Viewing entries tagged with 'playstation'

Xi: I heard you like games

29 March 2009 | 1 Comments

Tags: playstation, home

I had pent up fanboy-like optimism for Playstation's Home since it was announced in March 2007 and I lapped up the beta client in December last year. But apart from a bit of playing around with the in-home Chess, the novel arcade games and decorating my personal space with the free robot and arranging the couches into a fort, there hasn't been anything that has made me return on a regular basis.

Recently, there's been some activity on the 'spaces' front including the introduction of the Red Bull Air Race and game-specific Resident Evil and Far Cry 2. But the most intriuging development is in the form of 'Xi', the world's first console-based Alternate Reality Game. This for me is two birds with one stone – something interesting to keep me coming back to home and being able to participate in an ARG as it unfolds (they are never as interesting once all is revealed).

The teleport is found in the form of the grafitti 'Xi' located in the Home Square (Central Plaza for some of you) and takes the player to The Hub, a space that provides the clues to searching for Jess, a member of AlphaAFK, that has disappeared. In a smart move, the designers have made the 'online terminal' information accessible outside of the game as they are simply standard pages including a blogspot-hosted blog (http://cafeconmiguel.blogspot.com) and even Jess' 'desktop' (http://www.jess247.com) which helps solving one or two of the puzzles.

Right now, apart for gleaning more understanding of the story, the treasure to secure come in the form of butterflies and torn pieces of paper. Both of which are the result of successfully decoding the daily puzzles. Their current meaning is shrouded but undoubtedly at least the piece of paper will grant some more insight.

For a lot of people, this won't be their cup of tea but I hope this is the first of many interesting ways of expanding the Home idea.

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Back To The Regioning

2 June 2008 | 0 Comments

Tags: playstation, bluray

Arrrgh! I just lost my original rant!

Ok, I won't lie, I've just switched back to Qwerty as my original post in Dvorak took half an hour to write. Funnily enough, I keep looking at my dvorak layout and I realise by reverting, I may be already unlearning the weekend's efforts.

This was a post about Blu-Ray regioning but upon a little research, according to http://www.blu-raystats.com roughly about two thirds of the discs coming out now are region-free. Woo! For those not familiar with the previous DVD Regioning (which still exists, just that it is easy these days to overcome it), information on Blu-ray and regioning is, of course, at wikipedia (and I am not linking because you should be able to find it yourself).

The reason why I bring all this up is that I have obtained a PS3. One of the best bang-for-buck players out there at the moment as it is always being updated to cater for new Blu-ray features and the PSP connectivity is brilliant. For example, some discs are coming out with smaller versions of the movie on thedisc for a mobile player such as PSP or iPod. Not only that but I can stream the Blu-Ray to the PSP if I was so inclined.

I can also stream video and music off my network (I use mediatomb) and can browse the internet. I hear it even plays the occasional game! (For which I bought GTAIV)

Ok. This post was not as good as my original but I am sure you all can understand the frustration of using a web browser and losing the page.

Now, back to Dvorak, housework and GTA...

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