Rage is being made by a company called ID software. They have been making games since the very beginning. They know what they are doing, and they have made huge innovations in gaming that most people do not even realize.

So why should you care?

If you enjoy playing FPS games, then you should care. Id software is the company that created the whole FPS genre. That’s right, they made the very fist FPS game ever created and it worked so well that soon every game developer started doing it. Call Of Duty, Halo, Half-Life would not be what they are today, if ID software did not start the FPS genre that has sold billions of games worldwide.

Who is John Carmack and why should you care?

John Carmack is the co-founder of ID Software. He was the lead programmer for many of the earlier games that have helped shape video game history. He is known as the first person to actually MOD a video game. He also has encouraged video game modding by unleashing the source code to several of ID Software’s popular game engines. By doing this he has helped create some of the best games that you have played.

Remember that little game Call Of Duty Modern Warfare II? When you first turn that game on, at the very bottom of the screen you will notice where it says “ID Software.” That is because Modern Warfare II uses part of Id Software’s game engine.

Who doesn’t like Sniper Rifles in games?

Yet again, another great idea that can be traced directly back to Id software. They introduced the Rail Gun in Quake II, and this my friends was the very first time that a sniper rifle made it’s way into a video game.

Death Match anyone?

Are you starting to see the pattern here? Can you guess who invented the hugely popular mode of gameplay that is found in every Halo game, Call Of Duty and countless other FPS games? If you guessed Id software, then you are a winner. They invented Death match, and once again changed the way we play video games.

Now maybe you are starting to understand the importance of Id Software’s Rage, and how they have helped shaped video game history. You can thank Id software for all of these great innovations by picking up a copy of Rage when it is released on 9-13-2011. If you don’t get your hands on Rage, you will be missing part of FPS and video game history!

Portal 2 is a unique first-person Action-Puzzle-Platforming game that tests player’s ability to think and act creatively as they use the game’s ingenious wormhole creating portal gun to produce their own paths through otherwise sealed surfaces and across the open spaces of the game.

Sequel to the original Portal game, the surprise add-on hit included in Valve Corporation’s 2007 release The Orange Box, Portal 2 continues the storyline from the first game, featuring both new and returning characters, and poses a range of new challenges making for a much deeper game. Additional features include a new two player co-op mode and an original soundtrack.

 

Portal 2 Release Date April 19, 2011

Portal 2 Features

• Extensive single player game featuring next generation gameplay and a wildly-engrossing story
• Complete two-person cooperative multiplayer game featuring its own dedicated story, characters, and gameplay
• Advanced use of physics allow for the creation of a whole new range of interesting challenges, producing a much larger but not harder game
• Original soundtrack
• A massive sequel to the title named 2007′s Game of the Year by over 30 publications worldwide.

Portal 2, Playing With Science, You Monster

I decided to play some Little Big Planet 2 while I waited. I got wrapped up and played LBP for about an hour. That should be long enough. I tried to sign into the PlayStation Network and there was that nice friendly message telling me that it was undergoing maintenance.

I had a feeling that there was no actual maintenance being performed. I don’t remember seeing any scheduled maintenance reminders. They usually tell you that they are going to be doing maintenance and when they do, it is usually early in the morning when most of us gamers are fast asleep.

The plot thickens.
I called a friend on the phone to see if they were having the same problem. They were getting the same friendly error message and they were in a different country. Time to investigate. I went to my computer to see what I could find out about this unfortunate event. I could not believe what I found.

The current Playstation Network status was apparently a direct result of a group of Hackers that had been targeting Sony for the last few weeks. That explains why the service has been going off and on.

The hackers behind the attack sent a public message to Sony via Youtube. The message was cryptic but straight to the point. In the message the Hackers claimed that they would shut down the Playstation Network and other Sony websites for violating the rights of George Hotz. Sony has filed a lawsuit against him for Jailbreaking the PS3. If Sony dismissed the lawsuit and apologizes to its customers, then the hackers would stop.

The hackers who call themselves, the Anonymous group started with a DdoS attack on several of Sony’s websites and the PlayStation Network. This initial attack was the cause of the sporadic outages that have been happening.

