I have not given a lot of attention to my PS3 for a while. PC gaming has pretty much taken over all my home entertainment needs these days. That said, I had a strange compulsion to return to the big black box just to see how everything was doing. I downloaded some Borderlands 2 DLC that I haven't yet played, downloaded a little bit more of Vanquish, and deleted everything that wasn't related to gaming to allow for more of the space that I just recently filled up entirely.

The main reason for this return: I was looking for my Vita charging cable and found it attached to my PS3. You see, when connecting the Vita to the PS3 for file transfer you do not have the option to use a USB cord as you do when a PC is involved. Well, the Internet was down when I wanted to see if Closure can be played on a Vita. (It can't.) I gave up in frustration at the complete lunacy of the situation. This time the Internet was working, and now that I had the Internet connection required to connect the Vita and PS3, it then required me to plug in a USB cable. Fuck you. You're telling me I need an Internet connection to use a fucking cable?! This always-online crap will not end!

Anyway, after discovering that bullshit, the thought of using a Vita as a controller for the PS3 came into my head, and so I used the Vita to search the Internet to find out whether that was true or not. Well, kind of? There's a secondary feature in the Vita's Remote Play app called Cross Controller, which allows you to use a Vita as a controller and second screen (Take that, Nintendo!) on certain games. Of the incredibly short list of games that support it, I was surprised at the inclusion of LittleBigPlanet 2 on the list. Since I own the damn game, I pretty much had to check it out.

Turns out, it's actually a downloadable new level pack that adds such functionality to the game. There's new tools that take advantage of the touchscreen, I guess. I didn't buy it, but I probably will in the future due to my strange unconditional love for that game. I then proceeded to lose myself in the costume menus for about half an hour while fulfilling some sort of nostalgia quest to remember all the good times and strange things about that game. In a related fashion, it then hit me to check out the new content in the store. I hadn't checked on what new stuff could be in the store for probably a year now, so I made it my duty to refresh myself on the matter.

They still keep adding content! I don't know how many people still play this game, but good on Media Molecule to keeping the community alive for all these years. The community page is constantly updating with community-related stuff, so that's cool. The store page is much more streamlined, doing away with the searching the felt planet bullshit they had earlier and having actual menus. They probably had to, since there's now so much stuff! They now show only bundles on the menu, and when you click the bundle you can choose to buy everything in it or pick some individually. The whole setup is smart except for the fact that descriptions seem to be missing. Oh well. Even if most of the costume packs don't grab me, I'm sure people are still buying the new ones. They just added a Bioshock Infinite costume pack, with five characters bundled together for six bucks. I had to force myself not to buy it so impulsively.

Somehow, that reminded me that my avatar and theme were kind of outdated, so I decided to head into the PlayStation Store to check out some newer ones. I was already aware of the Store update before, but this was the first time I spent more than a couple minutes in it. I have some good things and bad things to say about it. I like the new way you can search games. No more selecting the first letter and scrolling down a long menu. Now you type it out until the option presents itself to the right. You select a game, and everything related to a game is there. Not bad. It also looks cool to me. Some may like or hate the new look, but I feel the minimalist style and font choice are definite improvements.

There's a lot I hate about the new Store though. It's fucking slow! I mean holy shit! At least the old Store booted up in five seconds. This one takes as long as a game to load up. Every individual action within the Store is sluggish as well. I don't know if it's because of old hardware or poor optimization, but it's a problem, and I don't like it. While searching for games is a lot easier, I swear that process involving themes and avatars is even worse than before. There's absolutely no good way to filter what I want to look for. I can't text search for themes and avatars, so if I find a cool theme that I want to save for later or tell a friend about, I have to slog through the one huge menu to find it.

I found a cool tank theme among the stuff I care not about in the slightest. It's a dynamic theme that shows some German tanks shooting stuff, I guess. I decided not to buy it, but I wanted to and probably will in the future. Apparently, it's the second theme in the series, and I wanted to see what the other one was. Boy, what a pipe dream! It took me 10 minutes to find that one theme in the first place, and I suspect it will take just as long to find it again. As for the other tank theme, fuck it. I don't know how to find that. It might as well not exist as far as the Store is concerned. The filters do not help at all with these themes, since they are only categorized in areas such as "Action" or "Strategy". I can't find those tank themes using the filters. The filters included probably only make up 2% of everything in the themes and avatars section, and that's terrible.

I bought a Terraria avatar for 50 cents. Quick and easy since the avatars were at the top of the menu. Can't say the same about those avatars in 6 months though.

That's where my short journey ends. I learned a lot of new stuff about the PS3 since I last did anything on it other than play games occasionally. There was a lot to take in, and I can't imagine what it would be like for a person new to the PS3 to take in all this and more. It can be difficult to keep up with everything in the games world when you have limited amounts of leisure time, or don't have to do that as part of your job!