Yes, I've noticed that I'm a horrible blogger, but now I know why: back when I used to write on this thing every few weeks or days, it was because I was busy not playing games! This will the final time I mention how much damn fun I've been having with my PS3, and even though recent holiday sales at numerous electronics stores have made me second-guess my timing, I don't actually regret buying my PS3 in April at $400 and my TV at quite a bit more, even though there's a PS3 with triple the HDD space for $50 less. The last six months have been insane game-wise and I really can't wait to see what 2010 delivers. I'm just gonna let my brain spew things for a while and I'm sure I'll miss things, but hey, whatever.

-I'm horrible at playing games I buy. I guess I got used to having to play a game in three days or read a book in a week when I was a kid, because despite the fact that there is no time limit with GameAccess.ca, I feel that I have to play a rented game and only that game until it's done. I bought inFamous in June, Bioshock in August and Uncharted 2 in October, and I've played those three for a combined total of maybe two or three hours, and that's just for inFamous: I've installed but not played Bioshock and I haven't even unwrappd UC2 yet! My 2 most recent rentals were Uncharted 1 and Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection, and I only rented SUGA for a fairly easy Platinum trophy because I was so disheartened with being unable to to it in Uncharted ('Crushing' difficulty in that game is a very appropriate name). But now I'm done with SUGA and the game I want next is on reserve, so I'm forcing myself to play games I actually own until it's available. Speaking of which...

-...Batman: Arkham Asylum is a contender for my personal "Best Game of 2009 That Was Actually Released in 2009." I remember downloading the demo and my friend and I must have played it five or six times before we both marched over to my computer to pre-order our own copies. It took three weeks after release for Future Shop to finally send mine, but it was worth the wait. I won't go too much into Arkham Asylum's awesomeness, but to relate to my previous point Batman was a game I actually had to make myself play: if I wasn't trying to get all the trophies in Uncharted, I was doing homework that I hated, and left Batman to languish but for the fact that two other friends were playing it at the same time and I wanted to talk about it with them. I played it in three chunks and just beat it a few days ago, and during my Christmas break from school I really want to go back and do all the Riddler challenges.

-I'm still a massive whore for music games. Guitar Heros Would Tour, Metallica, Smash Hits and 5 sit next to Rock Band 2 and The Beatles: Rock Band on the shelf, and at the moment I have eight megabytes short of six gigabytes of Rock Band downloadable content on my PS3 HDD. I love them, I love to feeling of playing them while feeling shamelessly pathetic, I love creating avatars of myself and my friends to play our favourite songs with, and they're also fairly generous with their Trophy support. I also fell in love with the PSP version; Rock Band: Unplugged is extremely fun and the Rock Band aesthetic makes a fairly dissimilar method of playing music familiar and fun. However, for the past two weeks there has been no downloadable content (444 MB and counting), and while I'm annoyed at Harmonix for stopping it what bugs me more is that they won't announce RBU's death. I understand why they would kill it off, and you hear the same argument every time an MMO's death is announced: it simply makes no sense to keep something going if there's no money being made in it. But even though I'd keep buying songs in RBU, if the quality of future DLC stays at the level it's been at maybe it should die. Just don't toy with us and announce it already, HMX.

-The Japanese Bayonetta demo is flat-out the most ludicrous demo I have ever played, and I'm certain I'll be buying it on Day 1. Yes, a good amount of it has to do wth the sexy protagonist, but the gameplay reminds me so much of God of War and Devil May Cry that I feel like it would be a horrible thing to miss this game. Besides, sexy female protagonists have made me play games before that I thought would be bad but turned out pretty good (P.N.03 for example).

-Prince of Persia: The Movie: The Game? What the hell is this? I personally loved the 2008 Prince of Persia and anyone who whines that not 'dying' made it too easy didn't get it: a game like PoP with insane acrobatics and landscapes flows a hell of a lot better if you aren't being forced to press "Restart" every fifteen seconds or, for that matter, if you're too afraid to try a jump because you've run out of sand, as I did so many times in The Sands of Time. The Two Thrones ended that story full circle, so what on earth could this be? Are they re-making The Sands of Time? Could it be an alternate sequel, ignoring Warrior Within? Whatever it is, I hope this is temporary and the story of the Nathan Drake Prince and Elika will continue at some point, even if it's another epilogue. Give those of us who actually like that game something, Ubisoft!

I like money, I like having it and I hate wasting it, as I have done all too often since opening an eBay account. Since finally joining the now-gen I'd figured I'd be buying more games, but I knew my wallet couldn't take it so renting was the real choice. And hearing so many good things about GameFly (mostly from X360 achievement whores) I decided to try it for myself, save one problem: GameFly is continental U.S. only. Before I really startikng digging around, I found GameAccess.ca completely by accident and immediately filled my queue with games I know I'd buy if I was a little less frugal. (Seriously, I spent almost what my PS3 and games cost on eBay crap last year. I really needed to reel it in.) First arrival was Dead Space, and playing the first two chapters and jumping out of my chair yelling when my cat nuzzled my leg was enough to convince me to buy it outright. Despite what some pessimistic Aussie might say, Dead Space was really fun, scary as f&(% and a game I'm glad I bought. Two games (Call of Duty 5 and Prince of Persia) later, I declare the experiment a success.

