» playstation 3

About more than a month ago, I wrote a post about how I “broke” my PlayStation 3. My friend came over today to take it apart and we are now pretty sure what the problem is as well as the potential cause.

I found this youtube video for us to follow which I think is pretty detailed. This video basically shows you how to disassemble the PS3 as well as putting it back together. But I warn you, if you do not have the confidents and/or skills to do it yourself, I suggest you don’t and instead find someone you know to do it! I also suggest you DO NOT take it apart UNLESS it is over the 1 year warranty because disassembling the PS3 will void your warranty if you are still within that 1 year.

Opening the PS3 is actually easier than I thought, provided you have the right screwdrivers though! You will need a small “minus” sign screwdriver for the very first screw (the one behind the warranty sticker) as well as the torx 10 screwdriver for the ones inside. So we thoroughly checked and make sure it wasn’t the control arms that were causing the problem. I wish it was though, so at least we could relocate them back to their correct positions. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case.

At this point, we were pretty sure at least the mechanical parts were working properly, we were now stuck whether the cause was coming the Blu-ray lense or as my friend suggested, the drive controller. The drive controller is the board that lies below the Blu-ray drive (as shown in the third picture, right below the yellow warning sticker).

We then looked on ebay because I read from some forums that people are selling the complete Blu-ray rom drive on ebay for $150+USD + shipping. But they don’t include the drive controller. We thought we could swap the existing one in if indeed its the rom drive that’s causing the problem. Next we searched for PS3 drive controller and to our surprise we found someone from Hong Kong selling just the PS3 drive controller for $80+ USD. We thought maybe we should give the controller a try? Then we saw someone asking if it came with the mother board as well but the seller answered was “NO”. Then the person who asked the question said each drive controller is keyed to with a specific mother board which means you can’t just swap the drive controller. So inclusion, if you fry your Blu-ray drive’s controller, your only options are either buy a new PlayStation 3 (duh!) or send it back to Sony (will update how much once I call them on Monday). As you can see I really have no choice but to send it back after finding out how much they are going to charge me. I found a forum (I can’t find it anymore for some reason!) and the person had the same issue as me and he had the chance to talk to the technician and he said it wasn’t the drive itself but rather it was the shorted drive controller. This convinced us that should be what my PS3 is experiencing right now.

If its only your Blu-ray drive that’s not working properly I think you can still get a new one on ebay and swap out the drive controller from your old drive to the new one and it SHOULD work. I cannot be sure as I have not tested.

I hope this little blog post will help those that are in the same similar situation as me. Just try and NOT turn off your PS3 by using the power switch at the back until it shows you the red light! I hope it doesn’t happen to any one of you!

Incoming search terms:

• playstation 3 parts
• ps3 blu ray drive
• ps3 disassembly
• ps3 drive
• ps3 taken apart
• playstation 3 taken apart
• ps3 disc drive
• ps3 disk drive
• ps3 blu ray board
• location of ps3 blu ray drive control board

This game has officially made it to my MUST-BUY list, at first I thought it was another somewhat-interesting action RPG game. But these two trailers changed my feelings for this game forever.

As I mentioned Demon’s Souls is an action RPG, what sets this one different from what’s currently out there right now is that it has co-op mode. That’s not all, when you die in a particular area, you can leave notes behind so other players can read what you leave behind so they won’t make the same mistakes you made going through the same area. I find this very original, definitely an interesting and helpful feature.

As for the co-op mode, you can ask up to three more players for help in a given area. You can also be asked to help others. Afterwards you as well as the other three will have the ability to rate each other so other players can pick based on feedbacks. I wonder if there will be any mechanism to prevent losers from abusing the rating system where he/she will give bad ratings to players even though they perform positively.

Another thing that caught my eyes is the huge boss battles in Demon’s Souls, yes I love huge bosses because huge boss battles are just too EPIC to miss these days! It gets even better when you can kick some huge boss ass with three others!

Demon’s Souls will be out exclusively for the PlayStation 3 in the fall of this year. But I still have to get my PS3 fixed asap! This might just be the RPG I need that will last me until Final Fantasy 13 is out.

