So what is my favorite thing about gta4? The laughs. The humor. The tv. But The thing I love the most is when you get grenades. Yes. Go draw a bunch of cops to you, then get in a car with your grenade selected. Once a lot of cop cars are around and cops start coming up to the car, throw a grenade out the window but just sit in the car, don’t drive off, sure this kills you, but you get to watch lots of people get launched into the air in slow motion while you die. This is so fucking hilarious to me. I’m a fan of violent entertainment(yes, movies, games, sports like ufc). I have played all the GTA games. I love mob movies, scarface, donnie brasco, godfather, you name it. GTA, and I mean all of them are mob games. You play a thug climbing your way up the mob ladder. NOW, let’s talk about what is good. The aiming system is improved big time. Now, you can either lock on by holding L2 all the way, or free aim by holding down L2 only a little bit. There is now a cover system ala Uncharted or Rainbow 6 Vegas. This adds a whole new dimension to the game play. The gunplay is amazing, especially when people are up close. The screen kind of blurs and its frantic and loud and when you shoot people the animation of them being shot is simply amazing. This game is so intensely overbearing, It stirs up emotion in me. Especially the close combat gunplay. The over all feel of the game is so much better than previous games. Sure the graphics are a lot better, but the biggest difference is in all the small details in the world. From the random people on the streets, to the physics of the cars, to the animations of everything, this is a huge leap up from GTA3: SAN ANDREAS.

Ok, ok, Rockstar seems to be the only company that can really pull off an open world type of game and do it well. What sets this above all the clones and copies? The characters, the music, the humor, the story, the writing, the acting, the physics, the gun play, the cars, the driving, the look and feel, the game mechanics, and the missions. This world breathes and lives. There is a ton of sarcasm. I love how it picks on reality. I love how it portrays politicians, and authority figures. This is closer to reality in many ways than what the real media shows us(especially the stuff on the rich and powerful). One of the shows on the TV is this series called Republican Space Rangers. This had me on the floor laughing. This is so damn spot on! SO HILAROUS! The fake radio commercials are hilarious as well. So much work went into this game to really make you feel like you are living in this world. Sure the relationship aspects(dating and bromance) of this are kind of shallow and boring once the driving drunk(btw, you can call a cab instead of getting in a car while drunk), bowling, darts, and pool gets boring, I did not find this part of the game that fulfilling and ended up blowing most of it off, and it does effect the game. If you don’t keep up with your friends and girlfriends, they wont help you out as much in some of the missions. So yes, there is dating, the internet, and cell phone texts in this game. Whoo, like in real life but much funnier. You can have insinuated sex in the game after a date, it doesn’t show anything, but you can hear it as a camera pans around the house. No hot coffee this time I bet. I love being able to play as the bad guy, another thing that the GTA series always seems to do well. I like anti heros. I like dark art. This game has a black sense of humor, one that I can really identify with.

The graphics are pretty impressive. Well, at first I was not that impressed, I was like wow, a new paint job on an old game. Then I went back and looked at vice city. This is a huge improvement over the past games. When I compare the visuals of GTA4 to something like Uncharted, Heavenly Sword, or even Call Of Duty 4, I felt a little underwhelmed by the visuals. However, as I played on and noticed all the details in the city as more and more of it was unlocked to me, I realized that this looks amazingly detailed. The explosions are amazing. There is so much going on in this game. How the different people walk, talk, fight, die. So much polish went into this game and this is really obvious once you go back and play one of the older GTA games. The world is seamless. Not many loading screens at all once it boots. the initial load in (when you start the game) is a little long, but I can live with it. The driving mechanics are a lot more finicky this time around. The cars will spin out and you will lose control a lot more often than you used to from the previous incarnations of the game. I found this new sense of driving realism(no nothing like a simulation racing game or anything) to actually help the game play. You really can tell the difference between the different makes of cars in how they drive and turn. Car wrecks are much more fantastic now. Not to mention that people will be thrown from their cars in really bad wrecks(through the windshield). If this happens to you, you can lose major health. Another thing that has improved is the common people in the streets. Some will fight you, some will cower. When you shoot people and wound them, they will hung over and crawl off or gimp off, sometimes only making it a few feet then falling over, then getting back up after a minute and trying again to fall again. What detail.

The multiplayer is PHAT! So many modes. It plays well. Lag is not really an issue from what I can tell. My personal favorite types are Helicopter Race, and Cops and Robbers, only because I have not really played much else. Getting online with a bunch of friends and having 4 people in a car shooting at other people is so much fun. This is serious fun. I mean I will play this for years type of fun, or until the next installment of GTA comes out. My only real complaint about this game would be that when a lot of stuff starts happening on the screen, the frame rate can slow to a crawl and really have a negative effect on the game mechanics. Back to what is good. In one of the missions you have to run down some people fleeing from a drug deal gone sour. I put the driving view mode into first person cockpit view. Let me tell you, running over people like this is amazing. The way their bodies curl over the front of the car and how their bodies go limp and flail and slide off. The detail is amazing, and it is never the same twice it seems. Sometimes its so hilarious. I also love when you spook a crowd of people, and they go running into a busy street and get hit by cars and go flying. Man. This game makes me laugh in so many ways. From the artistic satire found in the media in the world, from the web pages, radio, and tv, to the many senseless ways you can find funny ways to kill people. Niko the character you take control of in the single player game is by far my favorite character of all the GTA series. I really like the single player story. Its a great mob movie in the form of a video game. In fact better than a lot of the more recent mob movies that hollywood has barfed up recently. It’s not just Nike I like though. I like a lot of the bad guys in the game, they are very entertaining to say the least. The story and the characters really make me want to beat the game and do all there is to do. The music in this game is pretty cool as well, in fact, for me, some of the best because they put in Nitzer Ebb, Aphex Twin, Killing Joke, Sisters of Mercy, Black Sabbath, David Bowie, Smashing Pumpkins, Tangerine Dream, Jean Michel Jarre all of which i really listen to. I do still like all the fake music in the original gta3 the most especially the techno. But this one comes in second. Although I really did like the Vice City sound track as well. Just a warning, this game is hard. Towards the end you will have to try missions over and over before you can beat them. This really puts a lot of people off. I just wait a couple of days once i get burnt out and try again. This works well for me. I have beat every GTA game. I would say this game is a little harder than all the others.

