Sidewaysgravity Blog

If you are one of the users who has been trying to get into home recently, only to find out you need to update to 1.36 and while waiting for the download to start, your playstation instead decides to shut off, your in luck. Whew…

I have a fat ps3, you will notice that when you open up Home it will tell you that you need to upgrade. Dont press anything. On the lower side of your ps3 you will see the yellow Hard drive light flickering or on solid. You have to wait until it is no longer active before pressing (x). For me this took about 30 seconds or so. Once the light was off, the update worked perfect.

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First things first, the rumor is False. I received in my inbox the other day a message from a friend stating that on Sept. 12 and 13th that people should not play cod4 in protest to infinity ward for making exclusive map content available only on the xbox 360. While looking around for more information about it today I was glad to see that Infinity Ward has commented on this as being false. Now the only question is whether or not to buy the prestige mode game box for the night vision goggles…

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One game that has always called my attention has been Lair. It was an early release for the ps3 and got a lot of criticism for the controls and it really hurt the overall sales of the game. I heard that they eventually came out with a patch for the game that allowed players to use the analog sticks instead of using the 6 axis for flying. While I could not bring myself to pay the full price for the game; now years after the release it is pretty easy to pick up for less than $20 at any major game trading store. So finally I decided to pick up the game at Gamestop for only $15.

My first impressions of the game were good. Once I got my Y-Axis inverted and got used to the basic controls it seemed pretty simple. For one of the first games to come out on the ps3, the graphics of the game are pretty good too. Overall the game has a lot of potential. Although I only about half way done with the game, you can still see how the control structure is a major downfall to the game. You almost need someone who has played the game to sit beside you and tell you how and what to do. There have been a few times where I have spent all my lives playing a level, and only right before my last death, I finally figure out what it is I am supposed to do. The game will tend to be very detailed about what you should do, and then later say nothing at all. So you think, if its not obvious, they will tell me like they did before, so you wait and die, until you eventually find out they are not going to tell you.

It reminds me of playing some of the original tekken games against my older brothers. They knew all the combos and would always beat me, so my only chance was to pound the control and hit every button as hard and fast as I could and hope that one of them would work. With Lair, I find myself doing that a lot as well. My character will give me encouraging signs, confirming what I am doing is right (pounding all the buttons). I will say that with time I have begun to notice certain patterns to how to defeat enemies, and it is getting easier. But at the same time, I die a lot still and think that there are certain things that I am missing about the game, and that if only I knew what it was, I could do much better.

When I am not totally frustrated at the game, I do enjoy it. It still is fun to land in the midst of a large group of enemy infantry (R2 and L2) and burn, swipe and eat your occasional enemy. For $14.99, it is a pretty good game. Just take into account that it can be extremely frustrating at times, and you may not have a single clue as to what you are doing. I found it useful to watch some online videos and read up about the controls of the game. If your just starting the game and you cant figure out how to beat your enemy when you are flying along side him… just make a quick movement of the controller in the left or right direction… seems simple but it took me a while to figure out. If you can get the game for $10, I would say give it a try.

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After a long wait and feeling like those still playing cod4 were forgot about, Infinity Ward has released patch 1.40 but with very little information. From what I have read in forums, this should be fixing some of the hacks that have plagued the game for a while now. As a person who doesnt use any hacks, I am glad to see this patch come out.

Although the next Call of Duty is just about to come out, cod4 will continue to be played for a long time and will benefit from this patch. I was hoping for them to add trophies as well, but again with the new game coming out soon, it was highly unlikely.

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I just finished a quick look around with the new system update to version 3.0. As always, I think it is easier to see what’s wrong and the bugs than to see the benfits. One item that I immediatly love is that the battery indicator no longer covers the clock. One thing I hate is the “what’s new” news ticker that shows up below the clock. They have moved where you go to disable it, it’s now under the system settings but apparently they forgot to make it work. You can set it to on or off and it makes no difference. Hopefully they will patch it soon.

The only other change I was not thrilled about was how clunky the buddy list seems now. I have yet to find a way to slim it down. It seems like the older version seemed a little cleaner. The new one seems more cluttered although I didn’t see any major updates to that area.

