So I have been trying to leave for a while now.

 I have finally reached the end of my rope with GS.

The unfair treatment by mods of people I see everyday. The stupid rules that restict freedom of speech. You cant say the worst 4 letter word in the english language on the forums.... BIAS!!!! If you dare breathe it in the PS3 forum.... BANNED!!!! And what for, for expressing an opinion? Wow, reviews are opinions and GS expresses those all the time, guess because we pay for a service we are not entitled to **** about it...

 Oh Well...

 I am moving on to Gametrrailers.com. They are a great site, always have the newest media, and all the news you find here at GS. Plus, you accumulate GT dollars that you can trade for real life stuff. For a mere $11,000 you can get games for the next gen systems. (Been with them for a couple months and I have $1000+ already. So not bad at all)

 I have cancelled my subscription with GS, as I will no longer pay to be censored.

I may post in the forums, but rarely now, and certainly not like before.

Fairwell all, and hope to see some of you at GT....

So about a month ago I got a auto renewal reminder for Xbox live. As March 17th is my anual renewal date.

Since I havent used Live in about 6 months now, I decided I was going to cancel my subscription, and just live life as a lowly Silver member. Not an issue for me, as I rarely play games online. I used to be an online nut back in the Quake 2 days, but I find I get very little pleasure from it now. So, hence the cancellation.

So I log into the Xbox (back in Feb) check account management, Hmmm, no where to tell it to cancel my subscription. I cant even tell it to not auto renew. My options are Pay it all at once, or pay it monthly. Well this sucks. I check the M$ website, and find the only way to cancel is to call the toll free number. Grrr.

So I call them up, navigate the automated message center for 10 minutes, then get left on hold for about 20 more, before I talk to a fine young lad, who seems very put out that I am cancelling my subscription. He proceeds to ask my many questions about why I am quitting. I am thinking, none of your friggen business. I dont want the service, leave it at that... I told him he can cancel it ASAP, as I wont be using it between now and the renewal date anyway. He says that they will give me the last month free, and that it will not renew on March 17th. I even get a confirmation email from M$ stating such.

Well here we sit, the morning of the 17th and guess what..... F***** M$ went ahead and renewed my subscription anyway. So I guess now being a Gold member means I am locked in eternally to be a slave in the Hell that is Xbox Live.... UGH!!!!

Guess I will have to spend half my saturday getting this rectified.

So a word to the wise, if you are going to cancel your subscription, I suggest you actually change your credit card info or something within the Dashboard, then maybe they will get the hint when the transaction fails.

This rant cant even come close to showing you all how pissed I am right now......

So here I sit in the post launch drought.

The dust has settled, the shine is off the diamond, sales are slowly getting into a norm. PS3 consistantly sells 20k units a week in Japan, and the Wii sells it's stead supply each week.

But the question arises, where are the games?

Now, all I hear on every forum on the web is PS3 is not worth buying now because there are no good games available. OK, fair enough, they had a few good launch games, and things until march are less than stellar. But then why dear readers do we not hear the same gripe about the Wii? They had a lack lucter launch lineup (say that 5 times fast) with the main title being Zelda.

But then what? Wario ware has been the only REAL title since the lauch, and if you dont like gimmiky mini games, then you son are screwed. So why do we not have fanboys with pitchforks in their hands at Nintendo's doorstep, like they have at Sony's?

Is it the price difference? Do people feel that they only paid $250 for the Wii, so if it stis there collecting dust, no biggie? It is not even like there is a huge library of old GC games worth playing, dont get me wrong, there are some, but they pale in comparison to the 8000 games available for PS1/PS2.

So why the double standard? Why is the lack of games acceptable on one console, but not the other?

So here we sit, Feb 9th.

In about a months time we will be getting an onslaught of PS3 games, and even a couple 360 games.

But what happened to the AAA titles that were set for March?

Where is Lair? What happened to Heavenly Sword?

I love my PS3, it is one hell of a console, and it gets better with every Firmware, but now what we need is some games damnit.

When I was the trailer for Heavenly Sword at E3 2005, yes... 2005, I knew then and there I was getting a PS3. The cost ddint matter, the release date of the console didnt matter, all I knew was I have to play this game.

Then we hear it is a launch title. Woohooo! Lets rejoice, oh wait, delays, ok a Feburary title, ok, kinda bummed, but not bad, I have R:FOM, and about 15 PS2 games to motor throught. Well Feb is apon us and now I have mixed info, EB says June, IGN syas FORTH QUARTER!!!!, and Futureshop is still locked in at Feb 15th, oh how I wish...

So why is it so damn hard to get some PS3 games in the market. Surely game developement has been going on for more than a year, so what the hold up?

Guess I will have to go back to playing Dirge of Cerberus (shudder) until we get some of the promised March titles.

At least I can look forward to R6: Vegas, Motorstorm, SC: Double Agent and God of War 2.

