Nin, when you jump on the bandwagon with these guys, you always remind me of that little varmit on Jabba the Hut.

Seriously, if you guys want to have a party over globally bad figures for all systems, go for it. At least something good will come out of it.

As for Ps2, it's the most successful console of all time (well over 136 million units world wide). It's stillbeing played, I still have PS2 games I return to like the SSX ones. MS dropped true support for the failed attempt called Xbox in my opinion. You are actually trying to make PS3 look bad because Sony still supports it's products? Wow, what else do you like to buy? I can form a small cottage industry off of you and people like you. You are better off going back to chanting Natal like the rest of the Xbots rather than pretend any news is good on the financial front.

I haven't had a use for PC gaming in half a year, still not seeing anything I would buy unless Blood Bowl get's physical media and no DRM. It's dead Jim.

This comment was edited on Jul 17, 2009, 18:26.

If a Samsung drive with auto-trim firmware contains an NTFS partition and is idle, it will automatically auto-trim itself in the background. Simple.

End of story. Already being automated. Industry will follow. New OS not needed.

Now about the other SSD issues...

Console sales as a whole are down around 40% in total compared year to year. Using 1 month is silly. Especially when a lot of 360 sales come from people getting RROD, buying an arcade version and putting their old HD on (because they don't want a refurb).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Blo0mMUPIBc

The PC industry is doing even worse...

There is no good news here, just bad.

This comment was edited on Jul 17, 2009, 02:12.

Wheelman had some great material and the innovation of vehicle melee and the slowed down action firing from the car, even flipping backwards and shooting at stuff behind you (cyclone), were some great new things to play with. The on the fly stunt areas were plentiful and well done. The game did a very good job of teaching each little area of the city, it's unique features, and how to use those features to beat enemies or win races. All in all, this was some very good stuff.

The whole side mission game (which is really not a side mission portion when they are all pretty much important to developing the main character's vehicle attributes (health, melee attack, performance, focus gauge etc..)), was built with the most cheap shot, in your face, trap setting design I honestly have ever seen in a game. Add to that the fact it seemed like everything was on a timer (if you gotta use a timer to prop up a game to be compelling, go back to the drawing board). They went way, way past challenge, and in to beating the player anyway possible, including the use of all nuetral vehicles as well. If there is a place you need to go, they would plug the opening with a semi. If you were going too fast to beat a time, they would send 2 neutral bystander cars swerve together blocking the lane. You name it, if it could go wrong, it went wrong and then some. It made Murphy's law look innocent. The long term effect of playing a game like that is simple and pure hate generation. This was in everything from who won out in a conflict, to all the little stubby protrusions all over the city catching your vehicle, to seeing neutral cars go 50 yards out of their way to hit you, to a motorcycle you are riding blowing up for no apparent reason. Then you get cheesy stuff like placing an end of mission target (you have to hit it with the hood of your car) in mazes that you are expected to traverse with multiple failures a the end of a long mission, resulting in a restart. The game became 100 times lucky instead of skill in a lot of ways (you needed lucky stuff to happen to succeed), and the most used function of the game was down the menu 4x and hit x (restart mission). Something that should probably been the first pause menu selection.

Out of the car was really easy gun fights. You didn't have to use auto targeting but it's there if you want it. Still real easy but sometimes that isn't a bad thing depending on who is playing. There was room for improvement in that area none the less.

The whole police model was really poorly implemented. The system was trying to be different than other systems to some extent which made the whole police involvement in the game pretty much a non issue once you learned how it worked. In essence police involvement in the game was rare which is a shame, and it wasn't very entertaining, or engaging when you did encounter law enforcement. You pretty much have to seek them out in free mode, then nurse them along to get to higher levels of alert to experience anything exciting.

