So it’s a great big awesome holiday weekend for us Americanos, and I know that I for one will be hitting up the gaming in a major way. I really don’t get a whole lot of free time these days, and I’m really looking forward to playing my fill of some very good games.

Right now I’m working my way through Fight Night Round 4, X-Men Origins: Wolverine (which is surprisingly very fun), Star Ocean and hopefully some Metal Gear Solid via PSN. In particular Wolverine has really shocked me with just how good it is. It’s the exact kind of Wolverine game that should have been made years ago, and proof that licensed games are getting better and better as gaming has been taken more seriously as a medium.

So what about you guys? What are you playing this weekend?

One of the games that impressed me the most from E3 that I truly didn’t expect was Splinter Cell: Conviction. The last couple of times we saw this game (years ago), it didn’t seem to have a whole lot going for it, but after some revamping and retooling, the game seems to be getting along just swimmingly. Here’s a new behind the scenes video that shows off the mindset that went behind the game’s attractive new design, and some of the new gameplay elements.

Who else thinks this game looks awesome?

So over the weekend, I played and finished the Ghostbusters video game. Overall, it wasn’t the best game ever, but it certainly had its decent portions. And heck, it was essentially Ghostbusters 3, so how can you not love it? I’ve been waiting years for more Ghostbusters content, and this provided it.

Anywho, Anthony played the game on easy, so he wouldn’t understand, but one of the game’s biggest issues for me was its “cheap death” mechanic, where it would constantly kill you just out of the blue and with no real way to prevent it. There’s not a very friendly dodge function in the game, so really you just run around and circles and take punishment from bad guys and hope to not get whacked.

Well, one particular part of the game proved to be one of the hardest things I’ve done in a video game. And it kind of sucked.

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Over the last month or so some new games have started to hit that I’ve been interested in, but I can’t seem to nail down whether or not I want to play them because of some mixed reviews. The main games in question are Red Faction: Guerrilla, Prototype and InFamous.

The main complaint about Red Faction is that it’s fun to destroy things, but the game is too red. This is a funny complaint considering the game takes place on, I dunno, Mars. The quintessential Red Planet. In addition, I’ve heard that Prototype is fun but nothing special, with similar digs leveled against InFamous as well.

So who’s played these games, and what do you think of them? Go!

I’m playing Star Ocean: The Last Hope right now, and it’s the first JRPG that I’ve played in a good long while. After playing some games like Fallout 3 and Mass Effect, it really feels childish and completely ridiculous in comparison, and really got me thinking a bit about the choices that designers sometimes make in games.

The reason for this is that while I’m overall enjoying the game, there are some things about it that really irritate me, and lead me to ask “why would they do that”. For instance, the game starts with a 30 minute battle tutorial followed by both a 20 minute cut scene and a 2 hour dungeon. How does that even make sense in terms of not boring the person playing it to tears? In addition, there are some minor character and script issues that bug me, such as the annoying item creation character and adding a six year old to the party that ends all her sentences in “kay?”.

Like I said, overall I’m having fun, but there are some simple things that keep this game from being great. What’s the last game that you’ve played that you felt that way about? Solid mechanics, but if it wasn’t for one or two things, you would have loved it? Go!

Microsoft has to be pretty pleased with themselves after E3, seeing as how Project Natal seemed to be the talk of the show. While the tech stuff they showed off looked impressive, it’s yet to really get gamers on board with it completely. Well, last night, Jimmy Fallon, host of Late Night, invited some XBox dudes to demo Project Natal in front of a live audience.

I have to admit, even though the dodgeball/break-out game looked a bit strange and un-coordinated, the driving bit at the end actually looks kind of fun. We’ll see how the tech continues to develop. What do you guys think?

Ok, that post title sounded much more dirty than I intended it to. Oh well. Anywho, every now and then there’s that game that comes along and surprises us with how fun it is. This isn’t exactly extraordinary, however, sometimes it’s a game that you might not be too particularly fond of admitting that you like.

