I get it, I get it. You can make a lot of good games, videogame industry. Quit releasing several each week. Last week we had to endure through:

Final Fantasy XII
Neverwinter Nights 2
FEAR
Power Stone Collection
Killzone Liberation
GTA Vice City Stories
NFS Carbon

This week, you drop the megaton bombs in:

Gears of War
Guitar Hero II

Along with:

DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 2
Call of Duty 3
Tony Hawk Project 8
Final Fantasy V Advance
SOCOM Combined Assault
SOCOM Fireteam Bravo 2
Elite Beat Agents
Viva Pinata
Sega Genesis Collection

Do we get a break next week? I guess not since the PS3's launch on the 17th and there will be so much hoopla surrounding that. If that wasn't enough, you've got games to go alongside those consoles to take some more money. For example:

Resistance: Fall of Man
Ridge Racer 7
Genji
and the other games that'll be available.

If we don't have the PS3, you still toss us:

Smackdown vs. Raw 2007
Naruto Uzumaki Chronicles
Metal Slug Anthology
Final Fantasy III

At the beginning of the week after that is the launch of the Wii on the 19th and along with that comes several games that you toss at us like:

Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz
Red Steel
Rayman Raving Rabbids
and other titles.

For the other consoles, there's:

Rainbow Six Vegas
Superman Returns
DOA Xtreme 2
and the trio of Burger King games (Sneak King 'GOTY', Pocketbike Racer, Big Bumpin')

WTF? Can you not give us a break? Let us enjoy the games we have before tossing more at us. If we still have money by the time December rolls around, it'll be a Christmas miracle. You make me sick, videogame industry, by incessant need to shove all these good games down our throats. Show some self restraint for goodness sakes.

I picked up my copy of the Bully Collector's Edition from EB yesterday and it's worth the extra $10 to me. The game itself is also quite fun. The game is executed similarly to The Warriors with the health bar around the feet of the people you lock-on to and there's just a lot of freedom to the game, which was expected. It just feels like you're in this world, this school campus, and you're just one of many students populating this world. There aren't many clones like you see in the GTA games, each one is fairly unique as they will retaliate if you've beaten them up or messed with them recently. I recognize their faces and know if I'm looking at trouble or not. This is something hasn't really been done in this type of game before and it's very nice. It's something I'd have expected for next-gen games, but it's in a nice current-gen package.

I've barely gotten my feet wet in the game at the moment, playing through a few missions and taking a few of the classes, but I'm enjoying it greatly right now.

I noticed that a few people have signed up to track my submissions, which is cool. I can't promise any great content, but I'll post what I can find that could be enjoyable for many people here at GameSpot. I might have a few things to upload when I get the chance, so keep an eye out for that.

I've been meaning to upload some new videos lately, so I took a look into my collection to see what I could upload. I remembered that I had several Conan skits and decided to upload those. My favorite of the bunch is the 1864 baseball skit as Conan's hilarious with his commentary on these people that are recreating an 1864 atomsphere in which to play some old-school baseball. Conan's trip to see Martha Stewart at her ranch is also another favorite as it deals with his classic obsession over Martha's evil demonic side. Feel free to watch those and the other videos I've uploaded and enjoy.

[video=dyMxlmat5bsFsjbe]

I beat Ape Escape 2 last week before one of my classes. I was very glad to have beaten it, as this is one of my favorite series around. Once I beat it, something that I think violates some principle of game design happened. After all the ending movie played through and came back to the home base after the credits, I went to go back to one of the levels to get the rest of the monkeys that I missed and some video plays saying that Spector, who I had just caught, escaped again. This wasn't so bad, as it meant more replay value, but it took a monkey away from me on the levels that I had already caught them all. This meant I would have to play through them again to get that last monkey. I'm not a game designer just yet, but erasing the player's progress in order to create replay value isn't the way to go. It's not that big of a deal, but it's not great to see extra work that I put into the game being taken off to force more replay value into it. It's a great game, but this kind of soured the thought of going back to catch the rest of the monkeys I had missed.

