I know its been a while since Ive been on Gamespot but Ive been playing a lot of games and thats basically taking my internet time away. So I thought Id share my thoughts on how I feel about the game industry today. Prepare for a fairly long rant.

Its disturbing to see were the current gaming trend is going. The shooter genre is the dominate force today and I believe its invading other genres. For example, The Mass Effect series is supposed to be an RPG. But it looks more like a shooter to me. Just watch the trailer for ME3 which shows the main character picking of an alien or whatever with a sniper rifle.Its the same with Borderlands, its classified as a shooter RPG. I just think shooters are too glorified. Dont get me wrong, I like shooters as well but I dont like how gamers are now demanding more dark and gritty shooters to the point were the market is saturated with them. I still have yet to enjoy a shooter as much as I did with Call of Duty 4. Now there are rehashed Call of Duty games coming out every year with little to no improvements over the previous one. I think its getting a little stale but yet Black Ops shatters sales records left and right. Is it me or is the masses moving toward this trend? Im actually starting to miss WW2 shooters. Anyway, if the masses continue with this trend, there will be no more games with originality and companies will be to scared to try out new IPs. Gamers complain that the market is lacking in new IPs but yet, when one comes out such as Mirrors Edge, Resonance of Fate and Folklore, it gets bad sales. Whats wrong with this picture?

Also, I dont like how gamers and critics are being critical over the littlest things in games. An example is Gran Turismo 5. Gran Turismo 4 was blasted for having no online multiplyer and car damage but yet when GT5 comes out with multiplayer and car damage, they still complain saying that the damage is "unappealing" and the multiplayer system "feels outdated". They should be thankful that the demands from GT4 have been met. Another example is Final Fantasy XIII. When Final Fantasy XII released, some fans complained that you spend to much time in the desert grinding and leveling up and not much story. But when Final Fantasy XIII came out, it basically solved those problems with a heavy emphasis on story and the gameplay was more streamlined to focus on the story. But fans are now complaining that they cant go out into an open world like the desert in FFXII and it has to much story. Once again, what is wrong with this picture?

I also dont like how popular digital distribution is getting. I like buying an actual physical copy of a game. Just like buying a music CD your buying a piece of art. Also, what happens if your hard drive fails and you lose all that data? You have to redownload it all over again and it can be a pain if you had a lot of games. Especially if your signed up for the Playstation Network. The PS3 tends to be very slow with downloads and intsallations. Digital distribution can also be bad for the economy. Its a danger to the physical retail stores. A big retail store called Hollywood Video and its gaming store, Game Crazy, recently bit the dust because of the popularity of digital distribution and the employees lost their jobs. Now I hear that Blockbuster is in danger. I also dont like that some PC games now require you to have a Steam account. Its almost like being chained to Steam. Some say that digital distribution is a lot more convinient but I see it more as a source for lazy gamers.

Simply put: The current state of gaming sucks and the future of gaming is not looking so bright.

As for the FFXIII union. Im sorry to say that Im still having issues trying to get it going. I get an error screen everytime I try to send out the invites. This appears to be happening to many users from what I can see in the Technical forums. So until Gamespot fixes this problem, the Union is currently in limbo. Sorry.