Category Archives: PS3

Fixing Skyrim issues with the Seagate Hybrid SSD

Posted by on January 13, 2012 No comments

My previous Skyrim crashes and lag-problems seem to have “temporarily” disappeared. Considering that many other Playstation users experience the same lag- and crash issues, one can assume that aside from the blatant bugs in Skyrim, the bugs themselves are related to storage.

As an experiment I purchased a Seagate Momentus XT 500GB hybrid SSD drive (500GB traditional platters and 4GB SSD cache) and fitted it into my PS3:

Seagate Momentus 500GB Hybrid SSD drive

On the PS3 slim, the installation is straightforward – I did struggle finding the drive bay (unlike the PS3 phat), the drive-bay on the PS3 slim is on the front left and the bay can be unlocked by removing a latch at the bottom of the PS3 – make sure that you have the right torx-srewdriver to avoid stripping the screw.

Once you synced all your accounts trophies and performed a PS3 backup (which took in my case 4 hours), you can remove the hard-drive, replace it with the Seagate Momentus and then restore your backup.

Drive characteristics and warning: Ensure that your drive comes with firmware SD28 – anything before that is trouble-some. Also note that the PS3 does not natively support trimming and eventually the solid-state portion of the drive will fragment. This does not worry me too much, as the PS3′s usage behavior focuses more on reads than writes (i.e. installs and save-games).

The drive is a 7200RPM drive with 32MB DRAM cache, 4GB SLC NAND and 500GB HDD space. It features Seagates adaptives memory algorithm which over time will remember usage behavior and make most accessed files available on the SSD area.

The restore of about 230GB of data was reasonably fast (short of two hours) and installation of Skyrim seemed to be faster compared to Sony’s factory HDD (a Toshiba 5400RPM drive). Even after long usage, the faster drive speed does not result in the PS3 running hotter.

The most amazing thing is however the regained stability playing Skyrim. Given that I have only played about 10 hours in the last few days, I have not experienced a single lag or hang during 3-4 hour gaming sessions. Using the factory HDD I managed perhaps 1-2 hours.

Most amazingly, the transition between areas (i.e. leaving a dungeon our house or even fast-travelling) is considerably faster and almost instant.

I have not noticed considerably faster startup time or game-save or game-load operations – it almost seems that Skyrim requires most of the time processing the data. I do see less HDD activity – and those occur in small bursts (judging by the HDD LED indicator).

While the switch to a hybrid SSD might not necessarily fix the Skyrim issue for everyone, it was a reasonable cost-effective upgrade (the drive costs about R 1,600) and has resolved my issues quite dramatically.

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Skyrim – fixing the lag problem and crashes

Posted by on January 1, 2012 1 comment

Skyrim has been troubled with glitches and bugs since it’s introduction in November. Frequent crashes and bloated save games have been an experience for all users and Bethesda has been desperately trying to fix the issues by rushing out 3 updates over the last few weeks.

Skyrim - PS3 lag and crashes

With this brief tutorial, you will be able to fix most of the issues, but it is still no silver bullet for the occasional crash until Bethesda releases a more stable patch. You should try the following procedure:

  • Start Skyrim, reload your previous save-game and then disable all auto-saves. The auto-save is in my opinion the biggest culprit in Skyrim hanging. The downside is that you will need to save frequently yourself.
  • Save to a new save-game and then exit Skyrim.
  • Go to the Save Data Utility on the PS3 and deleted any Corrupted Files (the PS3 will show these with a different icon)
  • Follow the “Activating Safe Mode” steps below and then run the steps “Restore File System” and afterwards “Rebuild Database”.
  • Restart Skyrim and hopefully most of the lag-issues are gone (unfortunately not for good, but some root-causes have been removed).
  • If Skyrim crashes, make sure to delete Corrupted Files before restarting Skyrim.

Activating Safe Mode

Step 1: Turn off the PLAYSTATION 3 by holding the Power button on the front of the unit till the Power light is red.

Step 2:

  1. Touch and hold the Power button, you will hear the first beep, meaning the PLAYSTATION 3 is powering on.
  2. Continue to hold the Power button and after about 5 seconds, you will hear a second beep, indicating the video reset.
  3. Continue to hold the Power button and after about another 5 seconds you will hear a third beep and the system will power off (Power light is red).

