GOTY

Seeing how the end of the year is coming up, I suspect there are a lot of Game Of The Year posts on 2o2p.  I am going to do mine:

Motor Storm 2!

That game is amazing.  When I put it in the machine 10 days ago and ran that first race I just had a huge grin on my face.  It was the most fun I have ever had on the ps3 yet.  Even after playing this game for the last two weeks straight, I am still finding new paths, and new ways to use vehicles.  If they would put motorstorm 2 in an arcade cabinet they would make a fortune!  I can't remember the last time I had so much fun with any video game.  I am an adult, and I still apparently love arcade racers!

I grew tired of burnout after a month or so, but I will be playing motorstorm 2 for a long time.  I really liked the first game, but the second game is crazy amazing.  The tracks are something you could only come up with in your dreams, and then there you are, being wide awake, racing cars in a dream world.

There is is this one track named Calerda.  It is INSANE!  You take off from the start, go around a curve, and the track drops almost straight down like a roller coaster.  Your vehicale is almost falling the entire time, and if anyone even bumps you, there is going to be a huge massive pileup!

Anyway, if you have access to a ps3, don't play the lame demo, play the real game.  Its the benchmark and standard that all games must now beat in terms of graphics, gameplay, and emotion.

1 week in apocalyptic USA

So I have had Fallout 3 for about a week now.  I pretty much liked it.  I think my wife likes it much more then I do tho.  I think its ok.  I have had a few really neat encounters, but there is so much nothing in-between the cool things.  I don't know how long I will hang on.  I am pumped to see the cool aircraft carrier city, and to wear power armor.  I will stick it out a bit yet.

I will say that my favorite thing I played this last week was Mirrored Edge.  The artwork, the music, the setting...everything just seemed to click for me.  At first I heard that the demo was almost 10 percent of the total game and that really bothered me.  Then I heard the game described as a race track.  Yeah the story was only 4-6 hours long, but you will want to play the levels over and over again like a racing game.

That so appeals to me.  With my busy work schedule, I don't have time to invest 100's of hours into a video game, but I could sink 5-20 hours into a rewarding game like Mirrors Edge.  I hope this game acts as a wake up call to the industry.  They need to get out and create new IP's....

GameStop Offically is worst retailor of the year!

I can't believe that a company that is so poorly run and managed can continue to exist. I have pretty much given up on buying locally from gamestop/eb and I now know I cannot ever trust their website as well. The short story: I mistyped in a credit card experation date. Ordered put on hold. Log in on website, correct date, order stays on verifying for 2 weeks and now I do not have a collectors edition of Fallout 3 anymore. I didn't even know until today that something was wrong because after I corrected the info they sent me an email saying that everything was good to go.

I am pretty furious right now. When I called customer service, not only where they totally non-careing, they made no effort to make anything right. They are one of the worst companies I have ever worked with.

I was so looking forward to getting that lunchbox, bobblehead and art book. It makes me sad they treated me this way. For Christmas I will not be asking for anything from that store and I will be sure to inform the 100's of people that talk to me about videogames to not deal with that store either.

Thats thing about not treating your customers right. With how social networks go, an unhappy customer doesn't just tell 10-20 friends anymore...with the power of the internet, I can tell lots and lots of friends. Plus they have no idea that I work in a position where people ask me advice on electronics/games all the time.

man, this sucks....hopefully over my lunchbreak I can find some of this stuff at bestbuy or someplace. I only ordered from gamestop b/c I wanted the cool comic book manual thing. It was a little booklet that showed how to survive in a post-apocolypse world and it was exclusive to gamestop. I also wanted the cool cd that looked like an old 45 record. All of that is down the toliet now.

How depressing. This was supposed to be the one thing I was getting to be a treat for me and my wife.....

UPDATE:  I went to Best Buy over my lunch break and got a CE version of Fallout 3.  I am a bit bummed b/c I wanted that extra cd and book, but after the kid goes to bed tonight I am going to start exploring post-apocolypitc America!

firmware adds much needed feature

So the new ps3 firmware is up.  Why is that so exciting?  Because HULU.com is working!  I am streaming Fringe onto my old junky analog tv right now.  The catch is, hulu is only playing like 12-24 frames a second.  It can get a bit jumpy.    I assume that is b/c the ps3 has some of the slowest harddrives ever created on the  inside.  I am just excited that I can have fullscreen video on my tv and I can have my laptop 100% dedicated to surfing.

I will say that I am a big fan of the wackiness of Fringe.  In todays episode, they imprinted a mans electronic brain signiture onto some pidgeons, and had the homing pidgeons fly around New York until they found the suspect.  WHAT?  Thats the awesome craziness that comes with the show.

I also figured I am going to holdoff on Little Big Planet.  I can't think about how that game can be fun in the long run.  Do you know why?  Because you can't shoot!  How can you have a great platformer without shooting?  Time will tell, but just jumping can't be that awesome.

I am excited about Fallout 3.  If my wallet wasn't on the otherside of the house I would pre-order it right now.  With McCain being as out of touch with people as he is, and Obama seeming like a smug criminal pawn, it won't be too long when we will all have to know how to live in the desert wasteland.

Failure to evolve

I just don't understand why developers do not look at their games as platforms rather then individual products.  Take Motorstorm.  It was a great game, but somewhat limited.  So they come out with version 2.  Why don't they fix version 2 to input all the data from version 1?  Why are they two seperate products?  I should be able to play motorstorm 2 online and drive the grasshopper track!

With a Harddrive in every ps3 it just bothers me that more games do not tie together.  I hope that Sony eventually opens up HOME so that my home avatar can drive or be in my game, or a game character that I really like can show up in the HOME universe.

Game buying plan for the Fall: Fallout is a for shure.  I don't know about Little Big Planet.  I love it, but it appears as tho it might get really boring.  That game needs weapons and monsters.  I do love the concept of the game tho, so I am really torn as to if I am buying it.

Kid Game of the Month:  Burnout.  My 7 year-old played it and loved it for a month, but then got sick of it.  He LOVES the motorcycles tho.  He plays it for his alloted game time every week.