Anonymous Attacks the PSN

Today and Yesterday the PSN has been sporadically not working due to attacks from a group known as anonymous. They are justifying these attacks by saying that Sony's treatment of PS3 hackers and users of modified PS3s is unjust and they simply ask that Sony cancels all charges against the hackers as well as cease finding and attacking more people. They also request that Sony allows users to modify their PS3s freely without fear of being charged. While this might seem like a just cause I doubt Sony will abide to any of these terms and will just wait for these attacks to stop which I believe they will.

Due to Sony's past way of treating people it seems that they will just try to bring members of anonymous to court which probably will not be successful. So at the end of the day this whole attack on Sony will probably be forgotten and the only long term effects that I can see is Sony becoming more aggressive in stopping PS3 hackers. If anonymous can keep up their attacks on Sony for a time period long enough to have an effect which just doesn't seem like it will happen, then Sony might just have a change of heart, but as i said it just doesn't seem like that will be the course of action.

PSN for CFW in the Future?

Just a small update but it has been said that many devs are working on restoring PSN to CFW users. A member from Team Rebug said that Rebug is not working on PSN but many devs are working on it. I personally enjoy being able to use PSN on CFW so I am looking forward to it.

Kmeaw CFW that has Dual Boot for OFW and CFW Coming Soon

This is just a small update but Kmeaw who is known for his custom firmwares and lv2 patcher is planning his own dual boot CFW along with Graf_Chokolo, but Kmeaw's CFW will not be for linux it will allow the ability to switch between OFW GameOS and cfwOS. This is just a small update as Kmeaw only announced he wants to do it but it seems really cool to be able to switch between CFW and OFW.

Graf_Chokolo Publishes Petitboot Tools for Linux

After Graf_Chokolo announced that he successfully installed Gentoo Linux onto his internal hard drive, he said that he would create a petitboot which he did. This petitboot will allow for dual boot of GameOS and Linux which is pretty awesome. To create the petitboot yourself is very involved and waiting for a dual-boot custom firmware seems like the easiest option for most.

A guide for creating a petitboot can be found at here, and it seems very complicated so I will personally wait for a dual-boot custom firmware.

Possibility for 3.60 CFW

Today a hacker by the name of Mathieulh revealed that he has recently exploited and dumped the LV0 on 3.60 firmwares. Mathieulh has been known for not revealing much information about his exploits but this time he has been kind to help some people out. With this a twitter user by the name of Ps3WeOwnYoU has claimed to have reproduces Mathieulh's trick. He says that he has the decrypted LV0 from 3.60 after using this trick, but Ps3WeOwnYoU's claims have not been substantiated and this is still largely a rumor.

Basically this exploit will allow access to the 3.60 keys which will then lead to CFW and homebrew on 3.60. Basically this will allow PSN access once more and make it so games do not have to be patched to run from an outdated firmware.While 3.60 doesn't seem all that necessary it would still be nice and I waiting for some more good news.

Graf_Chokolo

Graf_Chokolo continues his contributions to the PS3 scene now allows for Linux to be installed on the internal hard drive of Slim PS3s. He was able to increase the FLASH region on the PS3s hard drive from 256MB to 40GB, and installed Gentoo Linux to this location. PS3 owners can even have their PlayStations format their hard drives and the Linux will still remain and be usable. Hopefully a version for the Fat PS3 comes out so I can try it out.

Graf_Chokolo's plans for the future just makes things sound even better. These plans are to compile and install (to the vFLASH) petiboot and then after that he plans for the creation of a HV CFW which can also boot GameOS or petitboot which can either boot Linux or GameOS.

Great things will come from Graf_Chokolo's hypervisor and I am exited for the future.

Dragon Age 2 Review

My first review will be on Dragon Age 2 which in my opinion sucked pretty badly being a horribly dumbed down game compared to Dragon Age: Origins

The first aspect of the game I will touch is the new combat system which is actually quite nice and a step forward from Origins. It looks nice and the characters of different attack animations depending on where you are initiating you attack which is kinds cool. The only flaw to the combat system is that you just mash the X button the whole battle which can become annoying.

The Story is terrible I don't even know if I encountered a story and I am at act 2 with around 15 hours put into the game I would expect a story by now. The only thing this game has me doing is collecting money via boring quest and then collecting more money.

The quest I mentioned are incredibly bad and after a few hours I was getting this feeling as if I had been to these places before... which I had because in Dragon Age 2 the creators just kept reusing the same maps and designs for all of the locations. The actual quest are just as bad as where they take place and only involve talking to ALOT of people and then a little fighting at the end after the fighting you get to talk to some more people to finish them.

The characters in this game are mediocre at best and have no development what so ever. In Origins the character development was amazing and there was changes between characters in just idle talk which was humorous and interesting as well as being able to talk to the characters individually. In Dragon Age 2 you barley get to talk to the characters and they all have very uninteresting personalities. The only character that I somewhat liked was Merril with her naive out look but I wish I could talk to her more than they let me. Romance with the characters is barley noticeable and the few times you can use it just appear very strangely in conversation.

The skill system is the only part of the game that benefited from being dumbed down and is very easy to use.

The inventory was decent and with it being organized much better then in origins but the variety in items and armor took a hit. Hawke is the only character who can equip different armor and all the other characters have unchanging armor. It also seems that the weapons have less variety with no difference between choosing a great axe or great sword as long as they are both 2-haned.

The setting of the game sucks with all of the maps and scenery being copied as well as the main portion taking place in one city that you probably have been in 90% of the game being of all the going from person A to B quest in the game.

The last part of the game I would like to address is the dialog system which along with the rest of the game sucks. You only get 3 choices most of the times which are normally always good, humorous (which is a lie), and forceful . The actually conversations are not actually changed by choices as well with normally only a one line response to your choice and then back to being a record player.

At the end of the day I would give this game a 4/10 and suggest that if you are going to buy it have not yet played Origins go buy Origins and don't bother with the sequel.