Step 3:

  1. Touch and hold the Power button, you will hear the first beep, again for the PLAYSTATION 3 to power on.
  2. Continue to hold the Power button and after about 5 seconds, you will hear a second beep for video reset.
  3. Continue to hold the Power button and after about another 5 seconds you will hear a quick double beep.  At that point release the Power button.  If you succeeded in activating Safe Mode, you will see a message on the screen saying, “Connect the controller using a USB cable and then press the PS button.”
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Dragon Age: Origins

Posted by on January 2, 2010 No comments

Dragon Age: Origins is the spiritual successor to BioWare’s critically acclaimed Baldur’s Gate, featuring deep character customization and role-playing, morally challenging decisions, tactical party-based combat, and a wealth of gritty, mature sub-plots. It is a dark, heroic fantasy game that combines original storytelling techniques with classic role-playing challenges.

In Dragon Age, your choices change the world and affect the people around you. Certain situations, storylines, and conversation options will change drastically depending on your origin and your motivations. You choose your origin, and from that starting point, your story begins. You play through your character’s early days, defining his or her background and motivation and begin to learn more about the world of Ferelden from your own distinct perspective. Your choice of origin defines how you will view the world and how it views you. Choose a sneaky, disrespected commoner and you will play a story that focuses around subtle skills and careful wordplay. Choose a noble origin and the world will be much more positive and helpful, but those jealous of your status will not be afraid to take what you have, violently if necessary.

The character creation reveals more of Dragon Age’s depth and flexibility. You have three separate races (human, dwarf and elf) and three base classes (warrior, rogue and mage) to choose from. Additionally, your hero will have general skills, class-specific talents and specializations, which you can learn from manuals or other characters willing to teach you their arts. By the end of the game, your hero will feel like a true legendary Grey Warden with a full complement of abilities to destroy the Darkspawn.

Dragon Age provides a ton of customization without a level cap, so it’s possible to take two characters with the exact same background and develop them in completely different ways. For example, do you want a berserker that mows down enemies, a stealthy rogue that strikes from the shadows or a mage that wields the elements?

I am on my 3rd playthrough – played through as human warrior, dwarfen rogue and now as an elven mage. A must-have RPG for the PS3 (I have never run into a game with a gay assassin or a bi-sexual elven rogue). Per storyline the game will entertain you for at least 40 hours (2nd playthrough took 32 hours as I skipped most of the dialogue).

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New PS3 firmware: PS3 data transfer

Posted by on December 9, 2009 1 comment

It finally appears that Sony has listened and with the upcoming 3.15 firmware will support PS3 data transfer. This feature enables you to transfer all of your saved data from one PS3 to another. So if you decide to get a new PS3 you can make sure you don’t loose any of your existing content. Content such as games, game save data, and videos downloaded from PlayStation Network can be transferred to the new PS3 system and deleted from the current PS3.

Other content, including personal media files (photos, music, videos), can be copied onto the new PS3 and remain on the current PS3 system. This is good news for the 60GB PS3-owners as those consoles seem to very quickly die now.

Update (2009-12-12): The firmware update is now live – you can download it here.

I WAS WRONG: The transfer-utility allows only to copy content via ethernet – WTF Sony? I was hoping for a transfer via USB.

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Playfire: Answers to Modern Warfare 2 competition

Posted by on October 18, 2009 No comments

PlayFire is hosting a competition with a give-a-way of Modern Warfare Prestige edition.

The answers are really straight:
1. Infinity Ward
2. PS3, Xbox 360 and PC
3. November 10th 2009
4. fourzerotwo
5. Dual-wield handguns
6. Modern Warfare 2: Ghost
7. False – it’s one iteration on
8. Square Enix
9. Task Force 141
10. Sargeant Gary “Roach” Sanderson

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Guitar Hero: Slider-tap strumming

Posted by on July 26, 2009 No comments

I got Guitar Hero – Greatest Hits over the weekend and going through the tutorials, found that with the new slider-guitars you can also “tap-strum”:

The slider bar can take the place of the normal strum bar (you can tap-strum). Instead of strumming you hold the fret-buttons and tap the slider. You can use it to create different “wah” effects, use it for hammer-ons/pull-offs and hitting a crapload of notes in a row without strumming. It does seem that the GHWT-guitar suffers from build-issues, as star power can now only be activated with force.

