Just saw the video  posted up on g4's website and had to respond.

topic at hand is video game violence.

adam was horrible to watch he  needs to just SHUT up and let mr. thompson say his entire point before responding.  Interupting your oponent during a debate is not only rude but it  makes you look very very bad.

What surprised me was when mark plainly put it.  "It's up to parents to watch and control what their kids are exposed to"

Jack: "That's not the issue here."

Then I have to ask if children being exposed to this and parents taking responsible roles in what their kids watch and play isn't the issue then what exactally is?

Making sure that no one under 18 buys bully?  there's already laws in  place for that to occur.  ones I personally agree with if you really want the game let a parent buy it. 

I  would like to thearby suggest that mr. Thompsons issue must then lie with this every being released in the first place.  At which point arn't we really talking about the right of free speach here? 

That's what bothers me most in this whole issue really is the lack of free  press issues.  People IMO have the right to put out whatever they wish to put out and enforce the ratings and let the parents decide.

that's what it all comes down to here.  It's  up to the parents to take an active role in their kids entertainment,.

Ignorane is what causes outcast or fusterated children which in turn will breed violent people.

Case in point.

So I went and picked up  shadow of the colossus today.

Really enjoying it so far the game is really unique in it's idea and it's approach.

Graphics are wonderfull too it really makes me question if we need more for eye candy nowadays in games.

anyway point in case I'll have to write up a full reveiw on this one once I finish it.

Been playing some Fallout tactics too but that's an oldie and another tale.  Summer gaming feels  that dead to me right now.

Had my job reveiw today too which amazingly went really really well.  Was having a very bad morning too at work so I thought I was in crap when I got called in to "talk" with the boss. :P

Good karma I suppose.

Only problem left now is figuring out what to get my little brother for his b-day next month.  Was going to buy the bugger a ps2 slim since that's what he was telling my father he was after but now the little bugger went and bought it himself.

Oh well guess I'll just have to buy him a game or two. :P

I'm thinking god of war since...well he has a  hard time grasping anything complex at all.

Any other ideas out there I'm thinking but  nothing is coming to mind for another title.

Just a bit of advice.

Go out and get a comfy  office chair for home.

The results when you sit at home on your computer for any more then 2 hours a day are very worth it.

comfy. :)

NOTE: forgive the grammer and spelling errors it's a big post and I've been a little stripped of time to properly edit it yet.

All i'm going to say is that it's taken microsoft a year with it's 360 to put out any titles that would be of interest to me personally and of that theres only 4 titles on the system I would ever consider picking up and playing.

Gears of war, Dead rising, 99 nights, and chromehounds

At this point I think it's safe to say that with the ps3 and wii around the corner anyone who does not currently have a 360 is not very likely to get one for a while until after christmas is all payed off. especially if they get a ps3.

With the lack of exclusive titles for the 360 right now they may fall behind the two new systems altogether but something tells me if they do indeed have halo 3 (not a fan myself but hey I recognize landmarks) and some new exlcusive titles out right before the ps3 launch they may stave it off in moderate numbers.

ps3 let's not even get started they have just been way way too arogant lately and are at a loss indeed for public relations right now.
It's gonna hurt them a lot on loss becuase at this point with only two games out there with large public appeal (MGS4 and FF13) for a 600 dollar price tag your going to have to have a lot of good presentation to make a sale.

Don't get me wrong it's a great machine for the price. but how many of us at this point and time need "a second computer" were gamers and we need a machine for games plain and simple. It's hard to really question who sony is aiming this product at becuase with that price tag they have pretty much lost any parents who would buy their kid this thing when you have such cheaper alternatives around.

Finally we have the wii.

This is probally by far the most gamer hyped system coming out and with good reason. It's something totally new and best of all a lot of things you pay more for on other systems like online play and accces to demo content is free.

This is also the cheapest system at a price point of no more then 250 dollars and maybe even less then that. With games also being targeted at a max of 50 dollars your probally getting the most out of your money by far with this machine.

Let's face it no one at this point can really say anything about the wii other then it's cheap price and that it's totally something new and well it's exciting to see someone take a risk like the wii.

Will they suceed. If the DS (inovation) to PSP (technology) war is any idication odds are in their favor thus far but consoles do follow some minor rule changes compared to portables so the implications are reduced even if they are there.

All facts set aside my personal opinon is sony is poised to come in last place with minimal good developers openly wanting to publish for them and a high price tag throwing off a lot of the gaming population.

Xbox360 while deffinatly not a slacked this round of consoles is IMO probally going to hit second spot halfway into 2007 and easily hold that spot. All in all they have just taken too long to get the good games out there and it's going to hurt them. Middle of the pack in developers wanting to publish for them as well has left them with some good titles that will deffinatly pull a few people into buying their machine.

