Even after a few days, I'm still very shocked by what happened to Jeff this last week. CNET will deny it, Jeff probably can't talk about nor can the other editors do, but it seems clear enough that Jeff's firing was probably related to his review andultimatelythis is unacceptable. If a gaming review site can't be trusted for its reviews, then the site is absolutely useless.

Because of this and in support of Jeff and the other editors, I've decided to cancel my Total Access Subscription to GameSpot for the first time since I started paying 3-4 years ago. I don't usually believe in massive internet petition or ban, but in this case I cannot let this be and continue paying for this site. Over the years, GameSpot has hired some of the best editors in the business and the "old gang" with Jeff, GregK, Rich, Bob Carrie and all the others made this my #1 choice to get gaming news. This week, CNET showed what it has in store for GameSpot and I have no respect for such business decisions. What a sad day.

It's too bad that new management seems to have screwed this up. Whatever happens next, I wish the remaining editors and staff good luck and I hope GS can return to its former greatness. We never know, the uproar over Jeff's firing may actually cause CNET to review its policies and make it up by returning control over editorial content to the actual editors instead of having marketing and biz-relation run the show.

To all the editors, thanks for all the hard work and good luck. Seems to me you'll need it.

When the current generation of console started, I jumped on it from day one,in part because I like shiny new gadgets but mostly because of the fact that consoles would be connected to the Web with updates available. To me, it seemed like something the PS2 and XBox should have done, but this gen would bring all new posibilities.

Some of the stuff was unexpected like Achievements. Pretty nice. One thing that was expected is downloadable content. I think that's great because when I finish a great game, I'm always bummed that I have to wait at least a year if not more to play more of it. My biggest problem with DLC, at least so far, is that they come out way too late. So there will be new playable characters in Marvel Ultimate Alliance ? Great! But I'm done with the game. In fact, I've been done with the game for a long time now and have no interest in playing it again because I have a lot of other stuff to play.

I understand that these things takes time to make. I really do. But several months after the game is out is just too late. Crackdown is in the same position. I loved that game, but if the DLC doesn't come out soon, I will probably not care anymore.

Seeing new songs in Guitar Hero 2 so quickly after the game came out was great. A little overpriced, but that's another debate. I like how they decided to release new songs every month. I think other publishers need to take note. I'd certainly buy more stuff if they came out sooner. 

I've discussed the Xbox 360's achievements system before, but tonight it's not until tonight that I was able to fully appreciate the what it could truly do. Crackdown has been on my mind lately. Not because the game I can't stop playing the game -- the new DLC really is needed -- but because I finally got 2 important achievements. Master Agent and, most of all, Free Runner, the one where you need to get all 500 Agility Orbs.


I was really pissed of at that thing and had actually stopped playing and had migrated to the PS3 to play Motorstorm and God Of War. Tonight, while trying to finally get Master Agent status, I happened upon the last orb. I had been at 499 for a few weeks now, been around the tallest building in the game at least 10 times and I finally found it tonight. It just happened to be located in Lost Muertos, 2 feets above the ground, in the middle of the starting island.

While I'm kinda pissed about having missed it the first 30 times I went around that island, it really made me appreciate the concept of achievements. It's not really about the total gamerscore, it's about what it can do to push yourself to play further and to do more. I never would have attempted to do this on any other system.

Can't wait to see what Sony does with the Trophies system in Home. Hopefully that accomplishes the same thing and if it can do that without computing a final score, it might just end up even better. Now if only Nintendo would do the same please. 

So I've been playing a lot of Crackdown recently. I really enjoy this game even if it's a little easy. I'm done with the storyline and am now working on the (pointless but fun) achievements. I really like what they did with them in this game, except perhaps that

I have 499/500 agility orbs.

Yes, I'm missing one and it's driving me crazy. I was at 467 when I beat the game and got to 493 really easily. From there, I was able to get to 497 in one night and then 499 in 2 more nights. I've been stuck at 499 for like 5 days now. I swear I've visited every inch the map at least 10 times. Finding one little green orb in a huge map is not easy.

And don't even get me started on the hidden orbs. I'm at 226/300 and have no intention of ever trying to get them all. This is just crazy.

