If you are being prompted to install Playstation 3 Firmware Update 4.45, you may want to wait for a few days as Sony are currently receiving reports that PS3 consoles are failing to boot after installing this update.

Specific symptoms seem to be that after the update to firmware 4.45, your PS3 will reboot and then show the welcome screen (the ribbon and sparkles thing) but the menu fails to load, effectively bricking the system.

Unfortunately, we don’t have a list of PS3 models this is happening on or an official comment from Sony Support yet but we can tell you that there are well more than just a handful of users affected. For more, check out this thread on the Playstation 3 Community forums and check back here for more updates. For now, proceed with caution when installing firmware update 4.45!

Update: Firmware 4.45 has been pulled from the Playstation Network, and no longer appears on Sony’s website. We still don’t have an official comment from Sony Support on this issue.

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While Valve stayed home from E3, yet again, they weren’t sitting idly by while the rest of the industry went crazy, they were hard at work Greenlighting a list of new games for Steam.

Greenlight, for those who aren’t familiar, is a platform within Steam where indie companies can submit their games for consideration by the community. The games that get the most votes will be released on Steam, as they are completed.

The latest round of Greenlit games are:

Assetto Corsa
DreadOut
Ether One
GunZ 2: The Second Duel
Heaven Benchmark
Stonehearth
The Forest

There are some other cool looking games in the latest round of titles to get the Green Light, but our favorite, from what we’ve seen so far, is The Forest. The Forest mixes building and crafting with horror and survival in an open world. That sounds good to me.

If you haven’t had a chance to checkout Greenlight, hit one of the links above and go vote on some other games that catch your eye. The voice of the community is heard loud and clear on Steam.

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After some retail store promotional materials leaked online earlier today, Activision and Treyarch decided to lift the curtain back and reveal the Vengeance Map Pack; the third piece of DLC for Call of Duty Black Ops 2.

The Vengeance Map Pack DLC will be released on the Xbox 360 first on July 2nd, with the PS3 and PC release dates to be announced later. It will include four new multiplayer maps, one new Zombies mode and one new weapon. Three of the new maps, Cove, Detour and Rush, are brand new and the fourth map, Uplink, is actually a remake of the original Black Ops’ Summit map. Then there’s a new Zombies map called Buried and the new Ray Gun Mark II weapon, which is available to use in any Zombies map.

The Vengeance Map Pack is free for anyone who purchased the Season Pass and available for everyone else for $15. To go along with the DLC announcement, Treyarch released the below video to give us a look at the Vengeance DLC in action. Check it out.

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Summer is almost here and GOG.com are celebrating by putting 500+ games on sale during their NoDRM Summer Sale, which starts today and ends on July 5th. Even though there are hundreds of games to pick from, the first game you’re going to want to grab is the original Torchlight, which is free for the next 48 hours.

New sales will pop up each day, with games like The Witcher 2, Alan Wake, Two Worlds 2, Neverwinter Nights, Beyond Good and Evil, Assassin’s Creed, Legend of Grimrock and more as today’s deals. Even though the majority of the games on gog.com are old, it’s a great place to find great deals on DRM free games you may have missed.

Click here to get Torchlight for free and here to see the rest of the deals on gog.com.

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Alright everybody, now that all of the excitement of E3 is done it’s time to get back to business. While we were all otherwise occupied, People Can Fly have been hard at work on some new maps for Gears of War Judgment.

The Lost Relics DLC will be available today, June 18th, for Gears of War Judgment VIP subscribers and will have a release date of June 25th for the general public. Lost Relics features four new maps, new weapon and player skins, and a new game mode called Breakthrough.

Check out the playlist below for a flythrough of all four maps in the Lost Relics DLC and grab it now:

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Undead Labs released the first title update for State of Decay last week, but things didn’t go as planned and the update failed to apply to the game correctly once you downloaded it. They worked with Microsoft to get things resolved but it didn’t work out and now all of the changes in Title Update 1 have been inserted into Title Update 2, which is in QA testing now and hopefully in certification next week.

Basically, that means that Undead Labs are almost done testing Title Update 2 and then they’ll submit it to Microsoft, so they can do their testing as well, and then it will be released to us. My guess, based on what I’ve seen with updates in the past, is that we’ll see Title Update 2 within the next three weeks or so. The good news in all of this is that we’ll be getting a much bigger title update when the second one is released. It’s not all just bug fixes either, with lots of general changes to the game as well. The change that I’m most excited about is the one that makes searching for stockpiles over the radio more reliable. It seems like the longer you play, the more likely it becomes that Lilly will say she found something, but it never shows up on your map. I’ve had this happen quite a few times and can’t wait for it to be fixed.