10.0 Presentation
The way the story is told, the menus, the look and feel of everything, the radio stations, the tv, all of it looks and feels alive. TOP NOTCH.

8.5 Visuals
I do not agree with the rest of the press on this. I know the ps3 can do better graphics than this. I was kind of miffed to find out the game ran at 630p, not 720p like the 360(even though the game still runs and looks better on the ps3)(so what, call of duty 4 on ps3 and 360 is 600p, so what, that looks amazing still too). Still, the ps3 should be able to do better. Hopefully the next GTA game will improve on the visuals and the frame rate slow downs when lots of things happen. The frame rate is pretty high and stable most of the time though.

9.9 Audio
The kick ass music sound track! The sound FX, The Voice Acting, the background music, all of it is spot on!

8.8 Game Mechanics
I still think the game could be more responsive like Uncharted. I will say that it is a huge, and I mean BIG step up from it’s predecessors.

10.0 Replay
100 hours of game play if you explore everything. The story is about 40 hours. So there is a lot of game here. Finally a game that is actually worth 65 dollars. Its worth beating he single player game a couple of times to tinker with the relationship aspect of the game. The multiplayer is simply great. This world is so fun to play in. The modes are great as well. Nothing else like this on the market.

9.9 Total Score.
(out of 10 / not an average)

If you do not like grand theft auto from previous versions of the game, this one will not win you over, the core is still the same. There is just a lot more detail. Even with the duck and cover system, it does not change the game that much. So If you hate gta, you wont like this one either. I happen to love them all. I love the big free world, how you can ignore the story and just spend hours being a hooligan destroying things, killing people and running from the cops. If there was no story, I would still buy this game to just be a hooligan in this world. That is so much fun all by itself. So far, this is the best game of this year so far. Wonder if MGS4, Little Big Planet, or Killzone 2 or Resistance Fall of man 2 will topple this. I doubt it. One last thing: To all you fear mongering jerk off conservative media fucks who say that games, tv, music, and movies lead to violent behavior, excuse me, go read some history. Long before there was tv, electricity, and guns people were killing each other. With knives, Spears and arrows. War after war after war. People did not kill because of fictional art in those days and people do not kill because of fictional art in these days. Violence and murder pre date all of this entertainment my friends, so stop spewing forth your un-scientific idiotic religious fear monger claims. Art is a reflection of life with a twist. Art is a result of life. Art is not instruction. It is entertainment, it is fantasy. Dumb people do Dumb things. People should take responsibility for their own actions. These games never tell you to kill anyone in real life. They are fiction. They are entertainment. Just because a small handful of idiots do stupid things, don’t blame the rest of us. This is a game made by adults for adults. This is not for children. The box clearly states this. GO BUY THIS GAME: Click Here to buy Grand Theft Auto 4 for Sony PS3.

PS: Now you know why my blog has been so stale this week. This game is like 100 hours of game play in it. I cannot get enough of it.

The above map is Creek. This is breathtakingly pretty, especially the water fall and the creek bed area of the map. This is cool as well, up top the ridge of the ravine there is like a mountain path on one side, and on the other there are houses and a burb like area. Very well designed. This is sniper heaven. This is a game of try to run from sniper fire in al most all cases. Game modes like sabotage and search and destroy really are a bitch to do on this map, and poses a real challenge.

Above is a picture of the Killhouse map, which usually only shows up in private matches and cage matches. They added cage match which is a 1 on 1 battle, and I simply own all 1 on 1 usually so I absolutely love this map. The VAC klan usually has private matched where we play the shipment map that is small. This map is small like shipment but a tad bigger. Perfect for big private matches of free for all and 1 on 1 cage matches. Nice to have another map like shipment. I like the small maps best for private matches. A very welcome edition. They also added some new game modes to select from: Variety Pack Team Death Match(new maps team death match), Variety Team Objective(new maps like team tactical with more players), Variety Hardcore, Mercenary Team Death Match, Hardcore Team Death Match, Hardcore Search and Destroy, Old School Free For All. So a lot of new modes to play online!

Above is China Town. This map is pretty cool, Looks nice, but it is confusing because a lot of it looks the same and it’s hard to figure out where you are on the map at first. I eventually got used to it, but it honestly took me the longest to adjust to. I would say this is my least favorite of all the maps but do not think for a second that it is not worth it. It really is a great edition and adds a welcome variance to the cod4 maps. These maps do nothing to the single play part of the game, they are for online multiplayer. So if you do not play this game online then do not bother buying this map pack. But if you play this online like I do(I’m addicted to this hardcore, almost as bad as the smoking addiction I had in my 20s) this is worth every single cent you pay. I highly recommend this. I have raised COD4 with this map pack to an over all score of 9.9. I’m sorry, but no other game on the ps3 has held my attention like cod4. In fact this may turn out to be my favorite game of all time after playing it hard core since it’s release. BUY THIS!