Sony has admitted to an actual “Intrusion” into the PlayStation Network and as a direct result they have shut it down without further notice. How long will the PlayStation Network status remain down? No one seems to know at this point, but gamers are suffering and they might start jumping ship, if this does not get fixed fast.

For those who haven’t been following it, iPhone Jailbreaker George Hotz (Geohot) is being sued by Sony for hacking their PS3. It’s not new for companies to take action against hackers. Every time Apple updates iOS they try to close Jailbreak exploits and they even lobbied the US government to try and make sure Jailbreaking wasn’t granted a DMCA exception (Apple didn’t get their way and jailbreaking was given an exception.

While Apple went after the entire process and asked it be ruled illegal, Sony is going after one person in particular, George Hotz. After recently releasing his 3.55 jailbreak for Playstation 3 users, Sony rewarded his efforts by applying for a TRO (temporary restraining order), which was recently granted. As they continue to go back and forth, Geohot has issued a statement to Sony on his own webpage.

Note to Sony:

It’s apparent you don’t care about your reputation with consumers, and I can almost understand your point there. Few people consider buying a TV or laptop a moral choice, and the consumer base is quite large. But talented developers are in much shorter supply, and take it from one personally, who you choose to code for is much more of a moral choice. The programmers you will one day be looking to hire are the ones reading the tech news sites right now.

And they will remember.

I’m not sure what this means for iOS users at this point. If Sony succeeds in their case against Geohot, it’s unclear what if any precedents will be set in terms of other companies suing Jailbreakers. Also, whether or not Geohot will remain an active part of the jailbreak community is uncertain. Seeing as jailbreaking iOS is not illegal, I can’t imagine he would abandon both communities. One thing is clear, the case will definitely be interesting to follow. If Sony gets their way, will that lead to Apple starting a fire with our very own jailbreak community again? Or has Apple mellowed and Sony taken the lead in anti-community action? Sound off in the comments!

[Geohot]

Geohot vs Sony: what it means for the iPhone and iPad Jailbreak community is a story by TiPb.

Sims 3 cheats for xbox 360 and PS3

The Sims 3 console version does not let you cheat like the Sims 3 PC/Mac version does. You have to use Spoot the llama which only gives you some Sims 3 cheats. To get the llama, load up your Sims 3 saved game and hit start. Hold down LT,RT,LB,and RB (L1,L2,R1,R2 for PS3) together and the Sims 3 cheat screen will come up. Follow the directions on how to get the llama from the buy/build menu under misc. decor. Cheating does disable your challenges and achievements so make sure you save before cheating like it asks you to.
 

More info about Sims 3 here. Sims 3 Cheats For Xbox 360 and PS3.

After the disbanding of Infinity Ward, Call of Duty hopefuls schooled in Modern Warfare feared the worst for the franchise. Treyarch had never been a particular memorable Call of Duty developer, and their last attempt, “World at War” was met with mixed reception from fans of the series. However, anticipation soon spiked when Treyarch first showed their next foray into the series – Call of Duty: Black Ops. With Black Ops, Treyarch finally chose to do what Infinity Ward did in 2007, and nixed the World War II back story for a more modern first person shooter in the vein of Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare series.

Modern Warfare 2 set records at retail when it was launched in 2009, selling around 5 million the first day. Indeed, this popularity helped pave the way for Black Ops a year later, when it shattered the record held by Modern Warfare 2 just a year earlier by selling over 7 million copies its first day. With Call of Duty Black Ops breaking the record set by its Infinity Ward predecessor just a year ago, the COD series has become the first entertainment franchise in history to set sales records back to back for two consecutive years. Treyarch finally has their own memorable Call of Duty, and the Infinity Ward name has since been reduced to a whisper.

However, Activision has recently bragged about patching up Infinity Ward, and getting the development company ready to do what it does best – make video games. Will the revitalized Infinity Ward once again be able to claim their COD master developer title? Or is Treyarch the new champion of the series? I’m sure we’ll find out next year, as a new COD game is almost as certain then as a 2011 Christmas.