50 Cent: Blood on the Sand has been that game for me this weekend. I know, I know, but hear me out. After a few weeks of hearing that this ridiculous game was actually kind of fun, I had to satisfy my curiosity and check it out, and lo and behold, it really is an enjoyable game. Ridiculous plot aside (50 Cent is hunting down Iraqi gangsters to find a diamond studded skull- yes, in Iraq- and yes, seriously), the game has some refreshing mechanics and plays like an arcade version of Gears of War. I was surprised by just how much I’ve been getting into it. I ended up playing it for about four hours yesterday.

So what about you guys? Have you ever had that guilty pleasure game that you weren’t too excited to come clean about to others? Go!

As I’ve said before in other places, E3 really is the pinnacle of the gaming year. It’s a magical time where gamers get to find out what they can expect for the next year and a half or so, gaming-wise. We’re able to speculate, drool and generally get excited about all the things we love.

The week saw a lot of crazy things. There’s Project Natal from Microsoft which actually looks to show some promise despite my earlier misgivings about it. There’s also the Team Ninja Metroid and Final Fantasy XIV for the PS3. Halo: Reach was a pretty big announcement, as well. On top of that, we got to see some gameplay for things coming out soon, like Assassin’s Creed 2, Mass Effect 2 and Modern Warfare 2.

My favorite game of the show though was probably Uncharted 2 or Splinter Cell: Conviction. I wasn’t expecting much from the next Splinter Cell at all, but they’ve really overhauled the gameplay since the last time we saw the game, and for the better.

So what about you guys? What was the most impressive E3 thing you saw this week?

After Microsoft’s Shock and Awe campaign yesterday, I think we were all anxious to see if Sony would even show up for their 2-hour presentation today. Here are the highlights:

• Sony dude Jack Tretton opened with a joke about how nobody in the industry can keep secrets, a total reference to the leak of the PSP Go from the other day. I think it’s pretty classy that they can make fun of themselves like that.
• 364 new games coming to Sony systems this year, 35 of which are exclusive. Considering the dearth of PS3 games for a while, this is welcome news.
• Uncharted 2 Multiplayer beta goes live tonight. Single-player looks very impressive. Really seem to have meshed the shooting and platforming elements. Also, the graphics are incredible.
• Gameplay footage of MAG. 256 players in one battle. For so many players, it looked kind of lonely. Would have liked to have seen more action.
• Hannah Montana lilac colored PSP announcement for this Fall is met with cheers. I don’t know if that’s funny or scary.
• PSP Go! announced officially. Will not replace UMD or other PSPs. 16MB of memory. Can download from PSN with built in Wi-Fi. 50% smaller and 40% lighter than original PSP. The price will be $249.99, available on 10/01/09. Too rich for my blood.
• Gran Turismo for the PSP. Over 800 cars and 35 tracks. You can trade cars with your friends. Cool, but where is the PS3 version???
• Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker for the PSP. Kojima announced it himself. Set in the Seventies, 10 years after MGS 3. Might show the origin of Outer Heaven. Looks like a full on MGS game, with the possibility of 4 player co-op in the form of Snake clones.
• New Resident Evil for the PSP. Also, LittleBigPlanet, Monster Hunter, Motorstorm, Soul Caliber, Fat Princess, Guitar Hero and Star Wars: Battlefront.
• Final Fantasy VII on PSN TODAY! Also, over 50 PS1 classics by the end of the year.
• More content coming to Home. Meh.
• Video of various games, including DC Universe Online, an MMO and also a PS3 exclusive.
• Rockstar PS3 exclusive: Agent. Spies and assassins in the late 1970s. They claim this will have the same must-have value that GTA did. No footage shown.
• Assassin’s Creed 2 footage. Looks pretty cool, might have solved the problems of the first game. Out before Christmas along with the PSP version. PS3 version will have 6 exclusive weapons.
• More Final Fantasy XIII footage. Gorgeous, just like you would expect.
• Final Fantasy 14 in 2010 for PS3 ONLY! It’s an online game! Awesome footage! This is the megaton announcement!
• Motion control time: True 1:1 tracking. All of it was a tech demo, looks cool. Coming in 2010.
• LittleBigPlanet is getting Disney themes. That is kinda awesome.
• Mod Nation Racers announced. Part of the Play Create Share theme that Nintendo ripped off earlier. Drivers can be customized like in LittleBigPlanet. Think Mario Kart meets Sackboy. Custom tracks! That is pretty neat. Better than making Wario Ware games! The track builder seems easy to use as well, they built one on stage in just a few minutes.
• The new Team Ico game is called The Last Guardian. The trailer from last week was indeed leaked, but it doesn’t change that this game looks incredible. Interestingly enough, the leaked footage is about a year old apparently, and this stuff looks way better.
• God of War 3 will be the last game in the series, and it’s going to have some crazy brutal quick time kills. The ones on the centaur and the chimera are stinking insane. Creatures are going to get owned, for sure. The game drops March 2010.