Finally a Final Fantasy 7 spin off that is worthy of the name. I am floored. I don’t know if I have ever told anyone on my site what my favorite game of all time was. It’s Final Fantasy 7. The game that got me into RPGs. So, I bought a psp a while back, and it was pretty much collecting dust. Lets face it, most PSP games are pure shit. Lets see, god of war, burnout, ssx, those were good, but damn it, nothing mind blowing besides god of war for the system, well, until now. This game plays more like Kingdom Hearts. FF7 had this sad theme to it. It continues here. I wont get to into it or spoil it, but the first ff7 made me cry. Yes. Granted I was in a weird emotional state when I played it back then that may of contributed to it. This is heavy like the old ones so don’t worry.

This game is pretty! and I mean it. To me, the game play engine looks like ff 10 polished up a bit. Seriously, it’s damn good. You usually only fight 3 enemies at a time, sometimes a little more or less. It is simple. You wont be beating yourself up trying to figure it all out. Exploring is simple, there is no world map like in the old FF games. Instead you do side missions from the save point and the main story just kind of puts you where you need to be. You will explore areas, the city etc, but the scope of it seems kind anemic compared to the older games. This is the best looking hand held game I have ever seen. When you fight some of the summons this becomes very evident. But what really shines? The Video cut scenes. Man. It is like watching heaven on a cloud with a head full of hallucinogens. I love the characters. I love Sephiroth, The best video game character ever! EVER!

This is what I have been waiting for. I have waited about 5 years for a good RPG. To me, the last great rpg I played was grandia 2 on the sega dreamcast and final fantasy 10, not 10-2(the worst rpg ever). This is fun, Some of the dialog lines are cheese ball, but over all this is still pretty good in english actually. I still would prefer japanese with sub titles. This is a hack n slash. Don’t worry though because there are rpg elements, too bad you never get to mess with the sword, it always stays the same. Good thing there are materia, and materia fusion, this gets pretty deep and impressive and makes me feel like I am playing an RPG not some devil may cry hack n slash. You play as one(zack). You never control a team in battle. The DMV kind of makes up for this(more about DMV below). You use X to attack, and switch what X does by scrolling through commands with the L and R shoulder buttons. You also have a dive(avoid) button, and a block button. Zack is a little campy and kind of silly, but, I still like him despite all that.

The DMV is the new summon and limit break system. It works randomly kind of. The game kind of senses when you need a little extra edge in a battle. It works like a slot machine, and the DMV will fill up with summons and characters in the game that will grant you special moves. Like super healing, or helicopter attack, or super attack, or a summons. These DMV attacks look breath taking. Some of the stuff in this is mind blowing, some of the best in the final fantasy series. The enemies look cool, lots of cyber industrial machines and beings. I wont give anything away about the story. Lots of Sephiroth. If you only play the story mode (which is hard with out playing the little side missions), you can beat the game in about 12-15 hours. So that kind sucks. But if you play all the side missions(that seriously helps you level up and not die in the main story) it can get up to about 50 hours of game play. So this is a good bang for the buck! Below is the funniest final fantasy spoof I have ever seen!

9.2 Presentation
Amazing. Intuitive, Easy, Looks good. Familiar menu sounds :)

9.4 Visuals
I know the PSP can still do better, but in all honesty, this is pushing the system harder than any other game in terms of graphics and sound. The battle engine looks like the ps2 ff10 stuff polished. The Cut scene video story stuff looks better than the Advent Children ff7 animated movie. No joke.

9.0 Audio
The music is fitting, more modern, and in the cut scenes magnificent. Sound FX are top notch.

8.5 Game Mechanics
Very responsive, easy to use. Be careful not to over attack, if you start a combo, he won’t stop in time to block or dive.

7.0 Replay
No online, But this is a great game, in a year you will want to play it a again. This is a buy, not a rent.

9.5 Total Score.
(out of 10 / not an average)

This is the best game on the PSP hands down. I don’t care what genre you throw against it. It’s so polished and just amazing to look at. The story is good. The characters are great. Even the new ones, Genesis, and Angeal. I cannot recommend this enough. A 10 out of 5. If you don’t own a PSP, well now you have a great reason to go and buy one Click Here to buy a Sony PSP. Click Here to buy Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 for the Sony PSP.

Music Listened to while writing this review: b-52’s: Funplex and Tegan and Sara: The con.

Lets start by saying, this has been done before. Innovation here? NOT ONE BIT. In fact, there are frame rate issues in this game. The game controls slow, and sloppy. Character animations are twitchy and jittery and look very un-natural. The character models have been improved over the original rainbow 6 vegas, but the environments are really dull, low res, and static. After playing cod4 all the time, this feels like you are on quaaludes, like someone dosed your drink with ghb, but not enough to knock you out. Lets not forget the massive online problems. Krztov and I, we played the main story in co-op all the way through. But, he would invite me 30 times, and I would get “unable to join game” over and over again. A reboot would sometimes make it work. BUG CITY. DID THEY NOT BETA TEST THIS BEFORE THE RELEASE? GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK!

Don’t get me wrong though. This game is decent despite its glaring problems. The Duck and Cover system is back, ala Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune style. They added a run button and this helps. I still feel like the controls are slow and sluggish though. Some of the outdoor battles are really nifty. The enemy AI is pretty good and move around and hide a lot. I did have some fun playing this co-op with my friend(when it worked). But I did also play it by myself a bit and found it really boring like this. Controls over the friendly wingmen are the same and make the game so easy to walk through, just have them clear out every room, use the snake cam to tag people behind the door. Kind of makes the game feel really cheap and un-challenging. So I recommend not using the wingmen much if you want the game to actually challenge you.