I'll jump right back in sometime in the future. I just want to beat some games first. I took a bunch of games into EB yesterday to take advantage of a good trade-in they had, which was trade-in 4 current-gen games and get an extra $10. I took in about 16 games and got nearly $100 in credit. I put $5 down on a preorder for Naruto: Ultimate Ninja since I enjoyed the hell out of the E3 demo. It should be out later this month and I cannot wait. :)

So my semester break (some may call it spring break) started this week and I have a goal to beat several of my games by the end of next week . I doubt I'll beat them all, but I'd like to at least get a few of them. If you'd like to know, here's the list:

1. Ape Escape 2 (nearing the end last I saw) (PS2)
2. Burnout 3/Revenge (over 50% done in 3, around 25% done in Revenge) (PS2)
3. Dragon Quest VIII (over 20 hours in) (PS2)
4. Freedom Fighters (got to be somewhat close to being done) (PS2)
5. Ico (been wanting to finish after beating Shadow of the Colossus) (PS2)
6. Jak and Daxter (My first nearly complete went with my dead memory card) (PS2)
7. Kingdom Hearts (doubtful with all these others) (PS2)
8. MGS3: Subsistence (Want to finish Snake Eater and catch those damn monkeys!) (PS2)
9. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (Never got an extended period of time to play it) (PS2)
10. Ratchet and Clank (want to get further in the series, so I've got to finish this game up) (PS2)
11. Viewtiful Joe (too fun to not finish it) (PS2)
12. X-Mens Legends II (loved it before suddenly stopping) (PS2)
13. Star Wars KotOR (Found those annoying sand people and stopped playing) (Xbox)
14. Final Fantasy VII (nearing Jenova on the first disc, Advent Children makes me want to finish this game up) (PS1)
15. Grandia II (If I'm going to try to beat RPG's this one goes along for the ride.) (DC)
16. Legend of Zelda Wind Waker (loved it, but couldn't beat the hand boss) (GC)
17. Metroid Prime (got stuck looking for this furnace-like place) (GC)
18. Pikmin (I finished twice, but never got all the right parts) (GC)
19. Advance Wars (gets hard after the first 10 missions or so) (GBA)
20 Fire Emblem (I'm on a side mission on 18 and the story makes me think I'm near the end, though that could be a trick.) (GBA)

Wow. I might be a little too ambitious, especially with all of those RPG's. Six RPG's might push me more towards those action or platformer games first. It'll be fun to see how much of a dent I can make in this list.

E3 is coming up in just under two weeks now and I simply cannot wait. Hearing all these new announcements of games that will be at the show is almost overwhelming. With a new Madden on the Wii up for play should be cool and I've definitely got to stop by Atari's room (last year's room was set up like an arcade) to check out DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 2 and see how Spike has improved the game. If I can find a way to sanely try out the DS and GC Zelda titles, I'll be happy as Nintendo had a full booth everytime I stopped in there. It's just more like I'm biding my time until I leave for L.A. than trying to enjoy the time I've got free. It'll be my second year there and my first under the media label and first year being there all three days.

The latest game I've been really into was Project Gotham Racing 2, as the scoreboards let me know how bad, or good, I'm doing so I can improve my Kudos scores. The game looks very nice and there's a nice variety in the tracks with the ability to choose various routes within the same locale. The one problem I've found is that the steering seems to lock up when braking quite often, meaning when I brake, I cannot turn to avoid driving into a wall and thus I inevitably have to hit the wall and lose potential points. I don't know if it's a design choice by the devs or if it's a flaw, but it is annoying. 

If you haven't heard of the Hardcore Gamer Magazine, do yourself a favor and subscribe as soon as possible. In the meanwhile, they have a site up where you can do various tasks for points to redeem for cool stuff. Just click the link above and sign up and get as many points as possible to get some cool game swag. 

