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Generally speaking, there is nothing in my taste in music that would suggest that I would have any interest in DJ Hero. I have long enjoyed Eric Prydz's "Call on me" remix—although in that case it admittedly has more to do with the video! But all in all, I have very little interest in or knowledge of hip-hop, and only a passing awareness of dance and techno.

If I may be allowed a small digression here, I should say a bit about my taste in music. To a lot of people, my musical library, which is composed primarily of classical, opera, and jazz, would be considered 'snobbish'. I don't see it that way. To me, the crucial factor is of musical talent. Thus, I favour genres where the musician actually plays his or her music—the less studio remixing, autotune, or other artificiality involved, the better. Beyond that, I also like music that is technically impressive and interesting, which is why classical and jazz float to the top.

This is why, although new country is probably the musical genre I hate the most, two of the last five albums I bought were bluegrass—hardly a musical genre one would call 'snobbish', but one which showcases some of the most impressive, real musicianship in the world.

End digression. So, given my attitudes towards music, what on earth could have persuaded me to buy DJ Hero, and think I might enjoy it? In part, it was precisely because I knew so little about the music and about DJing as an art form, and was hoping that playing through this game would allow me both to widen my horizons and to gain an appreciation for DJing—something which up until now, I had considered to be nothing more than cutting and pasting sound samples on a workstation, and hardly a performance art.

That is not to say that I was going into this completely blind, though. I have listened to plenty of Fatboy Slim, Moby, and Eric Prydz before. And the second album I ever bought (on vinyl!) was He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. While we see enough of Will Smith nowadays, the chance to play through a DJ Jazzy Jeff setlist in DJ Hero somehow felt like an appropriate way to give him his due :-)

What really sealed my willingness to be open to this game, though, was the fact that my go-to "coding music" is in fact a 31-minute long live mix by Japanese DJs Denki Groove (the opening of which can be seen here). Having watched this, and listened to it often, was the only real evidence I had going in that live DJing was a real thing.

So, I was somewhat open to DJ Hero, and hoping that it would widen my horizons. That would not be enough to make me buy the game, though. What really pushed me over the edge was just seeing it—being played in the video game store. The controller is a nice piece of kit—significantly nicer than the very fisher-price Guitar Hero controller. The game looked fun (and it is fun), and that is as important as the music.

So, what do I think? This is best music game I've played since Guitar Hero III—and I sunk a lot of hours into that one. I'll be doing the same with this one, as well. It is fun, and it does help gain an appreciation for DJing, although I think it is necessary to do some outside research as well (since the game is more of a game than a realistic representation of what a DJ does). But the game helps inspire you to look into the real thing (I've spent a lot of time on the Korg and Roland websites in the last few days.) I am still not ready to put DJs on the same level as the instrumental musicians that I primarily listen to and admire. But I am less dismissive of their music, and do appreciate dance and hip-hop more now (for what they are), than I did before.

Katamari Damacy was one of those games that won me over from the opening title sequence. As it turns out, my son had the same experience with Katamari Forever, its sequel on the PS3: every time we start the game he goes nuts, pointing and shouting, and applauds when it ends. Consequently, we watch the opening sequence nearly every time :-) James also enjoys the "Royal Rainbow" effect, which is also accompanied by frantic pointing and squeals of "REGARDE!" <look>.

The game itself is primarily a compilation of levels from other Katamari sequels—which is not a bad thing, if only because I, like nearly everyone else, hasn't played any of these sequels since the original. The review on Giant Bomb does a good job of evaluating the title, so I won't say much more about it here, other than to say that I agree with that assessment.

I will just underline what an incredible value this game turned out to be. I bought it for Emilie, but I was really impressed with what a put-together title it was. There are a ton of levels, and multiple game modes, plus cousin collection and present collection side-quests to do in the levels. It adds up to tens of hours of gameplay—more than most PS3 games—for a very low price. If you like Katamari Damacy, this game is an excellent buy.

If there is any genre in video games today that is overdone, it is the first-person shooter—and the most clichéd sub-genre of this most clichéd of genres is the bald space marine type of first-person shooter, in which realistic battles are fought in a sci-fi setting. Just as in the 80s space shoot-'em-ups cloning everything from Space Invaders to Galaga formed a glut of mediocrity in arcades, today, faced an increasing number of mediocre Halo clones, a first-person shooter has a lot of resistence to overcome if it is going to merit atteniton.

And yet, from early on Killzone 2 (in which the protagonist space marine, to be fair, sports a military haircut rather than being bald) held my interest in spite of my all-too-apparent reticience to play this kind of game, because the programmer in me just had to see what has long been acknowledged as a supreme technical achievement. In terms of raw graphical beauty, Killzone 2 currently sits atop the PS3, and is without reservation the best first-person shooter I have played.

That's not to say that it has won me over to the genre, though. And not because I don't like war games on principal: Metal Gear Solid 4 in fact is my favourite video game of all time. But that game tackles the moral questions surrounding war in a thought-prevoking way, even while putting together an awesome action tale. Killzone 2 has no such pretensions—but it compensates through faster gameplay and more intense action. In "video-gameyness", that probably counts for more for most people than a thought-provoking plot, though, so my preferences may be in the minority.

This really comes to the fore in online play, where teams of 16 players confront each other in a variety of missions. These battles are a lot of fun—and definitely a game, not a serious war story like the single-player campaign (you respawn after eight seconds, after all). In online play, it is the scoreboard that matters, not who prevails in the science fiction saga of the invasion of planet Helghan. Both the single-player and especially the online modes have a ton of replay value as well, so Killzone 2 provides a huge value for entertainment: I definitely prefer it to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and since owning one realistic first-person soldiering game is enough for me, it is Killzone 2 that I would recommend.

All in all, then, I would not hesitate to recommend this game as a core element of anyone's PS3 library, especially for those who are more predisposed to first-person shooters and war games than I am personally.

Thanks to excellent coverage by podcasts and video game sites, I've been able to track closely all the goings on at E3 2009 last week. As an owner of a Wii, DS, and PS3, the announcements at this show about what games were upcoming were very interesting to me, as I dream about what I might be playing in a year's time. (And Microsoft's announcements were interesting too, inasmuch as they allow me to weigh what I'm going to be missing out on in a year's time!)

