yes it does... unless you are streaming with tversity (and it's probably transcoding the video in the process) you need to remux the mkv to something the ps3 can read

or if you installed linux on the ps3

I watched another blu-ray. I put it in the drive (with the ps3 already on and on the menu screen). It automatically launches and I wait ~30 seconds with a spinning thing in the upper right-hand corner before anything shows up on the screen.

Is killzone 2 like gears of war in that you can take cover and stuff, or is it just a regular FPS?

Yes. You have to take cover in SP. It's done in First Person as well, and it works rather well.

The only gripe would be the controls. Many people didn't like them at first. You pretty much have to hold crouch to stay in cover mode. Still great.

The cover system was disabled in MP. It plays somewhat like COD IMO. Very fun, in any case.

i've never had this happen... usually no more than 5 seconds before the disc loads

now BDLive updates can be super slow (ironman release forced alot of people to disable BDLive or unplug the network cable on their player just to get the menus to load because paramount's servers were ****ting themselves)

This is what I hated about it. They want you to use the cover system, except that it's an fps so when you're ducking behind something you can't see over it to spot your targets. The bad guys don't stay in one place and take a whole bunch of rounds to take down so the gunfights take *forever* as you pop up and plink away at people. In the end I just played it the old fashioned way and strafed in and out of cover.

The aiming is also screwed. There's no autoaim as far as I can tell, and the guns have that annoying Counterstrike effect where if you spray the bullets seem to go everywhere but the center of the screen. This is irritating because when the bad guys get up close you can't shoot them - the game wants you to pull out your knife but I died a bunch of times because my first reaction was to shoot.

Also annoying is that the more damaged you get the darker the screen becomes so the lower your health the less able you are to actually see WTF is going on and return fire/run away.

You play most of the game with an AI squad but you can't control them at all...there were so many times when I had to storm a room or bunker or something and got blown away from both sides because I couldn't send my squad in first.

It's definitely an AAA title and it's got some really cool cinematic scripted stuff, but I thought it should have been in third person...you just die so much because someone threw a grenade or you can't tell what direction you're being attacked from. That's a bit of a rant but I played through it yesterday so the wounds are still fresh.

That was all based on the campaign, btw. I didn't try any multiplayer.

I was glad it was First Person.

Seriously. IRL you can't see over a wall without sticking your head out.

I was getting sick of all the third person games with cover systems. This was a nice change. They tried something new. It may have not been the greatest thing to hit games, or even good at all, but at least it was fresh.

Unlike the rest of the game. >.<

You didn't play MP?! OMG?

No cover in MP.

Btw, autoaim is available on the shotgun. Finally a game that doesn't move your screen towards your opponent, completely throwing you off course of what you were doing. The only autoaim that should be available in games is something like in Goldeneye and Perfect Dark.

Those didn't **** with my screen and move me right into my enemies fire instead of letting me do what I was doing: running away to let my health go back up.

Sounds like I should rent it. I also hate games that severely screw your accuracy by spraying bullets everywhere but where you're aiming.

If gunfights were fun "IRL" more of us would be soldiers.

You may be sick of third-person shooters with cover systems but I'm sick of games that have a realistic damage model. It's a video game. It's not realistic and it can't be realistic because of the limitations of hardware. Real life handicaps will only be appropriate when peripherals can offer the same degree of motion as real life, the same field of view as real life and the same depth perception as real life. Until then it's little more than the fastest way to make your game inaccessible to the 99% of the gaming audience who does not have marine corp fantasies.

Jon, I'm not implying that I like a realistic damage model in my games.

I don't.

I like following the basics, though. My main complaint with peaking around a corner in third person is that, you can see them, but they can't see you. In a game, if you can see them, they should see you. Unless of course you're cleverly hidden in a dark corner or under a bed or something.

Now I know this is part of the gameplay, but seriously, I was getting sick of clearing a room, checking it, then only coming to realize after I died that someone was hiding around the nearest corner. They all just camped corners as far as I've noticed.

