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Being a big fan of the movie, and hearing all the positive reviews of the game, I had very high expectations. Boy, was I let down. From the very beginning I was thrust into mission after mission with pretty much the same damn thing going on. Every environment looked pretty much the same -- dark, dank, maze-like. There was little difference between running through Tremont and running through SoHo except for maybe slight alterations in textures. Coney Island felt no different than Bensonhurst except for some theme-parky stuff smattered around the Coney area. Areas were terminated by completely artifical boundaries such as police barriers and fences that didn't belong there (such as in the middle of the street). It sure didn't feel like I was in New York, despite the subway trains. Traveling from neighborhood to neighborhood felt like I was running around the same place with different gangs.

Nearly every level was a combination of run around, fight, rob some car stereos or break into some stores, avoid cops, fight some more, and sometimes a Shenmue-styled "hit button Y, hit button A, hit button X" session for good measure. The fighting was strictly a button mashing affair with little reason to block or do much more than perform repetive sets of sequences. Boss fights ranged from simple, to cheap, to lame as hell. The gang control aspect worked great, though. The gang members almost always responded as expected and weren't completely mindless, which was unexpected, and appreciated.

The story telling was excellent. The flashback and prequel levels were a lot of fun leading up to the all-too-short re-telling of the movie (I think it took about 90 minutes to make it through all of the movie sections). The prequels and flashbacks did a good job of explaining how the Warriors formed, and why they were at the gang summit in Pelham Park. It provided a nice humanizing touch. It's too bad there was so much crap in between.

The game itself was very short. I did every mission including flashbacks and prequels in around 8 hours playing time. There was little reason to play beyond that with no additional extras (aside from Armies of the Night) or much incentive to continue playing.

A nice surprise was the Armies of the Night game that you unlock by beating all of the flashback levels. It was basically a Final Fight clone with nods to Double Dragon and with cheesy 8-bit music. It was perhaps the most entertaining part of the game, although a total novelty.

Bottom line: it was just "ok" and I'm glad I got it as a rental, and not a purchase. A real let-down, especially being a fan of the original movie. I give it a 5/10.

Amazing graphics, cool concept, and some fun gameplay. So, what's wrong? After all the hype, I figured this would be one of the best games ever made. The demo was pretty fun, but not enough to make me want to run out and buy it. So, I GameFly'ed it and played it over the weekend. The graphics are amazing, some of the best I've seen on the PS2, the storyline is excellent, and there's some really cool stuff going on in it. It's just too bad that I had to trapse through so much bullshit to get there. Some of the levels are great, while some border on the Darkwatch style of "let's throw as much shit on the screen as we can and see what happens," and some are just so crappy they make Max Payne's "walking on bloodtrails" level look fun by comparison.

It wasn't the difficulty that I had issues with -- hell, I loved every hair pulling minute of Ninja Gaiden XB. Difficult and challenge are cool, unnecessary stupidity and frustration is not. The worst parts of the game was anything that involved precision or platforming -- such as an area where you have to walk along a series of beams while bladed fan-like structures are flying at you (and jumping straight in the air can end up having you not land where you jumped from originally) or the controller throwing frustration of trying to climb a spinning wall of spikes several levels high (the first go-around of that one was fine, the second was ass). I trudged through those saying out loud, "who thought this was fun?"

After beating the game, the unlocked special features were amazing, and it showed that the development studio really had an interest in making the game great from the concept down to the actual design. I just have a feeling they may have overreached a little. Not a bad game by any stretch, but some of the "not fun" and "this is so fucking dumb" parts kind of soured it. It plays very much like Ninja Gaiden in the Greek era, but just wasn't as fun. i'd have to say a 7.5/10. Highly recommended as a rental and maybe a purchase, but there just isn't much replay after beating it. I am waiting for a sequel though -- maybe they will get it right, as they were pretty damn close this time, just barely missing the mark in my opinion.

Way too short; I finished it in about 6 hours, and felt no compelling reason to play it through again. For the most part, it's quite a bit of fun, has a cool story, and many entertaining moments. But, it's short, and at times very repetitive. My rating: 7/10. Bottom line: great rental, lousy purchase.

Getting tired of buying games only to sell them on eBay a few weeks later, I decided to give GameFly a chance. NetFlix is great, and GameFly is basically the same premise. You add games to a queue, they send them to you in the mail, you keep them for as long as you want, and you pay a monthly fee.