I'm not an Xbox 360 fanboy, as I don't have the system and don't intend to have one for a long while, but the Dreamcast fanboys keep spreading stupid rumors like the Dreamcast had the best launch lineup and that the PS2 sucked worse than any other. Sure, fanboys are not to be trusted, but they spread this stuff to the non-fanboys, who then shout these things as "facts." I'm not a fanboy of any kind as I want to enjoy my consoles rather than bash the ones I don't have.

Now this isn't a perfect fact that the Xbox 360 had the better launch, but it's as close as we can get outside of arguing for the next 1,000 years about it. Whether you like it or not, good games are good games and the number behind the title isn't that big of a factor. This uses the GameRankings average ratings that have been given to these games to ensure that the wild rantings of a lunatic don't affect this as much as possible. The launch lists themselves came from wikipedia's launch game page, which lists the games available on day one of the launch to avoid the argument about the launch window. 

Without further ado, here's the findings of my experiment:

Dreamcast Launch List

Airforce Delta - 64.9%
Blue Stinger - 71.1%
Expendable - 61.0%
Flag to Flag - 63.9%
House of the Dead 2 - 77.9%
Hydro Thunder - 80.3%
Monaco Grand Prix - 69.5%
Mortal Kombat Gold - 55.2%
NFL 2K - 91.6%
NFL Blitz 2000 - 80.1%
Pen Pen Tri-Icelon - 63.7%
Power Stone - 84.0%
Ready 2 Rumble Boxing - 83.5%
Sonic Adventure - 87.1%
Soul Calibur - 96.7%
TNN Motorsports Hardcore Heat - 59.5%
Tokyo Xtreme Racer - 71.3%
TrickStyle - 71.8%

Total Games: 18 Avg. Rating: 74.1%

Breakdown
60% or lower: 2
60.1% - 70%: 5
70.1% - 80%: 4
80.1% - 90%: 5
90.1% - 100%: 2

By all means a pretty good launch. Most games are in the 60% to 70% area with a handful that are better. Only eight of the games are above the average with the other ten below. How many are right around that average (+3%)? Three, TrickStyle, Tokyo Xtreme Racer, and Blue Stinger. That means the launch is most either far above the average or below it, no consistency. Soul Calibur was the highlight with the rest complimenting it nicely. Now onto the Xbox 360 launch:

Xbox 360 Launch Lineup

Amped 3 - 75.4%
Call of Duty 2 - 90.6%
Condemned: Criminal Origins - 83.5%
FIFA '06: Road to FIFA World Cup - 64.5%
GUN - 77.7%
Kameo: Elements of Power - 81.6%
Madden NFL 06 - 77.7%
NBA 2K6 - 81.3%
NBA Live 06 - 63.5%
Need for Speed Most Wanted - 84.4%
NHL 2K6 - 75.7%
Perfect Dark Zero - 84.9%
Peter Jackson's King Kong - 82.8%
Project Gotham Racing 3 - 89.2%
Quake 4 - 75.1%
Ridge Racer 6 - 76.9%
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2006 - 72.4%
Tony Hawk's American Wasteland - 77.4%

Total Games: 18 Avg. Rating: 78.6%

Breakdown
60% or lower: 0
60.1% - 70%: 2
70.1% - 80%: 8
80.1% - 90%: 7
90.1% - 100%: 1

Woah, it's 4.5% higher than the Dreamcast launch. Why? Consistency. How does the launch handle the consistency test (+3%)? Seven games are right around the average, much higher than the Dreamcast's results. The reason? Most of the games here were at least good games with eight again beating the average rating of the launch. The highlights of this launch were Call of Duty 2 and Project Gotham Racing 3 with a handful of solid 80%+ titles right behind.