I don't mind it too much, it's part of the gameplay, and it's a third person shooter - I get that. But if the cover system in KZ2 were to pull you out to go into third person, I'd have been really, really upset.

My ideal game is Mirror's Edge, and my own game concept which deters from this "marine corp fantasy" that you speak of. I hate the military-type games, but unfortunately, it's all they're releasing these days as far as shooters go.

Yeah, I thought Mirror's Edge was the bomb - I only made it to the ship before the rental was due back but man I liked basically everything about that game (except for the QTE in that one cutscene).

There's a lot of awesome PSN games to play like Fat Princess, and I'd suggest you try out Little Big Planet. It's not for everyone, but if you do like it (or possibly your kids), you'll love it. I played it at a get together a few weeks ago and it was exactly what I wanted it to be in my head. A "game" in the best sense of the word.

I have a PS3. It was awesome until I got my 360. Now it only gets used for playing blu-rays or DVDs (I have a 3 at a time Netflix subscription, so it gets used a lot for that) or playing Rock Band, since I got that before my 360, and already had the controllers and lots of DLC for the PS3 version.

I say it's good by itself because the cross-platform catalog is good, and some good 360 and PC exclusive games have been later released on the PS3 at least. There are the few good PS3 exclusives, but it's not enough to carry a system I think. The fact of the matter is, any time a good cross-platform game comes out now, I always get the 360 version. The only advantage the PS3 has with cross-platform games in my mind is its higher capacity media, which only really matters with RPGs for the most part.

So yeah, even though I never play it outside of Rock Band, it gets used a ton for movies, much like Jon said. But hey, it could be worse, it could by like my Wii, which gets used for, well, nothing these days.

And on the topic of games, I hated Resistance. It felt like a step back when I played it after playing much better console shooters like CoD4 and such.

.... how the hell did you not finish it before the rental was due back?

Did I mention Metal Gear Solid 4 already?

And Kirby speaks truth, def pick up LittleBigPlanet

maybe he rented it for a short time period and not everyone has alot of freetime to play games all day

Oh, stores around here rent for 2 weeks only.
And it takes like 6 hours to beat, that's all.

Uncharted.
Killzone 2.
Resistance 2 (the launch Resistance title was terrible IMO, Resistance 2 made up for it in the first 2 levels, plus co-op)
I enjoyed Warhawk but its not for everyone.

I've seen some delay in getting blurays to load - but seriously its 30 seconds. Thirty seconds. Half a minute. Find a remote or make some popcorn or something Brian!

30 seconds means somethings wrong on his ps3 because it doesn't take near that long on everyon else's ps3

or brian is seriously exaggerating

No I actually timed it.

I played the killzone 2 demo. It was okay. The controls feel really laggy, though. I turned the sensitivity way up and it still feels that way. Like I move the stick and it takes ~500ms before the guy starts moving. Resistance doesn't do this, it's immediate. I think they do it on purpose. When I turned the sensitivity up, the delay was still there, but once it was over everything moved faster.

Something lame, when you use the guns to zoom in, on most games it's easier to then see and kill your targets. In this one, it seems to make it more difficult (the hud for each gun is different and they are way too visible and block out too much other stuff).

My wife bought some disney movie and when it was loading a message popped up saying that on some blu-ray players it would take 2-3 minutes to load. WTF?

My ps network name is bddead, not that it matters, I don't really play online much anyway...

Oh also, the system update on PS3 takes forever compared to xbox. The web browser is pretty cool though.

Yes, some standalone players do take even longer to load discs.
Again, its a minimal wait. If its a concern, make sure you put the disc in and then take a few minutes to settle in while the disc loads. Its a minor inconvenience for the quality of the media you're about to watch.

Killzones controls are certainly a sticking point for some. They've patched the retail version and I believe there were changes to the multiplayer controls however I haven't had enough time online with the game yet to really be sure. I've read in various places that the fraction of a delay you have with controls is all about the 'weight' of your gun and character's armor within the game. For an example, if you make your character jump, there is deliberate delay as you crouch, then jump and even landing you take impact - every movement you make is weighted and delayed a bit.

