Well, in my pursue to own every console this gen (partly because Im a working man as of now) Ive decided that it was time to have a DS join the party that my PS3, Wii and PSP were having (and my PC).
Its a nice console, I had to buy a DS Lite for the GBA slot since I have many GBA games that I play when I travel.
Its a nice console, though its kind of sad when you have on one hand a PSP 2k graphically and musically speaking. Still, Nintendo does have some amazing games that I just can let pass me. Reason why I also bought a Wii.



Though, just to make a point, games as Boom Blox are not my kind of games so you could say that I bought the Wii for like 10 or less games. Mostly sequels to NGC games xD.
Anyway, Im a happy gamer now, I will buy a 360 later this year, gotta play Star Ocean 4 and Ace Combat 6!!!!!.  I had one, but it RROD on me.
Anyway, by this year end, I will be a FULL FLEDGED MANTICORE!!!!!
Yay for me I guess. Though I say, Yay for The Almighty Dollar!

Finally I could make the change to HD, having suffered all this months with some games that I had to leave unfinished due to bad "text" on them, I can now pick them up again and finish them. I bought a Bravia 32" TV, which also supports Full HD, or 1080p. Its goregeous, and has 2 sockets of everything, escept for antena and VGA.












It is true what people says, once you see how they are in HD, you cant go back. And its not the same as the ones that you see in the stores, because this time its in your room or Living Room or kitchen or wherever you want to put it. The biggest improvement comes from textures. Things that could not be noticed before are now as clear as sun light. For example, when I picked up Eternal Sonata, the grass was "plain" looking, it was the old, green mass of texture with no special detail, but now in HD, its a whole different  tale, it has texture in the grass and it looks wonderful.
There is another advantage that I found, specially in Gran Turismo 5 Prologue (Which I have to call the best looking game ever, including Crysis).  The thing I noticed is that my FoV (Field of View) drastically increased. I no longer had to move the camera to see the rear view mirror and I could see more of the inside of the car, as well as better textures, less Jags and better lights and colouring.
The other game that got completely changed was Lair. Yeah, I know most of you hate it, even though you havent played it. Lair was one of the first to come with Native 1080p and at that resolution, it looks more than beatiful. Given the scale of the levels, some graphical things can be forgiven as the low res foot soldiers and such. But the dragon models are gorgeous, the detail on them, aside from the animations as the wings moving from the wind (flapping), the veins, the different layers of colouring in each dragon variant, etc. Lair was a solid 7, and got to 8 thanks to the Dragon Update which included Analog Support. The best part of the game though has to be its sound track. Its just impressive.
The next game I will be mentioning is my favourite JRPG of this gen, Valkyria Chronicles. Despite what many think, Valkyria has more than impressive sales, placing it as one of the top 5 most selled S-JRPGs in history with its close to 300.000 units sold. Even the Disgaea saga is less popular with an average of 180.000 (yes, even the PS2 versions). The game looked great in SD, with lovely graphics and art direction. The CANVAS engine really does a great job (I cant believe people think that a Wii could pull this, fanboys should really check their tongues some times) Anyway, the game was gorgeous, but once I changed to HD (around chapter 6) I found myself against a whole different thing. It was impressive, everything looked beautifull, though some things in the stages are really cheap, the rest overflows with quality, lovely graphics, excelent choice of colours, the animations and attention to details, etc. Valkyria Chronicles is a genre changer, much as what Halo did for the console FPS genre, and what Super Mario 64 did for console platformers, Valkyria is the new standard for Strategy J-RPGs.
I tried the rest of my colection, as well as some Demos, to see how "different" they where, and in most cases it was really noticeable, but in others not that much, such as the case with Turok (dont blame me, I love the franchise, and I actually liked the game, as long as it was me, my knife and a Dino) and NFS Carbon (really crap, but I bought it really cheap at a time that I needed a racing game aside from Motorstorm.
PS2 and PS1 games look great. PS1 games get a facelift at 1080p thanks to the upscaling tools in the console, making things look cleaner, most PS2 games look great at 1080p also, but for some reason, Yakuza 2, despite having 16:9 and Progressive Scan support looks like crap, which still intrigues me considering that games whithout 480p as Final Fantasy XII look amazing.