I do hope more developers follow the example set by this game in terms of achievements. You get a good number of them by simply completing the game but the rest are really well done and innovative. I can't wait to see what the additional 100 points they will distribute through DLC will be.

I may well be wrong, but I believe we are now in the year 2007. Vista just shipped. OS X 10.5 is coming in a few months. Our computers now have 1 or 2 GB of RAM. New games require that much to play.

And yet they ship on CDs.

This, to me, is baffling. The debate has been going on for a while now but what really pissed me off this week was looking at the PC games at Futureshop (canadian Best Buy). Here in Montreal, we usually have 2 versions of the games. The first one is the US game. This one is usally on CD because who know, maybe somebody who doesn't own a 15$ piece of equipment might want to play the latest games. The other version is the european version so that we can get a french version of the game. Now, the european version is usually on DVD. (it's also in french, which is why I don't buy it)

I really, really wish I would understand that. I don't.

A DVD-Rom is so cheap nowadays and *all* new computers have had them for years. Is there a reason Company of Heroes ships on CDs here and on DVD in europe ?

CD-based games are longer to install, there's a risk you might damage or lose one disk ... there's just no reason to want to ship a game on 5 CDs when you could ship 1 DVD. Heck, the "next" generation of DVDs are already on sale now. Isn't it time to assume people who wants to play a game that requires a 1500$ computer will have a DVD drive ?

I mean, we might as well ship floppy disks just in case.

I think pretty much everyone agrees that Blizzard is a top-class game developer. The games they have put out so far are all, without exception, quality games (since they've been called Blizzard anyway). Not everyone likes every of their games, but there's no doubt it's all been quality stuff. That alone, is a good reason to love them but every once in a while they do stuff that blows me away.

Last year, they came out with patch 1.10 for Diablo II, a major patch for a game that came out 6 years earlier in june of 2000. I was pretty impressed then, but this week they did it again. This time, it's a patch for Warcraft III, a game that came out in 2002. In both cases, the games had and continue to have free multiplayer over Battle.net.

What they did this time that blows me away is that they just added new maps (again!) and even more suprising, native support for Intel Macs for Warcraft III. Now, I'm a big Mac User so I always appreciate when compagnies like Blizzard come up with Mac-compatible products. It's a small marketshare after all. But to port the game to the Intel architecture for the PowerPC code some 4.5 years after release is nothing short impressive, even if you couldn't care less about Macs.

This is why I love Blizzard so much. It's great to support such a company. I bought BC (just like the other 2.4 millions who did apparently on day 1) and I have no doubt I'll buy their next game also.

The Wii has been out for about 2 months now and I've had a couple of interesting experiences with it. So far, it seems like the console is an absolute hit for group gaming. I just spent another evening with a few friends and brought the Wii over and we had a blast. Clearly, this is the console to own if you're interested in playing with a bunch of people on a couch. Everybody seems to enjoy the party games on the system.

The thing that bothers me though is that so far, I really can't see this console being great for single player games except for 1st party games and the occasional 3rd party gem. Basically, it's the GameCube all over again. I mean, am I going to play racing games on this ? What about Shooters, or RPGs, or action games ?

In all those cases, the Wii is not going to be my first choice. That means the 360 or the PS3 will still see most of my gaming time and the Wii, just like the Cube before it, will probably end up with less games in my collection.

The real problem with the Wii for "generic" gaming is the controller. As innovative and fun as the current controler is, it just doesn't work for most game type. The DS also has innovative controls and mechanism but at least it also has regular controls (for an handheld). I think Nintendo has done a fantastic job with the console, but not including a regular controler is a mistake in my opinion. I don't mind that the graphics are not up to par with the PS3, but I do mind that the controler means most game type just don't work optimally.

Even though I have a ton of games to play and very little time to play them, I recently picked up 3 more games to add to my collection. These are games I *should* have bought when they came out but never did for some reason.

So over the last couple of days, I ordered Okami and Psychonauts (straight from Double Fine to encourage them). Last night, I was at an electronic shops that used to sell video games but have since stopped and they had a bin of games where I found Chronicles of Riddick for 10$. I figured it was well worth it even though it's not yet ont the BC list for the 360. I'll play this one at some point...i'm in no hurry anyway since there's a lot of other stuff to play.