Wii is IMO while mostly unknown deffinatly going to take home first prize this generation. This is probally mostly due to it's very affordable cost and the fact that already there is a great launch lineup going on including Zelda, Dragon warrior, sonic, and possibly metroid.

That's pretty solid going out of the gates and they have a huge developer support base compared to the more expensive to produce xbox360 and ps3.
 

honestly I think this game is horrible. 

It makes the very very typical mistake of trying to mix genres and fails to get the  most out of any one of those genres.

The game honestly did not appeal to me at all graphics wise.  I can easily run this smooth as silk on 1024*768 and everything looked very mushy for textures and there were multiple clipping problems.  I think this is one of those games that would have been server very very nicely with an art style rather then trying to push graphics.  (ex. How Warcraft 3 had that cartoon look to it that makes the game feel like it's aged graphics wise very little).

There are some great ideas here granted like the dual pistols and concentrion mode. The shooting aspect of the game is bang on and hits some solid moments with the hostage situations and duels.

The physics are sadly sub par though.  I found myself often having to make multiple attempts to fit a box under a ladder where the clipping of the ladder or stairs would interfere with putting the box where it's obviously meant to go.

The stealth though I absolutly hate.  It's the worst stealth I've ever seen in a FPS They should have just stuck with the great shooting mechanics they had.  I'm sorry but Stealth and first person rarely mix unless well  without a lot of tinkering with level setup to make it easy to sneak around. 

Ultimatly Call of Juarez is a game with good ideas but totally fails to execute well due to adding on a lot of bad ideas to the gameplay and being a total system hog graphics wise with no real reason to be so with what at least to me were bad graphics very very bad graphics.

Feel free to disagree but please validate your points.  Sticks and stones....

Make no mistake Prey is a solid idea. Portals, Wall walking, and spirit walking are all good ideas.

It's a good engine; prey looks great on the doom 3 engine and runs flawlessly on the pc. I'll admit I have not touched the xbox 360 version so this review focuses on the pc version of this title.

First off let's make no mistakes Prey starts off on all the right notes as anyone who has played the demo will tell you. The story is introduced well and you will be on the alien spaceship before you know what hit you. However the bad note of this is that they sacrifice a lot of the character development (in fact you could say all of it) to pull the player into the shooting so fast.

Before long as well the player gains the ability to spirit walk where you can travel outside of your body. This effect is used often and unfortunately more often then not it's only to get past a forcefield to press a button. Needless to say this leave the idea feeling half done and not as special as it was intended to be. there are a few places where you have to move onto a platform and then hit a button but these cases are rare and far in-between bouts of the simple turn off the forcefield.

Also of note in the spirit walking is a disappointing aspect of never being able to die. Basically whenever you die by gunfire or a fall or whatever the case may be you are transported to a tiny rocky island where you shoot flying blue and red monsters for health with a bow and arrow. The idea being that you need to shoot enough red monsters to gain hp and blue monsters to gain spirit energy which lets you shoot your spirit bow when your in the real world. Even if you shoot no monsters at all you still come back with half health meaning that it's impossible to die in prey. This ultimately means that there is no real threat to any of the aliens or any satisfaction to killing an enemy.

The next idea of note in this game is of course the ability to alter gravity by shooting certain switches and walking on designated wall paths. This is in all honesty probably the games best idea and adds an element of disorientation to combat. Sadly though the AI seems lackluster in taking advantage of that and tends to only stay in one spot and blindly shoot at you. Again the idea is good but the overall ability to which it's used seems sub par and off base leaving you wanting more but feeling disappointed and quickly tiresome of another half baked gravity puzzle.

The games portals have their moments however and in the first two hours of the game this truly shines as enemies use the portals often as traps in the direction of the game to put you in some nice moments. However the games seems to quickly drop the use of portals as anything more of putting an enemy directly in front of you and as doorways to ammunition rooms. there was a lot of potential here but the lack of enemy AI to use the portals to their advantage and the lack of later on using the portals as anything but a simple cool looking doorway shine through as disappointing.

The guns in this game do come off as organic and have a nice look to them
but there really isn't anything special here in terms of actual performance. The shotgun now shoots acid and mini-guns and rocket launchers organic or not are nothing new either.

Sound wise and voice acting in this game sad to say are probably the worst i've seen in a first person shooter in a long time. the aliens don't really sound like they are the oppressors and evil beings they are supposed to be and the characters sound out of place and almost totally robotic at times.