I preferred army of two over this. It had more character, the story was told in a much better way as well(not to mention the bromance). The Audio in this games a joke, the ambience was louder than all the dialogue and acting most of the time, so I would miss parts of the story. Didn’t matter, because the story was so bad and predictable I didn’t even care. This doesn’t even feel like a tom clancy game. Usually Tom Clancy’s games have decent stories full of bullshit propaganda that is done well. This was like. WTF is he saying? Of fuck it. One cool thing though, If you have an eye toy, you can map your face on your character. Krztov did this, and it was hilarious. But it too has issues with lighting, he tried to get his grandmother into the game, and it would’t work for some reason.

4.0 Presentation
Bad acting, Bad story, Bad menus. Bad.

6.8 Visuals
Slow frame rate, buggy animations. Dated look and feel, bland textures.

5.0 Audio
So bad, the audio mixing was done by a 3 year old with Attention Deficit Disorder.

7.0 Game Mechanics
Controls are sluggish. Felt like I was on downers when I played this. But not horrid. Stop and Pop is fun if you have the patients.

2.0 Replay
Single player was about 8 hrs. Because of the online issues of, 1 out of 40 tries getting a single game to connect FORGET MULTI PLAYER.

6.4 Total Score.
(out of 10 / not an average)

Seriously, This was fun when played co-op. Terrorist hunt was ok too. But it wouldn’t not even work 90% of the time. I recommend you rent this. It’s barely worth a rent, and that is only if you really love first person tactical shooters. If not, Stay far far far away from this game. Ubi soft does not even acknowledge a problem with the ps3 version of the game. You can read about the nightmare HERE!. This is a joke. UBISUCK should really learn how to code on the ps3.

Pros: So what have I liked about my ps3 so far? A handful of great downloadable games. Good first party titles. It has been a very reliable piece of hardware this far. I really like the sixaxis controls. I have bought more games for the ps3 since it’s launch, many more games I had on any of the previous consoles I owned in the past. As a Blu-Ray player, this thing is the bomb. Videos look amazing on my trinitron in 1080i. The DVD upscaling is amazing as well, making many of my regular old DVDs look almost like Blu-Ray movies. I like the interface on the Playstation 3 operating system. It’s fast, responsive and easy to navigate. I love a lot about the Playstation 3.

Cons: So what can I complain about? Let’s see. The online store is ugly, hard to find things and is not updated with good content and game demos enough. Still not a lot of ps1 downloadable content, I want the rpgs, ff7, ff8, ff9, stuff like that. Home needs to come out like NOW. No rewards in games. I really think they are dragging their feet right now. I know this summer will be big, but come on Sony, give us more online stuff. The great games that have come out for the ps3 are usually 6 to 9 hours of game play, at 65 dollars per game after taxes, This really sucks. I feel really ripped off in that regard. Linux runs like ass on the ps3. Only 256mb of ram, they should allow usb ram to work as system ram on linux as well. No linux distro supports the ps3 cell, instead it uses the ps3 as a power pc, using just the controller processor on the cell which is a ppc. In the end, the performance of linux on a PS3 is like running a mac g4 at 1.2ghz starved on memory. This is a joke. Sony needs to get a good build of linux out there. One that supports FLASH. Flash on ps3 linux is not supported, because adobe doesn’t support ppc anymore. So the ps3 in linux doesn’t even cut it as a web browser. Linux on ps3 is not even an option because of how slow it runs and the flash handicap. I was hoping the ps3 could be a computer on my big TV. Nope. Don’t even bother with it for now. When a cell based linux distro with flash support comes out, i’ll jump on. They also lock down the video and do not supply drivers for the video card in linux. grrrrrr. The regular ps3 web browser is a joke. The font scaling sucks in high res. The ps3 always runs out of memory, I cannot even look at gametrailers.com movies with it. Big thumbs down on the ps3 web browser. They should allow for usb memory to expand the ram for web browsing. No in game xmb. Meaning, if i am in a game playing, and a friend tries to chat with me, I will have to quit the game to chat, or read a message. Xbox is way better in this regard. Sony promises in game xbm and chat soon, let’s hope they deliver. Seriously.

Check out the new japanese trailer for home below:

Conclusion: The ps3 to me is still the best console on the market for the money. Blu-ray, and dvd playback are the best. The games are the best. The free online network is great. But the online store sucks for the most part. Linux is a joke on the ps3. The web browser really sucks on the ps3. I like the browser on the wii better. The games are over priced, and do not deliver enough game play for the money this is true on the 360 as well though. I still recommend buying a ps3 as the main gaming console. Don’t expect linux, web browsing and the online store to be good for now. I hope they fix these problems.

Okay, this game is good. I’ll say it. But let me explain why. It was designed for two player co-op. It uses the unreal 3 engine and it also sports a very nice physics engine as well. So it looks great, and people die and go down great. So, Krztov and I played this through all the way in two nights, online in co-op story mode(campaign mode). The single player mode is the same as the online co-op story mode(campaign mode). We had a couple of hiccups, the game would crash in one spot(it crashed twice, well dropped a player out), but once we got past it we never had that problem again. I really did like the story, and it surprised me. So it has a lot of cliche crap in it, but I did like the government conspiracy stuff that was in it. I love the metal Masks the two main characters wear. This game has character as a whole though. I liked most of the characters over all. The enemy AI is not that bad, they don’t stand around and let you shoot them, if you run up to them, and they see you, they will usually start running away firing. If you can catch up to them, you can melee attack them, and there is a canned animation, randomly that will happen. Some of the melee attacks are hilarious, I loved grabbing guys by the head and throwing them around. You have to react quick. In the single player game, the AI of your comrade is not the best, but usually pretty decent. I did not have problems with him dragging me to wrong spots to heal me like a lot of other reviewers have stated. I also really liked the level designs. We had a lot of fun playing this co-op. It can also be played split screen. So over all so far I have enjoyed the game. I am not saying the game is perfect at all though.

