Playing Demon's Souls now; stuff coming up I want:

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Assassin's Creed II
Katamari Forever
Gran Turismo 5 (almost certain it's coming this year)
Heavy Rain
God of War III
White Knight Chronicles

I know the last three aren't until 2010, but I definitely want them.

I liked both Advent Children and Spirits Within.

Oddly enough, maybe the best game-to-movie adaptation is the original Mortal Kombat. Beyond that, just about everything sucks.

Depends. If you plan on doing a lot of online playing, go for Modern Warfare 2. If you want what will likely be a superior single-player experience, go for Uncharted 2.

Both will probably be legitimate GotY contenders, but I personally think Uncharted 2 has the edge over every title this year.

Flower
Wipeout HD
echochrome
Shatter

Nobody should sleep on Shatter. That game is bad-ass. :)

They're in a private beta testing phase now, but it will soon shift to public. There will be ways to get in; for example, those who have annual subscriptions to Qore can land a beta spot.

It seems we at PSXE lit a fire...

Firstly, I'd like to clarify that this is NOT some ridiculous ruse just to gain attention or traffic. The information is real, the game is real, and it was simply leaked to us accidentally. We then agreed to keep it under wraps.

Secondly, to those insulting us for running the article, I would like to add that I - unlike many so-called journalists in this industry these days - worked in newspapers for several years. I'm aware we're just building interest (hype if you wish to call it that), but as this is an ENTERTAINMENT industry, that's a relatively common thing. Do you think movie or music writers do anything different?

Thirdly, I find it interesting that Warhawk was such a hot topic of conversation here...

-- Ben S. Dutka
Editor-in-Chief, PSX Extreme

Square-Enix has indeed gotten too sequel-happy, and the backlash from the gaming public is deserved. There's no two ways about it.

At the same time, if we're talking about money and nothing more, I fail to see how their current viewpoint differs from that of any other major publisher these days. I'm also sick and tired of seeing people complain bitterly about sequels. We are in the midst of one of the best gaming stretches in history, and what do we have?

Grand Theft Auto IV
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
Devil May Cry 4
Gran Turismo 5
Final Fantasy XIII
Gears of War 2
Halo 3
Bioshock 2 and Mass Effect 2 (start of series)
Guitar Hero IV
Resident Evil 5
Marios
Maddens

The biggest games of this generation are almost ALL sequels, and oh yeah, they're also some of the best games ever made. I just find it immensely ironic (and a little bit funny) that we have all these threads pining over the loss of IPs, and then millions are sold of the preceding games, and they're raking in ridiculous review scores. This being the current state of gaming, why SHOULDN'T S-E adopt this approach? Their only problem is that their sequels aren't of the high quality we're familiar with, but that doesn't make the concept wrong. Furthermore, S-E's slacking only affects these lacking sequels; in no way will it affect FFXIII, and I doubt anything thinks it will. On top of which, no entry in the primary FF series can be considered a "sequel," anyway (save FFX-2), which only proves that S-E simply has to kick things up a notch if they want to play the sequel game.

See above.

Phantom Leo- While I understand what you're saying, I think it's a little insulting to us critics.

Basically, what you're saying is that both Rockstar and other sources have an impact on the scores we give to certain games, right? Now, I don't argue that this may happen from time to time - this is the real world, after all - but to assume that Rockstar paid off a bunch of sources, and to assume that one source had a "cascading effect" on other sites (including ours over at PSX Extreme), kinda says that we journalists don't have a mind of our own. Let me say this- I get random crap from publishers all the time with review copies; 3 Titleist golf balls with Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds, a mini-survival kit with Metal Gear Portable Ops+, a little collectible model sword with Heavenly Sword, etc. Do you really believe those trinkets somehow affected how I scored the games? Well, actually, Arnold reviewed two of those because he got them, too, but I can guarantee the bonus items didn't affect his reviews, and it didn't effect mine of HS.

Now, while I will check other sites to see what scores they gave, I'm not about to alter my score just so it can "fit" better with the other critics. If the difference is significant - like if I want to give it a 7 and everyone is giving it a 4 - then I might go back and try to see what I missed. I'm also more likely to read other reviews in order to spot the cause of the differential. But when it comes to a game that gets a perfect 10, I'm actually LESS inclined to give it that score. First of all, I NEVER give 10s, and second of all, I consider it a challenge to find something wrong with the game that would allow me to give it a lower score. It'd almost be like a little moral victory (all in good fun, of course). But when I gave GTAIV a 9.9, I did it because I simply couldn't find a reason to give it a lower score. However, the technical shortcomings (frame rate, pop-in, wee bit of camera problems, etc.) were obvious, and while I know people just want to call those things "endearing eccentricities" of the franchise, they're still errors. Thus, the non-perfect score. But is there anything else wrong with it? Not that I could find.

I've never been paid off or coerced by another source to significantly change a score. There's no reason to do that. I have no motivation to do it. I get paid to do my job and I do it to the best of my ability. What you're implying is just a little insulting to the integrity of journalists and critics, that's all. I DO get what you're saying, but even so...

P.S. And to be perfectly honest, I couldn't care less if we pissed off Rockstar somehow. They make like three games a year and if they stopped sending us review copies, it really wouldn't affect us. Big freakin' deal...it's not like we lost Sony or EA as a contact. ;)