it to Red Ring of Death is retarded. Firstly this is expected to be a temporary issue, secondly it is unlikely to reoccur since the fault has now been identified and thirdly it is not writing the hardware off, look at the error the complete worst case is you loose a few trophies. No doubt it’s annoying but it’s hardly having to post your console back to the factory and wait a week for a new one with no fucking data on it at all.

Sony posted around 3 hours ago that they will have the issue sorted within 24 hours so take a deep breath, go to the gym, put on your PC or 360 and wait until tomorrow before getting too excited.

Oh and in case you are upset here’s the seemingly undying Hitler Internet meme done up for Sony’s latest fiasco!

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I think it’s pretty cool. The whole thing seems a bit odd in places, but when you remember that it was made to be show in 3D and on a cinema screen, that weird time vortex sequence suddenly makes a lot more sense. Not much longer to go now!

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OK it wasn’t very revealing but come on it was kind of cool right? Here are some mock-up posters they did with the actors, they look really cool. I included smaller versions since the dudes running the website embedded 1MB versions (serious guys your bandwidth must be dying) but you can download the really pretty large versions if you click the images.

Blood Harvest Movie Poster

Death Toll Movie Poster

Left 4 Dead Movie

The Guys behind all this great work are called Splinder (that’s in Italian) but you can find the community site for the film here and the still under construction official site for the Left 4 Dead Movie (there I gave you some SEO love) in that link.

They also fleshed out some details in a Q&A session on the site with the following information coming up;

• The film will feature a tank but it will be CG
• They are unsure at the moment as to whether or not the “new infected” will be featured
• The story will incorporate elements of all L4D campaigns
• It will be free to watch
• It will be voiced in English

I encourage you all to post them some positive comment on their shoutbox as a whole bunch of morons decide to bitch in it. Sigh.

To Splinder I say “Good job so far guys and good luck on the project”

What does everyone else think? Good? Bad? Waiting for more before you reserve judgement?

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If you weren’t impressed by that you should probably stop reading now.

Augmented reality (AR from here on in) is an up and coming field that everyone here at Guardian Force is  a big fan of, this latest endeavour by Microsoft is not only technologically impressive but also so promising for the future development of the field.

Firstly the improved operation of the overall mapping functionality is fantastic, no more glitchy jumping, no more load times when I scroll, seamless, quick and attractive.

Secondly the new perspective (sim city as he called it) is also amazing, the Google Maps part 3D view is good but this is a serious improvement, now we can see things in size comparison and even gauge how far apart they are etc. I really liked just this mode with AR features and he made the passing reference to blog post being linked to locations etc, I am sure tweets will follow.

Then we get down to the really cool stuff, the link between 3D and street view is amazing and their improved more dynamic version of street view is also impressive.

Everything from this point in is just fantastic, the live video is great (think of all the camera it could stream from, concerts etc!) and all the interlink information and meta data has seemingly unlimited potential development, think of all the gaming developments alone this could bring.

Lastly, if anyone thinks there is going to be a privacy problem from this your a twat and please fuck off back to facebook and your abacus.

for everyone else, what do you think impressive or am I over-egging it?  What was your favourite feature?

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Nostalgia aside this is still one of the best RTS games ever made and not only that it’s for-bearer (Command & Conquer) and it’s less impressive but none the less fun offspring (Tiberian Sun) are also available, completely free, just visit http://www.commandandconquer.com/classic and get downloading.

Also this game series was one of the first to actually employ actors (real life!) to do cut scenes and I don’t think any man who played Red Alert ever forgot Tanya (shake ‘em baby!) so get to the site and download Red Alert at the very least, if not all of them.

What is this heresy? A company offering real games for free? Well it’s all in celebration of the next release and hailed conclusion to the Tiberian saga. I hope it turns out to be as innovative and fun as it’s past was but I honestly think that RTS has it’s limitations and while I have no doubt C&C4 will be a fantastic game with amazing graphics I won’t be picking it up right off the bat simply because I don’t want an RTS right now.

I actually feel guilty for not pre-ordering after they have gone to all this effort buy don’t worry guys I will buy it eventually it’s just not going to go up against FFXIII for my time, sorry :(

If by any chance the guys at EA end up reading this thanks for giving us a free piece of our history, it is actually awesome of you to do this.

What does everyone else think, do you reckon giving away old games in set-up to sequels is a good marketing tactic/customer reward? Could more franchises benefit from this?

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Final Fantasy XI was the first “full on” MMO we played as a guild (to be honest it was one of the first one anyway) and it was fantastic, as flawed as it was in the outset we had literally 100’s of hours of fun and team work and when the announcement came that XIV would carry the online franchise on, well we were happy.

We have slowly been given details of the new job system-esque and the site now has details on the different Disciplines and in depth details of classes inside them for the War and Hand disciplines. I will do a post once the section is complete looking at all the classes but for now I thought it would be good just to take a look at how the “Discipline” and Armoury system work.

In FFXIV all abilities and jobs are split into one of four Disciplines, these are War, Magic, Hand and Land.

War and Magic look to be focused around combat while Land and Hand around resource and crafting. It’s an interesting twist to make the crafting classes full on jobs. The Armoury system allows you free range to switch in between the different classes and Disciplines but based on the fact you have to “learn” skills I can see it being inefficient to take more than one from each Discipline at most.

For those who don’t already know the Armoury system in FFXIV is a way of limiting what abilities your character uses. It’s basically the inverse of usual systems, instead of Mage’s not being able to pick up a sword you simply cannot use your Magical abilities while wielding one. However switching your equipment around to robes and staffs and all your Magic is suddenly available again.

This works for all equipment, whatever you are wielding and wearing your character will become, plenty of freedom which is great but as I said before I imagine specialising will be the only way to go at higher levels.

