I removed my last blog entry voluntarily a little while ago after having left it up for a couple of days, mostly because it felt a lot like I was only venting, and this isn't really the place for the kind of venting I do. For the Achievement Whores out there, I just don't get it. For the rest of you, I just don't get it. I hate that it's come to the point where Microsoft has to step in with something as messy as they have with this new gamerscore reset nonsense, and I still don't understand exactly who it affects as far as Achievement Whores go, but at least they're they see a problem with cheaters (Achievement Whoring or not) and are willing to take a step. It's a bit like swatting a fly with a grenade launcher, but I'm not Microsoft so I wouldn't know how or if I'd handle it better.

Now if they can crack down on racism, anti-Semitism, griefing, sexual harassment, threats of harm, threats of violent sexual acts, and balancing issues I might actually consider going gold myself. Until I feel less like I'm walking into a teenaged minefield I'll continue to play solo jugador (my babelfish Spanish 8)) and hope these things continue to at least be openly acknowledged.

Before I write this let me make it clear that I have no quarrels with the Playstation in any of it's iterations, incarnations, and generations. I've owned the first one at least three times (Sony = bad hardware too? Noooo, can't be!), I've owned at least two Playstation 2 systems (another defective Sony product? No, DRE is I myth, I swear!), and I have a PSP which had developed a mysterious crack that grew into a massive fracture across the now replaced faceplate. I don't love Sony, I don't love the Playstation in any of it's forms, and I don't actually hate them either. They are as faceless to me as I am to them. However, there is something funny about how they conduct themselves when it comes to their latest and greatest (and priciest!!!) system, the Playstation 3. Let's run a fact check:

$600 is cheap!
Former Sony CEO and resident crackpot Ken Kutaragi said that $600 for the Playstation 3 is "too cheap".

Old games, shmold games!
They cut backward compatibility from their Playstation 3, an original selling point of their system.

Doesn't need games as long as it has 'Sony' printed on it!
Sony Europe CEO David Reeves said about the Playstation 3; "We have built up a certain brand equity over time since the launch of PlayStation in 1995 and PS2 in 2000 that the first five million are going to buy it, whatever it is, even [if] it didn't have games,"

Rumble's played out, y'all!
Sony's Phil Harrison said "rumble was last generation, movement is this generation." Now play a game of Lair and repeat that with a straight face. Wait, what's that you say? Sony is bringing a last generation gimmick back? They're making rumble controllers again? They even let you pay for the new controllers? Oh boy! Now… what happened to all those promised motion controlled games? Oh right, they suck, never mind.

It's all your fault we got a big head!
American Sony CEO said "I don't know that we were ever considered arrogant by consumers," Tretton said, adding, "I think the arrogant claims came from the press and bloggers more than true consumers. ... I think the arrogance claim comes with a leadership position and being unwilling to admit that you're failing. And anybody who's been through media training or been with the press isn't going to get on a soapbox and talk about their failures. If that gets construed as arrogance, then I guess that's a risk you have to take." I point you, good sir, to your company's other CEOs and ask you to again, repeat that with a straight face.

I only bring this up because of all the excitement over the return of the quivering controller. I congratulate Playstation 3 owners for finally getting something quality for their cash, like Metal Gear Solid 4, and a controller that gives you a happy little hum when you're being shot or hit that accelerator. Sony has been blowing hot air at people, and now it seems as though they're not only shrugging and offering a "so what?" answer to their mistakes, they're doing it with a giant grin. Fanboys rejoice like abused wives getting a bouquet from the husband that just finished slapping them, saying things akin to "See that? I told you he really loves me!"

Worry not, fellow gamers, I've got more than my share of punches ready for Microsoft and it's "most reliable video game box out there." I know mine's on it's last leg, which is amazing considering it's already lost about five or six. Before anyone asks me, I do not own a Wii, I've mostly ignored it because Nintendo still thinks games should all be family oriented fun (in other words 'Rated J' for juvenile). I like childish games myself from time to time but not every game should have people batting at each other with flowers and pillows. I want guns and cars too, you know.

