No sooner than I get my first Award I get my second and third Awards for watching the E3 coverage. Its nice to know I can get an award for clicking a button at a certain time of day, get up and walk, away, and get rewarded for it.

I have been very absent as of late…a bit disgusted with my Review of MSG getting deleted might have something to do with that. So I will do a quick update on my current activities!

360: I just picked up Civilization and played a bit of that tonight...not bad so far. I am also in the process of downloading the Too Human demo...I have been chomping at the bit for this one so its an understatement to say I am excited.

PS3: Nothing since having my MSG4 review deleted by the Game Spot Fascists.

DS: Warhammer 40K Squad Command...not bad but it has some control issues and a few other minor problems that would prevent me from recommending it except to the most hard care of strategy and 40K fans.

PSP: Slowly working my way through God of War...I do like it, but it just feels like it is a pale comparison of the PS2 versions...cant put my finger on it...controls, graphics, not sure what it is but it just not gripping me the way the first two did.

Wii: I completely hate this system...read my rand on Motion Sensor Controllers to know my full thoughts on this. And now, seeing the E3 coverage for Wii Music, a small part of my soul died.

Other distractions: I have been closely following the news that Flagship Studios (Makers of Hellgate: London has been closed down. I have many friends there and feel bad for the situation they are in. Anyone (myself included) who have spent any time in he game industry has experienced having their company and or project ripped out from under them by the big corporate meat grinder that is the game industry.

I have recently got back into painting figures for the table top war game Wahammer 40K. Currently building a 1500 Point Necron army that I will be playing some day soon I hope. For far to long I have bought figures, painted them and then just let them sit in their protective foam cases. I am committed to finishing this army and crushing my enemies. (Just in case you ever doubted my geekyness).

Well I finally got my first award! For tagging of all things!

Strangely, it was in the same 24 hour period that I got my first Terms of Use Violation….makes me think I should have been breaking the rules a lot sooner.

Well thanks Game Spot,

Well it has finally happened! The whinny cry babies here at Game Spot have deleted my review of Metal Gear Solid 4 because I used **** to self censor my own review. And rather than asking me to make the change, or give me a warning, as a first time offence they deleted it.

Now here is the real problem! They don't tell you what rule you violated! They just say that you have violated a rule and what action they took. "Review Deleted". Well thank you so much….very helpful! So I had to go read over all their rules so that I could GUESS at what inane rule I might have broken.

Now I am will with the need to copy all of my blogs and reviews so that I have a back up on my own machine so I can always re-post anything that gets deleted.

I have been playing video games for almost all of my life. I was 5 when my father brought home the Odyssey in 1975, complete with the first "Light Gun". (33 years of game playing for those of you doing the math)

Over the years I have had many game systems, and close to 1000 games. Listed here, is the game systems I have owned, in the order I received them: Magnavox Odyssey, Atari 2600, Comador 64, Apple IIe (I call this a game system since that is all I used it for, much to my Mothers dismay), NES, SNES, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, Turbo Grafix 16, Playstation, N64, Dreamcast, Playstation 2, Game Cube, XBox, XBox 360, Wii, and finaly the Playstation 3.

As I look at the collections of other players, and see some of the great old games that I played and once owned, I feel a sad that I don't have those games anymore.

This rant is stemming from the recent GTA 4 score. A perfect 10? So what you are saying is this game is so good, it doesn't need a single thing to be fixed or improved! In the Game Badge section they have list "Occasional problems with friendly AI" and "Some minor visual quirks" under their "BAD" category….well doesn't that say that its not a 10 right there? At least a 9.8 wouldn't you think?

I also know ex-Rockstar guys who have told me that Rockstar actively bribes game review sites with swag (shirts, hats, free copies of games, etc… ) as well as threaten to pull their advertising from the site in order to bump a review a few points. And since playing GTA 4 I have to say I can see it very clearly. The game is far from perfect. (Read my review if you want to hear more about GTA 4).

But this lack of integrity extends beyond cheating the reader of a few points. Last year, a veteran review writer was fired from Game Spot for giving the game Kane and Lynch a poor review. At least those are the rumors! These rumors have been denied by Game Spot and owner CNET. I don't know Jeff, never met him, and couldn't tell you if he is the kind of person to do something worthy of being fired after working at a place for 10 years, but I know the game industry and I can almost guarantee that he was fired for giving a bad review.

I personally know another writer who was fired from IGN for similar reasons, but being a junior writer he didn't make hardly any waves when he disappeared.

