When the pictures were released revealing Tron controllers for Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii, my jaw dropped. I had to have one. I got a closer look at them at PAX which deepened my craving for them. When I got back home in Oregon, I had totally forgot about the controllers until I went to Fry's and saw them on the shelf. Without skipping a beat I grabbed an Xbox 360 Tron controller and ran to checkout with a huge grin on my face. This controller looks like the real deal.

Plugging the controller in (yes, it's corded) the bright blue glow comes to life, complimenting the black base color. It's beautiful. Holding the controller feels equally as good. There's grip on the left and right sides of the controller and the part where the palms go is a bit fatter - making my rather large hands fairly comfortable. The look of the buttons remain largely the same. A,B,X,Y are in a Tron style font and moved slightly closer to one another. The Back and Start buttons are slimmer and positioned slightly higher than on a normal controller. All buttons (including L3 and R3) have a rather loud click noise when pressed in and the Guide button is pretty flat.

Unfortunately the controller is just good looks. The thumb sticks don't have as much resistance to them like a regular 360 controller would and the face buttons (A,B,X,Y) require a more involved press to get any result. While playing Super Meat Boy I found the A button wouldn't immediately pop back up, instead it would stay down for about a second longer and then pop up. I did find that the controller is fine for slower games that don't require much immediate input. The D-pad is the worst thing here. It's incredibly loose and doesn't provide accurate input whatsoever, making playing something like Pac-Man a terrible experience.

The Tron controller is something you probably shouldn't buy unless you're a hardcore Tron fan or need something cool to look at. It's a poor controller that has an incredibly nice shell.

You need to play Machinarium. It's a wonderful indie title that featues a downright georgous art style, charming characters, clever puzzles, and a beautiful soundtrack. It's hard not to like it.

For years now I've been wanting to play Persona 3 & 4. I've been seeing a bunch of these games be played and have heard so many positive things about them that I might have to track these games down. They seem right up my alley, since I enjoy just about every RPG known to man. I might have a position of Fry's Electronics soon so I'll pick them up there. One reason why I haven't picked them up already is because I don't have a Playstation 2 at the moment. My friend currently has it and my PS3 isn't BC. Just for the record, he's in Michigan and I'm in Oregon. So I've been thinking of either getting another PS3 with BC, and then give my old PS3 to my parents, or track down a PS2 and be done with it. I'm also running into space issues with my current PS3 so that'd be another reason to get a new one. I might have to delete Home. Oh no!

I've been playing X-Blades over the past couple days for review. I had to obtain a copy myself since Southpeak seemed to have forgot to send my review copy. But now that I've played it I'm starting to question myself as a person. Why did I ever have any amount of hype for this game? Yeah it looks pretty and the controls and good, but the structure of the whole game is so dated and boring. I thought the last game to play like this was going to be Golden Axe: Beast Rider. Since it did so poorly that should of been a hint to not make games like this! I don't know if I have it in me to finish the game.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope is also on my to-do list. I'm on disc two, about 30 hours in. It's been a complete blast so far. Though, I did encounter a part that made me quit for a few days. While this error was mostly my fault, I couldn't help but be annoyed. When I go through dungeons I comb through them, getting every last treasure chest. This cave I was in took me a few hours to get through. I gained atleast 5 levels and had obtained every chest so far. I see a save point, but then I see another chest to open. I run twords the chest, eye's big as can be, mouth wet, skipping for joy. Then a cutscene triggers. Then a boss appears. I look at my HP and MP, gone. Game over. I never could save.

I'm never one to brag or self-promote, but this is just too rad. The lovely Art Green pointed out that my review for Lord of the Rings Conquest somehow made it onto the front page of Google news. It might of been Google news Canada or something silly like that. But either way, awesome!

I'm a fan of live feeds. I watch the Chris Pirillo live feed quite regularly and this year at PAX I was introduced to the Desert Bus marathon. You can go here: http://desertbus.org/ to learn more, but what it basically boils down to is a group of people from LoadingReadyRun play Desert Bus until viewers stop buying hours for them to play. They're currently on their 2nd day of playing and have raised over $23,000 so far. All the money raised goes to Child's Play, which is awesome. They have two cams set up, one watching the game and the other on the people playing the game, who are surprisingly entertaining. This reminds me of the 448 team that tried to beat the 4 3D Zelda games in 48 hours last year. I watched the bulk of that and was blown away that so many people donated money to this kind of thing. I love it and I'm happy to see more. Check it out!

There have been a lot of great games that have come out this year. Certainly you've played most of them, or would atleast like to. Christmas is right around the corner and that means most of 2008's games have came out. Just like last year, 2008 did not lack in quality. This is a simple and short list of games that have come out this year that I am very thankful for. (The list is not in any particular order.. except maybe the first one.)

Lost Odyssey
Fallout 3
Metal Gear Solid 4
Fable II
Rock Band 2
LittleBigPlanet
Grand Theft Auto IV
Gears of War 2
Braid
Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution
Penny Arcade Adventures (Episodes 1&2)
No More Heroes
Burnout Paradise

So what games are you thankful for?

