I do a little graphics work for the company I currently work for, i.e. event banners, social media graphics, collateral design etc. and I thought I'd take a whack at making a Giant Bomb logo. I know it's super simple and not incredibly clean; however, I like how it turned out.

My friend and I have been making this video game podcast for quite a few months now and this most recent episode I am rather proud of. If you have a spare hour or so to give a newish podcast a listen, please try ours out! We are on iTunes and all that jazz and here's the link to the latest episode. Thanks for giving it a listen and subscribe and all that jazz! Just two duders talking about video games!

PS4 Launch day has come and gone.

Exciting! Unless your PS4 comes broken from Amazon.

I preordered it the second I could during the press conference and lo and behold the thing comes busted. It started up after a few restarts, tried to update, then would just pulse the blue light over and over again endlessly. No matter how many times I took out and then put back in the HDD, nothing.

So, I spent a long time on hold with Sony, waiting and waiting, with their crackly waiting music. During that time I scrolled through the PS4 support forums. During that search I stumbled across a post from someone claiming something interesting. He claimed that he had gotten through to Sony, and they told him to take his PS4 to the Sony store and they would replace it on the spot for free.

I didn't believe it.

Until someone else posted that they did the same thing. Or at least called and the Sony store confirmed this. So, I called my closest Sony store (an hour and a half away). The person was confused at first, but told me to hold on, and lo and behold I could bring it in no problem.

So, I rounded up some friends and hit the road. I got there and this is where it got interesting...

The person doing the exchange informed me that this is something Sony had foreseen coming and planned for. They realized there were units having problems and shipped extra units to some Sony stores for this purpose. But he also said they were not announcing this. People had to call the store and ask and find out. Curious? I think so.

If it were not for that one post in that one forum that I stumbled across, I would still have a dead PS4 instead of a brand new one that seems to be working wonderfully.

He also said he had five amazon dead PS4s, a Meijer one, and a WalMart one. So it doesn't seem specific to any retailer.

When he brought out the new one it was in a special box that seemed to be rushed shipping to be specific for replacing dead ones. It made me wonder if was ensured to be working. I had him start up the thing at the store just to make sure. He had the cords already set up at the station to test it so I am assuming I wasn't the only one who had requested it.

It seemed interesting to me that they had set up this fail safe without telling anyone. They probably didn't want a rush of people getting replacements, instead limited it to those who cared the most to call the store.

They also had 10 systems still left for sale.

The sales rep was super awesome and understanding about it. I wish I had gotten his name so I could thank him. He was happy that Sony had taken care of this as well.

It may suck real bad that there are a bunch of bricked PS4s out there, but if you have one and can get to a Sony store it seems like they have the ability to replace them. Just call to make sure.

I'm just glad I have one and it's been working great for a couple hours now. My friends and I are live streaming it here: http://www.twitch.tv/thebrokenhammer playing some games and talking in weird accents from time to time.

That's my PS4 launch day adventure. I hope you all had a better one and are enjoying your PS4s.

The podcast I co-run is hosting a PS4 live stream right now. I will be posting a detailed blog post here about my PS4 adventure today. Check it out! Early Killzone Shadow Fall campaign, probably some multiplayer later and then Need for Speed and Battlefield 4.

http://www.twitch.tv/thebrokenhammer

This year my friend and I decided to make a gaming podcast. Throughout the years we have found ourselves having long conversations about random games and so we decided to sit down and actually record it. I have access to the professional equipment in our broadcasting studios so we are able to produce something of high-ish quality.

The two of us are just really passionate about video games, we may not always get our facts right or know every little detail about everything, but we care about this stuff. Each episode is about an hour long, so if you run out of Bombcast to listen to and want to listen to a little more video game nonsense be spit at ya, check it out here: The Broken Hammer or in iTunes

Thanks if ya listening and if you don't, thanks for reading this anyways!

I am getting beyond excited for Uncharted 3. Resistance 3 was great and Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One was well, ok, but U3 looks like it is going to be the best PS3 game this year.

I played U2 a lot. Both the single player and the multiplayer were fantastic and kept me coming back for more. I have the collector's edition coming for release day delivery so providing my campus's mail system isn't all fucked up on Tuesday I should be playing it as much as I can.

I think of you are a PS3 owner and you ignore this game or this franchise in general than you are missing out big time.

Hey I am a freshman and I just moved onto the campus of my new college. I can't connect to battle.net or get my PS3 to work with the internet. The wireless is campus wide and the PS3 knows its there and obviously I can access the internet, does anybody know how I can get my PS3 online and access battle.net in SCII? thanks!

I'm on a Mac and I am trying to install Steam. I drag it into the applications folder then try and open it but all it does is bounce for a while on the bottom then say it needs to be connected to the internet. Obviously here I am connected to the internet, anyone know what could be going wrong?

I'm not one for much blogging on this site. I have my own blog: http://theblogofateenageguy.blogspot.com/ that I try to keep updated regularly. Not much there except my random ramblings and such. Check it out if you want to.

I'm looking forward to Killzone 2, I'm sure it will be a great FPS for the PS3 and I can't wait to get my hands on it. Hopefully the servers online will work well so that experience will be great as well.