Rest in Peace Zune

           

      Zune has become Xbox Music. Yes Zune is dead and it will be missed by the few that actually gave it a chance. Zune failed for one reason and one reason only. In a world where music services are cross platform Zune simply stayed on Windows and Windows Phone 7. Zune didn't even leave the country until very recently and that was only because of Windows Phone. So what has changed...? Well in short nothing. Xbox Music has the same exact problems Zune had and actually they took away features. Basically Zune was a Facebook for music. In theory you were supposed to share songs with friends and comment on what they were listening to. The Zune team even went to as far to implement something like Achievements which gave you a badge for listening to artists or songs a certain amount of times. It was a great concept failed execution. Basically Spotify is what Zune should of been, a complete social music experience. Xbox Music is going to suffer the same fate as Zune unless these problems are addressed and supposedly they are working on fixing it. Sometime soon a iOS and Android app are supposed to be released and when that day come Spotify will be dropped for good. Zunes  Xbox Music's song selection is far superior to Spotify's. Plus I'm still holding on to my $14.99 music subscription with 10 free songs a month. Xbox Music has promise, much like the Zune did but with the Xbox app a mess and no other phone support besides Windows Phone they don't have time to lose. It will be very interesting watch for sure. Stay tuned....

Bought a Vita

Ok I didn't just buy a Vita. I got it on launch day and I've had some time to mess with it and here are my impressions.

The Vita is a beautiful system. Huge crisp display, its just a portable powerhouse! The analog sticks are great as are the buttons. Its really how the OG PSP should of been. With Uncharted, Resistance and, Gravity Rush finally out the Vita has some heavy hitter games. But there are problems. The home screen is quite possibly the worst thing ever conceived. The bubbles are ugly and the whole thing looks terribly organized. The XMB was a much better interface thats a lot simpler and actually makes sense. Now when you think of any other system ever made and you put a game into the system the game pops up and you click it and you can play it. Not on the Vita. You put the game in and it installs. Ok well what does it install? Quite frankly I'm not sure it puts a bubble on your home screen and before you can play it has a live screen. A live screen is like a Facebook page for a game. It shows friends and people around that have played it and it shows informations on downloadable content and patches. Well thats one of the nicer things its cool to see everything about that game. Now so you play the game and you quit then pop the game out but wait! the bubble doesn't disappear. Thats right the stupid bubble stays there regardless of if the game is in or not. It looks just like a full downloaded game. It makes for great conversation when I show friends the Vita and they go to click on Uncharted but oh that game card isn't inserted please insert game card to play this game. Ok but how about when you have two games and there both installed but one of them is in the system. How do you know which is in there with out popping the game? Well the bubble glows right? No. It Spins? No. It literally does nothing! You have no clue which game is actually in there unless you remember or pop the game out. Now you may be thinking whats the big deal on just popping the game out? Well its a pain in the ass, the little flap is held on by some kind of rubber bands and you have to have some kind of nails to get the flap open. You take the game out look and see and pop it back in but wait the game has to apparently install something. So its quite a mess, the web browser is pretty much garbage and the keyboard is the UGLIEST THING IVE EVER SEEN! ITS LIKE PURPLE! What in the hell were they thinking!? The Netflix app is nice and the HD shows look really nice and run smooth. Haven't really messed with Skype but its a nice looking app. But where the Vita really shines is the games. Uncharted is really good. It looks like Uncharted 1 on the PS3 and plays much like it. You can tell the Vita isn't as powerful as the PS3 because of the animations in most of the games. They seem very PS2ish where there smooth but not lifelike. Most games I have do not have multiplayer which puzzles me as the PSP had quite a few when it launched. I think Sony has some work to do but the Vita looks promising the horse power is there to have great games, they just need to get out there. I think this is going to be a very important E3 for the Vita and with the rumors of PS Plus coming it should be very exciting!

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.

Where the Games at?

