We need to talk. Are you sitting down? Okay, okay. I’m not sure I know how to say this, but…I think the video game community might have assholes in it. Yeah, I’m positive. Believe me, I wish I wasn’t.

So for those who weren’t aware, there’s a site called Metacritic. Basically metacritic is a sort of “stat keeper” for music, movies and videogame scores from various review sites. Now, for the most part that section of the site has been reliable coming from reputable sources. But then there is a dark side of the system. Gamefaqs, IGN and other large gaming sites should be painfully aware when you give a fanboy the ability to voice their opinion to be viewed by many, THE SHIT WILL HIT THE FANS. In this case, you have “M$” fanboys lowering the scores on Littlebigplanet, before it was released widely mind you. This resulted in the collective Sony irrational mob descending upon the Gears of War 2 user reviews and lowering the scores. So, yeah, this sort of shit isn’t anything new, but allow me to ask all these big sites something…why?

Maybe the better question is, why is it so easy? Major sites need to maintain some semblence of professionalism but when the doors are opened wide open to anyone with at least one finger and a keyboard you’ll get a clusterfuck of jackasses and (wait for it…) douches. Maybe reviews could be subjected to community based voting by members with prestige or GameFAQs’ karma system for some sort of integrity screening. Another idea I might suggest is a spelling and grammar system. If a review submission has X number of errors in it, into the recycling bin it should go. Trust me, no troll or fanboy has the time nor the intelligence to bother looking over what they’ve read (I swear to God if anyone e-mails me about grammatical errors in this post…). I guess what I’m saying is that there are good, reliable people out there who make legitimate points when critiquing a game but I can’t shake the feeling that they are vastly outnumbered by assholes who feel the unquenchable thirst to even that huge score we call the console rivalry . Of course this isn’t to say that all major sites are reliable because if it was, stereotypical gamer/dermatologist’s best friend/chocolate aficionado Jeff Gerstmann might still be under siege from Eidos, but still while being paid by Gamespot I might add. My message: follow your heart when reading reviews and learn to seperate the rational from the completely fucking insane…oh and read our stuff too.

No I did not go to E3, but instead watched all the press conferences from home, streaming. For the most part E3 was kind of boring, which has been the general consensus. I’m not sure if it’s because the women are gone or it’s the realization that it’s looks a bit like a 6th grade science fair now. There were not big surprises this year, but rather a showing of some more solid games, with no real huge titles on the horizon. Killzone 2, FFXIII, and Resident Evil 5 are still far away from getting crammed into consoles, but I’m pretty sure we’ll make do until then. Afterall, isn’t the joy of E3 finding games under the radar and raving about them? It might be, but since I wasn’t invited, I wouldn’t know that (hint, hint ESA).

Before Sony’s press conference started I started doing lines of coke because I wanted to make sure Sony and I were on the same page. You know, thinking that I was a Superbowl QB for the Ravens and Sony thinking that they are on the edge of beating Microsoft and Nintendo. Okay, enough of that for now. Biggest thing for Sony this year was probably PSN. Sony is trying to pimp the hell out of PSN as being a service which can rival Xbox Live for online marketplace/hub dominance. New content will be added like movies and TV shows. I don’t know who exactly has been clamoring for that sort of thing but they need to shut the hell up, because as of yet, game consoles are still not or even close to becoming the premiere method of getting visual media. I appreciate it, but I would really prefer more game content and better methods of communication with friends. I sincerely hope that Home will be the creature that puts all of that in motion, but sadly I don’t know when that will be. No ones knows when and that’s somewhat of a disappointment. After showing half of the show in the Home world last year, I was hoping for a release date, but instead I saw Jack Tretton parading around while not giving anyone specific details.