Pretty happy with the state of my collection so far. There's a few more things I need to pick up but at least I finally have Psychonauts. I felt bad last year when I was watching the 2005 awards from Gamespot and didn't have the game. At least now, 1 year later, I do have it. Better late than never I guess.

Last night I was on my daily hunt for extra nunchucks and/or PS3 when I stumbled into a small gaming store and saw a PS3 box sitting there. I was convinced it was an empty promotional box but the guy behind the counter told me it was a real PS3. The last piece of the "next-gen" puzzle is now complete for me. I now have all 3 systems plugged in, with only the Wii still waiting for my components cable on wednesday and an extra controller. Other than that, I'm all set.

I also recently got the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive as an early christmas present so that's pretty nice too. I'm really happy to finally have all "wireless" consoles. No more wired controllers.

Now, I just need some time to play all the games. I'm currently playing Monkey Balls on the Wii and FFIII on the DS (and WoW on the PC) but I really want to get to Viva Piniata as soon as possible.

Too many games, too little time. Its a great time to be a gamer though!

If one was to ask me what I did this weekend, I would have no choice but to say "Played video games". Other than that, I slept a little and ate a little but did about nothing else.

It all started friday night when I picked up 3 games. Final Fantasy XII for the PS2, Need for Speed Carbon for the 360 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance also for the 360. I figured I'd wait until saturday morning to get started.

Instead of playing then, I visited Gamespot where the "We just got a PS3 marathon" was just getting started. There went my friday night! I really like thos marathon though I kinda wish they had given an emblem for it. These damn emblems are just like the 360 achievements. Completly useless but still addictive. I have no idea why I even care.

So on saturday I decided to try Marvel Ultimate Alliance first. I stopped playing last night at around 2AM. It's a great game and I'm pretty sure I'll get to finish it tonight since I'm already at act 5. Not much of a super heroes fan but it's great to be playing with old favorites like Spider-Man and the X-Men. I figured I would play for a few hours and then try FFXII but I ended up really liking the game even though it's little more than a button smasher.

This week will be a busy week and that's not considering work and the User Group I run. Once i'm done with Ultimate Alliance I'll move on to FFXII but Tony Hawk Project 8 and Gears of War are both coming out this week.

I have officially no idea how I'm possibly be playing all of this. It's a good thing I didn't pre-order a Wii or PS3. I'll pick them up as they become available and as my play list empties a bit.

Been playing Lego Starwars lately and the game's as good as its predecessor. Seeing how this completes the starwars story, I'm guessing there will not be a sequel to this one. The games were developed by a 3rd party, not lucasart so this opens up possibilities for other franchises being "legofied". The OXM guys on their podcast mentioned Indianna Jones would be great. Personally, I know it won't happen but I would love to see a lego Buffy or a lego LoTR.

Can't wait to see what they come up with if anything. Judging by the sales of the first game (and hopefully the sequel), it's hard to imagine them stopping now.

Apple held a special event yesterday for the press and announced a number of new products all related to music & iPods. iTunes 7, new iPod, new iPod Nano, new Shuffle and iTV. That's all good, but since this is GameSpot, let's talk games.

Confirming the rumors of the last few months, Apple announced a number of games for the fifth generation iPod (the ones supporting video playback). 9 games are available so far for the system and most of those are games that are already available on the 360 and presumably will be for the PS3 and Wii. Publishers have figured it was a great business to be in and now it seems we have another platform to buy 5$ games on. This time, the platform happens to be playing music too. My guess is that Microsoft's Zune player will also have similar games. I'd say many of the 360 Arcade titles will be on Zune too.

Let's get back to Apple though. 9 games at launch. Being a huge Mac fanboy and a gamer, it was a no-brainer for me to try some of those games.

One thing to note that I haven't seen mentionned yet is that music & podcasts do continue to play in the background while you game.

TETRIS:
First one I tried. Works really well. Surprinsingly so in fact. You still need a little practice with the wheel to be really confortable but after a few minutes it works really well. Haven't played enough yet to see if the game is "gameboy perfect" but it looks good and plays well. For 5$, it's not bad at all.

PACMAN:
I was surprised by Gamespot's comment in the news article that said the control was not so good on this one. I found it to work pretty well. Of course, it's not D-pad, but it works well enough for the game to be enoyable. The game itself looks good. Seems to me similar to the 360 version, except of course for live leaderboards and achievements.