It amazes me, utterly amazes me that of the two new formats of the so-called "HD Wars" Sony seems to have taken over. I wouldn't go so far as to declare them the winner, hand them a trophy, and place a blonde in a bikini next at Sony's side for quick victory photo ops, but they seem to have plowed right over Toshiba's format and are now standing as the sole survivor of this obnoxious format conflict, a conflict, I remind you, that has more collateral damage than anything else.

Clearly early HD-DVD adopters are out of luck, as are anyone that bought into Microsoft's sales pitch about the HD format being vital to their console, though not necessary. People that thought buying an HD-DVD player would pay off in the long run are now face with a collection that will be checkered with mismatched formats that will require mismatched players. They can also forget about replacing busted players in the future. Just look at what happened to people that bought one of Sony's other failed proprietary formats, the Betamax.

As a matter of fact, every attempt by Sony has so far failed, which is a part of what surprises me so much. Betamax lost to JVC's Video Home System (VHS) back in "The Format War". I kid you not, there really was a war in the 80s, and don't even get me started about top-loaders and remotes that needed wires.

Another Sony failure was the MiniDisc. Okay, so technically not a failure in Japan, but as far as the rest of the modern world is concerned the MD is nothing more than wannabe CDs. Sure CD burners were expensive once, but so was pretty much everything else. Ask anyone in America or Europe what a CD is and they'll look at you like you're an idiot. Ask those same people what a MiniDisc is and they will look at you like you're an idiot. Granted, either way they'll think you're an idiot, but at least they'll know what you're talking about when you mention a CD. An MD, doubtful.

Sony's latest fiasco was the Universal Media Disc (UMD), a format that many had their doubts about and the more enlightened among us believed was a bad idea from minute one. Personally, and I can really only speak for myself, I hated that in order to view anything with one of these you needed a Sony Playstation Portable (PSP) or other Sony device. As far as I am aware of no device exists that can play the UMD format other than the PSP. Compounding this issue was the fact that the Sony PSP has such a terrible battery life, so longer movies such as The Lord of the Rings were never going to be ported over, and if they had been you would not have been able to take them with you, making the "portable" part of the PSP pretty pointless.

So I imagine by now you can see why I'm so taken aback at the idea that a Sony format has succeeded. I stress, however, that HD is hardly beyond it's larval stages, what with HD TVs , players, and discs being so expensive. Unless the prices become more reasonable ($800 for a generic 27" TV is bad no matter how one may look at it) I don't see that Sony's victory here is anything but hollow.

When first person shooters were in their infancy, titles such as Doom and Duke Nukem 3D ruled the landscape with complex levels, smarter enemies, better graphics, and innovative game play. Duke Nukem was, for many, especially great, if for no other reason than being a truly 3D game, and that it was more adult oriented. Maturity in games has been long fraught with constant barrages of misinformation and sensationalism. One falsehood, such as a parent blaming their child's bad behavior on a video game, and before you know it lawmakers and politicians are up in arms about "protecting our children". I hate to burst bubbles here, but a bare virtual breast or some red pixels DOES NOT a killer make. I firmly believe that one of the biggest draws of games like Duke Nukem or God of War are that they don't attempt to treat players like children, something other games do despite the fact that the statistical majority of us are legally adults and over the age of 28.

So again, a franchise that helped pioneer maturity in modern gaming raises even more controversy, but it's nothing worth supporting by anyone, not even the fans. Duke Nukem Forever is by far one of the most frustrating games ever conceived, not so much because of how it plays, but that it DOES NOT EXIST! People are dedicated to this topic from both sides of the argument, some desperately devout fanboys proclaiming that it really will come out "when it's ready" while the majority of us have become more and more doubtful over the years it's taken for this game to be ready at all. Since it's first announcement and original screenshots we have seen literally nothing in terms of actual in-game graphics, not a sound effect, not a model, not a stage, nothing. Absolutely nothing at all, unless of course you count that absurdly primitive trailer they had released recently, replete with chunky graphics and next to no information as to what to expect in terms of anything other than a scattering of screaming monsters and a CG image of the now aging icon sassing us after he works out on a bench. Really, that's almost everything they've shown us, he works out, smokes, and apparently revels in his own campy juices.

