Perhaps I´m holding this generation to an impossible standard after the PS2 and Xbox brought more awesome than most mere mortals could handle, but I just haven’t been impressed with much of anything that the Wii, 360 and PS3 have brought to the table. And the first half of this year hasn’t done much to change my mind. Has everything been bad? Absolutely not. But have enough games pushed the boundaries and showed off that next generation feel? No.

Sure, I’ve loved my Guitar Hero sequels, and I love my MLB ‘08: The Show, but these are titles I could just as easily be playing on a 100 dollar PS2, not a 400 dollar piece of hardware. They’re not pushing enough technically to validate my next generation hardware. And sure, the last generation started off slow, but once Red Faction hit in early 2001, it seemed like I was bombarded with non-stop excellence for four years. However, with this generation, we’re going on our third year, and the only console-exclusive title that wowed me was Gears of War for the 360. One great exclusive title. Three years. Yikes.

Now there’s already commotion for the new systems. But how about we tap the potential of these systems before we worry about shelling out several more Benjamins?

Ryan’s Playstation 2 died this past week. The cause of death remains unknown pending an autopsy, but it’s speculated that internal failure caused by an accumulation of dust is the main factor of its untimely demise. It was seven years old. Ryan’s PS2 is survived by a collection of 32 titles, two sibling PS2’s and one significant other, an HDD. Ryan’s PS2 described his life partner as “always being a pain in his ass.”

I’m going to miss that big, black box of love. I was only 15-years-old when the PS2 launched in October of 2000, so as you can imagine, it was a little tough scrounging together almost 1,000 dollars to splurge on the launch.

Was it completely necessary to spend that much?

Absolutely.

It was more money than I had ever seen in my life (the bills were all jammed in my wallet) and I felt like a junior drug dealer when I handed the wad over to my dad on the day of launch.

I had school, so I had to rely on an outside source to punch and maim their way to the front of the line at Gamestop to snag my system.

The anxiety of sitting through class, wondering if my father had succeeded, was near unbearable. I’ll never forget coming home that afternoon and finding a blue box on the table and a bag of assorted goodness.

A relationship was forged that day, a relationship that lasted seven years and blossomed each time I put in something new: from the original Timesplitters, to Red Faction, to SOCOM 2, to Ratchet and Clank and so on and so forth.

Add to the fact this new generation has been a big dud (the Wii is over-hyped garbage, the PS3 is a 400 dollar paperweight and the 360 has a great lineup of mildly superior ports and non-exclusives, but not much else, and it makes the loss of this beloved friend all the more tough to swallow.

But I’m not going to be bitter about this loss. The PS2 and I had a good run together that lasted seven great years. It’s hard to believe anything will come close to matching the experience we had together, but my heart is always open for another beloved console. Until that happens, though, PS2 will always be my numero uno.

Goodbye, old friend.

I’ll be the first to admit I’m ignorant when it comes to storylines that deal with the sciences, resonance cascades (which I do know are fictional) or anything technical. My fortes are writing, sex and eating chicken, and as I’m sure you might be able to tell, I’m not too great at those things either. However, despite my disdain for all things involving critical thinking and intellect, I was deeply engrossed in the world of Half-Life 2. I’ll be bold and say it has one of the most gripping video game storylines of the new century. The reason I was so caught up in the goings-on of the HL2 world, despite some of the story’s deeper scientific hullabaloo, had to do with the fact you were always Gordon Freeman.

The game, unlike most of its peers, never physically took you out of that role, and the character never spoke for you. Your actions, in a limited sense, determined the outcome around you. It didn’t matter if you were Chris from Newark or Shaquita from Portland, while playing Half-Life 2, you were Gordon Freeman, and Gordon Freeman was you.

The fact that you look through the eyes of the character for some games (all first-person shooters, obviously) is the biggest reason games are more immersive than movies, in my opinion. While watching a movie, it’s incredibly rare that you ever feel like you’re the main character. You’re always on the outside. You’re always observing. But when you’re always in the role of the main character, it’s easier to feel the emotion a game is trying to purvey.

