Well its been about a week now from the time i got my dual shock 3 from Japan. just like everyone else is saying, the first thing you notice is the weight. where the Sixaxis is so light you question if you actually have a controller in your hands or not...you know your holding the dual shock 3 when you pick it up. i would say its about the weight of an Xbox360 controller at this point, but im not an offical scale that i put my controllers on to get exact mesurements so that fanboys online can flip out because suddenly the weight of the controller also determins the fate of the console.

now the reason i say reviewish thing is by the simple fact nothing seems to want to make the dual shock 3 actually shake. granted so far ive only played assassins creed (which does have rumble enabled) and Call of Duty 4 (which apparently is not...i was really hoping i would get the dirrectional vibration so i could feel where the shots were coming from....but w/e). so assassins creed has to be the weakest form of rumble i have ever felt in a game. the stupid thing only vibrates a little when i take damage...other wise it doesnt do anything. i make a big jump and land hard but dont take damage one would expect a small rumble for effect....but no its only when i take damage.

so that got me thinking. fanboys exploded all over the internet about the ps3 lacking the rumble feature...but in the end i dont need it...infact i dont even realize its there or not. after i got done playing call of duty 4 for the ps3 and i was thinking about what to put into my blog about the dual shock 3 i couldnt even remember if it had vibration or not. i had to actually go back turn the game back on and enter a game just to confirm if my controller shook or not. when it gets to the point i have to be looking for the rumble to realize its there, its pretty much rediculious at what the fan boys will pick up and run with to make their console look better.

so maybe I'm not enjoying the rumble enough by putting the controller down my pants or something, but this whole rumble thing is blown out of perportion. maybe when i get that dirrectional force feedback that the dual shock 3 can do, ill change my mind. because i can totally see feeling the right side of the controller virbating when i get hit on the right making it easier to find out where im being shot from. that kind of rumble seems to have more of a point than the whole controller shaking when i get hit.

first things first, the messenger pad is only good for messaging...seriously if your not going to send lengthy text messages on XBL or constantly be using it for MSN, dont even pick this thing up.

Design: MS seemed to have really thought this accessory out, making sure it felt stable but also fit to the controllers design. other then slightly getting in the way of where my fingers usually rest, the messenger pad keeps the 360 controller the most comfortable controller on the market at this point. however no matter how i look at it, the messenger kit just makes your controller look that much bigger and that much awkward to use (even tho it pretty much feels the same, with the exception of gaining some wieght.) so bottom line...looks funny, feels good, and is sturdy

functionality: this small messenger pad does a great job at trying to be a qwerty keyboard. throwing me off with some odd placement of special characters such as "?" but after using it for 30mins or so i kinda got use to it. you can quickly hit the button that has a picture of a dood to bring up a small black box to type into, send your message and get right back into the game (only used in single palyer so far. where the game stops while you type and resumes when you hit the dood button again) so it almost like pauses it. this is just the thing i needed considering i send lengthy messages to all of my friends on XBL, sometimes missing out on the first 30seconds of a match to finish one im sending.

i can only justify the price of this accessory if you seriously use MSN and send text messages all the time.

Grade: A-

I try and make it a habit to at least finish the main story on a game before i review it, in which i will have a pretty good idea of how the whole experiance is. however theres just a few things in Mario i need to say before im done with this game (which may take a while...im not progressing through this game quickly.)

and heads up going into this preview, its going to be pretty negative.

visuals are first on my list to talk about. this game does a great job using bright colors and glow effects to make this game look amazing. however for being in outserspace there just doesnt seem to be a whole lot to look at or see. out side of the small level your in you dont see much beyond it. sorry for the comparrison but ratchet and clank just had a great evnironment to it, rocks floating all over the place, stuff was always moving, you never felt like you were in this empty environment. but with the exception of a few enemies on each of the tiny planets, theres just not a whole lot going on...im surprised mario isnt lonely with the lack of activity around him.

while mario games were never about the story, i just get the feelining Nintendo didnt even try. once again its peach kidnapped by bowser and mario is off to save her. yeah thats about as deep as the story goes. at least sunshine had this cool anti-mario thing going on...then peach being baby bowsers mom thing...yeah...sunshine jsut felt like more of an attempt to give some life to the lifeless characters of the mario universe.