Boy, its been ages since I last tried this crap, and how did I went on whithout it for so long???
For those who are either noobs or just ignorants, M.U.G.E.N is a fighting game engine, completely customizable for the PC. Its source of material comes strictly from fan made content, but thanks to some dedicated fans, you can get some great material.
The game basically requires you to create the interface, backgrounds, animatios, attacks and then that is combined with the games engine and you get a new game out of nowhere. Well, actually out of what you did.
But dont worry, you dont need to know any "coding" to make your own. In fact, you can get characters from the internet (why hasnt this won a Nobel prize yet??) and then add them to "YOUR" game, or in its defect, add them to the rooster of the game you are playing. Its a really great feature, and thanks again to the heavy mod community of the PC world, there are some really great games to try.











For example, for us old folks, you have a Saint Seiya themed game called Mythologie. For the old and young, we have a Dragon Ball Z simply called Budokai M.U.G.E.N. And for those wanting to get some really good time out of it, we have Everything vs Everything, which has characters from TV shows, cartoons, anime, movies, video games, etc all pitted toghether in one game. And its really good, because the modders have created some really good .gifs of the characters, sometimes using the ones from the games, like the Gundam M.U.G.E.N project which is using the old PSX Gundam Battle Assault gifs, or the Budokai M.U.G.E.N which is using the old Super Battle 22 gifs along with some custom made ones.
But, one of the best Ive found is called after one of the best 2D fighting games, I will give you 3 lines to think about it.
.
.
.
Got it? No?
Well, the game is... .... .... .... .... ........ ......... ........... ..............
MARVEL vs CAPCOM 3
Yes, 3, its a fan made rendition of the marvelous MvC2 that we all love. The game now features some really good DC characters, as well as all the MvC2 characters and some new guys. The graphics are exactly the same, the backgrounds also, and they even got all the attacks. Of course, some moves had to be changed to suit the M.U.G.E.N engine, so neither Megaman nor Ryu can charge their attacks, and some combinations were simplified for this.
The game is really good, just see the images below and you will realise that they kept all the same past glory, and the best part, is that you can include new characters as you see fit, so lets say, that how about Snake got to fight against Ryu? Or Master Chief? Now all of that is possible.



















I guess, that the best part of all this is, IT IS COMPLETELY LEGAL!!!. Yep, the engine is completely legal, and well, the material may be not due to copyright infringements, but it does not hurt anyone, since if you want the best experience, you should still go with the real deal, but if you want to have some "LOL" (god I hate that expression) moments, then its a sure bet.

Yep, Im trying to finish a couple of reviews and then post them here. Im re-doing my old Gears of War review that I had in GS, it was kind of bad the last time I wrote it because it was more personalized, and I missed a couple of things. The reviews that are coming are:
RESISTANCE 2                                                                 -- score: 9/10
GEARS OF WAR 2                                                            -- score: 9/10
GEARS OF WAR b                                                            -- score: 9/10
FALLOUT 3 (PC)                                                               -- score: 8.5/10
METAL GEAR SOLID 4: GUNS OF THE PATRIOTS     -- score: 10/10
ARMORED CORE FOR 4NSWER (PS3)                        -- score: 8/10
DEAD SPACE (PS3)                                                         -- score: 9/10

I will try to release one per week or as soon as I have them ready to go. Each one will have also a blog post with pictures to go with.

Killzone is by far one of the most looked forward games in the PS3 by both the media, and us fans. The reason? A promise of one of the best FPS in a long time.
Not so long ago, Guerrilla Games (GG) opened their servers for the public, to try the Multiplayer Beta. Though its not as "Public" as one would think, as their are quite a few pre-requisites to be invited.
So, the ways to get invited are to be either a member of G.A.P and be over 18 (the game is rated M for Mature) or you could have enroled through the european PSN store via downloading the Killzone 2 Multiplayer Beta Theme.
But that is not important here, I guess everyone is wanting to know if the game "delivers" or falls short on promises as the first one did. In a few words, the game delivers absolutely. Now, is it going to be a massively popular game? That is yet to be seen. 
On to the Beta then.

