Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Hack Edition Hotel

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If your a Mortal Combat fan, a new hack is out which enables you to unlock Skarlet, all the bosses, and all classic costumes from Mortal Kombat 1 and 3. Scorpion2k7 brings you the latest tutorial and video below: IF YOU ALREADY HAVE THE OLD CLASSIC COSTUMES MOD, START HERE: 01) Replace your current MK9 file from the last mod with the original file located in “Mortal_Kombat_9_-_Bosses_ +_Skarlet_+_Classic_Costumes_ModMK9_Original_Files” – COALESCED.INI (USRDIRCONFIG) 02) Delete all of your Game Data for Mortal Kombat on your PS3 by going to “Game Data Utility” and “Saved Data Utility.” If you have anything saved, you must delete and start fresh. IF YOU NEVER MODDED YOUR MK9 GAME, START HERE: 03) Go to “Mortal_Kombat_9_-_Bosses_+_Skarlet_+_Classic_Costumes_ModBosses_Mod(Your Game Region)” and replace the Following files: – PS3TOC.TXT (USRDIR) 04) Go to “Mortal_Kombat_9_-_Bosses_+_Skarlet_+_Classic_Costumes_ModBosses_Mod” and replace the following files: – UI_PS_VS_JPEGS_PS3.XXX (USRDIRASSET) – UI_PS_VS_PS3_N.XXX (USRDIRASSET) – UI_PS_VS_PS3.XXX (USRDIRASSET) IF YOU ARE ON 3.55 CUSTOM FIRMWARE, FOLLOW STEP 05. If you have read, you will know that PS3HaX has turned four, to thank our loyal members and to welcome potential new members, we will be holding a competition, the winner will receive a copy of the upcoming Mortal Kombat game, which is released on the 19th of April in US and 22nd April EU, all you have to do is state your favourite Mortal Kombat character and why you like them, here is an example: Character: Noob Saibot Reason: He is one of the easiest characters to play as and i like his moves, my favourite being his ability to fall through the ground and appear behind his opponent. The above is only an example, DO NOT copy and paste, you have to make your reason unique, remember that both your favourite character and reason have to be stated, otherwise you will be disqualified. This competition is open to all members apart from staff as that simply wouldn’t be fair:p The winner will receive a Pal/UK copy of the game, don’t worry all PS3 games are region free, so will work in any PS3 console. The competition will end on the 18th of April, winners will be announced on the 19th and should receive the game no later than a week after the 22nd of April, so you have plenty of time to enter.

Your post number stating your favourite character will be your “ticket” and i will use a number generator to determine the winner. One final thing, you have to be 18, but as everyone on the net is 18, that shouldn’t be a problem:p Anyhow, i will shut up and give you details and video on the game and good luck to all who enter 🙂 The story begins after the events of Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, but then returns to the period in which the first three games – Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat II and Mortal Kombat 3 – occur. Due to a plot twist (the character Raiden now having knowledge of the future), the events of this time are slightly altered. Mortal Kombat is the first title in the series to include 3D graphics with gameplay solely on the 2D plane (2.5D).

The developers have also stated that this is the first game in which they are making a conscious effort to create deeper gameplay for more dedicated players of the series and of fighting games in general. Mortal Kombat was officially announced on June 10, 2010, accompanied with a debut trailer showcasing the new presentation and new gameplay features. Twenty-four playable characters have been revealed to date, being: • Baraka • Cyrax • Ermac • Jade • Jax • Johnny Cage • Kabal • Kano • Kitana • Kung Lao • Liu Kang • Mileena • Nightwolf • Noob Saibot • Quan Chi • Raiden • Reptile • Scorpion • Sektor • Shang Tsung • Sindel • Smoke • Sonya • Stryker • Sub-Zero Goro and Shao Kahn have been confirmed to be bosses, but it is still unknown whether they will be playable. The character Kratos from the God of War series is available as a playable (in versus mode only) character exclusively on the PlayStation 3 version.