gameplay...now this is where im seriously pissed off. Super mario galaxy is a gamecube game...the way it looks and the way it plays. with a waggle of the wi-mote mario does a spin attack...thats right, the main use of the wii-mote is to once again just replace a single button on a normal controller. granted theres not a lot i can think of to use the wii-mote for in a mario game, but even while im playing i dont feel like this title is a wii game at all. you point and grabs starbits to shoot at enemies with the wii-mote but the star bits dont do much (other than the occasional star that requires you to feed a creature lots of star bits) making it just another thing to do/collect. the best use of the wii-mote is to grab blue orb things that once you grab it, pulls mario tword that orb. while not necessarely that cool or a good use of the wii-mote, it does its job to break up the platforming for a little while.

the games fun, im just dissapointed nintendos "revolution" isnt better than gamecube games with some waggle controlls ie legend of zelda as well.

With my new 360 in place and ready to game, i have decided to go back and play some of the games i left behind when my prior 360s gave me trouble. this week i threw in Gears of War and got a nice afternoons worth of hours into it.

so first the bad...The story in gears of war is well done, some elements to the story really could have been fleshed out a little more (wtf happened to marcus back before he was in jail for example). however this game still feels way too short. even on insane i was able to pick up the controller again and pretty much breeze through it with my friend like i had never stopped playing for 6months. tho i must admit i went down a lot more than i use to. so the game really could use some beefing up on the single player side.

the controlls are really tight, and with the acception of the "A" button really well thought out. everything feels pretty smooth with the exception of the ocassional glitch/bug. now before you get on my case about the "A" button and about how you thought it was a great use of the "A" button, i will tell you i absolutly hate it. having the roll/into cover/run button all being one button some times can feel clunky and result in you doing things you dont want to do. granted theres not a whole lot of other buttons on the 360 controller they could use for some of the a buttons functions, i simply think moving the roll to another location would feel better than the current set up. one of the things that really surprised me about this game, is about how much skill the game actually takes. was it lag i was seeing or do the guns really do have 0 accuracy, i dont really know, but i was constantly shooting to theleft of where i was aiming when i got into one of those cirlce shotgun duels. this made it extremly hard to take out my enemy, and he seemed to have issues taking me out as well. after playing a game like call of duty where i know where my shots were going...its rather annoying having to guess where my bullets will actually hit the guy 5 feet away from me.

this game is also a pain sometimes, while great with friends and a squad that works together...when your on a team of silent lone wolf guys you often find yourself on the bad side of a flank and getting your head bashed in by the enemys foot. even with every person on XBL having a mic (or should, just about everything coems with one of those stupid mics anymore) this squad based shooter just doesnt bring the players together as a team, and pulls a halo where its just a ton of lone wolfs hunting each other out. tho granted with a team that works together, you are almost garenteed to destroy the other team...i just dont see this happening much.

8.5-9/10

Now right after I played halo3 for the first time (launch buyer. got legendary edition mind you) i was really dissapointed. after the hype around halo2 and the way halo2 delivered i bought into the hype for halo3, and well...felt like i got kicked in the balls.

The campaign is a joke. people argue i need to play legendary and shut up about the game being too short...but that is the dumbest argument ever. a game should have in my honest opinion 10-12 hours of content when you rush through it minimal. it doesnt take that much to just increase the size of a level or flush out some of the storys more minor points, or even brush out a rather interesting twist. Halo3 gave about 5 hours if you rushed through the game, which i found pitiful. people also argue that the replay value for the skulls excuses the short campaing, and i must honestly dissagree. replay value extends the life of the game you bought, it does not make the game longer in anyway other than the number of hours you clock into the damned thing. so sorry halo, as much as i loved your books and the epic story in the first two games, halo3s story wasnt a satisfying end to the ark storyline.

gameplay, we all know the gameplay is good, honestly its the same thing as halo2 with annoying gezmos to slightly change up the game play. halo3 while tring to be diffrent, didnt do enough to really improve the gameplay.

now probably the soul thing that had me hating halo3, is your experiance is dependent on how well your team does online. this is no call of duty 4 where you get experiance and climb the ladders based on your kills and score. your team actually matters in halo3. I will be the 1000th person to say this but the halo online community sucks. seeing your squad effects if you get experiance or not, getting a really bad guy on your team pisses you off especially when hes just free kills to the enemy. another annoying thing is people drop all the time. in the middle of a match a guy and his 2-3 guests will drop out leaving you and a couple squad mates to fight a full team. the experiance points to level up just wasnt handled well with this game. im a very competetive gamer and when my experiance is dependent on others on my team, i get pissed off. luckally i was able to come to the realization all i care about is my personal kill death ratio...and at this point i dont care about my rank, it doesnt unlock stuff like it does in call of duty4, its just a number to sit next to my name. so if im going to be low rank forever, thats fine as long as my kill death ratio is at least 1:1

this is a good game, and i think all 360 users who like a mid speed shooter should look into getting a copy.

