It seems hard to be disappointed after picking up God of War 2, but I am.No it's nothing to do with the game at all but what I was told when I pre ordered it back in January and when I picked it up on Monday just gone by.

"EB will be the only ones getting the special edition and you can get a SE copy only if you preorder."

Ok the pre order bonus was the SE version but when I walk into another store(JB,Kmart,Big W etc.) and see the SE version I feel cheated. After seeing it in other places it made me feel disappointed in pre ordering the game. Just like with Zelda:TP on GC supposedly being another "EB Exclusive" only to find the game at Toys'r'us makes me wonder if I should trust an EB staff member again about their so called exclusives.

My only solace is that I do have the game am enjoying it.

It seems that I'm having one of those days where everything goes my way.(well, almost everything) It started with a tough work out at the gym with all my weights jumping up 5-10 kgs. Just about lost those man boobs I had last week. I also managed to stop some guys from laughing when I picked up some weights that were bigger than there's and they thought I couldn't lift them.(I don't look that big at the moment, not like last year when I was one of the biggest guys in the gym) I lifted them with ease and had to go back to the rack for something heavier. No messing with me amateurs. Hehe. :wink:

After the workout I headed home and just after getting in the door the postie showed up with some mail.Unfortunately no packages from the US. Some day soon though those ones will show up or I will be getting a refund as they should be here in the next 2 weeks at the absolute latest as its been 6 weeks.(Surface mail sucks!!) Though I did get 4 pieces of mail just for me.

The first was my mobile bill. Ive got to start using it more as I barely use up 1/2 my free calls.

The second was a package containing La Pucelle Tactics for the PS2 from Sydney. Used?? More like brand new. Score 1 for me. Ebay rules!!!

Next up was a letter from the Uni saying I have been accepted for my Bachelor next year and that I can go straight into 3rd year. Score no. 2!!

The last was a package containing my prize from a draw in a mag from 3-4 months ago that I won, an Aeon Flux DVD. It came with a letter apologising that the package never got to me and I received a bonus book as it was their fault, which was "Aeon Flux: The Herodotus File". Score 3 and 4!!!!

To top the day off I picked up 2 new chairs. All leather recliners(Cappuccino coloured, I would have gone with black but it would look out of place in the room) which arrive next week. So comfortable and they were cheaper than the same chairs across the road by well over AU$400. Oh and thats the combined price for the 2 I got against getting 1 of the exact same chairs across the road by the way. Plus I get a discount on top of that. How great is that???!!! Now I got to decide which game to play in my new chairs when I get them. Good times are coming.  :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

Well its not often that I pre-order a game.The last game I pre-ordered(and only game I have pre-ordered) was Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life and I had to wait a couple of weeks after its release to get it because they didn't get enough copies. But anyway I now have The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on pre-order(paid in full) with just over a month to release in Australia.

The only reason I pre-ordered it was because the Gamecube version(I'm not buying a Wii in the interest of keeping my bank balance happy. Wii = Cheap, Getting all the Wii games I want = expensive)was only coming out in short supply and EB bought up all the stock. I thought about getting it off ebay but I reckon it will be quite expensive due to the small quantities. Hmmm, maybe I should grab another copy to sell on ebay down the line...nah. I would keep it for a long time and still refuse to sell it.

I guess it won't be the last time I pre-order a game. With God of War 2, Final Fantasy XII and Okami yet to be released here I may end up having to pre-order all of them just to get a copy. Especially Okami!

I posted this in a board a few days ago and thought it would make a good point to start a blog at. I changed a few bits to make it apply to more than just a console but across Nintendo, Microsoft and Sonys' systems.

I think far to many people are using graphics as the basis of defining a console having reached it's potential. It's easy to look at graphics and say "yeah its reached its potential" but what about sound, AI, story, scripting, voice work, control, art style, game play and types of games? Have these all been fully exploited to the absolute limit yet? No.

Lets say that next-gen was still 3 years away and developers had to still use current technology. Graphically games can only get a small amount better, but developers would be forced to innovate to capture gamers attention. No one would want to play another RPG, Driving-Sim or FPS that is barely any different with small graphical improvements from the rest on the market.

So with developers free from having to create games with improved graphics and minor updates to capture the consumer they can focus on other areas of their games or make a new genre. When was the last game that came out that wasn't a variation or hybrid of existing games but a completely new genre? (Especially in the last 6 years.)

This is why I think new consoles and hardware come too soon. With the added power of new technology developers don't need to innovate as much, as they can always improve graphics which create that "WOW" factor to get people interested. Look at Sony's PS3 Tech Demos from E3 2005. Everyone was blown away when they saw those movies which created the "WOW" factor, but when it turned out they were pre-rendered footage it was hard not to be disappointed. While games may look that good at some point in the PS3 lifetime there was nothing to fall back on after the WOW factor vanish, which hurt Sony to an extent.(IMO) They were the same games with better graphics and nothing much more.

So as far as I'm concerned, the current-gen consoles was just about to hit a golden age that never will materialize because of the arrival of the next-gen consoles. Developers had been flexing their muscles with the standard games in the technology of the Gamecube, PS2 and Xbox for years and where coming to some limits with these games on the systems. The console was about to hit a point were developers would have been forced to create new experiences(The new WOW factor) and couldn't rely on the tried and true with graphical improvements and minor updates to series. This could potentially have led to new genres, complete re-imaginings of the old or a new approach to games, but instead the new technology has come early with added power and potentially gimmicky additions.

So IMO, creativity is being stunted by the next generations of consoles, not enhanced by it. All we are really getting with the next-gen is the same games we have been getting for years with some standard improvements, most notably is the graphics. By restricting developers to the current-gen and making them to think laterally with their games due to the perceived limits we may see them create the new experiences that could remove the staleness from the industry that critics have been complaining about for years.

But we will never know...