PS3 'saves' Hallelujah!!

"Cloud saving - not even Final Fantasy 7 related"

PlayStation Plus takes gamers far beyond competition

Matt Adcock for Darkmatters

It's a terrifying thought for any gamer who has sunk many hours into a game... Data loss!?
If you've invested in leveling up, getting to the final boss, working towards a Platinum trophy - the one thing you really don't need would be for your save data to be lost.

Many of my Xbox playing friends have openly wept as their machines went the way of the infamous Red Ring of Death or new improved Red Light of Death with the slim model... It wasn't so much the repair bill or replacement cost of the hardware but more the pain of lost game saves. PS3 users too have complained that buying a new PS3 or upgrading the hard drive can mean saying goodbye to some copyrighted game save data.

But while Xbox 360 players will still have that worry - and will need to keep some sort of external disc to hand for backups, now PlayStation 3 owners need never fear losing their save games ever again. All that's required is to sign up for the Sony's PlayStation Plus service - an excellent way to get free games, Beta access and exclusive treats from Sony anyway.

Because Sony know how to treat their gamers and have introduced 'cloud storage' for game saves.

This feature allows gamers to upload 150MB of save game data to the big Sony game save bank in the sky (online), so that you can not only easily transfer game saves between PlayStation 3 systems - should you own more than one, but also access your game save from a mate's PS3 by logging in on their machine.

So if someone should steal your beloved PS3 or heaven forbid, it die from years of hard service - your game saves are protected. Even copy-protected data can still be stored online, which will make the transition between PS3s or Hard Disc Drive upgrading that much more easy.

Nice move Sony, we gamers salute you!!

The Cloud Storage comes with the 3.60 system update and is accessed through the XMB's Saved Data Utility menu.

"Sony's PS3 Angels - waiting to look after your game save data"

Recent cool PS3 games to check:

KILLZONE 3

DC Universe Online

Darkmatters Review: Catfish

Catfish (12)


Dir. Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost

Reviewed by Matt ‘Rachel’ Adcock

My name is Rachel, I’m a sexy young babe with a hot body and naughty mind… I’d love to be your facebook friend and send you some great pictures of myself!? Tell me what you’re into, where you live, maybe we could meet up, I know you want to at least ‘poke’ me, surely it would be rude not to?

"'Rachel' - who looks a lot like Emma Stone"

Of course none of the above is actually true (apart from the hot body bit LOL) but thanks to facebook there’s nothing stopping me pretending to be ‘Rachel’ if I choose to and you might well have become my facebook ‘friend’… In fact I could have created a whole raft of alternate personalities on facebook – all linked to each other and interacting across the virtual social network.

Catfish is a thought provoking documentary which follows Nev Schulman - a New York photographer who strikes up an unlikely facebook friendship with an eight year old girl named Abby who has some artistic talent and likes to paint paintings of Nev’s photographs.

Nev’s brother Ariel Schulma and his friend Henry Joost are the filmmakers here and their documentary records how the virtual friendship between Nev and Abby grows. Nev gets talking to Abby’s mum Angela and comes across her sexy sister Megan – with whom he strikes up a long distance – social network enabled flirtation.

What at first starts off as a seemingly harmless and interesting set of new contacts for Nev, spirals into something a bit more worrying when cracks and inconsistencies begin to raise doubts in Nev’s mind as to who he is actually in contact with.

Catfish is a brilliant and compulsively watchable cautionary tale – which leaves viewers asking “just how well do you know your facebook friends?” Nev makes a good everyman hero – and his Scooby Doo style investigation with his pals into who or what he is virtually involved with in Abby, Megan, Angela and their increasingly diverse circle of facebook ‘friends’ makes for good viewing.

Needless to say that all is not quite what it seems but I won’t spoil the rest of the plot for you as it works best when you don’t know what to expect. The cinematography is of the shaky cam Cloverfield style – recently employed so well in The Last Exorcism. The filmmakers keep the narrative of their documentary ticking along so that you don’t have chance to get bored during the slow build up as you’ll really want to see how it ends.

There are some places where the film could be accused of exploiting real people’s lives (if in fact this is a ‘true’ as they’d have you believe) but the fact is that you’re likely to come away from Catfish having been moved and challenged – which are reactions that only the best films really accomplish.

Catfish is the perfect flip side to the big budget The Social Network, it seems that Mark Zuckerberg has a lot to answer for, not least empowering people to lead virtual lives that may not actually be rooted in reality. Recommended viewing for every facebook user in your life!

Out of a potential 5 you have to go with a Darkmatters:
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(4 – a carcrash spectacle of eyewatering social interaction)...