Now we move onto the PlayStation 2 launch lineup, which is routinely bashed as a crappy launch lineup. Now, I may be somewhat of a PS2 fanboy, but no more than to try to correct the wrong spoken of the console and it's lineup. Here's the proof that the PS2 launch lineup, while large in size, had plenty of good to great games:

PlayStation 2 Launch Lineup

Armored Core 2 - 74.1%
Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore - 86.4%
Dynasty Warriors 2 - 71.2%
ESPN International Track & Field - 71.3%
ESPN Winter X Games Snowboarding - 71.4%
Eternal Ring - 58.0%
Evergrace - 52.0%
FantaVision - 71.5%
Gungriffon Blaze - 72.3%
Kessen - 76.9%
Madden NFL 2001 - 89.4%
Midnight Club: Street Racing - 76.7%
MotoGP - 77.7%
NHL 2001 - 81.9%
Orphen: Scion of Sorcery - 56.8%
Q-Ball: Billiards Master - 66.5%
Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2 - 77.8%
Ridge Racer V - 79.5%
Silent Scope - 67.3%
Smuggler's Run - 79.0%
SSX - 91.5%
Street Fighter EX3 - 69.1%
Summoner - 70.9%
Swing Away Golf - 75.2%
Tekken Tag Tournament - 85.5%
TimeSplitters - 83.2%
Unreal Tournament - 76.8%
Wild Wild Racing - 68.7%
X-Squad - 64.5%

Total Games: 29 Avg. Rating: 73.9%

Breakdown
60% or lower: 3
60.1% - 70%: 5
70.1% - 80%: 15
80.1% - 90%: 5
90.1% - 100%: 1

While there's nearly twice as many games as the other two launches, that doesn't mean that the list is all crap. In fact, it's only .2% below the Dreamcast average. So I guess by association, the Dreamcast launch was crap if it's not much better than the PlayStation 2 launch? Not really. Despite the shortage of consoles at launch, which wasn't a new thing for consoles at the time, there were still plenty of good games to play. How does the consistency test hold up? There are 11 games that fall within the +3% range, which comes with the increase in titles. The highlight of this launch was SSX, which happened to be a new title from the newly formed EA Sports Big. The 80% games cover many genres with FPS's in TimeSplitters, fighters in DOA2: Hardcore and Tekken Tag Tournament, and sports in NHL and Madden 2001. The upper 70% games were also impressive with the likes of racers like Ridge Racer V, Midnight Club, Smuggler's Run, MotoGP, an FPS in Unreal Tournament, arcade/fantasy sports games like Swing Away Golf and Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2, and the strategy game Kessen.People complain about the lack of original titles in the Xbox 360 despite the good games there while there's several new games here, with 16 new game here, and 7 were above the 75% range.

Just as kind of a curiosity in leveling the sizes between the three, I took the top 18 from the PS2 launch to see how it stacked up to the others. The games below a 71.3% (Dynasty Warriors 2) were cut from the list. Here's the results:

PlayStation 2 Top 18 Launch Lineup

Armored Core 2 - 74.1%
Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore - 86.4%
ESPN Winter X Games Snowboarding - 71.4%
FantaVision - 71.5%
Gungriffon Blaze - 72.3%
Kessen - 76.9%
Madden NFL 2001 - 89.4%
Midnight Club: Street Racing - 76.7%
MotoGP - 77.7%
NHL 2001 - 81.9%
Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2 - 77.8%
Ridge Racer V - 79.5%
Smuggler's Run - 79.0%
SSX - 91.5%
Swing Away Golf - 75.2%
Tekken Tag Tournament - 85.5%
TimeSplitters - 83.2%
Unreal Tournament - 76.8%

Excluded Games

Evergrace - 52.0%
Orphen: Scion of Sorcery - 56.8%
Eternal Ring - 58.0%
X-Squad - 64.5%
Q-Ball: Billiards Master - 66.5%
Silent Scope - 67.3%
Wild Wild Racing - 68.7%
Street Fighter EX3 - 69.1%
Summoner - 70.9%
Dynasty Warriors 2 - 71.2%
ESPN International Track & Field - 71.3%

Top 18 Game Avg. Rating: 79.3%

Not surprising that taking the top 18 games of the PS2 launch would yield a better average rating, but this basically says that the PS2 had a better set of 18 games at its launch then the Dreamcast and Xbox 360 did. It's just interesting to see these results.