Check out Amazon for Call of Duty Black Ops.

• Covers Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, AND Wii.
• All career ladders revealed with strategies to succeed at any career path!
• Accelerate skill development with our essential tips and tricks!
• Fall in love—and stay in love—with our relationship tips!
• Object catalogs reveal the hidden properties of every object in the game!
• FIND EVERY HIDDEN COLLECTIBLE!
• Complete lists of every Achievement, Trophy, Opportunity, Challenge, and Karma Power!
• Mood-boosting strategies for keeping Sims happy and productive!

There are some good factors about the Sims 3 Console Official Prima Guide. There are detailed listings of the community lots and what you can find in them, along with details about the personality traits, aspirations, ingredients for recipes, etc. There are also in-depth looks at each of the careers, along with the available Career Opportunities for each.

However, I rated the Sims 3 Console Official Prima Guide 3 stars for several reasons:

1. As many people have commented, the Sims 3 Console Official Prima Guide is poorly indexed. It’s difficult to find the information you’re searching for unless you flip through the whole thing. I resorted to putting Post-It flags on the pages I used the most often.

2. There were A LOT of inaccurate personality traits and cheats (I could probably count the number of correct cheats on one hand). It seems like the guide was written off of an earlier beta version of the game.

3. The writing style of Catherine Browne is REALLY annoying at times – personally, I don’t care what she thinks about the game. I just want the facts and ACCURATE tips.

Check out more details and reviews on Amazon for The Sims 3 Console Official Prima Guide.

PS Jailbreak is a USB plug and play solution that installs in seconds, keeping your valid warranty seal in tact.

Easy to use installer and GUI takes you step by step.

Compatible with all production models FAT and SLIM. Supports all regions: USA, JAP, PAL and KOREA

PS Jailbreak disables forced software updates and will never brick your console.

Supports all games (it does not allow backups of bluray movies , dvd movies , or past consoles games)

Backup games to your internal hard drive or external hard drive through USB, and boot directly off GUI. Eliminating the need for expensive blueray burners and costly blank media.

Play backups off your hard drives 2x as fast as off the blueray drive. This eliminates lags and glitches to provide you with smoother game play.

Open up your console to a new generation of homebrew applications. Load homebrew apps/games off any USB hard drive/flash drive.

Fully updatable with new features/updates by connecting PS Jailbreak to any computers USB port.

Not that im an expert at spelling, im far from it, but you would think that people who are knowledgeable enough to create such a device, could at least spell Blu Ray right.

The FAQ section from their website:

Q:Is PS Jailbreak easy to install?

A:Yes, it is a plug and play solution. It takes 1 second to fully install, without modifying or opening your console.

Q:Does it permanently modify my console?

A:No of course not, once you unplug it from the usb port it is completely disabled.

Q:How do you install PS Jailbreak?

A:Please consult our downloads page for our instruction manual. We have done our best to make it as thorough as possible to answer all setup and troubleshooting issues.

Q:What is the warranty?

A:PS Jailbreak is sold with a 1 year warranty. All our resellers will take care of warranty issues.

The only downloadable thing of their site, is this Back Up Manager

Here is a link to their site:

PS Jailbreak

A site called PSX-SCENE, claim to be the first and only site that can confirm that this is working, here is a quote from their site:

The first PS3 modchip has arrived and PSX-SCENE is the FIRST site to CONFIRM it is 100% REAL!!!

PSX-SCENE is the first any ONLY website to CONFIRM that this product is working 100% Not by speculation but by being the only website to actually have testers with actual product in hand! We will have a video courtesy of OzModchips soon so stay tuned!!!

I have been in contact directly with the manufacturer and can confirm some things you have all been asking about…

1. FAT32 is currently supported. They are working on NTFS.

2. They recommend staying on current firmware and not updating until they have deemed it safe. The dongle is fully updatable.

3. Online play does work but they cannot guarantee that it will work with all future titles.

4. Final retail units are ready to ship.

5. Official reseller list will be on their site in the next 48 hours. You can pre-order from any of the official resellers. There are websites out there now claiming to be selling but they are not legitimate. Don’t get ripped off. Wait until the official list is posted.

