You know the deal. No 3 red yet but my 360 seems to be unplayable at this point as it feezes up shortly after being turned on.

You know I love the system but it but you still have to feel that MS never handled this problem right. My system is only like two years old. I think it is sytem that has the newer CPU but not the newer GPU because one was changed before the other if you remember.

Quite honestly anyone who does not have both the new chips should be entiled to get thier system upgraded to them for free.

On another note I hoe whenever the next MS system does come out they concentrate a little more on quality of the hardware.

Hard to believe but as people pointed out on this weeks Hotspot PC gaming is more and more in a bad way. If you had Asked me like 2 years ago I'd had disagreed but really this year I can't think of one PC game I will be getting this fall and even last year it was only a few.I don;t count WoW because the game is ancient at this point and it is only a purchase from a single company which hardly helps out the PC gaming industy, in fact you could say that its dominace has hindered if you think of all the other MMO's that came out since it and have failed, hint there were many.

It does make me sad but at the same time I think that the PC gaming industry and the hardware industry have done everything they can to turn people away. Piracy aside the PC indusrty as whole has terrible bussiness model and have only just recently acknowledged such and some still do not. Its just really dumb to design games around top of line technology which only like maybe 1% of the largest installed user base in thew world even owns at any given moment. The there are the hardware manufacturers who churn out new stuff like every 3-4 months. Dumb again.

I ould go on about this but really you can figure it out why its all bad and can easily see why it is failing.

Just makes me wonder what, if any games I will buying for mt PC next year. A new Compnay of Heores? Not if they put out another dumbed down version like they did the last one, DoW2 expansion? Possibly but I felt that was dumbed down too.

Don't know I hope it survives because consoles still do not do everything that can be done, especially from a user content level and RTS gaming but it is looking really bad right now.

This story was kind swept under the rug but the scum of the video game universe, Activision has decided to sue EA over Brutal Legend in attempt to basically steal the game from them after they clearly did not want it before. Fact is, and everyone knows it Activision chose to not publish the game, everyone knows it too but now that the game is near fisihed and has a buig buzz around it they want all of sudden want it. Personally I hope they not only lose this lawsuit but people stop buying thier mediocore games and overrated games. Can they sink any lower?

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23928

Normally I roll through each conferrrence and give play by play review of what I liked and did not. Time is not really with me this time and I am going to make this short and sweet on what I thought.

Honestly with the exception of the new Metroid game not much peeked my interest with the Nintendo conferrence this year. In fact I though they were probably the worst this time around.

MS's conference I felt was second. I likked the new motion control thinie. Natal is it? But when I omes down to it I see some problems with no other way to do other than by with you body.

Sony, OMFG where have you been in like 3 or so years now? Oh yeah, bringing up the rear or at least that is whatI thought. Not this year. Ok I will admit it was looking like another bring Sony conference there at first with them kicking it off with the PSP which didn't really interest me following by the nobody gives fxck talk about Home. Games aside it was Sony new motion control scheme that won me over, big time. Very early into the presentation they gave the line that made the most sense too. It was something to the effect of early on when using the EYEtoy we learned that you needed some kind of controller still and I agree 100%. I just see some problems with what can be done with MS's approach as far a games are concerned. Proof to me was watching the guy paint in the MS conference, hardly precision but fine for my 4 year old. Compare that to the guy writing in the Somy press conferrence and how precise that was and you can see the difference.

Any wayI think a combination of both would probably be the best option but of the two I felt Sony's approach was superior as far as gamesare concerned where good control generally is very important.

http://www.giantbomb.com/tales-of-monkey-island-trailer/17-716/

After years of Lucasarts making Star Wars game after Star Wars game and going from one of my favorite devs of all time to one of my most hated they finally are doing something right and doing a remake of the original Monkey Island as well as releasing a new episodic adventure, called Tales of Monkey Island. I would have been happy with just the remake but its great news all around.

Now I have all the MI games but I will still buy this in support of keeping this thing going and just because the games are awsome. I think the only mistake they made was not making a DS version which in my mind seemed to be the best fit but judging by the video the game looks to be maybe a little audio heavy, but still it would have been ok with just the text.

Anyway I am E3 has only just begun and I am happy. Now we just need whoever in charge of Seirra's stuff to remake thier games and EA to get off thier butts and remake the Ultima series.

This has to be the best commercial that Nintendo has put out in some time. I like it anyway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaL8HqufFI

I got around to beating Little Big Planet today. One of those games I started, and then left, no months later went back to and beat.