Now for some negativity. Okay, I have been playing a lot of Call of Duty 4. So when I started playing this, at first I could not get my head around the controls. It plays like Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune(except uncharted controls are perfect, these are not) ala over the shoulder(ahahah like the ministry song). There is slowdown when there is tons of gunfire and a lot of enemies around. This doesn’t get to bad most of the time, but when it does, the control inputs get sluggish and will usually over respond or under respond. By level 3 I got used to it. There was also slowdown on the hovercraft missions as well. The controls kind of sucked on that. I don’t understand why epic does the unreal engine fast, but everyone else has massive slow down. It makes no sense to me. Sometimes the textures on some of the landscapes looked kind of weak, but sometimes just right.

Honestly over all, once I got used to the controls(I got used to the slow down too, which changes how it controls), it was a lot of fun. You have to use strategy to win the levels, you cannot just run in shooting. One person can shoot and get the “AGGRO” which means the enemies will pay attention to the person with the aggro, then the other player can flank, sneak behind and shoot and kill. This is very necessary on some of the stronger bad guys that can only be shot in the back. The weapon upgrading is cool, being able to bling the weapons out in gold and diamonds ahahaah improves the aggro of your player. There are plenty of cool guns you can buy and upgrade as you earn cash in your missions. The money and upgrading really adds a neat dimension to the game that I liked a lot. Also, having a headset for online co-op is a must. Unfortunatly one thing I noticed about online in game chat, is that if a lot starts happening the chat audio will stutter and drop out. This sucks, COD4 will drop too. This really irritates me, to the point of now we use skype on our computers while we play. I recommend doing this on all ps3 games honestly. Skype sounds way better and doesn’t bog down the games or drop audio. The other things I really like about this game were the little details, like the friendly jabs and mean jabs you can do to the other player, in fact one of the friendly jabs is a rock out music metal dork air guitar on a gunfest. LOL. It makes me laugh every time for some reason(i’m a dork I guess). I really like when you have to help each other up over ledges as well. It’s funny when you have to shoot while being helped up. One player has to lift the other up. You have to open many doors together as well. They really made this a co-op game through and through.

Ok, now to the online play. There are bugs. Trying to get an online versus game to work is not that easy. Half the time it can never find a server, although I do tend to have better luck trying to find ranked matches. Setting up private online co-op was a breeze though. A lot of people on the net are having problems. If you read the manual, it states that you must have ports 3658 and 6000 open on your network router. I had to turn them on in my network router. I could not play online at all until I turned them on. You will have to know how to do that on your router, so read the network router manual. This is really stupid, because COD4 and Warhawk have no such problems, neither does unreal tournament 3. So EA, FIGURE THIS OUT! People buy consoles to play games, put it in and play, not set up their routers. Stupid. Hell, even Burnout paradise doesn’t have this problem and that is also an EA game. There are bugs, online bugs, server bugs, chat bugs, EA NEEDS TO PATCH THIS FAST!

7.5 Presentation
The menus are bland, The story is ok, I liked it, But it is nothing spectacular over all. The cut screens look amazing though.

9.0 Visuals
A lot of the other reviews really get down on this games graphics, I do not agree. I think it is one of the better looking ps3 games actually. Some of the animations are top notch as well. It’s not perfect, and there are a couple of things that look not so great here and there, but man the water on the air craft carriers was really nifty not to mention the character and gun details of both good guys and bad guys.

8.6 Audio
I liked the music in the whole thing, I think they did a great job on the music and the sound and the voice acting. Well, sometimes the voice acting is B movie quality, but I think it was intentional.

7.0 Game Mechanics
There is a learning curve on the sensitivity of the controls, it’s easy to be aiming at the ground or the sky when you don’t mean to. The slow down really hurts the game play in some spots. The back to back parts were really sluggish and annoying. This is the unreal engine, so i have no idea how they managed to screw this up.

7.0 Replay
The online co-op is good to go for 2 or 3 times around. It’s only 6hrs long in story mode. The multiplayer only has a few modes. In versus, there are only a few maps. I mean very few(4 I think). There are 3 game modes: Extraction, Bounties and Warzones. Good news though, they are promising download content support in the future. That will make me hang on to this, because this is a fun co-op game, and the versus game is fun, not mind blowing, but fun still once you get the hang of them.

7.4 Total Score.
(out of 10 / not an average)

60 bucks is steep for this title. I think it should only cost 49 because it is so short, and the online maps are anemic at best. If this game was 49 dollars, I would of scored it a 7.8, if it had more maps and modes online, + cheaper price, i would of given it an 8.2. As it is, it gets a 7.4. Ea has made another game that I actually paid for. Amazing. They are still making some decent games. I love this because I absolutely love online CO-OP games. Back in the day, fro and I would play descent, quake, rise of the triad,e, and a whole bunch of shooters co-op over the modem. This was the best times i ever had playing multiplayer games. But during the playstation era of gaming, this has long since been forgotten until now. For that, this gets a big thumbs up from me. Because I love co-op games. This game has a few problems. Once you get the hang of it, it is fun. The game goes a long way to really make it feel social and like you really need your partner. Go buy it now if you like co-op games to play with your friends. If you only like single player fps, rent it, and see if you like it first. You might hate it. Click here to buy Army Of Two for Playstation 3.

