Warhawk 1.3 is great. There are two new weapons, the biofield generator and the wrench. The wrench is a very effective tool/weapon that rapidly heals friendly vehicles and rapidly destroys enemy vehicles (even tanks). The wrench (like the knife) is a one hit kill for infantry. The biofield generator generates a small field of energy that rapidly heals allies and kills enemies (it can do so in a few seconds). The field lasts for roughly 30 seconds and guys benefitting from it recuperate from damage incredibly fast. Its also worth noting that the lethality of heavy machine guns (stationary turrents and mounted on jeeps) has been greatly increased. Last but not least, one can now see who has mikes (approximately 1 in 4 people in the games I have played) and who is talking at any given time.

Also, just picked up the PS Eye (the Eye of Judgement free version set me back 40 bucks). I picked it up because it includes a microphone and I was sick of charging (okay, forgetting to charge) my wireless headset. The audio quality is really good and the video is reasonably sharp (640 by 480). I downloaded EyeCreate (which is free) and my three year loves old the various special FX and funhouse type visual distortions it creates.

10 days after I shipped it. I don't think its the same system I shipped off (the controller is certainly new), though to tell the truth I haven't checked the serial number yet.

It didn't take too long to transfer the game saves, music and photos from the external hard drive on which I had saved them. The DLC is still an ongoing process, if only because the first thing I downloaded was Warhawk and Omega Dawn (I then immediately jumped online). Controllers work perfectly again and I was't too rusty at Warhawk so I'm happy.

It isn't exactly dead, but it is severely messed up. Basically when doing certain things (playing PS3 games and browsing the PS Store) the system doesn't recognize some button presses and does 'recognize' direction inputs that aren't being sent. Curiously, this problem didn't occur in the XMB (thus allowing me to back up the data) or when playing PS2 games.

I went online in search of fixes and learned about a tiny recessed reset button on the back of the controller but neither it nor any of the other solutions worked, so I wound up calling Sony.

The one year warranty on my PS3 ran out two months ago, but the customer service representative put me on hold for a few minutes, then told me I was covered by an extended warranty. So now I'm just waiting for the box Sony is shipping me. Kind of a bummer, but I recently acquired a bunch of time consuming PSP games and I never did polish off the Orange Box X360 so there is a silver lining to the cloud.

Motorstorm is my definition of the ultimate arcade racer because it has elements of Burnout, Road Rash and Sega Rally, three of my favorite arcade racers. I have even come to enjoy the rubberband A.I.. Playing with the rubberbands turned off (online) turns Motorstorm into a pure racing game (in that maintaining a good line and using the appropriate vehicle on the appropriate track type is vastlymore important than bashing one's opponents into walls) but I like a good combat/racing game.

Having one's bike slide off a narrow ledge into deep mud, then cursing as you redline the boost trying to get some forward momentum going before a truck smashes through you (once my cyclist found himself spreadeagled across the grill of a truck), the thrill of using a semi to crush, well, anything, watching a bunch of trucks and cars slamming into each other in a narrow pass for a few moments,while you hang back on your bike,and then zooming through a gap at the right moment to take the lead, using an SUV to nudge a semi scrambling for purchase at the edge of a ridge over the side,punching a biker off his bike, grinding a smaller vehicle into scrap metal, getting one's (heavy) vehicle under two wheels of atruck midway through a jump, so the bust lands on two wheels and flips. The track design in Motorstorm is great, but for me the memorable moments are the one in which I have taken out (and been taken out by) my opponents.

Anyway, the new vehicle types (shown on IGN) look more 'road warriorish' than what preceded them (i.e. a bus with barbed wire which ought tomakelanding on its rooftricky if not impossible) so I imagine they will be cool for races with rubberband A.I. turned on (be is single player or online) but less useful for purer racers.

One thing I'd like to see in Motorstorm 2 is vehicles that don't regenerate once they are taken out (at least in the singleplayer mode, it would kind of suck to get completely taken out of a multilap race in multiplayer due to a single accident, though that is effectively what happens against skilled opponents with the rubberband turned off). Wrecked vehiclesand their pieces scattered around the track would be pretty darn cool . Also, it would be awesome if the limit of racers was bumped up from 12 to 15 (the original target)or even 20. There is nothing like traffic (and multi-car pileups)in a racing game (the Destruction Derbies had some flaws, but their recognition of said truth made the first two fun).

