Red Faction was always a good title to play due to terrain destruction. I am very much looking forward to this one. It may not be the best shooter, but it has had some the best destruction based gameplay for a shooter. Mercenaries 2 could have done better on this.

I have heard a lot of bad things about this expansion. I don't feel like I am missing much by not buying it.

I think it's funny comparing Wii games and PS2. The shoe fits. If I wanted old generation games, I would buy more PS2, not Wii. But the control system is what seperates them. Good thing I prefer a standard controller. I did try SSX for Wii. LOL what a joke. Talking about trying to make something harder and less fun to make it fit the Wii style. Butt ugly and clunky. Oh how that beautiful SSX opportunity got mistreated.

Some of the Wii games are pretty cool like bowling and a few of the sword ones. After that, could play just as well with a standard controller and get more done. Nintendo has that Mcdonalds with the Moms thing going which is a good portion of the install base if you ask me. Coupled with the fad controller and I would wager intentional limited availability, created a Perfect Storm for Furby rain. It was marketed wonderfully. Too bad many of the games are crap ware.

Edit: Oh and Mag, I bought a 2nd refurb first release PS3 shortly after my first one specifically to play PS2 games. Wanted to be sure I always had the backwards compatability after hearing Sony was being stupid on this. There are still some refurb+bigger HD custom sellers out there. I would do that if I needed one. They are cheaper too.

This comment was edited on Apr 1, 2009, 22:39.

You tell them GT. You are far more eloquent than I, and we are on the same wavelength. ECA smells very fishy at best. Especially with it's sister site Game Politics propping them up as legit.

I think it's cool that there will be 3 more movies. They can cover all kinds of back story. The article even mentions cameos of LOTR people and some back story on the Wizard relations. 6 Tolkein movies? What is there to complain about? I am cheering!

I wish I had waited on Star Ocean. To get the most out of that game, you needed to constantly trapse back and forth to all planets. Since the Xbox version is 3 disks, you had to switch discs non stop to do that. I finally said screw it, finished the game (which while having high production values is pretty sad as a Square title) and blew off the crafting and planet trapsing. I think I would have liked it more if I didn't constantly swap disks and didn't also need to install it to the hard drive (13 gig) to get it to stop repeatedly freezing and causing hours of work to be lost...

So in essence, Xbox's track record with these large games is sucking hard (Last Remnant 20 gig HD install and a disk swap that cut into ability to quest, Lost Oddysey 3 disks, a few others that are multidisk). I think Blu-ray is a big feature to consumers for gaming because it works and you don't have to swap disks. Now if we can just get the damn games to show up.

Also if you read the article about FF13 using 100% of PS3 power, it states there will be no need for disc swapping on that game for the PS3 (but I bet the 360 will have atleast 3 disks, which will probably cut in to the game in some way, if you go by the last 2 Sqaure Xbox games). So at least there is some light.

Oh, here's another "Hell Yeah!" for Military Madness.

This comment was edited on Apr 1, 2009, 02:13.

These ECA statements seem to be doing more harm than good. Acknowledging the license agreement as being anything above unacceptable gives merit to the validity of EULAs and action based contract agreements before knowing the terms. This apparently puts ECA actions directly in conflict with the best interest of consumers he claims to represent. Seems like the industry trying to represent gamers on the sly at worst, or an organization stepping up to negotiate very poorly on behalf of gamers at best.

This comment was edited on Mar 31, 2009, 20:48.

I fell for the G-Force mix up as well. I was actually interested until I read the whole trained pig act. Oh well.

I am on the Netflix 4 blu-ray unlimited plan. With this 2nd increase in a few months, I will probably drop down to the 2 disk plan. I am not watching the movies fast enough anymore. I have had trouble getting a few choice BRDs when I want as well.

I don't want anything to do with 3D stuff. It's a diversion to making solid titles. Stop with the gimmicks and invest time and money in making a better games.

Huxley... How many years has it been. The videos don't have as much style as Hellgate London did. But the environments or more conducive to a broader range of people. The FPS part looks cleaner and more Quake/UT-like. I noticed a rocket launcher and a direct fire shell gun. Could be interesting...

As for XNA community games, not really found anything worth paying for. I tried a few of them and was pretty much bored with the lot. They are also now segregated in a way that many people will skip over them unless they specifically intend to browse that content.

Most likely price cut.

They have been responding in logical fashion as of late. Making a better dev kit and support. They also just announced an offering to pay the budget of indie titles. Price cuts would fall in line after cutting salaries across the board. Now they need to continue courting 3rd party software developers and get PSN transfer rates up.

Home is nice but not something I would be spending tons of resources on. There are higher priorities and I bet getting people just to try home is a bigger hurdle than expected, even if it's free (like a virtual mall). I think it's pretty much destined to be a kids and teens hang out. As an adult, I care more about the games, the speed of PSN, and DLC. If I wanted to hang out on line, there are better places.

John Reyes Davies, Mark Hamil, Malcolm McDowell and the latest cast of Red Alert, and many more have all done a good job in games. Not sure why anyone would rag on any one of them. I remember Cat People and a ton of other movies McDowell was in besides the one everyone always mentions, A Clockwork Orange. He's a great actor and only made the game better.

