Another week of gaming has served to reinforce my belief that holidays are awesome and even if it's been getting so hot I've lost the ability to think straight I've still had a pretty good time this week. I've played Team Fortress 2, Rock Band 2, Metroid Prime 3 and another game I'll mention shortly but if you know me you'll probably be able to guess what it is. I have been thinking of going for the Bladder of Steel achievement on Rock Band 2 but I'm somewhat reluctant. The achievement requires that you play the entire 'Endless Setlist 2' without pausing the game and while I knew this would be a seemingly impossible task it was not until recently that I worked out quite how long it would take to play the setlist without pauses and it clocks in at over 6 hours. Even with me and my bro switching in and out between songs this is still quite the task to complete. I've still got a little voice in the back of my head telling me to go for it though, not so much for the achievement itself but just to know that I've completed the challenge.

The really exciting news for me this week however is that my limited edition copy of Halo 3 arrived as expected. Not only have I been packing in a fair bit of multiplayer sinceI was reunited with the gameI got it I also went through all the content on the special features disc. The short film on Bungie and the Making of Halo 3 documentary were amazing to watch as a Halo fan and I'd definitely recommend them to any major fan that has the limited edition version and hasn't seen them. Seeing that these people will do 12 hour shifts, will work until 3 a.m. and won't see their families or have proper meals for days it really brings home the commitment that the people at Bungie have towards the Halo projects and makes it easy to understand how they are able to produce such high quality games. There was even one occasion in the Bungie documentary in which the security guard mentioned that he has known people work 28 hour shifts in the building.

The reviews for The Conduit on the Wii also finished coming pouring in this week and from what I've seen since the games release I'm not all that surprised by the negative reaction from critics. I remember a long time ago hearing about this game and seeing how much some of the Wii fanatics were so hyped about it but I didn't really understand the appeal, what was different about this game? Was I supposed to be impressed purely because this was a traditional FPS being released on the Wii? As time went on the game didn't really start to look any better and it looks like it has turned out as a bit of a mediocre game. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against a shooter games coming out on the Wii, I thought Metroid Prime 3 and Red Steel were great, but the game just seems to generic and really doesn't look up to scratch when compared to other shooters these days. It seems that a lot of the people who like the game reallyare purely excited about it's an FPS on the Wii and like most people I'd much rather have a good FPS for another console than a bad one for that one.

I think I'll leave things abouthere this week as despite the electric fan in my room I seem to be a little bit on fire. I hope everyone else has a great summer and I'll leave you with this short but amusing YouTube video. Keep on gaming.

-Gamer_152

So I have finished the campaign mode on Red Faction: Guerrilla. It wasn't an amazing game but it was most certainly a very good game and was well worth the play through. For anyone who is the slightest bit into action-adventure games I would recommend Red Faction to them because I'm sure they'll enjoy it very much. Right the way through the game I found that the destructible environments and the emphasis the game made on all the destructible buildings was what really set it apart from other games of its kind. However Guerrilla has actually only taken up a small portion of my gaming time this week due to my purchase of another great game which I'll mention in a bit.

I have finally gotten around to ordering my collector's edition copy of Halo 3 off of the internet and that should be arriving in two or three days. I figured I had to get it before the annual celebration of Bungie Day (which falls on the 7th day of the 7th month) and with a little luck I may even be able to pick up the legendary Recon armour permutation on the day itself, which is being awarded to anyone who can beat the Bungie employees at their own game. Pre-orders of Halo 3: ODST are also going cheap on some sites as well but I figured I'll check if I can order it at a local store first, that way I can pick up the game after it comes out as soon as possible, or at least that is the plan.

I have also downloaded and played a little America's Army 3 this week and I find myself once again disappointed with America's Army. I thought that maybe in the new version the shortcomings of its predecessors may have been cleaned up a bit, but it seems not. The game is littered with bugs ranging from major technical issues to numerous gameplay problems. But even ignoring these annoying glitches, the gameplay in America's Army 3 provides feels bland and derivative and I really couldn't find much enjoyment at all in playing. Being essentially a propaganda tool of the U.S. Army, it is free to download for anyone with Steam but there's not much to be got out of playing the game.

I am happy to say though I have downloaded a game this week that has been nothing less than brilliant and that's Team Fortress 2 for the PC. I really liked the game on the 360 but my two major gripes with the game were that it felt limited in terms of the number of maps and it tended to demand quite a bit of connection which wasn't the most convenient thing when my router and my Xbox are not the best of friends. However not only are there tons more maps on the PC version, along with all the stuff the various server admins of the PC version have cooked up, but I've found myself surprised by just how rich of an experience I've received from all the new (well, new to me) content in this version. There's more weapons, more achievements, more players allowed per game and maybe it's just because I haven't played an online shooter in a while but I think it's just plain awesome. If you wanna play you can add me under the steam ID Gamer_152 and I'll be playing much more of that game this week.

