In Iron Man 3 reality has finally caught up with Tony Stark. He is suffering from post traumatic stress after his near death experience in The Avengers which strains his relationship with Pepper Pots. In a moment of anger he challenges the The Mandarin, a terrorist that threatens the security of the United States of America. The Mandarin retaliates with a devastating attack on Tony’s villa that almost gets Pepper and Tony killed. Tony is left homeless, without his laboratory and with only one unfinished prototype of his Iron Man armour. He decides to go into hiding to prevent further attacks on those close to him, in particular Pepper. In his self-imposed exile Tony needs to overcome his fears and figure out a way to conquer his new arch enemy with very limited resources.

The third Iron Man movie is a bit darker than the first two. Just like the main character the story has lost a bit of the lightheartedness. But in return you get more suspense, a plot with interesting twists and even more action than before. Robert Downey Jr. is again at his best and delivers a very entertaining performance which ensures that things don’t get too serious. The special effects are brilliant as usual but still leave room for the human aspect of the story. The final showdown delivers the stunning final that the trilogy deserved.

If you like action, comedy and special effects in an entertaining format you don’t want to miss Iron Man 3.

1. Required Hardware
   To upgrade the hard disk of a PS3 you need of course a new drive. Any 2.5″ SATA drive should work in theory. I’ve used an Intel Solid-State Drive from the 320 Series. You also need an external USB 2.0 hard disk to backup the data stored on your PS3. I strongly suspect that drives larger than 2TB won’t work but haven’t tested that. The drive needs to have a standard PC partition table with an MBR and a FAT32 file system with enough free space to hold a full backup of the PS3 plus 300MB for the firmware image.
   To perform the actual upgrade you will also need a Phillips screwdriver, a DualShock 3 controller and the USB cable to connect the controller to the console.
2. Backing up your Trophies
   Even a full backup of a PS3 will not contain the Trophies that you earned by playing games. The only way to keep them is to link all accounts with trophies to a PlayStation Network account and synchronise the trophies before the hard disk upgrade.
3. Backing up your data
   To create a backup you only need to connect the external hard disk and then select Settings / System Settings / Backup Utility / Back Up. The PS3 should list the external hard disk as a possible target. Simply select it and wait. It might take over an hour to create the back up depending on the amount of data currently stored on your PS3.
4. Preparing a firmware image
   To complete the upgrade you will need a disk with the firmware for the PS3. You can download the firmware image from here. You will get a file called PS3UPDAT.PUP. The easiest way to install it is to copy it to the back up hard disk that you used in the previous step. The hard disk should already contain a folder PS3. Simply create a sub folder UPDATE in this folder and copy the firmware image into it. It is very important that the directory names and filenames are spelled in uppercase.
5. Changing the hard disk
   Now you are ready to change to the hard disk. A very good description of this step can be found here.
6. Installing the firmware
   When you first power on the PS3 with the new hard disk it will complain that it cannot read its hard disk. You now need to connect the DualShock 3 controller and the backup hard disk via USB cables. Afterwards follow the onscreen instructions for installing the firmware image (and not those for rebooting the console).
7. Restoring the backup
   After formatting the hard disk and installing the firmware your PS3 will be back to factory defaults. It will ask you for network settings, a username and similar information. Don’t spend any time on providing that data because it will be overwritten anyway. Once you can log in simply go to Settings / System Settings / Backup Utility / Restore, select the USB hard disk as the source, pick the latest backup (if there are more than one) and let the PS3 restore the data. This might again take over on an hour.
8. Restoring your trophies
   Your PS3 should now be fully configured again and know all the previously existing accounts. To get their trophies back simply synchronise their trophy collections with the PlayStation Network. This will restore all the trophy back to your PS3.
9. Activate Games and Videos
   If you have bought games or videos online from the PSN Store you need to activate them via PlayStation Network / Account Management / System Activation / PS3 System now.

After you have gone through all of the above steps your PS3 should work as before, or possibly even faster if you replace the hard disk with an SSD. Mass Effect now starts in 47 instead of 59 seconds on my PS3. But you will of course only get performance improvements for games that are actually installed on the hard disk.

Borderlands 2 is a first person shooter with role playing elements. At the beginning of the game you pick one of four (or five with an extra DLC) characters with different abilities like deploying a gun turret, cloaking, using two guns at the same time or freezing your enemies. As you progress through the game your character gains experience that you can use to boost his or her abilities. Another role playing element is the extensive amount of loot that can be found: six kinds of weapons, shields, grenades, ability boosters, new custom looks and other interesting items. As the items are randomly generated you can always find new unique loot. While playing the game you can also complete Bad Ass Challenges e.g. by using specific abilities or killing specific enemies to improve various aspects of your character like gun damage or maximum health.

The story takes your character to a planet called Pandora. Pandora is a hostile environment full of monsters, bandits and an army of deadly robots. Your mission is to defeat Handsome Jack the president of the Hyperion corporation and end his reign of terror over Pandora. To accomplish this you must stop him from opening an alien vault where an undefeatable warrior is hidden. Jack wants to control  this warrior to secure his dominance permanently. The main story is divided into a series of missions each with rewards waiting at the end. Besides the main mission you can complete a vast number of side mission that grant your character extra rewards like credits, unique equipment or experience points.

