The first game this gen that I ever bought was GTA IV. Really it was this game, or Final Fantasy XIII that I was waiting for to buy one of this gen’s consoles. I went a head and bought a PS3 a bit after this game came out and this game the same day thinking I really didn’t need anything else.

At the time I did not like it much. I thought it looked pretty decent, although I couldn’t get the settings right on a 1080i HDTV where it wasn’t jaggy as hell. No big deal. Then playing the game it became quite obvious that this wasn’t the GTA of the past.

First thing that probably popped out to most people was the driving mechanics. They were revamped a bit and felt much more difficult to get used to. At the time I hated it. I expected to jump right in and be able to drive like a beast.

Then we have the new wanted system where you have to “outrun” the cops instead of just going and standing in a alley for a few seconds. Besides that it seemed that the cops were much more of a nuisance in GTA IV than they had been before. This game was starting to be way too realistic.

Those two things alone I think put me off the game for quite a while. I didn’t really feel like I was having “fun” playing it. Never could you really just go off and just kill everyone around for 30 minutes and live through it. Then having cops pop up at the edge of the wanted circle it just got to a point where i was having little fun.

So…a few days with my new PS3 and this game I am somewhat disappointed and ready to throw this game into the composter. I go out and buy Fallout 3 and find it to be incredible. First impressions compared to GTA IV were off the charts. Nevermind that after 70 hours or so it became a glitchfest and chugging piece of crap. It was more free than GTA was it seemed and I didn’t have to spend 50% of my time running away from cops.

Fast forward about 2 years, nothing of interest available in the new game market for a couple months, and a 1080p HDTV this time. I decided to give GTA IV a try once more. This of course is after playing Red Dead Redemption several times already so I am much more familiar with the controls obviously. Easily picked it up and was good to go.

Something changed between when I first played GTA IV and now. A lot of the controls were actually closer to things that everything else this gen had incorporated. Things that are definitely different from the XBox and PS2 days.

This time I was in awe of the game. I didn’t think the game was bad the first time, but I wasn’t particularly impressed at all. After a couple years of playing everything from Bioshock to Just Cause 2 to Dead Space, I realized this game was a masterpiece.

I couldn’t believe I disliked this game before. Now I’m actually upset that I missed the prime when the multiplayer was jumping. The city in this game is by far the best in any game I have ever played. It may not have the best graphics of any city, but the “feeling” of the city is so perfect that I can’t honestly say there are many games I have played where I felt as immersed. Just take a cab ride and not skip it. The way everything on the streets look from the people to the lighting is outstanding.

Maybe this gen changed the way I look at games. Maybe the games like Fallout, Dragon Age, etc. gave me a new appreciation for how weak storytelling generally is. Maybe it just took getting used to the controls for this gen. Maybe it just took me to mature a little. I don’t know, but I have a new found respect for this game going back to it. It may be the only game that has ever changed my view so much with a replay years later. It is definitely not outdated either. It could come out today and still be a top game.

Originally I would ahve given this game probably an 8/10. Showing that I knew it was technically a good game, and well designed. Just wasn’t fun. Now? I’d probably say this is a 10/10 game. At worst a 9.5/10 since I almost never consider any game a 10/10.

So…if you were wanting the next GTA: San Andreas and didn’t really give this game the chance it deserved the first time try it out again with a couple years experience of this gen. It really is an amazing game.

Coming up are some games that are the absolute vice for me. Thee huge, open world games make me forget about everything I want to do. The only real issue between Skyrim and Dark Souls is that they are coming out within a few weeks of each other. Something that will make a bit of a problem when I play games like this for months alone.

While there are a lot of other big name action games coming out such as Uncharted 3, Gears 3, Resistance 3, etc., but at the end of the day the best games coming seem to be some sort of Action RPG, or just plain RPGs. The only real choice for me, however is whether to give Skyrim a whirl on a console for the first time, or just plain go out and buy a new PC to run it better.

Dark Souls and Skyrim though are the two and only games I have on my wishlist at the moment. I pre-ordered Dark Souls from Amazon about 2 months ago when they had the free upgrade to the Collector’s Edition ($89.99) which comes with a fancy box, game guide, soundtrack, and some other nerd stuff like art books.