Anyway it's absolutely boiling where I am with summer heat and the hot air blowing out of my laptop cooling fan so I'm gonna go sit by my electric fan and play some more TF2. I'll leave you with the trailer for the new series of the Halo machinima, Red vs. Blue. Peace out.

-Gamer_152

Has it really only been a week since my last blog? Wow... Well, ok I guess it hasn't quite been a week. You see I spent part of Saturday and Sunday round a friends house and I decided that sleep deprivation and blogging weren't a good mix. I've tried writing while barely conscious before and let's just say it wasn't my best ever work. However my exams are over and I am back gaming for real again. This week I've worked my way up to over 300 obtained pokemon on Pokemon Diamond Version, I've unlocked and completed all songs on Elite Beat Agents (although I'm still struggling at getting past the final mission of sweatin' difficulty) and I'm up to the final sector on Red Faction: Guerrilla. I've also played some of the online matchmaking on Red Faction and I've had a good time with that too.

Now don't get me wrong, all the games I'm playing at the moment are great but I've spent quite a bit of this week thinking about what games I am going to get next. I've already decided what site I'm going to get my limited edition Halo 3 copy from and as we speak I'm downloading America's Army 3 (which is free is anyone else is interested) for my laptop, however there are a few other games I have my eye on. Unfortunately my laptop is .2 GHz away from meeting the system requirements for The Sims 3 but the other major game I have my eye on is Prototype. I like the look of the big open-world gameplay of the game, the huge amount of skills to unlock and the abilities bestowed upon your character which give you the crazypower to run up walls, fly between buildings, turn your arm into a lethallysharp blade etc. I'm also thinking of getting Team Fortress 2 for my PC, I have it for my 360 but without the various extras of the PC version which they have been promising for a ridiculous amount of time it's not quite the same.

I am also considering getting Ghostbusters: The Video Game but from what I've heard Ghostbusters has fallen slightly short of being the video game it could have been. I wouldn't call myself a big fan of the movie but it's a movie thatI thought was very goodand it's good to hear that the game delivers on fan service, I only wish that it could have delivered a bit more in other areas because from what I saw it had the potential to be a great game. If I do get the game it will probably be one of my later purchases. I am also thinking of getting the Big Surf Island DLC for Burnout Paradise. I've been waiting for this one for quite some time and although the island isn't as big as I thought it'd be there certainly seems to be tons more content on there and it seems worth a look but it's not my number 1 priority.

As for games I already have I think I'm gonna finish up Red Faction: Guerrilla, play some more Pokemon and maybe go back to Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Lastly a special thanks to Gamespot for featuring me on their list of E3 bloggers and thanks to PJ24 for telling me about that. This week I'll leave you with Ryan Davis's review of my least favourite video game movie of all time (I really can't begin to explain how much I hate it). Hope you've enjoyed reading and there'll be more blog next week.

-Gamer_152

It seems like an eternity since I wrote my last blog and even longer since E3, but I suppose it hasn't been my normal week with things revolving much more around exams than gaming, through some miracle I haven't been entirely distracted by video games and I think I've actually done okay on my exams so far. I'm still playing Elite Beat Agents in my free time and as with any rhythm game it's great to see how much better you get over time just with practice, indeed I've come a long way from playing Walkie Talkie Man on Breezin' difficulty. Now if I can just get through Sweatin' difficulty I'll be very happy with myself.

As I promised a couple of weeks back I have spent a little time during E3 playing the copy of Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise my brother picked up. I must say even expecting good things from the game I was surprised myself by quite how much the few simple additions in Trouble in Paradise expanded on the original Viva Pinata and it was great fun to play. In fact I'd become quite forgetful of exactly how frantic managing a garden full of pinatas could be and it was good to get back to the crazily-paced gameplay, colourful graphics and enchanting music of Viva Pinata. Unfortunately the unruly nature of preowned Xbox 360 games struck again as within a week or two the 360 had already begun to refuse to play both the preowned Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise and the preowned Saint's Row. My brother decided he'd cut his losses and have the discs repaired and traded in as he'd lost the receipts for them but although GAME were willing to repaiir the discs for £1 but as I predicted they really tried to rip him off on the trade-in and would only give him £10 for both. So as I type this there are two non-working 360 games sitting on my coffee table.

My search for a collectors edition copy of Halo 3 stretches into yet another week as well and although I almost never buy games off of the internet I may have to consider it in this case, as long as I can find somewhere which isn't selling it for too much and will ship it to the UK. However my brother still seems to be purchasing games as his new fix this week is Red Faction: Guerilla and I do have to say it's a very good game. I didn't think I'd be so into this game but running away from exploding buildings and hitting enemies in the chest with sledgehammers is a very satisfying experience and I hope to spend a lot more time on Mars demolishing bridges and running down EDF soldiers.