It's gotten old really old, and so very tiring. No, there is probably no Bigfoot, aliens probably don't abduct rednecks just to cram probes in their nethers, and Duke Nukem Forever will most likely never be anything but a long lame gag. The sort of people that continue to buy into this farce are likely the same as the kind of people that keep talking about how great the Phantom will be once it's ready. I pity them, I really really pity them all.

A lot of you out there, like myself, were probably surprised by the announcement of Star Wars characters appearing in the game Soul Caliber 4. Some of the editors here at Gamespot said they thought it was cool for about four seconds, then started scratching their heads. I get the feeling that many of you were no doubt in the same boat. I on the other hand was, am, and will likely always think the idea is one of the dumbest marketing moves of all time. Darth Vader will , by the way, appear in the Playstation 3 iteration of this game, Yoda in the Xbox 360.

I want to say that PS3 owners got gypped but to be honest none of us are winning anything here. There is Star Wars in Soul Caliber! Nothing about this is a good idea. Sure there's the force, but there are light sabers, and why that wouldn't slice right through any of their swords or at least melt them really badly is beyond comprehension. Really, can you imagine the look on Maxi's face when he takes a swing at Vader only to see half of his nunchaku go twirling away in the distance after it's been cut in half by a weapon that is clearly in every way superior?

Let me remind you that they have the force, which is to say they can kill people from across the room with a thought. How is the average sword fighter, or even the best for that matter, supposed to defeat someone that can grab your throat and hurl you from the stage? Yoda lifted an X-Wing from a swamp with his mind, so it stands to reason that the little green man could more than easily fling Seong Mi-na far and away before her first step toward him. Should she avoid that and he take a shot at her with his saber, what does she do to defend herself? Use a shaft of wood to deflect a beam of energy that's so hot it can cauterize living flesh the instant it touches it, or that can melt right through a solid blast door?

Ok, I realize it's just a game, and that it is for them to decide how it is produced since it is theirs to do with as they please. I'm also aware that it doesn't have to be canonical, they brought Spawn and Link into the mix after all, but were people really as puzzled about them as they seems to be about Vader and Yoda? Spawn was actually fun to use despite being overpowered, but Yoda?! How do we fight that, or even hit him for that matter? He's barely three feet tall! The game (usually) gives us three basic attacks; vertical slash, horizontal slash, and kick. Horizontal seems fairly useless now, granted we have to actually get close enough to hit him despite the force and the light saber. Have you ever seen Yoda fight? Let's face it, we have a better chance of beating a Wookie in an arm wrestling match.

So, the reality is, no matter what we say or do, Star Wars is now a part of the Soul Caliber universe. I don't really get the connection, and while I want to keep an open mind and play the game before deciding whether I like it or not, Darth Vader and Yoda already feel like bad ideas. I don't have to select them at any point, so I can do my very best to avoid them while still enjoying what may otherwise be a great game. Then again I might actually come to like them as a part of the game. Whatever happens we should remember that it is just a game, and taking it too seriously is a larger mistake than any cameo they decide to pack into it. I only hope this doesn't become a trend. I don't want to see Smurfs in Street Fighter, or maybe Mario in my Tetris since we all know what he does to blocks.

Okay, the Smurf one actually sounds kind of funny, but you get the idea.

One of the perils of being human is the fact that we will constantly disagree with someone as long as there is someone to disagree with. Of course some out there also find that to be a part of our charm. I for one don't mind a debate, I don't mind never seeing eye to eye, but what I question are a person's motives for disagreeing with someone else's opinion in the first place. More to the point, why are people fanboys?

Ok, old topic, been covered thousands of times, and I know the fanboy genome has yet to be cracked. Still I fail to see why Jerk A must always disagree with Jerk B just because either jerks don't love the same console/company/whatever. I see it here at Gamespot a lot, have for a long time, and I'd thought that by now a lot of people would have outgrown handing out "thumbs down" because someone mentions the Xbox 360 in passing and not in the negative on a news post about the Playstation 3 or Wii. Sure we all want to see an actual Duke Nukem Forever, but we haven't, so why attack people for being skeptical or honest about their frustration. Comments like "SWEET!" and "OMG! This will rawk!" get a dozen thumbs up, while "I'll believe it when I see it" and "Been better since, couldn't care less" get a plethora of thumbs down (as a side note I've believed this to be a hoax for a long time now).