Not that it's been flawless. I want to rent some things because buying them outright would be stupid, like Guitar Hero Smash Hits. I've made good buys in Orange Box and inFamous, but I abolutely refused to even look at GHSH prices online. However, when I found myself in a Videotron/Microplay searching for a used copy of Burnout Paradise, I saw SH on the shelf and gave in. The guy working that day turned out to be a friend I had not seen in months and months, and we must've talked for almost an hour when he wasn't serving other customers. I tried resisted that purple box's siren call, but GameAccess had no copies and I knew there wouldn't be many people playing it online by the time I received it. I became extremely pissed later when I discovered that my Rock Band drums don't work with it. They work with World Tour and Metallica, so why not Smash Hits? What The F**K Activision? But I digress.

(EDIT 7/14/2009: My RB1 drums DO work. I realized the problem: when I tried them the first time, the drums were automatically assigned to slot 7 on the PS3. Why do all my music game peripherals get assigned to 7 when pretty much every game only recognize up to slot 4? Geez. Well, at least I didn't go out and buy GHWT drums only to discover this afterward, huh?)

I've sadly also become a trophy whore. I don't have any platinums yet, but I actually seek out games that have easy trophy accomplishments and look up how to get simple or obscure ones, going so far as to reset Prince of Persia a couple dozen times to ensure I got the Speed Demon and No Time to Waste trophies. But I'm not a complete slave to "the system": I can't push myself beyond what I'm capable of and I know it. For example, World at War has numerous (bronze) trophies for finishing each mission on Veteran (expert) difficulty, and the only reason I ever played Veteran was to get the Purple Heart trophy, which is essentially the 'die 20 times without quitting' award. That's also the biggest reason I caved to GHSH: easy trophies for winning online matches, but not close to worth the $60 I paid. Why didn't I just go back to RE5? I dunno.

GameAccess has one quirk that so far has bugged me: the game they send is practically random. They have you set up a ranked list, the ranking being the game you'd prefer to receive next. My first rental was Dead Space, and it was #1 at the time, as was Call of Duty, but the next game after WaW I was sent was Prince of Persia, which I think had been at #6. Two weeks and some $10 DLC later I've decided that getting sent PoP wasn't so bad, but now I've been sent Far Cry 2, which was #7 out of 11! There was some malarky on their front sign-in page about the 'Game Reserve' feature 'increasing your odds,' and maybe an extra $2 a month wouldn't be so bad, but on top of the $17.95 per month and the $4 for the "Fast Return" feature I feel slightly like I'm being milked here, which is ironic because the entire reason I rent is so I don't have to be milked at retail if I wanna play ten game this summer instead of two. But why bother having rankings if I have to shell out an extra two bucks to ensure that the game in my #1 slot is the game I receive? Maybe I'll be singing a different tune if Far Cry 2 turns out good, but if the game after that isn't Ghostbusters or Terminator Salvation (nothing but Gold trophies in the latter) I'll be making an angry phone call or two.

And that's how you all know I'm still alive. (...Aperture Science, we do what we must because we can...)

No updates for months at a time? Makes sense, considering my emotional state, school workload and the fact that I had nothing to say about games I had no chance of playing or owning. Well, that era is over and I have officially joined the current gen:

The Playstation 3 is finally mine, the most expensive birthday present I've ever received, but the game library will have to come slowly. I'd forgotten just how bloody expensive games are! I suppose rental is the way to go, but knowing me I'll be blowing a lot of money on Rock Band DLC in the coming weeks when I'm not playing RE5 or the soon-to-be-acquired MGS4. I have other games in mind: Dead Space, CoD4, Fallout 3, NHL 09, and who knows what else. I also wish I'd bought that $15 copy of The Orange Box I saw earlier, but I didn't have my $20 gift card on me. I hope it's still there next week.

PSN ID (add me): T-Prime85

Today 1UP.com was sold to UGO by Ziff Davis and all signs point to it being an empty shell of its former self. Most of my favourite 1UP personalities were let go and it looks like all of the podcasts are dead in the water, something that I have a hard time with. 1UP Yours was the bedrock of my Friday nights for almost three years and now it's gone, which is doubly painful when I realize how ironic the last show was, looking forward to 2009, promising to be back and Shane proclaiming an "epic" show for CES. No more Shane, Skip, Ryan, Milky, Philip, Chuff, Fitch and everyone else...I know they're just voices on the internet that have never actually been next to me, but I loved those guys. Sam Kennedy is trying to put a brave face on it, but really, it's no more. EGM has been disconnected from the life-support it's been on for some time, but how do they think they're "going to continue to work [their] hardest to make 1UP the best site it can be and to produce the very best content [they] can" without any audio or video shows? I could really care less about the business side of it all, and I somewhat understand the need to trim the fat in some areas, but to gut the best staff and destroy the only things that made the site worthwhile? Shame on you, UGO. Shame on you as well, Ziff-Davis.

R.I.P. 1UP.com.

This isn't exactly a "been gone for two months" blog: I hope to do one soon enough, because plenty has happened in that intervening period. No, today I will share some very recent heartache, some that I hope by sharing will lift me just a little. Where to start? At the beginning, I suppose.

