I'd hope so. Given that it generally takes years to design and test a console (the 360 is a good example of trying to rush this), I'd certainly hope all three manufacturers are working on their next console by now.

I'd expect we'll start hearing rumored hardware specs next year, with a release for at least one new system (probably the xbox) in fall 2010.

On random note, anyone want to guess as to the media storage format of the PS4? PS1 used CD, PS2 was DVD, PS3 was Blu-ray... what would PS4 be?

http://www.nulime.com/Limbo-Lost/p280916 if you're feeling daring enough to order it. 4 copies left...

I'm sure it's terrible, but I can't resist the urge to go through and play "spot the ripoff". I'm in Oblivion! Now I"m in Painkiller! Hello Unreal Tournament!

I'm all for story, but I don't like the concept of playing a game, and then having to stop and watch an hour and a half movie before I can start playing again. Yes, I understand you can skip the scenes, but there's no way you won't miss out on a large chunk of the story by doing so.

Unless the placement of these scenes is absolutely spot on, I'm concerned it would break the flow of the game too much. For that matter, do you get any warning you're starting a long movie and you might as well grab some popcorn and take a seat? What if you need to quit, but the movie pops up before you can save? Do you skip the movie and miss the plot so you can save, just turn off your console and replay from your last save, or pause the console and let it run until you can play again?

I guess I shouldn't complain though. If this trend continues, MGS5 will just be a standard blu-ray movie, playable on all players and consoles. Maybe it'll even come out in theaters!

I love my 360 as much as the next guy, but I think there's little doubt in most people's minds it is the most shoddily made console that's been released in the past 20 years or so (I can't remember any farther back - too young).

The 360 is the only console I've owned, going back to the NES, that I've ever had to buy a replacement for because the hardware just plain died. My first 360 died with a RROD about 9 months in, then my second's DVD drive broke after say 13 months or so. Fortunately, I found a youtube video online showing how to fix the particular problem I was having which involved (I kid you not) supergluing a part back in place. So far, the old girl's still running.

To be fair, like everyone else's NES, you had to blow on carts and the system would screw up here and there, but it still worked on the day I finally sold it. My original PS1 (original model) circa 96 still runs, although I have to turn it upside down as the CDs don't always load otherwise. It was a known defect in the first models, but it still lasted far longer than either 360 did. My original PS2 makes some grinding sounds when the tray opens and closes, and sometimes has problems reading CD-based games, but so far is still kickin'. Most consoles have had at least one revision that has issues, but even those lasted far longer than the average 360.

My Genesis CDX (Sega CD and Genesis in one unit) circa 94 or 95 still runs without a hitch. It recently loaded up a nine year old savegame (the internal memory still works) and then teabagged my 360, PS2 and PS1.

I wonder if the inclusion of Mike Tyson means they'll have fatalities in the game? He eats his opponent after he beats them. EAT HIM! TYSONALITY!

Seriously though, I'm glad they're finally releasing another in the series; the first one still entertains me.

MS is losing more money on lost downloads for movies and TV shows from XBL due to the fact no one has the space to grab the content. So they get no sales of the HDD addon and less sales from potential downloads. Nice brain trust over there.

Well put. You'd think they'd make an attempt to drop the price, but seeing as the 20 gig drive is still $100, I have a feeling it'll never drop in price. Oh well, I've got more than enough space to save all the games I need; what I don't have space for is their paid content.

Is there a full story on that dude's ordeal with the elevator?

Did you click the "lives of elevators" link in the text above the video? It leads to an 8 page article on elevators, amongst which is the story of the man in the elevator. Here's the direct link:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/21/080421fa_fact_paumgarten

Anyway. I hate end users. Uneducated idiots. If only people treated their computers the same way they do everything else. A little maint goes a long way.

I feel your pain (I work on a helpdesk).

For whatever reason, it's perfectly acceptable for people to be completely ignorant about computers, even when they use them daily for jobs.

A construction worker who couldn't properly operate construction equipment would be fired. A taxi driver who had trouble operating a car wouldn't have a job for long. A pilot who couldn't operate all the controls of an airplane hopefully wouldn't be hired to begin with. An office worker whose job is 100% computer based, yet can't find the start menu, is told to call the helpdesk.

A co-worker and I were just talking about this the other night as we were reminiscing about our experiences with previous generations of games.

As we've advanced through the generations, not only have we lost some of the quirkiness and creativity we saw in previous generations, but we've lost entire genres and/or styles of gameplay.

I haven't even played some of these games, and they aren't all exactly classics, but at least it provided more variety than we have now.

- Where have the space combat games gone? Tie Fighter/Xwing, Freespace, and Wing Commander are all games I fondly remember.

- Yeah, I mentioned Road Rash, as well as the Strike series of games (Desert/Jungle/Urban/Soviet/Nuclear Strike). You'd think that EA, being the king of sequels, would have updated these games by now.

- Demolition Derby. I loved those games, and the PSN download of the first game still entertains me.

- Where are the creative/weird/goofy game ideas and characters? Earthworm Jim, Vectorman, Comix Zone, Boogerman, Bug, Clockwork Knight, Battletoads, Lost Vikings, etc.

- 2D Sonic games on non-portable consoles. Really, is there anyone who thinks the last couple 3D Sonic games are better than Sonic 2 & 3? They don't need to reinvent the gameplay. Just give us fancy 3D graphics on a 2D plane, with the depth and variety of levels in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and we're set to go. We got a similar concept with New Super Mario Bros, now it's Sonic's turn.