 So GDC is coming to a close today and where are all the games at? I'd have to say the PlayStation 3. So far 4 days of GDC and no games from Microsoft and really the Wii didn't get any new game announcements either. So why'll Microsoft is saving there upcoming games for E3, Sony revealed Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time and Tecmo showed off the sexiness that is the new and improved Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2. Also Sony showed off quite a few PSN games like Rag Doll Kung Fu: Fists of Plastic and Fat Princess. Also Sony showed off inFamous which is looking a lot better than what I saw on Xplay a few months back. I know Sony said it was the Year of the PS3 last year and well I felt it was, but this year they just have a crazy line up of games. Starting with Killzone 2, inFamous, then BattleField 1943 in the summer, Heavy Rain, Ratchet and Clank Future: ACIT, Uncharted 2, Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, God of War 3, and possibly MAG and Gran Turismo 5. Thats one hell of a line up and thats not even counting downloadable games like Fat Princess, Punisher WarZone, and hopefully a new Siren game. I think Sony should really impress at this years E3. Though I can't wait to see what game Microsoft buys. I really hope a new PSP comes out with two analogue sticks. Sony needs to do something with it, announcing MotorStorm and the few other games was a good start!  

Call of Duty: World at War Has Been Won!

I beat Call of Duty: World at War. I just got the game not even a month ago so this is why I'm just now beating it. So after Call of Duty 4 people weren't too happy that the series would return to it's Nazi killing ways. I didnt really mind since I like the WWII atmosphere. This Call of Duty is the closest to the excellence of COD2 quality wise. This game does somthing really different from the past WWII games and that is that it focuses on the grusome side of things. This game shows that it wasn't just 60million people running at each other with guns. Insted it shows people getting burned alive, people climbing trees, and people who surrender getting shot up. Like this one part I wont forget is our squad was said to take back a city. We did that and the Nazi forces retreated running to a underground bunker that is then blocked off by bars. Well lets just say a few Nazis didn't make it in time and were stuck in the stairway. Our squad (6 people) then surrounded the stairway and we all through a grenade down towards them. Stuff like this happens all of the time in the game and I like that they took the game this way. Now for the gameplay, this game is COD4, every gun can pretty much be matched up with a gun in COD4. Even the single players story follows a similar plot line as COD4. Basically what I'm saying is 

if you liked COD4 you'll like Call of Duty: World at War. The multiplayer is still the same as COD4, you get the perks and all of the other stuff. As far as I can tell there the same perks. So in the picture to the right you have the old claymore vs the new bouncing betty. This picture show how well you can see it. As you can see the bouncing betty is nearly immposible to see especially against brown colored surroundings. with the claymore atleast you could see the red ray around the corner. With the bouncing betty you can't see anything. Another thing that I find funny about Infinity Ward VS Trearch is IW favors the M1 Garand and TA favors the Kar 98 as in its stronger in there own game. So I played this game on the PS3 it has a install of 60MB so basically nothing. The game runs in 720p, 1080i, and 1080p. Doesnt supprt DTS :-( though the sound is very good and lives up to the COD standard. The Multiplayer supports up to 18. The game also has online co-op where you kill nazis with up to 3 friends plus after that you can kill them again in Zombie form which is hella fun! The downside, the multiplayer is a little broken. Its hard to get a party together, if host leaves, the game ends just like in COD4. For any game this gen that is horrible and I hope IW fixs that in COD6. The game is alot of fun really worth the $60 though it is more of the same. So if you are really tired of COD4 you might want to wait to pick this one up. It sucks Treyarch isn't fixing the problems with the multiplayer, but hey what can you do? Also here is a comparison of the two games. 

9.8

       

Three Months of Seven

So it has been 3 months since I first installed the Windows 7 beta. Really it was just to see what all of the buzz was about. I didn't think Windows Vista was was bad at all. Yea it didn't run real well on older hardware but hey you can't expect everything to work on everything forever. So right now the laptop I'm using is a shit ass Compaq. It came with Windows Vista Home Basic and 512MB of ram. Since then I upgraded it to 2Gb of ram and that really helped out a lot and made Vista very able on this little computer. The laptop has a Intel Celeron M at 1.6Ghz. Its basically a netbook but fucking huge and blows out scalding heat. So as I first downloaded Windows 7 I was going to install it on a separate partition but that wasn't working so well. So I just installed Windows 7  right over Vista. At first I was extremely nervous, I have only done this once and that was from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 plus I had some help, so I really wasn't sure what to expect. But like every other program you just hit install and OK 20 times till you see a progress bar ^_^ At first it was horrible all of these programs weren't working, my Zune wouldn't Sync, all of my Music was gone and I was pretty pissed. But Win7 fixed it all on its own except the Zune thing, which I had to run it as administrator and it was fixed. Then overall the benefits of Win7 kicked in. The computer was faster, I could run more than 2 things at once, it didn't take 4 minutes to boot up, it was fantastic. Now this really gets me thinking with Mac users still saying Win7 is worse than OSX, then OSX has to be really fucking good. There is no way I can think of to really improve Win7. Now I'm going to show some of my favorite improvements here.

