If you ask anybody that knows me what my one passion is, within a mere second or two they will instantly say gaming. I love gaming, I love the industry, I grew up on, and it was my third parent. Where as mum and dad my teach you the abc’s, gaming taught me that all you need for fun is two paddles and a ball, yet for some bizarre reason, I dislike tennis. Anyway, back on to the point, it’s safe to say I live games, sleep games, it’s my hobby and within the near future will once again be my life. I grew up playing the classics and will admit that I did prefer Nintendo over Sega, and still do favour Nintendo to this day, but even the father of gaming has me worried. I’m not worried about children playing adult rated games, or the affect of gaming on today’s society, nope; I’m worried that sooner or later we are going to be at a stale point, if we’re not at it now. What am I talking about you ask? Well it’s simple, how many independent developers do you know of right now, not many I’m guessing. They’ve either been purchased by the mega corporations or ran out of business due to spiralling development costs. What does this mean, how does it affect gaming? Well that’s simple, all these independent developers that once made some great games are now forced to make rehash after rehash of pretty much the same game. Hell, just look at Electronic Arts, how many titles did they release last year? How many were not sequels to sports games or movie tie ins, you could probably count how many on one hand, at most one hand, one foot. So what if the smaller companies aren’t here anymore, what does it matter, they don’t do anything, do they? Well history has taught us that the majority of advancements in the industry have been by the little guys. Take the games that redefined the industry, doom, made by ID software, one of the only independent developers left out there. Then we have people like Sid Meier, how pretty much helped define the strategy genre with the Civilization series, but yet even he is now behind a big corporation (Take Two if you’re interested) and what has happened since the take over, a new Pirates (which was out over a decade ago) and a sequal to Civilization. No new titles that he is capable of creating. It’s the same everywhere, big companies are afraid to try something new and just stick to the same old formula, come on EA, how about a new product instead of Sports game 2069. There is still hope, we have seen some quality new brands released over the last year or so, such as Guitar hero and with E3 demonstrating there are some new titles in the work, Spore, Assassins Creed, Mass Affect, Gears of War, and Supreme Commander to name a few there is still a chance that maybe one day 90% of new games will be something new, will be something other than a sequel or movie tie in. But how can things change? Well like all things, everything revolves around money. It costs an estimated $8 million; let’s see that in numbers shall we - $8,000,000 to make a standard PS2 game. How can smaller companies afford that, and what with the PS3 and X360 both branding development costs almost double that of the last generation, how many brand new titles are going to appear? How many smaller companies are going to risk their whole future on one game, if it succeeds then great, they are secure for the time being, but if it fails they disappear into the history books. The gaming industry is the biggest industry in the world, surpassing the movie industry by over $1 billion each year. They make this much profit, but yet they continue to charge top dollar prices for games. We’ve all no doubt read or heard about companies loosing money (mainly because of development costs,) but when they announce their profits they still continue to boast huge profits, often running into the double millions. It seems that not even the gaming industry is safe from the big corporations and with the likes of Microsoft picking off smaller development houses as and when they feel like, there seems to be little hope that the gaming industry will once again return to it’s best days, which in my opinion are Retro and early Playstation. It seems it can only go in one of two ways, maybe we’ll end up sports title 2076 or movie turned game # 352, but then again, maybe we’ll be surprised and things will once again be about the important things, the games, and the people that play the games, but I seriously doubt it.

E3 overload, holy mother of christ, take a look at some of those screens, the new info, and it's not even started!

Simply put, amazing!

I've just finished my Burnout Legends review and you can find it tucked away in my profile, be sure to let me know what you think :)

E3 is hotting up already and I can feel the excitement in the air already, even more so now Nintendo has released information that the DS lite will hit US shores in June.

Now let's hope that E3 lives up to the hype and produces some quality news, which I'm sure it will.

A friend of mine just picked up copies of the two above mentioned games and I managed to get a steal of them before he could get into playing them both.

First thoughts are a bit mixed, I quite liked Battlefront on the PC, but I just can't get into it on the PSP, it just feels way to slow.

Spiderman 2 I am enjoying quite a bit, it's fun to play and a bit different from my usual choice of games so makes a nice breath of fresh air.