There's a girl I've worked with for a year and a half and had a crush on forever, but because I don't have a spine or a stomach I never asked her out. We made out once at a Christmas party (we were both tipsy, but not drunk) and I told her somewhat how I felt, but neither of us ever followed up. She'd just ended a long-term relationship and I'm a long-time loner, so nothing was gonna happen. In the last couple of months (coinciding perfectly with my dead blogging habits, now that I think about it) I've seen her more, be it on the way to school, more shifts at work together, and random run-ins. I even asked for her help with a class she'd gotten A+ in last year, but when I say I have no spine, I mean it: just knowing she had no boyfriend made me stutter around her. I exude confidence and am always "on my game" if I know a girl is taken, so the fact that I could have a simple conversation with her without feeling like a complete idiot is a big deal to me. (An aside: I've gotten all my 'firsts:' flirting, kiss, sex, dirty phone calls, etc. Thing is, in that case it was her who did all the work, and I just went along with it. It worked out fine while it lasted, so I'm not speaking as a total rookie here). Thing is, when we're working together I feel nothing but platonic towards her: she's very pretty, has great hair and a killer butt, but I feel nothing more in those three to five hours. However, moments after departing work, all my thoughts turn to her. They're envious and jealous feelings, and I've known for a long time that I was out of the running. Since she so easily had to go get birth-control pills when we were hanging out one time, and "What if I meet someone tomorrow?" was her response when I asked her if she had to do it 'now,' I took the hint. I tried to distance myself by not walking her partway home after work, but even then she was still officially single. Well, now that's over.

The first hint I got was when I saw her Facebook status updated several days ago as "X is finally happy," which made my stomach turn, and throughout tonight she was constantly on her cellphone, talking in a tender, whispering voice. My boss said to her that he's "happy for her," and just an hour ago I saw that she'd changed her Facebook profle picture and relationship status after both have been stagnant for over a year, which is always a sign of things. The worst part, I feel, is that she looked right through me. I know, I know, I should've been more assertive, but I'm not a big party guy and I guess I'm wired wrong or something, due to TV and my previous relationships. Still, she rejects me and starts doing the freaknasty with some motherf***er she's known a month and gets wasted with in some shed until dawn. I don't know him, I've never met him and his Facebook profile is set to private, and God that makes me angry, and I have the sore knuckles, dented walls, shivers, loose keyboard buttons and noose-building instructions to prove it. But I'm not suicidal: that's no fun. So instead I bought fresh headphones because I'm going to wear out the ones I'm using playing these break-up songs far too loudly:

Daughtry - Over You
Bob Marley - No Woman, No Cry
Cutting Crew - (I Just) Died in Your Arms Tonight
The Police - Every Breath You Take
Three Days Grace - (I Hate) Everything About You
Puddle of Mudd - She (F***ing) Hates Me
Simple Plan - Your Love is a Lie
New Found Glory - My Friends Over You (this one describes me perfectly at the moment)
Tom Petty - You Don't Know How It Feels
Fleetwood Mac - Go Your Own Way
Simon & Garfunkel - I Am a Rock ("a rock feels no pain, and an island never cries")
Gin Blossoms - Found Out About You
Ben Folds Five - Song for the Dumped
Linkin Park - In the End
Disturbed - Stricken
Ratt - Round and Round
The Offspring - Self Esteem
Weezer - Perfect Situation (also perfect for my situation)
Bon Jovi - You Give Love a Bad Name
Green Day - Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Adam Sandler - Somebody Kill Me
J. Geils Band - Love Stinks
Louis Armstrong - What a Wonderful World (I need something to pick me up, don't I?)

Depressing and angry songs that make me feel better, and I've also deleted a whole lot of songs that remind me of her from my iPod. (If I ever hear "Mr. Brightside" again, I will kill myself.) I know my anger shouldn't be directed at her, but what can I say? It's totally wrong but I do partly blame her, and rational thought and red-hot emotion do not mix. I just don't want to feel worse.

I keep wanting to say "I hope you die, you b!tch" in my head, but how can I? I think I can still consider her a friend. Besides, I know this whole thing is my fault: I just could never tell her how I really felt, if I did indeed feel that way and didn't just want to make out and touch her boobs again, which is a definite possibility, but either way I've officially blown it. However, this is likely a good thing; now that she finally has a boyfriend maybe I won't be such a nervous wreck around her when we work together again, like with all the other girls. Still, this is really gonna suck for a while.

I hate feeling emo, but writing all of this has helped me feel a bit better, so a big thank you to whoever reads this. (***personal obligatory game reference, being Gamespot and all***) Before blogging, not even my two new Rock Band Track Packs helped me feel better; forget black, I'm back in blue at the moment.

Final Fantasy III. Illusion of Gaia. Chrono Trigger.

I've seen each of these games go for $100+ on eBay a number of times, so I really considered it a joke when I make my first triple-digit maximum bid six days ago. "There's no way all three of these games bundled are going to fetch less than $100! It has six days to climb! This'll be fun to watch!" I thought to myself. And now? I'm stuck with a $86 U.S. Paypal charge.

I guess I won't be buying Chrono Trigger DS now!