          Click to make BIGGER

 

The Zune TTwist Interface by ME

When you turn on the touch based Zune you get a menu similar to the one now. For now these are all in landscape since when its vertical its the same as the original twist interface.  As you can see here when you click music you music pops up split screen style. This way its possible to access your other media without pressing back 20 times and plus its similer to the Zune software.  

 When you touch a song and play it you get the now playing screen which shows the large album art the Zune is acustomed to. On the right and left you have a back, next buttons, and when your playing music a visualiser shows up. I think a customizable ray like whats on the zune software would probably be better.

 So how about when you want to buy new Music or download new podcasts? Well you enter the Zune Mobile Marketplace. As you start out its the same as on the PC, you get to see the top songs recomended to you along with channels and friends. As you slide over you enter the music part. 
As you can see its basically the same as the PC software. You got the Artist of the week along with whatever else they want to fuddle at you, plus it shows top Songs, albums, and new releases. Im not going to show podcasts since its the same deal.

So as Microsoft said, they want to intergrate the Zune with Xbox live more. So why not allow the Zune to access the Xbox Live Marketplace to download Demos and Videos to you Xbox 360 from anywhere in the world.

 As you can see we have the Fallout 3: Operation Anchorage DLC. You can choose to download it to your Xbox 360, watch a trailer of it right there, or view screen shots right from the device. I think this would be a very smart way to intergrate the Xbox 360 and the Zune device. Along with the marketplace you can go to social on the main Zune screen and view your friends in the Social along with your Xbox Live friends.

   
Here you can see who is on. You can change between only online or all. It shows what game there playing and what there status is. When you click there name, lets say biggles then you see this screen. 
 This screen allows you to see there Avatar, gamerscore, what there playing, and you can send them a message. 

This TTwist interface which stands for Touch Twist, allows you to nearly have the full Xbox and Zune experience anywhere you go. Right in the palm of your hand. 

Mirrors Edge Has been Won!

Adding to my reviews I didn't get to, is Mirrors Edge. I've been really excited for this game since it was announced. I loved the art style, I love Dice, and I love the first person view. So basically it was a certified winner in my mind even before it came out. I wish this game would of did better so EA can do more sequals and so maybe Namco could bring back Breakdown which was another first person action game that didnt sell very well even though it was an amazing game. Like Breakdown, Mirrors Edge is an amazing game that everyone should experiance. I feel the game didn't sell so well since everyone knew it was a short game and when they could pick good games like Fallout 3 or even Resistance 2 for the same price with plenty more game play. Though its a shame that its so short (8 hours) it really would of been more of the same just dragged out another 5 hours, if they extended it. So before I get into the review I wanted to talk about the specs of the game first since this is important to some people. Mirrors Edge runs on a heavily modified version of the Unreal  3 engine and looks great even on the PS3 which I played it on. The games doesnt support DTS which is a bummer since the last few EA games supported that on the PS3. Its only 720p so once again you 1080i only players are left out on the PS3 version. So the game has a very forgettable story, you have to find who set up your sister and a few other things that would spoil it. Though the story is weak its told through very unique looking cut scenes between chapters. The game runs very smooth even though a few parts in later levels you will stop right in the middle of gameplay to load which is pretty ridiculous. On the PS3 version there is a install but its like 500MB so its not the worst. There aren't many jaggies and no texture pop-in which is a HUGE plus in my book. One of the things I really like are the controls, which are very unique. You use the shoulder buttons for all of the important stuff like jumping and ducking, etc... The game is very immersive and you'll find your-self playing it for hours. If your afraid of hights you might not enjoy this game all that much. One part in the game you have to jump from a zipline to another zipline in mid-air off of two skyscrapers and my stomach just dropped, I was shaking from a videogame knowing if I don't time this right I will plumit to my death. Somthing this game does that many others try but don't succeed in is the feeling you get when getting chased. Though no game will really get it right since in real life if you get caught your dead, there are no do-overs. So unless a game is you die and you have to start all the way over, you won't feel the complete need to survive. When you finish the game you really feel like you did what you needed to do and thats it. If this wasn't from EA I wouldn't think there would be a sequal since it didn't sell real well and they didn't leave you on some dramatic cliff hanger.  I would say buy this game now at the full $60 just to support Dice and the support of original IPs but really the game is perfect for a $40 price tag.

9.8       

Resistance 2 Has been Won!