All of this is just one man's impressions; for more complete coverage outlets like 1up, Giant Bomb, and the excellent video podcast Co-Op are the places to go. But I thought I could organise my thoughts here by sharing what games E3 has led me to put on my "definitely going to buy" list, my "definitely now interested" list, and my more disappointed "questioning" list.

Definitely Looking Forward To

The biggest surprise for me was that there is a Wii game I am definitely intending to buy this year, happily proving my Wii's Last Stand? concerns to be ill-founded. The New Super Mario Brothers Wii game looks fantastic—it should be a blast to play with my wife and friends. Prior to E3 I had no expectations for any new Wii games, now this one is looking like a sure thing, and two more feature below on my "excited" list.

On the PS3 side, Uncharted 2 is looking better and better, and Uncharted was one of my favourite games on the PS3 already (I've played through it twice, which is saying something). The sequel looks to have a lot going for it, I really liked the trailer, and so I am sure this will be one of my surest purchases when it comes out.

Also on the PS3, Final Fantasy XIII—which was always an automatic day-and-date buy for me—finally has a date to go with it (early 2010), something I'm very happy about. The E3 trailers also raised my hopes that the story will not disappoint, and the English voice acting should be up to Squeenix standards as well.

Definitely Excited About

These are the games that now have my interest after this E3, but I'm still unsure whether I personally will buy them when they come out, wait until they can be had for cheaper, or simply pass on. But I am now paying attention.

Two more Wii titles, contrary to expectations, are on this list: Super Mario Galaxy 2's trailer looked excellent. I enjoyed the first game a lot, but at the same time I have never replayed it, nor did I go for 100% of the stars, even though I still could. So I wonder if I really ought to get this game or not. There's no justification for it but for some reason PS3 Trophies make me much more eager to play long single-player games on that system, rather than 'lose time' on the Wii (but that's my problem, not this game's).

The new Metroid game is also something I'm very happy to see announced—although not quite so happy as these guys! But I won't know whether I personally want to play the game until I hear a lot more about it. I'll be paying careful attention, though.

Final Fantasy XIV was the best surprise announcement of the show for me. I've never seriously gotten into a MMO before, but I may well give this one a shot, though like with Metroid I'll need to know a lot more about how the game turns out before I can say for sure.

Disappointments

Heavy Rain, which I have been getting hyped for, did not look as good at E3 as I had expected it to. Not only that, but the Alan Wake gameplay demonstration looked a lot better than I expected that game to. I'm certainly not writing this game off yet, but I had expected it to be a day-and-date purchase, and now I'm definitely going to wait to read some reviews of what the game actually is like to play before I decide whether it's for me.

Honourable Mention

Scribblenauts, of which an astonishing impromptu demonstration can be found in this episode of Co-Op, is pretty amazing, although I don't know enough about how it works as a game to know whether it's worth getting or not:

Dishonourable Mention

Activision suing to prevent the release of Brutal Legend is really low. EA's lawyer put it best saying it was "like a husband abandoning his family and then suing after his wife meets a better looking guy". I may pass on Modern Warfare 2 because of this (I was on the fence for that game anyway), and it certainly makes me more likely to buy an EA-published Brutal Legend. The surrounding context of the story is probably too inside baseball for most people to care much, but it is petty and mean enough that it is going to have an influence on who I buy games from.

All in all though, I'm excited about the future: this show has got me interested in a lot more upcoming games than I thought I would be paying attention to—the year ahead is looking very promising indeed.

The iPhone—and its no-monthly-fee cousin, the iPod Touch, which is what I have—have been the surprise newcomers on the mobile gaming scene. While Java cell phone games have long been a lucrative and succesful market in their niche, they have still never been seen to compete in the same league as the "real" handheld consoles: the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP.

And yet, contrary to the expectations of many in the gaming press, the games situation on the iPhone is garnering a lot of attention. For the most part, though, the consensus is that the most interesting games are simple things like puzzle games (the free version of Toppler is worth checking out for a typical example of the kind of cute creativity I'm talking about), while the more ostensibly "impressive" looking games, like Super Monkey Ball, Assassin's Creed, or Metal Gear*, may look good in screen shots, but do not hold up as actual video games, when played on a machine like the iPhone that does not come with a user interface that is well adapted to serious gaming.

Rolando aims to bridge this gap, and bring iPhone gamers the best of both worlds. It is a simple game to play, using the iPhone's tilt sensor as the main control mechanic, you simply tilt the screen left and right to roll your "rolandos" through the levels. You can individually select which rolando you want to move my touching it, and flick your finger anywhere on the screen to make them jump. It controls intuitively, and you can jump out of the game at any time, it will automatically pause and save your state, so you can resume later (an indispensable feature in a mobile game).

Against this simple backdrop, however, Rolando brings an amazingly complete game package: tons of levels, which gradually introduce numerous variations and special elements (like enemies, bombs, fans, etc.) Each level has medals that can be earned for completing specific challenges: a time challenge, a survival challenge (winning without losing any rolandos), and a medal for getting all of the gemstones scattered throughout the level. And if that were not enough, there is also an achievement system in place for other rewards.

It is all those elements that really set Rolando apart as a more "complete" and "serious" video game than most on the platform. It's almost too much: I think the iPhone is better suited to single-screen puzzle games than the kind of world-based platformer Rolando is, but the simple fun of the tilt mechanic and the fact that you can pause the game at any time make Rolando a success. It's ironic in a way: I would never have bought Rolando if it weren't such a feature-complete package, because that is what convinced me that I was getting a good value. Whereas even though I think the iPhone is better suited to single-screen puzzle games, I haven't bought any of those since I don't see such games as 'worth' paying money for.

At any rate, Rolando is such a huge game that I have a long way to go before I finish it, so it will be a long while before I will feel the need to purchase another game for my iPod touch!

*Actually, I do happen to enjoy Metal Gear Touch, but that is more because I am such a fan of MGS4 than because the game itself is that good on its own merit.

(The title is a deliberate play on that of my first article on SFIV: Street Fighter IV Impressions.)

Last night I went over to my player profile page in Street Fighter IV, to see how my stats were progressing, and noticed for the first time the "play time" stat right at the top. Not usually an interesting statistic, but this time it really caught my eye: I have played 47 hours of Street Fighter IV already! It sounds stupid to say so, but I hadn't realised I was enjoying this game so much!

