Sony's been hiding the fact that they're launching FFXIV exclusively next year. It looks like it will be a continuation of what was started by FFXI online. I don't know what to think about this because I loved/hated XI. I played it for 2 years straight and it killed every other social acticvity I had and when I quit I did cold turkey and still have withdraw from time to time. Saying that I both WANT and NEED and LOVE and HATE this game! If I buy it I will hate myself, but I was it so bad.

A friend of my brother is trying to make some quick cash selling his 360. Its the normal Pro model, but he's added a 120 GB hard drive. He has 6 games including Halo 3 and Fable 2 and I've been wanting a copy of both of those. He also has 3 controlers with 3 headsets. My extra controlers are in bad shape from A LOT of use so I need some replacements and I need a new headset as well. Finally, he has a Xbox 360 Wireless Adapter! I offered to buy the whole lot from him for $300 and he agreed. I'll be picking it up today.

With the 360 the my neighbor is leaving at my house the total number of 360s I have is 3. Then there is one more 4 houses down the street at my parents that my brother and I just got recently. To any normal person this might all seem excessive. Thats because it is. Despite all of my video gaming prowess, I can still only play one system at a time. I'm thinking of this as a good price for all the games and accessories and the 360 can be my backup. I might just give it to my sister so she can play Rock Band and Guitar Hero on it. I'm kind of sick of all those plastic accessories at my house anyway.

I've got Killzone 2 for the PS3 and I have to say it is the best reason to turn on the system that I've discovered so far. I don't need to explain about the graphics or controls that I mentioned in my previous blog, but I finally got to play the multiplayer. Its great. There are a couple problems though. There is no matchmaking and the ranking system is WAY too generous. Since you get point by kills and not wins you rank up very fast. I'm getting around 50 exp per match. Another problem is with PSN and people who have a mic, its low quality and you just hear the game sounds being played back to you, and most people don't have a mic anyway. Still, the game itself is awesome. It obvious the developers took good use of the hardware, and they also did the best they could making up for PSNs problems. There are some nice features for friends and clans, but like all PSN features they're exclusive to this title. So far, I give the game a 10 out of ten despite flaws. I might review it if I ever get to finish the campaign and some more multiplayer experience.

I finally got around to turning on the PS3 again. I actually got on to look for an Infamous demo, but there either wasn't one or I missed it. Anyway, I realized that the last time I turned it on was to download the Killzone 2 demo and I got bored waiting for it to finish, so it just sat there. Since it was just waiting for me I did the quick install and got down to trying it out. Now, I had been impressed by the graphics in the videos and I wasn't sure if the game would hold up. In short it looks amazing! For the most part, everything reminds me of Gears of War except that the animations are 1000x better. The one complaint I have though, and this is for all shooters, when I look down I would like to be able to see my feet. All of these shooters star disembodied floating arms holding guns. The controls were a little weird at first but after a few minutes of acclimation I found it to be the most comfortable shooter controls ever mapped to the PS3 controller. The gameplay however, seems to just be the standard shooter affair. In the first part of the demo, I was supposed to blow up a bridge, but sadly I missed the instructions on how to do it because of something exploding next to me. I kept shooting the enemies out of the turrets only the have an infinite number of troops always replace them. Thankfully, it turns out the Helgast store their high explosives on their bridges with their infinite reinforcements, and the explosives are only triggered by bullets. Of course that is all just me being picky. I definitly do want this game and I think the multiplayer would be especially fun. Its looks like a great game.

I finally got around to trying out the PSN store on the PSP this weekend. The store on the PSP is rather empty, but I was really wanting something portable. I tried a couple demos and learned the other pain of the PSP store is that the downloads take a while and youcan't use the PSP for anything else while they're downloading (no download in background option).I decieded on Syphon Filter: Combat Ops for $10. It is a PSN exclusive PSP multiplayer only title. I played it a little online and it looks to be very in depth and from what I can tell the game is right up my alley.

There have been rumors of Sony doing a UMD less PSP for a while and I wasn't sure what to think of it. Now, I'm fairly excited. If Sony can expand the downloadable options in their PSP store the download only idea seems very doable. The downloads are easy (as long as you're old enough to have a credit/debit card) and they run super smooth compared to UMD based games. I'd also guess they would use less batteries. If Sony does announce the PSP GO!, or whaterever they call it, and its at a good price, I'll be up for it. I might not get it right away though because there is nothing wrong with my current PSP at the moment.

NeonNinja gave me the idea for this blog. You can see his original post here.

So, I've had a 360 for a while. If I remember correctly, I got it shortly after I got married in 2006. That was almost a year after it launched. I didn't want to buy one, but since the only contribution I made to towards the purchase was my original Xbox and my brother paid the rest of the $399 price, I couldn't refuse. Since then I've played a lot of games on the system. The following is a list of the 10 360 games I have the fondest memories of.

10. Army of Two- Reviewers found reasons to complain, but Army of Two does exactly what it set out to do. It is a top notch co-op experience, and is very fun to play local with a friend. I still get a little excited just thinking about some of the intense sequences in the game. The last boss was also very tough and very fun.

9. Lips- This game may or may not be as good as its PS3 counterpart Singstar, but it hits me just right. The no fail aspect makes it so anyone can play, even my two year old. Also, the non-competitive nature makes it fun to play with my wife. The song selection is good too.

8. Castle Crashers- This XBLA title is one more example of my love of co-op. Despite being a download there has been a lot of hours put into this quirky beat-em-up.

7. Resident Evil 5- The high production values on this game and the high replay value make this a title that easily wins me over. Oh yeah, its co-op too.