Well....

So I am rushing out the door to go to work, my alarm was set wrong (I can assemble a computer blindfolded, but can I set an alarm..... Nooooooo!) Made sure one kid was up, ran to the basement to check on our eldest son and SLIP!!!!! for some unknown reason my basement stairs were now firmly implanted in my azz. As if by some devine force, my right leg was pulled out from under me, and for some silly reason, my left leg thought it should promptly follow, thus sending my confused tukas onto the step, and my left foot into the wall.....

Where is all this going you are thinking.... Well dear readers, I ended up with a bloody broken toe.... Never broke a bone in my life, and trust me when I say I should have broken MANY by now. I have taken some falls that are too gruesom to put on America's Funniest Home Videos even. And never once have I so much as fractured anything....

So here I am, layed up on my couch, with all the time in the world. Hmmm. What to do....

So... I started Kingdom Hearts 2 finally. Now that the PS3 BC has been fix, I can finally sit down and enjoy some Square - Enix goodness.

I swear I have to stop buying games until I finish a few (or a dozen) I tend to run out and grab the newest title, rush home, pop them in, play for 30 mins or so, then shelf it for 6 months. What the hell is that about. I have tried to start buying used at least to save a few dollars, if I had waited the 6 months to get Kingdom Hearts 2 it would have cost me $19.99 instead of 69.99. Ugh!

And evidenced by the collection I have listed here, you can see I have a lot of PS2 gaming left to do. I wanted Dragon Quest Viii for Xmas last year, the wife was kind enough to indulge me that want, and on Christmas morn I promptly ran down, popped in the FF XII demo disc, played for an hour, tried DQ VIII as well for about 30 mins, and have yet to pop it back in since. I swear I have a mental deficency some days.

Anywho, I have somewhat vowed to not get any more games until I start finishing my PS2 collection.

So maybe this toe thing was Karma, telling me to get on my azz and start beating some games.

I better hurry becasue I have a huge lust for Heavenly Sword and God of War 2, and they are just around the corner.

Been a slow week for game stuff this week.

I finally finished up the Xenosaga trilogy with Xeno pt 3. What a friggin amazing series.

I admit, Xenosaga 2 kinda blew. The combat was incredibly fun and challenging, but as far as furthering the plot of the trilogy it really was bland filler.

But Xeno 3, OMG! The story was wonderful. It left all tthe loose ends tied up, and still gave a little wiggle room for a sequel. My only real beef is that the combat that was so great in the 2nd was replaced by the blandest fighting system I have seen since the NES rpg days...

It was truely an Attack, get hit, Attack, get hit, kind of affair. Up until the last maybe 5 hours of the game the combat was never even a challenge. And I spent no extra time leveling. Just bought the newest equipment, and kept the plot rolling.

Speaking of plot, when you decide to finish this game up, make damn sure you have an hour or more to spare. The final fight was a lengthy one, but it pales in comparison to the almost 45 mins of CG movies that wrap up the story.

Besides the Xeno wrapup, it was a pretty dead week for me.

The was the coveted PS3 v1.5 patch that has finally! fixed the BC issue with virtical banding. All games that were having issue now look amazing. Equal to if not better than the PS2.

I have been a major supporter of the "Fix my PS3" campaign going on, be it upscaling issues, customs backgrounds,  or the backwards compatibility issue surrounding crappy looking 480I games.

Now I did a butt load of testing myself when I first heard of the issue. I tried a side by side test with my sons PS2 and my PS3, both using component cables, both on the same display.

The results sucked. The PS2 did indeed offer a jaggie free, or less jaggie picture. From all the technical info available it is an issue with Anti-Aisling, that is affected when a non Progressive signal is played on the PS3. Does this suck? Hell ya. Do we need to keep beating a dead horse about it? Hell NO!!!!

Sony is aware of the issue, they have said that they will be making a firmware adjustment to correct the issue "in the future" When that will be, well your guess is as good as mine. I personally expect it to be around the Euro launch, it would make sense at least.

Sony also has claimed they will be making a software emulator in the future and dropping the PS2 emotion engine to cut costs. When this will be again is up in the air.

I wish people here, and anywhere on the net for that matter, would just do a little searching and find that there are about 50 threads on any forum about this issue. But then again, that wont get any trolls post count any higher.

You know, it is really starting to chap my azz that a guy cant make a comment here that is in any way positive towards Sony without being called a fanboy, you can't pat MS on the back without being a fanboy (or a lemming) and if you like the Wii, well they you must like to exercise j/k.

Here is the definition of a fanboy:

Main Entry: fa·nat·ic - marked by excessive enthusiasm and often intense uncritical devotion

Main Entry: Boy - a : a male child from birth to adulthood b : Son c : an immature male

Hmmm, an imature male with uncritical devotion. Sure that sounds like a few people I know, but the vast majority here are not (except those 360 guys, they are nuckin futs, just kidding)

Is it so unrealistic to think, that people who own a console, and even some who do not, actually like it and find value in it.... oh the horror.