That said, it is still a hard game, but the challenge is part of what makes it fun. I wrote in my first article that in the first thirty matches I played online, I had only a single victory (a .033 win percentage). I'm happy to report now that I have improved to a mighty .180 win percentage, which means that in any given match I have about a one in five chance of emerging victorious. But, a lot more of my losses are coming down to the wire as well, which means that I could break out to a new plateau any time now (or so I am telling myself!).

Winning online, then, remains hard, but is achieveable, and, at my current rate, I can usually hope for at least two or three online wins per play session, and with each coming with such effort it is a real moment of triumph when I do win. My current goal is to work up to 100 total wins (which will earn a gold trophy on my PSN account), so even progressing at a snail's pace like this I feel like I am building towards that goal.

What really amazes me, though, about the 47 hour figure, is that in order to improve my chances of winning I am currently limiting myself to playing one character (Ryu), hoping to master him first before diluting my abilities among multiple characters. This means that I still feel like I haven't even scratched the surface of the game, since eventually I want to be proficient in at least three characters of different styles. It makes me wonder what my total play time will end up as. 150 hours? That sounds insane, but I might be headed that way. I don't think I've sunk this much time into any one game since Guitar Hero III. So, even with the inflated European prices of PS3 games, in terms of the value I'm getting out of this game, this was entertainment money well spent :-)

To even begin to understand how I feel about Street Fighter IV, you have to have lived through the phenomenon that was Street Fighter II. That game is an institution, and at its height I sunk hours into playing this game, on the arcade machine at our local convenience store and at friends' houses who had Super Nintendos. It was the golden age of fighting games, with Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat reigning supreme as the absolute coolest video games in existence at the time.

Nowadays, the fighting game genre has faded from popularity, eclipsed by 3D first-person shooters like Halo and Half Life. In many ways the genre has grown stale, with both 2D and 3D fighters seeming to continually tread the same territory. I passed on Virtua Fighter V, because I felt like it wasn't a big enough evolution from the fourth edition—and it seems to me that a realistic next-generation fighting game should be a lot more realistic than what we get in Virtua Fighter and Soul Calibur.

Enter Street Fighter IV. This game is clearly aimed at fans like me who have nostalgia for Street Fighter II, and is an invitation to them to come back to the genre. This game is beautiful; characters and backgrounds are rendered in 3D at high-definition resolution, with an ink-brushed art direction that fits perfectly with the series, which has always had a cartoony look. At the same time, the fighting still happens on the traditional 2D plane. This means that it plays like Street Figher II—and in fact the special moves that still remain in our muscle memory from all those years ago still apply.

And yet, it is a hard game to play. Two people fighting sounds simple, but the amount of depth there is to this game is incredible. Each character has an arsenal of moves at his disposal, and the ways that they interact with each other makes each game into a sort of high-speed chess match. Learning to really play this game (e.g., knowing how your Blanka should approach an aerial character like Chun-Li as opposed to a grappler like Zangief) will take at least 40 hours.

I know that there is this much depth to the game because of its best feature: online play. In arcade mode, just as if you were on a real arcade machine, you can start playing single player, and when the game finds an online match, it will be interrupted (just like when player 2 puts his quarter in) and you play multiplayer. It's in playing human opponents that I quickly came to realise how much there is to this game—in over thirty matches against different opponents I won precisely once. To rectify this situation I will need to practise and get better at this game, and I think that will keep me playing far longer than I would if it were only a single player experience (where there is always the temptation to just set the difficulty to "easy" and fool yourself into thinking that you're awesome at Street Fighter).

I was really looking forward to this game, and bought it on release day—my excitement enhanced by the crowd of nostalgic onlookers waiting to play the demonstration unit in the video game store. If anything I am now even more excited by this game, and am thankful to Capcom for providing us with this beautifully made tribute to a game that occupied a prized position in my childhood.

When I bought my Playstation 3, I bought four games, Metal Gear Solid 4, Grand Theft Auto 4, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. All of these games have something in common: they are realistic, movie-like adventures filled with guns, explosions, and plot twists and turns. They also have violence and language that make them inappropriate for children.

LittleBigPlanet is something completely different for the PS3. It's as cute and fun as it looks, but rather than try to drum up some florid prose, I'd rather just embed a video to give you the idea:

With that out of the way, there are three points that I would like to comment on here: the controls, the sound, and the appeal of LittleBigPlanet.

Whenever an exclusive-to-PS3 game comes out, message board trolls who are 360 fans will come out and try to lower the game's reputation by harping on some minor flaw until it seems as though it were a major flaw. With LittleBigPlanet, these internet troglodytes love to harp on the 'floaty' controls. All I can say is that if that is the best criticism you can come up with about LittleBigPlanet, there must not be much to complain about. The controls are great. (A precision-based level like the ninja training one would be no fun otherwise—whereas in fact it happens to be my favourite out of the single player game)

Another thing which one does not necessarily pick up on right away when reading about this game, is just how amazing the sound track is. LittleBigPlanet has one of the best video game soundtracks ever, and although that is not in itself a reason to buy the game, it does mean that the game is great on a level beyond what you can see at first glance.

Finally, I want to say a word about the impact LittleBigPlanet has had on our house. Up until now, my wife has never touched the Playstation 3 controller. Not only did LittleBigPlanet draw her in, though: now she won't put the thing down. From having LittleBigPlanet dreams to complaining that she can't get the music out of her head in the morning, she has LittleBigPlanet on the brain! Best of all for her as well as for me, we can play together, cooperatively at the same time. So early on, when she was still coming to grips with the controls, I was able to help her get through difficult levels she wouldn't have been able to do on her own (although I must admit that she now has more stickers collected than me!). It's a huge hit in our house. (For context, this is not the first time that a video game has captivated her to such an extent—but the only other time I ever saw it happen was with New Super Mario Bros., so it is in some very good company!)

It is no coincidence that when you beat the single-player game, the trophy you receive is a silver—not a gold—and that its name is "Just Beginning". Some of the user-created levels (hundreds of thousands of new levels that people create that you can play online for free) are amazing—some are as good if not better than the ones that come on the disk. Others are creative masterpieces that you can't believe someone actually made using LittleBigPlanet. At the end of the day, LittleBigPlanet is not just a game, it's a platform, and its possibilities are something we will be exploring for years to come.