Boon stated that the Mortal Kombat team felt Kratos would “fit perfectly” into the Mortal Kombat universe. By the time Mortal Kombat 9 is released, almost 19 years will have passed since the very first Mortal Kombat game was released. The story back in 1992, followed the journey of a monk, known as Liu Kang as he tried to battle the evil Shang Tsung, the battle being a tournament known as Mortal Kombat. The game was released on arcade, soon gaining notoriety as one of the most controversial video games, of that time, it was later ported, to various home consoles, including, Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, Snes, Amiga, IBM PC, MS-Dos, Game Boy, Sega Game Gear, Sega Master System and Sega CD.

Due to the nature of the game, it soon found itself in trouble, with the court loving busy bodies, due to the court case, Mortal Kombat, inadvertently paved the way, to the ratings system that we have on games today, but enough of the short history lesson on the original game and lets discuss the new game. Mortal Kombat 9 returns back to the 2D style of gaming, though still maintains 3D graphics, the game itself is an altered retelling of the events that occurred during the first three Mortal Kombat games, Ed Boon, the developer and creator of the Mortal Kombat series, had this to say about the game..Raiden is about to be killed by Shao Kahn, and just before he delivers the last blow, he sends a mental message to his earlier self, so the camera rewinds back to Mortal Kombat 1. The Raiden from back then gets a message and he doesn’t know what’s going on, but he knows something bad’s going to happen, and the game spans Mortal Kombat 1, 2, and 3, retelling the story with an enlightened Raiden, and he’s changing the course of things, so everything you’ve seen happen before – Liu Kang winning, the guys turning into cybernetic ninjas, are changed around, so you might see a character become cybernetic who wasn’t before, and so you see a different version of events. Confirmed Characters: Cyrax Jax Johnny Cage Kano Kitana Kung Lao Mileena Liu Kang Nightwolf Raiden Reptile Scorpion Sektor Shang Tsung Smoke Sub-Zero Arena’s: Throne Room The Pit II Living Forest Kahn’s Arena Dead Pool The Bridge Rooftop The game will feature: Online Mode Tag Team Fighting Mode Challenge Tower The game will be released early 2011, here are a few images and video. Today smhabib released his second update to his 4.65 Cobra CFW.

Update 2: Changelog: 1. Fixed ntfs iso bugs 2. Semi-bc and bc support added for ps2iso 3. Fixed semi-bc and bc models controller synch prob partially by using old emus 4.

Updated toolbox for bc and semi-bc users to swap their emus 5. Removed dirty patch which was to improve games compatibility(causes some backup managers problem for ntfs iso Special Features: 1. Added new patches for ode drm 2.

Added a patch to speed up game disc/backup launch FEATURES: 1. MADE OUT OF 4.65 OFW 2. HAVE INSTALL PACKAGE FILES AND APP_HOME 3. HAVE REACTPSN COMPATIBILITY 4. PATCHED LV0 TO DISABLE COREOS ECDSA CHECK 5.

PATCHED LV2 TO ADD PEEK/POKE SUPPORT 6. PATCHED LV1 TO DISABLE LV2 PROTECTION 7. PATCHED LV1 TO ADD PEEK/ POKE SUPPORT 8. IT CAN RUN GAMES SIGNED WITH KEYS UP TO 4.65 9. CAN BE UPDATED OVER ANY CFW. CAN BE UPDATED OVER 3.55 OFW 11.

NOT ADDED NO BT/BD PATCHES 12. RSOD BYPASS 13. REACTPSN OFFLINE PATCH ADDED 14. BETTER SYSTEM STABILITY 15. REMOVED CINAVIA DRM FOR HDD CONTENT 16.

REMOVED CINAVIA FOR BDMV 17. REMOVED CINAVIA FOR BDVD 18. QA FLAG ENABLED BY DEFAULT IF PS3 WAS QA ON 3.55 19. COBRA 7.00 PORTED 20. INCREASED COBRA GAMES COMPATIBILITY FOR E.G MORTAL KOMBAT 21.

COBRA TOGGLER ADDED Cobra Toggle: 1. Go to install package files and install the toggler 2. Run the app to swap back and forth(also swaps ps2emu) NOTE: (fixed in 1.02) currently ps2 iso support is only for non-bc ps3s atm Changelog: New in 1.01: 1. Cobra toggler is also now known as habib toolbox: * dumps LV2 * user friendly GUI * shows IDPS from EID5 * shows current status of cobra and ps2emu * can swap ps2emu * can swap between cobra and non-cobra 2.