Music Listened to while writing this review: Ministry - Animositisomnia & Dark Side Of The Spoon.

Fun, Fun, Fun, Hard Hard Hard. Ever play the pc flash game “TOWER DEFENCE”? Well this is it, repackaged and better looking. This is a simple game, but required a lot of thinking and strategic placements of your armaments. There is a path, that leads to your hut, you have little creatures you must protect in your village. Waves of monsters come in through the paths. You must build canons, arrow stations, fire stations etc to shoot all incoming enemies who will eat your tribe if you should fail. This game is like crack. It starts off really easy, but by the end, you will be pulling your hair out. It pays off to win the special missions to get new abilities, they are crucial when you start playing the harder levels. It is also important to collect all the money and gems the monsters drop so you can upgrade your weapons.

This game has two player co-op but unfortunately it is not online co-op. But this is a lot of fun with two people playing. My only complaint is that you cannot save your game mid level, this would help so much, it gets old to kick ass on a map and then at the end, one monster gets through and makes you start all over.. Yo get 20 maps with this game. Very cool. The game also supports remote play with psp over the network via wifi, meaning, you can be far away from the ps3, if the ps3 is on a network you can play it via wifi on the psp. IT WORKS GREAT!

5.0 Presentation
There isn’t much presentation. very simple game.

7.0 Visuals
It looks better than tower defence on the pc, but really, the graphics could of been better or at least in 3d.

7.0 Audio
This sounds like an nintendo game. Average sound.

8.0 Game Mechanics
This is where the game gets fun, running around collecting gold and building and upgrading things.

9.0 Replay
This is just a fun game to waste time with. Even if you beat a level, it’s still fun to play again.

7.9 Total Score.
(out of 10 / not an average)

This game is available as a download on the playstation network, you have to be connected to the internet and have a playstation network account to buy this game. I recommend this to people who like simple god games that are strategic.

Music Listened to while writing this review: Death In June - Abandoned Tracks.

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2: Don’t laugh. But this was one of the first games that made me even pay attention to the next gen systems when they launched. This alone was one of the only reasons I was even considering an xbox 360. I actually bought a 360 on a whim. Took it home and did a bunch of research, it was pre hdmi 360, any way after I did a bunch of reading and saw that 40% of them were red ring of death. I took it back to the store un-opened, I am to poor to play russian roulette with a 500 dollar console. The damn thing has to just work when you pay that much. Any how. I got my ps3 on accident, I was not sure what console to get. I knew the ps3 was built well, but back then, all the press was doubting the ps3 and ripping on it left and right. I bought the ps3 from a guy who gave up on it. Said it was a doomed console and he didn’t like the games. 2 controllers, component cable, resistance, and motor storm. all for 350, and yes that included the ps3, and this was before the price dropped. So I got my ps3 from some dummy for the price of a new 360 with all the extras. (LOL, now the ps3 has sold to 10.5 million faster than the 360 did, and the new games rock, and the ps3 games are consistently better, not as many stinkers, 360 has so many shit games its not even funny) Ok back to the game. This was the first game I bought for my ps3, and even by todays standards this is still a solid game. The graphics are good, the cover system rocks, the satellite stuff, the helicopter levels, all of it plays great. This has the stop and pop feel of gears of war, even before gears of war came out.

This game is a strategic over the shoulder shooter. You have to command your team. You will have to blow targets up. You will have to use your brain, you cannot act like rambo and storm into a place and win. You will have to split your team up some times, and hit stuff from many different angles in order to complete certain objectives. The drone is a over head spy satellite that is very helpful in determining your path forward. The comrade AI is pretty shitty, that doesn’t hurt the game that bad though. The only thing they do well is take your orders. So you have to pay attention to them a lot. You can tackle objectives a number of different ways, the choices are up to you. That is another thing that really sets this game apart from many others. This game is fun, and when it came out, it really was the best shooter on the market. Things have changed now. The multiplayer is lame. The stop and pop is taken out, you cannot lean against the walls. That is what makes this game great to begin with. So, once they took that out in multiplayer it really ruined the experience for me.

8.0 Presentation
The way the story is told is well done. The menus look nice. Setting up the options is no problem.

8.8 Visuals
This game came out a long time ago. It doesn’t even look dated at all. In fact it looks brilliant still. Some frame rate hiccups here and there, but it does not interfere with the controls so no big deal.

9.0 Audio
The music, and sound fx are amazing. This game gets really intense on some levels, and the sound backs it up 100%.

8.0 Game Mechanics
This game controls a little slow. If you love to snipe, it’s perfect. The zoom is great. This feels a lot more clunky and realistic. That is one of it’s charms. It is very realistic.

6.5 Replay
The single player is short, and only about 7 to 8 hours long. This is bad. Because the single player is great. You might play it through 2 times. I recommend renting this. The multiplayer is super weak because they took out the cover system in that mode.

7.8 Total Score.
(out of 10 / not an average)

I really hate the Tom Clancy stories. All this yankee yahoo bullshit. American hero BS. It really feels like lame propaganda. Sure this one takes place in mexico mostly, and is laughable, well, the story that is. I recommend this only to the hard core shooter fans out there. If you have just gotten a ps3, and have beat all the new games out on the market, and are waiting for haze and metal gear, check this out to tide you over until some of the new stuff hits the shelves. You should be able to find this used at a game store or go buy it new: Click here to buy GRAW2 for PS3, only 40 bucks.