My iPod is in mourning this week as most of the people behind many of my favourite podcasts (including what had been my current number one favourite, "1up Yours"), were laid off yesterday as Hearst Corporation bought the 1up Network from the long-struggling Ziff-Davis.

Along with the podcasts, also axed was the illustrious video game magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly—although I cannot mourn it in the same way that I mourn the podcasts' passing. This is not because I am without nostalgia—in fact I'm probably one of the few gamers still around who can say that I bought Electronic Gaming Monthly Issue #1 (with the Mega-Man 2 cover) from the newstand. But print media, especially an enthusiast magazine focused on a multi-media realm such as video gaming, has long had a bleak outlook. Like most gamers nowadays, I have long gotten my gaming information through the internet. In fact the only times I've bought EGM in recent years were when I was in an airport, and that isn't often enough to feel too bad about the magazine going away.

If print is the past, though, the things 1up was doing in terms of online media were clearly the future. I subscribed to four of their regular podcasts (Broken Pixels and Review Crew were a bit too irregular for me to include them with the rest): The 1up Show, 1up Yours, 1up FM, and Sports Anomaly. Of these, the video podcast the 1up Show was produced at a standard that exceeds most television programs, and it deservedly got top billing on the iTunes store. In terms of new media, that is a coveted achievement.

Even so, one can see from a business perspective, that the 1up Show took a lot of people to make, and that is very expensive. In the face of that, and the few advertisements they were able to include, I am willing to admit the possibility that they might not have been able to continue with the 1up Show. (Although I should think that they could have done a better job in including advertisers—enthusiast-oriented programs like this are great for advertisers, where the topical ads are more interesting and less annoying to viewers, so it seems to me that there was a lot of untapped opportunity there.) But the audio podcasts were cheap to produce and cheaper to host—and they also had almost no advertising. I definitely feel that their potential was untapped by Ziff Davis—but for Hearst to axe them means that they have let go of the best part of the property that they bought. These shows made their contributers celebrities among gamers—who then read the articles on the website chiefly because they were written by these personalities. With no personalities and no shows left, Hearst is missing out on a lot of potential value.

One of the other "enthusiast" (in a way) podcasts I listen to, is the Wall Street-oriented "The Real Story" from theStreet.com. It never ceases to amaze me how consistently they are able to get advertisers—often ones like BP that are not even directly related to the show topic. Revision3 and TWiT may have to work harder to find sponsors, but they have been able to do so. This is why, despite not being on the business side, I cannot believe that such widely circulated and respected gaming podcasts—who have an obvious bank of potential sponsors in the game publishers and console manufacturers—could not be more succesful from a business standpoint.

But I digress. Although I take some solace in the fact that (podcasts being so easy to produce), most of my other favourite enthusiast podcasts ("The Java Posse", "Geeks On", and "The HDTV Podcast") are run by enthusiasts as hobbies, with no thought of monetary return. From this, and from the encouraging Twitter posts by the fired 1up-ers (the first episode of "Rebel FM" is already up!), I am confident that more podcasts will still be coming.

But, with the personalities that make these shows what they are being scattered to the four winds, I do worry about how long this will be able to continue, as they progressively find jobs elsewhere. Some may be able to continue, as John Davison continued to appear on 1up Yours even after leaving the company to found whatTheyPlay.com, but others, like past greats Shawn Elliott or Mark MacDonald, will not. The prospect of so many leaving at once makes me worry for the future, and while I look forward to listening to what they put out, the end of 1up as we know it is a very sad thing.

Mielke's blog of EGM's final day is a must-read if you've ever followed this magazine or its podcasts before.

My Christmas haul this year was pretty humbling, in that I got a lot of great stuff. I'm lucky to have such generous friends and family! Looking over it, though, one thing was striking for me: my video game presents consisted of two, third-party Wii games.

This is pretty shocking for those who follow video games closely, for two reasons: 1) There are no good Wii games that have come out in the last six months, and 2) all good Wii games are first-party, while the third-party games are all terrible.

At least, that is the conventional wisdom. Number 2, however, is often heard with the qualifier attached "except Guitar Hero", and indeed one of my two Wii games was Guitar Hero World Tour. Already having the Wii plastic guitar for Guitar Hero III meant that this was a no-brainer over the PS3 version, especially since the Wii version finally has DLC. Guitar Hero is the game I have sunk the most hours into on the Wii, and so having this next volume, with about 80 songs plus more downloadable all the time, means that my Wii will be seeing a lot of use in '09, dearth of new games or not.

Most gamers will grant that as normal, but what could my second third-party Wii game possibly be? Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09, of course! This is not as acknowledged by "gamerz" as Guitar Hero, but I find sports games ten times more fun on the Wii than on the HD consoles (where they might look better, but are less fun to play), and golf in particular I could not even imagine playing with a DualShock controller. (Most self-proclaimed hard-core gamers don't play sports games, which is probably why this point is so rarely conceded to the Wii.) In Wii Sports, golf was one of my favourites, but it only had nine holes and no real progression. Now I can play every course on the PGA tour, with multiple elements to give a real sense of progression. I'm still mastering the gameplay but I do find it to give a good enough sense of control that I'm not disappointed. I do find it kind of lame that the grass textures look worse than Wii Sports, but I waited out the '07 and '08 games for them to upgrade the graphics, so I'll take these as good enough.

Both of these are games that I see myself playing all year long, so I think they were great ones to get. When I look at the year ahead though, all the games I'm excited about are on the PS3—nothing on the Wii. Killzone 2, Street Fighter IV, Uncharted 2, Final Fantasy XIII are all games I'm really looking forward to, and I just bought LittleBigPlanet with my gift certificates. (Other older games I might yet pick up are Fallout 3, Valkyria Chronicles, and Assassin's Creed.) The Wii has nothing promising coming up, and that is a disappointment. After seeing what they could do with the controls in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, it's too bad that there aren't more serious games for the system. (Or at least, they aren't announcing them.)

Even so, I'm glad to have both a PS3 and a Wii, and will be sinking a lot of hours on both in the year ahead!

Metal Gear Solid 4 spent the last year as the Playstation 3's flagship game. When I bought my PS3, this was the game that came with every PS3 you could buy. In a lot of ways, it's an odd choice: First, it only really speaks to people who played the earlier Metal Gear games in the franchise, which pretty much excludes the larger public in favour of 'hardcore gamers'. Much of the plot involves tying together loose ends from the previous games, which are constantly alluded to. And the game is very complex, taking time to learn how to play—potentially a lot of time for someone who hasn't played a Metal Gear Solid game before. So why include this title with the system?

