Possible PS3 GTA IV Fix Reminds Me of Tweaking a PC

Well, it seems that the good folks over at Gamespot decided to submit a tech support inquiry to Take Two regarding the lockups that were occuring on the PS3.  The response was a long, drawn out process to get the game working correctly.  I do not know if these steps are complicated, but just from looking at them, I started to realize that gaming on a console today is starting to become as difficult as gaming on a PC.

I mean some of these items seem far beyond the simple, “blow on the cartridge”, or “hit the reset button” that we are used to in console gaming.  Some examples include:

8 ) Once this has been done, manually restart you PS3 by holding down the power button for 5 seconds it will beep once and then shut down. Release the power button and re-press it and hold for about 5 seconds. The system will then boot and reset all display settings. You will be prompted to reset your display settings to how you require them.

or

6) Delete all of the system’s Internet cache. To do this scroll along the cross media bar until you reach the ‘Network’ tab, now scroll up / down the list until you reach the ‘Internet Browser’, highlight this and press X. Once you browser opens press the triangle button once, from the new menu highlight the ‘Tools’ option and press X. Scroll down the menu until you reach ‘Delete Cookies’ and press X. Confirm the files deletion. Repeat this for ‘Delete Cache’.

Maybe it is just me, but a console owner should not have to jump through these hoops to get the most anticipated game of the year working.  Rockstar delayed the game eight months, so how could they not of fixed problems like this long before the game went to gold.  It should also be noted that there are still no responses to our inquiries to Rockstar about the freezing issues.

Seduced By The Evil of GTA IV

I tried to be strong and avoid all the allure of the advertisements and never ending stories on the web.  I told myself to be calm and wait, because the best version would come later in the year.  Who needs GTA on the console.  Not me…until it looks at you sheepishly in Best Buy.

There I stood, looking at the PC games, a complete excuse to go to Best Buy, just to see the demo lounge, and GTA IV on the big screen.  I saw the beauty of the game and the true interactive freedom.  I had to show an ID to get into the area, but it was okay.  I again told myself, you don’t need it.  Just wait.  Remember how bad the controls were on the PS2 when you bought GTA: San Andreas.

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When Patches Attack!

For many, many years, PC gamers, including myself have always had to deal with one thing that has never bother console players until recently - patches.  It has always been that you would buy a console game and never have to worry about post-release fix.  It made programmers sit up and take note that what they were doing was right.  They even double and triple checked their work, because a wrong move would cost the developer a recall if the problem was big enough.

On the PC side of the equation, developers have always had the option to fix things later by patching.  I remember the first serious bug that I ran into was in King’s Quest V, near the end of the game.  I swapped to disc 7 (go 3.5″ floppies!) and got an OOPs error.  It was a malloc, or memory allocation error.  After a few calls to tech support, I fould out that the issue had come about due to my installing the VGA version on top of the 16 color EGA version.  No biggie, just wipe out the install, but it was not that easy.  I had to get a “patch” in order to fix it.  This was an unheard of issue for me.  My games had always worked.  So I logged into the Sierra BBS and got the patch, applied it and moved on.

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GTA IV DLC To Be Rather Large in Size

Computer And Video Games magazine has released their special edition magazine about the upcoming Grand Theft Auto IV.  Inside, the pages espout nothing more than the second coming of gaming greatness.  They also seem to be focusing on the 360 version in this publication more than any other version, possibly due to to a sponsorship of the special edition by Microsoft.

Some news of note has come out of the magazine, in regards to the DLC that will be coming in the fall, and it is sounding rather large in regards to the area that will be added to the game.

via playthree

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Aeropodcast #28: Guilty Pleasures and Ginger Lynn

George and Stephen joined Joe this week with an Aeropodcast that was all over the map, going everywhere from politics in games, to full motion video games, to Daikatana and at one point working in Ginger Lynn and Mark Hamill references.

Today we looked at all of our guilty pleasures and why we are driven to them. Immediately, Joe lost all of his PC street cred when he admitted to secretly enjoying Daikatana due to it being “so bad it is funny”. Stephen talked about the Megaman franchise and enjoying almost all of those games. George explained how he felt that World of Warcraft was a guilty pleasure for him, because he can’t explain why he still plays it. He also brought up Hellgate: London, which prompted a bit of heckling..

We then turned to politics, with this being an election year in the US, and decided to look at the candidate’s stands on video games. The two liberal candidates feel that there might be some need for modification to the ratings system, while John McCain feels the system is good now, and should just be monitored. We also tried to classify whether this is a liberal or conservative issue, but we all agreed with Stephen’s point that it all depends on the individual’s definition of liberal or conservative.

William H had the correct answer to our trivia question, and he has won a copy of Audiosurf, Half Life 2 and Half Life 2: Episode 1. Eric Kranz also had a question about his ongoing gaming PC build. He had some issues with temperatures and wanted a good heatsink that he could put in that would not require him to remove the motherboard. Joe recommended an Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro 7

Recorded: Sunday April 13th, 2008..
Length: 1:09:39, 108 MB. Download it directly from here.

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Netflix On Your 360?

Recently, there has been a flurry of rumors about a big announcement from Microsoft at this year’s GDC. In our podcast, we thought maybe a new SKU or Gears of War 2, but it could be something a little less gaming related.

Last week, it seems that a letter was sent out to Netflix subscribers letting them know that they could soon rent movies by using their Xbox Live account. One only has to do some simple math in their head to see where this could be leading. It could be a great way for Microsoft to get a ton of movies on their download service, and would make the loss of HD-DVD much more palettable. It would also give Microsoft and Netflix a huge footprint in the digital video rental market.

image and idea via msnbc.com

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The Red Ring Shows Up At GDC 2008

The BBC were putting together a report at Microsoft’s booth when they came across a familiar site. They actually got video footage of a console in the XNA area that was affected by the Red Ring of Death. While this is not the first time that Microsoft has suffered from a miscue by a piece of equipment, it seems like they would make sure to have a better handle on their boxes that are being used for a public demo.

via the BBC

Left 4 Dead to Zombie Walk To The 360

Official Xbox Magazine took the wraps off of Left 4 Dead on the 360. The game has been in development on the PC for some time now, but this is the first time that Valve has said that it is coming to the 360. Left 4 Dead will include 4 on 4 multiplayer over Live, but they were staying mum on whether the game will also support split-screen multiplayer. The magazine also let it be known that the 360 version is being developed by a different development house outside of Valve, by the name of Certain Affinity.

The game will launch on the PC and the 360 at the same time, and it was announced as exclusive to those two platforms, so the PS3 owners will have to find another way to get their zombie kill on.

via left4dead411.com

Aeropodcast #20 - The “Not Those Kind of Chicks” Edition

Well, this week we had George, Paul and Stephen (man I wanted to type Ringo) on the podcast today, and the come with a bevy of topics for you the listeners. As always, we want to ask all the listeners to Digg the podcast and to review us on iTunes. It boosts the podcast in searches when you do this.

Length: 51:17, 85MB Direct Link Here

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Click the jump for the show notes.

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The Idolm@aster DLC = Japanese Crack

Recently, Microsoft had a press conference in Japan touting the sales of THE IDOLM@STER and the numbers, while not impressive, were good considering the low penetration rate of the 360 in Japan. However, that was not the big news of the story. Selling a cool 100,000 copies of the game is nothing when compared to how well the DLC is selling for the game. THE IDOLM@STER downloadable content is third highest selling in the world. That’s right, a title that is not available outside of Japan, and has only sold 100,000 units has the third highest selling DLC in the world on Xbox Live.

via Kotaku

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