If I had to describe Home in one word, it would be "boring". I'm bored to death with Home. I've only found two things that are entertaining for more than about 30 seconds, tweaking my avatar and playing the bowling minigame. Other than these two aspects, I haven't found a single thing that keeps my interest for more than about a minute. The theater just shows the same videos over and over, and its stuff that I can find online much faster other than waiting for it to download with an actual downloading bar streaming across the movie screen. Imagine that. Going to the movies and seeing the big screen with a loading bar on it, yea that's fun.

The games in the arcade cabinets aren't good and in fact downright blow! Pool is about as basic as can be. PC desktop pool is more fun. Bowling is OK, but it's certainly not enough for me to say, "I can't WAIT to play some Home bowling. That would be much more fun than Left 4 Dead or Gears of War 2 with friends." I understand that the point of these games is to help encourage people to talk while playing them in a virtual world, but that won't happen unless you're waiting to play. And who is going to stand around to wait to play Carriage Return or Ice Breaker? I mean seriously waiting to play in a virtually created world? There are 12 cabinets and approx three million people trying to play them. Does this make sense?

The problem here is that while the experience on the whole is supposed to be there to incite conversation, you only really exist while you're logged in. If you're not currently in Home, there's no way for people to interact with you outside of sending you a message, which you can just do from the XMB anyway. Really, if I felt like having conversations with people I don't know, I would much rather do it on a message board somewhere like Gamespot and then seeing if I want to be friends with them, all I saw in Home were hundreds of people running around doing nothing, chatting with a keyboard and two people using their oh so nifty bluetooth headsets…YES two people which you can't even mute no matter how loud or static their voices are.

I know that a whole lot more stuff is coming, but what's here now is a giant waste of time. Sony should concentrate on hanging on to their once beloved third party franchises and churning out more games then this crap that took WAY to long to be such a failure.

As a HUGE fan of zombies, zombie movies and survival horror games L4D was/is easily my most anticipated game this year. And that fact was solidified last night in stone. Last night Valve released a demo of L4D on Xbox 360 and I couldn't wait to play it. I hopped on and quickly paired up with some of my friends seeing as how this is a 4 player co-op survival horror game (SCREW BOTS) the draw was to experience this intense game together with your buddies trying to endure the endless wave of infected. After trouncing the demo on both normal and hard we felt pretty confident to go for a run on expert. WOW! What a ride! The game decided to go all out on us and send wave after random wave of infected running, leaping and bashing through walls to pummel us to a pulp (Seeing as how infected do not eat their victims only beat the ever loving crap out of them, and zombies eat the flesh of their victims. There IS a difference)

The game ran VERY smooth and offered up a ton of excitement, fun and suspense. One second you're in a room surveying the area talking to your teammates to devise a plan when suddenly out of nowhere (Especially in the open areas like streets or rooftops) dozens and dozens (nearly 30 or 40 at a time) of infected rush you from all angles and what was once a close cohesive unit turns into panic and chaos while you struggle to survive. This game is going to be awesome and I can tell already since I played through the 15 min demo about 60 times last night with each time being different since the AI changes the spawning of items and enemies each time. Don't get to comfortable with the situations they throw at you since your next playthrough will be a completely different story. Oh yea and don't try to be a hero and go off on your own. You won't make it.

Well as we ALL know Christmas has just passed and I hope EVERYONE had a wonderful holiday with their family and got everything they asked for cause I know I did! Actually I got MORE then I asked for or ever anticipated.

This Christmas I asked for a few games for PSP and Wii that I really wanted to play and while I did indeed receive Manhunt 2 and Silent Hill: Origins (Thanks mom) I also received a little bit more from my lovely fiance, a brand new 40 gig PS3! Thrusting me into the elite of the next gen gamer society! I now own all three consoles as well as the PSP Slim so to say gaming is something I enjoy would be an understatement.

