My advice" don't go playing a game like Assassin's Creed 2 and beating the main campaign and then working to earn all the trophies to 100% it. You can't trust a reflowed PS3.. you know why??? YOU KNOW WHY? when you reach 95% of the trophies, the ps3 STABS YOU IN THE BACK with a hidden blade and blinks that yellow light. And when you plan to reflow it again to get the save file off of it... you learn that save file is locked to that serial# ps3... Seriously, don't get involved in super long games as the ylod could happen easily after a reflow. Make sure any games you playing that the save file is "backuppable" and do so very often!Gratz on the reflowed ps3 though..good job
When it comes to high definition, multiplatform console games, you have a choice: you can go Sony or you can go Microsoft. Frankly, I'm starting to think even Sony wants you to choose Microsoft. Why does it feel like I'm being punished every time I try to play a game on my PlayStation 3?The last time I tried to play a game on the console, I was forced to download a mandatory update, which added a feature I didn't care about. (The update gave Sony the ability to suggest things to me. Gee, thanks.) The process took 30 minutes.Then I had to actually download the game from the PlayStation Store, which took an amazingly long time compared to what I'm used to from Xbox Live or Steam. When I saw just how slowly the download was moving, I was tempted to buy it on the Xbox 360 with my own money instead of using the review code supplied to Ars, but I persevered.All told, it was over an hour before I was actually playing the game. On any other system, it would have been minutes.Fast-forward to this week, when I wanted to revisit ModNation Racers to see if the new patch improved loading times. I turned on my system, popped the game in, and was gobsmacked to see that the system forced me to grab yet another update. What does this update do? It fixes the first update, the one I didn't want. So the update downloads, it installs, the system restarts, and there goes twenty minutes of my life I'll never get back. People tell me to set up a proxy server to decrease download times, because slow download speeds are enough of a problem that such bizarre workarounds exist.Update complete! Let's play ModNation Racers! Of course, I first needed to download the patch to fix the game's loading times. The file is 131MB in size. I can't download it in the background, and it takes seven minutes to complete. That means my data speed is 2.5Mbps, which seems about right for the slow-as-dirt PlayStation 3 downloads. Then it has to install, and the game reboots. Such stories are not uncommon."At this point I basically just build in 30 to 40 minutes [of] time prior to actually playing the game when I turn on my PS3," one gamer told me via Twitter when I complained. Someone else said I shouldn't complain because the PlayStation Network is free. Everyone agreed that these steps, and their general sluggishness, amount to a real pain in the butt.Ah, but I wasn't actually ready to play yet. I had forgotten that the original review was written on my debug kit; to play on my PS3, I'd need to install the game files to my hard drive. This is mandatory. This is after I updated the update that I didn't want and downloaded the patch that restarted my game to fix the load times on a game that you have to install on your hard drive. Simply wonderful.So does the patch fix the ModNation loading times? I have no clue. By the time I suffered through this madness, installed and updated and patched and wrote this, it was time to pick up my kids from school.What's your time worth?I never think to turn on the system to get these updates when I don't want to game, which means they always smack me in the face when I'm excited about playing something or have to do some work. If I have 30 minutes to game, I'm better off avoiding my PS3 if I haven't played in a while... there will be some form of update or install to eat up that time.It's not that Microsoft doesn't patch; it does. But the process is so much faster, easier, and less frequent (generally done only to add major features). It's not that Microsoft games can't be installed to the hard drive; they can, it's just rarely mandatory. And I'm not sure what Sony does in terms of download speeds, but they are markedly slower than other digital distribution services on the same Internet connection.When you're in the weird circumstance where all of this is piled together, it can be infuriating. Not quite PSP Go bad, but still deeply annoying. Sony needs to value our time a little more.Don't forget, though, you can get firmware updates and patches pushed to your system... if you'd like to spend $50 for a year of PlayStation Plus.
