Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Short Note: For ALX (Le Parkour Video Game!)

EDIT: I realize the formatting of the embedded videos is jacked. Anyone have any idea on how to fix it, beyond using Google Presentations to shrink it (Google Presentations doesn't work on Opera, hence my not using it)? Till I figure out how to fix it, I'll let the post run its course down the page as I post more.

BTW, I dedicate this and my last two posts to ALX, who is off in Honduras helpin the villagers with their water and sanitation needz, and who me and the Little Bitty hope will grow his hair back out in a non-exotic bird fashion.

So without further ado, here is a trailer of Mirror's Edge, which is due late, late 2008, and is confirmed for PC.

(In the tradition of Rock, Paper, Shotgun: Thanks Gametrailers! I'd give you ITB4free!)

ALX, I hope you have access to some flash and high speed internets somewhere. I think this game was maked fuh u.

BTW, for those of you who don't know what Parkour is, peep this vid. Starts a little slow, but stay with it.

Seriously, makes me wanna go workout or summet. BTW, I can do all of that. Yup.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

DAT TRU SH*T (I heart my PSTriplz)


Wee, so this draft has been sitting, waiting to be finished, so before I start, I should apologise for the absence between posts. Somewhere along the line, I got kinda busy with school, since I have a whip cracker behind me pushin me to get A's in my classes (not a bad thing).

SO! What? How did this happen, that I have the most hardcore of gaming consoles in my midst? And why do I love that giant hunk of slick, shiny blackness? Well child, let me tell you a story. It is a story of the ages.

The intitial draw to the machine was my desire to have a high def disc platform to feed to my glorious TV, which had long hungered for either Blu-ray or HD-DVD. I had held out because the two had been fighting it out for a winner ala VHS over Betamax, with no end in sight. That whole fiasco finally ended when a trickle of movie studios who signed up exclusively to put out movies on Blu-ray turned into a deluge. Once it was assured that I was not buying a machine that had a chance of becoming obsolete, there was reason #1 to get one.

There was also the draw of the ROCK BANDS, which I had previously played at Mike's, and is full of pure awesome. I had in the past bought a shoddy, used PS2 just to play Guitar Hero, and I was thinking of following suit with Rock Band. Granted, I had a Wii, and as we are seeing now, Rock Band is coming out for it, but I wanted the benefit of a giant hard drive and a means to download the tracks that the developers promised to release (they now have probably more tracks available online than what came with the game), something the PS3 had.

Lastly, there was an element of impulse buying. At the time when I was mullin over the aforementioned reasons to buy one, Sony was beginning to phase out their 80gb PS3 model, which had the benefit of backwards compatability, that is to say, you could play your old PS2 games on it, which is a feature not present in their vanilla 40gb models. True in fact, while I was waiting on Amazon to deliver the PS3, the 80gb models dried up from stores everywhere. Since there were games that I still wanted to play from the PS2 era (Shadow of the Colossus, God of War, the Fatal Frame series, and others). If I had not ordered the 80gb model, I would have missed out of these titles forever, as I did not plan on replacing the dead PS2 that I have at any point.

It bears mentioning that another 80gb version is in the pipeline that will come with Metal Gear Solid 4, but I do not regret getting my Motorstorm bundle. Don't think I could have waited that long.

Now that I have the PS3, I am finding it a great addition to my entertainment setup. The console has proved to have some pretty decent games, to the point where I own more PS3 games than I do Blu-ray movies. That's not a shot against the films, they look amazing in hi-def. There has been plenty of "wow" moments where the clarity is so apparent that you can't help but to remark on it. The machine also upscales my old, plain DVDs to 1080p, which makes them look even better on my TV. With it, I also have a player that I can send the sound to my reciever via a Toslink optical cable, which means I am for sure now getting that Dolby Digital 5.1 surround, versus the Dolby Pro-Logic simulated surround that I would sometimes get before.

I should mentioned a few things to nip the Xbox360 owners who might want to flame it up. I have no illusions about the PS3. The PSN (the Sony equivalent of Microsoft's Live online component) needs some serious work, as does the Cross Media Bar. It's too bad that I still love my PC and still defer to it for my online gaming needs (I welcome my Valve corporate masters). I do know that these issues have fixes in the pipleline, so I expect these criticisms to be moot at some point in the future. Also, I rather like my house.

In other news, Age of Conan is coming later this month. It could change my gaming habits if it ends up rocking. More on that in the coming weeks.