Sony's "Welcome Back" program

Could have something to do with downloading 10gb on your laptop at the same time...

EvilDead wrote:

I think its safe to say the PS3 download times are spotty at best and lean on the slow side for most of us. Lately, half of my stuff downloads at expected speeds while the other half downloads allot slower. It has been similar between the PS3 fat I had previously and the slim I have now.

On Steam I only get slowdowns during popular releases and on XBL I rarely have problems.

That's my experience as well. PS3 downloads can be horribly slow a lot of times, but then occasionally I hit a sweet spot where they're nearly as fast as XBL.

gregrampage wrote:

Could have something to do with downloading 10gb on your laptop at the same time...

+1

ilduce620 wrote:
gregrampage wrote:

Could have something to do with downloading 10gb on your laptop at the same time...

+1

TheGameguru wrote:

both have equal QOS in my router

The question is not about how long it took. It's how it clearly took longer than the other download.

First, I want to say: I really wish Sony had made more than six games available for this. Seriously, how many SOE games are there out there? It's not like it would have cost them any more to put, say, Calling All Cars or PAIN on the block along with the others here. Feels kind of like they purposely picked games that just about everyone who owns a PS3 already owned so they could avoid massive bandwidth usage.

I'm sure there's a corporate explanation for why they did it the way they did it, and I'm not complaining, I'm just saying: Your choice of 2 of these 6 games doesn't say apology to a lot of people.

That said, I picked up Super Stardust HD and Wipeout HD as part of the Welcome Back package. As a late adopter, I made out pretty well on this.

I'm loving SDHD, but I have to ask: Am I supposed to be able to win a race in Wipeout HD? I'm playing the campaign mode on the easiest difficulty and no matter what car I choose I can't seem to beat third place, and I only did that well once by luck. And it's not like I'm doing noticeably badly when I'm playing. I'm not bouncing off of walls or crashing all the time. Mostly I'm tracing a pretty good path through the track. Normally when I suck at a racing game, it's at least obvious what I'm doing wrong.

I remember playing Wipeout back in the N64 days and I never had this much trouble with it.

Every time I think I'll like a racing game, I'm reminded that I don't. I should have bought that zombie game.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

I'm loving SDHD, but I have to ask: Am I supposed to be able to win a race in Wipeout HD? I'm playing the campaign mode on the easiest difficulty and no matter what car I choose I can't seem to beat third place, and I only did that well once by luck. And it's not like I'm doing noticeably badly when I'm playing. I'm not bouncing off of walls or crashing all the time. Mostly I'm tracing a pretty good path through the track. Normally when I suck at a racing game, it's at least obvious what I'm doing wrong.

There is a bit of randomness to the weapon distribution that can make or break particular races but by and large if you can gold the 3 lap time trial of a circuit, in a given speed class, you should be able to win the race at that speed class. At the faster/later speed classes it can take a fair few attempts before you get the right combo of power ups or don't get the crap shot out of you to actually make good on your time trial practice.

Without being able to see what you're doing wrong, I'd guess that you're being too heavy handed with the air brakes. Apart from some very sharp/long corners, of which there aren't really all that many, you usually only need a fairly light tap on the air brake as you're on the corner. And a surprising number of the corners require no braking if you're positioned right.

DanB wrote:
doubtingthomas396 wrote:

I'm loving SDHD, but I have to ask: Am I supposed to be able to win a race in Wipeout HD? I'm playing the campaign mode on the easiest difficulty and no matter what car I choose I can't seem to beat third place, and I only did that well once by luck. And it's not like I'm doing noticeably badly when I'm playing. I'm not bouncing off of walls or crashing all the time. Mostly I'm tracing a pretty good path through the track. Normally when I suck at a racing game, it's at least obvious what I'm doing wrong.

...

Without being able to see what you're doing wrong, I'd guess that you're being too heavy handed with the air brakes. Apart from some very sharp/long corners, of which there aren't really all that many, you usually only need a fairly light tap on the air brake as you're on the corner. And a surprising number of the corners require no braking if you're positioned right.

The air brakes are key. I really sucked at Wipeout HD when I first got it, but once I got better with my trigger fingers, I improved dramatically. That said, I still haven't completed the game, and certainly haven't gotten gold medals on everything. I'm pretty close to the end of the original, and maybe halfway through Fury.

I still think Wipeout HD looks gorgeous, though. Holds up pretty well, in my opinion.

I didn't win a race in the demo or in the main campaign so far. Probably 10 races total I've played and ranged anywhere from 3rd to 8th.

And I never brake. :p

I started winning most races after my 2nd try. As far as I can tell, it's mostly an issue of making sure to hit as many of the speed boost strips as possible.