Well, it’s E3 time! Guess what Sony will do next? Go on, guess. Wait did you say announce another PS3 sku? Oh, well, you’re right. It’s a new 80GB version that doesn’t have the backwards compatibility of the past 80GB PS3s. I guess it’s safe to say that Sony has completely given up on backwards compatibility. If you want your PS3 to be backwards compatible you’re going to need a 60/20GB PS3 or duct tape a PS2 to your PS3. I’m also happy to finally see some Greatest Hits games come out, games like Resistance 1 and Motostorm will be there which is good news for me because I dropped the ball on the PS3 launch. The PSP is still chugging along and is doing surprisingly well in Japan. The games have finally arrived and are strong games and not just ports that everyone has been complaining about. It’s new big game is a Resistance game. Not a whole lot to say about the PSP to be honest. It’s just…there.

Little Big Planet continues to be Sony’s newest and by far most interesting in-home game. A demo was shown on stage and it really appealed to my sense of simplicity. It’s definitely worthy of appealing to a wide audience. Of course if that isn’t the case, Ted Price from Insomniac games came up and showed off Resistance 2 which appears to be a solid shooter. A teaser trailer for God War 3 was shown and that’s all I’ll say about that…alright, fine, it’ll probably be the same thing you saw last time. I can’t confirm that because it was a teaser trailer, but whatever, it’s at least a solid game the PS3 needs. Ratchet and Clank have yet another game, it’s a good series and all, but don’t go overboard.

Sony has definitely won in terms of games, with a variety that can appeal to just about any gamer. I’d like to see the PSN network address it’s main issues such as having a more unified ID system for all games. Getting Metal Gear Online to go is still a chore in the sense that you don’t actually go in with your PSN ID, but rather separate game ID. I’d like to see that sort of thing reduced

Nintendo’s press conference was by far the shittiest, and no I won’t hold back on that because it’s the truth. I don’t know what it is. Once again, and if your keeping score it’s about 10 years and going strong, there was a severe lack of 3rd party support. I don’t really know who’s at fault here, it is that developers still have a vertical thought process and that games should look better technically or that Nintendo has provided a console that nobody knows what to do with. Animal Crossing seemed to be the only real conventional game that Nintendo pushed out for the Wii. That’s right, I shit you not, Animal Crossing was one of their big games. So what did they do for most of their time, well, they did exactly what they did last year which was put out of another Wii *insert word here* “game.” This year, it’s Wii music. Now, in spite of my pessimism, this doesn’t look that bad. For one, I don’t have to buy anything else or have more useless shit packed in with the game; it needs only the Wii remote. Then reality set in as I read impressions of the game and its planned features. It’s geared towards that party/family group and as such probably won’t be played often by the lone man. Over 50 instruments are supposed to be usable in the game and I’m really curious to see how that works. Especially if pressing the buttons is somehow supposed to generate music that’s even a bit coherent. Wii Sports Resort was next up which is basically more of the same you’ve seen in the bundled Wii Sports. The change this time around? Wii MotionPlus. Fuck. For a second there I thought I would get away from talking about Nintendo and E3 without mentioning a new peripheral. Wii MotionPlus is attached to the bottom of the Wii remote and is supposed to add more precision and accuracy to movements of the Wii remote allowing for a more real time response on-screen. I personally never had a problem with the current Wii remote’s performance, but apparently Nintendo felt it would be necessary for Wii Sports Resort’s apparently high demand for accuracy on the level of NASA space launch.

The DS is still waging war against the Wii in civil war of sorts. In attempt to garner the attention of the more adult aimed PSP audience, Nintendo announced Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars. Hmmm, GTA on the DS. You know what? I say good for Nintendo, because you got a big name 3rd party franchise on one of their systems. I don’t know how it will look or play, but I’m willing to give it a chance just because they didn’t cram it with another horrid Mario spin-off game.

