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..

Zune Mr. 10,000; 8 Months later...

 Here we are 8 months from when I first got my Zune. My Zune has experienced about 4 drops, one of them being in the toilet. So my Zune has brought me much enjoyment, I have supprased the 10,000 songs played mark and have 15 badges which just recently became permanent. On my Zune right now I have 591 songs, 55 pictures, and 12 videos (mainly The Office <3) all of this content eats up 6.48GB and gives me 930Mb left. Through all of this my Zune has one (1) scratch with no case after 8 months, plus my play/pause button doesn't work thanks to the water and the toilets joint effort. So back to the achievement, 10,000 plays... at and average of 4 minutes a song thats 40,000 minutes! 667 hours! Hell thats longer than I wait for my laptop to boot up. Thats 28 days of music non stop! Thats listening to every song around 6 times over. After 8 months I still love my Zune and if the play/pause button still worked I wouldnt be in such a hurry to trade it up for a shinier 120GB Zune. With the Zune pass which lets  you keep 10 songs a month they pretty much have me forever and I really dont mind! Here's to 10,000 more! Keep it up Zune team!  

The Everyday Shooter is now the Everywhere Shooter

About an hour ago Sony pumped out a few games for the PSP in this Thursday Update and amongst them was Everyday Shooter. Being one of my favorite PS3 games I gladly and excitingly bought it. For $10 I wouldn't say its an absolute steal considering I got the PS3 one for $5 when it first launched (sale) but I'm still happy with my purchase. If your not familier with Everyday Shooter then shame on you. Just kidding but it is a dual stick shooter that was eagerly awaited by Playstation fans as it was a breath of fresh air during the drought of games after the PS3's launch. What was even more amazing is it is made by one guy Jonathon Mac during that time developers with 60 man teams couldn't make a PS3 game so this was kinda amazing. The game to me would seem very demanding to even think about putting on the PSP, with the backgrounds shifting, all of the text on screen, and all of the enemies, it would seem like a difficult job to do without changing the game dramatically. Amaingly they ported the whole PS3 game it has the same graphics to a extent, same sounds, same everything, this is Everyday Shooter on the PSP! What I'm still trying to figure out is why the game is almost double the size of the PS3 version? Anyway the game runs great and you may ask how does a dual stick shooter work on the PSP? Well its simple unlike other dual stick shooters (Stardust, Geometry Wars) it doesnt have a full 360 degrees of shooting it think like a compass like this picture>>        This is the same as on the PS3 (Jon likes to play the game with face buttons) so it was a perfect fit. Overall I'm still getting used to it but I did beat my PS3 high score already but I didnt get as far level wise. I think Sony is going to be porting or doing side quests of a lot of PS3 games to PSP this coming year. With the rumor of Jak and Daxter, I wouldnt be suprised if they have a Motorstorm or Heavenly Sword. I always thought Heavenly Sword would be a good fit since it doesnt use the right stick or the R2 and L2 buttons. So I guess we'll see, Sony did say '09 would be the year of the PSP. So I'm off to play more Everyday Shooter!         

The best looking trailer is the best looking game

Well I'm sure you have seen the amazing Uncharted 2 preview trailer but did you know that it was shot in real time? For a trailer that looks so amazing I would have to call bull but I recently went back to the first Uncharted and I'm still amazed on how good it looks. So if anyone can pull of a game that looks this good its Naughty Dog. Really I'm sorry to have to say but I think the Xbox 360 is showing its age and the PS3 is starting to shine. I'm not going to lie Gears of War 1 and 2 look amazing but they don't look as good as Metal Gear or Uncharted. So we will see some game play on the 14th exclusively on Spike TV!

PSP Champion

Since I haven't been able to get a hold of any new games latley I went back into the good ol' PSP library. Out of the 27 or so PSP games I have, only 5 haven't been beatn. Well mark that down to two games! I beat Socom Fireteam Bravo 1 and 2 and I beat Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories. All three were excellent games. None of which are good games to play outside of the house. Socom doesnt have any save checkpoints and some missions take a good 15-20minutes. Gran Theft Auto is Grand Theft Auto, it still takes 10 min or so to get across the whole city and some missions take a long time! Overall all three are fantastic games! The graphics in each of them are something the Sega Dreamcast would be proud of.  I think I'm going to do a review for GTA cause it was such an amazing game. Look for that some time soon. 