And why oh why does this offend people so much. Seriously, we are all here for 1 thing, and 1 thing only. GAMES. Cut and dry, no grey area.

People do not buy a 360 to play catch, people do not buy a Wii as a paperweight, people do not buy the PS3 too cook burgers George Forman style (At least most dont)

So is it so unreasonable to think that some of us may be happy with our purchase, that we may have bought each / any console for a reason other than undying devotion to a brand?

And what about those of us who have all three? I love my PS3 make no mistake, and my Wii is awesome. And just because I feel a little dis-enchanted with my 360, but that does not mean I am a bigger fan of the other 2. I have hundreds of hours played on the 360, far more than my PS2 saw all year, does that make me a MS fanboy? I think not

I am a GAMER, pure and simple.

IF someone rags on any of the systems unjustly, I defend them. That does not automaticly bump me into the catagory of fanboy.

By the definition above, I am far from it. Anyone who knows me knows I am super critical, I am the Jaded Gamer for a reason.

So I picked up a Wii at launch with the intention of playing pretty much only 1 game. Zelda: Twilight Princess.

It got off to a shaky start as I did not have a component cable, and due to someone dropping the ball bigtime at Nintendo, no store on the planet had a Wii Component Cable. (How could they launch without HDTV cables.... ugh!)

Anyway, I ordered, or should I say back-ordered a cable from Nintendo, and waited for it to patiently arrive, it got to me around Dec 7th if I recall. Now I tottly shelfed my Wii until I got my component cable as the picture was unbearable on a 113" screen. All you projector nuts will agreee I am sure.

So after a busy holidy season, I have finally found time to delve into Zelda. I am at the 33 hr mark now, and all I can say is WOW!

This is bar none the best Zelda thus far in the franchise. Now I went in skeptical. I figured this was gonna be a Gamecube port with sloppy controls, I originally intended to buy it on GC instead of Wii for the gamepad factor. But man am I impressed. The fighting is tight, the Wiimote controls are bang on.

Once you get some of the more advanced fighting secrets unlocked, it just gets better. Sheild thumping an ememy is just too fun.

And the puzzle design, what a refreshing breath into the adventure genre. All of the puzzles are not too difficult, but they are smart, and fun, and that is not to say they are without some degree of challenge, some of the sliding puzzles can take a long time to figure out.

Add in a smattering of minigames, and all the heart peice (40 I think) and poe soul searching (60 in all), you have a heck of a solid game, and a long one at that.

Clocking myself in at 22 hrs, and I know I still have 3 dungeons left, not to mention about 14 heart peices and 27 solus left. That should last well into the 50 hr range.

Highly recomended to any adventure game fan, and a definate purchase to any Zelda fan.

I am seeing a real disturbing trend around here.

People posting on a daily basis that they have seen *GASP* a PS3 on a shelf in a store, and this must mean that the PS3 is garbage, and no one wants it.... I even saw a comment about the PS3 "sitting there and collecting dust"

Where the hell did that logic come from?

Collecting Dust? For heaven's sake, there are many reports that Best Buy was stockpiling PS3's for there Dec 31st flyer, and gaurenteed that there would be 25 (at least) on shelves. So when someone walks into a Best Buy on Dec 31, ummm, ya, yer gonna see a few PS3's, as promised. Now if these consoles arrived, and a month from now they are still sitting there, then ya, I would say Sony is in a little trouble, and by then, they may have collected a little "dust", but right now, they are just waiting for people to walk in and grab one.

If the PS3 is on a shelf for more than 15 minutes, it is not the end of the console war people. This is a $600 peice of equipment, joe blow walking in to pick up a DVD or a DS game for his kid is not going to make an impulse buy and grab a PS3, he might, but it will be rare. So you need to have the right consomer walk in at the right time, this may not happen all within the first 30 seconds the store is open, it may just take the whole day, OMG, maybe even..... 2 days, oh the horror!!!! If you wanna talk about dust collecting, then just take a look to the left of the PS3, see that huge stack of 360's no one is rushing in to buy, even with the boxing week specials.... mmmhmm, thats what I though you would say fanboy....

This is where the Wii has the upper hand at the moment, Joe Blow is a little more likely to make a $250 impulse buy and not get killed by his spouse, make an unsanctioned $600 purchase, and Joe Blow may never get blown again...

So for God's sake, lay off people already...

I see this as Sony delivering what they promised, they said they wanted to get 1 - 2 million units out by the end of the year, with reported sales of over 1.2 million PS3's sold worldwide already, they may just hit the 2 million mark. And as a byproduct, we are gonna see PS3's in stores.

Ask yourself this one, if we never saw PS3's on a shelf somewhere, how would we get one?