I'll get some reviews up shortly :)

Over a month since i've properly visited Gamespot, so much to see, so much to do, so much to catch up on.

Been in hospital for a while having some much needed Surgery, so now as I get some rest and recovery it's back to the important stuff, gaming and of course, the upcoming E3.

I've got a lot to catch up on so I'll cut this one short, until next time :)

If like me, you remember the days when the idea of saving a game and coming back to it later was not an option then you’ll have fond memories of when games began using Memory Cards.

How different would it have been if you could have saved half way through a session of Mario Bros, only to be able to come back and carry on a few hours later. Back when the idea of saving a game first became common place it was greeted with high applause and now many years on when Hard Drives are becoming more common amongst home consoles, the Memory card still serves us well.

I remember an advert on the back of the Final Fantasy VII manual; it was for the Playstation Memory Card and offered the challenge of beating the game without one. I sure wouldn’t have been able to, and I don’t know anyone that has, although that said, someone has bound to have done it. Imagine gaming where once you died that was it, or you got ten minutes from the end and you suffer from a power outage, devastating.

They don’t ask for much and in return they give us the ability to go have some lunch, to go outside and the ability to have a game that lasts for many hours. Where would games be now without Memory Cards? We probably wouldn’t have games that last for twenty plus hours, no sir.

These days many of us overlook this little beauty that gives us so much, and offers a lot in return, so when you get two minutes alone with that little peripheral be sure to let it know just how thankful you are.

As promised I've submitted a few new reviews. Sadly they aren't of any new games due to lack of PC power atm, but that will change shortly.

You can find them all in my review section so be sure to let me know what you think :)

I finally manage to get myself some internet time and with a lot of excitement around the final placings of the Developer for a Day contest, I then find out it's been delayed, for an interesting reason though. Well another week wont hurt, will it?

Seems I have a new emblem called the Vote Rocker, I have to say it does looks good, so thanks for that Gamespot.

Also it seems "Complete' has been changed to 'Total Access.' I like the new emblem, even if it has a military theme behind it, which i'm not sure if it fits in, but none the less it looks good.

Next time i'm online i'll get some reviews posted, I have about five or six waiting to go online so be sure to give them a read and let me know what you think.

Well it's been a while since i've posted anything here or for that matter been on Gamespot all together. I have no internet at home right now so have to make do with the local Library, which means having to go all the way to town only to be allowed one hour only.

But on a brighter note I've just sent off my Developer for a Day entry and can tell you all its a project titled "Retribution: The Dawn of Heroes." I'll detail more information in the coming days.

Just started reviewing again and am currently building a selection of reviews up on my laptop at home. Once i've got a good number i'll get them all online, hopefully wont be to long.

/Aedelas

It’s not come to that level yet, but is this the way gamers will be communicating with each other?

Ok, first off I should perhaps take a few seconds to say that this article will have no discussions of wang’s or any other part of the human body, sorry to disappoint. 

Now that is out of the way, lets get down to business. 

We’ve all seen system wars and we have all seen the comments some of those “less gifted” than the average guy / gal make. 

Let’s get one thing straight, we are computer game players, well at least we use to be. Now I don’t confess to being an old school gamer but I did grow up with a NES controller in one hand a SMS controller in the other. Back in those days nobody cared about the console, nobody cared about how much graphics power the console had, but instead they cared about the games. 

I can remember arguments me and friends would have, it wouldn’t be because I had a SNES and he had Mega Drive, instead it was because he had Echo the Dolphin and I had Mario, that’s how it should be in my opinion. 

Now what do we get? I mean we hardly see the games even mentioned and considering we are on the eve of the beginning of the next generation, surely this is a sign that many of us so called gamers have lost our way? 

It seems that gamers of today are more concerned about processing chips, RAM and graphics power rather than the games. I mean what has gone wrong with so many of us? You know what a game is right, you know them little circular disks that you put in your boxes of high graphics power and so forth? 

Every day it seems that people are more than willing to bad mouth a console because of its technical specs, rather than the games. So on the eve of the next generation, take a step back and remember the games make the consoles, not the technical specs.