Overall, a pretty solid showing with really no wtf moments to speak of. Not a whole lot of new stuff coming, but when you have this many exclusives coming over the next year, why do you need to drop a lot of new information?

What do you guys think? What’s the most exciting piece of Sony news?

Here are the big points of the big N’s press event today:

• Looks like those reports of a new Mario Wii game were right. However, they shocked everyone with a new Super Mario Bros. game – with 4 player co-op! Plays a lot like LittleBigPlanet from the looks of it. It will also be out by X-Mas!
• Wii Fit Plus is out in late 2009. Oh joy.
• Wii Sports Resort uses the new Wii Motion Plus for enhanced movement – isn’t this what the Wii was supposed to do to begin with? However, the sky diving looks cool, also there will be basketball and archery.
• Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 packaged with Wii Motion Plus. Neat.
• Red Steel 2 also comes packaged with Motion Plus and can only be played with the peripheral. Gameplay looks pretty sweet, and love the new art style.
• Square Enix announced Final Fantasy Crystal Bearers, a new open world RPG headed exclusively to the Wii. That’s what I’m talking about. The system sorely needs more RPG’s.
• A new DS Mario and Luigi RPG called Bowser’s Inside Story is coming at the end of the year. Those games are fun, but they really need to change the formula.
• Next, they teased everyone with a “legendary RPG announcement”. No, it’s not Zelda. Turns out it’s Golden Sun DS. Meh.
• Cop, a new DS game from Ubisoft, looks like a rip-off of Chinatown Wars, only it might be even better.
• Wario Ware DIY for the DS lets you design your own games. Could be cool, but due to Nintendo’s fear of the Internet, I can’t see this going anywhere.
• Facebook is coming to the DSi. That’s two systems now. You can upload your pictures of yourself with a squished head!
• Every presser is bound to have a wtf, and Nintendo unleashed one with the Wii Vitality Sensor. It’s a pulse reader that helps you relax? Seriously, they just showed a pic of Iwata in a recliner with his eyes closed and the thing on his finger. Wtf Nintendo. Games, please.
• Super Mario Galaxy 2! This one’s got Yoshi in it apparently. I have to say, that’s a pretty cool announcement. Any new 3D mario game is a total bonus. No date given, though.
• You know it’s bad when Reggie has to come out and say “I read the blogs, too”, and has to defend Nintendo’s hardcore-ism. After that, he showed off Sega’s Conduit, Dead Space: Extraction and Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles. Nothing too exciting here.
• Oh snap. A new Metroid game dubbed Other M is being made by Team Ninja, the Ninja Gaiden dudes. It’s a mature game with awesome third person action and platforming elements. Coming in 2010, and holy crap it actually looks cool. Maybe one of the best announcements at E3 to date.
• Kind of weird that Miyamoto didn’t make an appearance. I’m guessing that means we won’t be seeing Zelda until next year.