Skyrim I am still deciding what version I want, and may wait until after release since I will be playing Dark Souls anyways. The other issue with Bethesda games is that after playing Fallout: New Vegas I have very little trust in their ability to put out a finely tuned product. Certainly the early pre-patch data will be engulfed in glitches so waiting a month or so may be the way to go. It has a new engine this time though so we may be getting something that is just much better and made for the current generation rather than a rehash like the Fallout games were from the Oblivion engine.

Dark Souls

What can I say about Demon’s Souls at this point that hasn’t been said? It was by far the biggest, and frankly best surprise for this gen in gaming in my opinion. To this point I may say it is my favorite game this generation still. Being a unique experience in the current high graphics, easy to play, casual gamer era, it was a breath of fresh air. Dark Souls is promised to be even more difficult than Demon’s Souls, although it is not considered a “sequel”. More of a “spiritual Successor” as Demon’s Souls was to the King’s Field series. Regardless it is pretty much a sequel if you were a fan in the gameply and style areas.

The world is supposed to be more open than Demon’s Souls with no internal hub and areas separated. If you can see mountains int he distance you can walk to them according to the developers. You will be saving at fires that you will be able to place. The online factor I am not quite sure of the overall specifics although we have seen several players chilling around a fire beacon.

Gameplay looks very similar to Demon’s Souls and the movements are very close from the gameply I have seen, and you can see in the video below. Definite changes of course, but I say that Demon’s Souls was so good that you didn’t have to do a lot anyways except clean it up a little. Some of the animations, targeting, etc.

Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

I didn’t buy ES IV: Oblivion until almost a year after it was released on PC. I did buy it on the PC, however so I was able to enjoy the array of amazing player mods that were released unlike our console brothers who only played there. Word is that the consoles will allow mods for Skyrim this time! Something that was a huge factor in whether I would buy it for the PC, or PS3/360. Now I am in a bit of a dilemma, although the PC version will force me to buy a new PC so it may not be that much of a dilemma .

The video below shows a vast world. We have seen a fight with a giant dragon in video clips where it is said this is actual combat, although I believe that it is more of a cutscene with a finishing animation than actually fighting for what we keep being shown. Still it looks awesome and different and more intense than any Oblivion battle ever was.

They have changed all the leveling and character building once again. Getting rid of things like acrobatics and the other annoying and useless skill s that we would upgrade by leaving our man swimming in a pond for 2 hours just to get their speed and stamina up. That is of course you didn’t have a PC version where you could just hit “`” and cheat in the console. Hopefully this game doesn’t make it as tedious and boring to improve skills and not make us want to cheat every time we play.

Nothing more fun than these games IMO. Huge open worlds, with tons of random quests out and about. Weapon searches, and best of all player mods. These are the kind of games that save you money. You don’t need anything else for months after buying these enormous games. About the only games I will be buying after this comes out are the bathroom variety for my iPod Touch, or your ipod nano 8g.

Killzone Cover Art U.S.

Not sure why I started with bad TV shows rather than video games. TV has so little to watch in recent years with all the reality bits that I rarely watch more than a few shows a year. Video games on the other hand…I have been a gamer for nearly 20 years. Owning most consoles of any note. Except for handhelds of course. Those are for kids and ferners. Closest to a handheld I am going to get is my phone.

As for Killzone (the very first one), and really you can probably make some of these claims for all 3 of them, the game was a huge piece of mediocrity. Like all 3 of them, the first was marketed excessively. Everyone knew about it, and expected something totally new and amazing. In fact, it may be the first game that the PS2 produced that was claimed to be the true “Halo Killer” of the time. Something that clearly it was not, and in hindsight I don’t even think it was a good game.

When I bought this I think I was at the store looking to buy ANY game, like I often do when I am bored. While I tend to drop by the greatest hits, or the old classics bins on these days, if I won some extra cash playing poker the night before I may just plop down for a full priced game I hadn’t look into much. Full priced games I almost always know what I want and know if they are going to be good before I buy them. If I buy a game on release day, which I do for most I really want, I already know it is going to be worth it. RARELY have I been duped. Once in a great while I will buy a new full priced game at random when nothing at all is out of serious interest. This of course is usually based on a random idiot salesperson’s opinion on what is a good game. Typically that doesn’t actually include them having played it at all, but just what they “heard”. Killzone this angsty teen “heard” that it was Playstation’s answer to Halo from the XBox. Yeah…I don’t think so.