At the same time, MGS4 was an inevitable choice as a pack-in title, since no other title so supremely shows off the incredible power of the PS3. The battlefield in MGS4 is so realistic that if it weren't for the heads-up display you could easily be fooled into thinking you're watching a DVD, it's that good. (The screenshot above is what the game actually looks like while you're playing it.) The cutscenes are also gorgeous, all while managing to avoid falling into the 'uncanny valley'. And the gameplay, plot, and voice acting are all on a par with the graphics. In a lot of ways, Metal Gear Solid 4 is the best game I've ever played. It is, without question, a masterpiece.

The gameplay, as I said, almost requires you to already be familiar with the Metal Gear series, which is based on 80's action movies, most obviously Escape from New York. This is not just another shooter: Metal Gear is all about stealth-based gameplay. While you do have weapons, there is only one of you, infiltrating enemy bases with countless soldiers, so while you may have to fight your way out of a jam, going head-to-head with the enemies means certain death. Instead, you have to hide (in lockers, under tables, etc.—there are countless possibilities), create distractions (leaving a Playboy on the ground to trick sentries into bending over to pick it up, throwing an ammo clip across the room to create a noise elsewhere), and use techniques like choke attacks to render enemies unconscious without making noise—making sure to sneak up from behind so they don't have time to raise the alarm! There is a lot of depth to this: if you choke out one sentry, for example, you'd better hide his body somewhere before his partner comes along, or else that one will raise the alarm. All of this is what makes the game fun and unique—you're constantly finding new ways your character can hide, or tricks you can try—but it is also takes a lot to master.

All this sneaking creates a lot of tension, so the game balances things out by interspersing a lot of cut scenes, which bring the plot along and give you a chance to recover after the stressfulness of infiltrating another level. I like this a lot, it makes playing the game a lot more relaxing, and the plot of MGS4, which centres on private military corporations (rather like Blackwater), is at times quite thought provoking. At other times it's quite hokey, but it wouldn't be a proper hommage to 80's action movies if it wasn't!

Some of these scenes are fantastically epic and memorable; some of the gameplay levels vary the standard stealth in ways that not only add variety but make it even more fun, from tracking a trail through the forest on one act to tailing an unsuspecting spy through the streets of an Eastern European city under curfew in another. The bar is high to learn this game and its universe in order to get the most out of it, but the rewards are amazing.

When I bought my Wii, it came with Wii Sports in the box. The contrast between the PS3 coming with MGS4 and the Wii with Wii Sports could not be starker: one is easy for anyone to pick up and play from children to grandparents, even though no effort at all went into its graphics and depth. MGS4 is so hard to figure out how to play to the uninitiated that months went by before I really sat down and started trying to play it (and I had played MGS Twin Snakes before), and even then I had to acclimate on "easy mode" (which gives you a lot more weapons and makes the enemies fewer and stupider). Yet the graphics are so good that it can be mistaken for a DVD, and the amount of depth, both in the plot and the gameplay, exceeds anything that has come before it in the history of video games. The execution is flawless. I am so glad to have played MGS4, but at the same time I have no problem understanding why it is the Wii that is outselling the PS3 by a more than 2-to-1 margin. Five stars. It deserves them, even if it isn't a game for everybody.

When I bought my Playstation 3, I bought four games for the system: Metal Gear Solid 4, Grand Theft Auto 4, Call of Duty 4, and Uncharted. Besides not having "4" in the name, Uncharted is also unique on that list as not having sold in the same kind of ridiculous numbers as the first three (which are acknowledged blockbusters). And I wouldn't have bought it, if it weren't for one of the guys on one of the video game podcasts I listen to who kept harping on how great Uncharted is and how sad it is that more people didn't play it. The fact that he kept bringing it up, even months after the game's release, convinced me that his love of the game was heartfelt. So I decided to give it a go, and man, am I glad I did!

Before I get ahead of myself, though, I should explain why I had been ready to pass on the game in the first place. I heard many good things about it when it came out, and the premise sounded interesting (a swashbuckling, treasure-hunting adventure with near movie-quality storytelling), but then I watched a few video reviews of it. Besides leaping from ledge-to-ledge and exploring ruins, a big component of the game play was gun battles with modern-day pirates who are after the same treasure you are. Ok, but when watching the video, I saw that there were a lot of these gun battles... and a lot of pirates. It didn't seem very realistic that the hero might kill 400 people in the course of the game. I mean, Indiana Jones killed a few bad guys, but it's a bit different when you're talking about a bodycount in the hundreds. I felt like that would ruin the storytelling for me.

Well, having played thorugh the game, yes, you do kill a lot of bad guys. But the gameplay of those gun battles is so well done, and the mechanics of hiding behind cover, aiming and shooting work so well, that they are just fun to play. It's one of those cases where watching someone playing a video game is nothing like actually playing it. In a movie, that many gunbattles would take you out of it, but in a game, which lasts a lot longer, you barely notice it. Especially when they're done this well.

And ironically enough, Emilie actually did spend a lot of time watching me play Uncharted while feeding the baby and whatnot, and it totally captivated her attention as well as a TV show. Heck, the graphics are so good-looking you might even take it at first for a TV show. Definitely a five-star game in my book.

Nintendo has announced the next version of their handheld console, the Nintendo DSi. Nintendo was due for an update since their last model, the DS Lite (of which I am a very satisfied owner, as I was when I wrote my original review) has been out for quite a while.

The DSi offers a few features that I don't care too much about (it includes two cameras, and an SD card slot), and a couple that I do (the ability to download games from an online store, and a larger screen). It can't play GBA games, which slightly bothers me because I still haven't finished Final Fantasy VI Advanced, but isn't that big of a deal.

However, even if my DS Lite were to break, there is no way I will buy a DSi, and this is for one simple, boneheaded reason: DSi games are region-locked. This is already something that is idiotic in a home console, and the Playstation 3 being region-free is one of its best features. It allows me to buy games whether I'm in America or in France, and even to import quirky games (viz. an HD train-driving simulator) from Asia. But in a portable console, it's especially dumb. My DS gets the most use of all when I travel (incidentally, the reason I haven't been using it much lately). Now when I travel I have to keep track of which DSi is from which country in order to know what games I can get? No thank you! Even if my European DSi can access the Europe store when I'm in America, that will mean that there are American games that I can't get on it.

