Coming Soon

I'm going to discuss the newly announced NGP aka PSP 2 and what it needs to succeed and finally beat out Nintendo

Next I'm going to do a State of the Zune Address

Then I'm going to do a feature on needed apps for ios, android, mac, and windows so look out for that!

All of this starting tomorrow so stay tuned!

On to Mac

So I finally got a mac. It is wonderful, the Macbook Pro isn't just good engineering its perfection. Everything just works. Its the beautiful marriage between software and hardware. This laptop is literally everything you will ever want or need in a laptop. Great looks, battery life (10hrs),power, and great volume for not actually seeing any speakers. I can play every game in my steam library that works on Mac. Now onto OSX. OSX is so simple that its actually hard to get used to. Your used to windows where after you buy something you have to go through menu after menu pop up after pop up to just make your computer work the way you want. When you want to install a program you download it then drag it to applications folder. If you want it gone what do you do? Why go to the add/remove programs of course! not! Actually you just right click on application, click move to trash, then empty trash, and ta-da no more program. Its really so simple and well worth the money. Around April or so I might buy an iMac and put windows on that so im not relying on my ever so great Gateway netbook which now catches your legs on fire for some reason must be the eight core processor knocking around in there (sarcasm) I'm now on the Mac and loving it. Just wish it didnt take me so long to switch.

State of the PSP Address

Many would say the PSP is dieing. Its not competing with the DS very well at all in North America and the amount of big games coming is dwindling. Though with my recent purchase of a PSP GO I must say the PSP has plenty of life in it if Sony would just let it live! The PS3's motto is "It only does everything" the PSP's should be "why not" You have to remember how old the PSP is. It came before the iPhone/iPod Touch. It came before the Xbox 360. So when you think of the things the PSP could do out of the box its pretty amazing. It could play video! View photos, music, and shortly after launch browse the web. You might think wow my cell phone does all this but also think, the PSP came out before iPods could play video! This is way back when that thing called iTunes used to only sell music! There was no apps, there was no tv or movie downloads. The PSP was the only place to get ground breaking 3D games, music, photos, videos, and internet. So why is it that the PSP is going down the tubes? The answer lies within Sony. The PSP's problems could be fixed so easily. They need games. Find some way to get EA, Ubi Soft, and Activision involved with the PSP again. Start getting a good flow of games out there. Once that happens drop the price. Make the Go $179 or even $200 give people an incentive to buy the GO. If people have to download games they cant pirate them. This makes developers happy, thus more games. Another thing is to add features. Make more movie formats available, such as; Divx and Xvid. When people can get there movies on something easily, the happier they are. Overhaul the web browser. Adopt Opera where everything is done on a server elsewhere. Bring on the YouTube and various other applications such as Twitter and Facebook. You don't have to go crazy just satisfy peoples needs. Which brings me back to the "why not" slogan. People might ask why would I want to connect my PSP to my TV? Why would I want to use Skype on my PSP? The answer is "why not" If its there and is something that could come in handy one day or if its something you use everyday the PSP has it. So why would you want a PSP? Well how about "Why Not"? The PSP is an awesome device. It has a giant crisp screen. The Go is very portable and comfortable to hold. Its really a revolutionary device stuck in the past because of Sony. The PSP has sold 60million units up to December, 2009. The PSP is no flop its far from one. Sony pumped life into the PSP with a large amount of high profile games last year no lets just see more. There are 60Million of us Sony make us happy.



`Also expect a few more posts about the PSP soon. I'm going to talk about games, I'm going to have a review for my Go coming soon, and maybe I'll do a few PSP feature videos.

Out with the Old in with the New

Today I finally got the one thing I've saved up for, A band new 32GB Zune HD. I must say this was one of my most wanted gadgets ever. I was super excited to get one today. The Zune is super sleek thinner than my Zune 8GB and ever so sexy. Packing a Nvidia Tegra chip the Zune HD has really fast and rich animations. It even does a cool little slide show when you have it docked. The new UI is hard to get used to, it recognizes flat finger input. Which is good in the long run but I guess i'm just used to using the tip of my finger. Your music is real easy to find since you can sort it by album, artist, song, genre, and by pressing on a letter which is the quickest way. Videos look really good and crisp on the OLED display. The radio even comes in better. Im not sure how to get to HD1 or HD2 like what i saw but ill figure it out. The web browser is nice and quick and from what i've seen its comparable to Safari on the iPhone. Finally the apps. Now there are like 8 apps out right now most of which are some shouddy games like chess, etc.. but there is also a weather and calculator app. Now on to the bad. It seems like my Zune's screen flickers... I dont know if it is or its just me. Also I bought the $100 dock package that includes all sorts pf stuff and it doesn't work real well with my Zune HD, the remote doesnt work. I can press play and songs will play but i'm supposed to be able to select different menus. Now the Indian lady at Zune support said charge it... I don't know what the hell thats going to do but ill try it. It also weirds out when you just set it on the dock. Like it will switch back and fourth and it wont stop. Ill have to restart it. Other than the dock it works flawlessly and was well worth the wait. Ill probably be taking it back tomorrow to exchange it but we'll see. So that's it for now I'll keep you updated!

