Players will notice a quicker push to level 50, which was the maximum level in Forza 3 that’s gone now. In Forza 4 the maximum level is 150 to reward those die hard Forza fan’s. As I write this I’m already in the mid 40′s and the fact that I’m now given a choice of car’s as a reward time I level is fantastic. I really enjoy the fact that I get to choose my reward. After hitting level 50 the car rewards are gone and replaced with credit bonus’s ranging from 100k to 350k. Car manufacture affinity rewards you to being loyal to your favourite car manufacture. Love Ferrari? only drive Ferrari? levelling your car manufacturing affinity gives you bonuses like free parts, badges and titles for your player card.

You’ll notice in the early stages that the AI is quite different then in Forza 3. In Forza 3 they removed power from the AI to make slower on easier difficulties. This isn’t the case in Forza 4 what they do is reduce there confidence when there in corners. What this does it makes the AI brake earlier into corners which is where you as the player can out break them and slip in front of them. The moment the AI it’s the apex in the corner they will be flat out regardless of the difficulty level.

The key to beating them on the straight’s is to block them down the straights. What I’ve found so far is that this is producing closer, better wheel to wheel racing and I’ve actually lost a few races to the AI. This is a great improvement as generally there really isn’t much of a contest from the AI.

The team over at Turn 10 partnered with Pirelli tires with new data which mean’s the tires in Forza 4 behave exactly as they tests indicate on real tracks on the real cars. Hardcore racer’s will notice that car’s behave a bit different and that’s because Turn 10 made some changes to their steering model, let’s be real not all track’s are smooth and are there some bumps along the way, so expect to see a bit of track bumpiness as well. These changes truly impact the way the car’s handle very different from Forza 3 and for me make it a bit harder to handle with most of the assist’s turn offed.

One of my favourite little features to Forza that is completely separate from the overall in game experience is the ability to navigate the menu’s using my voice and the power of Kinect. When I first discovered this I played around about 5 minutes going Xbox, My Garage. Simple use of Kinect but so very convenient.

Turn 10 has also gone a head to implement the ability for racers to drive with there arms. Gas and Braking are controlled by the game for the gamer and all the racer need’s to do is steer using there arms. I’m not a huge fan of this to be honest and this is suppose to be a sim racer and well this portion of it isn’t but I understand that it’s trying to get the family together. I appreciate that but would rather they hadn’t.

Autovista is a new feature that integrates Kinect into the Forza experience. Imagine your own personal automotive showroom that allows you to fully explore supercars like the Ferrari 458 Italia, Lexus LF-A, 1993 McLaren F1, 2008 Lamborghini Reventon the 2006 Koenigsegg CCX. With Kinect this allows the player to walk around the car, open doors, sit in the car, turn the engine on and most importantly hear what gear head Jeremy Clark has to say about these cars. This is a really cool feature but it’s not available on all cars.

So should you buy Forza 4? that’s the question and since it’s notably the best in the franchise you should. The visual upgrade isn’t significant but the changes to the physics, AI and community are sure to make this game worth your dollars.

The next Kinect game I want to talk about is Kinect Star Wars which was one display and all I wanted to due was go pod racing. You use your hands to control the pod racer and a push of the hands forward allows you to add some turbo thrust to go a bit quicker. There seemed to be plenty of aim assist on and sometimes it felt like I wasn’t actually controlling the pod racer. I hope the level of assist can be turned down during the final retail build.

The following trailer I grabbed from Gamespy show’s most of the demo I played of Mass Effect 3. Word’s can’t describe the beauty, fun, smile and erection I had while playing this demo. By far the the best thing I saw at X11. It was very shooter focused in this demo but I didn’t mind as I was trying to save one of the few women Krogan’s left in the world.

Trials Evolution was one of those XBLA game’s that had no line up and I just squatted there until I was kicked off by the gentlemen handling the arcade area. Trails is fun, looked great, new courses, I had a blast and a huge grin on my face. If you loved the first one, you already know your buying this so there is no reason to sell you on it.

I also got to see Assassin’s Creed Revelations this was a hand’s off demo where we see a very old Ezio leave Italy to seek out Altair’s secrets. He’s hunting for five keys that allow Ezio to travel back through time to relive memories of Altair. We were also shown the new bomb crafting system which is accessed at various stations around the city. You can create bombs in three categories lethal, tactical and diversion. Bombs are built by combining a shell material, a gunpowder material, and an “effect” material.