So far, I've received and returned two games from them, Geist, and Stubbs the Zombie. My first impressions are mostly positive. The games arrived in good shape, and well protected, and they sent out the next game as soon as it was scanned by the USPS.

They seem to have lots of rare games available for rental such as Gitaroo Man and Rez. The only complaint thus far is shipping seems to take forever. First Class mail shipping from Southern California to Western Washington took 3-4 days for the first two titles. Are they delivering them via horse and buggy?

That aside, so far, so good. I'm hoping the long shipping times were due to the recent rash of postal holidays, and things will speed up soon, because that's my only real complaint thus far.

Yeah, I know, it's way late, but who all is going to be at PAX on Saturday or Sunday? I will be there, and remember musings from many folks that they'd be there too.

We all knew it was going to be expensive.

They announced the pricing (with the questionable decision to have two bundles, one without a hard drive).

But, seeing the two bundles that EBgames.com is offering really hit the fact home. The Xbox 360 is going to be fucking expensive.

When you're paying $700 to get a console, four games, and an extra controller, you have to wonder what the fuck are they thinking.

Here's a quick breakdown of the pricing.

$399 - Xbox premium console
$240 - 4 games
$50 - extra controll.. wait.. did I just write $240 for four games?

Holy crap. I haven't paid that much money on games since I went on an import binge a few years ago, and even then I ended up buying two Beatmanias, DDRMAX, and a Beatmania IIDX controller.. and that was only around $200.

I think I'll be waiting a bit before I invest in the next generation of gaming goodness, thank you very much. My bank account just can't take it.

First of all, this isn't to profess any sort of anger about GTA San Andreas, something I hailed as being a possible GOTY last year. No. Also, this is most certainly not about the whole retarded as fuck "Hot Coffee" controversy. No. It's about they royally managed to screw the pooch with the Xbox port.

I've been playing it through again on the Xbox after purchasing it a couple of weeks ago. Pretty much the same game I remember. The controls are bit more iffy on the Xbox (mainly due to a lack of L2/R2 triggers making some things a might inconvenient). The graphics are a slight bit sharper. You get custom soundtracks.

Wait, did I just say the graphics are a slight bit sharper? Just on a whim, I popped in my GTA3 and GTA:VC ports for the Xbox. I damn near shit myself. Where did these amazing graphics come from? The GTA3 and GTA:VC ports on the Xbox look positively amazing. The graphics are incredibly sharp, the character models are just out of this world with detailed facial expressions and even individual fingers. The reflections off the cars is crazy. When you drive in the rain or hit a fire hydrant, water splashes all over the screen. The framerates are super smooth. Everything just looks fabulous, a true upgrade from the Playstation version. Then I put GTA:SA in the Xbox and I'm presented with pretty much the same grainy PS2 graphics, same blocky character models and boxing-glove fists, and chuggy framerates. I just have to say to myself, what the fuck happened?

Rockstar had 9 months to crank out an Xbox port. Did they just not care enough to really make it shine like the VC and GTA3 ports? Did they just get lazy? Why is the GTA:SA Xbox port so sub-par? I was really looking forward to the Xbox port as soon as I played through the PS2 version because of the amazing graphical makeover the previous two had, but time made me forget just how extreme the makeover was. Now comparing the two older ones to the new one, the difference is night and day.

Now, sure, graphics don't make a good game. But, GTA:SA was already a freakin' great game, and admittedly a much better game than GTA:VC or GTA3. I just feel kind of ripped off by Rockstar. I expected further perfection like with the VC and GTA3 ports, and just got a slight upgrade. Kind of like moving from a Kia to a Hyundai when I'm expecting a Mercedes.

I steped into the conversation way late, but Rychan was going on about some stupid crap she read regarding violence in video games. I saw her say this:
[Rychan] how about this part: "These are murder simulators. Manhunt has been called the video game equivalent of a snuff film. I am working with an Oakland, CA prosecutor in a murder trial in which the older gang members used GTA 3 to train teens to do carjackings and murders."

.. and I just lost it.