Music Listened to while writing this review: Death In June - The World That Summer.

Usually, I hate racing games but ages ago, when I first saw burnout(the original) I was blown away by the crashes and fast pace arcade feel of the game. This is not a simulator like Grand Turismo. This is pure arcade style racing, and you do not need to be great at racing games to pick this up and enjoy it. Paradise City is a huge step up from it’s predecessors. Online play, and an open ended world make this a truly amazing experience. I love how you just drive around and each stoplight in almost any intersection on the map is an event, and to trigger the event you slow down and hit the brake and gas at the same time, then it loads a racing event, and off you go. There are only 120 events in the game, and you will be re racing many events over and over during the duration of the game(this didn’t put me off one bit, there is more than enough variety in the race types). You earn cars as you upgrade your drivers license. When you win certain events the game will tell you about a new car that will be driving around at random, and if you can take it out(make it crash) it will be added to your garage which is held at one of many junk yards around the city(where you can change the vehicles your driving). There are repair shops and paint shops you can drive through to fix your car or give you boost, and during races these are life savers. The graphics are amazing, and this game runs at 60 frames per second even with a full race going and tons of cars everywhere.

The city is very well designed and thought out. The map is big, I mean big like grand theft auto big(not quite that big but close). Everything is seamless, there are shortcuts, ramps, and jumps all over the place. Lots of hidden things to discover. The sense of speed in this game is unreal. You really feel like you are flying down the road at 180 miles per hour. The one thing that has let me down is the CRASH MODE, now called SHOWTIME. In the old burnout games you could load different crash courses, and you had to try and get the most points per crash level. Now, crash mode can be activated at any time by hitting r1 and l1 at the same time. This takes some of the fun out of it. It is too easy to just flip down the road endlessly. In the old one, there were objects you could touch to make you explode extra, or multiply your score etc, all that is gone and each event was set up like a crash puzzle, gone. So a big Thumbs down on the crash mode. It’s still fun, but not like it used to be. I hope they add a better crash mode via a download update to the game. That would really make me happy. The other racing modes are still here in all their glory. Standard race(title says it all). Marked Man(you have to race to the end while other cars try to take you out, get taken down 3 times and you lose). Burning Rout(these are car class specific, and you have to beat the allotted time, if you do, the car you are racing will be upgraded). Road Rage(take down as many cars as you can in the allotted time). Stunt Run(rack up stunt points off ramps, crashes, barrel rolls, drifts, etc).

To win races, the game forces you to be aggressive and take down other cars. When you successfully take out another race driver in an event, your boost meter is filled up so you can speed up. This is crucial to winning races. There are many awards in the game, for crashing through all the billboards, super jumps etc. There are car types as well. Stunt Cars(will do barrel rolls easier), Race Cars(with a an annoying boost that has to be used all at once), Aggression Cars(can take a lot of punishment but don’t turn as well usually). There are about 75 cars, but include upgrades to that list(meaning when you win a burning route and your car is upgraded, even though it looks the same, the upgrade counts it as a new car) So that number is kind of cut in half.

Multiplayer is great, you just tap right on the d-pad to go into the online menu where you can select the type of play, invite friends to race events, or go into free roam mode online(there are a ton of multiplayer events). Also, if you have a usb cam or a playstation eye, the game will photo you for your drivers license and also take pictures of you losing and showing it to your competitors. This can be really funny. So what are the downsides to the game over all. DJ ATOMICA! MOST ANNOYING F$%! EVER IN A GAME(you cannot turn him off either). Since the world is open ended you run into that annoying grand theft auto thing. If you fail a race, you have to drive all the way back to the beginning. So you end up driving around a lot just to get to events or restart races and that gets a little old. But I find this is the type of game to just play in 1 or 2 hour spurts then put it down. If you play it for 10 hours straight, the driving around to restart and find new events really gets on your nerves. What makes up for this? The crashes. When you are going really fast, and your slam into a brick wall, it’s amazing, It goes into this camera view and into slow motion, then what you see and hear is super slow motion violence. The windows break, the car gets crunched up, and the sound fx of the glass breaking and metal bending is absolutely visceral. You have to see this. You can spend hours, I mean like 100+ hours playing this game unlocking all the cars, finding all the hidden stuff, short cuts, and ramps.

The sound track is mostly super annoying. There were a few good classic songs, I liked the junkie xl cover of siouxsie’s City’s In Dust. Adam ant’s Stand and Deliver is great fun. But man, rusty cage again? I am hearing some of the same songs I heard on road rash on the 3dO. WTF. Not to mention that most of that new rock shit just plain sucks major ass. If they got some good songs from ladytron, astral projection, the prodigy, new young pony club, blondie, that would of helped a lot. They did a bad job on the soundtrack in my opinion. A lot of the songs do not match the pace and feel of the game. They need to hire me to do this for them. Seriously. They have all that money, and this was the best they could come up with? At least the sound track did allowed me to discover the LCD Soundsystem, even though they picked the wrong track from that band, one of their worst tracks.. HIRE ME EA. I can make your sound tracks better! LOL.

9.0 Presentation
Everything is great with the exception of DJ ATOMICA! The way you go about the city and the online play is very well done.

9.3 Visuals
60 frames per second, killer looking city, cars. but no humans, how sad.

9.0 Audio
The soundtrack is ok, you have to turn off a lot of the super cheesy pop crap though. The sound fx and crashes are amazing. DJ ATOMICA SHOULD ROT IN HELL! No custom sound track, lame.

9.2 Game Mechanics
The controls are perfect for a arcade racing game. Each car is slightly different, and that makes for varied racing experience. Very well done.