ZUMA:
This is Zuma and well...it's Zuma. I hadn't really played that game a lot before so I can't compare to other versions, but it certainly looks like a classic zuma to me. Plays rather well since the design is circular just like the wheel though I suspect the wheel might be a bi slower than a proper mouse or controller for the task at hand.

MINI GOLF:
I was expecting this one to be bad and I was right. Haven't played a whole lot, but from what I can see, it's a mess. Not surprising since playing mini golf with a clickwheel is just as hard as you might imagine. The game itself also doesn't seem all that well done.

BEJEWELED:
This one works as expected. Works pretty well with the weel. Again, the control is not as precise as a mouse or controller, but it works well. If you like Bejeweled, you'll like that game.

So there you have it. My initial thoughts on Apple's first games for the iPod. Hopefully we'll see more regularly. I don't expect an "iPod-Wednesday" but if we can get a game or two a month it would be great.

If there's one thing we have begun to see more and more of these past few years is the idea of convergence. It seems just about every business is in the process of cross-promoting & cross-linking just about everything nowadays. The latest victim to this unfortunate trend is Gamespot. That's really too bad.

The worst thing is, you can't even blame the Gamespot crew for this. That's what you get by merging with (or being bought, can't remember by) CNET. Now there's MP3.com news on many pages (though I can't see them today, maybe they disappeared ?), you also get those darn TV.com and MP3.com buttons in your profile for no reason and staff writers for other CNET publications are now appearing on Gamespot.

As with convergence in the world of TV/Print media, this is really a shame. I can understand why CNET would want to do such a thing business-wise but on the other hand I subscribe to Gamespot because I think it's the best gaming news and reviews site, not because I want to know what's going on with Britney Spears and the latest soap opera developments.

I understand the idea between integrating Gamefaqs with Gamespot and even Metacritics as far as games are concerned but staff CNET writers, TV.com and MP3.com have no business on a game site. I'm just sad because I have to deal with exactly the same thing at work and I know that the Gamespot crew are probably in the same situation I'm in which is they probably have no choice. I just hope CNET realizes this annoys their users.

It would be interesting to hear Greg and/or Jeff about this on the Hotspot or On The Spot. I may send in a question about this... though I wonder if this is the sort of thing they would discuss publicly.

I picked up Enchanted Arms on the 360 earlier today despite the fact I still have to play Dead Rising and Saints Row. I have no idea where I'll get the time I'll need to play all of this.

The game's not too bad so far. I picked it up mostly because I've been craving a Japanase RPG lately and since Final Fantasy XII won't be out for another 2 months I figured Enchanted Arms could fill the void. Playing it today made me realize the decisions developers sometime make while making their games are sometime incomprehensible.

If you've played Enchanted Arms for any length of time, you have no doubt recognized the headline of this post. For some reason, the developers figured it would be a good idea to explain in great detail what you need to do every time to encounter something new. Did you know you have to press A to open a chest ? Or to climb a ladder ? Or to open a door ? Or to talk to someone ? The list goes on.

I could maybe understand saying it once (like "Press A to do an action") but was it really necessary to explain it for every little details ? The worst part of it is that after each explanation, you are then asked if you got it and then when you say yes your character repeats the information just in case you weren't clear on the concept of pressing A to activate the little moving platform. It's not as if the thing you need to do is complex. You just need to press A. That's it. And you do that for just about every action you might want to do!

It just makes no sense whatsoever.

Another thing that has been annoying me in a few titles on the 360 (including Enchanted Arms) is that every single time I save the game first asks me on what device I want to save. Now I'm sure if the game always does this or if this is only because I have both the HD and a MU, but didn't it occur to anyone that if my previous save game is on a device there's a good chance I'll continue to save on that device ? At least it could default to the last one and give me an option to select another device if needed. Again, I have a hard time imagining why the developers never saw that as an annoyance. I can't believe they play tested the heck out of that game probably for several months and yet nobody noticed that it was both useless and extremly annoying.