Nintendo, please, I’m begging you, do more or at least try a little bit, I promise, I won’t hate on everything you do. The one thing Nintendo needs to do more than anything else is get the Wii on shelves. To this day here in the US, you cannot simply walk into any store you want and get a Wii unless you have some sort of strategic plan on par with a CIA covert operation. I don’t expect the Wii to be competing with PSN, let alone Live, but I simply ask that they get a better online system, and this year they dropped the ball on that. Wii online is still as cumbersome and poor as ever and nobody at Nintendo seems to give 2 shits about. Of course if I was raising my earnings expectations every other damn day, why would I care about that. This whole Wii generation of party games and shit really does seem like a step towards the casual, maybe even the less casual 9-5 worker and older family member crowd. Now, that’s fine and all, but let’s not forget that you once made triple A titles and franchises for the Wii. Remember when Miyamoto showed off Twilight Princess while brandishing a sword and shield? I sure do. Remember when Miyamoto dragged Reggie Fils-Aime’s awkward ass on stage to play Wii Fit soccer? As long as I take these green pills I don’t.

Microsoft seems to be in somewhat of a hot potato situation. For the time being, they have the ability to challenge the Wii for top spot, but look jittery and trying to quickly find anything to keep and expand its audience. Halo is gone for now and no one knows when it will be back, sure there’s Halo Wars, but what about that big-time game that attracts the best and worst of Xbox Live into the same place? Ah, yes, Gears of War 2. Aside from GoW2, which has had media coming down the pipe pretty quickly, Resident Evil 5 got a release date for the 360 as well as the PS3 along with a demo that looked great and seems to follow-up on the foundation Resident Evil 4 made.

I heard something about Final Fantasy XIII coming to the 360, I bet no one really cared about that. It’s probably even less likely that anyone went onto internet forums proclaiming Sony’s doom and Microsoft’s victory. Surely none of that happened, but just for kicks, let’s say FFXIII was actually coming to the 360. I would say that’s extremely good news for Microsoft struggling to reach out to the more dedicated gamer crowd (a.k.a. “hardcore”).

The biggest news outside of FFXII was the new Xbox Live redesign. Everything will look different, but kind of looks like the Aero view on Vista or at least will remind you of it. Virtual avatars, clearly taken from the Nintendo box will also be there. So if you’re scrawny, pasty, acne riddled white kid, you can at least misrepresent yourself on Live as a 7 foot tall black guy and until someone hears your voice you might be able to get away it. It’s a nice visual change for the system simply because the current blade system can be a bit redundant. Half of the stuff on the Live blade can be done on the games blade and so forth. It looks functional and as long as it doesn’t brick my system as other update have been shown to, I’m on board.

Nothing major this year. No new controller that everyone was expecting, just some more games. Fallout 3, Gears of War 2, and Fable 2 seem to be the type of games that the 360 has been welcoming with both arms for a while now. Microsoft really needs some more games. I know they’re trying one big shooter every year won’t cut it. The console itself is solid in its base now it just needs the games should be their big picture. The new Xbox Live system is a nice change, though not exactly revolutionary or even edgy, but it’s at least something to keep Live from falling behind PSN. Hopefully next year there are some new franchises to jump on board with.

Shitty or the shittiest E3 of all time? I go with shitty, because for a second generation of games for the PS3 and Wii, and a third generation of games for the 360, I didn’t see a whole lot to get excited about that I wasn’t already fully aware of. Now, I didn’t go in expecting to hear things like Halo 4 or that Rare would start producing games that didn’t suck ass, but rather to hear about some new franchises and a few big name games being shown off. Aside from the games I mentioned earlier, I didn’t see a whole lot of either. I hope next year’s E3 offers a bit more, to be honest I’ll even be in favor of the Tokyo Game Show taking over E3’s duties as the premiere expo for these sort of things. E3, shape up. Microsoft, do something new. Nintendo, do something old. And Sony, just do something.

Well, are you? Rockett and I sure as hell are not. Like the rest of the Xbox 360 community we too were eager to get our hands on Halo 3 when it first launched. However somewhere along the way, the multiplayer failed to deliver the same experience which kept us on our couches for countless hours like Halo 2 did. Rockett and I were trying to figure out why we weren’t playing the sequel to one of the greatest online console games of all time.