I do like that you can now access your recieved messages by buddy instead of having to view them all throught the recieved folder. There are a couple more features that have been included as well, such as a greater integration of the playstation store into the XMB, but I am still not sure how I feel about that. I can already see my XMB becoming the next ad space for Sony, and it is starting with 3.0. Overall I have mixed feelings about this update with some features I love and others I will have to live with and hope they address at a future date.

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This post is a continuation of a previous post about the (8002AB0B) error that I received when trying to install almost any game downloaded over the PSN.

Last night I think I finnaly found the source of the error code that has plagued me the past few months. It came down to an Ethernet cable, once replaced everything worked great. The playstation website along with there customer service had never mentioned this as a possible issue, but if you are having this same error message I would suggest trying the following.

• Change the way you connect, if you are using a wireless connection, try hooking up through a direct connection.
• If you are wired through a router, bypass it by plugging directly into the cable modem.
• Try switching your ethernet cable for a different one.

For me, I hooked up the ps3 directly into the cable modem first and used a different ethernet cable. I was able to download five games and install without issues. I noticed that the games that gave me the errors were the larger 1GB + games. Once I saw it worked hooked directly to the modem, I reconnected to through the router but with the new ethernet and downloaded a couple more games. So far all are working great now. The interesting thing is I could still connect and play online games fine with the bad cable, but it must have been corrupting the download data to cause the error.

Unfortunately the main reason to get this fixed was to play the new Uncharted 2 multiplayer beta which I had a key for. I got it installed only to see that the time period had expired.

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After downloading the new demo for crash commando from yhe playstation store i recieved the following error when trying to install the game:

An error occured during the install operation. {80029564}

So I deleted the install and tried again. I re-downloaded the whole thing and did the install once more and got the same message. Other demos work fine but this one has a problem. Let me know if anyone else has this issue.

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The latest update 2.70 came out today and I just wanted to write up a couple of the features that this update will have.

• You can now have text chats with your friends while playing games. This could be a nice feature to have instead of sending messages and constantly checking your recieved box. I am still waiting for the ability to view a recieved message when clicking on your friend, it shows a notification by there name, but you have to check your received box for the message.
• You can now get information on a game by opening the options (triangle) while you are on the icon of the game and selecting “internet search”.
• Copy and paste, copy text on a website and paste it into a chat window. I cant say I will use this much.
• Option to reduce the difference in volume level between tracks so that the music doesn’t suddenly get loud. Although I am not sure yet, I hope this works on the music that a game plays when you have the icon selected. There are a few games (Iron Man Demo) that blare out every time I select them.

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The Hub was recently re-opened on playstation Home as a new area to explore. To get to it there is a small circular grafitti mark that has been placed on a wall in the main central area that connects to all of the rest. When you first enter the hub you will be put on a “quest” or scavenger hunt after a breif introduction, and you will have to go find some pieces of paper.

• The first piece of paper that I found was located behind the three teleporting pads which are directly to your left as you walk down the main entry stairs. There should be a robot like statue back there and the paper is to the left of it.
• The second, if you keep moving away from the main stars toward the corner of the room there should be a plant sitting on the ledge. Move up to it and you should get it.
• The final piece of paper was located near the base of the staircase that is on the far side of the entrance. It is easiest if you are between the staircase going up and the staircase going down to the message board room. There should be a small ledge where you can look at the pillar and find the final piece of paper.

From there the system kept crashing on me so that is where I stopped.

Update (3-25-09)

After collecting the three images I was unable to progress any further due to technical issues so I gave up. I tried again today and noticed on the scrolling information that if you had collected all three pieces of paper and it wouldnt let you go further, than to unregister and try joining again. To unregister you simply need to walk up to a box on the wall near the entrance where you can unregister.

Once I re-entered the Hub and joined again, I was able to complete the first task of collecting the peices of paper and get access to the AFK website. The first puzzle you select the cat and you get the code 17PARIS

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Reading around today I saw that the long anticipated playstation network game “flower” is set to release this Thursday with the normal weekly update of the Playstation Store. (2-12-09). This is another one of the inexpensive (cheap) games you can purchase on the playstation store. The price should only be $9.99 US. There have been several reviews of the game and most of them have all been great. It might just be that quick game you will need to play inbetween breaks of Killzone 2 which is set to realase later this month.

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