Incoming search terms:

• demons souls boss
• demons souls bosses
• demon souls boss
• demons souls all bosses
• demon\s souls bosses
• BOSS DEMON SOUL
• demons souls ps3
• boss demon souls
• demon soul bosses
• demons souls boss pictures

So this trailer basically shows off all the (possible?) moves for this upcoming action game. I’m pretty hyped up for it honestly, specially after seeing all these trailers. I mean being able to mount a bazooka on behind each of Bayonetta’s heels is just awesome! The kill combo moves are simply bad ass as well. The fact that you can equip her with different guns and even whips and katanas (at least from the trailers) you can have a lot more combos because you can have different equipment combinations. You can have hand guns in both hands and have bazookas behind both heels OR you can get her to equip bazookas in all four! The combos are just limitless, so to speak. That means you won’t get bored easily with the same moves over and over again.

So for now, in my opinion, Bayonetta looks very promising and I think it looks and plays even better than the all time favorite Devil May Cry. I’m curious to see if I’m right or wrong on this one.

Bayonetta will be out this September. I’m hoping the demo will be out sometime in August?

Incoming search terms:

• is bayonetta better than devil may cry

So I was playing my favorite Call of Duty 4 on my Playstation 3 and getting pwned, all of a sudden I lost the background sound and I could only hear gun shots. It wasn’t long until it was completely silent, or near silent. I quit the game after the match was over and I couldn’t, it just froze with the black screen, the screen you normally see when you quit the game and back to the main screen. I call this the black screen of death or BSOD for the PlayStation 3.

I’ve encountered freezes before but this time it was different. The console remained in the black screen so the first thing that came to mind was to turn off the console from the back after trying to turn it off from the touch-sensitive power switch at the front. I turned it back on hoping to get back in the game but I wasn’t able to. The game would not load, as in I didn’t see the game icon in the main screen. So then I tried loading one of my Blu-ray movie discs, same thing.

With less than 2 years of game time, my PS3′s disc drive is already busted. That’s pretty disappointing. I’m going to call support tomorrow and hopefully get it fixed. I don’t care if I have to ship my console to them.

Sigh.

Incoming search terms:

• unable to load call of duty 4 on playstation 3s

X-Men Origins: Wolverine reminds me of Heavenly Sword, a lot, particularly the sound of Wolverine’s clawns make when you slash your enemies into pieces. The demo was actually enjoyable, but still not worth my money to be honest. Maybe its because I’m not a hardcore fan of Wolverine, but one thing for sure is this game has not been polished enough, again in my opinion.

As I mentioned the style is similar to Heavenly Sword, or any other hack and slash games out there. You can chain your normal attacks with your heavy attacks. The fights are fast and bloody, a plus for me. There are also features that I haven’t seen in other games before, or I just don’t play enough games anymore these days. One is the Lunge attack, which you get early on in the demo and which you get to lock on to a target (make sure there is no object in between you and the unfortunate, and then jump onto the target and kill him. I never got bored of using Lunge when I played the demo but I found it a bit too powerful. The second feature that I like is the way the environment can give you different ways of finishing off your enemies. Like you can throw someone into a large stake that you will find on the walls or floors. These features really give the game more varieties, in terms of killing.

You can also upgrade Wolverine by collecting orbs and gaining experience by killing your enemies. I’m a big fan of level grinding so experience is another +1 for the game.

Now you will probably want to ask “Then why won’t you buy this game since you sound like you enjoyed this game?”. Well for one thing this type of game does not really offer me too much replay value, once I finish the game, it will be collecting dust, but this can be easily solved by selling it back to game stores. But I’m too cheap for that even so I might go rent it for a weekend. Second thing I don’t like is related to the “has not been polished” that I have mentioned before. The graphics look nice until you notice your character, Wolverine, is sometimes “floating” above the floor instead of walking on the floor. Floating is noticable when you are going uphill. That alone just turned me off, it might minor for you but for some reason its a big deal for me and its not acceptable.

So overall I think this game is worth it if you can ignore little issues here and there, I’m sure there are more issues like “floating” in the full game. The fact that you can interact with the environment and make use of it for killing your enemies is really a big bonus, making the game much more fun. So that’s my take for this game, get the demo if you have an xbox and/or a PS3 and see for yourself!