6. Braid- The greatest game on XBLA! Its amazing! Braid is perfect in every single way. This puzzle/platformer shoudl not be missed (it can be downloaded now on Steam).

5. Blue Dragon- The most under appriciate RPG on the 360. The game did some really smart things with the visible enemies, Field Barrier, and the Encouter Circle. The checkpoints before bosses are a great idea too. If only other RPGs could learn from what this game did right. We'd all be better for it.

4. Halo 3- You knew it would be on here. Probably the most hyped game ever, and yet it still manages to live up to it in my mind. The multiplayer is exceptional, and, in case you've forgotten, the campaign is co-op.

3. Mass Effect- Mass Effect is a revelation of how great storytelling in a Video Game can be. The game is fun to play, but stands out further because no other title has ever matched its narritive. Hopefully Mass Effect 2 can live up to its predicessor.

2. Lost Planet- The quirky japanese campaign on this game reminds me of old school titles like Mega Man other Capcom clas.ics. Its fun and incredibly hard on the higher difficulties. It also has one of the most enjoyable online experiences I've ever played.

1. Shadowrun- If you've read any of my most recent Blogs you should have expected this. Shadowrun is a multiplayer only game, but it is the most in depth and unique competitive shooter ever made. I've spent an unknown, but extremely large, amount of time on this title and I'm no where near done with it.

Some games that just missed the top 10, in no peticular order: Dynasty Warriors: Gundam, Quantum of Solace, Earth Defense Force 2017, Pac Man Championship Edition, and Catan.

Writting this list has made me realise a few things. Mainly that I really like co-op. Another thing though is that I seem to like 3rd person shooters more than First Person. Finally, although a few of these games did score well with reviewers, there are many that didn't. I like to think it shows that I'm an independant thinker who's not afraid to make his own decision about things. It could also just mean that I'm weird.

You would think that hooking up 2 Xbox 360s to LIVE (WAN) would be as easy as plugging eternet cables into the system and the router. It turns out its not. Last night, a neighbor/friend of mine who plays 360 brought his system over. We were going to try them out playing a couple games online, but didn't get the opportunity. It could be because of the network set up I have, but getting them going was a pian. It doesn't help that I have the cheapest router I could find at WalMart, but to add to those problems I also have a cheap 4 port switch in the basement (which is where everything but one computer is set up). I took me four hours of searching the inernet and trying different solutions to finally find a way to make it work. Its up and going now and I tested doing simultanteous voice chat over LIVE and that worked. I haven't tried gaming though. The objective is to have all the systems in my house all playing Shadowrun over LIVE. I don't know if it will work over my Comcast internet or not, but I think it will.

In another note, if you want to join me in some Shadowrunning you can pick up the game at New Egg for $10.

XBOX 360 VERSION

WINDOWS VISTA VERSION

You'll need Xbox Live Gold (and a 360) to get much use out of that version. The Vista Shadowrun just needs a free silver account. Also, it has been cracked for XP, but it works just fine out of the box on Windows 7 Beta/RC, if you're using that.

I've outright given up on Xbox 360 achievements for now. Though neither I nor ThaSod have officially past the 50k finish line, we've both beat by Soulreavercross (who I was ahead of for a long time). As much as I love achievements, I want to play games I enjoy, like Shadowrun (which has incredibly difficult achievements). When I'm trying too hard for points I don't have time to enjoy gaming. I don't mind earning them still, but I've got more imporatant things to do than worry about my score.

Right now, in addition to Shadowrun, I'm playing Star Ocean the Second Departure on PSP (no achievements). I've beat this game many times on the playstation and it is one of my all time favorite RPGs. The PSP remake takes out some of the original difficulty by giving every character a three hit attack combo. That doesn't ruin the game, and many people will probably prefer it, no stoping to level grind. However, considering I played it on the "impossible" difficulty on PS1 and was only not able to beat the secret dungeon because my game kept freezing, this version seems like a real cakewalk. I'll beat it on the default difficulty probably today or tomorrow and hopefully that will unlock the harder modes. Hopefully then the game will continue to kick my a$$ like I'm used to. When it comes to remakes, developers should unlock those extra difficulties from the begining for returning fans of the original (or for punishment gluttons like myself).

I've downloaded and installed Windows 7 Release Candidate on my computer. While I had some trouble initially, I can say that it is clearly better than the Beta in many subtle ways. The only real issue I still have is that I don't see where all this Windows 7 hype is coming from. Yes there are some subtle improvements that I like. Some of them couldn't be brought over to vista, like the new taskbar, but some of them could, like the Media Center updates. While I'm sure eveyone knows this, Microsoft is only abondoning Vista in name. Windows 7 is a paid Vista upgrade. Despite the initial press Vista is not a pretier XP (and that might be where a lot of people had a problem). Its still has some nice improvements on Vista, but it is not the world difference that Vista had on XP.

Ask EA. They know.

Monopoly on the 360 is a crime against the original board game. The game moves so slow and tedious tedious. From what I could tell there are no options to turn off the animations and speed up the game. Also you can only trade at the end of your turn. In real Monopoly you can trade at ANY time with ANY player, as long as you can keep straight who owns what when one player is roling the dice. Also when a trade offer is rejected there is no counter offer and no negotiation. The option are to accept or reject and if you want to even try trading again you have to watch the stupid Mr. Monopoly animations. Also, EA, did you know that monopoly is for up to eight players? I didn't think so. The people that handled the production of this game must have never seriously played monoploly in their lives. If they had they would have know what a pathetic and frustratingly stupid version they created. I HATE THIS GAME!

I'm so glad I only got it from gamefly and I didn't buy it, which I strongly considered doing.