Undead Labs also announced today that State of Decay’s PC version will launch on Steam (release date still TBA) and both it and the Xbox Live Arcade version will be getting a new Sandbox Mode. This new mode will remove all of the story and introduce “new mechanics” (details not released yet) to provide a pure survival simulation. I definitely want to hear more about that.

We’ll update again once we know the release date for Title Update 2, the PC version and Sandbox Mode. For now, you can read the entire patch notes for Title Update 2 below.

Update #1 (6/18/13): Undead Labs announced on Twitter tonight that they should be ready to submit Title Update 2 to Microsoft tomorrow, which means we could see it late next week, as long as the certification goes through. We’ll update again when we know more.

• Fixed rucksacks falling through floor and being unrecoverable. Rucksacks are now moved to an easily accessible location within the same building.
• You can now manufacture homemade painkillers in the Medical Lab.
• Stockpiles that are over the maximum storage provided by your current Facilities (the “cap”) will no longer drain while you are not playing. Instead, Stockpiles that exceed the cap will drain every five minutes of play at the following rate: 2 if you’re 100% over, 1.5 if you’re 50% over, and 1 if you’re 15% over.
• Improved awareness of Stockpiles that are over the cap. The Assets page now displays both the current amount and cap for each Stockpile. Stockpile amounts that are over the cap will be displayed in yellow, both in the Assets page and the Home Status panel.
• Influence in excess of Fame no longer drains while you are not playing, and the rate of drain during play is reduced from 6 per minute to 2 per minute.
• The rate at which Stockpiles are consumed no longer factors in the number of missions played during the current day. It was causing Stockpile consumption to be too high.
• Fixed a bug that caused some characters to be given 100 ammo.
• The “Too many infestations!” to-do item is now properly cleared if you relocate your Home to a site with fewer than two infestations within 500m.
• Fixed several areas on the map where the player can get stuck.
• Fixed several pockets of deep water.
• Fixed a bug that could cause unexpectedly large numbers of zombies to spawn near the Mt. Tanner cabins.
• Fixed a bug that caused games with large communities to fail to load.
• Fixed a bug that allowed players to get stuck in the abandoned farm house north of Marshall.
• Removed several sections of fencing around warehouse near fairgrounds to improve navigation for missions in the area.
• Made it easier to navigate fairgrounds in vehicles.
• Adjusted draw distance of dynamically generated vehicles to match pre-placed vehicles.
• Fixed a bug that caused character to become stuck in a falling state when dropping from a ladder into a group of zombies.
• Fixed a bug that prevented weapon durability from being reduced by certain combat moves.
• Made it easier to execute “Double Kill” move.
• Fixed a bug that caused a Feral zombie to react incorrectly if you dodged while he was leaping.
• Fixed a bug that briefly displayed debug text in the main menu after selecting a storage device.
• Made major adjustments to Facility action times to make Facilities more useful during the current play session:
• Globally changed Want delays from 1 real-time day to 4 real-time hours.
• Duration of Fitness Regimen, Combat Training, Big Meal, Feast, and Firearms Practice changed from 3 real-time days to 2 game-time hours (where “game time” means time playing the game, not counting time that elapses while you are paused or logged out) so you get the full benefit of the bonus while you are actually playing the game.
• Cooldown on Big Meal and Feast changed from 22 real-time hours to 3 game-time hours. This means your community is “full” for 1 game-time hour after the effects of Big Meal and Feast wear off before the Facility actions can be used again.
• Trade Opportunity action time changed from 1 real-time day to 90 real-time minutes.
• Train Outsiders action time changed from 1 real-time day to 90 real-time minutes.
• Preservation Attempt action time changed from 3 real-time days to 90 real-time minutes.
• Create Biodiesel action time changed from 3 real-time days to 90 real-time minutes.
• All Library research actions changed from 2 real-time days to 4 real-time hours.
• You now receive a Stockpile bonus upon claiming a new Home site. Each site comes with a specific number of Stockpiles, based on the size and number of Facility sockets in the site.
• Fixed a pathing bug that caused zombies to get stuck in the floor during a “Besieged” mission.
• Added a “Stick Sensitivity” option.
• The game will now repair saves affected by a bug fixed in TU1 that could cause Lily to be killed by the simulation.
• Characters selected for Mercy Shot mission can no longer recover from their injuries.
• Mercy Shot missions can no longer select playable characters.
• Moved “Horde Alerted!” banner higher on the screen and reduced size to avoid interfering with driving.
• If you move your Home site when a Trade Opportunity mission opportunity is active, the mission opportunity now relocates to the new Home site.
• Lily no longer reminds you to come to the final mission site. It was annoying during sandbox play after winning final mission.
• Edged weapons are now effective against Feral zombies.
• Fixed bug relating to Juggernaut reactions to incendiaries.
• Fixed a bug that notified you of simulation events affecting NPCs that are not in your community.
• Searching for Stockpiles with the radio is now more reliable.
• Fixed bug causing stimulants to have permanent effect. Stimulants such as coffee and energy drinks now properly wear off over time.
• It is no longer possible to establish an Outpost or relocate your Home while on a mission.
• Improved music track selection logic.