I've never understood how people could be blindly loyal to or even affectionate for a game company. Oh I think Nintendo is a good company, and I think they've released some fantastic games, but do I love them? Hardly. To them I am a consumer and a demographic, to me they are provisioners of fun or misery depending on the quality of their product. I can't love Sony any more than I love Hanes, and Hanes will always be closer to me in the literal sense far more so than Sony.

If a product is great I love the product, not the makers. I love Final Fantasy 6, I love Chrono Trigger, and I love Dragon Quest 8. I don't love SquareEnix, I don't love their designers, I don't love their programmers. Sure, they are pretty great in a lot of ways, but as a company they've historically squandered opportunities to really tap into the American market simply because of the old stereotype of the dumb American gamer. They have since changed their stance, at least as I understand it, but that doesn't change Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, the long running absence of Final Fantasy 5, and that our versions of other games they have published here were dummied down for us.

It remains to be seen how long a trend like this will go on, and to me a bad trend is about all it appears to be. I have an Xbox 360, not because I love Microsoft, but because the system has a larger library of games I feel are worth playing more so than any other console out there. The Wii seemed like a neat idea, but it's fallen short and the potential isn't really there as I see it. The Playstation 3 is a lot of things it shouldn't be, and that made it more expensive than it had to be. They all claim to know what is best for us, Microsoft believing we should pay to play games on their system regardless of the fact that it has been a largely free thing to do on PCs for years. Sony thinks Blu-Ray is the wave of the future and wants us to pay for a feature a lot of us have not and may never use at all. Nintendo thinks all gamers are children at heart, which hurts the industry more than it helps it by giving credence to the powers that be which want to hold game companies responsible for corrupting youth with virtual violence. Yes, loads of kids love games, I did when I was a kid, but I still love games to this day and I've been a full grown man for years now, as have the MAJORITY of gamers in the market today.

Fanboys will never make sense to anyone other than fanboys. Rational though we try to be about it we cannot win against "It's better coz it's Sony". These are digital cultists, and I for one have long since grown tired of the punch line they've become. Grow up boys and girls. Love the system all you want, just stop hating those of us that know better.

I was looking in on the news before getting ready to split when I saw this story about Shigeru Miyamoto. Normally, I'd simply nod respectfully at the idea that the man that redefined console gaming when we needed it most has won his due praise. However, there's a lot of people calling him things like "master" "sama" (essentially like master, I think) and even "god". Ok, right off the bat, didn't this guy once say something like Americans will buy anything with nice graphics? Wasn't he also the guy that said Super Mario Bros. 2 was too difficult for Americans? If so, is that really the sort of guy that deserves your tongue on his boot heels?

I emphasize that I really love his games, and yes, he is a genius, but calling him master and god hardly seems like a smart idea considering.

True or not, don't shoot me, I'm only the messenger.

I'd like to start by saying I love Half Life. I'm not in love with it like a lot of other players, but yeah, it was a memorable ride. Half Life 2 was a great game as well, despite it's bugs (boy was it a buggy game too) it's long delays, and it's lack of what one might traditionally call an ending.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

When HalLife originally came out, there was another game that I enjoyed quite a bit more for very particular reasons, SiN. Unlike Half Life, SiN had branching levels, so the possibility of winding up on another stage or beginning a stage from a different spot was there. Even more exciting (a feature, mind you, that has to this day remained absent from the Half Life series) was that you got different results from shooting people in different parts of their body, such as the leg arm, hand, head, etc. Nothing quite as fancy as Perfect Dark, but still pretty neat stuff. So I guess what I'm getting at here is that I love both of these games, and I love playing them. Oddly though, I hate Valve, or, more to the point, I hate Steam... immensely.

When they'd first announced Steam, my first two thoughts were literally "Oh crap! MORE product activation?!" and "Wait, they want to buy games without actually owning them?". I'd later learn about "Episodic Content", which has essentially sealed the deal for me. On the one hand, the idea that I can get a shiny new game experience threaded into another game sounds promising, as does the idea that we can see more of the story or experience more of the action without having to shell out for a spankin new game. These are not what Episodic Content offers. Episodic content gives you an unfinished, mostly unsatisfying game demo. Amazingly, it's actually worse than "cliffhangers" in video game (the third dumbest idea in gaming, squarely behind micro transactions). Subscription content is also as bad, but I'll get to that in a sec.