For me personally, the biggest complaint I had was the weapons. Now I’ve always been fairly neutral on the subject of weapon imbalance. Of course I’m not in favor of some sort of game breaking gun in which the first team or player to get that gun takes the game. However it’s important to keep the weapons imbalanced so that a rocket launcher kills anything in 1 hit (aside from Unreal Tournament) and for the most part Halo 2 lived up to this. Halo 3 tried to take this concept of having different balanced weapons, but did it to the point that they all became boring to use and the online became boring as well. 2 rockets to kill a guy using splash damage that was pretty damn close? C’mon, that’s bullshit. Probably the worst addition or rather re-addition is the assault rifle. Speaking for THS, I have to say that this gun is shit and I have honestly no idea why it came back. It’s highly inaccurate, slow and weak. The only thing keeping it from being completely useless is that it can be used in tandem with the frag grenades. And that’s the other thing, because the other weapons are all scattered about and it takes time to find your go to weapon, you’re forced to use the AR. This results in an orgy of grenades and splash damage and you trying to figure out where the hell that grenade came from. Now that’s fine because that’s their nature, but having to do it because the AR is so terrible, now that’s just plain shitty.

Dual wielding was one of the great features of Halo 2. It got shafted big time in Halo 3. Why? Well let me present you with the dual wielders’ fairy tale:

Once upon a time there was this Halo 2 player named Michael. Michael loved to use the SMG and Plasma rifle combo. Oh how he loved to deplete the enemy’s shield with plasma and chew into the enemy’s health with the SMG. Then one day the bad men at Bungie took away his SMG as the default weapon. In place, they gave him the assault rifle. Michael smiled and simply said “that’s fine, I’ll just go search for an SMG and swap it.” Michael found an SMG and exclaimed “a ha!” As he went to pick it up he was shot in the head by a sniper. Tom found himself once again with the assault rifle and said “that’s fine, I’ll just go search for a Plasma rifle and swap it.” Michael found a Plasma rifle and exclaimed “eureka!” As he went to pick it up he was shot in the chest by a Spartan Laser. Michael respawned then curled up in a fetal position and drank anti-freeze until he was dead. The neighboors notified the police of a horrible stench coming from Michael’s apartment. The police then busted down the door and found Michael dead in the kitchen leaving behind a simple note written in black marker:

The moral of the story is: when you make a dual wielder have to search over half the fucking map for 2 specific guns you’ve taken a shit on dual wielders everywhere.

Bungie, I don’t hate your game. In fact I feel we could’ve been best friends had you not chosen to water Halo 3 down. Is there a good reason why virtually no publications put you in the running for Game of the Year for 2007? Probably not, but it’s the little ones that added up. For me, it’s just not as fun as Halo 2 online, it’s just…just…EARAGHHHHHHHH, THE ASSAULT RIFLE? WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING?

End.

Once upon a time, gaming was seen toy for children. I, was one of those children. With an NES, I had the zapper gun that would allow me to reenact a successful hunting trip with Dick Cheney. There were a multitude of accessories that were out there that may or may have not enhanced the experience but nonetheless were still available, notably Nintendo made the most for its system as a first party such as the Power Glove. However, by the time of the Playstation we saw these attachments and “zany” accessories slowly go away. The average controller had enough buttons and functions that making some variant of this would only hinder the player and contribute absolutely nothing. The Playstation’s Dual shock controller was the culmination of well planned design and functionality. Games such as Gran Turismo and Metal Gear Solid required both a number of features and precise actions to be used, for this, the controller was prefect providing absolutely what was needed and nothing more (for the most part at least). Going to the next few generations, all systems had a controller similar to the PS1’s Dual Shock. With 1-2 analog sticks, a d-pad, some face buttons, and some shoulder buttons. Of course Nintendo tried to break the mold of conformity and, in particular with the Gamecube, was met with mixed responses and a bunch of 3rd parties trying to figure out how to multi-platform with it.