I have to admit, while most of that was a snoozer, the Project M reveal at the end was incredible. Check back throughout the day and these bullets will be updated with links to videos and screenshots.

What’s the coolest news from the Nintendo event? Discuss!

The Microsoft E3 press event has officially taken place. With it come a bevy of announcements, trailers, videos and more.

Here are the highlights:

• Modern Warfare 2 gameplay looks awesome.
• Splinter Cell Conviction coming Fall 2009. Sounds like they’ve added some new gameplay elements, mainly for the story.
• Final Fantasy XIII coming in Spring 2010, much earlier than projected.
• Left 4 Dead 2 Coming November 17th! Seems a little early, but I can dig it. New weapons, including chainsaws.
• Forza 3 is coming in October.
• Crackdown 2 trailer shown! This rules, it was one of my favorite games of this generation so far.
• Halo 3 ODST video looks sweet. They also highlighted a story-telling element: most of the game will be a mystery pieced together through flashbacks. Coming September 22nd.
• Bungie also shows a trailer for a new Halo game, Halo: Reach. Guess they lied when they said they were done with Halo, but I’m cool with it since Reach is such an awesome story. The book is incredible. Fall 2010.
• Last.fm is coming to XBL gold users at no additional cost. Listening to music is neat, but I’d rather not do it on my TV. Still though, not bad for a service I’m already paying for.
• Facebook and Twitter are coming to the XBox 360? Double no thanks. The world is over as we know it.
• Kojima sneaks onto stage to announce that the Metal Gear Solid franchise is coming to the 360. Kind of cool, but it’s a Raiden game. Which is not so cool. If you’re bringing MGS to the 360, bring the actual game, not some dumb Raiden extension. Guess sloppy seconds is better than nothing, though.
• Motion control coming to the 360. The final wtf? It’s not a controller. It’s a camera that translates your actual movements to the game. Sounds mega-lame. “Project Natal”. Lionhead even showed off a new game for it called Milo.

By the way, the links are to videos. So, which of these excites you most? Which is the stupidest? Go!

Yes. I’m going on the record. I’m apologizing to Treyarch. You see for the last year or so I’ve been on the bandwagon that Call of Duty: World at War wasn’t going to be very good, because it was made by Treyarch, and it was going to be set in World War II. I loved Call of Duty 4, so any departure from that game seemed to me to be a bad idea.

Well, I was wrong. I just had two epic 3 hour gaming sessions last night and this morning, and beat World at War. I have to say, that I was thoroughly impressed, and agree with almost all of Sean’s review of the game. I’d easily give the game, based on the campaign, a B or B+, even. It was great, and in particular the Russian/German levels were a joy to play, if a tad difficult towards the end.

So, does anyone else want to join me in apologizing to Treyarch?

So I imagine you guys are all aware of this little title called Killzone 2? Yeah, thought so. The 360 fanboys hate it already and the PS3 fanboys are ready to canonize it, so I thought I would take a look at it myself. Having read dozens of reviews of the game already, I had a good idea of what to expect and my main complaint was that the demo was really too short to make a firm judgment about anything. This preview will also answer some things I have seen pop up online regarding the demo and the game itself.

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Let it be known that I am a Halo fanboy. I know that may draw ire from some of you hardcore PC gamers, and even I am ashamed of it on some level, being also a Counter-Strike fanboy as well. Something about the atmosphere of Halo has always grabbed me, and its rich mythology did the job of sucking me in. You’re reading the words of a guy who has read the graphic novel, assorted comics, and several of the novels, here.

As many of you know, a demo for the game hit XBox Live just last week. So, how did this console RTS that has spent way too long in development hold up as of right now?

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Monday night was a weird night. After watching my beloved Tampa Bay Bucs get pounded by the Carolina Panthers, I noticed it was about midnight. I drove up the road to Blockbuster and purchased The Dark Knight and went home to watch it. I decided to check my email first, though, to see if there were any emails from Eddy telling me how great my posts are.