Fixes/changes from Title Update 1:

• Playable characters can no longer be killed by the simulation
• Workshop now repairs weapons and vehicles at game dawn rather than the next real-world day.
• Reduced cooldown times of commands in the Radio Menu, notably Words of Encouragement, Words of Inspiration, and Medical Advice.
• NPCs no longer get stuck behind the counter or on the stairs at the gun shop in Spencer’s Mill.
• The “Too many infestations!” event will now only occur when there are too many infestations within 500m of your Home, rather than anywhere in the world.
• UPDATED: The “Too many infestations” to-do item is now cleared when there is only one remaining infestation within 500m of your Home, rather than anywhere in the world.
• You must now be close to the ranger station for the Memento mission scene to play. Previously you would be teleported to the station if you left before the end of the mission.
• Community members will properly interact with Facilities in your home. Previously they would stop after a period of time.
• Feral zombie now properly dodges vehicles approaching at an angle.
• NPCs will now reliably reach warehouse between Mt. Tanner and Spencer’s Mill when called to gather supplies.
• You can now punch out through the windshield of a vehicle if both doors are blocked.
• Zombies and NPCs no longer get stuck behind the grocery store in Marshall.
• NPCs now properly move to the proper location during cinematic scenes.
• Zombies no longer fall through floor in the Marshall courthouse.
• Zombies can no longer get under porch or floor at the Wilkerson’s farmhouse.
• Fixed a few rare crash bugs.
• Fixed various translations bugs.

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We’ve known since the Microsoft E3 Media Briefing that the Xbox One will cost you $499 if you decide to grab one at launch, but the more pressing question, in our minds, was how much would the games cost? Today we have your answer.

As for the Playstation 4, we don’t have any actual confirmation yet but Sony President, Jack Tretton, in a recent interview with CNBC said that the PS4 is, “designed with the game developer in mind and the consumer in mind,” and will offer games with prices ranging from $0.99 to the more traditional $60 range with the ability for players to sample games before they buy.” This would lead us to believe that Sony are planning for a $59.99 price point for their full retail games as well.

Personally, I hope we see more games in the $20 – $30 range this generation but I’ll settle for no increase in price.

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The Last of Us has been one of our most anticipated games since long before even last year’s E3. Naughty Dog’s take on the end of civilization is so intriguing, and fungus based, that we couldn’t help but pay attention. As excited as we are, we can’t help but wonder if this game is going to turn out to just be Uncharted with fungus-zombies but we’re hoping for something more and, judging by the demo, we’re going to get it. Now the time is finally here, the time in which we get to take a cross country trip with Jake and Ellie to show those mushrooms who’s boss.

Single Player

I won’t spoil any of the story, but the setting that The Last of Us presents you with is one that I could go on for hours about. This is essentially a zombie story, but one like you’ve never seen before and, for people who know the science behind it, one that is truly terrifying. The infected, as they are known by the characters in the game, are not actually the walking dead but are the walking living. Humans are being infected by a new strain of the Cordyceps fungus and being turned into violent shells of their former selves. If you aren’t familiar with Cordyceps, I suggest you look it up as it is one of the freakiest things you can find in nature and Naughty Dog have perfectly captured the terror that the discovery of a strain that could jump to humans would bring.

It isn’t simply the concepts that make The Last of Us scary, the situations you’ll run into during the game serve to suck you in like few other games can. Every environment that you’ll come across is stunningly beautiful in its own right due to both the level of detail and the visual quality. The Last of Us is one of the best looking console games of this generation, hands down.

Uh, you have something on your face.