It’s not like I am even a big fan of Halo. I actually think it was one of the games that helped the downfall of actual challenging and fun shooters. Making every online player believe that the easier it is the better it is. Replacing skill with a high quantity of morons that think they actually have skill. Well..enough of that rant, just old gamer syndrome coming out. Can’t wait for Dark Souls.

So this game called Killzone. It was a futuristic shooter where you run in a group called the I.S.A. against these mutated humans called Helghast. The story is pretty forgettable as you can now see as I don’t care to go into it. More or less the game was supposed to look pretty and have a lot of awesome first-person shooter gameplay.

Let’s just say that this game got ranked by people that don’t know how to rate video games and should find another career like selling Wholesale Insurance. Some were harsh on it, but there were quite a few good reviews back then saying it was pretty, which if you are a serious gamer, you know is one of the least important factors in how good a game is. (See: Final Fantasy XIII). Metacritic has settled in the 60s/100 somewhere I believe so in the long run the game got it’s fair due as to how mediocre it really was.

The game was just plain mediocre. The online was even more mediocre. With the amount of hype the game had, and the next 2 in the series have had in the marketing department, everyone just expected much more. These games look good, but they are just plain boring as all hell. In Killzone you fight I swear maybe 2-3 different enemies the entire campaign. The dialogue is pathetic, and the stereotypical characters are even worse.

The funny thing is that even with how boring this game was, when Killzone 2 was released people were just as excited for it as they were the first. I didn’t even bother buying it, although I did download the demo on the PS3 when it was released. It was once again quite pretty. Had some OK gameplay, but it certainly didn’t sell me on the idea of buying it. IT was a game that I would wait on after being burned by the hype of Killzone 1. In the end I never heard anything about it that made me want to buy it, and when KZ3 came along I didn’t even notice it.

Overall, this is a series of extreme hype, and no payoff. Doing nothing special, or anything great that makes it stand above any of the other generic shooters out there other than sound and graphics. If a game has nothing going for it in the fun department, and relies only on looks and sound it should be considered a waste of money, and that is what I considered Killzone 2 hours after I had purchased it.

If you have owned a Playstation 3 for more than a couple years you remember the great ApocalyPS3 of 2010. During that time of the Playstation Network getting hacked we really didn’t have a whole lot to worry about other than some lasting inconveniences. We couldn’t upload our trophies, and we couldn’t get online. To this day I can’t get Platinukm on Bioshock 2 because of this day and a trophy that is impossible to get because of ApocalyPS3.

ApocalyPS3 pales in comparison to the Great CollaPS3 of 2011 that we are enduring now. It has been almost two weeks now since we have been able to access the PSN and play games online, or get into the Playstation Store. So if anyone needed to delete any game data and redownload a DLC, or even a purchased game, they are out of luck for quite a significant amount of time.

Those aren’t really serious concerns over the long-term, however. Besides not having access, the hackers have reportedly stolen a lot of customer information from the PSN. According to Sony, they have not taken out credit card info (that they are aware of), but they have taken personal information such as names, addresses, and our PSN login info. They have no reports of identity theft, or credit card fraud yet so it appears we might be safe there. Of course this is why they think it hasn’t been stolen it seems to me. They claim they have all that data encrypted, and even if it were stolen they don’t have our security PINs, nor our expiration dates.

Suffice to say, that info about your PSN login info could be a concern for you. If you use the same password as you use there for things such as your e-mail you are going to want to go a head and CHANGE it just in case. You don’t want them knowing that you use post workout supplements now do you?