As a developer myself (not in the game industry unfortunately), I can understand that sometime a developer can get lazy and take a shortcut but in these 2 cases, it's the opposite. Games that ask me to select the memory device to load a game from when I launch the game are also annoying. The 360 (potentially) has a HD and at most 2 MU though I guess most user have either only 1 or at most 2 devices. Couldn't games just scan those 1-3 devices and find the save game themselves ? I can't imagine it being all that hard to do. It's that kind of small details that makes great games into good ones. In the case of Enchanted Arms, it's not enough to really hate the game, but it's enough for me to take a few points away on my review. At least it would be if I was actually working at GameSpot.

For a while now, I've been picking up OXM (Official XBox Magazine). I do this mostly to have something to read during the commute everyday but I must admit the guys over there are usually not so bad. Demo disks are sometime pretty nice, especially since demos are sometime on the disk before they are on Marketplace. While reading up on the latest issue earlier today, I noticed a few things that were either wrong now (new info have since come out) or in the case of the Street Fighter 2 review, quite... the opposite of what everyone else are saying (keeping in mind their review was obviously written prior to the patch that just came out).

No lag in online play ? Perfect multiplayer ? Arcade perfect port ? Really... wow, I guess all the comments on the web must have been wrong then. This review made it perfectly clear that the reviewer played a beta version of the game "online" with 1 person in a perfect setting and never actually played against real players. That's understandable because they need to write all their stuff several weeks prior to the magazine shipping but at the end of the day, you have to wonder if print media is obsolete now that we have up-to-the-minute updates on Gamespot, blogs and other gaming sites.

The debate certainly isn't new. I'm aware that it's been going on for a few years now but it seems to me that now that we have podcast, video broadcast, blogs, live updates and whatever's coming next, information that is several weeks old is just not interesting anymore unless you've been living in a cave somewhere with no internet access.

Part of what made me think of all this is Major Nelson's latest podcast. In this special episode, he was basically moderating a panel at PAX discussing the advent of new media in video game journalism. It's pretty interesting to ear the opinions of those professionals. You can check it out here if you are interested.

As someone who spends most of his time in front of a computer or online in some way either for work or for fun, I guess I'm totally the wrong demographic for this sort of magazine. Still, you have to wonder how long they'll last. I'm not just talking about reviews that are coming out a few weeks late (which is something I could live with), but info that's just wrong because of the realities of the media itself.

Combine this with the need to use as little paper as possible to save cost and you've got yourself a pretty useless, but entertaining magazine.

Quite an exiting development this week, I actually played multi-player on Live. I played a couple of games of Marble Blast Ultra and managed to get 2 achievements out of it. Overall, it was a pretty fun couple of games and I think I found out why : nobody was talking. Quite an improvement over the usual live game though I will admit that I don't try very often anymore. I've never been a big fan of multiplayer games regardless of platform and the overall childish behavior seen on Live doesn't exactly make me change my mind.

I was reading the other day about Microsoft's initiave for girl gamers and it made me think it would be great to have more separation of gamers on live. I'm 27 now and I'm starting to feel that an adult only room would be great. I'm also not a pro gamer so having a more relax environment would also be pretty nice. It'll be interesting to see in the future if/what Microsoft does with all the data they get from the gamer profiles. This kind of data is pure gold and it would be great to see Microsoft do more intelligent matching of gamers. Getting in a match of Street Fighter with a kid who practices all day is hardly fun. I guess I'm getting too old!

And now on a completely different subject:

I'm going to New-York for a couple of days so that means I had to shift my gaming from home console to portable. I don't travel very often so every year I use that occasion to dust off the portables and get great games. I just realized that Nintendo has its "World Store" in New-York, so I'll be stopping by to get a game or two there but I got myself Mario & Luigi : Partners in Time. This is somewhat of an old game but since I don't play my DS that much, it'll be great to play yet another mario RPG game. Not quite sure yet what I'll pick up once there for there for the trip back. Will probably get Lost Magic if I see it, especially since I'm not too hot on the brain games.

As opposed to some gamespot editor (and sadly, former editor), I'm not yet addicted to the gamer score system on the 360. You can see my current total at the right and don't get me wrong, I'm always happy to get more achievements, but I'm not at the point where I would play a boring Japanese game to get achievements (Jeff and Carrie, you guys are the best!).

