PSN shop is back - as broken as it was before. You'd think SONY took the time and fixed the interface along with the security issues, but no, apparently it's the best we're gonna get.

The annoying background adverts are back. Those are way too bright and make the white text nearly unreadable. Seriously guys, how difficult it is to QA these things? You could've made the windows more opaque or have the font outlined - these are the first two things that come to mind. Or better yet, have the colors/layout customisable with user settings or skins... So many options here.

Or, we could just do away with these silly adverts/wallpapers. Haha, yeah, that would be a small miracle right there if it happened.

So, there is this No More Heroes demo that I wanted to try. It's not under N though. Or H. In fact, it's not in the Demos section at all, it's in the Latest -> Demos. The most logical explanation is these entries are not links but entered and maintained separately - and that has consequences, more on this below.

The Secret of Monkey Island is not under M, it's under S. Okay, that makes perfect sense if you follow proper conventions, since it'd be Secret of Monkey Island, The then. But Monkey Island 2 is under S as well, for whatever reason... Maybe because it's Special Edition. God only knows. The allmighty might also know where the hell Tales of Monkey Island are because I just couldn't find them. At all. Telltale Games should totaly sue, they are loosing sales because of this blunder. Fortunately the search option will find what you want - but you can't navigate back to the point of origin so it remains a mystery where PSN guys put those.

The in-shop search function is a blessing but really, who uses that on daily basis? Not to mention it's far from perfect, as the rest of the shop interface, and with all the heavy load lately it's prone to time-outs. It'll just wait forever trying to fetch the results and will not work after that. What's more, if you wait too long you will get booted out of the PSN shop alltogether - and not while doing the search but later when navigating.

There are tons of other things wrong with the shop, and item naming is the most obvious and annoying. So what is, say, Epilogue and why it's under P? Well, that 'cause it's Prince of Persia add-on. The World Of Recycled Vessel is also under N because it belongs to Nier. Trust me, this list goes on. It's not just DLCs, HOARD game is under L for example. Sackboy's Prehistoric Moves is under L too, since it's Little Big Planet offspin I suppose - even if the title doesn't even contain the letter L at all.

And don't get me started on ALL CAPS names or Extremly Long Game Titles: First And Only Part There Was Or Ever Will Be But Just In Case We Made This Subtitle In Advance. Or weird version numbers in demo titles. Or how some games have the demo, full game and addons nicely grouped while others require deep knowledge of the PSN store layout. Monkey Island remake is one such game, you'd best remember there is a bundle now that has both of the games, and cheaper too. Too bad it's not pointed out anywhere in the descriptions of the individual downloads. Frankly those are never, ever updated once put in the store anyway.

Ah, about descriptions. Those mostly contain the legal mambo jumbo, rarely anything else or of use. Definitely not the download size, to get to know that you need to purchase first. I have 250G model and fast internet connection but I suppose not all PSN users do. Some descriptions will list supported resolutions and HDD requirements for saves, but that's it.

Oh, and the non-linked entries I mentioned? It's very easy to forget one when updating something, and so we have Worms that, depending on which section you're browsing, have the PSN+ price drop or not. I couldn't be bothered to look for more examples. Point is, these guys are getting paid for it. Maybe it's not enough, I don't know, I sure could do a better job in my spare time though.

The download history is pretty useful, or rather faster than navigating the darn shop. But it's just one big list, can't be searched either. Most importantly you can only redownload items on one by one basis, and if you happened to delete your 40+ free Ridge Racer 7 addons, you're going to weep. I sure did.

Well, now that I got that out of my system I feel much better. I needed that after the Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes demo got me this close to punching my monitor. It should be called Might & Magic: Now Loading - I'm willing to bet the Nintendo DS version works faster... And DS has what, 4MB of RAM?