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

I've been keeping a very close eye on my 360 repair status. They repaired it and sent it out Wednesday and it's already in HODGKINS, IL, which is roughly 3 hours away from where I currently live. If I don't have it by Saturday I will cry.

Anyone using Twitter yet? I put an update on there saying I had put up all of my video game posters. I counted 25 but I'm betting I forgot a few somewhere. The posters actually covered up one wall and so I continued covering the next wall. Half of my room is covered in video game posters! Cool! 

I have a love/hate relationship with Resistance 2. The single player campaign was ok. The giant boss battles were a thrill to play through, but the rest oddly continued to try my patience (it's worth noting I have the most patience in the world). I won't lie, I was playing on casual because I was nervous. I died, a lot. Like, a lot a lot. I didn't expect it to be so tough! The new health system works great, but the thing I always seemed to forget was that most of the Chimera guns can shoot through walls/cover. I would always hide behind cover to recharge my health, but continued to get shot through the cover. Cool but annoying.

With Resistance 2 beat and no 360, I've been bored. So bored that I bought Wrath of the Lich King. Ewww gross. I know I know, shh. *Shocker Alert* I'm impressed by this expansion! Northrend has been a complete joy ride so far. Hijacking horses from the Alliance never gets old. What's most impressive is probably the Death Knight. What was shocking to me was some of the quests actually have scripted story elements to them. One of the Death Knight quests had you joining up with an army of ghouls and other Death Knights to battle this human army. It was really something seeing all these ghouls rise up from the ground and rush into battle with us. I swear there were over 100 characters on my screen in that battle. After that battle came lots of talking, with real voices by the NPC's! It was pretty neat seeing this level of NPC interaction with each other and voice acting in an MMO.

I should do a video blog soon. I guess all of this would of made a good one. Oh well, maybe next time.

I follow Wil Wheaton on Twitter and this gave me a good laugh. http://twitter.com/wilw/status/998441967

Poor Wil, yours gave out soon after mine. 

Resistance 2 has been eating up a lot of my time today, after making my new room more like a command center.The 40-60 player matches take a while, but are mad fun and an easy way to get experience. I'm not done with the campaign just yet but the big bosses sure are fun to play around with. I also tried a co-op mission solo. Not a great idea. It's co-op for a reason! But now that I can spend all my quality gaming time with my PS3, I'm thinking about playing through MGS4 again, Uncharted again, and ofcourse check out more LBP levels. If you have any of these games, and can spare enough time away from Gears 2 to not get a headache, we should play!

This is going to be short because of jet lag and the amount of stuff I need to unpack.

My friend bought me a copy of Gears 2 today. We were playing and took a break to eat. When we turned our 360's back on, they both got the RROD. But apparently his works now and my still doesn't? Ugh.

To make up for lost Gears 2 play time, I bought Guitar Hero: World Tour for PS3. The strum bar on the guitar doesn't work very well and the drums have massive sensitivity issues.

Games hate me.

Happy gaming everyone! Looks like I love my PS3 afterall.

To put it simply, I'm a nerd. I'm a nerd who's attracted to another nerd. And that nerd is attracted to me. We're in a bit of "nerd like", if you will. I've started making a LittleBigPlanet level for her. I know it's not an original idea with people proposing via video games, but I thought I'd take my stab at this thing, though I'm just asking her out. And what better way to start off a nerdy relationship by doing something like this?

So far, the level starts off with our two Sackboys being greeted by a big cute bear telling us we're going on a ride. We cross a bridge with dozens of colorful stars dangling above. We come to Wavy Davy (best name ever) who tells us not to get lost. We hop aboard the flying machine. We float high into the sky passing by symbols of her interests. We come across a platform to which we jump on. We slide down a glass slope and come across a dude that says "Now on to more pressing matters!". We come to a bridge with a crocodile under it saying "you know I like you and all, and you like me, or atleast I think so". Now, I haven't actually finished the rest yet, but I have some ideas on how to finish it off. I could have another big cute bear (they're hard to resist!) asking her to go out with me.

So Idea number one is to have two switches, one switch with a yes sign and the other no. If her sackboy jumps on the yes switch, a bunch of stars and score bubbles fall from the sky. If she jumps on the no switch, a bunch of spikes fall from the sky killing her sackboy. Idea number two is to buy a Playstation Eye and take a few pictures of myself. So it'd be the same idea as the first, but if she jumped on the yes switch a curtain would rise and a picture of a happy me would show up. And if she jumped on the no switch a sad picture of me would show up.

This is my first time actually making a level so it's not super great, but this is still really neat. It's short and sweet and I'm really giddy about showing it off to her. If you guys have any ideas on how to make this level more awesome, please share!

By the way, I beat Fallout 3. The way I ended it pulled a couple heart strings. Mm mm, so good!