Fixed psp iso issues 3. Booting of game discs and backups speed increased. New in 1.02: 1.

Fixed ntfs iso bugs 2. Semi-bc and bc support added for ps2iso 3. Fixed semi-bc and bc models controller synch prob partially by using old emus 4. Updated toolbox for bc and semi-bc users to swap their emus 5. Removed dirty patch which was to improve games compatibility(causes some backup managers problem for ntfs iso) from starting, cobra uses psjailbreak type things which brokes compatibility with some games like ccapi for instance and syscall8.you could toggle between cobra and non-cobra if you have a specific app giving you problem. MD5sum: 61725A502BBA9F719C1AB2F5E5FBFB74 –. Following the recent Habib 4.65 CFW release, Habib Cobra 4.65 V1.00 was released earlier today.

Special Features: 1. Added new patches for ode drm 2. Added a patch to speed up game disc/backup launch FEATURES: 1. MADE OUT OF 4.65 OFW 2.

HAVE INSTALL PACKAGE FILES AND APP_HOME 3. HAVE REACTPSN COMPATIBILITY 4. PATCHED LV0 TO DISABLE COREOS ECDSA CHECK 5. PATCHED LV2 TO ADD PEEK/POKE SUPPORT 6. PATCHED LV1 TO DISABLE LV2 PROTECTION 7.

PATCHED LV1 TO ADD PEEK/ POKE SUPPORT 8. IT CAN RUN GAMES SIGNED WITH KEYS UP TO 4.65 9. CAN BE UPDATED OVER ANY CFW. CAN BE UPDATED OVER 3.55 OFW 11. NOT ADDED NO BT/BD PATCHES 12. RSOD BYPASS 13.

REACTPSN OFFLINE PATCH ADDED 14. BETTER SYSTEM STABILITY 15. REMOVED CINAVIA DRM FOR HDD CONTENT 16. REMOVED CINAVIA FOR BDMV 17. REMOVED CINAVIA FOR BDVD 18. QA FLAG ENABLED BY DEFAULT IF PS3 WAS QA ON 3.55 19.

COBRA 7.00 PORTED 20. INCREASED COBRA GAMES COMPATIBILITY FOR E.G MORTAL KOMBAT 21. The things they told us as kids that would happen to video games, and how far we’ve come.

Below I give you a list of things I’ve been told (as well as things you may have heard) and how far we’ve come since these concepts being just figment of imagination. YOU WILL BE ABLE TO IMMERSE YOURSELF SOMEHOW IN THE GAME Sure, when we were told this, we were already playing games like Duck Hunt with a light gun controller, so technically, that was already done. But we were told that it would become more complicated than this.

For example, in 2003, Sony, with collaboration from Logitech, released the Eye Toy, a webcam like device that can track your movements and translate them into the gameplay (those minigames that came with the Eye Toy often were fun) as well as take your picture and plaster it over a created character. (ex: Tony Hawk’s Underground) It was technologies like this that helped propel now existing technologies like Kinect and the successor to the Eye Toy, the Playstation Eye (and the new PS4 version as well.) Then there were games like Gran Turismo that supported a steering wheel, Dance Dance Revolution which supported a Dance pad (which was also technically seen before during the NES days) and a Skate Board-esque device with “Tony Hawk’s Ride.” not to mention the Nintendo Wii made a point with this often times with its unique controller design that resembled a remote. Plus with Project Morpheus/Occulus Rift, we see games in a whole new world. Well, assuming Facebook does the right thing. YOU WILL BE ABLE TO STREAM GAMES Sure, often times when you went to one of those ‘middle to high end’ hotels, they often times offered a chance to let you stream Mortal Kombat into your room at an extortionate rate, which is why chances are your parents usually said “No, Thanks.” But your parents did warn you “Someday this will be the norm in the household. We currently don’t have something that can stream console games, but we will soon via PlayStation Now. For now, our cable set top boxes sometimes let us stream low bandwidth games just like the hotels in our heyday did (yet my STB doesn’t offer me Mortal Kombat, but I digress) and we DO have services like OnLive for PC games.