I've been legally eligible for a credit card for over five years but I just recently applied for and received my first one, and my recent mail deluge has reminded me why I waited so long: easily spending money + myself = rich eBay sellers + red numbers. I've grabbed the following games from EB and off of eBay in the past three weeks -

-Goldeneye
-Resident Evil 2 (N64)
-Perfect Dark
-Donkey Kong Country
-Donkey Kong Country 2
-Aladdin (SNES)
-Super Castlevania IV
-NHL Stanley Cup
-Mortal Kombat II (SNES)
-Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey
-Mega Man Maverick Hunter X
-5 empty PSP cases and 4 empty PS2 cases

After I bought those last three I realized I had to stop, because it's just far too easy to spend too much money. I mean, two old hockey games and a remake of a game I never played? WTF was I thinking? (And then there's the Chrono Trigger bid I lost by 1 cent.) I knew I was dangerous for years and my first credit card statement has confirmed this. That tingly feeling when the mail arrives be damned, I can't keep doing this. I think my SNES and N64 collections are complete enough for now.

Kotaku
Gamespot

The gist of it: Sony has hammered out deals with Activision, Harmonix and Konami so that the instruments for any one forthcoming music game will be compatible with the other two. You only have to buy Rock Band 2 in order to play Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Revolution (not that anyone will).

I am extremely relieved to hear that someone at Sony has been paying attention to the collective bemoaning of us wannabe rockers and not just to the sounds of cash registers going off in their heads. I was dreading late October because of the prospect of having to spend upwards of $400 on fake instruments, and the sad thing is that if this annoucement had never come I actually might have done so. I hope compatibility with current PS2/PS3 Rock Band instruments gets hammered out in time as well, and I will actually be living on a prayer until it is.

I've been through 4 GameSpot layouts, and they always suck initially. Yes, it looks almost exactly like the Giant Bomb site design (which I'm no a fan of) so I switched to the "light" theme, which makes it look quite a bit nicer and swaps yellow text with orange. I liked the previous design just fine, but I'll live, and so will all the complainers.

EDIT: There appears to be a blog-posting problem. I tried posting this blog twice, only for it to say that "topic already exists." However, there were no such topics and I ended up with a duplicate blog; strange. I hope that gets ironed out.

I have a great fondness for rhythm games and 1980's Time Life infomercials, so Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s was really a no-brainer for me. The fun-as-ever gameplay is identical to Guitar Hero II and there's nothing new in terms of game modes, and yes it was expensive when it came out, but GH: 80s is still a blast.

First of all, if you're not one for Guitar Hero in any of its forms, this game is not going to change your mind. Guitar Hero as a series has always been about playing music with a guitar-shaped peripheral controller, and GH: 80s is just more of that with a fluorescent filter poured over everything. The visuals in this game pretty much equal a re-skinned Guitar Hero II: there are lots of hot pinks, bright yellows and sky blues in place of reds, darker yellows and dark blues in the menus, and all the selectable characters have a distinct 80s flavor to their clothing, from Judy Nails' big hair and Axel Steel's bling to Johnny Napalm's skater outfit and The Grim Ripper's red-and-blue 3-D glasses. These things are really for people who are already fans, so again, do not make Encore your first foray into the music-genre field.

GH: 80s is essentially a disc-based expansion for Guitar Hero II: more songs, different outfits, changed backgrounds and that's it, nothing else new. In fact, because this isn't a completely new game, quite a few things have been removed. For one, there are only six characters to choose from: Johnny Napalm, Judy Nails, Izzy Sparks, Pandora, Axel Steel, and The Grim Ripper. They've also removed the RedOctane Club and Stonehenge stages from Guitar Hero II as well as changing the anachronistic Vans Warped Tour to the "Rock For Safety Tour." But GH: 80s keeps all of the good stuff from GH II as well: easy hammer-ons and pull-offs, practice mode, more multiplayer modes and detailed post-song breakdown.

However, to many people all of that is moot, because the music selection is pretty much top-notch. It operates the same way as GHII in that there are 30 songs split into 6 groups of 5 songs each once they are all unlocked, and again considering that it's safe to assume that most people who pick up this game will have little-to-no guitar playing experience the designers tried to make a lot of the music recognizable, while also keeping with the Harmonix tradition of having lesser-known and more obscure songs that still rock anyway. Ask any group of people to try to squeeze an entire decade of music into only 30 songs (no bonus songs this time, unfortunately) and there's a good chance pop/rock songs like A Flock of Seagulls' "I Ran (So Far Away)," Asia's "Heat of the Moment" and The Vapors' "Turning Japanese" would end up in it, only to be plopped right next to heavier stuff like Accept's "Balls to the Wall," Dio's "Holy Diver" and Judas Priest's "Electric Eye." But Harmonix went even deeper into obscurity this time, scraping up songs like "Only a Lad" by Oingo Boingo (who?) and "Because It's Midnite" by Limozeen, a fictional hair metal parody band from the Internet flash series Homestar Runner.

