Time flies like an airborne Nike Bellic, shot skyward through the atmosphere after ramming his PCJ 600 headlong into an oncoming LCPD cruiser. We’re already halfway through 2008, and while the end of the year holds some big titles like Spore, Gears of War 2 and Fable 2, we’ve already seen some GOTY contenders hit the market. Here are a few of my favorites so far, and a quick view of the rest of 2008:

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Wrapping up my three part series recounting my reactions to the E3 2008 Press Conference offered up by the Big Three (Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony), I present the final installment.

For those who have followed along, I posted my thoughts on Microsoft’s shindig first, then came my reaction to Nintendo, leaving Sony. While all three companies devoted time to elements outside of their core consoles (in particular, Nintendo covered their DS handheld and Sony the PSP), I’ve catered my comments towards the consoles. (Uh oh! Here comes my 10th grade English teacher – a.k.a. the alliteration police).

Without further adieu, I present the top five things I learned from Sony’s E3 press conference:

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Recently, I posted my reactions to Microsoft’s opening salvo in the 2008 Electronic Entertainment Expo. As promised, I’ve returned with my reactions on the other company’s press conferences.

Basically, I’m working these things in order. MS went first, so they got top billing. Nintendo followed with their conference on Tuesday morning and Sony closed out the keynote addresses later that afternoon.

Without further adieu, here are the top five things I learned from Nintendo’s E3 press conference:

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Here are The Top 5 Things I Learned from Microsoft’s E3 2008 Press Conference:

5. Those who play together…: Online multiplayer used to be a developer’s number one bullet point. If you shipped a title without it, the professional game critics immediately dropped a couple points from your score, even if the game design didn’t necessarily warrant the feature. Nowadays, online multiplayer is old hat and developers have become hip to the fact that folks tend to gravitate to one or two online games and ignore the rest (meaning titles like Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 reap heavy rotation long after their single-player campaigns have exhausted). That’s not to say developers won’t try and lure gamers over to their unique brand of fragfests, but for the most part, gamers know which series they’ll pledge their allegiance to.

Me — I’ve sort of had my fill on the pure multiplayer melee madness. I’ll dip my toes in the waters, but I’m just not hardcore enough to know whether the kids think I’m kewl or a n00b they can pwn. That said, I do like gaming alongside my buddies — with the ability to chat away on MS proprietary voice channels. Which is why I am thrilled at Microsoft’s new marching orders to offer up the online co-op campaign experience in a number of their titles.

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So, a good friend of mine accidentally gets an Xbox 360. I say “accidentally” because he received it as a gift. If he had his say so, he probably would’ve gotten a new PC; however, he’s pleased with his gift because he has Call of Duty 4, which keeps him more than occupied. Of course, the sad part is that my PC version and his Xbox version won’t play together online, so we’re still stuck either playing at my house on the PC or at his house on the Xbox, either of which devolves into drinks, telling goofy stories and wondering why we both keep getting killed. It also leads to the occasional rant about why the PC and Xbox version of the game aren’t compatible and how this should be patched/fixed/updated, despite the fact that we’re probably members of a group of gamers comprising one-half of one percent of the Call of Duty population.

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I love the last four words spoken in Iron Man.

Before I go further, I’ll stop and allow anyone who hasn’t seen the film (and has a desire to do so) to jump off the bus. The last thing I want to do with this Blog is turn it into a spoiler site. 

Now that they’re gone, I’ll pick right back up where I left off – specifically, at the very moment Iron Man leaves off. 

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Anyone following Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’s development cycle knows that the property landed before a number of top Hollywood scribes before Spielberg’s go-to guy, David Koepp (Spider-Man), took a hack.

Following the film’s release, the Internet community commenced their big fat geek meddling by laying the blame for all the goofy detours the film took at King George Lucas’ feet. Notably, they took issue with Mutt’s Tarzan act as well as Indy’s A-Bomb adventure in a Frigidaire. (Forget the fact that he survived the blast – how the hell did he open the door from the inside?)