They posted a video:

Here is a quote from Mathieulh:
ps jailbreak’s so called “Backup Manager” (which is pretty much the only thing available to download on their website) is a debug package including a regular fself compiled with the (massively privately leaked) 1.92 sdk, The package itself is generated with Sony’s official sdk tool (make_package_npdrm revision 1203 probably from that very same sdk) that makes it illegal to share because I am quite sure ps jailbreak staff doesn’t have the appropriate license to be using the official Playstation 3 SDK and its tools. The binary itself seems to use the usual sce apis when it comes to the gui or copying files over. It does run on a debug console and displays a “nicely” done GUI that lets you “backup” your game to the external or usb hdd and “run” them later on. Needless to say the backups wont “run” as their “backup manager” is just a regular fself running with game privileges and doesn’t make use of any exploits that I can think of. Needless to say that if their so called usb dongle is real (which I doubt) it does extensive use of leaked sony’s software and keys/certificates.

PS Jailbreak, so the only question is it indeed real or fake.

This year’s E3 was the first in a while where no one at Sony said “This is going to be the year of the Playstation”, and ironically, this is the first year in a long while where we would have agreed with that statement. Sony brought something to the show fer every type of gamer. They showed off Playstation Move, Playstation Plus, and a wide variety of new games, including one big surprise – Twisted Metal for the PS3.

Playstation Move might look like a Wiimote with a ball on the end, but Sony is packing some serious punch into the device. Playstation Move will support all of the mini games you’ve come to expect from a motion controller, but it’s also going to be used in some clever ways in more traditional games. One such game demoed at E3 was Sorcery, in which Move is used as a magic wand. By doing different gestures with Playstation Move, spells can be cast in different ways. Spells can also be stacked on top of one another to create different effects. The example shown during E3 was a flaming tornado created by first casting a wall of fire, and then sending a wind spell through it. Take it from us,  any game with a flaming tornado of doom is sure to be a hit.

Rumors had been swirling for a long time about a premium Playstation Network service, and Sony finally made the announcement at E3. Playstation Plus will cost $50 USD per year, or $18 USD for three months, and as a member you’ll get early access to demos, access to beta tests, full free PSN games, free Playstation Minis, and the ability to automatically download all Playstation Plus content.

Screenshot of Sorcery being played with Playstation Move from Sony's E3 press conference.

Hardcore gamers will be happy to hear that Gran Turismo 5 finally has an official release date: November 2nd. Killzone 3 also has a release date, though it’s a little more vague; that game is due to hit store shelves sometime in February 2011. The big surprise for hardcore Sony fans was the announcement of a new Twisted Metal game headed to the PS3. Very few details were given about the game, but we do know that it will feature a wide variety of new game modes and vehicles, including flying vehicles.

The PS3 is going to have a lot of big, successful, exclusive games over the course of the next year or so. Sony had a top-notch showing at E3, and we can’t wait to get our hands on Playstation Move later this year. We’ll be sure to bring you more information on all the games Sony had to show at E3 as it becomes available.

According to a highly-placed source, Sony will announce a large-scale monetizing scheme for PSN at the LA show, but we’re assured nothing planned will impact the service’s current free aspects.

A string of features will be revealed, apparently costing “less than £50 per year”.

Sony will confirm plans to give all subscribers one free PSN game per month, from a choice of “two to four” every month.

“If you work it out, PSN games cost an average of £6-9 each, so over a year you’re basically going to be breaking even,” said our source.

A streaming music application similar to Spotify will be announced in Sony’s press conference on June 15. It’s thought that this can run in the background while playing games.

Rumours that cross-game voice chat is being saved as a paid feature are apparently not true, we were told.

“I can tell you now, 100 percent, that that’s not the case,” our man continued.

“There’s nothing in the premium package which will gimp regular PSN users.”

The PSN premium services announcement is thought to be a major part of Sony’s E3 conference, which will also heavily feature Move.

It’s thought that a PSP2 announcement, for this reason, is unlikely, and will be saved for either gamescom or TGS later this year. Get more detail on that here.