Color me a bit skeptical, but haven’t we been hearing forever and a day from Sony and their ilk how awesome their stuff will be.

Speaking with IGN, the Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (PS3) lead developer said that the PlayStation 3’s trophies build off of groundwork laid by the Xbox 360’s Achievements, adding that the social aspects offered by the system could "become the norm across all gaming systems."

"I like the fact that you can pull them up and look at them in-game anywhere you are on the PS3 interface," Lemarchand continued. "I think there’s going to be other things coming down the pipe that’s going to give PSN as a whole a competitive edge."

Lemarchard declined to offer specific details on the upcoming additions, but stated that he was excited by the internet connectivity and user-oriented content systems offered in Sony’s forthcoming lineup.

So basically, trophies are achievements and the details of the features are too much to share because they will blow your mind. Pretty much exactly what Sony has been saying forever now. Color me not excited by the hype.

Also, when they do release features, it’s not exactly what they claim.

These kind of things make me think of that PA comic. Sony keeps promising, keeps telling us how awesome it will be. But months and months later, they still haven’t managed it.

Sony, please do me a huge favor. Give me a good reason to buy your system. Uncharted sounds fun, for instance, but is it a system seller? I’m not feeling it. Or, shutup and just get the shit done. Quite hyping things years in advance. It makes me believe less and less.

What Would Matt Do: Someone at Sony call me up, I’ll set you straight on how to market to us, the internet savvy users who don’t believe your bullshit. It will probably involve something along the lines of putting up or shutting up. Or maybe even getting some really good games on the system so I don’t feel like I’m just buying a Blu Ray player, something I don’t really need.

Quick rundown.

This is the game.

This is the response from feminist gamers.

             Shakesville:

—but the only thing I can’t figure out is why anyone would want to rescue a fat princess in the first place, since everyone knows that fat girls are unlovable human garbage at whom any sensible bloke would sooner hurl invective than cast a longing glance.

             Feministe:

Fat Princess is a send-up of that tired old cliche. Believe me, there are a lot of ways you could send up that cliche, but of all the possibilities, Titan chose to make the princess FAT. The joke here is also obvious: LOL who would want to rescue a fat chick? It’s a shtick that’s been used in animation and film plenty of times; the dashing hero thinks he’s rescuing a beautiful damsel in distress, but the “joke” is on him because it turns out she’s larger than acceptable! And therefore unattractive and a horrible burden for him to rescue, of course.

             Feminist Gamers:

Instead of running out into the forest to find cake to fatten up the princess with, why not go out and find gold (which is a lot heavier than cake) to stuff into a treasure chest. The more gold in the chest, the heavier it would be, and the harder it would be to carry.

Oh, but that’s not as “cute” as cake and fat chicks. Right.

Wow, so many things to cover.

Lets start with how easy it is to troll the sweet lass at Shakesville. I won’t go into big detail on this since most of the internet falls down on this, but I’ll just say that if you want to sound professional, you probably shouldn’t be responding to stupid posts on the internet. How you can run a site on the internet and have such a thin skin I don’t know. Then again, if you want to sound like a raving idiot with a big chip on your shoulder who jumps off the handle at any perceived slight, you’re right on track.

Ok, now on to the whole fat princess thing. Who cares? What does it matter? It’s a game. It’s a mechanic in a game. Don’t get me wrong, I know a lot of people are sensitive about their weight and it’s a very important issue to many people. But that should mean we can’t have fat people in games where we feed them? Way to overreact.

Or is it the fat girl idea? I don’t really know. What I do know while being fat is a sensitive subject to many, this is just a game. And actually a fun sounding one. Sure, they could have used a different mechanic, but why? It sounds fun.

Honestly, I want to sit down with the people that are taking offense to shit like this or to the WallE movie and tell them to quit being silly. I’m a fat guy, I don’t like being made fun of anymore than the next guy/girl, but damn me if this isn’t overly silly. Oh noes, you can feed a girl in a game and make her fatter so she harder to rescue! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

And again, I want to suggest that if you’re getting all out of sorts over a game or a movie, entertainment made to make money, you’re asking to be ridiculed. You’re not only asking for it, you’re holding up a big sign that says, "Hi, I’m an easy target!". It’s a system to make money with and you’re actually helping them make money by making a stink about it.

Also, some people whose rants I read about this game and other stuff they find offensive to fat people seem to think we shouldn’t talk about it at all. That we shouldn’t talk about being overweight being a national epidemic, that we shouldn’t make some good humored fun about it. That it isn’t a serious problem. I’m sorry, but I don’t agree with that. You can’t ignore things and hope they go away. Also, without fat, we wouldn’t have great Louis CK jokes like these.

What Would Matt Do: I’m trying to grasp the big uproar here, but I’m just not getting it. Take a breath, quit over reacting to a game that isn’t even released yet. You’re sounding almost as bad as the people that talk about murder simulators or SEXBOX games like Mass Effect. Basically, you’re not helping anything and making yourself a target. Not the brightest way to roll.

I have no idea on the stats or even if it’s really for serious true (I saw it on Kotaku), but if you have a PS3, you might want to hold off a bit on updating to the latest version. Apparently, 2.40 is bricking some systems.

Owners of PS3s in all shapes and sizes have been reporting that their systems were loading to the initial PlayStation wave screen and simply hanging there after applying 2.40. No icons, no controller functions, no nothing, just the wave across the middle of the screen.

I also see a couple of forum posts around the web very similar to this one on Eurogamer:

Downloaded the update, installed, and it restarted itself. It made the usual start sound, and just stopped and wouldn’t go past the waves.

Didn’t show any user accounts. It stayed on the waves for a good five minutes.

I decided its already installed the firmware, so switching it off wouldn’t make a difference.

And it didn’t. I switched it back on, and it still stopped at the waves. I switched it off again, and held my finger on the power button to reset the display settings (being that’s the only thing that I can actually do) and now it just display a black screen.

Controllers don’t connect (didn’t since the beginning), they just flash red and turn off.

What do you think? Fucked?

Yeah, I’d probably go with fucked.

Kotaku also mentions that some more tech savvy users have found out that if you take the HD out of the PS3 and format it, it’ll work again after the ps3 formats the driver when you put it back in. Which means you lose all of your saved games and installs, but at least you don’t have to send it in for weeks. Does removing the HD on a PS3 void the warranty? I doubt it, but it’s something you should consider. I know it doesn’t on the 360.

Oh, and Sony? Good fucking job. Do me a big favor, be sure to publicize whatever jackass QA firm you’re using to test your updates so I never go near them.

What Would Matt Do: Being that I don’t own a PS3, I’ll just shake my head sadly at Sony and wish the PS3 owners out there well. On the plus side, you’re probably just playing Blu Ray discs on the thing anyway so maybe you won’t lose anything with the format!