The Most Beautiful is So Far Away

You may or may not remember the Voodoo Omen but it is finally here! At a price that costs enough to buy two (2) (1+1) TWO! well built Hp Blackbirds. Thats right the Voodoo Omen STARTS AT $10,000! Now to give you a little back story on Voodoo, they are a company that builds very high end computers and recently they were bought by HP and they built the Hp Blackbird 002 with Voodoo DNA. Almost a year later Voodoo burns down there site and shows off the Brand new Omen and Envy, some of the most beautiful and stunning computers you will ever see. Voodoo PCs are hand built in Canada and they are well know for their custom paint jobs which are around $300 and up. The sad part is the Omen when announced was very high end but now with the Intel Core I7 finally coming out and the fact that the I7 uses a completely new socket so even if you wanted to swap them out you wouldn't be able to. Don't get me wrong the Omen is still very powerful and very beautiful but for $10,000 I expect it to be liquid cooled and to have the newest and best technology available.

The NXE: Some Impressions

The NXE has been here for a whole week. I've started to get used to it. First of all the NXE is screaming fast as soon as your Xbox does its thing your signed into Xbox Live. Besides that, all of the problems that were wrong with the blades are still here and then some. First of all there are menus galore. Here ill show PS3 vs the Xbox 360 menus

To go to active downloads:
Xbox:
Cant find it in the main menu
Xbox Guide button> Left> Left> Down to active downloads

PS3:
Right> Down to active downloads

Go to Store:
Xbox:
Up>Up>Up>A>Sub Categories
Have to go to a different menu to get to Video Store

PS3:
Right>Right>X> Sub Categories
Also can get to Video Store

Change Picture:
Xbox:
Up>Up>Right>A>Down>Down>Down>(A)Change picture

PS3:
Right>Right>Up>X>Down>(X)Change Picture

What also sucks is you have to back out of all of those menus by pressing "B" sometimes you can just press the Guide button. Also you cant save Videos, Pictures, or most Music to your Xbox. Overall it's a lot of eye candy but it's not up to the XMB yet.

Under Cover Home

So as you may of heard PlayStation Home has finally hit version 1.0 for the Beta testers. I've always known Sony was making Home to make money but I didnt think they were going to go this far. So as I updated and went through to the avatar creator which I had to recreate my avatar which was rediculous but I said hey I wont have to do this again so its no big deal. I notice there are a lot of hairstyles missing including the one i used to use, which was pretty much a combed down style which  how my hair actually is. So i had to settle with a spikier version. I then proceded to the cloths which a good decent amount of were missing. Now I had to go to the colors for my person, there was midnight black, brown, a mexicanish, and blinding white! So I settled for mexicanish and now the guy that is supposed to look like me is a chubby mexican with black spikey hair. Atleast they had my hair color. Now this has me worried, does this mean there going to do more updates and add those styles back or are they going to charge out the ass for them? I think the later. So as my mexican counterpart I went and checked out everything, they stilled had the same videos up, they took all of the items out of the mall, and atleast the arcade and bowling alley are much better! Also the Uncharted and Farcry 2 areas are gone. Something I really hate is they took out the virtual PSP for some screen thing with speakers on it that has 8 font. If you put the now Home against the NXE Home looses in every category! I know Home isn't even out yet but they need to get there act together and stick to what even got them this far; make a lot of it free!      

** Update: The Home community manager said all of the hair styles and other stuff will be back soon!**

Birthdays and Deaths: The Circle of Life..

 Well its this time of year again. The Xbox 360 turns 3, the Nintendo Wii and Sony's Playstation 3 both turn 2 years old this month! It has been a great year for gamers alike even if your just dedicated to one sytem (wii?) with huge multiplatform blockbusters such as Grand Theft Auto 4, Mirrors Edge, Fallout 3, and Dead Space, this was a year for the gamers.  Also BIG name exclusives finally came out such as Metal Gear Solid: 4, Fable 2, Resistance 2, Gears of War 2, Little Big Planet, and Banjo and Kazooie. Both the 360 and PS3 got significant and much needed upgrades such as in game XMB and the NXE. Its been a great year and I'm sure next year will be even better and hopefully I can include the Wii in this article next year!

On the bad side which isn't really related to this,  My Zune has went toward the light up in the sky then I pulled it back... My Zune fell into the toilet many electronics final resting place but my Zune wasnt one of them. Immediately I pulled it out and turned it off. My Zune was still playing  the song while deep in the toilet. I let dry all day while I was at school, came home and it turned on first I thought the battery was messed, like  charging in 10min then immediatly going to low battery. So i let it charge over night and the next day it was fine basically  like a new Zune. There was no waterdamage or anything but something had to break to piss me off and it did the play/ pause button stopped working. This button turns the Zune on and puts it into sleep mode and of course it pauses. So I did some research for replacement parts go figure this part is the most expensive since you have to buy like half of a Zune. I may get it but I'm not sure yet. Though I give mad props to the Zune guys for making a tough and kick ass device!

Also Microsoft didn't let me in the NXE preview program even though I signed up. Today they let everyone who signed up get the NXE update a day early but NOT ME!! FUCKERS!!