The First thing that you will notice, is that you may want to check the controllers first, specially if you are coming from extensive months of Call of Duty 4 (CoD 4) as the initial set up for it is more of the traditional kind. Now, after that, you will have to configure a couple of things, for starters, Sony asks you to use an Internet connection setting not entered manually, that means that you will have to go to your connection option in the PS3 XMB, and set everything to Automatic.
After that, you will have to choose your UNIVERSE, or in other words, your gaming region (, US, etc). Then you have to set your time, or time zone. After that you can start the game.
The game Lobby is similar to, lets say, 99% of the other FPS out there. You have the GAME option, you have the PROFILE option CLAN, and OPTIONS. Inside of each, you have their different sub menues, to check Leaderboards, Create or search for Clans, check your friends progress, check your personal Progress, change some game options, or the usual, Create-Find Game.
Now, before going to the game per se, lets talk a little about the other options, more precisely, about the Personal options. Here, you will be able to check your basic stats as Weapon aim, shots fired, Kill/death ratio, etc. You will also be able to check your position in the leaderboards, but most importantly, you will be able to check your Ribbons, Badges and Medals. As you progress through the game, your actions will be rewarded, getting lots of headshots will earn you the Headshot ribbon, getting that ribbon 8 times will give you the badge, other awards can be for having more than 10% of the total team kills, earning over 20 points in a round with 0 negative points and so on. This badges will later give you access to new guns, skills and side things, as bigger initial payloads, more grenades, etc. This sytem is similar to that found in Call of Duty 4, only that this time, we can add the Class System, which adds a lot to the game, specially once you unlock one. Members of the team with an unlocked class are your most valuable assets. 
As you may have noticed, I mentioned that you win Points after the rounds, those points are called XP (or in other words, Experience). The more you have, the higher your Rank is (which instead of numbers, has the usual military terminology). A level 2 player can create Squads, and a level 3 player can create a Clan.
Now that the whole stats thing is covered, lets move on to the Clan tab, this should be short as its still no implemented, but this is how it will work. You form a clan, nothing new here, after that, you can do some of the following things, participate in tournaments (cool!), participate in clan battles or event create clan events that will be exclusive matches for clan members. Its pretty much what we have known as traditional stuff for this.

Ok, enough of the options mumbo jumbo, lets go to the juicy part, the GAMEPLAY!
First things first though, so we have to cover the game type options and game modes. I will make it quick so not to bore anyone.
When you create a game, you can manage the usual stuff, spawn times, round time, number of players (Up to 32 players can participate, thats 16vs16!!), etc. This time around, matches are handled with an extra something. This time its not just traditional TDM, DM, TM. This time we have something that makes the gameplay more captivating, and entertaining. What we have now is Missions. The rounds can be made to have several missions during the match, and the winner will be the one with most wins. This is something that keeps a round always fresh, and keeps the players more focused on achieving such things, as it means that their team will win. Now, the game has several types of Matches which are:

• Body Count: the team with most kills wins)

• Search and Retrieve: an Object has been placed in the map, the teams will have to find it, and deliver it to a certain spot. This is similar to CTF
• Search and Detroy/ Protect: One team has to reach a location and place explosives, while the other team has to defuse the explosives
• Search and Hold: This one is really good, its kind of like the old King of the Hill. One team has to find a location and hold their position, while the other has to siege them, and take the position.
• Assassination/Protection: Each team is given a target player (one of the players becomes the target) and the each team has to kill it. Sometimes only 1 team is given a target, and the opposing team has to protect it, and vice-versa.

As you can see, the modes are varied, and having the possibility to have the Round change of style every given time makes the matches amazing to play, as it is constantly changing. The team who fulfills the objective is given a point, the team with most points by the end of the round is the winner. This also means that there can be draws, but only when the total number of missions is set to pair and not to an odd number.  The team that wins the round, is given an extra 1.5 XP multiplier, which is a really good bonus, and should keep teams more focused on accomplishing objectives than going solo to kill the most enemies. 

There are 3 maps to try, there is one thats really big, and is set in a dark Market area, this one is a really good map, and it favours all kinds of gameplay methods, be it camping, soloing, etc. The map has several levels also, which makes it the more fun. The second map is in a Building or Archives place (I think it was an University or Library). The place has some theatres, a plaza in the middle, and 2 levels, the upper one with a balcony to the plaza. Its simple yet complex, as if you dont know the basic layout of the map, you will be receiving fire from all the sides. The last stage is a street, the one seen in the last MP videos. There are several levels, and the side buildings can be entered for alternate routes. Its a narrower stage, yet its long, and it forces both team to meet in groups at determined places, which means, crazy combat give-away!!

Now, lets go back to the cherry of the cake, Gameplay.