As for Red Alert 3, I have been playing the PS3 version and I must say for the first time, I actually prefer the console version over the PC. I have it loaded on my PC already, so it's not anything to do with DRM. There are some cool things I can do with a controller like hit square to select every unit on the map, then pull right trigger, and then select a specific type of unit and all those of that type on the battlefield will move to the spot selected. Makes it easy to spread out forces to put out fires and defend, then gather them up really fast. You can assign group numbers too. The Blu-ray is loaded with stuff to watch, couple of hours plus unit descriptions. some tactic tutorials, and the full sound track. Downside is the game limits units at 50 and only 3 AI on a skirmish. So I will be playing the PC version for the big fights.

Ok I played 3 recent console RTS games back to back to check out how things are going as far as console development. I was very surprised.

Halo Wars (360) Very simplistic, has a nice local forces command but lacked good grouping (I couldn't find it if it does exist). It was however easy to play an RTS. Good visuals, interesting units. But pretty easy.

Red Alert (PS3) WOW! That's all I can say. The system on this game is amazingly simple to use. There are a few things that are a bit 1-2 clicks further away but it flows really fast and easy. Assigning and recalling groups is a breeze and I was actually able to sit down and destroy medium difficulty AI on my first skirmish. The blu-ray cut scenes are amazing. But back to topic, this RTS interface system is amazingly well done.

Stormrise - UGH! Bland environments, and the control system has your camera angle always near the back of whatever unit is selected. Plays like Dawn of War in 3d up close. It's dark and ugly for the most part and the controls are very difficult to use. Selecting units is easy, getting them to go where you want in a timely fashion is what kills this game. Being below a roof that you want troops to go to, is painfully hard to command. I lasted 2 campaign maps. I will go back and play it to completion and try to force myself to learn this system at some point, but it's something you will have to spend about 20 hours with the reap any of the shortcuts that may exist. The individual units have all kind of special abilities and numerous secondary powers. Getting special powers in to play in a timely fashion also kills this game. It's a renter for the folks that want to see how not to make 3D FPS/3rdPS RTS interfaces. It's a shame too because the base ideas are pretty sweet.

This comment was edited on Mar 29, 2009, 18:22.

10 reasons to hate every console is misleading. It's 10 reasons why to hate any platform, including the PC, DS, and PSP. Good read and some of it is quite true.

This comment was edited on Mar 29, 2009, 17:55.

Yes it is an action game where you play the role of a magic user on a flying carpet, gaining new spells over time. Fighting off enemies and conquering their castles. Trying to get enough control of the primary resource, little mana balls to bolster your ability to fight and use stronger spells. It is very light on the rpg for sure.

Ok I just read Kotaku and this may not be on topic but this is a good place for it. Magic Carpet (PS1) is available PAL but not in NA. So here's hoping we see that title as nothing has ever been close to it and as a first person RPG it was pretty damn amazing for it's day. Magic Carpet 2 was aweful, but the first one was pretty sweet. I doubt the PS1 version is as good as the PC, so maybe GoG will hop on this and try and get it online. I know I would actually buy my first GoG game if they do. This game also needs a serious remake as DLC on consoles as it *was* a console game more than a PC one (I used a gravis game pad to play).

I can understand how "some people" are green with envy of Blizzard's success. But you know I was singling them out as the one to watch 15 years ago and "some people" didn't understand it. What's worse is I don't see a lot of other companies really learning and implementing the steps they took to reach that success. They would rather continue the wrong way because it works *good enough*. To those "some people", go ahead and keep releasing half baked, unfinished, boring, uninspired cookie-cutter work and whine about how Blizzard is beating you. I will keep on praising Blizzard and buying their stuff.

As a caveat to that, the merger is a big question mark and very much should be something to be concerned about. Only the future can tell us what to expect. If the quality drops, so will their status and fan base. I hope they keep on kicking ass.

This comment was edited on Mar 27, 2009, 18:52.

The large full featured LCD HDTVs have a 4-12ms delay as well.

This is a great move if it true. You can't really count Spore figures as it was really too early in the "new style" DRM flood to be considered indicative of people's tolerance for DRM. I got 3 copies for this household. Got 3 copies of Red Alert 3. I also bought 1 copy of Mercenaries 2 (had the PS3 one) and it was bugged out and wasting activations while not running. So I returned it. That's when I decided no more boxed PC games with DRM. I was lucky enough to have avoided all the other games that used DRM that people had issues with, GTA4, Mass Effect, Bioshock, Fallout 3, etc, etc.. So my decision came after roughly 3 exposures. Now they also need to make Sims 3 available on Steam/Impulse etc. for guys who want that type of distribution too. It's about maximum exposure and choices. Some of us like to collect and own a game, others want the service to handle it. And of those, some want a specific service they are comfortable with.

Edit: I have no intentions of ever installing GfW, so if games are using that, I am passing. If it was a singular solution that was robust and functional as it was intended, then I would entertain the idea. But it hasn't been and I don't really ever want it to be at this point now either. Why? Because so many other services that are user accepted can do it now. YMMV

This comment was edited on Mar 27, 2009, 16:38.