THE CARTRIDGE WILL MAKE A COMEBACK Now that flash media isn’t as expensive to produce as it was during the N64 days, can hold more, and has better durability over CD based media, its no wonder why Sony used flash based media for the PSVita, why the DS lines for Nintendo still use cartridges as well, and why people just use memory cards like SD, Memory Stick, M2 etc to store plenty of games. Blu Ray discs can hold over 50GB, but I HAVE seen 2TB SD cards. Plus the read speed compared to CD media is no comparison.

Cartridges are here to stay. ALL PHYSICAL MEDIA WILL BE OBSOLETE Why buy software that takes up physical space when you can stream it? Or download it.

And believe me, Steam has made a killing on download only games. Hell, some companies chose to release their games digitally only. Even though it was a failure, the PSPgo was marketed for download only. There’s advantages to having physical copies (less space taken up in a hard drive, less bandwidth consumed) but as far as BluRay technology has come, some people have sworn off physical altogether, making all these advances to Bluray discs arguably obsolete. YOUR CONSOLE WILL BE MORE AND MORE USEFUL IN THE LIVINGROOM Starting with the PS2, our consoles were DVD players on the side. And our parents LOVED THIS. I didn’t so much at the time.

I wanna f**kin play, why do you have to watch your movie now? But why buy a DVD player AND a gaming system when you could save money and get an ALL-IN-ONE. Sure right now a DVD player AND a BluRay player can be bought for next to nothing, but at the time of the PS2’s release, DVD players were EXPENSIVE.

Our consoles come with a lot of the features of a standard player, such as support for Surround Sound devices, that it’s becoming normal for a gaming system to find home in EVERYONE’S living room. You can even buy a remote for them, or in the case of HDMI Sync, you can control the console with your TV remote. Plus, they can play CD’s, MP3’s, can stream music from PC’s or the internet, can watch Netflix, sporting events.

The Xbox One cashed in on this. Although for the time being both the PS4 and the XBOX ONE backpedaled and don’t support MP3 or CD’s, but time will tell.

YOU WILL BE ABLE TO PLAY ONLINE You were told this when chances are you were still discovering the internet on your PC. With the Sega Saturn in Japan, through external attachments, it was possible to play online. This technology was later introduced elsewhere with the successor, Sega Dreamcast, though also with an attachment. The Xbox hade native online support, but you had to pay. The PS2 needed an attachment at first, through a slot that Sony left in the unit “for a rainy day” but as time went on, The Slim line units had an Ethernet port built in. The Xbox 360 again had paid online, but retained Ethernet only. The Wii and PS3 were the first to have wifi built in.

YOU WILL BE ABLE TO PLAY YOUR FAVORITE GAMES ON YOUR PHONE, BESIDES SNAKE We all loved Snake, the game where you chase a dot and grow and grow and grow. But now we can play GTA San Andreas on our phones. The only thing we cant do is play Mario games. Well, we can, but without Nintendo’s blessing, anyway. PRETTY SOON, VIDEO GAMES WILL LOOK REAL, ALMOST LIKE WATCHING A MOVIE Remember the 8 bit era?

Such fond memories. And remember how cartoony everything was during the PSX/N64 era?

Some games go for realism. Graphics have become so complex that now its almost like looking in the mirror. Its like watching a movie. It’s beautiful. We’ve had a lot of advances to our consoles, and its been fun. But there still is ONE idea I have heard will happen, but hasn’t happened.

And I await it EVENTUALLY, YOU WILL PLAY VIDEO GAMES NOT THROUGH THE TV, NOR ANY SCREEN, BUT HOLOGRAMS Remember in 2012 when Tupac “came back to life” at Coachella? Holograms will be controllable. Imagine it like this, you’re palying Mortal Kombat on a plain surface, you just made your friend’s hologram Subzero a burn victim via hologram Scorpion’s “Toasty!” fatality.