My conclusion is that gamers seem to have short memories where they feel it suits them best and nostalgia rules all. The truth is that no launch can really be better than anyother because it's all a matter of opinions. What one person finds an amazing launch another will scoff at it, but as long as you can respect that person's opinions and be able to understand how they can like those games, it should be fine. The problem is the fanboys that feel that they have to bash what they don't like with undue reason and it only results in their inability to adapt and enjoy all of the games available. I am not a console fanboy, I am a fanboy of good games.

I just picked this up before class and played for about 3.5 hours afterwards and it's a great music game with a great soundtrack of great songs to play. The last few on easy mode get a little confusing with quick reflexes needed to do extremely well on the Queens of the Stone Age track, Motorhead, and the last track that I'm blanking out on. I highly recommend it to rock fans, Harmonix fans, and probably Guitar Freaks fans, as well.

Without any real games coming out that can push the current-gen systems, one might think this holiday season will be devoid of great games because of the Xbox 360 taking resources from the top developers and publishers. That's simply not the case. In fact, this holiday season is full of great games all around making those not ready to move on very happy gamers. This month especially contains several great games that will attract a majority of gamers to spend more money on games than they'd intend. It's a challenge to decide where our money goes, but it's better to have a large amount of great games to choose from than a small amount of decent games. Here's the lists of games that are planned to come out for the next three weeks:

October 11, 2005:

SSX On Tour (Multi)
SOCOM 3: U.S. Navy SEALs (PS2)
Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 2 (PS2)
Serious Sam II (Multi)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (DS)
L.A. Rush (Multi)
NCAA March Madness 06 (Multi)

October 18, 2005:

Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi (PS2)
F.E.A.R. (PC)
Quake 4 (PC)
Age of Empires III (PC)
Blitz: The League (Multi)
Tony Hawk's American Wasteland (Multi)
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (GC)
Shining Force NEO (PS2)
Shadow of the Colossus (PS2)
Fable: The Lost Chapters (Xbox)
The Con (PSP)
The Warriors (Multi)
Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood (Multi)
Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse (Xbox)
Jak X: Combat Racing (PS2)
Major League Baseball 2K5: World Series Edition (Multi)
Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life Special Edition (PS2)
Wild Arms Alter Code: F (PS2)
Crash Tag Team Racing (Multi)
Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy (PS2)
Dig Dug: Digging Strike (DS)

October 25, 2005:

Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (PSP)
Call of Duty 2 (PC)
Civilization IV (PC)
Soul Calibur III (PS2)
Resident Evil 4 (PS2)
Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix (GC)
Battlefield 2: Modern Combat (Multi)
Ratchet: Deadlocked (PS2)
Metroid Prime Pinball (DS)
X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse (PSP)
The Legend of Heroes (PSP)
The Sims 2 (Multi)
Gunstar Super Heroes (GBA)
Spartan: Total Warrior (Multi)
Fatal Frame 3 (Xbox)
Taito Legends (Multi)
Nintendogs: Best Friends Edition (DS)

We've got 7 games that came last week, 21 coming this week, and 17 coming next week. I'd probably need a couple grand to be able to get all the games I'd want this month, but that's really not possible. I'm looking to get DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi, Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, Shadow of the Colossus, Fable: The Lost Chapters, and maybe Soul Calibur III. There's no way I can afford them all at once, so hopefully I'll be able to get a majority of them by the end of the year. November doesn't look as good right now, but once we get closer, the release picture will become more clear.

What do you think of the surge of good games this month and how will it affect your usual game-purchasing decisions? Which games do you think you can realistically get and what would you get if you were had the money to get any that you'd like?