Borderland 2 is technically a very good game. It doesn’t feature photorealistic graphics, the world looks like a comic strip. This style also keeps the violence (of which there is a lot) tolerable. In return for the simple look you get very smooth animation (even on the ageing PS3), vast maps with many details and fast loading times. The game also never crashed for me which is unfortunately not always a given these days. The game play is very good: controls, weapon balance and level design are all excellent. There is also enough story and humour to keep things interesting. The only problems are the occasional spikes in difficulty. I found the displayed difficulty rating of a lot of the missions was not accurate.

The multiplayer mode is interesting because it allows up to three extra player to join the hosts singleplayer campaign. All the players simply play the current mission together, face tougher enemies and get better loot in return. Due to the level of consensus and cooperation required this is really something you want to play with your friends and not with strangers. And as my favourite fellow players unfortunately never bought this game I didn’t play in this mode a lot.

Overall Borderlands 2 is a really enjoyable game full of action and weird humour. If you try to complete the side missions as well it will keep you occupied for a long time.

Last weekend I finally finished the single player campaign of Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. I had started playing this game over 7 month ago. But the releases of Borderlands 2, Mass Effect 3: Retaliation and Mass Effect kept me occupied in the meantime. It also didn’t help that Revelations is not as good as the two previous games from the same series. The game unfortunately lacks novel content and a good story. And I guess I was also pessimistic about what might expect me at the end of the game.

As Assassin’s Creed:Revelations is the last game that features Ezio Auditore as the main protagonist I was worried that he would have to die. And I wasn’t keen on another depressing end for one of my favourite video game characters. But ultimately I was positively surprised when Ezio is not only allowed to retire after 30 years of fighting for the freedom of mankind but he also finds love. So I got a proper happy ending, which was just what I needed to make the farewell easier.

Mass Effect tells the beginning of the adventures of Commander Shepard, her appointment as a Spectre and her first encounter with the Reapers. Like its successors the game features story telling, well written characters and dialogs at the highest level. The game play looks very similar too the second part at a quick glance: a third person shooter with elements of a role-playing game. But after playing the game for a while you realise that the RPG elements are much more predominant than in the later games. You e.g. have to manage a massive inventory of equipment that you gain by combat or by looting all kinds of containers (crates, lockers, etc.). Developing the powers of your main character is more important in this part of the series because abilities like charming other persons or opening objects are not a given. If Commander Shepard lacks any of these skills you will have to pick your squad mates accordingly.

The gripping story makes Mass Effect a lot of fun to play. There are however a few annoyances effecting the game play. The mini game for opening containers is a stupid reflex test which I failed far too often. Power classes can by default only use pistols which makes combat unnecessarily difficult. You can work around this if you actually find out how. At that point you probably have to start a new play through from scratch. Your character’s bonus power can only be assigned when you create a character. You can also, just like the points assigned to powers, never change it. Kudos to BioWare who fixed all these problems in Mass Effect 2.

If you haven’t played any of the Mass Effect games I would highly recommend to play the whole trilogy. You will embark on a video game adventure like no other. If you have played Mass Effect 2 or 3 because you like role-play games and good stories you will like the first part as well. If you however mostly like shooters Mass Effect might not be your cup of tea. I personally enjoyed it a lot, in particular the awesome ending.

Last week Silke and I finally went to see the first part The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. It had all the things that made The Lord of the Rings trilogy really enjoyable: an decent adaption of the story, well written and played characters, views of fantastic landscapes, a lot of action and last but not least excellent special effects. The decision to turn the book into three movies seems to work out alright. The film doesn’t feel incomplete like the original cinema cuts of the first three movies. It sometimes is almost a bit lengthy but usually picks up the pace quickly again.

I really enjoyed The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and am definitely looking forward to the next two movies. I only wish they would get released sooner.

When I finished my Insanity run through yesterday I finally watched the new ending. I was very pleased to see that it is indeed much better. As expected I still didn’t get Marriage, old age and a lot of little blue children, but I finally got closure and a sense of accomplishment . BioWare added a lot of background information, closed plot holes, fixed glitches and most importantly showed the events after the Reaper war. On top of that the player can now choose a fourth radically different outcome of the story.

The Extended Cut is the epic finale that the Mass Effect trilogy needed, that it deserved. The game play of the final mission is still disappointing but at least the story is alright now. There are still a lot of fans that are unhappy with the plot. But I guess that is to be expected if you don’t deliver a Hollywood style happy end. To be honest I find the ending quite depressing as well. I wonder though why the game didn’t come with the proper end in the first place. I can only guess that BioWare struggled to keep the release schedule and had to cut some corners. Mass Effect 3 wouldn’t be the first game that suffered from this problem.

But  Silke and I both think that Vader is way cuter than the crumpled dog who actually won the competition.