This is the only thing I have left to see that I was told would happen. So, anybody have any thoughts? RetroArch has been updated to latest version bringing huge changes to performance, auto detecting of core, and a better OpenGL driver.

The entire list of changes is too long but here are the highlights: RetroArch PS3 This is a port of RetroArch to jailbroken / debug PlayStation3. Version 1.0.0.0 has just been released. RetroArch PS3 v1.0.0.0 – Changelog: The list of changes is too exhaustive to be summarized, so just a couple of highlights: VBA Next performance improvements – all games should now play at fullspeed more or less (even games like Final Fantasy 5/6) Revised menu – should now have the same functionality as all other RetroArch versions New ‘Detect Core’ function – you no longer have to switch a core and then select a ROM – with this mode you can select a ROM and RetroArch will look at the file extension and start the core associated to it. If there are multiple cores that support this file extension, then it will give you a list of supported cores and you can select which one you want to use. Much improved OpenGL driver – the PS3 version of RetroArch should now have the lowest input/video latency out of all RetroArch versions (with the exception of maybe KMS/libdrm on Linux). Comes with MAME 2003 now.

Mortal Kombat 1/2/3/Ultimate should all play at fullspeed with the DCS Hack enabled. Many more changes Cores currently supported: Genesis Plus GX SNES9x Next VBA Next NEStopia FCEUmm Mednafen PCE Fast Mednafen NGP Mednafen VB Mednafen Wonderswan MAME 2003 NEW! Prboom QuickNES NX Engine (Cave Story) Tyrquake FInal Burn Alpha []. Here’s one for the books, Sony has plenty of stock for PS4’s ready for the holidays. So why have they sold out at retailers, Amazon, etc? Well, you may have remembered a similar move by Nintendo when releasing the Wii U.

Sony Wants as much people to have the PS4. Unfortunately you cant preorder.

So what they want to do is release day 1 stock to retailers so that in case you forgot/couldn’t preorder, you can still play with all your rich friends day 1. SEA’s Jack Tretton had told Fox Business a little more on the matter, which you can read here, courtesy of IGN: “We want to make sure people can buy a PS4 on November 15 and through the holidays,” he said.

“So, we’re holding back some inventory to make sure people will be able to buy one. “We can pre-sell every unit we can manufacture, and the good news is that production yields have been phenomenal. We’re going to work very hard to make sure that every consumer that wants one gets one.” While it’s not yet clear if Sony has replicated this move outside of North America, it’s a wise decision by the company to try and make sure that retailers aren’t left without stock in the run-up to Christmas. So what do you think? Think it will last them a couple days? Or do you think when the smoke clears and people have fought like gladiators to get their PS4’s on time, Mortal Kombat will have a whole new meaning this holiday season? Sound off in the comments below Oh, and uh, its good to be posting again, being sick and having my hard drive be funny on my desktop really put a damper on everything.

Well, till next time. We’re moving ever closer to the next-gen era where console games will be available to buy via digital delivery, day and date with the retail disc versions, but in the meantime it’s Sony that is leading the charge in providing timely PSN releases of many of the latest PlayStation 3 titles. They’re not cheap and you can’t resell them, but download titles do offer up the enticing possibility of running your games entirely from hard drive, divorced completely from the much slower Blu-ray optical drive. So the question is, do PSN downloads provide a superior experience to traditional disc-based gameplay?

It’s a topic that often comes up during our Face-Off coverage. Xbox 360 lets gamers download their discs to hard drive, at the very least providing some kind of loading time advantage – but to be honest, it doesn’t offer much else beyond silencing the noisy DVD drive.

Meanwhile, PS3 owners are very much at the whims of the developer as to whether or not data installs to the hard drive, with only a tiny fraction of titles supporting optional installs. Utilising digital downloads from PSN returns the choice to the user but more than that, PS3 gamers can use any hard drives they want, even allowing for the introduction of solid state media – SSDs – for the very fastest possible performance.But what does that that extra performance actually translate into during gameplay? Beyond loading times, do we see any improvements to frame-rates, geometry or texture pop-in by embracing digital delivery? We decided to find out, utilising our available library of PlayStation Plus “instant game collection” titles, compared against the retail disc versions of the same game.