The thing to understand about the music selection is that is belongs squarely in the 1980s. There were '80s songs in GH 1 and 2 (and then subsequently in 3 and Aerosmith), but those songs were much more timeless, whereas songs like "The Warrior," as incredibly fun as it is to play, could never be gotten away with on contemporary music charts. There is simply no pleasing a wide audience when a game tries to represent such a rich musical era into a setlist that can initially be burned through in a few hours, so Harmonix instead decided to choose music that would work with the "guitar" part of Guitar Hero regardless of a given song's popularity. And for additionally snooty music aficionados, there are a total of five master tracks; while I am of the school of thought that covers are no big deal and a player can have fun with a song regardless of it being "real," playing the authentic version of "I Ran (So Far Away)" does make it seem that much more satisfying. As for the rest of the music, it is mostly superb cover musicians with a few oddities here and there: "18 and Life" and "No One Like You" sound spot-on, "(Band Your Head) Metal Health" strangely omits a guitar solo and, scarily enough, "I Wanna Rock" is not a cover, but a re-recording from the real Twisted Sister and it sounds awful.

If you practice your finger-tapping well into the night and watch late-night infomercials with LimeWire open so you can "relive the memories," Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s is probably the game for you. And not to beat a dead horse, but GH: 80s is for music game fans only. Don't bother if you're not already into them.

Final score: 9.0 (I score what games are, not what they should be)

Being the jaded, mean-spirited cynic that I am, I can't help but shake my head at the headline "Wii nears 30M, DS slumps in Japan." I can't say I blame Mr. Brendan Sinclair for his choice of words because after all, I think most people laughed at the Wii's potential pre-launch prospects and are still recovering from the massive surprise and ego-bruising that Nintendo's sales figures have inflicted, but to cla$$ify Nintendo selling 6.94 million DS units worldwide as "slumping" compared to the previous year's 6.98 million means that Nintendo's consistent brainwashing of "look how awesome we are" is working on us, and without the rest of the sentence, "here're some games your don't want but we'll shove down your throat anyway." With 77,540,000 DS units sold worldwide, Nintendo execs can wipe themselves with cash at this point.

All of this only makes me sad that I don't like Nintendo anymore. I would have loved it if somehow they could have been this successful last gen, when they hadn't yet completely altered their market approach. I know the Game Boy Advance sold 81.24 million units across all iterations (according to Nintendo of Japan), yet the GameCube (my favourite system ever) only ever hit 21.74 million units worldwide in its lifetime, with 12.94 million in the Americas and 4.04 million in Japan. Think about that for a moment: 21,740,000 units over a course of roughly six years, or about 300,000 per month, in the entire world. In only about twenty months, the Wii has demolished the Cube's sales figures, going for 29.62 million units worldwide, with 13.11 in the Americas and 6.43 million in Japan. Wii's already sold 60% better in Japan than the Cube could ever muster, and that makes me angry, because who do these people ("casuals" and "others") think they are trying to steal my favourite pastime?

But I should restrain myself, because I'm certain there appears to be room for co-existence in both spheres: I see no reason why games like Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin and Metroid Prime 3 can't share shelf/heart/mind space with My Life Coach and Wii Fit, but the problem is that Nintendo doesn't care and probably won't ever again. To put an analogy forth, "hardcore" games are the children's fingerprint painting to Nintendo's work-weary parent: they see them and smile and nod encouragingly to the child (in this case, the developers and us) and hang them on the fridge, only to cover them up or replace them with their more important newspaper clippings of cheap and casual games. They don't push those "old sty-le" games because they can't: they KNOW they've abandoned us but can't possibly bear to say it because if they do, what they've built could possibly come crashing down like Gotham City's hope in Harvey Dent.

I'm too dejected to continue. Enjoy Soul Calibur IV, everybody, even though I still haven't mastered II.

-Nintendo sales figures (in .pdf format)
-Ctrl-Alt-Del 7/21/2008 (where I stole this blog's title from)

Monday, July 14, 2008, 12:44 PM: After another long night of useless web browsing, music downloading and PSP tinkering, I rose from my summer slumber and proceeded to my PC to watch Microsoft's E3 press conference live. I press the Power On button, and...nothing.

After weeks and weeks of having to leave my PC on standby/sleep mode because it took 45 minutes to boot if shut down, my Frankenstein's monster of a computer had finally died a sputtering death. The tower itself was at least seven years old (there were two stampings dated Dec. 24, 1999 on the inside), and the guts were a smash-together of obsolete-but-good-enough parts that just couldn't work together well enough for long. I smirked at myself because even hough I knew this moment was coming for some time, it just HAD to happen the Monday before E3. Desperate for some form of news, I turned to a source I'd never bothered checking, but desperate times call for desperate measures:

That's right, I was forced to keep up with E3 via my PSP, and it was not easy. Even standing right next to my router, most pages loaded so slowly that it was like going back to dial-up, and then there's the big problem of pages scaling to fit the screen; even if I changed the settings and text size, most pages either squished everything together into an intangible mess or broke the page in question into numerous vertical sections that were displayed one after another. Surfing on the PSP is frustrating, near-broken and not much fun.