Sony says that the PSN should be up “within the week”, and they will be giving us some free stuff as compensation. The free stuff doesn’t seem to be sufficient it seems for most people that care about this. According to CNET this is what they promise (you can also read angry comments from PSN users):

The company today explained how it would try to make it up to customers. Sony will provide free identity theft protection service and “will consider” helping customers who have to be issued new credit cards. Sony will also be offering free selected downloads, as well as 30 days of free PlayStation Plus service. Music Unlimited subscribers will also get free service for 30 days.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20058731-260.html#ixzz1LAKir1LY

EDIT: This review is for Dead Space 2-Limited Edition for the Playstation 3. The Limited Edition is PS3 exclusive and is the first shipment of the game for the PS3. It includes a free game, Dead Space: Extraction. Extraction was a rails shooter made for the Wii originally, and despite being an on-rails shooter it is very good. It works with the Playstation Move, but if you do not have Move you can use your Sixaxis controller to play.

I almost went out and bought Little Big Planet 2, but realized that Dead Space 2 was coming out a few days later and I think I made the right call by waiting. Obviously the two games couldn’t be further a part in genres, but I can like more than one thing right? I decided to wait for LBP2 to fix itself up a little first and get it later when it had a bunch more stuff available. So…I went with another of my favorite early games in this gen of consoles, Dead Space.

One of the things I loved about the first Dead Space was that it was pretty technically sound. Sure it had some money glitches here and there, but overall it was very well made. In fact I would say that it is literally the first game I bought for the PS3 that didn’t have a patch to download the day I got it. Dead Space 2 is just as tight and runs like a champ.

Now, if you played Dead Space you have a good idea what to expect. You are in space fighting Necromorphs created by The Marker as our hero Isaac Clark, and you basically have to find your way to safety. Isaac Clark returns in Dead Space 2 as our hero 3 years after the events of Dead Space 1. Unlike Dead Space 1, where you did all kinds of backtracking and fetch quests, I believe that Dead Space 2 feels much better like you are always going forward.

Dead Space 2 is located on the Saturn moon of Titan at the station called Sprawl. You are no longer just inside of a spacecraft with little to no variety in environments. Sprawl has a nice variety of areas including a creepy school a bit like F.E.A.R. 2 had, you spend time out in space of course, Unitoligist recruiting center, and another very great location that is a spoiler so I will not mention it. Overall, I felt that the environments were much more colorful, and fun to explore than Dead Space 1.

Graphically, the game improved slightly. Isaac looks a lot better than he did before. Nicole on the other hand looks like a completely different person. Some say much worse, but she has more features to her model than she did before even if she looks different. Character models have improved in DS2 for sure. Environments feel somewhat familiar, but as I said there is much more variety, and graphics have improved overall. Graphics are very good and quite satisfactory. Many things floating around in the air like blood, bubbles, and anything else looks good, but sometimes cartoony.

The gameplay has not changed a lot, but what it did improve was very well done. You really won’t notice it much and it will feel the same, but there are some changes that make the game more fun to play. There is no HUD once again like DS1. Weapons have the ammo display on it. Health and stasis levels on the back of your suit. Same awesome menu design.

One change you may not notice is the map is gone. Instead you hold down the R3 button rather than just clicking it to show the trail and you can have the line switch between objective, shop, bench, and save point. You won’t miss the map at all. It’s a nice new change I think.

Kinesis, first and foremost, has taken a much bigger role in Dead Space 2. You can certainly get by without using it as a weapon on the lower difficulties, but on the higher ones you will need to utilize it.

With the same upgrading system at benches to your equipment you will notice the edition of Kinesis Damage on your RIG. Unlike DS1 your Kinesis distance is maxed out already, but you can increase its damage as part of the RIG. This helps a lot when you decide you are ready to become a Kinesis master and clear rooms with one bullet like I found great joy in.

How would you do this? The Necromorph blades in this can be detached from dead Necros and shot back at other ones for severe damage. Additional spears, mop handles, and all kinds of other spear-like objects can be shot at them as well. This is a very important aspect to harder difficulties to conserve ammo.

Even a larger variety of weapons and RIGs are available in DS2. The list of standard weapons (Excluding any DLC available in pre-order, or Collector’s edition) include some old favorites like th e Force Gun, Ripper, Line Gun, Contact Beam, Flamethrower, and of course the master of them all the Plasma Cutter. Many of the weapons have “Special” abilities at the end of their upgrade path. The Plasma Cutter for instance adds a “Enemy on fire” attribute, although not as cool as it sounds. Contact Beam adds stasis to its alt-fire which is nice. Of course you probably know that the Contact Beam is just to swoop ammo to sell since it costs too much to use constantly.

