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I've been remiss mentioning a contest going on over at Aeropause to give away one LittleBigPlanet God of War costume pack code and one 007: Quantum of Solace (Xbox 360) map pack code.

Sony Japan has boosted the number of titles that adhocParty for the PS3 supports to over 100 titles including many that go pretty far back in the system's lifespan. It looks like the application has turned out to be just what I hoped it would be -- a generic matchmaking service that can take many adhoc-only games for the PSP online. If the titles keep piling on like this it'll be a welcome replacement for the stringent hardware requirements and configuration vagaries of XLink Kai.

Still no word on a US release for the adhocParty software, and while there are instructions online for getting it using a Japanese PSN account I'd much rather have something officially supported for North American gamers.

There are a great number of titles I'm happy are on this list. I don't own many of them and have seen some of them disappear at retail after being liquidated, but I would try picking some of these up if I had the chance at a bargain price.

Here are the titles that interest me most, and remember these are the Japanese names:

The 1.04 patch for PlayStation Home deployed earlier today and for the first time since it was released last week I was able to log in. Granted I'd only tried a few times in the evening, and today I tried mid-morning on a rare day off, but it was nice to log in.

When I mentioned the challenges facing Sony on the PS3's second birthday last month I held up the economic crunch in the United States as a possible monkey wrench in the gears of the system's slow but steady uptick of momentum. What I never expected was what fell out of the November NPD console sales numbers: growth of PS3's year-over-year didn't just slow down in the face of a frankly frightening economic picture, it started going backwards.

Backwards. Backwards after stellar titles like Resistance 2 and LittleBigPlanet have finally landed. Backwards after a year of growing positive press on the system. Backwards in a critical time, the holiday season which should show growth.

With an utterly insane number of Wii consoles sold in one month -- 2 million of them -- and an exceptional number of Xbox 360s sold at 836k, it's not hard to see where those console sales went. The PS3's limped into its third holiday season with just 378k units sold.

Around the middle of 2008 I personally had made my peace with the fact that the PS3 wasn't going to catch up with the Xbox 360. The best I felt I would see it do is keep pace with the Xbox 360 month-to-month, maybe edge it out every so often, and never really eat into the difference between them. Even that, now, seems astonishingly optimistic.

The current strategy is just not working. Top-quality exclusive games haven't turned the tide. Highly reliable hardware hasn't turned the tide. Blu-ray hasn't turned the tide. Free online play hasn't turned the tide. There needs to be a new strategy, and I think you'd agree that this strategy will have a positive inpact and could be the only way the PlayStation products will still be sold in 2010.

Grudge Match: Resistance 2 vs. Gears of War 2 @ Yahoo! Video

IGN Insiders got treated to a video that Insomniac should be proud of. They compared Resistance 2 and Gears of War 2, asking that if a gamer were only to buy one or the other (assuming they're rather wealthy and own both an Xbox 360 with an Xbox Live Gold subscription to play online and a PlayStation 3), which should they spend their money on. The video covers both the single player aspect of each game and the multiplayer aspect of the games and ends up siding with Resistance 2. Given the hardcore gamer street cred of Gears of War 2 this is no small achievement.

Adam Sessler also recently did a Sessler's Soapbox (link) about the R2 vs Gears 2 fanboy fights on Metacritic, and he has similar thoughts to the video you see here.

The comparison is pretty even-handed and as someone who bought Resistance 2 I can't say I disagree with what the video says and what critics have said, even if I've only scratched the surface of the game so far. The co-op is that good. Give it a look and decide for yourself.

Seen on PlayStation Universe.

From TripleTags.

One of the best shooters I've ever played is Unreal Tournament III on my PS3. Not only is it a pretty and high-performance game, it supports keyboard and mouse, allows you to host a server, and supports user mods for levels and mutators (sorry Xbox 360 version!). Throw in that famous classic announcer announcing Double Kills and Monster Kills and you get a wonderful shooter experience. No Trophies, given its age, but it's great fun.

So why am I still talking about a year-old game? Because it's available used for $12.99 on GameFly.com. The Xbox 360 version is there as well in case you want the split-screen play you don't get on the PS3. I highly recommend it.

Check it out on CAG.

I think Blast Factor is the first PSN game I bought, and I'm pretty sure it was the first game that had online leaderboards. I distinctly remember the handful of minutes I had the top spot against my friends before those without kids and other such afternoon and evening things to keep them from playing fully pwned me. Yes, yes, I could practice again and with today's upcoming patch giving Trophies to the game and its two expansions I just might be motivated to do so.

If you never picked up Blast Factor now would be a good time considering the bundle of the game plus the two expansions is just $12.99 while the main game is $9.99. The full bundle has 25 Trophies available, and given how hard the game is I take them at their word that the challenges will be tough.

If BluePoint Games can patch Trophies into a game built on probably one of the oldest PS3 firmwares without even letting us know ahead of time, I wonder why there are publishers like, oh I don't know, let me think, Capcom taking so long to patch them in? Bionic Commando: Rearmed is still waiting for Trophies, kids. And while I know THQ has slid a bit in this economy, could we maybe get a Trophy patch for Saints Row 2, hm? Do we need to have the guys at BluePoint go show both of you guys how to code?

Seen on the PlayStation Blog.

From Aeropause.

I never really expected the PS3 web browser to amount to much, but Sony has proven me wrong by upgrading it bit by bit. Yesterday's firmware release of 2.53 has added support for full-screen Flash playback. This brings Hulu and other entertainment streaming sites onto the system without any additional software being needed.

I even tested it out by watching the entire The Simpsons MyPod episode. The playback does happen at a bit of a lower framerate than I think you'd see on a desktop, but I got used to it.

Really, all they need now is integrated Netflix support, which frankly I'd pay a one-time fee for in return for it being officially supported by both Sony and Netflix, as opposed to TheMediaMall's PlayOn software. I did try PlayOn but found that it failed in one critical aspect as of a few weeks ago. It can't fast forward to a given point within a show to resume playing. When a stream craps out due to random network congestion 30 minutes into a 42-minute TV show, that just won't cut it. As for streaming from sites like Hulu and YouTube I found it worked very well and had better picture quality than the PS3 browser does now.

Still, free is free, so take it for a spin and tell us what you watched if you want to share!

Seen on the PS Blog.

From TripleTags.