I saw the Home icon when I jumped onto Sony Online Sunday afternoon (oddly, there was no such icon at the time of the Thursday update).  I started background downloading, played a bit of Oblivion (my kids trashed my X360 game, so I decided to pick up the PS3 version) and then jumped into Home.  I wandered around and spoke to people (everyone was civil and some peoples' lack of headsets was actually a benefit since once could evesdrop on typed conversations as long as one had the conversationists within one's view and I watched two guys have a pretty informative discussion about Home and when they expected the next Beta revision), played some minigames (the only one I really got into was the helicopter rescue game though the racing game also seemed to be well done), bowled a bit, practiced pool and watched some movies (including the trailer for RE Extinction, which looks to be even more nonsensical than its predecessors).  I was kind of disappointed that Gamer Cards (which allow one to propose jumping from Home into say, Motorstorm) and placing data from one's hard drive into one's apartment (i.e. playing Common on the stereo and maybe a trailer for The Darkness on the tv) hadn't been implemented, but I guess if the beta was final, it wouldn't be the beta.

Anyway, if anyone wasn't to be a beta tester but isn't, they shouldn't be too broken up about it since Sony seems to be adding people all the time.

Onto Forza 2, I haven't spent much time playing it (too technical for me) but that game is clearly sex in a box for car enthusiasts.  I watched a bit of a 75 lap online race (strangely, with damage turned off) and then looked at the online car auctions (most people didn't go to crazy with their designs, but seeing cars with South Park characters was kinda cool).  Unless Polyphony Digital has some really bold ideas about what to do with GT they might not even want to bother releasing GT5.

I'll also throw in a plug for Afterburner: Black Falcon.  Its kind of like Ultimate Ghosts n' Goblins in that people that weren't fans of the old game aren't going to be impressed, but fans owe it to themselves to hunt down a copy.  The music is maybe a little too faithful to the 80's arcade game...

I just got VF5 today, but I made the mistake of downloading Flow during dinner, which immediately captivated my wife (also a VF fan) and oldest daughter.  VF5 is great stuff.  I haven't really gotten a chance to try out the single player modes, by Vanessa, my fighter of choice in Evolution, has some cool new moves and the two new characters are have some great attacks (its wild how they literally crawl all over their opponents).

Flow is just out there.  I've gotten only about 30 seconds of playtime, because as soon as I started playing my wife was like 'That looks beautiful, I want to try it'.  For the first time ever, she asked me who made a game.  I told her I don't know (I know it was designed as a thesis project), but I'm going to find out.  Flow is really out there in terms of game design (the character mutates into a variety of really weird forms, and has to go up against some really big enemies).  Flow reminds of of Katamari Damacy in that it is simple, unique, bold, and most of all fun.  I hope Sony had the good sense to buy the design team, or at least contract them for multiple projects.

The first thing I should mention is that it has an art style incredibly similar to that of Okami.  However, like all of the games in the series, one is playing from a pretty distant perspective so I don't expect RotK11 to come up for any art awards.  In RotK11 there are battle screens for duals and debates (for the unintiated, debates are a 1 on 1 faceoff conducted with words as opposed to swords) which are the only times ones sees characters up close in any amount of detail (aside from the everpresent portraits). 

In RoTK11 there is no special battle screen, one fights from the same screen one governs from.  Also, unlike some of the other Romances, one has no option but to be a ruler (whereas in other games one could play people from various walks of life, though the only other path I ever walked was general).  One has a lot more freedom when creating traps and fortifications than one does in any other Romance (that I recall).  One has to put something like two spaces inbetween constructions and can't built in certain places (say, the steep side of a mountain) but aside from that, the sky's the limit.  It looks like some of the traps (such as one that produces a rolling ball of fire) are impacted by the 3D nature of the game design, though since I don't have any cities on hills, that is me speculating.  Also interesting is the fact that one's support buildings are all outside of the city.  One builds stuff like barracks, farms and blacksmiths on specially designated pieces of land that come with the ownership of each city (how many varies, though 12 seems to be the average).  It definentely complicates defense because one has vulnerable places outside of cities (which tend to be pretty well defended) that one really doesn't want to lose.  Also, one has to make hard choices.  Does one want a city with a really massive financial district, even if that means it doesn't have shipyard (no warhships) and that it has few farms (one can buy food, but it ain't cheap)?