New editions include some pretty cool weapons. The Seeker Rifle has an alt-fire zoom that allows you to zoom in, but it is not in a scope. This zoom gives you more damage from the weapon at the expense of vision. The Javelin Gun is basically a gun that does the same thing as using Kinesis to toss spears, but in gun form. Ammo is different than random crap laying around obviously so no “junk ammo” gun here. The alt-fire has a “shock” ability to nearby enemies and is pretty awesome. The special adds an explosion to the shock. The Detonater is a mine gun that is a very awesome gun and very powerful. So you have a pretty vast array of weapons and it may be tough to choose (I used the Plasma Cutter only all the way through Zealot mode my first time).

Suits have many more variations this time around. Some unlockable by beating the game, others in DLC packs, and of course those found in game with schematics. Most suits have additional properties that they didn’t have in DS1. One has the ability to get a 10% discount in shops, one has 10% damage increase for the flame thrower, another has 15% bonus to health packs, etc. The best IMO is the Advanced suit that gives you a 50% reduction in stasis recharge time (that’s right it recharges this time!)

Since I just mentioned it, Stasis is a pretty big deal in DS2. While you could get by in battle fairly easily in DS1 without using it much, in DS2 it becomes necessary to stay alive many times. The great thing though is that Stasis will recharge in DS2. Before you think this makes the game easy, I’m here to say that on harder levels you won’t care about this at all. It isn’t exactly fast either. I believe it takes at least a minute to recharge 1 slot. You can upgrade the module up to 4 slots in this.

Stasis may be the most important weapon in this game. Upgraded for number of shots (up to 4 per filled gauge), Recharge speed, and duration. Why is it so crucial this time around? For one thing enemies come in bigger groups than DS1. They also seem to move even faster, and there are some very pesky Necromorphs that move in on you so fast that Stasis my save you from being overwhelmed. It is also awesome for freezing a Necro and picking up a blade, or spear and shooting it right through them for an ammo free kill!

What you really want to know though is if it has scares right? We aren’t here to order strawberries now are we? Well..this is always a bit of a personal thing since those of us that have a lot of experience in survival horror/action games tend to be a bit desensitized. Others still feel the scares. Personally, this game gave me a handful of good jump scares. Similar to DS1. The sound is just as creepy and there are quite a few jump scare moments.

The creepiness of the game can be a bit lighter for Dead Space vets I’m sure, but it does a pretty good job of trying to get you now and then. Necros certainly jump on you closer than I remember in DS1, and they hide a little better in the darkness. There are some creepy stalker enemies that even hide behind crates and look out at you while they hide. Creepy.

Isaac has quite a few crazy ass hallucinations in this one brought on by the Marker I definitely won’t spoil these for you, but let’s just say that they are satisfactorily creepy in a Japanese ghost movie sort of way.

In my personal opinion this game is MORE intense than Dead Space 1. In DS1 you had the game broken into chapters and you had these “breaks” in between when you got to the tram station. Then you saved and waited for the next chapter to load. In Dead Space 2, there are no loading screens unless you die. Each chapter runs smoothly into the next one with just a small onscreen text announcing the next one. It makes the game much more immersive to me, and it also makes it so you really don’t feel like you have a really safe place other than certain areas like where there is a save point, shop, and benches.

The game feels much more fast-paced as well. Enemies feel faster in some instances. They come more often and in larger groups. You are never just going back and forth other than a few instances so every area is relatively new to you as you progress. It makes feeling safe a little bit more difficult as you aren’t familiar with a room.

Let’s talk difficulty. As a Dead Space vet I knew I was going to take on the highest difficulty for the first round. In this case it is called Zealot. Below that are Survivor, Normal, and Casual. The differences in the level difficulties are health and ammo drops from enemies, the damage they deal, and the damage it takes to kill them. An additional Hardcore level is unlocked after completing the game once (more on that later)

I started the game on Zealot. The real deal here is that Zealot is the hardest difficulty in the game for everything except what I will describe when I discuss hardcore. It is more difficult than hardcore even for the enemies. This is where you earn your badge of awesome Dead Space 2 player more or less I believe, although hardcore has its own difficulty added.

