So its Easter Sunday and we are all well aware of Sony’s increasingly frustrating PSN outage. Other than munching on chocolate, I am sure today was also planned as a lazy day in, served with a hot session of online gaming! With the misery story of the PSN, we thought we would try and offer some other alternatives so that your gaming day at home would not be totally ruined after all.
We spoke earlier about how gamers who also own an Xbox 360 were simply switching consoles and playing Xbox live, well this is the first tip. If you just bought Mortal Kombat 9 on the PS3 then this will be very annoying, but anyone who freely plays games on both consoles should not have too many problems playing with the 360 while we wait for service to resume. You can find regular updates on the Playstation Blog.
Attempt split-screen multiplayer, even if vs. a Kinectimal
Back in my day, the Internet was strictly for porn and downloading songs illegally through Napster. Meanwhile, videogames were played offline with local friends in a form of multiplayer called “split… screen.” Games like Mario Kart 64 and GoldenEye 007 used to rob teens and twenty-somethings of sleep on a regular basis, but unlike Call of Duty today, we were all able (read: forced) to enjoy the close-quarters competition. Being able to throw a couch pillow at a buddy who was just few feet away is a cheapshot that you just can’t execute with today’s microphone and headset combo. Now, we know that you may have shed all of your tangible friends since the dawn of social networking sites Facebook and Twitter. However, we played against a Kinectimal in Tetris and couldn’t be more pleased with the results. Everyone likes winning and this is a sure-fire way to scream Charlie Sheen’s favorite line after every round.
Go outside
Many videogames are based on the environment outside of your living room and it still exists today! So, get up and have an up-close-and-personal encounter with planet Earth and… oh no! The sun is bright! Everyone back inside and move onto the next suggestion…
Sneak into Netflix on PS3 through this workaround; feel like you’re sneaking into the movies
I’ve never snuck into the movies, but I can imagine what it’s like now that I’ve overcome the log-in obstacles that currently plague Netflix on the PS3. Booting up the dashboard widget leads you to the notorious PSN sign-in screen. Grumble, Grumble, Grumble! Same thing as online gaming, right? Well, if you press X to sign in and fail, simply press O. It’ll still load up Netflix. It’ll ask you to sign in a couple more times until you advance far enough into the movie selection screen. Don’t give up, after a couple of tries, it quits faster than an underpaid movie theater usher.
Surf the web and play Call of Duty: Black Ops offline at the same time: “Pfftt... yeah, I’m online... gaming on PS3”
Please don’t resort to playing Farmville or any other obnoxious social networking “game” that is going to clutter the newsfeed of your soon-to-be-former friends. We know that you want to tell everyone that you were online gaming this weekend and don’t want to end your streaking just because PSN is down. Instead, surf the web and play an offline game at the same time - you’ve got two hands. There’s even an awesome site we can suggest for the first half of the online + gaming equation.
Log into... dun dun dun! Xbox Live or Steam
PlayStation-loyalists aren’t going to be pleased with this suggestion as they are the most vocal in the so-called “system wars.” But Xbox Live and Steam are two great alternatives to gaming through PSN. A lot of the same games are offered on the Xbox 360 and PC/Mac including a couple of exclusives like Limbo via XBLA – my personal favorite of 2010. So long as you aren’t rebuying your PS3 games for this (hopefully) single weekend of downtime, then you’re spending your time and money wisely. There are some PS3 and PSP fans who “say” they’re so fed up with the whole ordeal that they’re buying a brand new Xbox 360 for this very reason. We think most of them are lying like the overenthusiastic Republican or Democratic voter who says if X wins, I’m moving to N country. Not a chance.
Rig up that old PS2 Network Adapter
PS2 Online is reportedly still working, according to a mix of tweets. Since this 2002-launched service was never part of the PlayStation Network, this would make sense. So, if you still haven’t traded in your old PS2 console and have Sony’s archaic PS2 Network Adapter screwed into the back of your last-gen console’s expansion slot, then you could be playing SOCOM 1, SOCOM 2, SOCOM 3 – even SOCOM 4 …as in SOCOM: Combined Assault, the real fourth installment in the SOCOM series. Be sure to tweet that you’re “playing SOCOM 4 online right now” and get every online shooter fan into a frenzy.
Laugh at Wii’s still-pitiful online support
PSN may not work this week, but in our minds, Nintendo’s online gaming strategy has never really worked for us. Without a sole identity and, instead, relying on a series of numbers, the motion-controlled console missed the boat by a mile this generation. 3DS makes it a little bit easier with a single-friend code, but if Microsoft and Sony have taught one thing, it’s that gamertags and personal IDs are the way to go. Oh and that voice chat shouldn’t be done through a room-wide speaker doodad like Wii Speak.
Try logging into PSN 80710A06 times. We hear that’s the magic number
More than 1,100 words later and is PSN back up yet? Not from what we see. We must have tried signing in 8,071,006 since our PS3 went down on April 21. That’s very close to the now infamous error message 80710A06. If only we could figure out the A part, maybe we could somehow beat the system and host the smallest CoD: Black Ops game in history. Keep trying, folks. Hopefully, PSN will be back up on Monday.
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