What is PCI? The PCI Security Standards Council which is responsible for the development, management, education, and awareness of the PCI Security Standards including Data Security Standards, Payment Application Data Security Standards and PIN transaction Security requirements. Why is this important? Well because Sony stores sensitive data and credit card information on it’s servers. Basically they audit your servers, provide a list of recommendations that you should implement to protect your servers. After a company is audited it’s recommended that you look to implement the recommendations on your servers to make you more secure, rinse and repeat.

I’m curious to know when Sony’s last PCI audit happened, what recommendations came out of the audit, what did Sony fix and Sony didn’t fix?

To me, Sony handled this perfectly. They were hacked but didn’t know to what extent. They hired professionals to help and than once they realized the extent of the damage they informed the public.

Back to the Timeline:

April 3, 2011 – a group called “Anonymous” launches cyber attacks against various Sony websites because Sony was suing George “GEoHot” Hotz and Graf_Chokolo who hacked the PS3

April 11, 2011 – Sony settles with Hotz

April 19, 2011 – Sony’s Network team detects unauthorized activity in the PlayStation Network system

April 20, 2011 – Sony discovers unauthorized intrusion and that data had been taken off the PSN servers. Sony hires a forensic investigation team. They can’t determine what data was taken and the Playstation network was taken off line.

April 21, 2011 – Sony hires a second forensic team

April 25, 2011 – Forensics team determine the scope of personal data that was illegally taken from all PSN and Qriocity servers. No indication if credit cards where taken.

April 26, 2011 – Sony finally informs the public of the hack and notifies authorities of the attack

April 28, 2011 – Hotz denies any invovlement

April 29, 2011 – House of Representatives wants more information about the attack

April 30, 2011 – Kazuo Hirai speaks to the public for the first time about the attack and apologies to its customers. Hirai states that PSN should be back up a week and that network security has been beefed up.

• Restoration of Online game-play across the PlayStation®3 (PS3) and PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) systems -This includes titles requiring online verification and downloaded games
• Access to Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity for PS3/PSP for existing subscribers
• Access to account management and password reset
• Access to download un-expired Movie Rentals on PS3, PSP and MediaGo
• PlayStation®Home
• Friends List
• Chat Functionality

The new security measures implemented include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Added automated software monitoring and configuration management to help defend against new attacks
• Enhanced levels of data protection and encryption
• Enhanced ability to detect software intrusions within the network, unauthorized access and unusual activity patterns
• Implementation of additional firewalls

Complimentary Offering and “Welcome Back” Appreciation Program
While there is no evidence at this time that credit card data was taken, the company is committed to helping its customers protect their personal data and will provide a complimentary offering to assist users in enrolling in identity theft protection services and/or similar programs. The implementation will be at a local level and further details will be made available shortly in each region.

The company will also rollout the PlayStation Network and Qriocity “Welcome Back” program, to be offered worldwide, which will be tailored to specific markets to provide our consumers with a selection of service options and premium content as an expression of the company’s appreciation for their patience, support and continued loyalty.

Central components of the “Welcome Back” program will include:

• Each territory will be offering selected PlayStation entertainment content for free download. Specific details of this content will be announced in each region soon.
• All existing PlayStation Network customers will be provided with 30 days free membership in the PlayStation Plus premium service. Current members of PlayStation Plus will receive 30 days free service.
• Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity subscribers (in countries where the service is available) will receive 30 days free service.

Additional “Welcome Back” entertainment and service offerings will be rolled out over the coming weeks as the company returns the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services to the quality standard users have grown to enjoy and strive to exceed those exceptions.

May 1, 2011 – Sony finds files that says “Anonymous,” “We are legion.” That’s the slogan for the hacktivist group.

May 2, 2011 – Playstation blog update ” One other point to clarify is from from this weekends’ press conference. While the passwords that were stored were not “encrypted,” they were transformed using a cryptographic hash function. There is a difference between these two types of security measures which is why we said the passwords had not been encrypted. But I want to be very clear that the passwords were not stored in our database in cleartext form.”

May 4, 2011 – Sony sends letter to Congress answering questions.

May 5, 2011 – Sony’s global network and security teams at Sony Network Entertainment and Sony Computer Entertainment began the final stages of internal testing of the new PSN system

May 6, 2011 – More testing

May 14, 2011 – PSN returns sort of? Video from Kazuo Hirai

PS3 software update announced – The update (v3.61) is mandatory and is available now

May 15, 2011 – users updating passwords, severs can’t handle the load, suspended servers to catch up. Sony recently had to turn off services for approximately 30 minutes to clear the queue.