9.5 Replay
So much stuff to find, and unlock. Awards. 100+ hours of game play easily.

9.1 Total Score.
(out of 10 / not an average)

I had to doc a few points off the over all score because of DJ ATOMICA, showtime being a let down compared to crash mode, oh and Avril’s “Girlfriend” track, who ever thought to include this in a racing game should be tied up and whipped, 50 lashes, HOW DARE YOU! It’s a good thing you can turn off songs. I had to turn off most of them! LAME! No custom sound track on the ps3 version. Xbox 360 users can use their own music, the only thing that the xbox version does better. PS3 version runs faster, looks better, and was the lead platform on development. This is great. Go buy it Click here to buy Burnout: Paradise City for the Playstation 3.

Music Listened to while writing this review: Death In June - Abandoned Tracks.

Generally I am not a fan of platformers. Some how with all the hype about this game I decided to pick it up over the holidays. Wow. It’s not as great as it’s hyped to be, but maybe that is because I generally do not like these kind of games. But for some reason, I got sucked in. The story is very pixar influenced. Speaking of which, that is one of the things that makes this game so impressive. The in game rendering engine is used for all the cut scenes. The game itself looks very very close to a pixar film on DVD. But some of the jagged edges kind of degrade the effect of it all and make it look a little less spectacular than a pixar movie. Well, enough on that. What makes this game fun? Well it has the smash boxes and grab bolts(treasure) or crystals stuff you expect from any rpg. Then we have the Weapon system which is totally upgradable along the way adding yet another RPG kind of element to the game. It is an over the shoulder shoot as well and a platformer. That is why it shines, It is a shooter with RPG elements, a great story like any good RPG, and platform style game play on top. It pulls it off very well.

Everyone always brags about the weapons in Insomniac games. Resistance fall of man showed me a taste. This game delivers here as well, one of the weapons is a disco ball that makes all the enemies on the screen dance, this is hilarious. Omniwrench is what you start out with by default, he uses this tool to turn bolts in the game to solve puzzles. Buzz Blades are a gun that shoots out circular saw blades, Tornado Launcher fires tornados that you conrol and move with the sixaxis tilt controls. Swingshot is a grappling hook that allows you to swing. Robowings lets you fly using the sixaxis tilt controls. Geo-Laser will cut new paths in weakened walls. Groovitron is a disco ball that forces all the bad guys to dance. Mr Zurkon is a robot that shoots stuff along side you. That is just a small taste of the weapons in the game. There are more advanced rock launchers and web guns later in the game that kick ASS! I used the Laser Whip through most of the beginning levels.

I said it was over hyped, yes it is in a way. But no matter what it is still a AAA title that should sell systems. Just look at the screen shots. They look amazing. Very close to pixar movies. No other game even comes close in that regard. There are levels where you play as Clank, which I found to be more puzzle oriented, and probably the most boring part of the game for me. But the good thing about the levels are that they are big but not to big. Just big and long enough to make you try again and again till you beat it. I normally don’t cover family oriented games on this site, but I made an exception for this because of how well it was done. This game delivers about 15 to 17 hours of game play. There is no multiplayer in a game like this who cares though. There are plenty of hidden places to explore and try and find the ultimate weapon thing that you can collect parts for. don’t remember the specifics, but there is a lot to come back for after you beat it if you are into that kind of thing.

Despite it’s cute nature that is geared more for kids, I did actually end up liking most of the characters in the game. I actually was laughing during parts of the story. Not many cute things do that me, well some anime does, but rarely. I did really enjoy the part of the game where you slide on the rails. The game flow was great, there is even some spaceship shooting levels where you fly around and shoot in the ship, and as clank you play gunner. There are so many styles of game play that come in and out of the levels and stories. It is so well done, you don’t even notice it, it feels natural even when the controls totally change during the different styles of game play. Not only that, Robotic space pirates are cool. I really liked the sixaxis tilt control on the mini puzzles for opening doors later in the game, you tilt the circuit board with a ball on it to bridge the circuits before the electricity gets to the points that need to be bridged. This was challenging and fun. There is a lot of fun in this game, from the story to the game play. This is worth every cent and certainly one of the best games on the Playstation 3 platform. This is why sony rules. They have a style of game for every type of gammer that is AAA and exclusive to the ps3. This is one of those.

9.5 Presentation
Everything is well set up, it is complicated, but it is not hard to figure out and really rewarding when you do. To hell with mario, i’d rather play this. The acting is great, the story telling is good.

9.5 Visuals
The best looking cartoon style game on the Playstation 3. Almost as good as a pixar movie, now that is really saying something.

9.7 Audio
I love the music, especially the cheesy disco! The voice acting is superb. The sound fx and explosions and destruction really sound great, so far this is the best audio i have heard in a Playstation 3 game.

9.8 Game Mechanics
Amazing, it does everything spot on. Every kind of game style you change to controls flawlessly and really is responsive, even the sixaxis controls ROCK in this game!

7.9 Replay
So many kinds of game play that is challenging and fun, you will come back again and again.

9.7 Total Score.
(out of 10 / not an average)

Ok I lied, this game lives up to the hype, this is the second best game of the year next to Uncharted. If you have a Playstation 3, even if you don’t like platformers, give this a chance, I did and it won me over. I have never even played a ratchet game, not even on the ps2, if all the games are this good in the game play department, I am glad I have a 60gb ps3, I’m going to go buy the ps2 Ratchet & Clank games now. This is great. Go buy it Click here to buy Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction for the Playstation 3.

Music Listened to while writing this review: Def Leppard - Pyromania.