[ramp^work] "prosecutor in a murder trial in which the older gang members used GTA 3 to train teens to do carjackings and murders."
[ramp^work] HAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA
[ramp^work] Oh shit, that's so unintentionally hilarious.
[ramp^work] I can just see older gang members sitting down the younger gang members in front of the TV
[ramp^work] "Ok, BG. First you walk up to da bitches ride. Then you hit the X button. Then you jack they shit. Hear?"
[ramp^work] "Now remember. The Kuruma is a good all around car to jack. It's got good speed and handling. The Cheetah is pretty dope, too. But it's hard to find. I like the Esparantos myself. That be the old school shit, ya hear.
[ramp^work] "Don't fuck with the black Sentinels. FBI biznatches be driving that shit, yo."
[ramp^work] oh wait.. it's the Y button to jack somebody's car isn't it..

Has GTA taught me nothing? I can't even car jack properly in real life.

I purchased this title last week and finished playing through it over the weekend. Since I'm in a lapse in today's training class, I figured I'd do a brief write-up on the experience. It's rated a pretty respectable 88 on Metacritic, which is always a good sign. The user reviews give it an unbelievable 9.6 rating. I was kind of on the fence not knowing how I felt about the whole first-person gameplay thing. I played it at a demo kiosk at Software Etc., and it was pretty damn fun, so I decided to buy it.

I'll say over all, it's a pretty fun game. It had excellent gameplay, wonderful character design, interesting weapons system, amazing graphics, and pretty good controls. It did a good job seamlessly integrating third and first-person gameplay. The downsides are that it's way too short, and has no really discernable story line (at least until you're close to the end). There's some bullshit bosses, but nothing too challenging or difficult. The missions basically felt like the same shit again and again with very little variations. It does have Fuzzles, though, which is about enough to save any game.

I can't say it's a bad game, as it's really not. But, it's no where near as fun as Munch's Odyssee was. Would I recommend it? Not for $50. Get it used or as a rental, and I can guarantee you won't be disappointed. But as a brand new $50 title, nuh-uh. Not worth it. To use the EGM rating system, I'd have to give it about a 7.5/10.

The Xbox Media Center Extender is a really cool piece of software. If you're running Windows XP Media Center Edition, it extends it on to your Xbox. Using the XB MCX, you can watch live TV, play music, videos, radio, and pictures just as if you were using a real MCE PC.

Anyway, it says it requires 802.11g, 802.11a, or wired ethernet to run. My wireless setup uses 802.11g, and let me tell you, the XB MCX ran like such crap it was basically useless. Live TV was choppy to the point of being unwatchable, videos were useless, and the whole UI was unbearably awful. Apparently 802.11a is supposed to be leagues better, but I'm not about to upgrade all my WiFi equipment just to run the XB MCX.

So, I wired the living room into the office with about 10 meters of cable (luckily we have the apartment configured to where you can't see any of the wiring). It made a huge difference -- it became useful!

Now I'm loving it. Using the Xbox like a virtual TiVo is super cool. While MCE was fun to use from my desktop, having to burn recorded shows to DVD and carting them into the living room was a real hassle. Now, it's like the MCE PC is sitting right in the living room. It totally rocks.

If you are running XP MCE, have $70 to spare for the XB MCX kit (which includes a remote, IR eye for the Xbox (which allows allows for DVD playback), and software), and have 802.11a (which the manual says is "great" compared to "fair" for 802.11g) or wired ethernet, check it out. If you're using 802.11g, don't bother. It's useless. Otherwise, it's a very cool piece of software.

We just drove by a bank, and on its marquee it said in big letters: MASTER CHIEF BANKS HERE Scary

Leslie said that it worked fine. Plus, the whole encryption thing is bullshit according to some conversations I had here at work. The culprit for DVD reading problems is generally flaky/dirty DVD drives.

I get home and go to sit down for a nice gaming session with my just acquired Halo 2.

Hm. That's interesting, I'm getting the dreaded Disc Read error.

Hey look, is the disc supposed to be warped like this from the factory?

Yup, I got a bad copy. Near the inner ring, there's a warped section that you can feel clearly on the top side of the disc. How fucked up is that.

I just hope the local Gamestop still has LE copies left tomorrow.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is simply amazing. Yes. But, you probably know that already if you've read the countless reviews saying how amazing it is. So, I won't even bother. But, if you've been sitting on the fence about this game, or were at all disappointed with GTA:VC, *get this game*, it is well worth the money.

Game of the year? We'll see.. there's still a couple months left in the year, and lots of superb looking titles on the way.