What this game did for car games:

1) Vehicle Melee done right
2) The slow down gun fire moves from the car (more please).
3) A city built with plenty of on the fly stunt areas that a player could reasonably implement in to game play when they wished and be somewhat assured the outcome would be successful (encouraging use).
4) The best fun I have ever had driving a motorcycle in any game. This was pretty well done.
5) Shooting out wheels and having it affect performance. Think of it as Need For Speed running over spike strips but being able to still play. It adds a lot less traction to the vehicle for each TYRE out (lol they spelled tire as "tyre" through the whole game, not sure why). So the end result with all tires out is a whole lot of slippage.
6) On the fly car switches by leaping from one vehicle to the other (more please).

Barcelona was a well done map from a gameplay perspective. Excellent use of varied terrain and features to create a very diverse environment, even if it was simplistic and generally less attractive than some cities we have seen in other open world games.

The music was horrifically implemented. I can't think of a worse attempt at including a music selection in any game. It was really that bad. The story mission select pieces of music were decent to good, but that radio station selector had all bad.

The story was pretty good and Vin Diesel is his classic character. If you like Vin Diesel, you will like the story.

Another big problem this game had was when you destroyed another vehicle, or any animation sequence where you were on the road in movement, the time still passes while you are not in control of your vehicle. So you often got punished with being stopped, crashed, or even turned around because of this messy handling of on the fly highlights.

A HUGE pet peeve I have with several games, and this one was one of the worst, was when you complete and objective a HUGE FING PICTURE AND INSTRUCTIONS would pop up in the MIDDLE of of the screen blinding you when you are STILL PLAYING and driving at break-neck speed. Stop this sh*t people, seriously. This rates up there with developers who are inclined to use all white screens for effect. Some of us play games in dark rooms, no need to blind us!

This comment was edited on Jul 17, 2009, 18:18.

If someone wants to yell at a black box for any reason whatsoever and it's under the Db limit for actual disturbing the peace, the police have no business being there, at all after reasonable suspicion was destroyed by the revelation that no one was getting hurt and nothing visible that was illegal.

I would hate to be the upper management guy who has to justify the payroll for all the officers that were called in over one pissed off old man screaming at his tv. Much less the guy who has to justify to the public why those tax dollars got spent over one old man screaming at his tv. Sometimes defusing a situation is better for everyone instead of a display of power (justified or not).

This comment was edited on Jul 16, 2009, 20:38.

Try and think of any company product that is singular. It's the exception, not the rule. It isn't going to happen in gaming, unless everyone stops playing them and 1 company refuses to give up the fight...

I'm a dude with a hands on own it all opinion, not a person running a web site with news as it's claimed content.

The only 2 things Xbox offered this year so far that was worthy of a look was Battlestations Pacific and Magic:The Gathering (which turned out to be a paid extended demo in my opinion, meant to get people hooked on buying cards, virtual or not).

I would like nothing more than to see one of the worlds richest companies with large amounts of dispsosable cash start investing in more games rather than trying to own people's computers and living rooms. Mechwarrior is a good start, couple of other projects as well. They have a lot more that needs to be done. Hyping Natal isn't worth the time of day until it's near release, and real games are ready.

This comment was edited on Jul 15, 2009, 20:59.

Game sites are political furballs that rarely actually report everything and pretty much have an agenda to print what furthers their wishes be they based on money, politics, steering the industry or even personal preferences. Because of this, promotion isn't easier than ever, it's actually harder.

For every truly doctored ad or screen, I would wager there is also an equal amount of negative attacks directed at games that are completely fabricated.

If you are affiliated with a web site, you should ask yourself if you are acting like Fox News or being a true journalism site.

There is a pretty good compiled list by build beta testers that show quite a few games not working. The last time I checked it's about 60-40, 70-30 on percentages that work and don't work. Performance decrease on some games, increase on others.

Windows (Vista) is pretty much a restart on building a library of games in a lot of ways. It's the new PC console. Which is fine. When there are enough games that take full advantage of those features, then I would consider upgrading. But right now it's like buying a new console with little to no games made for it specifically, with limited backwards compatability to make due until (if and when) there are. There could be another vista-like roll out after this one for all anyone knows. Patience is probably a good thing for people that don't "have" to have it at release.