New Toy!

While I was at work on Friday a new toy arrived at my house. It was my new laptop, the Gateway LT 3103u. This is one of those better netbooks that are basically a laptop. The screen is 11.6" which is bigger than what a netbook's can be and is at a higher resolution at 1336x768. Its a 16x9 screen so thats the reason for the odd resolution. Underneath the hood we have a 1.2 GHz AMD Athalon 64 processor couped with an ATI X1270. Yea its not going to be pumping Crysis out at 60FPS but its speed really does suprises me. It has 2GB of RAM and a 250GB Harddrive, oh and its running Windows Vista Home Basic and I'm debating if I should put the new Windows 7 beta on it. Overall it is very snappy, it takes about 30-40 seconds to boot which seems pretty fast to me. I have multiple programs open at once. I even did a stress test to see how much I could do and I was suprised. I had two games of Braid running, some music from the Zune software, a video playing in WMP, and was surfing the web and it was still running pretty smooth. Now I mentioned Braid so you may ask what other games have I tried? Well nothing real crazy. I bought Braid, Peggle, Plants vs Zombies, and all of those run great

. Though I did play a little Half Life 2 and here's a screen of the details ithas me running at. Now I'm not sure about the framerate but it runs pretty smooth.

It looks really good actually. I might even say Xbox 360 quality graphics though framerate is a little different story. But thats pretty much it. The computer is dead silent and doesn't heat my room so thats good. But overall I really like it. When I first got it and was using it, it seemed pretty slow then I took Norton off and bam instant speed burst. It doesn't play HD YouTube very well since thats pretty processor dependent. I really like it and for $400 you really cant go wrong. I would of liked to get that HP DV2 but that was like $800. Ill just end up getting a beefier desktop later on anyway. The only problem I have with this laptop is the battery life. It seems very short though I do have it in full bore. If I put it on power saver it says 6 hours but its really slow, will probably use if I'm just writing a paper or something. My satisfaction could not be higher, Im very suprised by the build quality of this Gateway laptop and I'm glad Gatewayy is getting back on there feet.

E3 2009 Sony/Microsoft

Well the big E3 is back. And it seems to be back with a bunch of stuff we can't have yet.. Alot of announced stuff coming in 2010. Though Sony and Microsoft really stole the show and Nintendo um.. not so much, they did better than last year but hell anything is better than last year. So here is a run down of what was announced.

Microsoft

Some big games most come out next year but it shows there is some life still kicking in the ol' Xbox 360.

~Alan Wake was finally shown off. looks very good they definitely scaled it down a bit and looks more constricted but it looks very promising. Coming in 2010.

~Like 58 more Halo games were shown.. well maybe 2. Halo ODST was shown looks pretty neat basically just more Halo. Also a teaser was shown for the new Halo game called Halo: Breach. Not much is known about the title. ODST comes in September and Breach comes in 2010.

~ Forza 3 was shown. Probably one of the worst kept secrets. Forza will have around 500 cars, the custom tuning from Forza 2 and some better damage effects. Comes out this year on 2 discs.

~Left 4 Dead 2 was also shown. Its based in the south has 4 new people. There is new Zombies, weapons, and day time levels. Comes out this year.

~Crack Down 2 was shown and not much else is known they just showed a quick teaser trailer.

~Metal Gear: Rising was shown off and is the first Metal Gear to come to the Xbox 360. Game isn't exclusive but the trailer was only shown in Microsofts Press conference.

~ One of the bigger suprises is Splinter Cell: Conviction. UBI Soft throws out emo Sam Fisher for the bad ass that we all know and love. The games looks very good comes out this year on Xbox 360 and PC.

~ Microsoft Showed of their own motion sensing tech called Project Natal. It uses a new camera and your whole body is the controler. They showed off some neat tech demos, ones that you need about a 20ft radius around you so you dont kill anyone. This looked very neat and the fact that you can control the NXE with it makes it even better. Comes out eventually.

~Also unannounced at their press conference is the ability to buy and download full Xbox 360 games to your harddrive. Launches at end of the year with select titles.

