I just think this is really funny. Real, downloadable content for EA’s Mercenaries 2 game, featuring some of our favorite politicians. Just watch the video.

Rejoice initially, fiddle with it, then figure out how you like it over the next few days. At least, that has been my experience so far with the rereleased PlayStation Store for PC, which has been offline for some overhaul work. The result is a new store interface that looks a lot more like the stores found on the PS3 and PSP. Not only that, the store on PC is now integrated into Sony’s Media Manager for PSP 3.0 software. Don’t worry, Media Manager 3.0 is free to download (http://store.playstation.com), unlike previous versions in the US. The main draw of this software for me is the advertised ability to transfer bought videos for storage onto my PC when my MemoryStick is running low. Sadly, I’m not yet sure if that’s something I’ll be doing yet.

I immediately met problems. My first install failed for some reason, but no biggie. I finally got the program running after a couple tries and synced up my PSP, only to find that the program couldn’t locate most of my PSP’s files, not game saves, not videos I have bought, not music. The only thing I could access were my PSP’s bookmarks. Not very useful. The Store, on the other hand, appears to work just fine. The layout is almost identical to the most recent version of the PS3 Store, except that the icons for items appear low-res and somewhat pixilated.

With the release of PSP v5.00 and direct PS Store access, the only reason I can see for using the PC PS Store is to rent or buy videos, a function unavailable to the PS Store on PSP. Or, perhaps if one were in a Wi-Fi-less area, the PC store would be the only option, and I guess that really is the point, to provide options. Hopefully they’re able to work out the kinks in the software with future updates, that are, hopefully, free as well.

 

Maybe it’s because I never really played the original Rock Band that much, despite having bought the whole kit, but actually playing Rock Band 2 is a whole lot of fun. I’m working on guitar skills at the moment on my single-player World Tour and have actually gotten up to hard difficultly on most of the early songs. You know, medium level should really be called "Easy" and hard level should be called "Normal," because when you play on medium, the buttons you actually press are highly abstracted from the notes you actually hear. Often you’ll hit one button, but hear three notes played. It doesn’t happen as much on hard. Then again, if hard was "normal" and medium was "easy," I don’t know, maybe people would have as much fun feeling accomplished.

This past weekend, I decided to look into the Rock Band Community Site, which I had registered for with the original Rock Band, but never actually visited. The coolest thing I’ve seen so far is the Merch Booth and Unleash Your Band feature. Basically, linking your game to the community site lets you order custom-made, 6 inch, real life miniature statues of your band members to display in your household. It’s neat stuff that I think a lot of people will go for, if they know about it. Wouldn’t you? I mean, what’s the point of totally customizing your character, if no one is ever there to see it? This is really smart marketing, though the $60.00 ~ $80.00 price tag is a bit much for me at the moment, but I wouldn’t be against some of the custom band member T-shirts that you can also craft at the Merch Booth.

As for the rest, it seems Rock Band could really become somewhat of a Rock Band centric Facebook. It seems like every game is trying to go in this direction. I hear the Resistance 2 community site will have Facebook-ish features too. I guess we’ll see how it goes. I’ll let you know what I think once they’re all out and ready.

Anyways, check it out for yourself. Here’s a link to my Rock Band page, if you’re interested in following my band progress in pseudo-real time. Comment if you want to ROCK!