I just wanted to put up a reminder that the Welcome Back program ends in two days. If you've been procrastinating, or haven't grabbed your free games, get them now. Also, if you don't want to be auto renewed into Playstation Plus, check your subscription settings as that free month of service ends at the same time.

I have been procrastinating on Plus on purpose. Wanted to see what deals would be up in July.

And there is no auto-renew with the free 30 days of Plus. It doesn't make you put in card info.

Now if your free Plus is about to run out and you want to buy games, then yes, check on that this weekend.

Does the PS+ subscription (1Year) ever have any deals? I have live and never paid more than 30-35 for a year.

Sometimes (like right now) they add extra months if you buy a 12 year subscription but I don't think you ever pay less than $50 or whatever it is.

Started playing inFAMOUS (my 2nd free game) this weekend and so far, it's been a lot of fun!

I think it's rather telling that I never bothered to get my free games. My PSP was fun for a month but I'm already thinking it's trade-in time unless someone or something jumpstarts me on Persona 3 Portable.

Even on a really high-end connection, I find that PS3 updates are super-slow. The system update a week or so ago was at maybe 25% downloaded after 10 or 15 minutes. I ended up turning the monitor off, so I don't know how long it actually took, but it was glacial.

Whoops. I missed my free month of +.

Oh well.

I got Braid for $3 with my free month, so that was pretty worthwhile.

Tyrian wrote:

Whoops. I missed my free month of +.

Oh well.

They even gave you an extra 4 days. Silly rabbit!

I never did anything with my free +.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

I never did anything with my free +.

cyrax wrote:
Tyrian wrote:

Whoops. I missed my free month of +.

Oh well.

They even gave you an extra 4 days. Silly rabbit!

I tried to sign up for it on the 3rd, but it was apparently already done? Or I just suck at finding ANYTHING in the PSN Store.

I grabbed Dead Nation on my wife's PSN account before the program closed, and it's a lot of fun! I plowed through the first five missions tonight and I am forcing myself to put it down to go to bed right now.

I'm trying to withhold full judgement until I finish, but I'm a little confused so far at the mediocre reviews this got. I'm playing on Normal and I'm not finding it overly difficult yet; I've only died once. The shooting and the weapon upgrade system are great.

If anyone wants to do some online co-op, hit me up.

Yeah, I was surprised by how much I enjoy Dead Nation. I had to fiddle with the controls a bit to find a configuration that worked for me, but once I did it all clicked. Great fun all the way through.

Evo wrote:

I'm trying to withhold full judgement until I finish, but I'm a little confused so far at the mediocre reviews this got. I'm playing on Normal and I'm not finding it overly difficult yet; I've only died once. The shooting and the weapon upgrade system are great.

There were a couple patches that fixed some major issues with the game after it was reviewed, like voice chat, checkpointing and difficulty spikes. Even so, a lot of the mediocre reviews were bagging it for other things. I had a great time with it.

MechaSlinky wrote:

Yeah, I was surprised by how much I enjoy Dead Nation. I had to fiddle with the controls a bit to find a configuration that worked for me, but once I did it all clicked. Great fun all the way through.

Just out of curiosity, what did you change? I'm having a hell of a time aiming the charged shot by pressing down on R3 but I don't want to displace anything from the shoulder buttons.

With +, at least I got some nice dynamic themes. I wouldn't pay for them, but it was kind of a nice little freebie.

Damnit.. I forgot to activate my PS+ subscription, and I've been away on holidays away from my PS3.

Oh well.

Evo wrote:

I grabbed Dead Nation on my wife's PSN account before the program closed, and it's a lot of fun! I plowed through the first five missions tonight and I am forcing myself to put it down to go to bed right now.

I'm trying to withhold full judgement until I finish, but I'm a little confused so far at the mediocre reviews this got. I'm playing on Normal and I'm not finding it overly difficult yet; I've only died once. The shooting and the weapon upgrade system are great.

If anyone wants to do some online co-op, hit me up.

I enjoyed Dead Nation as well. I played through on Easy, but it was still fun. Doesn't have much of an ending, and the gameplay gets a bit repetitive towards the last levels. Regardless, I enjoyed it. Particularly because it was free!

El-Producto wrote:

Damnit.. I forgot to activate my PS+ subscription, and I've been away on holidays away from my PS3.

Oh well.

Best thing about PS+? I got to play Borderlands and Assassin's Creed II for 60mins for free. That sold me on one and made me not care about the other. A quick look at my Steam profile will tell you who won that one.

And last night I could not connect to PSN on my PS3, despite the system registering connection with my router and the Wii streaming Netflix just fine. Both via wireless...