Graphics however on this title are top notch. Everything looks like it should and lights well. There are some very nice looking moments and enemies. The portals themselves look good as do the explosions and animations. Everything runs smooth on a medium or better quality pc and can quickly be considered this games strong point.

Ultimately Prey is a nice looking be it short game with a lot of good ideas packed in. Unfortunately none of those ideas are used well and in some cases interfere with what could have been an excellent experience.

Prey is likely to be remembered more for it's ideas then as a game. For 50 dollars at this time you definitely are not getting enough good gaming for your dollar.

That said I would feel bad telling you to stay away without recommending something to go check out. If your looking for a good shooter at this time I can definitely recommend checking out the upcoming Team fortress 2 and Portal that will ship with Half-Life 2: episode 2.

jappenesse gamers have way way diffrent tastes then american gamers they seem to take more of a stand towards RGPS and puzzle games.

It's rare to see a good FPS in Japan.

Plainly put the Xbox to them to the key market in gaming is worth about as much as a pile of poop.

This is why microsoft looses so much money on this. They fail to adapt to cater to Japan's tastes. Nintendo in the meantime and to a lesser extent Sony have decided to try and cover the whole market with all games types rather then focus on a few for it's exclussive titles.

that's the BIG diffrence between microsoft and the other gaming giants here.

Microsofts exclussive titles are always the same things, shooters, sports and gore.

sony has lots of exclussive RPGs and adventure games. While still having those few gory action titles like god of war and devil may cry.

Nintendo is well...nintendo they have mario, zelda, metroid. Everything. Problem last generation was a lack of 3rd party support.

Microsofts got to learn to adjust it's strategy if it wants in the game industry longterm.

I honestly did have plans to accually go out and pick up a  once it got some half decent games out there and the price dropped a bit. 
however now I'm just in a state of shock at the sheer number of broken systems I'm seeing on an everyday basis.  The latest being the horror story told by Scott over at www.vgcats.com

Besides that case just the other day in EB I say 3 diffrent 360s all trying to be returned none of them with anything less then a hardware problem. 

And yet here the gamespot boards still rave with half blind halo fans and xbox fanboys. Why?

Seriously the game has some great sports titles and great online play for it but can that 400 dollar price tag be justified for a pc user when the xbox has proven that it is very much capable of breaking down on a regular basis.  At least I know my nintendo machines and my computer have never done that.

My ps2 while it has not yet broken down after two years I don't hold much hope for since in that amount of time I went through 2 diffrent playstation ones.

It's not like I'm hard on my systems or anything either.  Heck I spend extra for a good case and a  couple of extra fans and lighting for my pc. 

Why is it that out of all the three gaming giants nintendo which is probally the one with the LEAST money is chargning less for it's systems which almost never break down and sony and microsoft with more dollars chargemore per system and their machines break down far far more frequently.  Althought I think Microsofts 360 is setting a new standard very quickly of machine to broken ratio. :P

At the end of the day you almost wish someone would slap a few company pr people in the face and say "if you trying to get me to spend more then 200 dollars on anything nowadays it had better not break down every year you jerk!"

This is one sad not getting a 360 now gamer blogging out.

Seriously most gamers are now in their 20s and 30s and not a lot of us are willing to spend 600 dollars on a system when that can easily pay for our license plate or a downpayment on a car or furniture.   

Not to mention the absolute lacluster lineup on the psp which was also qutie pricy when compared to the DS alternative.  Which also just got a lot better with you now getting an improved and lighter wieght system for the same price as before. 

Ultimatly though what's really going to kill sony is the outrageous deveopment costs of cell technology and blue tooth.  These are not shall we say horses with the system blinders on their vision skewed to the only system doing well on the market either.

Developers are already investing in all three systems already.  Square has FFXI out for the 360, and it's working on the wii so it knows whats it's like to program for all three systems and it doens't take a market analyst to tell you which one is easily going to  pull in more profits per development cost.  Konami as well has already begun wii development and many other big names are also very active already in the tri system  war pushing titles for all 3 systems.

Ultimatly this is as it is every 4 years not a war of systems but a war of costs and profit often at the cost of the system makers first and developers second. 

A lot of people fail to realize this sadly and play fanboy pushing for their favorite system.

Ultimatly it's the devs who decide which system wins becuase no matter how good the graphics and processing without good games it wont' sell. Let's face it it's the metal gear solids and final fantasys that sell systems not the hardware. If it's more profitable to make those games on another system if they can take a bigger slice of the pie you bet that the devs will do just that.

Unfortunatly Sony keeps sending the message of "we dont' care about exclussive titles" particulary with the comments of losing grand theft auto last week.

Ultimatly it's not the gamers who are going to determine Sony's failure it's the game developers. 

Things are not looking good.

R.I.P sony.