I agree that zooming in doesn't make it necessarily any easier to shoot enemies though. The issues you're having with the scopes and irons, well... every FPS with different guns has different sights for all of them.

My brother rented it...I only had a couple hours to play it.

Ah gotcha.

It's just that it's pretty universal, that the game is really short and can be beaten in around 6 hours without trying hard. And for any rented game, that's unusual.

I returned it before it was due because I really did not see a point in trying to do what I did in less time.

The game is fun once, IMO.

friend request sent along with an invite to the Massassi Communist Party in home

speaking of the MCP is there any massassian by the PSN ID of XxObeyXStewiexX or whiteamigo? if so please resend your join requests i make it a personal policy to decline all requests from anyone not on the PSN ID list in the game room forum

Remind me to toss a request your way, DrkJedi. I just recently reformatted the PS3 and have my name on it. I keep it offline mostly so my 3 year old doesn't play LittleBigPlanet online on accident. My PSN is Fi3xer

Brian, I can confirm that it's not a PS3 issue with the blurays. I have both a PS3, and also a standalone Sony BDP-S350 model player, and both do take a while to load the discs. It's also very title dependent. I'm not saying they should be identical, but as of now, the current hardware is still not THAT great at loading all discs quickly.

The newer players coming out are getting much better at optimizing this, and I wouldn't be surprised if newer PS3 models in the future start to incorporate updated versions of bluray drives.

"The technical explanation is that there are essentially 3 ways a disc can be encoded: BDAV mode (simple, DVD like menus, not generally used for commercial movies), BDMV mode ("true" BD-style menus and features), and BDMV mode with BD-J features. Discs making use of BD-J require the player to load a Java VM in which to run the BD-J content. The latest players, PC players, and the PS3 have the processing power to do this very quickly. Older players ran with much slower processors and could take a LONG time to load the Java VM, run the "player speed test" that was included on many BD-J enabled titles, and finally, load and show the BD-J content. It's just FAR more computationally intensive than what other video formats needed previously.

Even within the BD-J enabled titles, there's a huge disparity among titles in terms of how difficult their effects are to pull off computationally. Some are fairly simple (such as replacing the player's on screen display when fast-forwarding) and others are FAR more complex (games and menus requiring lighting effects from multiple sources, etc).

As the latest players don't struggle as much with the speed, the studios are increasing their use of BD-J considerably to create newer and cooler menus and content on their discs... to the detriment of owners of older stand-alone players."

I played some more of resistance. It definitely got better after the first level because now I can regen some health and there are health packs everywhere. Seriously what kind of moron decided that the first level should be 10x harder than the next 10 levels combined? I literally haven't died more than a few times since I passed the first level, but I died dozens of times in the first level. First levels of games should be fun and should hook you in, not frustrate the hell out of you for no reason.

Anyway, the story is pretty boring, the weapons are unimaginative, and the graphics aren't that good. But I'm still playing it because some of the levels have been fun - like on where I'm in a huge battle with the alien/virus dudes through these city streets. Also the spike grenade things are pretty cool. We'll probably pick up the 2nd one when I'm done with this one.

Regarding blu-ray disks... Going from upconverted DVDs to blu-ray didn't seem like a huge jump. I've been getting a lot of blu-rays from netflix and watching those. Now when I go back to an upconverted DVD it really looks blurry. Interesting how that works.

it's because you got used to seeing the increased detail and clarity

and yeah resistance does improve later in the game once the dude gets infected... though i don't know why you had so much trouble on the opening level... most people got through it just fine

Resistance was hard? o_O

The first level because I kept dying. You can get shot ~4 times and after that you're dead. You don't auto-heal and you can't get health packs until after the first level. So it wasn't "hard" if you don't mind dying and respawning at last checkpoint over and over, but that is lame.