Our focus titles are Mass Effect 3, Sleeping Dogs, Mortal Kombat and MotorStorm Apocalypse – a decent range of games that should allow us to test both loading times and in-game asset streaming. The friction-filled experience Upgrade time: hard drive or SSD? SSDs are just getting cheaper and cheaper.

120GB models regularly pop up on bargain forums for less than £50, while 250GB drives are sometimes available for less than £90. None of these models are going to be the absolute best drives available, but the point is that the PS3 artificially caps transfer bandwidth anyway – the only advantage SSD offers is the zero latency in movement from one file to the next, and that’s something that all solid state drives have in common. While SSD prices are more attractive than they were, it’s worth pointing out that traditional hard drives are still much cheaper and to our mind, still represent the best value for the vast majority of gaming scenarios. Save an SSD for a desktop PC or a laptop where the improvement is truly night and day, and go for a 500GB hard drive as a PS3 upgrade – 7200rpm HDDs offer a small performance increase but even the bog-standard £45 5400rpm models will serve you well. Occupying the middle-ground are hybrid SSD/HDDs.

These carry a small amount of SSD RAM integrated into a traditional hard drive. The onboard processor notes the areas of the drive that get the most use and caches them to the SSD RAM for faster throughput. Hybrid drives are quite a bit more expensive than standard hard drives but we have seen some quite promising results from them. However, in common with SSD, the actual amount of games that truly benefit is very, very low. Quite apart from the fact that buying a retail disc gives you reselling rights and a much easier way to archive your games, there’s a significant amount of friction involved in actually getting any PSN game downloaded and running on your system. Part of that is down to PSN not being as fast as it should be: we carried out our testing on an “up to 20mbps” ADSL connection but our throughput topped out at 12mbps max – pretty much 1.5MB of data throughput per second. On what we assume was a congested period, the 14GB Mass Effect 3 download slowed down considerably, taking a mammoth six hours, 17 minutes to complete – a disappointing 5mbps.

On the same connection, Steam locks to 16mbps and with a level of consistency that PSN can’t match. Next up there’s a fundamental difference between Xbox Live, Steam and PSN in terms of what happens when data is decompressed after it has downloaded – with Sony’s chosen technique being a bit of a pain in the arse. Steam appears to decompress data as it arrives so your game is good to go pretty much as soon as the download is complete, while Xbox Live doesn’t do any decompression at all – games are delivered in a Microsoft equivalent to the ISO format – a simple, big archive file. PSN offers the poorest solution of them all, decompressing the data only when the download is complete. Depending on the size of the download and the amount of files within, installs can take a very long time indeed. It also means that you need extra space available on your hard drive – which needs to host the original download and the uncompressed version (again, these are not limitations on Xbox Live or Steam) until decompression is complete. So let’s see how all that downloading and installing breaks down in our chosen titles.

In terms of the install times, we actually carried out the process twice over: firstly, by using the standard 60GB HDD supplied with the EU launch PS3, and secondly we repeated the procedure with an SSD installed. What’s curious here is that the SSD results are fundamentally much poorer than they would be were we to carry out the same decompression tests even on a modest PC.

We have a couple of theories about why this might be the case. Firstly, all previous testing we’ve carried out has suggested that PS3 bandwidth on sequential read/writes is limited to around 12-15MB/s, no matter what kind of HDD or indeed SSD you utilise.

This nullifies much of the advantage you get by moving across to solid state storage where even the poorest SSDs operate at least ten times as quickly in PC hardware.Obviously, the bigger the game, the more data there is to decompress and the higher the likelihood that there’ll be more files to extract, but suffice to say that we’re glad that Sony has completely rethought its strategy for digital downloads for PS4. Clearly, the current situation is rather grim.