I did my own personal “One Gun” run on Zealot and I can confirm that you can beat this game with nothing but the Plasma Cutter. Unfortunately there is no Trophy/Achievement for “One Gun” this time around, but I felt the need to play it this way the first time because that was how I played DS1 the first time. Of course I started on Normal for DS1 so this was a significant upgrade in challenge. Zealot is a legit challenge in my opinion, and I would suggest you play this difficulty the first time with the Plasma Cutter to get the full impact out of the game. You just can’t get this challenge fully if you start on an easier level and then play Zealot. You know where everything is. It also really helps you get proficient using Kinesis A LOT and it saves you a ton of Nodes for upgrading.

Now onto Hardcore. The difficulty that is a shout out to old school survival horror players. You see Hardcore uses the settings for enemies from the Surivor difficulty, and it combines the Zealot level ammo drop rates. Enemies are certainly easier to defeat if you played Zealot already. It feels quite a bit easier for you. So what’s the catch? Oh ho! YOU CAN ONLY SAVE 3 TIMES THROUGH THE ENTIRE GAME! That’s right. Not a typo. You can make 3 saves for the entire 15 chapters of Dead Space 2. There are NO CHECKPOINTS IF YOU DIE. You go back to your last save. So if you try not to save until Chapter 6 and die. Guess what? New Game. This is not for the faint of heart, but dammit friends they gave us a real challenge this time and I applaud them heartily for it.

Quick bit about the story since I guess I skipped over it all. Isaac wakes up 3 years after the last game in a straight jacket. He and anyone that has been exposed to the Marker are being experimented on and questioned. Trying to find out secrets. Of course all hell breaks loose and off we go to find the way out. Your enemies here are Unitoligists, EarthGOV, and the Necros. There is a great bit of info on Unitology in this game and you actually visit a recruiting center and church in the game. Story I would say is good, but DS1 was better. Not disappointing, but just not as new.

Couple other tidbits about the game that are more convenience things than anything else. On the main single player menu there is a nice video called “Previously on Dead Space” that is a good watch before you start the game. Also, on the main menu is a “New Game+” listing that unlocks after beating the game once. Makes sure to move your right stick around on the menus to see some hidden messages. Another convenience is that you have an in game trophy list on the start menu while you play. It keeps track of even the ones that require several instances for a very easy way to track your trophies (ie. 0/2500 limbs dismembered).

Of course I must mention briefly that the Playstation 3 Limited Edition contains the free game, Dead Space: Extraction originally made for the Nintendo Wii. This is only available for a limited time as it is in the first shipment although it can be purchased in the PS Store I believe. It is compatible with Move and the Dual Shock 3 controllers. It also has its own set of trophies available separate from the main game. A good bonus.

Before my conclusion something very important must be addressed for people thinking of waiting to buy a used version, or renting the game. Dead Space 2 comes with a card that has an online access code in the box. This code is only good for one username (others on your console can use it). When you first go online the game asks for this code, and it is required for you to play the online multiplayer. Yup…you buy this used and you are screwed. You ahve to BUY an online access code from EA for $10! They do offer a 2 day free-trial for you if you rent, but still it pretty much forces a purchase if you want to play online a lot. So…keep this in mind when going out and buying this game. Good news is that there are NO ONLINE TROPHIES for this game so you can get the Platinum simply through the single player game.

Bottom Line: I think Dead Space 2 is a better game than Dead Space 1. It is more immersive. More intense. It is more diverse. While I think the story of DS1 is likely better, and the original DS experience certainly can never be the same, they did an amazing job at making this a unique experience. The addition of harder enemies, new weapons, use of the module skills in gameplay, and the insane Hardcore difficulty requirements makes it better for me. This is one hell of a game.

FINAL SCORE for single player game ONLY: 9/10 MUST BUY

For anyone interested, Dead Space: Aftermath is available on Youtube in full right now so get it while it is still up. Watch it over there in HD. This is a prequel to Dead Space 2 and adds a bit to the story. Fair warning that it is pretty cheesy, and not the best movie ever, but worth a watch for fans.

DEAD SPACE 2 TRAILER: