Playstation 4 Games Catch-All

iaintgotnopants wrote:

Does anybody know how to check how long your membership runs to?

Hmmm. You can certainly check in your transactions to see when you paid for it, but I'm sure there are other ways.

Like these two I just found:

For me at least, the most simple way is to hit "triangle" over a PS+ game and then look for the expiration date. For most games you will see the date along with how many days you have left. You can also check online by

log into: https://store.playstation.com/logout...
click on "view services"
find and click on "PlayStation®Plus"
find and click on "subscription"
which should yield you something like the following:

Title PlayStation®Plus: 1 Year Package (1 Year Plus 3 Bonus Months)
Charge $49.99
Starts 06/27/2010
Expires 09/27/2011
Next Renewal Date 09/27/2011
Status In Use

I think there is another way to check on your PS3 but I do not know that off hand.

or

The best way to keep track of your account's expiration is through your PlayStation "account management" options. When you're signed into your PlayStation 3, scroll upward to head deeper into your account's clickable pathways where under "transaction managment" you should see a list of "services" rendered. Under here you'll find a selection related to PlayStation Plus. Outlining the start date and the end date, this marker should tell you everything needed to know about your contract with Plus.

Awesome. I don't need to worry about renewing until mid-August.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Also, I wish I had a bigger hard drive in mine. I only have the 160 GB model and I'm already hitting the limit with the addition of these PS Plus games.

I have a 60 GB model. The beauty of the backwards compatibility is the only reason I haven't upgraded to a larger drive.

RoyalApe wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Also, I wish I had a bigger hard drive in mine. I only have the 160 GB model and I'm already hitting the limit with the addition of these PS Plus games.

I have a 60 GB model. The beauty of the backwards compatibility is the only reason I haven't upgraded to a larger drive.

Are your PS3's incapable of switching out the internal HDD? I switched my 80GB HDD (Made by Toshiba, lol) for a faster running (7200rpm vs 5400rpm) 500GB HDD. That said, I'm looking at upgrading again, only have about 63GB left.

Eldon_of_Azure wrote:
RoyalApe wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Also, I wish I had a bigger hard drive in mine. I only have the 160 GB model and I'm already hitting the limit with the addition of these PS Plus games.

I have a 60 GB model. The beauty of the backwards compatibility is the only reason I haven't upgraded to a larger drive.

Are your PS3's incapable of switching out the internal HDD? I switched my 80GB HDD (Made by Toshiba, lol) for a faster running (7200rpm vs 5400rpm) 500GB HDD. That said, I'm looking at upgrading again, only have about 63GB left.

I totally could, I just don't know if it's worth it or not to me.

Yeah PS3s can switch to bigger drives very easily. Not nearly as expensive as Microsoft's 360 solution or as troublesome as trying to do your own custom 360 one. I think you can plug in just about any SATA laptop drive and do the trick.

Step-by-step on Sony site. Looks pretty easy.

Escapist did an experiment to see if Solid-State Drives would improve install and/or loading times, though, and it didn't. Seems as if it's all programmed for a regular hard drive and can take as long or longer in order to load, similarly to how installing Halo on the 360 doesn't really help since it was programmed to take advantage of the disc/hard drive capabilities.

Summer Sale begins on Tuesday, July 3. If you haven't played Shadow of the Colossus, you really ought to get it for $10. I also really enjoyed Crysis, which can also be had for $10. Closure will be about $7, which seems tempting to me.

ccesarano wrote:

Escapist did an experiment to see if Solid-State Drives would improve install and/or loading times, though, and it didn't. Seems as if it's all programmed for a regular hard drive and can take as long or longer in order to load, similarly to how installing Halo on the 360 doesn't really help since it was programmed to take advantage of the disc/hard drive capabilities.

I totally forgot to respond to this. SSD's don't offer any significant performance increase with blu-ray disc games because the blu-ray drive reads so slow. Anyways, that's one other reason besides programming for that. I remember seeing some benchmarks a few years ago. The first game that actually benefitted was Gran Turismo 5 because it has a huge install. Still, it's not worth it because of how expensive and small SSDs are.

If PS+ keeps coming out with lots of free games, I'm gonna have to get a new hard drive. I don't want to have to juggle installs. Was there an issue with max size? I can't recall. Can you go bigger than 500 GB? I would probably just get a 1 TB 2.5" 7200 RPM drive but drop that down to 500 GB if needed. Do they format the drive as FAT32? That may affect the max size they allow.

Another question I have is: When you do the swap, does that affect your save/trophy stuff? For instance, do you not get trophies anymore when you continue from a save, forcing you to delete the save completely and start over? I know that happens transfering saves, but since this is a full hard drive with your account and everything, I would hope that isn't the case.

I've done two hard drive upgrades to PS3's and they're super easy. Firstly: Trophy data is kept on the server. With PS+ that sync should happen automatically, without it, you perform a manual trophy sync before you start the upgrade process. Save data is the same. You can use your PS+ cloud storage to push all your save games up to the cloud, and then pull them down after the upgrade, or you can grab an external USB HDD, and perform the PS3 backup procedure. Note that this would be a completely separate external drive, you can't use the HDD you are going to upgrade to as the backup target. I prefer the USB method, because you're not relying on the cloud or your own internet upload/download speeds. But, if you've got a big pipe, knock yourself out. The other major advantage of the USB method, however, is the complete nature of the PS3 backup utility. It will take care of all your save games, including your protected saves, all of your downloaded data, including videos, music, DLC, and downloaded games, and all of your installed data for disc based games that install to the HDD. It's truly a complete backup. But, the fact that it's so complete does mean it takes a long time. My first upgrade from a nearly full launch model 60GB unit took 4+ hours to backup, and another 5 hours to restore to the new drive. My second upgrade was far worse. Going from a nearly full 160GB slim to a 500GB took 7 hours for the backup, and another 10 hours to restore! But after both procedures, once the restore was complete my system was up and running with nothing missing. They were exactly the same as before the procedure, except a little faster, and with lots more space.