With the acquisition of the NFL license by EA during the winter months, many gamers were pissed by it as their favorite sport in the videogame world had been relegated to just one publisher. Many talks of boycotts to teach EA a lesson to not try to start a "monopoly" in the sports videogame world. I'm not writing this to discuss this possible attempt at a monopoly since there are many loud views already on this subject that have been displayed already. The fact that a boycott is being attempted by many gamers brings up many faults in their logic.

To say that EA went to the NFL and bought the license right then and there is quite naive on how it all went down. In the spring of 2004, top NFL officials met at an off-site meeting to determine if they would make their license exclusive. They decided to go through with it and put the exclusive license up for bids, so the publishers had to bid on the license or risk missing out. EA was amongst as many as five publishers to bid on the license, probably along with Sega/Take Two, Sony, Midway, and Disney (from another article I've read). Imagine only being able to play NFL games on the PS2 and PSP because Sony got the exclusive license. My point is, it could have gone much worse than it did.

I support anyone's right to boycott any product or company they don't like, but if you're trying to send a message, do it right. You want to teach companies not to go this route? Teach them by not allowing either side to gain anything from you for it. If you're going to boycott EA, boycott the NFL along with them because it takes two to tango. They felt it was better for the fans to go exclusive with just one publisher, which they're very familiar with exclusivity with giving deals for sports clothing and sports drinks. Don't buy their products like jerseys, cards, clothing, or anything that the NFL endorses. Make them pay and teach them that as an NFL fan, you want choices when it comes to your NFL games.

Here's where the boycotting goes wrong. Not that long after the NFL deal was announced, Take Two announced their deal with MLB that gave them the exclusive third-party rights to the MLB license, effectively killing the very successful MVP Baseball franchise from EA Sports. Gamers seemed to rejoice that Take Two struck back, when it's not really any better than the EA license. The only way it wasn't as bad was the fact that the deal allowed first-party developers to continue with their MLB games. This kept 989's MLB series going and sparked Nintendo's Pennant Chase Baseball to be announced shortly after. This still shut out EA, Midway, the former Acclaim, and any other potential participants that were considering joining the fun. If you're so concerned with exclusivity, you should have been against this deal as well. No one company should be able to keep other developers from creating their own sports, especially those that were giving so much competition to the 2K Sports game.

So, along with boycotting EA and the NFL, add Take Two and MLB to that list. Yes, this does include Take Two's Rockstar Games, 2K Games, and their many other brands. No Grand Theft Auto, no Midnight Club Racing, no 2K Sports games, no games from Take Two period. Teach the MLB a lesson for even going this far with that licensing deal, buy no tickets, no merchandise, buy no pay-per-view packages of MLB games, nothing from them either. It's simple, don't be biased when it comes to sending this message. You want to send a message to companies to stop this exclusivity bull****? Go to the extreme and tolerate nothing.

There is that little license agreement with the NBA and publishers. Well, it really was the best of them all and really didn't tell any publisher to shut the **** up and get out. The simulation games, Live, NBA 2K, and Shootout will continue as normal, while the arcade games, Street and Ballers, will alternate every year. No company is shut out and the arcade games get alternated to keep them fresh each year and allow for the development teams to get more time to work on them. The NHL has no deal, and probably won't as they need the money and publicity after the lockout this past fall. I'm looking forward to seeing the league back in action, but the games haven't really been all that good over the past few years.

Other leagues with exclusivity agreements really aren't that bad with lack of good competition to push them. The NCAA Football, NASCAR, PGA, AFL, and others fall under this category and really don't factor in, though the same company has these licenses and has produced solid entries year in and year out after acquiring the licenses.

Okay now that the plan has been laid for you to follow for your boycotts, all you need to do is follow it through and stick to it. Boycott EA and the NFL along with Take Two and MLB. Go forth and enjoy your used copies of older sports games, just as long as you don't get it new. Feel free to discuss your new mission of equality amongst yourselves.