I guess this is just about the end of things for another week. I'd like to give a quick shout-out to Jeb800e who has started a new Gamespot union for Metroid fans, Distress Signal 4. Also a big shout-out to someone who I think is a very underappreciated Gamespot user, the Best Buy employee turned Navy recruit (no really), CmdrMcNeil. Thank you all for reading and hopefully there'll be more from me next week. I'll just leave you with this amusing real-life Elite Beat Agents parody from Mega 64.

-Gamer_152

So, straight into the blog this week, no time to talk about what I've been playing 'cause I got a video game expo to talk about. Please don't be afraid to skip through whatever of this gargantuan wall of text doesn't interest you or read part of it now and come back later.

Microsoft

The Microsoft press conference was definitely my favourite press conference of the show this year and the one that really sticks in my mind. For a while I was just sitting back and watching it thinking what I was seeing looked really good but not much blew me away in a really big way. I did think that the whole concept for Tony Hawk Ride was good and the game itself looks like a good play, although I don't really want to pay that much for the board peripheral. Although I'm not a big fan of stealth games I did think that Splinter Cell: Conviction presented itself really well and the look of the game world and the various elements being projected onto the environment were really stylish. I thought Modern Warfare 2 looked like a lot of fun for those who enjoy the Call of Duty series even if I'm not overly partial to Call of Duty myself. I also thought that Final Fantasy 13 also looked like a game well worth picking up with its combat and the brilliant world the game was set in.

As a huge Halo fanatic I do have to say that I was absolutely glued to the screen in a moment of pure captivation as Halo 3: ODST was shown. I thought the opening of the game came across really well and I liked the look of all the gameplay as well as the darker feel of the games setting and the new firefight mode they showed post-conference. They also announced Halo: Reach and while we have no clue what this is (although I may talk more about this in a later blog) I'm sure Bungie will very gradually reveal details on this mysterious game and at any rate we'll get to experience it this September in the beta.

So everything was going great for Microsoft and proceedings then reached the point where I pondered whether they were about to wrap things up, when Microsoft unleashed something I was completely unprepared for. All of a sudden I was watching this strange but rather brilliant turn of events where Steven Spielberg was on stage talking about this wondrous new peripheral, the natal. Even trying to keep calm and critical I couldn't help but get excited over what Microsoft was showing. It wasn't just the motion capture aspect of it; it was also the voice and facial recognition features which really gave it some of its potential. Although I did think the somewhat controversial "Milo" scene was undoubtedly scripted in one way or another, I think that the basic concept of an interactive computer AI which works with the natal would be possible and very fun at that, even if not quite in the magical sci-fi way Microsoft presented it in.

The 1 thing I wish I could have seen on a Microsoft console that wasn't there was a Portal 2 or a Half-Life 2: Episode 3, instead Valve opted to showcase a Left 4 Dead 2. This'd be all well and fine but considering the latest series of Half-Life games are supposed to be episodic I think we're owed at least a glimpse at Episode 3 when Episode 2 was more than a year and a half ago.

EA & Ubisoft

So I knew the EA and Ubisoft conferences weren't going to be as big as the big three's but when EA's hit off it wasn't too bad. I'm far from being fanatic about anything in the EA Sports franchises but what they showed of Brutal Legend was very entertaining, The Saboteur was interesting in both art style and gameplay, there were some nice trailers here and there and all other content at least managed to hold my attention. Particularly the confusion of Gamespot users tuning into the live stream just as EA began showing everyone The Littlest Pet Shop game. It also seems like Mass Effect 2 is really a step up from its predecessor with much less of the technical issues and a darker story.

I wish I had something positive to say about the Ubisoft conference but sadly I feel like I gained little more than a 2 hour nap from watching the show. Granted it was pretty late when I watched but I was awake enough to properly take in what I was seeing and for E3 I was willing to sacrifice any amount of sleep if I got to see something good. But the only one thing in this conference which really interested me was James Cameron's lengthy talk on the universe of Avatar he and his team had created; apart from this the only other items of the conference which I really had any interest in were the showing of a very small amount of information about Red Steel 2, the announcement of No More Heroes 2 and to a certain extent the demo of Rabbids Go Home which seemed very Katamari-like to me and could be relatively fun. Most of the rest of the conference was filled with the same Splinter Cell content we saw in the Microsoft press conference, Academy of Champions which still seems like a bad football/Harry Potter crossover to me and a big presentation on games for casual gamers. I understand that Ubisoft are a company and like any company what they aim to do is make money, they are not simply here to entertain me, but while statistics of high profits and exploitable markets are all well and good for those in the business, they risk putting off potential supporters of their games by having a large chuck of their press conference dedicated to flaunting fitness titles and "tween games". Indeed at the time watching the Assassin's Creed trailer was good but it wasn't worth waiting through some of the rubbish that led up to it, when both the trailer and a full demo of the game were featured at the Sony press conference.