On a standard PS3, you’re looking at anything between 19 to 38 minutes of waiting before you’re able to access the games that already took so long to download, on a service that clearly has real issues utilising the full bandwidth of your connection. The only advantage SSD has is the virtual elimination of seek times – the process of moving from one file to the next. On a traditional hard drive, the head moves across the surface of the disk – a process that takes time. The same action has no latency whatsoever on an SSD, speeding up the process considerably, depending on how many files there are – the more files being accessed, the more the SSD commands an advantage. Quite why Sleeping Dogs was actually slower on SSD is a bit of a mystery that we can’t readily explain – all our other results point to the solid state drive in offering a noticeable, though not quite spectacular, advantage. Running from HDD – does it improve gaming?: Developers have the option to offer users the ability to dump a section of game data onto HDD in order to improve performance – Ridge Racer 7 was the first game to support it, and Gran Turismo 5 is one of the games that benefits the most from it. Now, the question is, why don’t more game-makers offer that functionality?

It’s an interesting point but our investigations on our selection of test games suggest that while there are loading time advantages to optional installs, improvements from a gameplay perspective are extremely thin on the ground. That’s not to say that they’re completely non-existent though.

Take Mass Effect 3 for example. The disc version doesn’t actually install anything to the hard drive (though we suspect that the HDD cache gets a thorough workout). Now, generally speaking, texture pop-in isn’t really an issue but in areas where a new location is loaded, we do see textures resolve more quickly on HDD and faster still on SSD. There’s a similar effect on Sleeping Dogs, but nothing really noticeable across the run of play, while on MotorStorm: Apocalypse, some elements appear to arrive on-screen a split-second faster on the PSN versions compared to the disc game.

Of course, Mortal Kombat loads straight to RAM and has no streaming that we’re aware of, so there’s no appreciable in-game difference. Click for full size. We saw more differences on Mass Effect 3 which has no mandatory install. Textures resolve faster on scene changes: here the building gets full texture res much faster on SSD, though the rocks in the centre appear faster on HDD. Disc lags quite a bit here but in most other cases, it’s only a touch behind. We’re fairly confident that the vast majority of games play just as well from disc as they do from a PSN download, which is perhaps not surprising.

Developers build their titles around the bandwidth offered by the Blu-ray drive, and for those that need the extra speed, they tend to go for mandatory installs to the hard drive. So effectively for the most demanding games that use an existing HDD install we are just comparing hard drive to hard drive – full install vs. Partial install, if you will.

It’s not really that surprising that there are thin pickings here, and that the majority of the improvement comes down to loading times, particularly on games where there is no mandatory install. Here’s the lie of the land in terms of loading times across our test cases. There’s a noticeable boost going from disc to HDD to SSD, but it’s hardly game-changing stuff – certainly not enough for us to want to give up our rights to resell our games, or to more easily access them. That said, an OS-level HDD install option for all games would still be much appreciated. Sharing save games between disc and digital versions: So are there any instances where a hard drive or SSD upgrade can make a genuine difference you actually feel? Well, this is well-trodden ground and something that.

Our conclusion back then was that while faster drives do present some advantages, just like our test cases above, the vast majority of the improvement was in loading times alone. At the time of writing, Hitman: Absolution is the next big triple-A title to be offered as a digital download on Sony’s phenomenal PlayStation Plus subscription package (in the EU at least).

If you already own the disc version of this game – or any of the others in the line-up – there’s the opportunity here to resell the original release and play on using the Instant Game Collection download. However, this relies heavily on your existing disc save working on the digital delivery. Of our test cases we found that three out of four of them allowed players to swap between disc and PSN download seamlessly, sharing the save game data. However, the PSN version of MotorStorm Apocalypse was a different edition of the game, and thus the save couldn’t be shared, with only minimal data carried over – something that has upset some gamers. Save data is allocated on the hard drive according to the serial code of the game. These vary from edition to edition (for example, Batman: Arkham City’s original launch vs.

The Game of the Year Edition) and also from region to region. If you’re playing a US version of Hitman: Absolution for example, it’s almost certainly the case that the EU PlayStation Plus version won’t recognise your save. The simple solution here is to download the game, check that the save works or not and then decide the final fate of your existing physical copy. However, there are a select few titles that truly hammer the hard drive and where moving to a faster drive or even an SSD make a genuine difference. GT5’s prolonged loading and install times are improved considerably, for example, while id software’s Rage – with all its texture popping issues – is significantly transformed by upgrading to an SSD,.

