I am now officially registered on the Playstation Network. My name isn't actually Goliath though (although it might have been, had I thought of it earlyer), it's really Blaine. I've been pondering for months now trying to come up with coolest name but, when the time came, I was left dumbfounded. My first choice would have been Roland (from the Dark Tower series of books... go read it now!), but it was taken, so I just wrote the second name I could think of from the books. Blaine the Mono 's the full name, and he doesn't play foolish games!

It's funny story time folks: here's why it took me so long to get online. Last weekend I tried to connect my PS3 to my router, but whenever I would connect the wire, either the PS3 or my computer would tell me it could not detect a connection. Finally I gave up and didn't try again until today. I found the problem quickly enough. Long story short, the wires behind my computer are mostly hidden and are in a big mess, and it turns out both the wires from my computer to the router and from my PS3 to the router are the same color! So, whenever I thought my PS3 was plugged in, the other end was lying on the floor, and when I unplugged my "PS3" from the router, I was really unplugging my computer! Well, now both my computer and my baby --uhh, my PS3 I mean!-- are plugged-in and online. I've been playing resistance online and, although I am far from being the worse one on there, I have a lot of catching up to do!

Ya, I got a PS3 last wednesday, and I've been so busy playing I haven't written about it yet. I got it with Resistance, and the game is awesome! The graphics are surreal, the gameplay is smooth, and the arsenal is possibly the most diverse, original and useful I've ever played with. Wait... What's that? You want me to tell you how I got my PS3? Well, ok!
In truth, it's not really how I got it that's interesting, but how I almost didn't get it! That day, the Universe was conspiring against me!
My story begins on wednesday, november 22, 2006, 3 pm. I received a text message from my gf asking me if I still want a PS3, to which I reply "Of course, why?" Turns out EB had just received 2 PS3s that afternoon and one of our friends could hold it for me. So I jumped out of bed, got in my car (2000 Nissan Xterra, yellow), and made my way to EB.
When I got there, my friend got the PS3 out of the back for me and put Resistance on the counter, at my request. The total came up to 706.92, and I made to pay with my Interac card. This is where the trouble starts: the little debit machine emmitted a negative beep and read "Limit Exceeded". F***! I told my friend to hold on as I called my bank to ask if I could raise my limit on the phone. Turns out that because I don't have "easy phone" account set up, I can't do it now, but I could have if I had had it set it up before. F***! Now I have to drive to my nearest bank and do it in person, and my friend chooses this time to tell me he can only hold my PS3 until 4, at which point he will have to sell it to someone else. Right now, its 3:25! F***!
So I ran out of EB, got back into my truck and made to drive to my bank. I got lucky and found a bank right around the block, this should save me a lot of time. Thank the lord (score: me 1, Universe 3)! So I am about to turn into the bank's parking lot but the entrance is blocked off. F***. I know there's another one around the block, so I drive around (and wait at 4 red lights), only to find I can't enter from this side of the street, I have to be going the opposite dirrection. Now I'm back where I started, and I have just wasted 10 minutes (25 left to go). I drive straight and pull an illegal Uee (thats a U-turn!), then head back and finally enter the parking lot (Universe 5, me 2). I then enter the bank. Both tellers are busy but there's no lineup , so I wait a few seconds. Skip the technicalities, I talk to the teller for a few minutes and we conclude I can't raise my limit... but I can withdraw the ammount! So I walk out with 800$ in pocket and drive back to EB. It's now 3:45, and unless something catastrophic happens to me, that PS3 is mine!
Well, nothing catastrophic happened, I bought my PS3 cash and became the object of all my friends jealousy! By the time I wrote this, I finished Resistance on medium difficulty and am halfway through hard! Now I need to go back to EB to buy a memory card adapter so I can finish FFXII.
Oh, I almost forgot, I also got Taladega Nights on BD for free with my PS3! I never saw that movie before and I watched it and enjoyed it very much!

I stopped by best buy at 9 tonight to check up on the line and I was already too late... I checked out a few other stores and, sad to say, I won't be getting a PS3 anytime soon... Resistance will have to wait... I'm really abusing these suspension points...
On the bright side, I get to play FFXII on my friend's borrowed PStwo, and it is possibly the best game I have ever played. FFXII is the reason I've been absent from gamespot for over a week, its just so good I don't need to read about other games right now! Honestly, it is simply amazing.
It would make me the happyest guy alive to be playing Resistance tomorrow, but I won't, so I'll enjoy FFXII in the mean time.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I finally got Final Fantasy XII! I have been waiting for this game for over a year now, and it finally came out yesterday. I picked it up in the afternoon, collector's edition of course! But wait, here comes the plot twister: I can't play the game because my PS2 has been broken for about 3 months now! So, my collector's edition of FFXII is just sitting on my shelf, in an upright position so I can better gaze at it admiringly, and basically all it's doing is looking pretty!
*I feel kinda stupid wrting these blogs to nonexistent readers... maybe people will actually read my interesting blogs someday!...

  
     I look at PS3 preview videos, and I am breathless at how good almost all of them look. This is a good thing, but it can also aplay against us. I look at games like Motorstorm and Fatal Inertia and I am taken away by how good both these titles look, but I also wonder how well they will sell. Somehow, I don't see them being major hits and with such high-budget visuals I can't help but to wonder if some studios are in for big time losses in the next gen. Studios will obviously need to think long and hard before making a new game now because, considering the potentially higher production costs, a flop could hurt badly... a next gen hurt!

     This could cause one of three things (that I can think of). The first is that some studios will continue making bad high-budget games and go bankrupt. The second option is that some studios will stop being daring and inovative and play it safe, making games that will guarantee some profit rather than trying somehting new that could fail. The last possibility, and possibly the better one, would imply greater involvement of the gaming public. Studios may have to get closer to their target audience and learn first-hand what the gamers want.

     With next-gen media and processing capabilities, the possibilities are becoming ever-more endless, so studios can really pull out the stops and make games we never would have dreamed possible. They'll just have to be careful which stops they pull out, and they could use our help in doing that, or (financial) consequences could ensue.