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Sacred 2: Lazy developers

Posted by on July 12, 2009 No comments

I got Sacred 2: Fallen Angels over the weekend and am mightily disappointed. The local two-player mode is unplayable as you constantly clash with your buddy. Unlike Return To Arms or Baldur’s Gate, two players can also not change their skills/inventory at the same time and playing this game becomes tiring.

The single-player campaign is slightly better, but riddled with bugs (such as the one below):

Sofar I have not been able to do 3 side-quests, since either an enemy all of a sudden disappears or I am not able to reselect the side-quest itself. In one case I had to guide a NPC to a location and half we through the trip, the NPC decided to run off and was never seen again.

If you are used to Baldur’s Gate or Oblivion, you will be disappointed. If you are starting out fresh on RPGs on the PS3, this might just be the game for you. Even on the hardest difficulty it is very easy.

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Credit card fraud: Shopto?

Posted by on June 19, 2009 2 comments

It certainly makes you wonder (and worry) that within one week at least 3 members at the PS3ZA forum faced credit-card fraud (here, here and here). Allegedly all users have been using ShopTo.net and I am aware of users who only use a single credit card on ShopTo.net.

While ShopTo.net has denied that there was ever an issue, I strongly believe that fraud has been related to ShopTo (a simple Google search will show you many “coincidences”).

I used to be a loyal ShopTo customer and after spending in excess of EUR 800,00 was eventually banned from ShopTo, as they claimed that I abused their lost-parcel policy (yes, I did claim for two parcels valued at EUR 29,00 each – but those never arrived). So when checking today, that they really removed all my credit card information, I was surprised to see that Safari also alerted me about an invalid SSL certificate (I don’t see the same message on IE and can not really confirm if there is a Safari glitch – but again, another coincidence and the first SSL issue I have ever seen).

My point in the above: Make sure that you only disclose your CC-details to trusted sites and check your credit card statement daily.

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Steve you F! Hope you enjoyed my game

Posted by on June 14, 2009 No comments

I am used to parcels getting lost or stolen by our local Post Office staff, but this one takes the cake:

An order shipped via CDWOW on 17th April arrived today. The envelope was in mint condition, but I was already not impressed when the game was not in its shrink-wrap. Opening the case revealed the little note. After a WTF-moment I laughed, thinking of some guy (who isn’t called Steve) getting the game and still being honest enough to send it on (I wish this would happen to all the other parcels being stolen).

In any case – Steve – if you read this – thanks for being honest. I am also mightily impressed with CDWOW as the had send me a replacement copy (which I received 3 weeks before this one).

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Fallout 3: Awesome

Posted by on June 7, 2009 1 comment

I have been playing Fallout 3 on the PS3 and finished the game last night with all achievements unlocked.

The game is set in a post-apocalyptic world following The Great War between the US and China, a conventional and nuclear war that occurred on October 23, 2077 and lasted less than two hours despite causing immense damage and destruction. Before The Great War were the Resource Wars, during which the United Nations disbanded, a plague rendered the United States paranoid, and Canada was annexed.

The game’s gameplay is very similar to Elder Scrolls and glitches on the PS3 just as much as on any other platform. It took my roughly 40 hours to finish all main-, side- and some freeform-quests. Unlike the open-ended Elder Scrolls, the introduction of achievements made the game more enjoyable and at least had a few goals to pursue (something I never managed to do with Oblivion).

Playing on normal difficulty is fairly easy and once you reach Level 10, the game does not provide a challenge anymore (other than completing the quests). You will have enough ammunition and health, and nothing gets in your way. Fallout 3 caps the maximum level to 20, at which point I had most of my skills at 100 (barter, science, repairs, speech, big guns etc).

I did not feel like playing the game 3 times (to achieve reaching level 8, 14 and 20 at good, neutral and evil karma) and saved before levelling up, then did actions influencing the karma to get the achievement.

While the PC-version allows you to cheat via console commands, the PS3 is less forgiving. Save often, as you will run into glitches and you will regret that you did not save. This happened to me in the last 30 minutes of the game, when I realised that I will not be able to get the platinum trophy, as I was far off from the “Silver-tongued devil” achievement. In the beginning my speech skill was too low and I lost most of the challenges, I also made certain choices which did not involve speech.

Thanks to a glitch in the game, I came across Knock-Knock (figure yourself out where you find her) which allows you to repeat the same speech-challenge several times.

Can’t wait for the add-on content coming in towards the end of June.

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