But it wasn't all bad. In my search of acceptable sites I went to Joystiq, and lo-and-behold that site has a text-only "Joystiq Mobile" version that I assume detected my PSP browser and directed me accordingly. It is thanks to JS that I learned of all the comings-out from "teh w0r$t eTHree EVAR," from FF XIII being confirmed for 360 and the PS3's 80GB model getting gimped to the not-ending-anytime-soon battle between Guitar Hero World Tour and Rock Band 2 and Nintendo just plain sucking. (It was also slightly chuckle-inducing to read about the PSP's "problems" from a PSP itself; as far as I'm concerned, it's a nice handheld with some decent games and more capabilities than 95% of PSP owners realize.) I did mange to grab my sister's laptop briefly on two occasions and saw some LittleBigPlanet and Madden '09 footage, hence my shiny new emblem:

I missed the press conference emblems this year, but considering I missed this one last year, it all evens out for me.

With a functional iPod but no PC to plug it into, I had to get my numerous podcasts some other way, and so I also discovered the wonderful world of RSS feeds. After a few patience-testing loadings, I had feeds from all of 1UP Radio, the Giant Bombcast (http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/T_Prime, btw) and ESPN, and I have to say, lugging my PSP around just so I could listen to the three (3!) hour poolside 1UP Yours wasn't as huge an annoyance as I thought it would be. The PSP doesn't remember a podcast's playback position, though, and nothing could top my two-year-old iPod Nano's comfort, but it wasn't all bad. I won't be going back to it anytime soon, though.

And then there's the browser navigation. The nub acts like a mouse to the cursor, scrolling is made easier by holding down Square and pressing the D-Pad, and Triangle brings up the browser menu, such as "Address Entry" and "Close Page" (which you can also do by pressing O). Text entry works very much like cell phone texting with twelve on-screen "buttons" containing letters like on a phone's keypad, which (while annoying) is much easier than the on-screen QWERTY keyboard I remember seeing in some old mock-ups.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008, 10:38 PM: Proceeding to the basement to turn on the wireless router and maybe play some Okami, I find my new rig sitting in the POS' place. My mother's friend takes his time, but it's worth it when he's done. And I'm back. You might not care, but I certainly do.

"God of War II delivers on all levels, improves on the first game in many bloody ways and is a creation of genius"

God of War II is an incredible example of improving on the first game while not drastically altering gameplay in any major way. The main gameplay elements of visceral combat and challenging-but-not-difficult puzzle solving are just as present as before, but the fact that they feel so much better than the first game make God of War II a game for the ages.

GoW II picks up from the end of the first game: you are Kratos, the ashen-white, bloodthirsty Spartan warrior who has recently deposed Olympian god Ares to become the God of War. The main story involves Kratos' tactics becoming so brutal that the Olympian gods send him back to earth as a mortal again, trick him into giving up his godly powers and almost send him into Hades. Showing up to save Kratos is the titan Gaia, who then informs Kratos that he must seek out the destiny-controlling Sisters of Fate, a feat no mortal has ever come close to accomplishing. If you played the first God of War, the premise should seem similar in that Kratos must journey further and achieve something more difficult than anyone before him, while along the way encountering many characters and creatures from Greek mythology. And how do you manage to do this? By destroying, maiming and tearing apart everything that moves!

The combat remains almost identical to that of the first game. You press X and Triangle to use Kratos' chain-blades and other weapons, but when enemies swarm upon you constantly you can mash buttons for only so long before you have to start learning how to avoid attack patterns and use numerous combos. But for all the things that remain the same, much has changed in God of War II. One addition to GoW II is the presence of sub-weapons, either a giant hammer or large spear, that Kratos can use instead of his Blades of Athena, but much like the previous game you'll pretty much only need the blades and nothing else. There are also new spells this time around, with long-range attack Typhon's Bane (renamed from Zeus' Fury) and enemy-freezing Head of Euryale (renamed from Medusa's Gaze) being joined by Cronos' Rage, a multi-targeting electric attack that will likely be your most-used magic attack, and Atlas Quake, a wide-area ground-pounding attack. The Rage of the Gods also returns as Rage of the Titans and works the same by pressing L3 + R3, except that you can manually stop using it before your meter drains.

Kratos can also use a hookshot-type item to swing from certain areas using the R1 button as well as being able to fly (glide, actually) later in the game. The button-mashing-in-correct-sequence quicktime events return, and ripping out a cyclops' eye or a medusa's head feels just that much more satisfying after hitting a four-button, two-stick combo. There is one place they're even more welcome: opening doors. In God of War, you had to mash R1 to open a door, but in GoW II you have to press R1 and then mash O repeatedly, which is much easier on the hands but can still get extremely annoying when there is an army of skeletons trying to kill you as the spiked roof not-so-slowly collapses upon your head. The other little changes that were made were for the better: you can press X to have Kratos move up ladders now in addition to walls, you can jump down walls as well as up, blocking an enemy's attack with L1 can send the attack back at said enemy if timed right (which comes in extremely handy in later boss battles), and in certain areas you can even stop time for a few seconds, with your time left being shown as a yellow bar below your green health meter and blue magic meter, replacing the red "orb count" meter. You still collect a ludicrous amount of red orbs to upgrade your weapons and spells, though; I got so many from enemies and chests that all spells and but one weapon were at max level by the final battle.

