These two demos hit XBL and PSN today, and I got a chance to try them out.

BF:BC seems like it will be a fun rent. The funnest aspect seemed to be the single-player experience, a mix of vehicle-heavy mayhem, quirky humor, and a potentially interesting story. The weakest seemed to be the multiplayer, feeling akin to Quake Wars, were the game's weaknesses are only amplified by their sum.

Civilization Revolution also seemed just decent, average. Basically 1/3 the choices of Civ IV, its greatest weakness is that it feels stripped. The game touts mulitplayer but beware; since the game is turn-based, anticipate a lot of downtime while you watch each player go through their turn. But Civilization has always been more focused on single-player and single friend v. friend, and I think that's what most people will buy the game for. It's essentially a great console translation.

This week I bought Ninja Gaiden II and Bourne Conspiracy. NGII is amazing and BC is extremely good for a licenced game, and very good it its own right. One reviewer but it well saying the hand-to-hand combat is excellent, the shooting good, and the driving poor.

[ADD] By the way, Dark Sector had a universal price drop to $39.99. If I wasn't already over my budget this month I'd definitely buy it. (And Mass Effect and BioShock are the same price at Amazon.)

This post is for video game soundtracks in general. They're really expensive but people upload them all the time to Youtube. You can play the soundtrack on Youtube and record directly from your soundcard using Freecorder www.freecorder.com and it'll automatically convert to MP3.

I found this out b/c I really wanted the FFVII: Crisis Core soundtrack (it's amazing), but I spend too much money on import game CDs as it is.

And with the advent of Xbox Live and the rise of forums, blogs, and other online commentary, it's ironic the internet is becoming worse place; because as these things are meant to enrich the internet, the majority of forum posts and blog comments contribute only negatively. In one instance, I was reading through the comments on an interesting blog post at Destructoid. Most were negative, hateful; but what really surprised me was that the editor of the original post was contributing to it. He was ignoring all the constructive comments that would have advanced the dialogue of the subject he posted about, and instead he was only responding to the negative comments, at one point calling everyone "professional assholes." And I find editors do this often. It's destructive and they don't realize it.

After that instance I never visited the site again. To me, that instance was the culmination of years of watching the internet deteriorate (in terms of content quality). And I have found the more a Web site caters to kids and teens, the worse it is. For instance, sites like Destructoid, Gamespot, Gamertrailers, Playstation -- all full of kids and teens and the original content is decent, but no original content can go further discussed without the comments turning into a dialogue of hate, and no forum thread will leave you without a bad taste in your mouth.

I don't like to post long things because I know no one will read it, so I'll wrap it up. My point is: this site is one of the few places on the internet were the culmination of user-created content is actually good and decent. The people here have avoided the transformation the comic depicts and have made 2 Old 2 Play an enjoyable place to be a part of.

I'm mainly a console player, so my computer is mediocre by gaming standards; otherwise I'd likely be trying my hand at Crysis, Supreme Commander, and Sins of a Solar Empire. I have been meaning to go to the PC gaming cafe and try these games--especially Sins--but the cafe is a bit far (gas prices) and noisy kids get a bit more annoying as I get older.

I hope you all have a good holiday weekend -- enjoy it