Sony Begin Restoration of PlayStation services

Sony has begun restoring the Playstation network. The restoration will begin in the US, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the Middle East. This comes after a down time of 3 weeks due to a security breach.  Users will be required to change their password upon signing in.  

According to a press release services expected to return are:

• sign-in for PlayStation Network and Qriocity services, including the resetting of passwords

• Restoration of online game-play across PS3 and PSP

• Playback rental video content, if within rental period, of PlayStation Network Video Delivery Service on PS3, PSP and MediaGo

• Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity, for current subscribers, on PS3 and PC

• Access to 3rd party services such as Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and MLB.tv

• 'Friends' category on PS3, including Friends List, Chat Functionality, Trophy Comparison, etc
  PlayStation Home

 See the press release here.

By Robert Leat

(C) Robert Leat 2011

Site founder and Editor and chief

Brink First Impressions

(C) Splash Damage

Brink is Bethesda and Splash Damage’s new Shooter. It was released yesterday (13/05/11) I bought it today (14/05/11) for Playstation 3. The game is set in the future on an island called the ark. The ark was built as a vision of green sustainable living. An environmental crisis became a reality, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, thousands have fled to the ark as a last hope. There is tension on the ark as forces fight for control of the Ark. 

At the start of the game you have to make a decision to escape the island and play as the resistance or save the island and play as the security forces, I chose to save the island which meant playing as the security forces.   You play as these people with very long faces, your characters are customisable and as you gain xp you unlock new outfits for your character. The graphics are pretty good, and the character animation is good. The game reminds me a lot of the splash damage game quake wars as the classes are the same, medic, engineer, soldier and operative also the fact that you can choose to wait for a medic or spawn with reinforcements.  There are 3 ways to play the game, play through campaign in order, or you can do free play where you play the levels in any order, and challenge mode where you complete challenges in order to gain xp to level up and to unlock costumes for your character.  However the control scheme isn’t great the controls  felt quite awkward but that’s just me if it’s not like the cod controls i have become used to it’s not right, also I found that I kept getting downed and when the medics came to rescue me they got killed , the ai isn’t great but until PSN comes back up I’m stuck playing with bots.

So far I am pretty impressed by brink; stay posted as I will have a full review to come soon.

By Robert Leat   

(C) Robert Leat 2011

site founder and Editor and chief,