First, let me say that the gameplay is more than solid, the controls have evolved and are no longer weird as in the first. Aiming is no longer a hoax and its on par with more recent games as Resistance 2 and Call of Duty 4 and 5. Yes, as some assumed, its like a half clone of Call of Duty 4. But that is not a bad thing, the game is great in this department, it has old stuff from CoD 4 and new stuff. Firing is not simple the first time you pick up your rifle, but as you advance, you start getting the hang of it, and it turns into something really good. Matches normally take around 20 minutes to finish, sometimes even less, depending on how each team works, and how fast the objectives are accomplished.  The traditional commands are also in the game, you can jump, duck, use physical hits, grenades, and more stuff. The reaction of the weapons make them feel more than real, and they have a really nice reach. They do make a lot of recoil when firing, which forces you to do as in CoD 4 and just fire in burst. Grenades are great also, they can clear closed areas really fast, and you can "cook" them before throwing them to the enemies to give them shorter response time. They dont have much range which is not really good, but from what Ive seen, a longer range would make them really cheap. Grenades have an yellowish-orange trace behind them, so its easy to notice when a grenade was used. Bullets also have tracer rounds, and they look really good, specially in dark areas. When a player dies, he has 10 seconds to be revived by an ally Medic, unless he is finished during that time by fire, explosions etc, which means he will have to re-spawn on the command point. 

There are some other things to this game, lets go to the Squad function of the game. Each team can form several squads or group of people. This squads have a leader, and the main purpose of this is to allow members of the squad to re-spawn where the leader is, istead of re-spawning in the base as you normally do. But this is not the only extra of the game, there is also the skills badges. This are the special something, that set Killzone 2 apart from the rest. This "perks" will grant us a wide variety of tricks to use in battle. For example, the Medic can revive ally players who are near death, other classes will be able to deploy Bot Turrets, become Invisible, create Spawn points, and after using such skills, you can access more advanced skills, as being able to create Med-Paks, call down sentry bots, and more. Yes, the Badges system gives the game that extra something that makes it unique.

All in all, the gameplay aspect of the game is above average, so if you were looking for a futuristic sci fi fast shooter, might as well check this game, as its not something to be looked over.  It covers from the most basic needs to the most competitives. The Badge system should keep gamers hooked to the online mode for a long time, as it is ever growing on what you do, and considering that you can mix skills to create new kinds of character, you could be about to find several different kinds of gameplay, that could fit you.

But people, this is not the end, what would be a review if I would not speak of what moves most gamers recently?! Yes, Graphics. I know most of you want to know how this baby performs rather than if it is good.

So, are they any good? Has GG lied to us? May I say it? NO.

Killzone 2 looks amazing from 90% of the sides that you look at it, and its even more amazing when you take into consideration the next 2 things:

1. Its a Beta
2. Its the Multiplayer Mode.

Yes, even for a multiplayer mode, the game looks amazing, and gorgeous. Some textures though are not that great, but when you take into consideration the size of the stages, and that most areas can be destroyed (yes, you can destroy many places of the map, which means, not everything provides great cover) then you realise that you cannot push it further, unless you want to reduce the number of online players or request for higher bandwidths.
But textures is not the only thing that is measured in the graphics area, lets go to character models. They are great, but not only in detail and textures, also in animation. The animations of the characters. The animations are just great, the way they react to bullets and how they "die" is just amazing, and gives it an extra something that cant be explained, it just feels right, and less frigid as in the past.
The other aspet that I want to mention, is the one that amazed me the most, no, its not the characters nor guns models, its the Lightning. This element is just plain amazing, the way it reflects when you look to a light source, the shadows, the light generated when you fire, everything looks great and shows a lot of polish and work to achieve them. Its amazing watching at the stages, for example the market, where not only you will see the player generated effects, but also the enviromental ones, that stage is in the middle of a warzone, and you will listen to explosions, see blasts, clouds of dirt, and more.
The attention to some details in the animations is also good, the HUD contains all the information one would expect, and the added effect of the blood stains when you are hit, or you hit someone close to you, feels really, good. Other details that are worthy to be mentioned are the fact that bullets pierce the body, so using a pal as a shield is not always the best option as we used to believe. But this also has its share bit of problem, mostly with your friends that go in your line of fire, just to get the kill. Some other smaller details that can be mentioned to are the flags in the corridor level, the dirt caused by an explosion, and never to be forgotten, the sound effects.
The sound effects nail the feeling and have that noise that you say: Thats how I wanted it to sound thing. You wont feel that you are firing something else, and they will feel like real weapons, despite being futuristic arsenal.

To conclude, Killzone 2 is on the road to more than fulfill its promises, we have yet to experience the whole deal of this game, as its still some months away, but if GG and Sony manage to maintain the quality level of their last games and Killzone 2, offers more of this experience, then we could be about to find our next big thing in FPS games.