When you aren’t fighting off other humans, which will happen quite frequently, you’ll be facing off with some of the most frightening enemies you’ve ever encountered in a game. The majority of the infected will come in one of two flavors: runners and clickers. Runners are the precursor to clickers and still look mostly like a human but the noises they make and their movements ratchet up the creep factor. Clickers are further along in their infection, to the point where the fungus has taken over their face so they can no longer see. Instead, Clickers see via echolocation forcing players to be very careful when dealing with them, as well as making a room full of them one of the most terrifying situations you’ll encounter in any game.

Since you are rarely alone during your journey in The Last of Us, you’re probably wondering if this is all going to be one big escort mission with Joel having to continuously rescue Ellie. This absolutely won’t be the case as the secondary characters can take care of themselves, for the most part, and can also not be spotted by enemies during the frequent sections where stealth is your best option. This mechanic can lead to some situations where Ellie, or another character, is sitting right out in the open while enemies completely ignore her, and can break your immersion but it ends up being a small price to pay for not having to worry about her being seen.

Try to keep up, old man.

Combat in The Last of Us is tense, strategic, and at times very difficult. Staying true to the survival side of things, ammo is scarce and avoiding enemies or sneaking up on them for silent kills is always your best option. If you are spotted, you can back off and hide while you watch the fantastic AI system at work. Enemies won’t simply rush you when they see you but will split up and flank you, try to sneak up on you, try to flush you out with explosives, remain wary of being attacked, and will switch their tactics if they discover your new position.

The Last of Us took me fourteen hours to complete, but the level to which you explore some of the more open environments could extend it quite a bit further. Your journey is often bleak, sometimes heartwarming, and is always tense while it wraps up with an ending that smacks you in the face. This is one of the best single player campaigns you’ll ever play.

Multiplayer

As surprising as it was to hear that The Last of Us would have a multiplayer mode, it was even more surprising to find out that it was actually pretty good and is built around a unique idea. When you begin multiplayer you’ll be asked to choose one of two factions, and will then compete in a twelve week quest to survive and grow your settlement with each match you play representing one day. As you win matches you will gain supplies and grow your colony. Go on a losing streak and you may find yourself without enough supplies to maintain your group.

Bring a Molotov to a gun fight.

The best thing about multiplayer is that the same type of strategic action that you get in the single player campaign also translates over to multiplayer. Players start with minimal ammo but can earn parts to buy more and upgrade their weapons. Items like health packs and bombs can also be crafted, just like in the campaign, by scavenging materials from the map. Stealth is still your best option in multiplayer and working together will always trump running in with guns blazing.

Closing Comments

With an engrossing story and campaign, stunning visuals, and survival horror mixed perfectly with fast paced action, The Last of Us is a truly impressive package. This is before you even get to the fun and original multiplayer mode or the fact that the campaign delivers twice as much content as we are used to with this type of game. Naughty Dog picked a heck of a way to close out the console generation by making one of the most memorable games the PS3 has to offer.

Score: 10/10

Price: $59.99
Release Date: June 14th, 2013
Available On: Playstation 3

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As a big fan of the series, and one of the seemingly few people who loved the story in Dragon Age 2, I’m highly anticipating the next installment in the series and at this year’s E3 we got to have a look at Dragon Age Inquisition running in the Frostbite 3 engine.

Dragon Age Inquisition is scheduled for a Fall 2014 release and, as such, will be a full next-gen title. The gorgeous visuals you’ll see in this latest trailer show off just what the Frostbite 3 engine can bring to the series and how well Bioware have been able to adapt the series to it.

This time around you’ll be playing a member of the Inquisition as an all out war between the Mages and the Templars threatens to tear the world apart. I’m already pumped to see what this story will bring, and how my choices will shape the outcome.

Check out the Dragon Age Inquisition E3 2013 trailer below, and look for a couple of familiar faces (HINT: it’s Morrigan and Varric):

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In all the craziness that was E3 2013 it was easy to forget that some of gaming’s biggest franchises were at the show too, but DICE are here with a multiplayer video that will make sure you don’t forget about Battlefield 4.

In this demo we get to see the Siege of Shanghai multiplayer map in action and, in true Battlefield fashion, this map is huge. Set right in the middle of the famous city, you’ll be fighting in and around the skyscrapers of Shanghai and they aren’t just there for decoration. You can actually bring them down around your opponents, and destroy other pieces of the map as well.

Blown out buildings are not exactly new to the Battlefield series, but you have to see the size of the ones you can destroy in Battlefield 4 to believe them.

Watch the 64 player madness in the Streets of Shanghai below:

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