Online all the time = no sale for me, no matter what piece of hardware it runs on.

Too bad. Wheelman is pretty fun after you get past the brisk acclimation to it's style of open world. Racing in Wheelman means 7 cars trying to beat the crap out of you in collusion while you try and just survive and eek out a top position. You gotta spend 10 hours with this game before you really start getting any fun out of it. Saint's Row 2 blows it away, but it's still something fun if you spend time learning it and run out of games to play.

More power to UFC. Glad to see someone stand up to EA's sports bullying.

I will not be getting Windows 7 primarily because the compatibility with many existing games has not been worked out according to list makers who have been beta testing each build. Secondly, there's no need for a new OS when XP runs games just fine. I wonder how Steam will handle this with the old games?

And if it is console multiplayer, give us 4 player split screen, bots, and the ability to take all 4 people online.

This is exactly what BF1943 is missing and why I passed on it. It's almost saying if you make an MP only game, you have to have single player... But it really isn't... It's some bot code and running a server local. Split screen is a must too. If you make something multiplayer on the internet, you should support local play as well.

As gamers age, I think we all gravitate towards SP again. With a job, family obligations and the inability to go without sleep anymore, you tend to want games that work around your schedule. Games you can pick up and play for an hour then go and put on the shelf for three weeks while you tend to real-life matters.

Very true. Good post Icewind.

I am actually just fine with dumping multiplayer...

It should be for games which truly shine and take advantage of that angle instead of forcing it in just to be able to say a gamer has multiplayer.

Reviewers neeed to start reviewing the contents of a game, how well that game does what it is engineered to do, and not what it doesn't contain, or what the reviewer wishes the game was about.

I would much rather see multiplayer only or single player only games just like we see with the recent BF1943.

This comment was edited on Jul 13, 2009, 14:47.

I played Mechwarrior the RPG, the hobby game, painted tons of minis, even owned some Geo-hex battlefield stuff, and of course the computer games (even the Infocom one). I think there is trememndous MMO potential for this franchise and would love to see it happen. In Mechwarrior your character had some very simplistic stats (that would need to be further developed to be engaging enough). But the cool thing was salvaging... If done right this could be better than Planetside with a whole range of out of mech roles and adventures too. I read a lot of the books too. The political landscape was always interesting. Houses vying for power with their own ace mechwarriors. The intrigue of Comstar and all the information economy aspects. Stock values and plenty of things to support a vibrant economy game. The whole story of the clans and how they were tribal darwinists breeding the perfect warriors. So much great material there with more than enough to seriously flesh out a deep MMO experience.

The question is are people thinking that far ahead already and is the money there to make it happen.

This comment was edited on Jul 9, 2009, 15:36.

I am just very happy to see this franchise being revitalized (I was finding it hard to believe 5 is on the way, that white car in the video looked very Japanimated). The foot could have been from any giant robot franchise...

This comment was edited on Jul 9, 2009, 15:24.

I may grab BF1943 for PS3 tomarrow. Trine may also be out on PSN, if not then next Thursday.

Verno the Xbox fanboy strikes again!

Xbox has a defunct previous console attempt, and an early start with the 360 and Halo. Now, they are only about 5 million units ahead (yes they have lost tons of ground) and have a network they are price cutting non stop just to get people to play stuff like Golden Axe, Gauntlet and Banjo-Tooie. Almost two weeks after Transfarmers 2 is out, you can still play online for a bit and get the "be ranked within the top 10000 players" achievement. Somehow doubt it's the game.

Then we look at the Sony camp, PS1, PS2, PS3, PSP and a rich decades long line up of titles they are going to be whipping out every week on PSN along with the 55+ console exclusives planned. A network that is free to use and hardware that actually lasts like it should (not to mention free Blu-ray player with console purchase).

I don't think Sony needs any help from me or anyone else at this point. But feel free to feel threatened every time I post. It's amusing.

This comment was edited on Jul 8, 2009, 14:18.