  I beat Resistance 2 in the begining of January and just haven't got around to reviewing it. Resistance 2 picks up right where the first one left off but like 90% of other shooters the story isn't a big deal and for the most part uninteresting. Resistance 2 seems to be stuck in the past where you are on a very strict path and you really can't do anything any other way than what they want you to. Which isn't too bad but it would be nice for them to have a few paths even if they all merge into the same area. The biggest difference between this and the first one is the scope of the game. Everything is ginormous when there is a big monster chacing you or one just attacking your whole squad you really feel like if I stop shooting or running that big bastard is going to tear you up. Before I get real in depth I'm going to talk about some specs. The game runs in 720p there is no other option so no love for you 1080i only people. The sound is pretty amazing and incorprates DTS surround sound which I think should be the standard with all PS3 games. And don't forget the multiplayer! 30vs30 deathmatches, 8 man co-ops, and many other objective based stuff like capture the flag. The co-op isn't really co-op and its kinda sad because it would of been fun to run around the single player with 7 friends. The co-op is basically defeat all of these people and press a switch or destroy some thing and watch out behind you because people are coming and basically repeat this a few times per level. It may sound boring but is very team oriented and is a lot of fun to play with some friends or even complete strangers. It has a Call of Dutyish level system in the co-op where you get upgrades and some power ups like hold more ammo, give more health, etc.. All parts multiplayer to this game is buttery smooth even in the bigger 60 player matches and in co-op you could have up to probably 80 or so enemys on the screen at one time. Its insanity, its a lot of fun, and its completly lag free! Back to the sinle player. The game starts out extremely slow and they make Nathan Hale sound like such shit and a wannabe bad ass. Pretty much for 30-40% of the game is run into this room and hold off the chimera untill there all dead and really any shooting game where you run out of ammo after every fight is pretty much shit to me but luckily the game returns to its roots towards the end and makes me love it again. The game makes such a right turn in the later half of the game and makes it really engadging and Insomniac does some pretty neat things. This isn't really a spoiler but at one part you have to run from these crazy ass bee things. You cant kill them and they kill you instantly! But when your getting chased the sound getting louder behind you as you haul mad ass towards the door is crazy and when you notice your out of breath from a videogame it shows they did there job at immersing you into the experence. Plus the ending is probably the biggest "holy fuck" in a video game. I wouldn't say Resistance 2 is as good as it could of been and I feel there taking it the route of the Ratchet and Clank games on PS2, where they add just so much stuff they take away from what made it great but we'll see what happens for the next one. Overall fun game and is really worth the $60 being the single player is around 12-15 hours and the multiplayer is endless fun.

9.5    

Oh My its a Goulash!

This post isn't about food. Its about all of the stuff I haven't posted about rolled into one post. So the big thing a wrote a post about but I never posted was my game of the year award. I felt I didn't really play enough of the games released to say which was the best, but the more I thought about it I decided Metal Gear Solid 4 is my Game of the Year. Since this game is pretty much my favorite of all time I don't think any other game could top it this year or in a really good while so I felt I could make a definate decision on that. I also figure that is was a year for games that start off slow. Resistance 2, Fallout 3, and Fable are a few games that are very good that start off pretty slow but pick up as you go along (I knew of other games but I had a brain fart :-/ and I cant remember) I would say if MGS4 didn't come out this year Mirrors Edge would of got my Game of the Year. I think there were a few flops through the year mainly toward the end of the year like: PlayStation Home, it is not a flop for Sony since they made over a million dollars in it but if it wasn't for me being in the beta I would of been probably a little more unsatisfied. Next is Little Big Planet, it has a lot of potential but its plagued by long loading times and I find it hard to make some things that should be easy to make. Maybe I need to spend more time with it. The next two are Microsoft related and I guess you can't really consider one of them a flop but it pretty much was, I would say the NXE and Gears of War 2 were flops. The NXE adds much eye candy but it is even harder to find things and there are sub menus galore plus its not even up to the XMB yet which still stands as UI king! Gears of War by sales can't be considered a flop by any means but the number of people playing it and the lack of Game of the Year awards is probably not how Epic wanted it to be. It shows Microsoft pressured them to get it out to compete with the PS3 onslought that would of occured if it wasn't there. I believe I bought 29(?) games this year 2 on the 360, 23 on the PS3, 1 on the Wii, 1 on the DS, and 2 on the PSP.  I think all of the games I bought on the PS3 were released in 2008, 1 360 game in 2008, and 1 PSP and 1 DS in 2008. I hope to get more 360 games and a few PSP game and hopefully I can add the PC to this list by next year. A few things I look forward to in 2009 are Windows 7 (love the beta), maybe a new PSP, the slew of games, and I really hope the 1UP guys and the many developers that got fired/layed off find new and better jobs here soon!