8.5-9 score.

Well today i had to kinda laugh at myself when i started watching and reading the mass effect reviews for the 360. where i found myself strangly wanting this game more than i had in the previous months when i actually owned a 360 console. then i also happened to notice atlas who published many of my fav. rpgs has signed on with the 360 as well...

so that got me thinking. i love games...the 360 has games...two of which i have been iching to play for months (eternal sonata and putting in my good ol gears of war again).

so by the next time in the forums floating around, i will own all the next gen consoles once again. this time hopefully i will no longer have hardware issues.

today is my first offical day without my ps3. its been 3 months of gaming bliss on the beast of a system...and it seems in those 3 months i became addicted, and dependent on the system.

right after lunch I started to get urges to play Assassin's Creed. no surprise really i only had a day with the game before my PS3 was put into the coffin...and it took a day for me to find time to get to the ups store to ship it back to sony. so i thought it was natural to want to play my new game some more. only to add to the pain after i dropped off my PS3 to the ups store i had to go pick up uncharted from gamestop or else they would sell my copy over the weekend (i work 6am to 6pm saturday and sunday...so i cant pick it up on the weekend). so this brand new title that hasnt even had the grace to please my gaming palet is mocking me on my book shelf...oh how its mocking me...THAT SICK SONOVAB**CH. Now my cravings are getting worse...i got the urge to play call of duty4 suddenly (one of my top 3 games right now). NOTHING SEEMS TO PLEASE ME NOW.

I have my PSP which has disgaea (tho i want to finish the 2nd one more...2nd digaea for ps2 is better.) and thats kinda keeping me busy. In desperation i bought Super Mario Galaxy when i picked up uncharted...and well lets say as great of a game Mario is...it just doesnt meet all my needs.

im breaking out in a cold sweat now...a little nocious...tho i dont seem to have degrade beyond that yet.

WHY god?!WHY?!

Probably the system I'm the harshest on is the fast selling Nintendo Wii. out of all the systems this generation, i felt the wii had...more potental in terms of how a game is played. the wii-mote is an excelent idea that if used correctly will change how we see video games. Being able to actually move the wii-mote to move the sword how we want, point and click adventure type games, etc. the wii mote opens up the playing field to re invent genre getting down to their core elements. unfortunetly the wii up untill this point in time has done a rather poor job at bringing these new ways to play to life.

Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was more of a step back for the Legend of Zelda series. Nintendo seemed to overall take the things we loved about LoZ(legend of zelda) and made them almost too simple this time around. puzzles we much easier to solve, killing much challenge and excitement too a dungeon. Even worse one of the main things in a Zelda game, the combat, seems to have been so simplified that anyone could beat this game with very little issues in doing so. while zelda isnt necessarely known for being DMC (devil may cry) hard, but this zelda title was far too easy. The wii version of the game was good, but it wasnt a wii game, the controls were tight but just from how the game handled you could feel it wasnt made from the ground up for the wii. thi i am impressed nintendo made the wii-mote feel so natural in just about everything it did in the game.

but its now the one year mark for the nintendo wii, and after that one year i can count the number of titles that appealed to me on one hand. Zelda, Mario galaxy, and uh....zak and wiki?...its a rather poor list in my opinion. granted mario is amazing and well worth it, ill dive into that a little later....but from a system that said it was a "revolution" it hasnt done much.

now after reading my list of games that appealed to me, many people would be quick to point of one of nintendos big franchises that i left out...Metroid Prime. All I can say in response to Metroid Prime is that the game fell short of what it should be. Shooting space pirates took far too long to keep the game fun for long, granted maybe i wasnt far enough along for the game to become "ZOMG AMAZING" but i feel it fell short in many ways. then again maybe its my taste in shooter (i like enemies to take only a few shots, and myself only able to take a few shots as well. keeps the game fast pace and fun...rather than just running around with a single enemy for a minute)

now for the character who is bigger than nintendo Mario. now this is only a first impression of the game, i am no where near completing the game by anymeans...infact my wii's sensor bar was destroyed by my kitten, so i have been playing SMG by placing two flashlights ontop of my TV to play this game. I must say i wasnt too thrilled when mario decided to run around on small planets, i felt the game was too much about weird angles (such as mario being on the ceiling jumping around) and not enough of the platforming goodness that mario 64 had. I was surprised when SMG was actually pretty fun to play. the core gameplay that always made mario a great game is still there, and then some. if i had to pick anygame right now to show the wii off, it would be SMG which while doesnt go over board like many developers do with the motion control, still implements them in a way that feels good and natural. this rememinded me why i bought a wii.

