I seem to have won a copy of Dirt 2 for the Xbox 360 through TOTS. I guess this makes up for that godawful football team sponsored HDTV raffle fiasco last year. W00t.

I saw that Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords was at half price on Live this week. I had 400 points left over from a rather misguided purchase of Battlefield 1943 and decided "Hey, why not?" So I bought PQ: COTW. And it is freakin' awesome. I had never really seen puzzle games as a particularly interesting genre, right up there with excer-games and casual games as dull, pointless games that no one in their right mind would play. Now...not so sure. Puzzle Quest is amazing.

This is getting annoying. First my PSP breaks, now my laptop hard drive got fried. I'm getting scared for my Xbox. :|

This morning, I turned on my PSP to check my email, my laptop being across the room and me too lazy to get out of bed. Imagine my distress when a horrible buzzing, grinding noise began to emit from the UMD drive. I immediately opened it and removed the disc inside. I examined the disc. Nothing seemed to be amiss, so I stuck it back in. The grinding continued. For the heck of it, I tried to run the game. No dice. I popped out the disc again and put another game in. Second try, I got the game running. I popped the disc out, shrugged, and left for a doctor's appointment. Several hours later, I returned to discover that my beloved PSP 2000 would no longer read discs. Ah well. Now I have an excuse to finally sell Crisis Core (one of the more atrocious games I have ever played) and buy the Assassin's Creed bundle, whenever that comes out. But it won't be the same, dammit!

RIP buddy.

--Feliscele

...and, frankly, I'm a little underwhelmed. I've had a PSP for over a year now, but I primarily use it to listen to music (as I'm too cheap and lazy to save up and get an iPod). This summer I am going to be without the ability to hook up an Xbox for a while and my computer's sound card is on the fritz, so I wanted a cheap and good gaming platform. I'd heard good things about Civilization Revolution on the DS, so I decided, being a big Civ fan, to pick up a DS and a copy of Civ Rev. Only the store didn't have Civ Rev. So I bought Pokemon Platinum instead. It's a really good game (I've played Pokemon on other people's systems before and loved it), but the DS itself is rather lacking in comparison to the PSP. I especially dislike how the main menu makes you turn off the system to return to the homepage and that there is no way to see the battery level (until it goes to red) when in game. But then, I've only had it five hours, and of those five, only used it for two. My opinion will probably change with time.

When the game's soundtrack loops for the 500th time, I will occasionally (re: always) switch to something else. Here is some of the best music to game by, in my opinion.

Sabatoge by the Beastie Boys

It might just be Star Trek getting to me, but I findthis song to bethe perfect thing to listen to while playing pretty much any racing game. Nothing can be more fine than bashing through traffic in Burnout while listening to Mike D scream into the mike.

Indestructible by Disturbed

Ah, Disturbed. One of my favorite bands.And, coincidentally,Indestructible is probably the ultimate Halo fightsong. I love to go blasting my way through hordes of Monster-fueled shooter fans with this blaring in the background. "I'm INDESTRUCTIBLE! Determination that is incorruptible..."

Yakkety Sacks

As evidenced by countless YouTube videos, Yakkety Sacks (I might havemispelled this)is the ultimate "let's go do random sh*t" song. Doncha just love to go around slaughtering helpless civilians while listening to the Benny Hill music? Yeah, so do I.

Volunteers by Jefferson Airplane

Another "let's go do random sh*t song." This is especially fun to blast while running like heck away from pissed off guards, civilians, demons from the otherworldly plane, etc. Wheee!

Adagio for Strings

Can't quite remember the name of the musician who did this, but it is a AMAZING song to play while playing any violent game (yes, I am copying Platoon). I especially like to mute everything else in, say, Burnout Paradise, turn this on and play Showtime mode. The contrast is just...amazing.

The HotSpot

Technically not a "song," the GameSpot podcast is the best thing to listen to when playing any MMO or other grind game. I've whiled away countless hours killing Charr in Guild Wars while listening to the wry wit and (depending on whether Tor is on or not) utter chaos of my favorite Tuesday past time. May the HotSpot never die!

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, an Elder Scrolls MMO would be the worst idea in the history of gaming. But there are a number of IPs and brands that are screaming, nay, begging for an MMO treatment. Here are my top five (in no particular order):

5. Grand Theft Auto

GTA is already famous for its open world, do anything-you-bloody-well-want gameplay. That translates perfectly into an MMO setting. However, the city would have to be somewhat bigger and it would have to be a MMO shooterto work. Judging by GTAIV's sales and popularity, this could be a WOW killer.

4. Assassin's Creed

Kind of a quirky concept, but would be really cool if done well. All of the Middle East open to exploration, multiple faction choices (Assassins, Templars, etc.), numerous ****s (Assassins, knights, thieves, bandits, etc.)...this is a really cool idea. Only problem is game mechanics, as it wouldn't translate well into the standard MMO model.

