NGP is Developer Friendly

Interesting article on the development of Sony's new handheld device titled NGP. Sony actually bothered to ask developers what they wanted and then the had the gall to listen to their feedback. Don't they realize that this sort of collaboration might seriously damage any anti-Sony sentiments pent up in bored adolescents all over the world?

The Last Arcade in Chinatown

Came across a post on this classic arcade located I think someplace in New York. I remember spending hours in arcades as a kid. Man, that part of video game culture is nearly wiped out at this point. Should we be happy or sad about this? Comment below.

Portal 2 Much Fun to Wait

I'm totally pumped for Portal 2. The first one was incredible and suprisingly it's the story that has me most excited.

DC Universe

Not a bad looking cinematic. I wonder how the game will play, but then I don't know that I will actually be playing anyway. I've never been able to get into any of those newfangled MMOs...

Next Generation in Motion Gaming?

I read this Killzone3 preview on Kotaku and now I'm totally excited about playing it. I had a feeling that this would be a monumental change in terms of motion gaming, but it's nice to hear that it's somewhat confirmed here.

More Bioshock Rambling...

I just never tire of looking at screenshots from this game. I sure hope I'm not dissapointed, but I really find that hard to believe at this point - what with all of the "Game of the Year" awards and so on. According to Kotaku, The "Big Daddy" shown here is new for the PS3 version. Yeah boyeeeee.

Bioshock Coming to PS3 - FINALLY

Oh thank Jesus! Now there's only one game that I would even remotely care about on 360 and that's Gears. I can live with that. I'd so much rather have Bioshock anyway. Apparently scheduled to release in October, hmm can I finish GTA4 by then? Hmm, better get playing...

2, 2, 2 Films in One!

Sony recently announced during CES that Blu-ray discs would soon begin to carry pre-formatted PS versions
of movies so that you can easily transfer them to your PSP via your PS3. I have to say, that is an awesome idea and a perfect usage of the PSP/PS3 relationship. That whole idea of buying the same movie twice, really blew. This on the other hand, totally does not blow.

Call of Duty 4 had me at "tracer-fire"

I have been blown away by Call of Duty 4. This doesn't happen to me that often where I am consumed by a game, but this one totally pulled it off. I was also consumed by Resistance (back in January of '07), but this is better in so many ways than Resistance.

For starters, COD4 looks gorgeous. I love everything from the level design (details like the bicycle on the hill in Russian countryside) to the general art direction and the framerate whch is kick-ass on PS3. The Chernobyl level is set as a flashback (brilliant use of story telling by the way) sniper mission set in a post-apocalyptic setting, over grown, destroyed, and partially on fire. The look here is depressing yet beautiful at the same time.

Let's not foget the writing which is equally well done considering how crap most games in this genre are written. COD4 is written intelligently and still remains climactic. There's a chase mission at the end of the game which is nicely done and the various slo-mo moments really help to plant the player into the world. I felt totally connected to the plot. The flash back to Cernobyl was especially nice. So often, you see writers take the easy way out by maybe going to a cinematic for these story points. However, I really like how here we actually get the opportunity to re-live the events, which make them far more meaningful to us the players. By comparison, RFOM was told in the past tense, so it sort of did this for the entire game, which also worked fine. It's sort of exempt from this criticism which one might still have of other games.

Lastly, the thing that left me feeling so much less annoyed than when playing RFOM, was the save mechanism. I'm so sick and tired of games that force you to replay a bunch of crap whenever you die. Nothing takes you further out of a linear-style game than this behavior. One reason for this is that you totally see the wizard behind the curtain when the same spawn points and trigger points are revealed upon replay after replay after replay...

On that note btw, I AM totally replaying this game on hard, since I played on normal the first time and had so much fun doing so. It's noticeably harder, but Im getting through it without too many re-dos. I can't wait for that Chernobly level again. That was truly amazing.

Go buy this game right now.

iTunes to PS3 Streaming finally!!!

Ever since Sony released UPnP support for the PS3, I have been wanting to somehow connect my iTunes library to my media center via the PS3. I had tried some other (not free) app that supposedly did the same thing, but it never worked for me. It was the trial version so maybe that's why. I can't even find it on Versiontracker anymore. I've been using an old PC running Windows Media Center, but that sucks because the tagging is all off and I don't ever use that computer so basically everything is out of date. Now finally, the fellas over at NullRiver have announced that they will be releasing a version of their "Connect360" app for the PS3 (assumingly named "ConnectPS3"). Seriously, this makes so much more sense from a mindshare perspective. I mean, why the hell are Mac users playing the 360? Where's your loyalty??? Okay, okay, I'm calm now. But seriously, this is going to make my life easier and probably yours. Here's another article if you want to read more on the subject.

PS3 on fire...in sales that is.

Nice! Maybe if this trend continues, we won't have to wait 2 months longer for every cross-platform release, as we have been. At least COD4 is already proving otherwise - not to mention that it's just as purty on the PS3 as it is on the 360. Okay, now bring us Gears. We've suffered long enough...
TG Daily - Price cut triggers three-fold increase in PS3 sales

Holy Bitchin' Burnout Batman!

New Heavenly Sword video...nice.

Apple Leopard is Amazing...

Okay, okay. I know everybody and their sister is talking about the WWDC and Apple's recent announcements relating to Leopard, iPhone, and let's not forget the John Carmack announcement...
Yes, games are coming back to the Mac. Sweet Jesus is it about time, or what? You can find some info here.

New MGS4 trailer online!

Check out this new trailer for MGS4 posted on the PlayFrance site. If you're on Linux like I am, you'll need to open it with iexplore but it's totally worth the effort. It's about 10 minutes of damn purty (supposedly) engine rendered albeit heavily scripted footage. Go checkit out.

New Need For Speed...looks nice.

Wow. The latest Need for Speed: ProStreet looks really good. This looks new and unique and the gameplay sounds fun with having damage carry over from race to race, forcing you to make a decision between fixing your car, or making more performance-based tweaks instead. I'm sort of shocked. Well done EA. Way to re-think a genre. Very nice indeed.

OMG, GH2 Guy Shreds!!!

Heavy Weapons Guy (TF2) Video...

Quake Wars Game Footage & "Making Of" Interviews...

Team Fortress 2 - coming soon...

OMG this game looks so bitchin! I remember playing the original TFC back at EARS while working in their tech-support department. We used to play at the end of each and every day and at lunch. It was like going to church (for non-religious folks). Actually that reminds me of another topic that I have been meaning to write about, but will save for another day. Anyway, check out this preview from 1up.
The original version was really the last game that I played online at home for that long without ever really getting tired of. It was just that fun. I hope it's as fun to play on a console, but then, this might just be the game taht makes me run out and buy a mouse/keyboard for my PS3, if it's not. Ahh, it will be pure joy, and now with the toon-shaded classic key-stone cops feel, I will be feeling the gaming bliss.