Seriously though it feels GREAT to be released from the shackles of fanboyisim and to truly view the gaming world with open eyes and the ability to expeirence it all. Now my only problem is having to MUCH to play. I mean I don't even know where to start, but I guess that's more of a good problem :)

First off the PS3 isn't NEARLY as heavy as it appears. The console is VERY sleek and hardly makes a peep while running, but I will say there are some things I do not like such as preinstalling your games to the HDD before you play which takes anywhere from 10 to 25 minutes. 10 TO 25 MINUTES!!!??? It's something I wish they hadn't done because it's so annoying and is one of the BIGGEST reasons I will choose all multiplat games such as Devil May Cry 4, GTA IV, Smackdown vs Raw, Resident Evil 5, Soulcalibur 4, Silent Hill 5 and Conan for 360 over the PS3 versions. I mean I want a home console NOT a computer. There's a reason why I don't play games on computer and preinstallation is one of them. The idea is a joke! For what? To save a few extra seconds of loading time? Not worth the painful waiting when all you want to do is play the game. I also think it takes way to long to download demos. I downloaded the Uncharted demo and the Condemned 2 Bloodshot demo and each one took nearly 15 to 20 minutes, THEN I had to install it to my HDD what a pain! I prefer the Xbox method of downloading the demo and ummm PLAYING IT! I'm still not a fan of the XMB interface and hate it on both PSP and PS3 there's just WAY to much micro management going on and it just looks cluttered with sub menu after sub menu after sub menu. I prefer the blade system the 360 uses which packs everything together neatly and makes it VERY easy to find what you're looking for. Not to mention interesting to look at. With the XMB it's more like looking at a computer monitor whereas the 360 paints a more upbeat vibrant videogame presentation! Also no matter what any Sony fanboy says the PSN store is like a supermarket when there's a tornado warning in the area........bare. Compared to the Marketplace on 360 it's very light in content. I think I counted MAYBE 30 demos, a handful of videos (Of which most were PS3 commercials) and a few drips and drabs of downloadable content like original PSone games, and expansion packs (Which cost just the same on PSN as they do on LIVE.) The PSN system of friends and networking is a joke plain and simple. You are VERY limited on what you can do and how you can do it, and for now I'll leave it at that.......but enough of the gripes let's talk about the goods.

I really like the orchestra music that comes up whenever you power on the PS3 and eventhough I don't like the XMB I do like the clean look of the PS3's background. I also like the little preview you get of whatever game or movie you have highlighted before selecting it. Which is the same thing the PSP does. Now I only played the Uncharted demo and Ratchet and Clank Future and I must say I was impressed. Not blown away since I've been seeing some pretty nice visuals for over a year now with the 360 but something just looks and feels different when playing a PS3 game. I won't say it's better graphics but I will say it is different and I like it (I guess it's the old Sony fanboy inside me still lingering around). So with that I'm gonna give the PS3 more time and look forward to playing the great games it has lined up like Metal Gear Solid 4 and Killzone 2.

So EVERYONE knows by now that the Nintendo Wii has surprised the gaming industry. What once was thought to be another kid friendly failure from Nintendo has turned into this gen's current leader in sales and has managed to capture the imagination of gamers and (more importantly) non gamers alike.

Well upon hearing the news about Nintendo's reasonably low tech and low priced console back in '06 I easily made up my mind,

I did not want any part of it.

But as time went on and the buzz became stronger and stronger I found myself tempted by Nintendo's song. So last Friday after months of coming up short on finding a Wii in my area and all hope was gone I drove past my local game store(A really small mom and pop store tucked away on the main strip of our local shopping community) to see a HUGE sign signaling they were in stock

"NOW"!

"The Wii! In stock"!? I thought.

This was it!

I promptly pulled over and purchased my very own Wii and I must say it's pretty cool.

It may not be this all in one home console like 360 or the PS3, or have this amazing online community like them either, but there's just something alluring about the tiny white console. Half the fun for me was hooking it up and experiencing everything it can do.

Super Paper Mario looks great and is actualy the first Mario game I've enjoyed since Super Mario World on Super NES (Which by the way I can download via the virtual console). Wii Sports is fun although a bit lacking after about 20 minutes but that's only because the game is meant to be used as a learning device for the Wii. One of my favorite features is the virtual console. Having access to TurboGrafx-16 games is wonderful since that was one of my favorite consoles growing up as a kid. The channels system is sleek and very easy to navigate. All in all the Wii is a great console.

11-10-08 UPDATE!

Well it's been over a year since I got the Wii and while it was a blast the first few weeks showing it off to my friends and playing Wii Sports it quickly became a novelty. I found very few titles worth playing and the one or two I did I hardly played.