Public Service Announcement: What to Do If You Lost Access to Your “Welcome Back” Free Games

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The PlayStation Store has been back for a few days now, and the “Welcome Back” program is in full effect. While it’s a nice gesture to be given free stuff, the process in which you get your free games is clunky and more confusing than it needs to be. You also run into a series of random error messages as you work through the process. Worst of all, during the process, it can error out in a way where it appears like you can no longer access one of or both of your free games. This just happened to me, and I was very upset for a few minutes.

Don’t fret if this happens to you. I found the fix on the PlayStation Community forums and have included this in the post. Follow the steps and you should be fine. No one should have to go through this kind of junk to get these “Welcome Back” freebies, but it’s better than nothing I guess.

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Let’s Talk About E3

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The most exciting time for gaming news is almost upon us! E3 is just days away, and I’m super hyped to see all of the hot scoops on gaming’s latest and greatest. Nintendo is set to show off a brand new console, Sony is going to reveal more about the NGP, and Microsoft…well, they must have something ready, right?

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Mortal Kombat Review

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It’s been a while since Mortal Kombat was relevant. Say what you will about the series’ consistently good sales, but when the genre fell out of relevance with the mass market, Mortal Kombat did, too. However, when Street Fighter IV single-handedly revived the genre, it was only a matter of time before Mortal Kombat came roaring back. And roar back it did. You, as gaming consumers, made it the number 1 selling game in the US in April, selling over 1 million copies.

Is the latest in the MK series a return to form? Did it sell solely on hype? Or does it take the series to the next level?

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L.A. Noire Review

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There are going to be a lot of people who will buy this game, thinking that they’re picking up Grand Theft Auto: 1940s Cop Edition. If the commercials or your expectations led you to believe that this would be that type of game, you’re either going to be pleasantly surprised or horribly disappointed. If this isn’t a Grand Theft Auto variant, than what is it?

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In Third Person’s Reader Trends: May 2011 Edition

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It’s usually that time of the month when I’d write about In Third Person’s top 5 posts for the month. I don’t want to do that anymore, because I don’t think it told that interesting of a story. I don’t think it benefits anyone when I write about the same 5 or 6 top posts every month that just so happen to be Google aggregate favourites (I’m looking at you, Gaming’s Definitive Moustaches).

Instead, I thought I’d do something more interesting with the numbers. Let me know if you enjoy this format better!

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Pick-Up Post: Blockbuster Liquidation Madness

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Across Canada, 146 Blockbuster locations are preparing to close their doors, which accounts for about 1/3 of all Blockbuster locations across the country. It’s a sad day for over a thousand people who will be losing their jobs and many of its customers who still want their movies and games on physical media. Canada will still have Blockbuster locations after this, but the future for those left is foggy at best.

The short-term good news is, all of these stores affected are liquidating their products at deep discounts. On the first day of the sales, my girlfriend and I went to her local Blockbuster that was shutting down and bought a ton of stuff. She bought Epic Mickey and a bunch of movies. I had upwards of 15 games in my hands during that trip, but I narrowed it down to 7 by the time I hit the register. Check out what I bought by clicking through to the rest of this post!

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The 2012 Goal for In Third Person

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In Third Person has come a long way from its humble roots as my pet project that was lucky to get 10 hits a day. While it’s still very much a pet project, the site is fortunate enough to reach an audience of thousands of visitors a month. Ever since the WordPress front page promo, thousands of visitors every month manage to find their way to my little slice of the internet. To say that this was all part of the plan would be a lie. I’m still surprised to see the number of views my posts get and the number of great conversations I have with readers in the comments.

Instead of simply riding the tides to wherever it takes me, I’d like to set a 2012 goal for In Third Person.

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Impressions of Mortal Kombat’s Story Mode

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Historically, fighting games have done a poor job of providing a good single-player experience and a horrible job at telling a story. Even 20 years after the release of Street Fighter II, the majority of fighting games simply boil down to fighting opponent after opponent, until you’ve beaten everyone in your path and receive your character’s ending. This does not make for an interesting one-player experience, or add any context to why you’re fighting opponent after opponent. To be fair, the BlazBlue series has tried to expand its single-player experience with a story mode, but that game’s story is so poorly written and presented that only the hardest of hardcore anime fans would find any redeeming value in it.

With that said, Mortal Kombat’s story mode is a breath of fresh air. It’s presented in a way that makes perfect sense to the mythology of the series and to the player in control. What makes it so great? And what could have been done better?

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Let’s Talk About Duke Nukem Forever

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I remember first reading about Duke Nukem Forever in EGM magazine back in 1997. That feels like it was a lifetime ago for me. While this game was going through development hell, I hit puberty, graduated college on two separate occasions and have worked six different jobs before settling into a stable position in the digital advertising industry. It’s crazy to me to think that 14 years later, this game has officially gone gold and is supposedly coming out in a matter of days.

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Early Impressions: Mortal Kombat’s Fighting Game Mechanics

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When you think about Mortal Kombat as a series, you think about blood and fatalities. Do you think about it’s rich and deep fighting game engines? Probably not. Mortal Kombat has traditionally, been a fighting game series built primarily on style over substance. For Midway/Warner Brothers, this lead to consistently good sales throughout the series history among more casual fighting game fans, but the hardcore have pretty much shunned it. Case in point: Super Street Fighter II Turbo is still being played at major fighting game tournaments this year, while the entire Mortal Kombat scene has virtually never had any sort of tournament scene to speak of.

I loved Mortal Kombat I-III, but having grown into a hardcore fighting game player these last few years has really coloured my perspective on those games in hindsight. I can still have a ton of fun playing the Street Fighter II series games of the same era, but those early Mortal Kombat games just don’t have the depth of gameplay to hold my attention nowadays. With that said, Ed Boon, the creator of Mortal Kombat, said this new one was aiming to cater to the hardcore crowd. I’ve only spent a few hours with it playing the story mode, tutorial and some versus matches with my coworkers, so it wouldn’t be fair for me to pass final judgment about the game now. But what I can tell you about are my experiences with the game so far, is that from a gameplay systems perspective, this is probably the deepest Mortal Kombat ever.

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