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According to scorehero.com, on June 3, 2008, a Guitar Hero III player using the screen name iamchris4life completed what is claimed to be the first documented FC of “Through the Fire and Flames” on Expert.  For those unfamiliar with GH3 lingo, this means that he successfully played all of the notes in the song and maintained an average score multiplier of 4x on the incredibly demanding song by the British metal band Dragonforce.  This is amazing news for GH players, to be sure, but I mention it because of the surprising amount of hate being slung his way by so-called “real musicians” on gaming website message boards.
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No doubt the news that Jack Thompson has been censured by a Florida Court for 27 Bar rule violations will be greeted with a rousing chorus of acclaim by the gaming community. That’s to be expected, as he has been no friend to our community. But we shouldn’t get too excited just yet, as the fight isn’t quite over. While the judge’s decision has been made public, Florida’s Supreme Court still gets their say in the matter before Thompson actually loses the ability to practice law for up to ten years. Given his antics at the latest hearing, not to mention previous sanctions for inappropriate conduct, I suspect the Florida Supreme Court will revoke his ability to practice law.

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Damn you, James Perry Jr.  Damn you to the Eighth Circle of Hell.

Jim is the man who hooked me on Guitar Hero III.  In the space of two hours, he transformed me from a mild-mannered PC gamer into a hopeless rock-and-roll slave.  And all because of a few minutes pushing buttons on a toy guitar.

Until about a month ago, the only reason I owned an Xbox 360 was because I had some Best Buy gift cards burning a hole in my pockets last year.  In the 12 months that I have owned the console, I might have spent a grand total of eight hours using it, mostly playing Jewel Quest and the first few levels of Gears of War and Lost Planet before the controller tied my fingers in knots.

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Before I became a game addict, I was (and still am) a movieholic; by my own count, I have seen 4,266 different movies in theatres since January of 1983.  In that time, I’ve seen lots of quirky personalities in the movie business, but few have sparked the level of vitriol from fans than the gaming industry’s favorite punching bag, director Uwe Boll.  And Boll has fought back, literally; several years ago he challenged members of the gaming press to actual boxing matches.  Also, in a YouTube video response to the recent Internet petition circulating to stop him from making more movies, Boll takes shots at Michael Bay and George Clooney and declares himself to be “the only genius in the whole f***ing business.”
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A petition demanding that director Uwe Boll stop making movies has been making its way around the Internet . It’s been in circulation for a few weeks now and even managed to get the director’s attention. Boll has stated that if the petition reaches 1,000,000 signatures, he’ll retire from the film business.

A pro-Boll petition is also floating around online, but those people are dumbasses. Anyone who claims to like an Uwe Boll flick is either a liar or saw the movie while on drugs. (Amazing drugs, not regular drugs. BloodRayne still sucked on regular drugs.) I’d rather get kicked in the nuts by a kangaroo wearing hiking boots than sit through House of the Dead again.

Uwe Boll’s movies suck, and as much as I’d like to see him quit, I know he never will. This petition could get one hundred million signatures and Boll would just laugh at all the people who know his name.

Postal comes out in theaters on May 23, the same day as the new Indiana Jones movie.

It was an ordinary day. I kissed my hubbie good-bye, shipped my youngest off to school, started my eldest on her Algebra and Biology lessons, and then began my commute to work. I stopped off for coffee in the kitchen, and then dashed into the office (5 feet away) to check on my mail and get my work in order for the day. My assignment for the day: spend 8 hours with my Xbox and put together a review for the site. I put in the new disk, and was greeted with GRIIIND…WHIIIIR…followed by what I’ve been told is the “red ring of death.”

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So it finally happened a little while ago. My computer, a top of the line custom built rig from four years ago, finally went to the great computer desk in the sky. One too many cords being unplugged and chewed on, and one too many things being dropped on the tower resulted in the death of my computer. I’ll mourn that machine for a long time……….

Okay, mourning time is over.

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Those familiar with my debacle with NetGear Wireless Garbage will no doubt remember the ultimate cause of that technological fiasco and my subsequent invective of discontent: my cat, Iago. Despite his fascination with destroying all cords, all the time, I still love him, much as a parent can love a child who destroys hundreds of dollars in household goods. But I’m not blind to his terrorism of electronic components. He is, after all, the reason for wireless networking, wireless keyboards and wireless mice. If someone would invent a cheap way to rig a monitor as wireless, I’d do that too, although he has some difficulty chewing the monitor cable; it’s a bit thick for his jaws.

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