When the resistance fighters in Half-Life would look up to me, or congratulate me for violently dismembering a battalion of Combine soldiers, I felt good about myself. I felt like they were congratulating me, and not some fictitious assortment of pixels. When Alyx Vance, Gordon’s main love interest, gave me a good old fashioned eye-rogering, I was immediately compelled to find the nearest motel room. And so on and so forth.

But despite these simple guidelines in the narrative, which must have saved a Valve a pretty penny on production costs, the trend in video gaming appears to be going in the opposite direction. As more and more Hollywood big shot writers and voice actors hop aboard the industry’s gravy train, more often than not, we’re being treated to cinema quality cutscenes with movie-like camera shots and angles. Game makers are trying their damndest to make a product that resembles, or trumps, the emotion of a great movie.

They’re doing this by imitating movies, but is that really the right way to go about it? While imitating movies is fine for a handful of games that have narrative experiences on par with the God of War franchise, I’m not exactly sure gamers want to be taken out of the role they were meant to play. I can’t speak for everyone, but I doubt I’m alone in wanting my character to be an extension of me. A pre-determined personality I have to babysit from point a to point b isn’t immersive, it’s a poor man’s movie with only a little bit more interaction. While Half-Life 2 is a step in the right direction, it’s my hope more developers take it as a cue to redirect their storytelling efforts. I guarantee the first game that ever makes me shed a tear will be a game where I’m looking through the tearful eyes of the main protagonist.

BioShock is overrated.

Now, before you reach for my head to uncomfortably detach it from my body, let me explain.

BioShock isn’t a bad game. Not by any standard. It’s just not the second coming of first-person shooters reviewers all over the world are proclaiming it to be. And not to take anything away from Andrew Clark’s extremely well written review (the best I’ve read on Avault), but BioShock doesn’t deserve anything higher than a 75 percent.

Everything about this game has received incredibly high praise. The environments, the combat, the story…. everyone loves BioShock enough it wouldn’t be surprising to hear they sleep with it.

So I must’ve played a different game.

The environments were startling when I first booted it up. However, once I got deeper and deeper, I realized I was playing through rooms with the same two color palettes: Neon light and black.

In fact, it was impossible for me to navigate through an area without checking the map every 10 minutes to see where I was. Everything in a level looks almost exactly identical. It looked like a hurricane had torn through every square inch of Rapture…. and then some delinquent followed up the hurricane by throwing s*** all over the place. Water pouring onto the tiles? Check. Blood splatters? Check. Crates? Check. Crazed sociopaths looking to gut you with fish hooks? Check.

Just about every room has a “splicer.” All of these splicers, despite the designations of “thuggish,” “lead,” “boring” et al, look the same. Of course, not like it really matters since 99 percent of BioShock takes place in the dark and you can’t see s*** anyways.

Other enemies you’ll encounter include security turrets (flying and stationary), bosses with unrealistic amounts of health and the enemies everyone craps in their cereal over, Big Daddies.

The Big Daddy was incredibly formidable the first time I laid eyes upon one. However, that formidable presence was quickly diminished once I realized he wouldn’t attack me unless I provoked him. Yawn.

There’s something about being able to stand next to an enemy swapping ammo types for several minutes that blows the tension of the situation out the window. Which brings me to my next point….

What the hell is with all of the micromanagement? Not only are we stuck digging through FPS clichés like ammo boxes and crates, but we’re bombarded with so much garbage we can pick up, the game turns into nothing more than a glorified fetch quest.

Anything you could possibly imagine having to pick up in an FPS is present, along with dozens of other unnecessary objects. Health packs were proved obsolete in 2001 by Halo; health should recharge over time. Eve hypos recharge your plasmid juice, which should also recharge over time. There are also three different types of ammo for almost every weapon, and a ton of other crap that didn’t belong in the game.

What’s the point of great atmosphere, if the game is going to force you into menus every 30 seconds? BioShock kills its own pacing.

Of course, none of this matters, because even on the hardest difficulty, the game is a cake walk. But, you figure as soon as you pass up a room full of useless crap, you’ll run into a hard part where that stuff might be necessary and you’ll have to repeat the process.

Sadly, nothing in BioShock is worth repeating.