So for your $20 you get a piece of a game, not a game, not an expansion, but a piece of a game that will probably not last you more than an hour or so. Chances are, the next piece of this unfinished gaming experience will not come anytime soon, Valve has more than amply proven that with the amount of time between Half Life 2 Episode One (some brainiac's idea of a good title I guess) and Half Life 2 Episode Two. Even better is that other gem, SiN. I have to admit, I was pretty excited about it, at least until I heard it was also going to be an incomplete episodic event. I wanted a game, and they gave me a $20 demo. Even more proof this "Episodic Content" is a really bad idea is that unless the first episode sells well enough, those that actually paid for the first one will essentially get nothing more. No ending, no completion, no return on their investment in the future of that game, just an unfinished idea, scrapped because they didn't make enough money. Granted, they have to eat too, but if they were selling books, and rather than giving you the chance to buy the whole book chose instead to sell it to you a chapter at a time, then saying "well, no more chapters, didn't make enough money", what then? Sure, you enjoyed reading the first chapter, but what about the rest of the story? Are we now expected to just go about reading a bunch of unfinished books just because the writers didn't make enough money to write and sell the next chapter? Wouldn't you have rather simply purchased the entire book? We wouldn't tolerate that with our reading, so why then are we expected to tolerate it with our gaming?

Cliffhangar endings are also bad, by the way. Since it only shows that the game developers didn't really think too far ahead of their own ideas. Halo 2, amazingly fun game to play, but what about an ending? Uh-uh. You know what you get for playing Halo 2, a fun ride that ends abruptly. No hero saves the day, no satisfaction, no climax, just a dumb one-liner and a credit roll. I hear that Halo 3 has remedied this (better really late than never, I guess) but for my $63 I'd like more than a skeletal online game that I have to pay to play and a single player experience that spans 9 whole levels (one of which I keep hearing is awful).

Subscriber content is the greatest of these horrible concepts. Easy example is Blizzard and their game (if you can actually call it that) World Of Warcraft. I am an active player, and yes I gripe, but it's a bit like smoking. You know you really shouldn't do it, but you do because for some reason you feel like you want to. I've got my other vices, and I'll be moving on to them soon enough. I know I will because I have in the past. For me, WoW is a very periodic experience. I quit some time ago, came back, and will probably quit once and for all pretty soon. It's like a salad made of lettuce, sure it's edible, but where's the actual sustenance?

Recently, Blizzard decided to offer some new content with this Brewfest event. Interesting concept, even more so considering the game has a largely under-aged subscriber base and this is an event promoting alcohol. I don't care, I just find it a little odd. What bugs me though, is that Brewfest turned out to be a bug ridden disaster. Widespread errors, missing content, serious connection problems. Their answer? "It should all be worked out in time for next year"...... WHAT?! Oh, don't expect a refund, don't expect an amenity, don't expect anything from these guys other than a shrug. They didn't have to give us new content (people continue to prove that no new content is really needed to get their money regardless), but to release new content that's wholly unpolished, sloppy, and poor enough to cause the original content to fail is pretty difficult to excuse, especially since, again, they are being payed by the month by users.

So the point appears to be that subscription based gaming and "Episodic Content" are truly designed to benefit the developers, since, an incomplete game doesn't have to be completed if it sells poorly, thus allowing developers to move on while gamers are left with the first chapter of an incomplete story. Valve will probably take another year or longer to release the third, and as I read it final chapter in the Half Life Episodic saga. By then, will anyone really be all that excited? Can we expect to be excited? I mean, it's just their way of finally giving up an actual ending to a game that seemed to start years ago with episode one. Could be great, but a game shouldn't take years to complete on the players part. WoW notwithstanding, but I struggle to call that a game anyway. Maybe Valve will do one better and throw another cliffhanger on the end of that too, thus giving us no end, no satisfaction, nothing but an unfinished story we may never feel quite satisfied with.

I'd get into a rant about this Micro Transactions business, but this rant's long enough already, so I'll save it for another day.