May 16, 2011 – PSN FAQ – Restoration Questions Answered. Details for PlayStation Network and Qriocity Customer Appreciation Program in North America

May 18, 2011 – Sony temporarily took down the PSN and Qriocity password reset page. Contrary to some reports, there was no hack involved. In the process of resetting of passwords there was a URL exploit that we have subsequently fixed.

May 24, 2011 – PSN down Maintenance

May 30, 2011 – Full PSN Services, including PlayStation Store, Return This Week

June 1, 2011 – Important PlayStation Network Maintenance,The server maintenance performed at this time represents a crucial step in the full restoration for PSN, including the PlayStation Store.

June 1,2011 – PSN STORE BACKONLINE!

June 3, 2011 – Welcome Back Program Available Now – Details Inside

Q: What’s in the Welcome Back Program?
A: To start, all PSN members who had signed up before the outage (April 20, 2011) will be able to select two games for the PS3 system and two games for the PSP system.
For PS3 owners, go to the ‘Welcome Back’ section in the PlayStation Store, and select 2 titles from the following list:

• Dead Nation
• inFAMOUS
• LittleBigPlanet
• Super Stardust HD
• Wipeout HD + Fury

For PSP owners, go to the ‘Welcome Back’ section of PlayStation Store on your PSP system and select 2 titles from the following list:

• LittleBigPlanet (PSP)
• ModNation Racers
• Pursuit Force
• Killzone Liberation

Massive PSN store update

June 4, 2011 – PlayStation Home Welcome Back Package Details

June 6, 2011 – PS3 System Software Update (v3.65)

Originally appeared on tehflakes.ca

On October 5th Activision Publishing Inc put out a press release stating that Call of Duty Black Ops would be going Stereoscopic 3d. Well this is great news as today October 5th 2010 is the PlayStation Canada Holiday Preview event at the newly renovated Sony Centre in downtown Toronto. Yes that put us among the first to see this newly announced mode for the Call of Duty franchise on the PlayStation 3.

To continue with its annual release, Call of Duty will be coming on November 9th 2010 and is being developed by Treyarch Studios. Black Ops will be available on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC and will come with 3D support if you have the required hardware to take advantage of this technology. Don’t worry, if you don’t have a 3D TV simply just hop into the menu and ensure 3D is turned off.

Jay Puryear Senior Manager at Treyarch studios was on hand to provide us with a 20 minute demo featuring 2 levels from the single player campaign called WMD and some time with the Number’s chapter which is yet to be shown publicly.

WMD starts with an interactive cut scene where an SR-71 Blackbird recon airplane takes to the sky and provides its eyes for a squad of troops down below. You direct and navigate them to various checkpoints throughout the level. Upon reaching each checkpoint you switch and take control of the squad of troops and fight off the enemies.

Numbers chapter starts with an interrogation scene where glass windows get smashed and a piece of glass gets put down a throat of the villain as we seek to get information out of him since he’s working for the enemy. Since we didn’t get the information we want we might as well throw a few good punches at his jaw. Before the interrogation is over, the enemy zeros in on your location and storms the building. Our prisoner takes the lead and heads up flights of stairs to the roof top where we proceed to take big leaps and jump across buildings. Once we make it inside we find a nice stash of weapons that our prisoner has stored away for us.

We also had a chance to check out some of the combat training mode which is essentially you and up to 5 of your friends taking on 6 AI bots in a multiplayer game. Don’t worry, the bot’s difficulty setting scales just like the single player campaign; Easy, Normal, Hardened and Veteran. It teaches and allows you get a feel for COD multiplayer without going online and getting your butt kicked by those trash talking 14 year old kids. It looked really good in 3D, however, I’m not sure I want my multiplayer shooters in 3D yet as there is to much going on for me.

Enough talk about Call of Duty Black Ops and on to the 3D talk. Considering that a decision at Treyarch was made no more than 5 months ago to implement 3D to this iteration of COD is astonishing. Back when the discussions first started this idea was looked at as a nice option to have for the game, but as things progressed it became obvious to the team that 3D needed to happen. I’ve seen a lot of 3D movies lately and some of the implementations were awful and felt more like a checklist requirement the movie needed to have. Have no worries here folks, this is the first video game that support’s 3D that has made me go OMG I think I need a 3D television. The first thing I remember seeing when I turned on the 3D glasses was Jay having his character looking down the scopes of his rifle and going shit that looks crazy real. The cross hairs and debris looked they were flying my way.

Re-posted from: TehFlakes