Thanks for the info, ThatGuy42! Good to know you can keep the protected saves using the USB method or the cloud method when doing the hard drive upgrade. I'd probably just go the USB route. I didn't realize the cloud thing is pretty essential for if your PS3 completely dies. Backing up your saves via USB was sorta pointless before because it ruined the trophy data whenever you restored them. I had that situation happen to me twice. Once when my PS3 Fat was replaced by Sony with a refurb and again after that one died, and I bought a slim a couple years later.

Looks like 500 GB 2.5" HDDs are only about 70-80 bucks, so I'll have to pick one up sometime.

Last week's system update also made it so you can copy (or delete) groups of save files now instead of each one. So all the multiple dynasty files for NCAA Football or association/my player stuff for NBA 2k that I just spent forever backing up to USB last month, I could do in a couple of button presses now.

But yeah the USB backup doesn't help with Rock Band 3 and other protected stuff. I'm almost tempted to sign up for + one month every year to save that stuff.

Three new games added to the free collection tomorrow:

Gotham City Impostors
Pac-Man Championship Edition DX
Renegade Ops

Rainbow Moon also launches this week and PS+ members get 20% off.

Dreaded Gazebo wrote:

Three new games added to the free collection tomorrow:

Gotham City Impostors
Pac-Man Championship Edition DX
Renegade Ops

Rainbow Moon also launches this week and PS+ members get 20% off.

Stoked for Pac-Man. If I didn't own Renegade Ops for PC that would be great too.

Renegade Ops was great. I may try out Imposters - I heard the multiplayer was pretty good.

Hooray for Imposters! I LOVE that game. Very simple, fun and funny. Should have been free from the start.

The cloud saves saved me today. I played a few hours of Skyrim today, and to make a long story short, I noticed that I had no head. In fact, it looked as if I had been decapitated. It was very disconcerting. This was true for all 4 of my saved games, which had all been saved over today. Internet research told me that I had probably survived a decapitation, but there was no solution that didn't use console commands. So, I downloaded the latest save from the cloud backup, and lo and behold, I had a head! I lost several hours of play, but I had my head.

Pacman Champion Edition EX or whatever it's called is pretty darn cool...and I've never really been a fan of Pacman

garion333 wrote:

Pacman Champion Edition EX or whatever it's called is pretty darn cool...and I've never really been a fan of Pacman

Yep, and same. It's pretty intense when you start to get a feel for the game and get some mega ghost chains going.

I agree about the Pacman. I need to get some friends over to play it with.

Wow, Papa & Yo just popped up on my radar. This game looks full of awesome.

I'm also very excited for Malicious (PS3) and Sound Shapes (Vita)

I'm actually a bit overhyped for the game- I think it has a lot of potential. Sadly, I don't have a PS3 so I'm just out of luck.

I know its odd that I keep reading this thread, but I am interested in talk about PS+, esp as I think there is an awareness issue with consumers about how much it really offers gamers.

This is probably the best place to post about it. The Laugh Factory Live! app is coming to PS3 September 1st. It'll be free until December and then cost $3 a month after that. Seems like it might be rad!

So this is probably the best place to ask. Does anybody else track their PSN account / trophies online? I found the official page to be nearly useless as I can't ever remember my password and so it will not show me what trophies I actually have and it updates at what seems like random intervals.

I've started using psnprofiles to track since it seems decently organized and lets me see stuff and reports some other fun stats like what percentage of others have gotten a trophy and allows for specific comments on each one, too.

Their stats say they're tracking just under 700,000 after only being around since September of last year (10 months)

Click on the "Mrtomaytohead" text next to PS3 to see my page.

I don't particularly care about trophies, but I've been using Raptr for a month now and that does a pretty good job of tracking everything for me.

Neat site, tomayto. Here's me.

It's nice that you can hide 0 trophy games. Like Green Day Rock Band, which I only used to import songs into RB3, and never played a second of it... but that 0% staring at me on my PS3 is annoying.

Here's me - I'm a terrible completionist

garion333 wrote:

I don't particularly care about trophies, but I've been using Raptr for a month now and that does a pretty good job of tracking everything for me.

I've heard of Raptr in the past. Is there a PC app that run / tracks time played? I tried xfire, for PC tracking and it actually will freeze some games up on loading / stop GFWL from logging in on Dirt3.

Pretty cool site. Here's my profile.

Stele, you platinumed Dark Souls? Well done!

mrtomaytohead wrote:
garion333 wrote:

I don't particularly care about trophies, but I've been using Raptr for a month now and that does a pretty good job of tracking everything for me.

I've heard of Raptr in the past. Is there a PC app that run / tracks time played? I tried xfire, for PC tracking and it actually will freeze some games up on loading / stop GFWL from logging in on Dirt3.

Yup. It tracks time and trophies and gives you rewards for certain games. For instance, playing some Blacklight Retribution can earn you some gear.