On hard, the A.I. is as ferocious as ever and warlords don't cut you or each other any slack.  My first game, I promptly came under attack by another warlord who was apparently offended by my building of defensive fortifications inbetween me and him (with heavy siege weapons and lots of soldiers, he eventually took me down).  The governor of my second city sold out to a rival during the attack.  My second game, I was a little more cautious about building defensive fortifications.  I lived long enough to take a third city, but the taking of the city overextended me a bit, so I came under attack by no less than three warlords simultaneously.  I took down or scared off two of them, but the third, who threw more bodies at me than the other guys and had some good generals, took me down.   They say third time's the charm.  My current playthrough I have had the pleasure of fighting off a coordinated attack (which appeared to be spearheaded by just one sovereign, since the other guys threw only something like 10,000 troops at me and retreated without too much encouragement) and eventually seizing the city of one of my attackers (after being weakened by his attack on me, another warlord attacked him, I kind came in on the tail end of that battle and scooped up his city). 

Bottom line: classic stuff any strategy geek can appreciate.

I finally got Resistance in the mail.  I was initially underwhelmed, but once the game dialed up the intensity about an hour down the line, I was impressed.  The enemy's A.I. is really good, and one can go against a lot of human sized enemies at once.  Weapons are well balanced (I only have three so far, but they all are handy in different situations) and the health system encourages/rewards aggression (one can only heal 25% of damage without medicine so it makes more sense to go out looking for the next healing pack than to recuperate behind a wall).  The often wide open levels tend to keep things interesting as well (you have a several ways to attack the enemy and vice versa).

I enjoy the scenes in which the main character is being backed up by lots of friendlies while fighting lots of enemies (thus far there seems to be a good mix of hero by his lonesome in an enclosed space and hero on a battlefield with a ton of enemies and allies).  Its cool that one can save soldiers (by shooting the alien that trying to choke a guy to death or what have you) in the middle of combat, but its weak how survivors quickly abandon the player (after a couple battles are won, they tend to stay behind).

I'm not all the deep in (I'm at the Cathedral) but thus far I'd say the impression I got off the demo is more or less accurate, though the final game dials up the intensity much higher (even on normal).  My wish list thus far for the inevitable Resistance 2 is more detailed textures (they are sharp, but could be more detailed), online co-op and more destruction (too much stuff that should be destructible isn't and of course, bodies fly around, but they don't fly apart).

I haven't tried online yet, I figure I'll finish the single player mode before I do, just so I can last more than 5 seconds.

EDIT: I'm now pretty deep into the game (probably close to the end) and towards the end the weapon selection gets a lot more interesting.  The sapper (which fires sticky globes which explode upon contact with an enemy, and which one can stack to do 'massive damage') is an awesome weapon. The auger (which fires radiation which grows more power as it moves through objects, including walls) is nice too.  My favorite part is how Insomniac balanced the auger.  It takes a couple of seconds to burn through, so a glowing spot in a wall is a sign one better move out in a hurry.

I got my PS3 in the mail Friday.  Unfortunately it beat Resistance (which I ordered at the same time but which shipped separately), but that gave me time to download all the demos.  The demo indicates that Resistance is conventional but extremely well made (which is what I expected from Insomniac).  The A.I. is really good, there is a decent amount of environmental destruction to be wrought and Resistance puts a lot of guys onscreen at once.  The graphics are nice, but clearly a notch below those of Gears.  But if I refused to play a games that didn't look as good as Gears, I would only play Gears :).

I was hugely impressed by Motorstorm.  It feels like Burnout taken to the next level.  While the difference between the vehicles wasn't as massive as there will be in the final game (bikes went against buggies, trucks against cars) it was wilder than any other arcade racer out there as is, and things will be really crazy in the final game when motorcycles and semis are sharing the same space.  I love the expressiveness of the bikers, who can punch other bikers off their bikes and flip off and otherwise taunt other drivers. 

GT HD is what it is.  I hope Sony releases a version 1.2 down the line with online play.  Blast Factor and Genji were just weak. 

I suspect UMD failed as a movie format simply because there isn't much of an audience for portable movies.  How many people spend 2 hours or more one public transportation on a regular basis?  I did at one point in time, but I suspect I was an exception to the rule. 

Sony's talk about allowing PSP to TV connectivity reinforces my theory.  I personally don't see the point in such a movie.  The movies look HDTV quality on a small screen, but their resolution is well short of that of DVDs, and UMD movies tend to lack the extras of DVDs, so in terms of viewing in one's home, UMD movies are a poor alternative to DVDs (and soon Blu-Ray and HD DVD).

Of course, the fact that the post-launch dry spell (of games) broke last Christmas with the release of games such as Burnout Legends, Virtua Tennis and Liberty City Stories also did UMD movies no favors.