Zune Leaving the Soical?

Well CES is about over and something during the Microsoft Press Conference really caught my eye. I thought that this would be the time where they announced some cool new kick ass Zune features but basically all they did was ackknowledge that the Zune existed. In the press conference Steve Ballmer said how software was becoming a main focus and how the market for dedicated portable media players is declining.. So either there planning on a iPod Touch competitor or there talking about forgetting the Zune, which I hope not since all of my music will probably go bye bye.  I guess we'll find out here soon since the spring update is coming soon.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

The Plan..

Over the past few months I've been looking for a computer perferibly a laptop but I wasn't ruling out a desktop and a netbook. So for awhile I was stuck on a Macbook which is an amazing laptop but, I started thinking how my life pretty much revolves around Windows. With my Xbox 360, Ps3, Zune, etc.... it wouldn't of made much sense to switch to a Mac as in it wouldn't of been cost feasible since I would be in Windows probably just as much if not more than OSX. So then I switched to a Dell XPS One which is the equivilant to a Macbook Pro plus it had a TV tuner among other things that I liked a lot and it came with a Dell Mini 9 for $100. Then they stopped the deal with the Mini 9 and it was kind of a no deal. Then HP/Voodoo droped a bombshell, a desktop that is sleek, sexy, powerful, and wouldn't cost as much as a DaeWoo. As you may know I'm talking about the HP Firebird 003 with Voodoo DNA. Costing only $2100 for the top configuration sans monitor :-(  but still a good deal non the less and I wouldn't need a small power plant in my basement to run it. I think this is the first time I actually could tell where a company was coming from on one of there products, Rahul Sood is right gaming PCs have gone crazy, I mean having four graphics cards and hell even two processors is crazy especially when you get into the killowatt range. With the Black Bird and the Voodoo Omen going missing it shows Voodoo/HP is going into a different direction. Thus the sexy Firebird was born. Since the Engadget leak that showed off the Firebird I really couldn't stop thinking of it, it was exactly what I wanted. The Sexyness of a Mac (even sexier) with the convienance of Windows.  I really felt kind of bad when engadget spoiled it since this would of been one hell of a nice CES suprise! Though enough was concealed to keep me eager till CES to find out more. So back to the plan. I'm going to get a Firebird 003, not just because I like the machine its self but I like Voodoo's community, I find it amazing that Rahul Sood is out browsing blogs answering questions on their products when he really could be saying "hey go fuck yourslef" or not say anything at all. Anyway the monitor I'm going to get is a Acer P244wbii. It's one of Acer's top monitors, it's a 24" 16:9 HDCP display which will play nicely with the Blu-Ray drive packed into the Firebird. Oh and of course at 1080p resolution. I think its a good choice it has a 2ms response time which is good for gaming and has two HDMI inputs and includes one HDMI cable for simple hook up to the Firebird. The monitor is just a tad over $300 which is around what I want to spend. Next up is the speakers 

and I wanted some that would take advantage of the 

intergrated Sound Blaster X-Fi card but the few I want are out of the price range I want to spend on speakers at the moment. Not that Im settling with these since they are good speakers they just 

weren't my first choice. Since Creative makes the Sound Blaster card I thought it would be a good idea to check with them first and since I don't want 5.1 speakers at the moment, the Creative 

GigaWorks T40s  seem like a very good option. I like that you can control the bass and trebble right from the speakers its self. Since my surround sound I have likes to be extra bassy, I like to have control over it. I think thats it that goes with the Firebird. All of this is right around $2500 but even with all of this it doesnt solve the problem of not having a laptop. So with that I'm going to keep it in the HP family and get the Mini 1000 Mi series 

which is one of the best netbooks out right now. It runs a HP made shell over Linux which I can live with till Windows 7 comes out. I'm going to get it fully loaded 2GB of RAM, 10" screen, but I'm going with the 16GB SSD drive since there are no moving parts and I will upgrade it later on if it becomes a issue. So there it is, the plan for the perfect combo, a powerful desktop a great laptop all under $3,000.

PS.. either spell check isn't working on two browsers or I spelled everything right so yay for me.