Alas, none from Eddy (probably busy playing Little Orphan Eddy by replaying Fallout 3′s opening tutorial) but I did receive an email from Sony, which brought a brief moment of panic. Had they finally noticed how awesome I am at all their games and sent me a Cease and Desist Pwning email? But no, wrongo. It was an invite to the Playstation Home Beta! I knew my awesomeness would be recognized eventually.

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So after experiencing some more actual time with the NXE, I felt it was necessary to provide an update. While I wasn’t too thrilled after my first exposure to it, last night I played Left 4 Dead for awhile and got to tinker quite a bit. I have to say, I really enjoy it.

For one, it’s faster to browse than the Dashboard was, by far. I remember sometimes I wouldn’t want to answer messages just because it was so slow to do that right in the middle of a game. With the NXE, browsing through the blades is quick and easy and feels just right.

In addition, I spent some time with the Netflix streaming last night… Let me say, if you have a Netflix subscription, the XBox 360 just got 10 times cooler. Adding movies to your instant queue is a breeze, and in no time at all, I was streaming HD TV shows (they’ve got a selection that includes things like 30 Rock, The Office, Heroes, etc) to my 360 instantly. The quality is spectacular, too. This is by far my favorite feature of the NXE now.

So how many of you have Netflix subscriptions and a 360 and will be using this to its full?

So apparently, if you filled out an application for the NXE a few weeks back, you can already get online and grab your update for the XBox 360. I turned on my 360 earlier tonight and was pleasantly surprised to be greeted with a new update, which then promptly replaced the old dashboard with the slick shiny new one.

All in all, while I like the way they’ve re-organized things, it all just seems overwhelmingly unnecessary, though I understand that something had to be done about all the clutter with the marketplace and the usability in general. I like the sleek look of it, and I can’t wait to test out the party system, which will let me bring several friends into games at once and do private chats with groups of people.

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As many of us know, the Left 4 Dead demo dropped on XBox Live as well as Steam yesterday, sending gamers into a frenzy much akin to the virtual undead hordes that awaited bullet-pummeling. After a bit of a download time, I managed to nab the demo myself over XBL for the 360, and I couldn’t wait to get into my first game.

The thing that was curious to me from the menus and even once the game started was how much it felt like a game that belonged on the PC rather than the 360. Something about the controls, the HUD, the interface, everything about it screamed PC at me. Even hooking up with a party didn’t feel completely intuitive, though after a bit the matter was settled. So how was the gameplay?

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We all want Left 4 Dead. Zombies and such. Well, part of the goodness that is L4D is the main campaign which can be played as 4 player co-op, or if you have no friends, by yourself. This campaign is split into 4 acts. So far, we only know that one is in the corn fields, one is in a hospital, and some new details have recently emerged about a third act, “Dead Air”, which takes place in an airport.

The dudes over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun have meticulously constructed what they call a Photo Essay of this part of the campaign, spoiling everything and showing you all the details that you could possibly want to know about this great zombie shooter. Beware though, there are spoilers galore, especially considering that this is possibly the last act of the game.

The Left 4 Dead demo also drops on XBL today. Excited much?

Source- Rock, Paper, Shotgun

So I got Gears of War 2 at midnight last night, and then played til just after 4 in the morning, central standard time. I’m about to hop on it again, too. I got about almost halfway through the game I’m guessing, and I wanted to leave a few impressions.

If you were even remotely a fan of the first campaign, get this game. So far, I’d have to say it’s tougher, huger and more epic than the first. There are constantly more enemies, more objectives, and all the new gameplay features work out really well together. I haven’t even dipped into the multiplayer modes yet, but I think the campaign is going to be a distraction for hours to come. Save for one completely out of place level (you’ll know it when you play it).

So yeah, weigh in if you got this game already or plan on getting it in the near future. If there are enough of us, I’d like to try a GamerSushi community match at some point in the near future. Let me know!