I used it myself just last week for the first time, no problems either. The app you install on your PC is tiny and pretty much runs itself. In Firefox, when I buy a game from the store and click the download link, it by default opens with the pc app. My only complaint is that the pc app won't download the game file unless the PSP is connected. It's not exactly a big thing, but it would be nice to be able to use the PSP while the game is downloading.

I picked up Destruction Derby, and surprisingly it's as entertaining as I remembered.

Edit: I swear I read that you can install the game on up to 5 devices, but I can't find any mention of it now

This comment was edited on Mar 13, 12:05.

Yeah but that was before they got bought. They'd been really suspiciously quiet about any future Mass Effect games.

Yeah, but they were bought by EA. You know, the company who has all the Sim games, Madden, Need For Speed, and Command and Conquer? Hell, Mass Effect has probably already been reworked into a ten game series, if not a yearly franchise. We have nothing to worry about, sequel wise.

I don't see how they are reaching blue ray capacity unless they are going the Lost Odyssey route and including shitloads of pre-rendered HD video, or not using compression, etc.

Based on previous metal gear solid games, it most likely just has that much talking they can't fit both languages on the disc. I don't remember there being any prerendered video in the previous games, although I do remember a few real-life video clips (nuclear explosions at the end of metal gear solid, if I remember correctly).

Yeah this RROD fiasco has hit M$ pretty hard, hard enough, hopefully, for them to be sure to NOT make the same design mistakes for the next console.

True, but it's not as if they intentionally created a defective console. Perhaps they rushed QA too much ( I say perhaps because both 360s I've had fail have done so after at least 9 months, which is probably a longer time than they can test for). Hopefully you're right though, and they will produce a more reliable console next go round.

My first 360 died of the RROD after about 9 months, while the second took over a year and I was able to repair it myself (it was DVD drive problem, not the RROD). I'm still using the second, until something breaks again.

The only people losing with this deal are the 2K Sports fans

Wait, there's a sport EA hasn't bought the exclusive rights to?

Rare, expensive peripheral that few people will get, so no games will support.

Yeah, you're most likely right. That said it's a controller that uses your thoughts to play the game. I mean really, that's just insane that we have anything remotely consumer level that can do that. They do say it can be made to work with existing games, so it's possible you could train your thoughts to map to keys.

Down the road, I can only imagine the possibilities of the Wii 3 (or would that be the Thwii?) using both motion and thought control. Imagine a Star Wars game where the lightsaber was mapped to the motion sensor, while force powers were mapped to your thoughts. You express anger towards an enemy, and they are force choked, all the while you are dueling another enemy with your lightsaber. If that idea doesn't excite you at least a little bit, you should quit gaming now.

As long as the PS3 offers the best price/feature combination among Blu Ray players, high-def discs will sell consoles.

And speaking of games, nice job of selling Bungie and watching as EA bought Bioware. EA isn't going to keep Bioware essentially exclusive to the Xbox (has Bioware released any PS games?), and there's nothing in particular keeping Bungie from putting Halo on other systems. Let's not forget Bizarre Creations was bought by Activision, so PGR is pretty much gone too (sure, MS owns the rights to PGR, but Bizarre won't be doing anymore sequels).

Anyone that has taken basic history knows that there was absolutely no violence in human society until TV, movies, video games, and rap music was introduced. If only we could go back to the good old days where aggression was let out in more productive ways such as gladiator combat, crusades, and global wars.

Not sure where they are getting their nonsense numbers, but Wii is already far past the xbox 360.

I wondered that too. It was my impression that the Wii has long been ahead of the other two in total sales. Not that I follow the numbers closely, it was just my understanding.

What? You wouldn't pay $10 bucks for 2 outfits and four emotes? Sounds like a great deal to me!

Seriously, this would be free content in most MMORPGs. I'm amazed they'd think they could sell it.

theres no problem with the game being a majority of side quests, if they are well executed.. but ive heard that they are all the same and follow only a few different boring formulas - if thats the case then i will pass on it

can anyone comment on that?


I beat this on the 360. The main quest line is definitely longer than 5 hours (probably around 13 if you take in the dialogue) but I chose to do virtually every side quest and that took me about 32 hours. The side quests all have different objectives but they usually boil down to going to a planet and killing a bunch of stuff. And due to limits of the DVD medium on the 360 (or so I heard), all of the buildings on the planets consist of 1 of about 4 floor plans which can make the quests really boring. I hope they fix that on the PC but I don't know if they will. I wanted to play this game again as an evil character but I might actually play it again on PC just to avoid the atrocious load times.

Agreed on the main quest time... there's no way it's only 5 hours. I mean maybe if you did absolutely nothing in the game except the main quest line, skipped through all the dialog, explored absolutely nothing, and had already played through once and knew exactly what to do you might be able to rush through in 5 hours, but you'd have to be absolutely working your butt off to play through that fast. I beat the games, did a chunk of the side quests, and hit around 32-33 hours of play time. I assure you I did not spend the majority of my time exploring the random planets.

As for the side quests, as Parallax said, there are only a couple base designs for the side quests that involve invading bases. Yes, it gets old seeing the exact same floor plans. Fortunately, the planets' surfaces have a little more variety, so the fights to the bases are slightly more interesting.

Also, there are quite a few side quests that aren't base related. Early in the game, you can do quite a bit without ever leaving the main station (the citadel). If you only do a couple base quests just to see how they go, and then do the main quest and the non-repetitive side quests, I'd imagine you could get a good 20 hours out of the game if you don't rush. As with the Bioware games I've played, it's well worth it to play through again as the opposite alignment, or even gender.

This comment was edited on Feb 12, 13:35.