Anyway, the bottom line is it's a dumb move, and a step backward for the DS, and so I want nothing to do with it.

Folklore is a solid game that I don't think got enough credit in the gaming press. I may be generous towards this game because I love the style and atmosphere, but in a game like this that is half the battle. If you haven't heard of Folklore, this video review gives the basic rundown:

To me a good RPG needs two things: first, a setting (and characters) that you like—you spend a lot of time in their world, so it needs to be a world you are drawn to. And second, a battle system that is engaging and fun. The gameplay needs to be able to stand up as a game that's fun to play for it to capture your interest.

On the first criterion, then, Folklore has me sold: it has a Hotel Dusk style murder mystery set in a seaside Irish town, framing excursions into a Netherworld that is beautiful and intriguing. People have criticised the graphic-novel style cutscenes (instead of voice acting like one would expect nowadays), but to me that's just not relevant to the core value of the game.

On the second criterion, though, Folklore really knocks it out of the park. There is no physical combat in the game; you capture ids from the monsters you defeat and use their attacks in battle. You spend a lot of time configuring which face buttons you want to go with which attack, but the overall feeling is that you are a real badass powerful wizard who can unleash a gigantic beast or dragon on his foes at whim. That super-powered feeling is for me one of the joys of video games, and this game really gives it to you.

So, no, it's not necessarily the game to win over converts to the genre, and the lack of much voice acting is disappointing in a PS3 game, though the presentation is otherwise good, if a little old-fashioned. There are moments of incredible HD graphics, but all-in-all the game feels like a a PS2 or Dreamcast game. (That doesn't bother me though: after all, I'm also playing Mega Man II!) On the measures that matter, Folklore is a solid RPG that I am looking forward to playing the rest of the way through. And it makes an excellent change of pace from shooters and war games.

I should clarify that Winning Eleven: Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 is the North American name, in Europe the game is simply called PES 2008, due to the high marketability of Latin puns in this region.

At least I like to think that that's the reason :-)

Whatever the name, this series has been the acknowledged king of video game soccer for years now—a rare exception to the general dominance of EA Sports, as this game is published by Konami. This is the first time the game has come out on the Wii, though, with it's unique controls, so the pressure was on to break new ground in adapting soccer to the unorthodox system.

Sports games, done well, have great replay value, since if you like the sport and the game is fun and engrossing to play, you never really get to an "end". Sports games on the Wii, done well, are even better because the unique controls give them a lot of opportunities to be engrossing to play compared to a game pad. John Madden Football is one of my favourite Wii games. Just the fact that you make a passing motion to pass the ball (and can throw a bullet or a lob depending on your motion) makes you feel a lot more involved in the game. And it's easier to navigate a playbook with a pointer than an analog stick. In fact a lot of the more detailed commands of Madden football (like juking or throwing a stiffarm) are a lot easier to remember and use with the Wii's gesture-based controls than by remembering the myriad of buttons on the PS3 controller.

Soccer doesn't really give you the opportunity to use motion in that kind of one-to-one way (putting the controllers on your feet would be pretty disasterous), but PES 2008 has found a way to use the Wii controls to deliver a game with more depth and strategy than any soccer game yet. As an American transplant to Europe, this was enticing to me because I think the key to appreciating soccer is knowing more about the formations and strategies (as opposed to, "it's just eleven guys on each side trying to kick a ball in a net"), and I thought this game would help a lot with that. And boy has it!

Such an in-depth approach feels a little strange on the Wii, though, in that the system has the reputation of being for easy to pick up and play party games. PES 2008 is anything but—in fact it feels like a PC game more than a console game (PC games have the reputation of being more cerebral), and the Wii remote's pointer is used like a mouse. Once you get used to the fact that this is a more in-depth game than you're used to on Wii, though, it works very well.

The controls are presented through a training camp of tutorials, so you learn the basics of dribbling, passing, and shooting before you're thrown onto the field. Once you get into the game, though, you begin to experience soccer in a completely new way (at least for me, I can't say that I've played a lot of recent soccer games though). On offense, the Wii's controls allow you to send the ball carrier one way, while simultaneously sending a player in a second direction while kicking the ball in a third (to land ahead of him, for example). This adds a lot of strategy to offense. Defense is handled in a way that feels more like a real-time strategy game.

On defense, you point at the opposing player you want to defend, and click once for each number of defenders you want to challenge him (so clicking twice will double team the ball carrier, for example). This makes defense a matter of managing your resources (the number of defenders you have) and their positioning, which is very much like real football. You can also position players on the field by dragging them with the pointer, or double clicking on a spot on the field will send the nearest defender there if you want to tweak his positioning.

The result is that PES 2008 is a very strategic game. It captures the complexity of soccer (on the one hand), and it teaches you how soccer is complex (on the other). Four and a half stars.

I was definitely late to the party on The Orange Box (Valve's unheard of package of five games on one disc), which doesn't bother me any, but it did mean that for months and months I heard people in the gaming press go on and on and on about Portal. The platitudes that have been heaped on this game. People said that they were buying the Orange Box just to play Portal. People said that Portal would have been worth it as a stand-alone game. People were saying that Portal was the game of the year.

Well I played Portal, and completed the game in about three hours. That fact alone to me signifies that the people who were making statements like those above are nuts: how can a game that takes three hours to beat be considered worthy of paying full price (60-70€ for a PS3 game over here), or of being called game of the year? Not only that, but what game, no matter how well put together, can deserve so much acclaim when it is so short? I say this in comparison to games like Grand Theft Auto IV which will probably take me about seventy hours to complete, and which will have a lot more replay value besides.

Portal was a fun time, mind you, but I really didn't think it was anywhere as big a deal as the gaming press makes it out to be. Now it is a puzzle-solving game, and I am sort of a puzzle solver for a living, working with computers, so maybe a lot of people get more than three hours out of the game. (I thought all of the puzzles were extremely easy—but then maybe they aren't targeting the kind of person who does Project Euler for fun.) But even if they do, they spend the extra time being stumped, so how much more fun could they be having than me?