One completely new element in GoW II are the two flight sections early in the game in which Kratos pilots a Pegasus in his journey to the Isle of Fates. Neither lasts too long, but long enough for you to have to fight airborne enemies, dodge fire in slow motion and jump onto an enemy gryphon and quicktime-event particular annoying enemies, all while careening through the darkened sky, and also while avoiding stalactites and beams in the cavern level.

For a PS2 game, God of War II looks absolutely insane. Sony's Santa Monica studio completely tapped the well dry with this game: the varying environments from the snowy mountains and titanic caves to decrepit swamps and sweltering volcanoes are mouth-gapingly gorgeous, and the game isn't afraid to zoom in on the architecture, enemies and characters because they can stand up to very close scrutiny and still look remarkable. Even that there are no load screens save for two or three is amazing because even the hallways Kratos has to run down to disguise them look amazing. The art direction and amount of polish in GoW II is second to none.

Overall, GoW II delivers on all levels. It contains all the things people play games for: gruesomely satisfying combat, simple yet ingenious puzzles, an engaging story and the desire to keep going because everything is just so good. And the best part is that there's so much of it: depending on how much exploring and fighting your do, the game could last from nine to twelve hours the first time through, and there are numerous unlockables and extra modes after the game's completion. There's even a bonus DVD that chronicles the making of the game, and contains many things from interviews and behind-the-scenes meetings to looks at lost levels and voice recording sessions, just to name a few. Whether or not you played the first game, or whether or not you even own a Playstation 2, you absolutely owe it to yourself to play God of War II because it truly is a quintessential video game and should not be missed.

Final score: 10.0

After failing to find it at both Future Shop AND Best Buy (despite their most recent fliers stating the contrary), I found a copy of Guitar Hero: On Tour at the "other" EB Games I go to, and while I can't post photos or video of myself talking to an imagined audience like some of you can, I can still give my impressions. After opening the box and discovering the little DS game case and GH stickers, my primary concern was modding the guitar grip so I can play it on my DS Original. Two too-large screwdrivers and a box cutter later, I was ready to go nuts.

First, the grip itself. It feels very nice to hold on its own, and the stylus-pick is also cool (if not a bit tacky). I had to adjust the strap several times before I got it feeling comfortable in my hand, and the buttons feel a bit too small, like the solo buttons on the Rock Band guitar. Even so, it's impressive that they could pull this off so relatively well.

As for the actual game itself, well...it's Guitar Hero. I made the mistake of jumping to Hard mode right away, because even with no orange button this game is no slouch. Maybe I just suck at strumming so far (which has to be right-on on the touch-screen strings), but the window for hitting notes feels like the first Guitar Hero: there's very little time. Also, because of the angle I have to hold the DS at to keep my hand from cramping, I have to tilt the top screen all the way back to fully see the notes. The visuals are pretty good for DS: lower than on PS2, but I'd still recognize Judy and Axel anywhere. The audio quality is rather superior, as well: put on some headphones and you might think you've got an MP3 player going. The quality is good enough for me to realize that the version of Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It" is a re-recording and re-affirmed my notion that "All the Small Things" is blink-182's best song.

I hope to have more impressions once I stop sucking at this game so much.

Source

Man Buried by Manga Discovered Dead After Quake
37-year-old company worker had stacked books two meters high in his room

Miyagi Prefectural Police officials in northeastern Japan have announced on Monday that they discovered a man dead in his apartment underneath several hundred manga volumes and magazines. They are investigating the cause of death and whether the 37-year-old male company employee is another casualty of last week's earthquake in Miyagi.

According to the investigation, the man's co-workers visited his apartment in Sendai City's Aoba Ward at around 9:00 p.m. on June 14 after he failed to appear at work. (The magnitude-6.8 earthquake occurred at 8:43 a.m. that day and caused 10 confirmed deaths so far.) The officials say that the man stacked books two meters (about six feet) high throughout his entire room. They consider it possible that the books fell on top of the man's chest and abdomen and thus prevented him from breathing. However, a June 15 autopsy was inconclusive, which left open the possibility that the man's death was unrelated to the earthquake.

I like(d) manga somewhat, but to have so much that it could potentially crush me? That's a fan for you.

In gaming updates, I've completed God of War II and I'm not sure what to do next; maybe I'll start Okami over from the beginning. Also, I really, really, REALLY hope this "neck slide" stuff rumoured about Guitar Hero IV is fake, but if it's true then I hope I don't need the newest peripheral guitar to play it because I'm sick of fake instruments and Activision's almost pathetic need to show up Rock Band in every way they think people want. I do NOT want that in what is supposed to be a simple pick-up-and-play game, so at least make my one of my three PS2 guitars work with your game, Activision.

The time known as
.

So with the Red Wings capping the NHL season and with me still PS3-less and therefore not having GTA IV or MGS 4 to distract me, I've taken to slowly whittling through my infuriatingly-large backlog and currently find myself on God of War II, which looks to be my Game of The Year so far. I had to stop playing Tomb Raider Anniversary because: a) Lara is too distracting, b) the area I'm stuck at is too reminiscent of the Water Temple, and c) I want to finish GoW II before finally digging into Chains of Olympus. I also want to at least finish either Okami or Final Fantasy X before the end of August, and considering how often I work and get distracted by Guitar Hero and Rock Band, actually setting aside serious gaming time is not nearly as easy as I'd like it to be. And that's not to mention that too new Guitar Heros and the Rock Band Tack Pack all come out within the next five weeks; if I don't get my game on now, who knows when I'll get some good Zeus-vengeance next?