Nintendo

For Nintendo I was expecting something amazing. I was expecting to see some awesomely innovative new peripheral or some really inventive applications of the Wii Motion Plus. Sadly it transpired that there was no presentation of either of these things. The Wii Motion Plus however is still looking like it will modify the Wii motion controls in the way everybody wants and it looks like there are some genuinely fun mini-games in Wii Sports Resort, so I think I'll enjoy that when I get it. Nintendo's new peripheral, the Wii Vitality Sensor however seems decidedly set around a single idea and seems like the kind of thing that may be used for one fitness game and then simply die. We might get maybe a few games out of it if we're lucky but I can't see it being used for anything ground-breaking.

As for the games themselves I'm surprised that I wasn't more excited over New Super Mario Bros. Wii, although I think this was just due to the way it was presented, with the 4 players in a sort of competitive co-op platformer situation, but with what was broadcast from the show floor later I was able to remind myself "Yeah, this is still Mario and Mario is awesome". The Wii Fit Plus will undoubtedly be another big money-maker for Nintendo but I don't think it's really the game for me, out of the RPGs they showed there wasn't much that appealed to me apart from the new Mario & Luigi RPG, the new Mario vs. Donkey Kong looked kinda good with the same old gameplay and the level creator, I thought the microgame creator in Warioware seemed like a great feature and hopefully it will be as good a creative tool as they said it would be (seeing the music editor for it was a very promising start), however I was surprised to see no demo or even trailer of Zelda: Spirit Tracks during the conference, but what was on the show floor reassured me that it will be another solid Zelda title.

However the two major announcements for me were the announcements of Metroid: Other M and Super Mario Galaxy 2. As far as Nintendo games go Super Mario Galaxy 2 was the highlight of E3 for me and a second 3D Mario game for the Wii really took me by surprise, of course we only got a glimpse of it but the brief look seemed to give the impression of a game that has more of what we saw in Super Mario Galaxy (which was a phenomenal game in my opinion), mixed in with some fun new content... Called Yoshi. Metroid: Other M looked very different than any Metroid game before it, being less isolated and seeming like it was a game with a story much more driven by character interaction, but I think this will provide a refreshing take on the Metroid series and I'm very interested to see what Team Ninja can do alongside Nintendo on this game.

Sony

Now I don't have a PS3 or a PSP but I have to say that even I was reasonably impressed by what Sony had to offer. Of course with the numerous leaks this year the announcement of the PSP Go was hardly the most surprising event of the show but none the less there it was even if I wouldn't want to pay all that cash for the console.

The way the new Uncharted presented itself certainly seemed enticing, MAG looked quite exciting and unconventional even if you will need the world's best internet connection to play, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker looked okay but it could have done with a few more Snakes, Assassin's Creed 2 looked very good and fingers crossed this game will have more longevity than the original, Final Fantasy 14 Online was as much a surprise for me as it was to anyone but it none the less looked like another very good game, the trailer for The Last Guardian piqued my interest and had me slightly confused, I'm sure more Little Big Planet won't be a bad thing and the track editor in Mod Nation Racers did look absolutely awesome.

The big deal at the Sony press conference for me though was their motion control peripheral. No doubt an attempt to improve on Nintendo's Wiimote, but this kind of thing will be an essential if they wish to survive in the market and if applied to games properly it could (much like the natal) snap up some of those casual gamers that Nintendo have been hoarding all this time, although I do wonder about how well they'll be able to break into an area of the market Nintendo has themselves so deep-rooted in. However it didn't really hit me properly until some time after the Sony press conference that none of the motion control devices we saw at E3 are necessarily better than any other; there are advantages to having buttons on your controller and advantages to not having buttons on your controller, there are advantages to having a camera and advantages to having something in your hand. At the moment although I think I probably favour what Microsoft is doing if I have to choose, I see each company's motion control peripheral as an alternative to the others, not something that is necessarily inferior or superior.

Until Next Year...

It was sad to see E3 end this year but honestly I don't think I could have properly taken in any more information about all the insane games there. There were tons of great games, some interesting peripherals and overall a whole plethora of exciting, interesting, promising and just plain awesome things that we'll all have our grubby mits on some time in the future. I'd like to thank you very much for reading and I'll be writing again next year when hopefully we'll see more of what made E3 2009 so special.

-Gamer_152