Incoming search terms:

• wolverine
• x man game
• x men origins wolverine ps3
• wolverine origins game
• x men origins wolverine game
• x men wolverine game
• x-men origins wolverine ps3
• x-men origins wolverine game
• x men wolverine
• Wolverine ps3

After months of waiting, they finally released another in-game trailer for Sarah-Palin-look-alike Bayonetta. This one shows a few more battles with large scale bosses as well as some crazy combo moves and how she can turn into a sexy beast err I mean panther. I am in love with the character designs, not just Bayonetta herself of course! Another thing I like about this game over Devil May Cry is the way the game is presented, with elegant style and music. I don’t mind even calling this game beautiful.

This game will be out on September 1st, seems like a long wait but I’m sure its worth the wait!

After watching all the trailers of The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena from Gametrailers.com I was really impressed by the game and without hesitation, I downloaded the demo on PlayStation Network tonight. And after playing the rather short demo, I was left with a huge disappointment. Maybe its just me but this game for sure isn’t for me.

The weapons, specifically the guns, look basic to me, although the clip-popping-reload is pretty awesome to watch every time you reload.

While this game supports 1080p full HD and I do have to say the ship’s interior, lighting as well as character’s facial details are all impressive, I give them that. But during the demo I noticed Riddick had jagged shoulders as oppose to smooth round ones. As I said the lighting is great but Riddick’s shadow was way too sharp in my opinion, I would think shadows would be a little blurry.

You get 4 blocks of health but I don’t like the fact that once you completely deplete one or more blocks, even if you rest, you won’t gain back the lost blocks. So say you lost two and a half blocks of health, even if you rested you would only regain the half block’s health and you would have 2 blocks all together. I also don’t understand why when you die, which is rather easy because of the way you heal, I once died and when I restarted from the checkpoint, I was left with 1 block of health. After dying for a couple more times, I got 2 blocks of health instead. Why is that? Isn’t it common sense that you restart with full health?

The stealth feature is “ok” but no where near Metal Gear Solid level. Finally I also don’t like the iPod-styled weapon select screen where you select weapons by rotating the right analog stick which I found a bit too unresponsive.

All and all, The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena might not live up to the hype it has generated thus far. I guess download the demo and see for yourselves. I know this game isn’t for me, I’m pretty sure.

Incoming search terms:

• chronicles of riddick assault on dark athena download demo
• riddick assault on dark athena demo download
• the chronicles of riddick assault on dark athena demo download

I haven’t heard any news for Bayonetta for a few months now, the last trailer was released back in October 2008. Today out of the blue, I had a sudden urge to watch the trailers from Gametrailers.com. With around 6 more months before the release, hopefully its released globally and not just Japan, that’s the only thing I could do to sustain my thirst for this game.

For those of you who has no idea what Bayonetta is, I can sum it up in one sentence – You play as Sarah Palin, look-a-like, instead of Dante in Devil May Cry. Based on the trailers, I think her moves are even faster, more elegant and of course sexier than those in Devil May Cry. I mean, you got an extremely attractive female protagonist with 4 guns, 2 in her hands and 2 just behind her heels, what more do you want? The guns-in-heels is very innovative in my opinion, I don’t recall any weapon of this sort before Bayonetta.

Aside from the guns, I believe she also uses a blade of some sort as well as summoning/transforming into some bad ass creature to fight against, as if killing the enemies by herself isn’t enough already.

The trailer also revealed a male character, maybe we can play him? But who cares when you got Bayonetta since he is not even half as cool as her?

Bayonetta will be released on September 1st 2009 based on Gametrailers, for now we will have to make do with the trailers and this one should sum up what I have just said, in a much sexier way. And I’m also curious if there will be any sort of multiplayer being implemented but then again based on history, this type of games generally don’t have a multiplayer side.

Let’s DANCE boys!

Incoming search terms:

• sarah palin look alike
• bayonetta monster
• devil may cry game look alike game in pc
• gov palin look alike 1
• sarah palin heels