Zune Conept

As a big fan of the Zune, I can't wait untill they come out with an iPod Touch competitor.So I made up a concept of what I would like it to look like. So here it is..
 

So here it is. It is a similar design to the iPod Touch but with the Zune flair. These are basically pictures of the UI up top is what it looks like in vertical mode. and below is what it looks like in horizontal mode.. I think it looks nice and is basically what I would want out of the Touch Zune.

GameSpy's Game of The Year awards

Xbox 360

10. SoulCalibur IV

9. Burnout: Paradise

8. Dead Space

7. Fable II

6. RockBand 2

5. Prince of Persia

4. Left 4 Dead

3. Grand Theft Auto IV

2. Gears of War 2

1. Fallout 3

Out of the 10 best Xbox 360  2 of them are exclusive. Gears of War 2 is the 4th most played game on Xbox Live and Fable II is number 10. Left 4 Dead also won best multiplayer game which isn't much of a supprise but what is a supprise is Gears of war 2 at 2nd in the best online game category. From everything I have read it seems that it has more trouble going on than Socom does but to each there own.

PlayStation 3

10. Burnout Paradise

9. Dead Space

8. Resistance 2

7. Prince of Persia

6. Valkyria Chronicles

5. RockBand 2 

4. Grand Theft Auto IV

3. Metal Gear Solid 4 !

2. Fallout 3

1. Little Big Planet

Out of the top 10 PS3 games 4 of them are exclusive. Little Big Planet continues to be loved by the media yet it's still being ignored. There is no way a game like Metal Gear Solid 4 should be in 3rd. It was a perfect game, it had the multiplayer and it had the single player. The graphics are amazing and so is the gameplay. I would of liked to see Resistance 2 a little higher but then again I haven't played it and GTA4 still baffles me.

Home is Here! NPDs are here

**Sorry it took so long.... 

So Home is here. What PlayStation fans have been waiting for, for some reason people think this is the answer to Xbox's better Live service. Well... its not and I'm not sure why people thought it would be.  Home is a gathering of people, which you go around and do things together. I'm not sure how or even why people think this was supposed to be Xbox Live for the PS3. If you look at both online services there really even in terms of features. The only things misssing is in game chat and cross game invites. In my eyes that doesn't justify $50 a year. So what does Sony need to do to make Home the killer app it's hyped up to be? One thing that really bugs me in Home is that you have to load every area and there not exactly short load times. What would be cool is if they kept 2 places loaded like if the main square was always loaded and from where ever you came that would be loaded untill you went elsewhere. One of the big pushes in Home is the community. You meet up with friends, meet new people and everyone is happy but there isn't enough to do at this time. What they need to do is put real movies in the movie theatre, say the Dark Knight starts at 7pm have people pay $2 and sync it up with everyone's connection so it goes up at the same pace. The same could be said about your house get the TVs in there and allow us to play our movies and maybe be able to stream big sporting events or even PPV events so we can have a party with  friends at our house. If Sony would do that and say oh you need to buy a club for your friends to come over and view events like that I guarentee Sony will get $5 from a lot of people! How about letting people buy arcade machines to put in there house which keeps the local high scores, so when your friends come over they can try to beat your score just like in real life.. Really all Sony needs to make Home better is more of everything and to deliver all of the things they have atleast have shown so far.. but really Home could of been much worse than what it is for something this big I mean the whole network could of went down.. =)  

The NPDs went with the Wii in first, the DS in second, Xbox 360 in third, and the PSP, PS3, and PS2 take up the rear. From these results it shows Sony desperatly needs a price cut on the PS3 even though the PS2 and PSP are profitable Sony still can't be breaking even.. I'm thinking a $299 PlayStation 3 with 40GB hard drive, no games no anything and maybe a 80GB PS3 with a Headset and HD cables for $399. I don't know if Sony should do this before or after Killzone 2 and Infamous but they would definatly sell more before those big games come out. Sony has done pretty good with games with all of there big releases topping a million units sold, but it should be more! Each of those big games should be atleast 2 to 3 million units sold. For me I think peole need to experience the PlayStation 3. There is something about the games (exclusives) that makes them so much better, I dont know what it is but they feel different. I'm not ragging on the Xbox cause I used to be a 360 fanboy, but with there DRM, shaddy hardware, and $50 a year they forced me to be a PS3 fanboy. Really I feel bad for the 360 fans that think Xbox Live is worth it and live year to year playing Gears and Halo. I love my Xbox but I just love my PS3 more.. and the Wii well thats the kid that parents stick into the microwave..