Hello, Giant Bomb. It looks like we have made it to the other side. Giant Bomb got a face-lift and now it’s more prettier than ever. I would like to thank all of the designers behind the whole thing. All of you hard working guys are awesome, and you built a great looking site that has some awesome new features that make navigating and using the site a whole lot easier. It’s rough around the edges right now because it just launched, but over time it’ll be polished, and I imagine it’ll be even more amazing when everything’s 100 percent stable. I’m loving the look of the new site, as written content such as this is a lot easier to read and the video player has been much improved, and I applaud the crew for doing such a great job with it.

As far as gaming goes, I’ve been playing my PS3 and Vita a lot. A played a whole bunch of the Sly collection last weekend, finishing the first game and completing the first chapter in the second one on Saturday night. I have also been trucking along in Persona 3 Portable which is still pretty good, along with some other Vita games. But as I was playing games that night, I’ve been thinking about how much I play Playstation games right now, and how invested in the brand I find myself in. So, I decided to get Playstation Plus. I downloaded Wipeout 2048 for free on the Vita, along with the HD/Fury DLC, and I really like it. It’s not as good as Wipeout HD, and the load times aren’t so great, but I still have a lot of fun playing it in short bursts when I’m taking a break from Persona on the bus and whatnot. Totally worth it.

Now, Playstation Plus is awesome, and I highly recommend it to anyone who has a PS3. There’s so much great content that they’re giving away and it almost seems like a steal. But here’s the problem I ran into with Playstation Plus: I ran out of hard drive space on my PS3. I had to order a bigger hard drive, since the one I have now is the 80 gig that I got at launch. I got the new 320 GB hard drive yesterday, but here’s another problem: I cannot unscrew the old hard drive from it’s cradle. I was able to unscrew every other screw in the process - even the cradle attached to the new hard drive - but not this one. I used different sizes of screw drivers and it wouldn’t budge. And now it’s probably impossible to get them all out now since I‘ve messed with it so much, the tops of them are completely rounded. Awesome. I called Sony to see if I could get a replacement on them, and he told me to buy it on eBay. Great job, customer support. Now I have to wait until that shows up from eBay so I can finally re-format my hard drive and begin the recovery process. I don’t have a USB flash drive to back up my saves, so I have to re-download everything, and it’s a process that I just want get over with as soon as possible.

Because I’ve been playing so much on my Vita and PS3 lately, I find myself not being excited in the next generation of consoles. While I am interested in whatever Sony reveals on the 20th, I don’t see that making me want to go out and buy the thing. Granted, I’m not really someone who buys new hardware at launch, but at least back when the PS3 and 360 came out I had some desire to want the new thing. Maybe I’m wrong and it’ll set the world on fire and everyone will want one, but personally, I just got a Vita which I really like a lot, and I’m perfectly happy with the Playstation 3 being my main console, especially with Playstation Plus. All of the rumors that have been circulating don’t make the consoles out to be anything I would want out of a home console, either. Required voice recognition and motion controls? Touch screens? Thanks but no thanks. Give me a controller so I can hit the “play this fucking game right now” button and have it instantly load from my hard drive and I can play it anytime I want. That’s what I want out of the next generation. Oh wait, I’m getting that already. Admittedly, the idea of streaming PS3 games, making them backwards compatible, sounds great if it works, but that’s the coolest thing I’ve heard out of the rumors.

And apparently the Ouya is actually going to be a legitimate console that will be sold in actual stores, which honestly really surprises me. For the longest time I thought that all of those backers were running into a scam and the thing would never come out. But here we are. It’s coming out in the summer, before of all of the other huge console releases. I’m curious about the success of the device, since it is a lot cheaper than everything that’s out there, but I just don’t see it being a big deal. In a market where tablets and phones are the source of (mostly) casual gaming, and the hardcore audience is playing on Pcs and consoles, is there any room for the Ouya? I don’t really think so. And the developers behind it cannot be any more cocky. “There will be an Ouya 2 and an Ouya 3.” How about you get over yourselves, see how this thing does in the market, and then plan future iterations? It just all seems really silly.

I don’t what to think about the “future” of anything anymore. Sony has been having a rough time transitioning to the new hardware, closing down developers who really don’t deserve it (STUDIO LIVERPOOL) and doing no marketing what-so-ever on their first party games. It’s very frustrating to watch, but I hope they’re able to get their shit back together. There’s a reason why I’ve been playing Playstation stuff more than anything else lately, the company has some great potential, I just hope they haven’t completely killed it by the year is over.

In a completely unrelated note, I wrote an article for the school newspaper and it got published on Thursday. I can’t post it because the article is about one of the counselors at our school, and that would I don’t think the people who appreciate all of that information getting posted online. But it happened, and I’m glad it did. It’s been really fun working on that stuff, and I look forward to doing similar things like that in the future. Now, I have to write an article about sports, due next week. Words can’t describe how badly I just want to get that over with.

Anyway, that’s about all for me at the moment. I’ll be back again when I have made progress about my PS3 situation or when I feel like ranting about more stuff. Until next time!