So, while i have many issues with the wii. overall when people stop making lowbudget games, minigames, and just bad ideas and treat the wii like a true console, i thnk the wii will be a must own system

(ZOMG THE SONY COW SAID SOMETHING GOOD BOUT THE WII!!!!)

I personally thing this generation of gaming should be called the age of motion. We have the introduction of Motion sensing as a standard in console gaming, but beyond that the video game characters are fluid in their motions. a prime example of the motion of characters is Uncharted. the way Drake moves and reacts is unlike anything else i have seen this generation. all the titles i can think of before this game are better looking versions of what we had durring the ps2s era, face it halo3 is a pretty halo2 with some added things...being on a next gen console doesnt mean its a next gen game.

Uncharted might not be the best looking game on the market, infact the visuals are up there with other games like gears of war, heavenly sword, call of duty 4. but the true beuty of the game cant be seen in screen shots, the game shines when its in motion. the way he stumbles, jumps, rolls, gets wet, makes faces, he is animated more so than any other character i have seen to date.

there are plenty of good games out on the market; gears of war, halo3, ratchet and clank, hawhawk...but none of them are next gen games. they are better looking games of what we had least generation. Master chief has never looked better, but he still isnt alive, hes not fluid in his motions.

what will define this generation is motion, from motion controls to the characters motions themselves.

I hate dealing with customer service, infact i would much rather have my 3 month old kitten JazzPurr bitting on my toes and scratching my feet in my sleep before calling up any customer service. you always seem to get connected to some one who doesnt speak english well, they dont seem to know the product, and they just dont seem to understand what your telling them. i can think of a million and one things i would rather do, than calling customer service.

However calling Sony about my ps3 was pretty nice compared to some other companies, such as MS...and even Nintendo (nintendo is a diffrent story, that customer service tried to talk me out of getting my NDS fixed...im pretty sure i want a 100% working system thank you). So first is calling in, 1-800-345-SONY(7669), and as usual you get the audimated menu system that forces you to push buttons to work your way around. Sony has it divided up into PS3, PSP, pS2, and i think other PS products and accessories...from there i went into the ps3 section of the menus, where i was asked if it was trouble shooting, checking on a current repair, advice, and a few other options that i didnt care about. this is where i found my first annoyance. under trouble shooting they didnt have hardware issues...infact i didnt find any sory of "my product isnt working right", i only found "i dont know how to use my product and need a helper"things. so i hit 0 to get an opperator. eventuelly i get sent to where im suppose to be, and i have a short 3 min wait ( thats unusually short compared to when i call other companies), tho the lack of any sort of music other than the occassional ad ever 45-60seconds was rather annoying. However the lack of music is not going to ruin your experiance in calling customer service. sure enough in a couple mins i was talking to a rep.

this is where i had my most problems, the rep on the other side of the line was talking so quietly it was hard to hear his instructions at all. i had to press the phone to my head, put a finger in my other ear, close my door and i was still just barely able to pick up what he was saying. No matter how many times i asked him, he just didnt seem to want to speak up. the process was pretty much by the book, get my info, find out whats wrong with my system, instruct/ask about possible solutions and tests to see if its really the ps3, etc. after all which i was asked if i still had my reciept. now while i was talking with the guy on the phone i was looking all around for it, checked my ps3s box, checked in my desk, i found many other reciepts but not for my ps3. so i told him i couldnt find it right now...and i was told it was going to be $150 to fix my two month old ps3 because i didnt know where the reciept is. luckly enough right after he told me that, and right before i was about to get all POed, i found my reciept with my laptops warrenty as well (seems i was smart enough to put it some where i would find it.) and i told him i found it. with out any further questions, such as to proove i had reciept now, i got my repairs for free.

so now im waiting for my PS3s coffin to come in, so i can send it off to meet its maker...now all i need to do is move all my ps3s game saves onto my PS3, so that i dont loose it if i dont see my original 60gb back.

so remember, lie about the reciept because they dont check.