Really, REALLY looking forward to this, may even think about reactivating my old FFXI character in the meantime…

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NO!

Leave it alone. Put it down. Stop messing… AHH.. put it down! Thats better.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2010/02/03/get-ready-for-watchmen-2/

I hope this story isn’t true. Do you?

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OK we are PC gamers but we’re not Windows fanboys, I like Apple in general and we all have iPones, iPods etc.

That being said I always feel Apple should be going that extra mile to innovate and push boundaries, they have done it before and when they go around calling themselves “innovation specialists” and “industry leaders” I am going to expect special things from them but I can’t help feeling like the guy in this video after watching the iPad presentation.

All right so it’s over the top but still made me giggle.

I strongly recommended you put the time aside to read Stephen Fry’s very informative post on this, it’s a long one but worth it, thanks for the effort on this one Mr. Fry. Alas it is time for a less cultured opinion than his on here though, namely my own.

Just like Mr Hitler in the video when the rumours first started flying on this I wanted it to be good, I wanted Apple to smash the market to pieces with a new piece of cutting edge tech that I would pre-order tonight.

What we got (and I hate to say this because it’s going to be the most annoying cliche over the next week so super big sorry in advance) is a big fucking iPhone with no camera and no sim card and most importantly nothing new.

Tablets are new, they are only just becoming good enough to warrent being a full time product for the everyday person, but to have Apple of all companies bring us something which almost everyone I have spoke to agree is so mediocre then I just can’t get on board.

Lets do the negative first. It’s not hard to spot.

No OSX or Multitasking

The first big upset is no OS. I didn’t expect the latest version of OSX to be given to me in handy tablet form but I wanted something, jesus even M$ can make mobile OS software and special touch screen editions, can’t apple be bothered?

I have seen some “comeback” to this point saying that people want it to be simple, they want it to be cheap.

Well two things; if you want it to be cheap then stop looking at the Apple version, this is a premium product from a company infamous for making high quality, expensive designer goods. For Geeks.

The iPhone is expensive but it is beautiful. Not just in a designery flowers and sleek edges way but in a world in the palm of your and way. Other things do what it does better but the iPhone has the edge because it’s simply looks and feels better.

Secondly, simple? FUCK OFF why should the geeks and businesses who have funded this shit being developed for the last 40 years have to have things dumbed down for them because the general public decided technology as suddenly “in”. Go and play football and drink shots and stop forcing big companies like Google and Apple to fuck projects up because you are so stupid *cough* Google Maps *cough*.

OK step back there, i’m not being patronising or elitist or anything else, I want everyone to embrace technology and I understand it should be accessible but god damn it please don’t use this as an excuse for the lack of major, if not essential functionality.

No USB

I can’t even guess what the pro-iPad people are saying in response to this. USB is needed for accessibility (something which is supposed to be a goal here) but Apple are so intent on controlling it all that they wont even let us use memory sticks, why? Because they know full well people will use it to expand their functionality and they [Apple] hate that.

Fry goes more into the Apple control argument in his post and I won’t pretend for a second I can articulate it better than him so go and read it, bottom line of my opinion is this is a childish move.

No Flash

Jesus I thought they would have learnt from the iPhone here. Every major software update we are promised flash support, do we ever get it? No. Now it looks like it wqill never come to iPhone and iPad is not even going to try.

Going to geek mode for a second here.

This is not as bad as it initially seems as HTML 5 can do a lot more than people realise and I assume that iPad will support this with Safari patches however why not just put basic Flash support on? I just want to watch YouTube and play Newgrounds!

Most people won’t understand the HTML5 thing and I think, in time, Flash will matter less but it’s going to be a long time.

No Phone Calls or Camera

Actually I don’t care about these features, it’s not actually supposed to be a big iPhone, it doesn’t need them. Besides Skype App renders this argument void and I would like to see you take a picture with a 10 inch flat camera.

On to some good points about it then, I told you it was not all just bitching.

It Has the iPhone Magic

As Fry says on his blog, it looks fantastic. I am sure he is 100% right about holding it makes you want one. It’s a small saving grace but it’s almost a neccessity for an Apple product and its one field the iPad doesn’t disappoint in. I will not truly know until i touch one.

It’s Quick

It’s quick as hell, compared to most netbooks at a similar price it is going to blow them out of the water. That solid state is just what the next wave of tech ordered but unfortunately it’s probably the only thing in it that is.

It Will Hijack App Success

Ok this is going to be a major point of the post.

The ONLY reason (in my opinion) the iPhone is so successful is the Apps other people make for Apple and their customers. All Apple to do was the initial push of  ”Look at the sexiest fucking gadget EVER, every one of your customer will have one” and we all ran with it. After that major players like Facebook, Google, Xanga and all the banks etc ran with it too and from there on in it was self reciprocating.

If Apps had never taken off I almost guarantee I would never have got one, the cost would not have been worth it. Whether or not you attribute this success to amazing Apple marketing, luck or a little of both is up to you but for iPad to succeed it needs the same thing to happen.

I think, hand on my heart, this hype is strong enough to carry the iPad into a decent portion of people’s lives. Once it does that the cycle will begin again and the $’s will roll into Apple HQ.

Will I Buy One?

Probably not version 1. I would like one but I am not buzzing about it.

There is a lot of potential and as I said, maybe some amazing Apps will get produced and it will all of a sudden be a much, much better deal but for now it simply isn’t a big enough leap in tech to warrant my hard earned cash.

Plus of course the “England” tax means it will likely be £600 for basic.

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Watch out for the description of Jack (1005 accurate), the reference to Richard’s guy-liner and the pirate. Enjoy!

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