So, I'd rate the game on its own as "so-so"—but since I still have Half Life 2, Half Life 2: Episode 1, Half Life 2: Epsiode 2, and Team Fortress 2 to play, I'm not complaining in the least about the Orange Box. Also I will most definitely replay the game one more time to hear the DVD-style developer commentary. But, there has been talk of releasing Portal as a stand-alone game on the Wii, and if I had bought the game seperately on Wii after hearing all the hype, I would definitely have felt ripped off. Two and a half stars.

I'm getting into a new excercise routine these days, and the impetus behind it was a video game system. —One hears people saying that a lot these days, but in my case the system is the PS3, not the Wii!

I should back up a bit first though, since the Wii does deserve some of the credit. We bought Wii Fit when it launched, and for the first couple weeks I used it to work out for half an hour a day almost every day. This was more than I had been doing, in fact other than a daily 4K walk at lunch time I had been getting pretty sedentary. And as is always the case, once I started exercising a bit more I noticed that I felt a lot better. So far, so good.

But one thing really bothered me about Wii Fit: it came out just as the weather was getting nice. So although it is a reasonably fun game, and the way it tracks your performance over time is very useful and motivating, I still wanted to go outside. This is also why our excercise bike, which I enjoy using in the winter, is no fun at all when the weather's nice and I can't help from thinking how much better it would be to go on a real bike ride.

Then along came a heat wave and the house was so stuffy that there was no way I was going to do Wii Fit. This broke up the rhythm I had gotten myself into, and I haven't been doing it much since.

By the time the weather cooled back down, I had bought a PS3, and was enjoying games like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Uncharted. In these games you play as elite special forces soldiers or parkour running adventurer: basically guys who are in peak physical condition, and you take them through some very physical adventures. All while sitting on the couch. There is only so much of that you can do before you start to feel like you need to work out more. How can I force my virtual character to run up the side of a mountain like that if I can barely run a mile?

What's interesting about this is that I play Madden Football on the Wii all the time but never felt the same kind of guilt. I think there are two reasons: the PS3 games are ones where you really identify with the character, they tell a story almost like a movie (Emilie loves watching me play Uncharted, in fact). Also, the Wii's immersive controls make you forget to some extent that you're not actually playing football. To pass the ball, for example, you make a passing motion. While on the PS3, my character is leaping from cliff to cliff, pulling himself up by his fingernails, while I'm just sitting back pushing buttons. So the disconnect between the activity of the game and the passivity of playing it is greater.

There were other factors in getting me outside too, like the Olympics, and my reading a lot of Homer lately, but I really do think a big share of the credit goes to the PS3—for making me feel so lazy!

(*I haven't given up on Wii Fit, either, but I think it should take a backseat to running and gardening as long as the weather is nice.)

So it's been just over two weeks since I bought a Playstation 3, the first week of which I played it nearly constantly as I resolutely squandered the second half of my vacation playing video games. Now I think I've had plenty of time to form an opinion of the machine and can say that I'm glad I bought it (good thing too, since the thing is ridiculously expensive in Europe!)

First I need to explain why I bought a Playstation 3. I already have a Wii, of course. But the Wii has not been getting a lot of the latest games that I want to play, which only come out on the HD consoles, the PS3 and XBox 360. The Wii has had some stellar titles—Twilight Princess and Metroid Prime Corruption were gaming nirvana, and I don't expect anything on the PS3 to exceed them.

The problem is, there just aren't enough games like that out for the Wii. Even being a new dad with a full time job, I eventually got to the end of Metroid, and found myself with no new titles in my stack. Worse, no upcoming titles to get excited about (except Tiger Woods '09, which I'm hoping will finally give a full golf game on the Wii with good controls—I love Wii Sports Golf and still play it, but there are only nine holes.) The combination of not having any big titles coming on the Wii, and there being a whole load of AAA titles on the HD consoles that I would like to play, made me decide to start saving for a second console.

Secondly, I have a 42" Plasma HDTV at home with beautiful 5.1 surround sound. The problem? There is practically no HDTV to watch in France! I had an upscaling DVD player, but I really wanted to get a Blu-Ray player to be able to watch my TV with the highest quality picture it can display. I was somewhat worried that the difference would be negligeable between a Blu-Ray and an upscaled DVD, but I had seen details on The Fifth Element on Blu-Ray that my mom owns that I had not seen on my superbit DVD version, so I felt it would be worthwhile.

Because the XBox 360 doesn't have Blu-Ray, and because it's goofy appearance looks out of place in a home theatre (not to mention its loud fan noise), the Playstation 3 was the clear choice. Online play is also free on the PS3 whereas one must subscribe on XBox. So how did it turn out?

Well I came very close to backing out. The PS3 in Europe costs an insane 400€, compared to a price of only 260€ in the US. This meant that when I discovered that I could get a good Samsung Blu-Ray player with HDMI 1.3 for only 250€, I had serious second thoughts. Why not just get that player instead, especially since it would work with my Logitech Harmony remote? Eventually though I decided to go through with it, and though the price is too high in Europe, the hardware has not let me down.

Blu Ray is awesome. I have Planet Earth on Blu-Ray, and the picture is just amazing. Emilie walked by when I first put it in and stopped in her tracks. The difference is clearly visible and a serious improvement over DVD—when the sounce material is good. This is real HDTV; a lot of the downloadable and cable content people get in HD has been compressed to save bandwidth and this lessens the quality of the picture, Blu-Ray is the best way to ensure you're getting top quality, and it shows. That said, I hope it will catch on because in audio, consumers have shown they prefer convenience (MP3s) to quality (SACDs and DVD-As, which you may never have even heard of they flopped so bad). There's a lot more marketing behind Blu-Ray though and the picture is so much better (if you have a big-screen HDTV, which not everyone does), so I think its prospects are good.

Uncharted and GTA4 are awesome. These are the two games I've been playing the most; the other two I bought, MGS4 and COD4, also look great but I am saving them for later.

Non region-coded games are awesome. In particular for me because I was able to buy them in the US for way cheaper, but also because as an American in Europe I might want to get games like NCAA Football that I might not otherwise be able to.

Of course, I don't want to give the impression that the thing is perfect, there are some big annoyances as well. I already mentioned the ridiculous European price, but that's not all:

No PS2 compatability is retarded. I would really have liked to be able to play PS2 games because I never bought a PS2, since I thought that would have been an act of infidelity to my dear departed Dreamcast. The Wii plays GameCube games and I have used that to pick up some old GC games on the cheap; there are a lot of PS2 games I would've gotten if they would've worked. It's especially frustrating since the PS3 originally could play PS2 games, but they removed the functionality.