Indeed, moving up to a hybrid SSD/HDD also makes a big difference but we’re not quite sure if that’s actually down to the SSD component or whether it’s just taking advantage of the faster 7200rpm drive. The much maligned Skyrim bug (now mostly patched) – where the game appeared to use the hard drive as an additional level of cache – also saw very noticeable improvements when the HDD was jettisoned in favour of an SSD. The same issue manifested in both Fallout 3 and New Vegas and was never patched, so if you’re still playing those games and performance is compromised, an SSD could make sense.

Over and above that though, the case for utilising an SSD in your PS3 is pretty shaky. Skyrim is – or rather, was – another isolated case that saw enormous improvements in performance when moving from 60GB launch drive to a 500GB hybrid SSD/HDD or a full-on SSD.

Here we compare frame-rates across the unpatched and patched versions. By the time Bethesda had patched up the game, the enormous differences were mostly resolved. What happens with next-gen?: Everything changes with the arrival of the next generation Xbox and the PlayStation 4. Comparisons between disc and hard drive will become mostly irrelevant, as it appears that both Sony and Microsoft have decided that every game should install in its entirety onto the hard drive. To ease the frustrations caused by a generation of hanging about waiting for installs to complete, the strategy seems to be that games boot from disc and “stealth install” as you play them. Developers have already experimented with this on the PlayStation 3 – Dragon’s Dogma does it, as do a clutch of older Unreal Engine 3 engines (X-Men Origins: Wolverine amongst them).

Hardware decompression is built into the silicon of both next-gen consoles, meaning that – fingers crossed – the notion of copying over thousands of smaller files to your hard drive (Gran Turismo 5 copies across over 8000!) in an uncompressed state will become a thing of the past. The interesting new addition here is that the stealth install strategy appears to have been expanded to digital delivery too, where a section of the game downloads into RAM and you play that while the download/install continues in the background. We can’t help but wonder whether standard ADSL broadband will be able to keep up here. Kamov KA-50 ALPHASIM For FS9 & FSX.

It’s clear to see where the platform holders are heading here – it’s all about removing the optical drive as a performance bottleneck, making use of the hard drive more extensively without leaving gamers hanging about waiting for time-consuming installs to complete. We’ll be interested to see whether games can be divided up into chunks that are fast enough to download as seamlessly as the concept demands, but in theory this all sounds like the best possible way to remove the friction that makes the console digital download experience as frustrating as it is now.

Let’s just hope that both Microsoft and Sony allow us to upgrade the hard drives as we see fit, without imposing proprietary solutions. The guys behind the Cronus device, will be releasing a new device soon called CronusX, here is some information about it: • Wireless state of the art modification technology • Millions of mod configurations. No limit to the number of mods and combinations! • Worldwide patentent pending • No chips, wires, or other hardware installation required • Chance for repait:.0001% • Does NOT void manufacturer warranty • All of the possible mods on the market available along with unlimited updates • User-friendly menu system using controller player LEDs (no additions) • Compatible with Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 systems • Support for all console games (i.e. COD series, Battlefield Series, Mortal Kombat, Madden, FIFA, GTA, Tiger Woods, racing games, and many more!) • Complete button layout configuration • Cross-over for multi platform compatibility (i.e.

Playstation 3 controller on Xbox 360) • No lag time (tested to 1.2 milliseconds) • Software modification support. Available library system to upload and download mods • Live forum and chat support • All devices are serialized and carry the highest level of bulletproof security • Universal device • Completely 100% undetectable • Stores memory for up to 9 of your favorite games. Button on device allows you to switch between game slots I asked the CEO if these codes would be backwards compatible with the original Cronus and he has assured me that they will be, he also told me that these devices cannot be blocked/patched by Sony. I just want to make a note that this is not me advertising, i am in no way affiliated with the creator/manufacturers of Cronus or CronusX, nor do i get any profits or money from the sale of their devices, i received the Cronus device for free in the understanding that i do a video review for it and i have done four of those, so my posting of this, is merely to say thank you for the Cronus device, i will also never take money from any device manufacturer to advertise any of their products, im not a sell-out like garyOPA 🙂.