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.

Review: Clive Barker's Jericho (PS3)

I'm going to try something new today. I'm going to try my hand at a review of sorts. As I am not a big fan of scoring in game reviews, I'm going to let my writing do the talking. In my opinion, which is one that is shared by many, scores and grades assigned to games take away from the actual editorial. Where you might have found a game that might be perfectly suited to your tastes from actually reading a review, some immediately stop reading upon seeing a score. SO! Here goes. I'll be reviewing the PS3 version of Clive Barker's Jericho.

First off, general info. Jericho is a first person shooter (FPS), that employs squad-based mechanics smililar to the ones employed in Republic Commando. Throughout the game, you will be able to jump between any of the six people in your squad, each with their own unique supernatural power and gun preference, among them; telekentic sniper, fire wielding chaingunner, katana wielding blood magician, the astroprojector, reality hacker, and the very cool guns-akimbo healer-priest. Throughout the game, you'll make use of each of their abilities and gun preferences, often as determined by level design (telekinesis to remove obstacles, or slow time to break through a fortified enemy position).

Speaking of level design, it is one of the game's major failings, if not the biggest. I cannot, however, totally throw it under the bus. I think anyone who is a fan of even a snippet of Clive Barker's work will enjoy the goryness and goop laden level aesthetics. There are some seriously disturbing sights throughout the game, along with some very impressive vistas (the Colosseum and the temple in the last level come to mind). With all the blood and guts, the game goes for creepiness rather than horror. This is further enforced by the monster encounters, which don't contribute much to the game beyond giving you something to shoot at while you progress through the level and further the story. No fancy reveals, no "boo" moments to make you jump. The typical monster encounter consists of artifical barriers that can only be surpassed by killing of waves of monsters. There isn't a whole lot of variation in the monsters from one level to another either. Still, once I got the hang of the game and found my niche, I enjoyed killing the lot of them (I particularly enjoyed using the katana wielding blood magician), except for those super tough suicide bomber monsters. Note to developers, if you are going to add kamikazee enemies, dont make them so effin hard to kill. Most of the bosses were interesting in some form or fashion, be it for their look or the encounter design. However, some where confusing at first and I remember killing at least one of the bosses and not really understanding how I did it.

This was my first 1080p game on the system, and it totally showed. Everything was nice and crisp, and made me very pleased with my glorious probably-payed-too-much HD-TV. I can't speak a whole lot about the controls, because it is actually the first FPS I've played on my PS3. I will say that I would have much preferred to play the game with a mouse and keyboard. I think the lack of precision that I had changed my way of playing. Had I the ability to be more precise, I might have made more use of some of the abilities that I avoided, such as the telekinetic bullet, which gives you the potential of being able to string several headshots with one bullet. On the gamepad, the best I could pull off was one head shot, if that, before the bullet went astray into a wall due to my inability to control it.

Jericho isn't exactly triple A material, but I enjoyed this game the way I might have enjoyed playing Halo, that is to say, turn your brain off for a while and kill some uglies.

Metal + Wii = Fun

We had a pretty good weekend, the lady and I. Thanks to Mike for having us and ALX over for some Wii and Metalocalypse.

Our visit is pushing me further towards a decision to buy a Wii. Lack of room be damned, playing even a stale game like Wii Sports has been fun everytime. That Wii remote is just too cool. Again, anything that gets Little Bitty (as I have taken to calling her recently) playing video games is bomb diggety, son.

After playing a good round of Wii sports, Mike hooked up yeh old PS2 for some THUNDA....HORSE, as it has been stuck in my head for days. We blew ass before a few warmups, but we got through it taking turns on lead, ending up on the green both times. Metal.

I have a little rant about the PS3. If not a rant, at least a comment. Now, no matter what Lonk says about how evil and shitty the PS3 is, I still maintain that the at-the-moment paperweight has some awesome potential. I hesitate to lobby any criticism, so as to cause Mike some undue buyer's remorse, but those motherfuckers at Sony have done PS3 owners wrong by not sending out the system with some games that are worth playing (I don't entirely disagree with Lonk). I'm SURE it is something that they could have helped. In the whole night, we only touched the box to play Metalocalypse. Pretty jacked if you ask me.
Granted, one could argue similarly against the Wii, but no, that's not gonna stick. The games are fun, at worst a little kitschy, and they appeal to a wider audience, negating the vitriol from the hardcore gamer. Cooking Mama is fun, dammet. GEWD JUBB!

So yeah, as you might have been able to tell from my little jukebox button up there, Dethklok has been ruling my brainwaves for a good week now (I like the contrast of my Pink page and its metal soundtrack). I was initially turned on to Thunderhorse by playing it on Guitar Hero 2. In my book, it's one of the top 5, maybe 3, tracks in the game, for the fact that it's one of those shredder tracks that just make you feel badass for pulling off. Turns out Dethklok is a fictional band from a show on Adult Swim, Metalocalypse, as I have previously mentioned. Mike picked up the DVD of the first season, and after we had burned some serius Wii calories, we sat down and watched some episodes. Granted, by this time I was on Corona # 6 or 7, but the show was pretty good. The songs are enjoyable in the context of the show, and it's bizzare to the point of being funny. I went home with the theme song in my head, which I will upload to the Stuck in My Head box shortly.
It also spawned a new "Your Face" joke: Your face looks like Murderface.

The only damper on the evening was Little Bitty being a jerk. I didn't hold it against her too much though, as everyone is entitled to some jerk time. ASS. In any case, she made up for it today. We had some good ass WANGS and watched a bad movie (Truth About Charlie), which in our relationship, is heavenly. Good times.

I have some skinny exam lootz this week, but I have some posts brewing in my head (why I hate Halo, why I don't like Hillary), so stay tuned on the off chance that I am not a lazy, Bioshock-playing bastard.

EDIT: Regarding my PS3 comments, I wake up the morning after and find this article on Kotaku.

DOODILY TIKKTOK TIKKTOK