Region coding sucks. PS3 games do not have region codes, but it won't play region 1 DVDs or Blu-Rays. Since I have dozens of zone 1 DVDs, this means that I have to keep my upscaling DVD player hooked up, and can't use the PS3 for everything. Region coding is retarded: imagine if all my books had stopped working because I moved to a different country!

No IR remote capability. To control Blu-Rays with my Logitech Harmony remote I need to buy a third-party dongle, which is annoying.

No SACD or DVD-A playback. Not surprising, but I would've appreciated it, now that HDMI means that these high-fidelity formats don't require a stupid amount of cables to use. Also it appears that, like PS2 compatability, the first PS3s had SACD but it was taken out. D'oh!

There are other little things I could mention, like the ability to install Linux (good), or the web browser (bad, or not as good as the Wii's anyway), but I think that this shows the general idea: I am extremely happy with the PS3 for games and movies, although some of the minor things are slight annoyances, all in all it's a great source of entertainment.

This weekend we had my mother- and brother-in-law over for dinner on Saturday night, and went out with four generations of my paternal inlaws on Sunday. We went to a restaurant and then back to Emilie's grandparents for poker and trivial pursuit (I won the latter!). The occassion was to celebrate September birthdays so mine was included, and I got some nice presents (a couple books on gardening and a model train, among others).

Besides family visits, a large part of our week-end was taken up in Super Paper Mario, which just came out in Europe for the Wii, and which Emilie and I are both enjoying. Before this she was replaying through New Super Mario Bros. to retrieve every single star coin in the game—I've been telling her that she's been playing so much since she's pregnant that we'll have to name the child Mario if it's a boy!

The rugby world cup has been fun to watch so far, although France's opening loss to Argentina was a disappointment. (I would've hoped the USA could've beaten Tonga too, but the fact is we just aren't a rugby union playing country.) Still, no matter who's playing it's an exciting game to watch, and some of South Africa's tries against England on Friday night were downright amazing. If France doesn't make it to the end I'll be rooting for the Springboks, although the conventional wisdom is that nothing can stop the All Blacks this year, curse or no curse.

One of the better written sections on Wikipedia, in my opinion (given the frivolity of its subject matter), is its series of articles on the history of video game consoles, which describes them as a series of seven generations. I'm old enough to remember video games back to the second generation. (Technically I started playing during the "video game crash" between the second and third generations, when microcomputers took over and consoles were considered a thing of the past. But I played many hours of second-generation games all the same and consider myself apt to speak of the era.) Anyway, as I was reading through these articles I started identifying each generation with a particular game or memory in order to keep them straight in my head. From this was born the idea of picking a generation-defining game from each era, and I decided to make public the games that I have (unilaterally) chosen to receive this distinction.

I must first make clear what I mean by a generation-defining game. First off, I do not mean the best game of its generation. Often times a game will see one or more sequels on the same console, and these may be far better than the original. But what matters here is how iconic a game was of its time and of its console generation. It should be a game that the mere mention of brings you back to that time and place. Of course a lot of great games, most of my favourite games, in fact, do not receive this distinction. To be generation-defining, the game should also be recognised in popular culture, and achieve widespread popularity. Sequels generally cannot be generation-defining, unless the sequel in question is the first time a series experiences breakout popularity (for in these cases, the sequel is actually more well-known than the original).

And now, without further ado, here are the winners of Jon Craven's "Game of the Generation" award:

The first generation of video games is pretty much defined by a single video game, Pong; without a doubt the clear game of its generation, a fact made all the more indisputable given that its only real competition were derivative clones.

The second generation of video games was dominated by classic arcade games and the Atari 2600. Its iconic, generation-defining game remains to this day a universal symbol of video gaming, and so it is hardly debatable that the award goes to Mad Magazine's 1982 Man of the Year, Pac-Man.

The third generation of video games was dominated by the Nintendo Entertainment System, and so it should come as no surprise that its defining character came into his own in this generation, and is exceeded only by Pac-Man as a symbol of video games. Although he got his start in the second-generation Donkey Kong, it is the game Super Mario Bros. that made Mario a legend.

The fourth generation of video games was shared by the Sega Genesis (or Mega Drive outside the US) and the Super Nintendo. From this generation onward, the choice of generation defining game becomes much more difficult and my choices are bound to become more controversial. Even though the Super Nintendo eventually sold more consoles, I think that this generation was Sega's finest hour, and Sega has a better case for the generation-defining game than Nintendo does, as the SNES' best games were continuations of third-generation titles. Sonic the Hedgehog, on the other hand, remains closely associated in our minds with the 16-bit era, and so is the most deserving winner of the fourth-gen award.

The fifth generation of video games saw the rise of Sony and the Playstation, which came to dominate the Saturn and Nintendo 64. This momentous turn in videogame consoles from Nintendo to Sony must be reflected in the game that is chosen to define this generation, and so I think that it is only appropriate to give the award to a game in a series whose move from Nintendo to Sony is widely recognised as the moment the centre of gravity shifted to the Playstation. Final Fantasy VII is the game that encapsulates what this generation was all about. I must add, though, that while I think the game's significance in putting the Playstation ahead of Nintendo is widely acknowledged, I also have some reservations about naming FFVII, since it did not have the wider presence in popular culture I would like to see in a generation-defining game.

The sixth generation of video games was dominated by the Playstation 2, but also saw the Sega Dreamcast, the Nintendo GameCube, and Microsoft XBox, all three of which also had incredible games. This is a very hard generation to make a call on, and think it has more to do with the large number of competitive consoles with great games than it does with the fact that the generation is just ending. The Dreamcast fan in me would like to give the award to Shenmue, but I don't think that a game on a console that finished fourth can really be called generation-defining. Halo was originally my choice to win the award, since it attained the sort of iconic status (in North America, anyway) that defines a game of its generation. On the other hand, its long-term significance remains to be seen, and the XBox also was not a big seller next to the PS2. In the end, therefore, Grand Theft Auto 3 wins the award as the most defining game of the sixth generation.

The seventh generation of video games is underway and so cannot be called yet (Wii Sports is out to an early lead, but I don't think it's much of a stretch to hope for better things to come).