Why would this happen? Why would the review sites deliberately deceive you? The answer is simple! They get paid (in advertising dollars and Swag) by the game companies who make these games. Gamer Scores are advertising bought and paid for! The higher a game's score the more game units sell, the more money the game company makes. So a game company can use the money they gave the Game Review site as leverage against the site. "If you don't give use a good review we will pull all of our advertising revenue from your site". Or in more extreme cases they can force a Game Review Site to fire an employee. In the end it comes down to the Game Corporations "Gaming the System"…the system in this case is "You" the reader, and guiding you to what games you are going to buy. For the Game Review Sites its not a big deal….what's a few points bumped up on a game score compared to the hundreds of thousands of dollars that they get paid by the game company. Who cares? Is just a game anyway right…no need to throw away all that money on something so small?

I don't want to sound like I am only dissing Game Spot, they are not the only Game Review Site who has been backed into this corner! Look around and you will see almost ever Game Review Site is in the same boat. There are a few sites out there that are too small to be affected by the this, but they are also to small to have much impact. Ether they are run by an individual or don't have a large overhead to pay for so they aren't handicapped by the advertizing of the game companies.

Now don't get me wrong! I love Game Spot, they have one of the best sites with all the cool stuff for us end users (Blogs, Forums, and don't forget the brilliant Badges)….but I am not going these cool perks blind me to the fact that we are being deceived.

How can this be fixed? The only way I can think of would be to have Game Review Sites that earn their advertizing revenue from sources other than game companies. Its ether that or we have some kind of Review Approval System with an objective group of people who make sure the Game Review Sites are not playing favorites…but that sounds to horrible to consider.

I don't want to sound like I am only slamming Game Spot, they are not the only Game Review Site who has been backed into this corner! Look around and you will see almost ever Game Review Site is in the same boat. There are a few sites out there that are too small to be affected by the this, but they are to have much impact. Ether they are run by an individual or don't have a large overhead to pay for so they aren't handicapped by the advertizing of the game companies.

Now don't get me wrong! I love Game Spot, they have one of the best sites with all the cool stuff for us end users (Blogs, Forums, and don't forget the brilliant Badges)….but I am not going these cool perks blind me to the fact that we are being deceived, and since I worked in the game industry for over 12 years I have first hand knowledge of how these things work.

How can this be fixed? The only way I can think of would be to have Game Review Sites that earn their advertizing revenue from sources other than game companies. Its ether that or we have some kind of Review Approval System with an objective group of people who make sure the Game Review Sites are not playing favorites…but that sounds to horrible to consider.

Isn't sharing nice? Isn't it the way it should be? When things are equal and everyone treats each other with respect? Well that only works in some fantasy world, the reality is that people only want what they want and once they have it, they couldn't give a tug what other people want.

My latest tirade is about bicyclists wanting to share the road equally with cars. They want us to watch out for them and give them room when they are on the road. This is all fine and great, but there is a problem….the bikers don't follow the same rules as a car.

When they are at a stop sign or a red light they only pause long enough to check for an opening and then they bolt through the red light weaving in between the gaps in cars. The bikers alternate between being on the street and up on the sidewalk as they see fit. And there really is no reason for them to follow the rules, the worst punishment they can get is a Jaywalking ticket ($80 where I live). But if a car goes through a red light the ticket would be upwards of $400.

And when there is an accident do they have insurance? No! There is no such thing as bicycle insurance. So the driver of the car is hosed, unless he wants to take the bicyclist to small claims court.

Until bicyclists actually follow the rules of the road (and that wont happen until the laws enforce it) and there is Bicycle Insurance, the idea of sharing the road with bicycles will never work.

For those of you that dug down into my early writing I am sure you heard my brief rant on this subject. But I just got an email from a studio trying to convince me to support a Motion-Sensing Controller for my upcoming PC based game. It really set me off, so here I go again!

I can not stand the Controller for the Wii and the PS3's 6-Axis functionality! Why, in the name of Zues's big toe, would I want that pieceof junk on my PC.

Listen up people! It's a gimmick! Does anyone remember the "Force Feedback Joysticks" from the mid 90's? After 15 minutes of game play your arm was so tired that you couldn't play anymore, just like the new Motion-Sensing controllers, plus you look like a complete goon flapping and swinging your arms while playing the game.

The Motion-Sensing Controllers are great for little family games that don't need true accuracy and pin point precision, but as soon as you need it to respond in a consistent way or reliably perform, it fails…horribly.

I applaud Nintendo for growing the game industry by targeting the casual players. I don't fault them for that, my problem is that they use to be more discriminating about what games they allowed on their game systems. Now we have these games that have no business being on a casual game system! The games are all junk because they were designed for a real game controller, but have been shoe-horned into the Wii controller.

But some of you are saying "The remote control design is so approachable and easy to use!" Yeah, when was the last time you used a remote control held up at chest height for more than 15 minutes. I guarantee that it wont be for more than 5 minutes before you are whining about how your arms hurt!

Its lame and only works for causal consol games that you are only going to play for 15 minutes anyway! As for having a Motion-Sensing Controller on the PC? Not only will people not want to have yet another piece of junk plugged into their computer, where would we have the room?