3. Greek/Norse/Egyptian Mythology

Yes, I know that Dark Age of Camelot has some mythology aspects and that Ragnarok is based on Norse mythology, but it would be really great to see a hard-core MMO based solely on one of these mythologies. Or you could do it Age of Mythology ****and have them all coexisting at once, with worlds based around each. separate mythology.

2. Pokemon

Maybe there is one (I don't follow Nintendo closely), but I'm not aware of it. Pokemon makes perfect MMO sense: turn based battles with other players across a huge world. Make it in any form, it'll sell like hotcakes. Make it on the Wii, it will sell like cream filled hotcakes. Make it a DS game and the world is Nintendo's oyster.

1. Discworld

I'm a big, BIG Terry Pratchett fan. I would pick up any current-gen game based on his works day one. An MMO would probably fail, but it would be awesome. You have all your factions, guilds, ****s, locations and species worked out. Just make a game based around it. I'm imagining something with the Guild Wars environment detail and the WOW character models. That would be absolutely amazing, to me at least.

Yesterday, Bethesda trademarked the title "Brink". At the end of the article there was this paragraph:

"Of note, Bethesda and ZeniMax are also at work on a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, having secured $300 million in funding for it and other development projects in 2007. However, Bethesda's MMOG in question is widely believed to be set in the publisher's popular Elder Scrolls universe."

This is possibly the worst MMO idea in history. Not only would it probably fail (Nothing is going to topple WOW), but, more importantly, it completely goes against the values and mentality of the series. Let me break it down:

1. Value

Oblivion and Morrowind are my two favorite games of all time. I've sunk 90 hours in Oblivion and probably just as much in Morrowind. And the best part? I got Morrowind GOTY edition for 8 bucks off Amazon and Oblivion for 20 bucks. For the price of seeing one and two-and-a-half movies, respectively, I have gotten over 180 hours of entertainment. Even for 60 dollars a game, that's still an incredibly good deal.

However, if the next Elder Scrolls game is an MMO, it will be 40-50 bucks initially, then 15 bucks a month for the rest of forever. An awful turn around for what has been possibly the game series with the best value in gaming history.

2. Gameplay

Oblivion, moreso than Morrowind, stands out from other RPGs (I'm looking at YOU Final Fantasy) by having a realtime fighting engine as opposed to turnbased. That, and the way you can kill anyone and pretty much do anything makes it a game best fit for singleplayer. If TES was transferred into an MMO, two of the best aspects of the series would have to be either heavily modified or taken out completly. In an MMO, you can't just go around slaughtering everyone. It would break the game if all the merchants were dead within the first week of the game being released. And the fighting would have to be converted to the realtime/turnbased hybrid of most MMOs, in order to work. Now we don't have Elder Scrolls. Now we have a cheap WOW knockoff.

3. Graphics

Oblivion was beautiful. Absolutely freakin' beautiful. You cannot make an MMO that looks that good. I think Guild Wars is the only thing comprable. And compared to Oblivion, Guild Wars is 2D. 'Nuff said.

4. General Feel

The best part of Oblivion and Morrowind is how it just feels. You know you're the hero. You're the guy (or girl) holding the sword. You're the savior of the realm. Now, picture an Elder Scrolls MMO. You finish a quest to go off and slay an ogre for the Fighter's Guild. After you collect your award, you look around and see another dozen people crowding around the quest giver to do the EXACT SAME QUEST. Then you realize that you are just one little, tiny, insignificant ant, one of several thousand people doing the exact same things at exactly the same time to help save the realm. And you turn off the computer and go and replay Oblivion.

In conclusion, an Elder Scrolls MMO is an awful idea. Bethesda, if you're reading this, I BEG YOU not to make an Elder Scrolls MMO. Just make TES5 single player. And make it awesome. Thank you.

I just read the multiple Guitar Hero announcements article and I feel really bothered. I like Guitar Hero, but I think Activision is going a bit too far. Because GH is such a simple game to make (as opposed to, say, Fallout or Oblivion), Activision is churning them out like hotcakes. Just because there is a profit to be had it doesn't mean you should make a million of pretty much the same game. Honestly, how many people are going to buy all these games? These are the same games with different songs on each and, in DJ Hero's case, one different controller. Wouldn't it save Activision money in the long run to make one game with room for more controllers to be installed and just make a huge download library.

The thing about all this that I understand the least is Band Hero. What's up with that? What is the difference going to be between Band Hero and GH5, aside from separate songs? You can't add any more peripherals, can you? What other instruments ARE there that would make sense in a band setting? And keyboards don't count.

GH: Greatest Hits is an incredibly bad move, in my opinion. What GH junkie is going to pay more money for stuff they already have? And why would a newbie to the franchise buy this and not #5 or 4?I can't see this selling more than a couple thousand copies. Why not just release these songs as downloads? It would save money and time, on Activision's part.

Guitar Hero started out as a fun idea, but after number three, the series has just become a shoddy, "Let's get this stuff out the door and make a quick buck" franchise with no heart. Yes, Activision wants money, but, judging by their income, they can afford to make good, in depth games and not just let a franchise's popularity support itself.