Ten Things To Do When The PSN Is Back

Previously, in this feature, I’ve made plenty of bad jokes about the PSN downtime. I seem to have annoyed a lot of people recently by either pointing out how terrible the “external intrusion” is or by pretending it’s not so bad and we can all have a good laugh about it.

So, this week I thought I’d try another tack. I’m going to make bad jokes about what to do when the network is back. Same standard of joke (poor), more positive outlook. Surely, I can’t lose with this formula…

1. Immediately sync your trophies. The absolute worst thing about the network being offline is that you haven’t been able to waggle your electronic penis-substitute in the faces of friends, family and complete strangers. You’ve got a huge collection and the downtime has only seen it swell even more with single player trophies. If you’re in the UK, you probably got even more of a swelling during the break we got for the Royal Wedding. You know, in between watching Pippa Middleton in a fitted white dress. Unleash that massive trophy erec… er, collection on your friends list.
2. Send a PSN message. You could use that message to gloat that you’ve already completed Portal 2’s cooperative missions. You could use it to enquire about the parentage and/or sexual habits of someone who recently beat you at FIFA. You should probably use it to let the recipient know that they have to forward the message to a hundred thousand people in the next week so that Sony will implement cross game chat/keep the PSN free/send us all a magic unicorn that farts rainbows. Please don’t use the message to say anything complimentary or send pictures of your genitals. I get enough of those.
3. Redeem that Portal 2 Steam code. There’s no joke here, if your PC is nice and powerful then get that free Steam version of Portal 2 claimed and downloaded. See how it can be even more beautiful than the PS3 version.
4. Sign in to the PlayStation forums again. Let’s face it, the network might be coming back with extra bouncers on the door but the sheer numbers of people trying to reconnect as soon as it’s live will probably mean that the servers fall over again. If you sign in to the forums before the network collapses, you’ll stay signed in and be one of the chosen few who can vent their anger/frustration/utter disbelief/astounding sense of entitlement to the people who can really do something about it: the community managers who have nothing to do with network stability. Oh.
5. Drop the lawsuit. You probably wanted to sue Sony for the mental anguish you suffered. Or perhaps you just wanted the cash and attention? Well, no matter because now that the network is up, you’ll be wanting to call LawyersDirect2U and tell them that you won’t have time to appear in court because you’re busy playing SOCOM: Special Forces and receiving messages with new and imaginative spellings of old swear words.
6. Dry your eyes. You’ve spent two weeks crying into your DualShock 3’s at the thought of having to play a single player game. Your eyes look a bit puffy, if I’m honest. Grab a tissue and dab away the tears and close down all those browser tabs you had open on various forums. When the PSN is back, you can stop interacting with people who can only type responses and go back to communicating through the glorious medium of shotgun cartridges to the face. And offensive PSN messages.
7. Play a game. The week that the network went down was a huge week for multiplayer gaming on the PlayStation 3. Portal 2’s cooperative side, Mortal Kombat’s online fisticuffs and SOCOM: Special Forces’ tactical murdering have all been crying out for your attention. Now it’s time to give them all a good seeing to and put all that solo practice to good use in front of an audience of millions.
8. Visit Home. In spite of its massive improvements, many people still don’t see much of Home. I have visited the place once since the weeks after it launched to find it completely different (and full of TSAers getting their picture taken). But it’s been completely empty for weeks. A whole world with literally nobody in it. If you can get lucky and be the first on it, you can probably stick a flag in it, pee up the walls and keep the place forever.
9. Download something. Anything. My ISP has been sending me letters to see if I’ve fallen out with them. I’ve had to massively increase the amount of gentleman’s videos I download just to make up the deficit in my usual monthly bandwidth consumption. On the plus side, I’m now the world’s leading consumer of movies featuring too many cheerleaders in too small a shower.
10. Switch off the 360. You don’t have to rely on Xbox Live for your online gaming fix any more and with the summer just around the corner, you really don’t need the extra heat it generates. Go on, there’s nothing coming out for it until after E3 anyway.