Its lame, so just stop it!

This has nothing to do with games but I have officially had it with the rampant tipping! I am a big fan of giving people what they deserve, but lately it seems like people expect to get tipped no matter what.

A friend of mine told me that he had a waitress stop him from leaving the restaurant to tell him he didn't leave a tip. So being a big wus he went back and left a tip more generous then the waitress deserved.

Waitresses get paid like a third world child in a sweat shop, so they should get tipped, but based on their performance not because they get paid poorly. I am not going to give someone 15% tip because they expect it, they need to earn it. If you are a crappy waitress then you are going to get 0-9% if you are an OK waitress they your going to get 10-15% and if you are a kick ass server then you are going to get 16-20%.

The new trend that has ticked me off is the Tip Jars on every counter of every store you walk into. Tip Jars at the pay counter? What am I tipping you for? Taking my money? No, I will tip you when I get my order and its not messed up! Some people will pay $4.30 for a coffee and then dump the .70 into the tip jar and then complain about paying $4 for a coffee….Hello?...you didn't pay $4 you paid $5. If you do that 5 days a week for a year you are paying $1200 a year for your coffee, $168 of it you are tossing into their Tip Jar. There is a café that I use to get soda from, the guy charged 1.10 for a can and not thinking about this I would drop the change into his Tip Jar. That was 2 bucks for a single can of coke, but I wont buy a soda from the concession stand at the movie theater because it costs too much? Where is the sense in that?

Here is a TIP for you: Tips are a Suggestion! That's right…there is no law that says you have to pay more for your meal/service. If someone gets in your face and demands a tip drop a handful of pennies on the table and tell them that if they want a Tip to do a better job.

If you want to give a tip but can never figure out what the tip should be, here is an easy way of figuring it out: (TAX x 2 = 16%) This formula is based on California Tax, but if you just double the Meal tax it will give you a good base Tip Price for a good sever. Then you can adjust it from there based on what you think is a good Tip for the service you received.

Hope this helps.

What do these things have in common? Absolutly nothing, but they are the excuses I am usiong for not writing lately!

I have been very quiet over the last month, lax in my writings. The main reason being I was gone to Hawaii but also I have started a side project on making my own board game and that has distracted me quite a bit.

I saw Iron Man last night and it made me want to write about it. This is a great movie with a really good cast and Downy Jr. was a perfect choice for Tony Stark (aka Iron Man). For those that don't know the Iron Man comic hero the movie will be enjoyable, but for fans of the comic hero there are tons of small nods to Iron Man comic lore and of course the always great cameo by comic creator legend Stan Lee. Overall this is just a fun movie that does a great job keeping the viewer entertained. There is a small extra goodie at the end of the credits that ONLY comic book fans will get, and wile it was cool, at the same time it threatens to muddy the future prospects of the Iron Man franchise. The horrors of Spiderman 3 flash before my eyes.

Stay tuned and I will soon have reviews of the PSP game "Patapon", and Xbox 360 "Overloard". Also, depending on how long it takes me to finish I will be reviewing "GTA 4" and the DS title "The World Ends with You".

Later,

Having just come down from the Requiem: Bloodymare (Worst name EVER) Closed Beta, the upcoming MMO from Gravity Interactive, I can say that MMOs are Killing Us.

The game industries newest game type is quit possibly one of the worst things to happen to games since Russian Roulette. I can't express to you how badly the MMO games have damaged the game industry. I'm not talking about financial success obviously, as money making devices they are phenomenal! I'm talking about damaging the overall potential of the game industry as a whole. Let me explain how this is happening.

Companies spend millions making these MMOs, the vast majority doesn't make it to the light of day, and many companies go bankrupt collapsing under the strain of trying to make the next WoW killer. Game Publishing companies only see the money making potential and so MMOs are the almost the only PC based game that they will fund, making the chance seeing anything other than MMOs unlikely.

Then there are the people who play MMOs. They invest so much time into one game, they ether have no time or no money to venture out and try any other games. This causes a stagnant pool of very few games, all largely the same (In terms of play style) with nothing new being created. Even when another game does come out that interests the players who are committed to an MMO, they have so much investment, and can loose momentum (by falling behind in levels etc… ) with guilds and friends, that they are not likely to leave, even though they might want to try something new.

So far this is only happening on the PC side of gaming, the Consol market is largely untouched by the MMO problem. I would even say that it appears that more non-MMO style games are being made these days, but largely on the consoles. Perhaps companies are becoming wise to the pit fall of the MMO and are no longer only investing in that game style, but they make so much money that I doubt it.

Now I know some of you will say that this is totally untrue, and look at all the new people the MMOs have brought into the world of gaming? Yeah, and looks where they stay, on that one game. I work with someone who is still playing The Dark Age of Camelot, that is not growth or progress.

I can only hope that the trend of MMO game development continues to decline.