I do, however, think that the system is absolutely brilliant. I know for a fact that I now get games on the 360 rather than on PC or other consoles just for that. For me however, the biggest reason why I love this system is that it forces me to play my games longer. Let me explain.


It's kind of foolish in a way, but I now feel bad about a game where I have earned very little achievements. This has pushed me to complete 8 games so far on the 360 which is more than the number of games I have completed on the Xbox, PS2 and GameCube combined over the last 5 years. I've been playing Marble Blast Ultra lately just so that I can get a few more achievements and I'm glad I did because I'm having fun playing this game and if not for this system, the game would be gathering dust (or in this case, digital dust).

I think it's safe to say that I'm usually more of a game collector than a serious player. I'm not very good at video games, despite the fact that I've been playing for 20 years and that I own many game systems and because of that, I sometime get bored quickly of a game and move on to the next one. In my case, the achievements are forcing me to go back, and I'm glad to have this system.

I certainly hope Nintendo and Sony will come up with something similar. I think it would greatly help me complete more games on their respective system.

So, today is the 8th of August 2006 and according to Capcom, this is the glorious day where we get to bash zombies on the head with various blunt object. I was fully prepared to do so, but once again the "release date", whatever that means, certainly isn't the date you'll get the play the game.

Most stores seem to say it'll be tomorrow or maybe, worst case, Thursday. My question then is, what's the point of publicizing a release date if on that date you cannot buy the game ? It looks like the distributor shipped the game on monday and that some store might get theirs tonight or (more likely) tomorrow.

Now the game manufacturing process was not completed on Sunday evening. No, they've been ready for at least a few days. Why ship the game on Monday ? Why not ship on Friday so that everyone has it by tuesday? They did that to make sure nobody would get the game early and break the street date. Now, I am obviously not an industry insider and I don't have years of experience, but it seems to me it's much better to have somebody break the street date early than to publicize a date and not have any game to sell on that date.

It seems to me that the game industry should take a look at how the movie industry works. When a movie comes out on a tuesday, it comes out on a Tuesday, not sometime soon. Movie stores actually get the movies sometime up to a week in advance as far as I can see. Why can't the game industry do the same ?

Now that the power is back on, I've had a chance to try the Dead Rising demo and I think I'll side with the majority here, I think the game's going to be a lot of fun. The variety of weapons and the fact that bashing zombies on the head with an axe is fun makes this game a winner.

I'm still not sure if the game will be fun for several hours though. I mean, don't get me wrong. I like the X button as much as anyone else but it seems that we'll be hitting it a lot and not doing much else. This in a way is like N3 except that the game is actually fun.

Still, I can't wait to be able to play the full game and see all the areas in the mall and all the different weapons in the game. The demo ends by saying that additional downloadable content will be made available after launch that will allow us to unlock new areas (that will have new weapons). I think this sorts of thing could work really well in a game like this, especially since they'll be coming up with crazy weapons so that people buy them.

Personally, I think this game needs a Buffy mod. It's not vampires, sure...but she's slayed a bunch of zombies anyway. Yup, slayer + cheesy one-liners would make this good game great.

And By that, I mean, literally. I'm here at work all alone pretty much in the dark. It's 9PM and the reason why I'm sitting here mostly in the dark is that if I go home, I really will be in the dark.

After the big storm on tuesday, power went out in style and it's still not back on and the latest estimates are that it won't be back on until tomorrow evening. Of course a cynic would say that whenever you call them they basically do a basic math formula that looks like : now + 5 hours but I'm not a cynic. All in all, a very un-fun experience. My 360 without SFII has been sitting alone and at least according to its blog, the 360 cannot wait until I can power it on again.

During the past few days, I haven't really played anything at all. Thank god we have a good internet connection at work and that even when home, my laptop gives me a few hours of computing. One thing you quickly notice when you lose internet access is that a computer without the Internet is really quite boring.

Especially when that computer is a MacBook Pro on which you really can't play much at all.



Still, the end is near. Soon, I'll be back online on my 360 trying to rack up more points. I'm kinda glad I couldn't buy Street Fighter II though because from the look of it, it doesn't seem all that good. If online play is laggy and single player is really hard, then it really isn't a good game for me because a) I suck at fighting games and b) well... yeah, that's pretty much it.