Sony

Sony showed a very promising line up of games most of which just like Microsoft come out early next year.

~ First big thing Sony really announced is the PSP GO! The system is bringing all of the sexy, along with a bunch of AAA games.

~ Gran Turismo PSP was shown. Looks excellent. From the videos floating around you would swear its GT4. The game has 800 cars, a bunch of tracks, and the game is locked at 60FPS. Comes out October 1st along side the PSP GO!

~A new Metal Gear Solid game is coming exclusivly (for now) to the PSP. Called MGS; Peace Walker. Its directed by Kojima and it looks very good. It takes place 10 years after MGS3 and somehow fits into the MGS time line. Check it out in 2010.

~ Also shown were a bunch of other PSP games like Jak and Daxter and many others like Echo Crhomo which is a 2D Echo Chrome with some color and a new time mechanic.

~ What was also shown but not announced was Fat Princess for the PSP. If you look at the PSP video montage they show it on there playing on a PSP.

~ On a bigger note Sony showed off MAG which looks amazing. It looked very smooth, though ill hold judgement untill its in my hands. There are vehicles and air strikes which Socom really never had. MAG should be out Fall of this year.

~ Of Course Uncharted 2 was there and it looked really really good. They showed some more single player and Drake's humor is still in tact. The story looks alot more engadging and exciting. They also released the Multiplayer Beta the same day so I checked that out and its alot of fun. The multiplayer looks really good though not as good as the single player. One of the problems is that it takes the same 30 bullets to kill someone, the same as the single player in the first Uncharted so I'm used to it.

~ Sony had another suprise known as the Agent. An Exlcusive game from the GTA Team, Rock Star North. Absolutly nothing was shown but the logo. Jack did say it was set in the 70s and they expect the same fanfair GTA provides. Expect it in end of 2010 ealry 2011.

~ Gran Turismo 5 was there in trailer form and looked very good and little improved from Prologue. The game has Nascar and Rally cars involved this time around and oh yes damage is there. Take that you cheatn Nissan bastards in GT 5: Prologue online. Expect in early 2010.

~ Sony tries to 1up Nintendo with there own motion tech which uses the PS eye to detect controllers with glowing balls on the end. Looks very promising and unlike Microsoft's and Nintendo's it seems to be aimed toward more hardcore gamers. Unlike Microsofts this will come ealry next year. My guess is maybe with Heavy Rain since they seem made for each other.

~Then Sony ended its conference with a bang showing a 10minute demo of God of War 3. Which looked very good seemed to have some hit detection problems but all of that should be worked out by 2010 when its released. The demo really showed the scope of God of War 3 where there was a huge guy throwing fireballs at kratos during his battle until the end where kratos had to fight him, and thats where the demo ended. Game looks very good and I'm pretty excited for it. Especially for the rumored God of War 1 and 2 in the collectors edition.

Well that was really it with these two. Of course other big games are coming to both consoles like Assassins Creed 2 and Modern Warfare 2. E3 was pretty big this year but it was alot of games that were announced for spring 2010 which is kind of a bummer. I could of included Nintendo but well just a new Metroid in 3rd person and Mario Galaxy 1 1/2 isn't exactly alot to write on.

Where the hell?

It's been awhile since I've done a post since I have been moving and having a bunch of other stuff going on. Also I didn't have internet for like 3 months which was absolutely horrible. So while I was gone there has been demos galore! My PS3 hasn't been off for 3 days. Quite a few demos were pretty good. I was very suprised by the Watchman and the Wheelman, I also thought Red Faction was pretty good loved the DTS sound. Though was very disapointed with Riddick, gonna have to check it out on the Xbox. The Red Barron and Sega Mega Collection were both suprisingly good, though I wish the Sega one was a downloadable game. The whole thing has to be under 2GB. On a side note my PS3 Harddrive is getting full again. Only have 25GBs left. So onto other news. Sony finally got their heads out of there asses and started doing stuff with the PSP which I'm very happy about and should make E3 very interesting. Also I'm really digging the Patapon 2 demo which I've gottern over 2 hours worth of play out of. I hope to get the full version here soon.   In a few days I should have a review for Killzone 2 which I'm really enjoying but I played it on hard since the early levels seemed too easy. So I'm kind of regreting that. Still a good game though and should have it finished just in time for Infamous. Tomorow I'm going to buy all of the recent PSN releases like Flower, Red Barron, Burn Zombie Burn, and the Watchmen atleast. Might buy Kung Fu Fists of Plastic as well. Big month for games, not enough time or money :-(   Well more in a bit with my Killzone 2 review.