1. Rent/buy game you're interested in.

2. Play said game for X amount of time.

3. Form your own opinion of game based on said experience.

4. Check reviews online to see if any chuckleheads agree with you, and if they don't, you shouldn't care because you loved/hated it all on your own!

I've had more than one game ruined for myself because I stupidly checked a score before playing a game and tainted the game(s) for myself, which led to me not really caring what any reviewer has to say. We wouldn't have lost so many good people in The Great Post-Jeff Purge of '07 (September_Grey, ZebethOrZebes, str1, GirlUntold) if people didn't look to places like GS for scores so much. Even so, that was the hardest friend list cleaning I've ever done.

"Exception to the FPS rule"

I don't play many first-person shooters, but XIII (thirteen) is an exception to the rule of space marines and alien hunters. I received it as a gift several months ago and let it sit on my shelf until I had the idea to dust it off, and I'm glad I did. Tight controls, a gripping story and an incredibly stylish look make XIII stand out from the pack.

XIII is based on a Belgian comic book that began in the mid-1980s, and Ubisoft took that "comic book" feel and translated it onto the screen in a unique way. The game is cell-shaded and tries to look like a comic-book in motion, with pop-up windows, enemy conversations in speech bubbles and visible sound effects ranging from "Kaboom!" to an enemy's footsteps as "tap tap tap". Despite the real-world locations and enemies, there is always a level of slight ridiculousness to the entire thing even as enemies are shooting you from every which direction and your health is plummeting and you're forced to stop staring at the scenery and pop caps in everyone around you.

Speaking of which, the PS2 controls are exquisitely mapped, almost to the point of being the FPS control scheme by which all others should be measured: left thumbstick to move, right to rotate camera, Square and Circle to cycle through your weapons, left and right to cycle through your non-weapon items (medkit, lockpick, etc.), X to perform actions such as opening doors and grabbing NPCs as well as reloading weapons, L1 to jump, L2 to duck, R1 to fire weapons and R2 to use a weapon's alt. fire mode (such as firing grenades or zooming in with a sniper rifle or cross bow). After five minutes these controls felt like second nature, minus to occasional annoyance when I would cycle through my weapons too quickly and get killed by a sniper before getting my own sniper rifle out.

The story represents something we see often in movies and books but very little these days in games: a good old political conspiracy and the only person who can crack it is an amnesiac. The original comic was heavily influenced by The Bourne Identity novel and the game doesn't really try to distance itself from that idea. The game begins with a man being woken up on a beach by a lifeguard and the man can hardly walk straight, never mind remember who he is or why he has the Roman numeral XIII tattooed on his torso. But within minutes dozens of armed men storm the lifeguard's hut, and even without a name XIII can take them down, all of which serves as the game's tutorial stages.

As it turns out, U.S. President William Sheridan has recently been assassinated and the man wanted for his murder is Steve Rowland. The problem is that YOU are told you are Steve Rowland, only the memories don't fit. After being arrested by the FBI but before being allowed to make any sense of what is happening, XIII gets rescued by Jones, a tough solider who knows XIII is innocent because she knew him before the amnesia and has been working with him to expose the conspiracy behind Sheridan's murder with the aid of one General Carrington. With Jones' help, XIII sets off to piece together his past as well as exposing the network known as The XX. The story is solid and flows very well, but be warned: as was the tendency of many games, movies and TV shows in the early 2000s, XIII doesn't actually end and the discovery you make right before the badly-placed "to be continued" is a huge kick in the privates and will likely leave you steaming, more so because no sequel has ever come out and likely never will come out.

The game is broken down into 30+ levels spread over 13 missions, and covers such expected but not unwelcome areas such as apartment buildings, a snowy military base, a mental hospital and a nuclear missile silo. Given the constant need to restart at previous checkpoints rather often (of which there are plenty, happily enough) I'd say it took me maybe nine or ten hours to get through XIII on the lowest difficulty setting. The actual music evokes mystery and tension masterfully, but if there's anything negative about this game, it's the voice acting. David Duchovny, Eve and Adam West all do fine jobs as XIII, Jones and General Carrington, respectively, but why get known actors at all? Studio voices would have done just fine, even more in this case because Duchovny and West just can't disassociate their voices with Mulder and Batman. Perhaps Ubisoft should have used the money hiring them to polish their AI instead, because even as tight as enemies' smarts can be, every so often there will be a soldier or two who will run past you to check on a fallen comrade as you fire a shotgun into his gut, or the patrolling sentry who doesn't notice that his partner twelve feet to his left just got hit in the head with a crossbow bolt and will continue not noticing because the body isn't on his very strict path.

Overall XIII is a rather superb game. It falls down in a few places, but it is so easy to and so worth the while to help itself pick itself up that if you ever get the chance, give XIII a whirl. If you don't enjoy good controls, a suspenseful story and an oozing sty-le then you just hate good, well-built video games.

Final score - 8.5