I don't think I have commented on this game since before it even came out. I like its style. I like how it sounds. But I despite the physics based jump. As like every review points out this game is a plat former that has a crappy jump system. It is absolutely and totally inconsistent and you will die many a times because when you jump it does not do what you expected it to do. And really that is one of the few things that makes this game have any difficulty.

A good plat former can be hard jut by layout. Some parts in this game do provide challenge, but for the most part you're dying because you're fighting with the physics to get Sackboy to jump or move.

I like the game though overall. I do hope however this is something that they address in LBP2 when it comes out.

Oh and the ending stunk but I will let that slide since the story wasn't all that great anyways. But yeah you beat it. And then seconds later it's done.

So....what to play next? I still feel I have to beat what I already started so I guess it will be jumping around between Kingdom Hearts, Pikman 2 and Empire. The last on the list I put the lowest priority on and if the game I was playing up till now starts to get worse I may rest that one and start over later. We will see.

Beyond this it is really hard to say and won't even get into it right now and I won't even speculate at this point.

I have taken a few days off from Playing Empire. Lat I played things had continued to decline, though i was finally out of the red budget-wise. Yet more countries have declared war on me, including allies. Not sure how this game will go but it doesn't look good.

I feel like that is type of game I can juggle with another because its open strategy game without really a story

I did what i said and went back to finish Bionic Commando Rearmed. I got to say the ending is tad bit more graphic than the origial version but it lacks Hitler or Master D. Anyways I played the hell out of the last level till I beat it. The end. You still blow the "Leaders" head up but I miss that plot point that they were suppossed to be trying to resurrect Hitler.

I feel it time to work on beaing Pikmin 2 now which I started months ago and haven't played inawhile. Kind of been my goal to finish what i started for awhile now.

Beyond that I am not sure what i will play next because i have quite a backlog. Kingdom Hearts I suppose, which started a awhile ago too but stopped playing,

I have have playing a few old games on emulators a little more lately. I bought USB adapter for my NES, SNES, Genesis, PS1/PS2, and N64 contollers. They seem to work well. Some those controller just feel wierd though in general. Just pick up a NES controller if you have one, especillay if you have not touched one in years. The thing is tiny and just does not feel comfortable compared to an 360 or PS3 controller. LOL.

Oh plans. Well I had them as you may have read in my last blog I am playing Empire: Total War. I made a classic mistake though in that I expanded faster than my Empire could finacially support. In my case I was fighting a war on mutiple fronts, like at least 4 enemies from which i had direct contact with. These enemies wore down my economy through raids and neglected the repairs.

So by like the next turn imediately after my last blog things started going downhill. My income began to go away which forced me to raise taxes which in turn has causes rebellions. It of of course stalled my expansion effort and made it hard for me maintain a proper garrision in newly occupied territories. Replenishing my troops also become impossible. Then one of my allies choose to attack another ally and I chose a side which of course gained me another enemy with my territorial reach. I did however manage to broker a cease fire deal for nothing with the Cherokee nation and for now that seems to be holding which is good.

At this point I am just trying to hold on and try to repair infrastructure and hope that my income will come back up. On the war front I just need to defend with what I got, or less.

Not much new. i beat Rayman Raving Rabbits 1 with like 98% which is good enough. I played a couple levels Raving Rabbits 2 which seems easy so far. Not that the first one was hard but it did have some levels that were difficult at times. Thsi one just seems like breeze so far.

Still building my Empire in..um Empire: Total War. Noit sure how many regions I have now. I took out Sweden first I think, who declared war on me. Then I managed to get in a bunch of other wars just by virtue of supporting my allies. I have actually offvially only declared war myself once and that was on the Cherokees. At any rate I just wiped out the Prussians, the country that I think is Germany, or the precursor to it, I forgot wehat they are called is almost wiped out too by me. Spain only has maybe 3 or so regios left and I suspect that once I capture the country proper any colonies will cave like those of France did. My plan as it is right now is finish up the wars with Germany and Spain and then take out the Cherokees. After that I will rest and rebuild because my infrasturcture has been going down as enemy armies like to raid a lot and I have not the funds to keep up armies and repair. This is biggest problem right now by the way is money is very tight right now.. I hoping that to change once Spain and Gemany. are gone though.

I am holding off on any other games right now though. But I guess my imediate plan is try to knowck out Bionic Commando Rearmed, which i expect to pain having not toughed it in a few months, then Pikman 2. After that i think it time to beat Little Big Planet.

I went out and found a copy of MGS3 the other day since I never played it and also bought Super Smash Bros Melee so my continuing mission to buy old games that missed is still going on. Whn I will have time to oplay all these is mystery though.

Note to readers. Enjoy being young because you simply will not have the time to do things as you had once you hit a certain pint in your life.