So today I decided to take the family to town to do some after Christmas shopping and in doing so managed to pick up some things that I'm very happy with and at least one thing I'm not so happy with. One of the things that I'm very happy with is the Rocketfish PS3 controller. It's basically a PS3 controller that is made to look and feel just like an Xbox360 controller, which for me is great seeing as how I prefer the 360 controller. I tried it out on KillZone 2 and while it couldn't cure the general "jankiness" of that game's controls, it did make them more managable.
       But the thing that I picked up that I'm not happy with is "The Conduit" for the Wii. The thing that bugs me about this game is not the game at all but rather the controls, or more specifically, the Wii remote. Trying to play an FPS on Wii is simply headache inducing. I must have played with the control settings, adjusting all levels of sensitivity, for about half an hour and still wasn't able to come away with anything that felt "right". Even with the cursor sensitivity turned almost all the way down I still had trouble aiming. I'm a big time FPS guy and really love precision aiming which the Wii remote simply does not allow for. Before buying The Conduit, the closest thing to an FPS that I owned on the Wii was Metroid Prime 3, which is really only an FPS in viewpoint, which makes the fucked up Wii controls almost acceptable (although the Gamecube controller was still much better).
      I'd been thinking about buying The Conduit for some time now, but finding it for $14.99 at Target tonight made me go ahead and get it. What originally piqued my interest in the game was that it seemed to have a cool sci-fi setting and that it was exclusive to the Wii. The reason I don't own any FPS games on Wii is because before The Conduit, pretty much all FPS games on Wii were just ports of 360/PS3 games. I still think that the game has a cool vibe to it from what I have played, I just don't know if I'll have the patience to finish it because of the controls, which is really a shame. I really wish they would have given the option to just use the Gamecube controller.
      In parting I would like to offer some advice to any developer thinking of trying to make a Wii game that appeals to core gamers: don't. Just make your game for Xbox360 or PS3 because chances are your gonna sell more copies on either of those platforms than you will on the Wii. Pretty much every core game made for the Wii has bombed when it comes to sales, so the logical solution would be to not make games like that for the Wii. The only games that will ever sale on the Wii are Nintendo games and 3rd party games that look like Nintendo games. I really wish that we could get games like The Conduit and Mad World on the 360 or PS3, not only because of the controls, but because I believe those games would be much more successful on those platforms.
      So I'm sure I'll continue to use the Wii the way I always have which is turning it on when family or friends are over for a little casual Wii sports, but I'm giving up on "serious" games for the Wii, that's what my 360 and PS3 are for.
 
P.S. One of the other things I picked up while I was out was Demon's Souls for the PS3, which I'm really looking forward to trying out.

• "Ain't Talkin Bout Love" by Van Halen
• "And The Cradle Will Rock" by Van Halen
• "Atomic Punk" by Van Halen
• "Beautiful Girls" by Van Halen
• "Cathedral" (solo) by Van Halen
• "Dance The Night Away" by Van Halen
• "Eruption" (solo) by Van Halen
• "Everybody Wants Some" by Van Halen
• "Feel Your Love Tonight" by Van Halen
• "Hang 'Em High" by Van Halen
• "Hear About It Later" by Van Halen
• "Hot For Teacher" by Van Halen
• "Ice Cream Man" by Van Halen
• "I'm The One" by Van Halen
• "Jamie's Cryin" by Van Halen
• "Jump" by Van Halen
• "Little Guitars" by Van Halen
• "Loss Of Control" by Van Halen
• "Mean Street" by Van Halen
• "Panama" by Van Halen
• "Pretty Woman" by Van Halen
• "Romeo Delight" by Van Halen
• "Running With The Devil" by Van Halen
• "So This Is Love" by Van Halen
• "Somebody Get Me A Doctor" by Van Halen
• "Spanish Fly" (solo) by Van Halen
• "Unchained" by Van Halen
• "You Really Got Me" by Van Halen
• "Come To Life" by Alter Bridge
• "White Wedding" by Billy Idol
• "First Date" by blink-182
• "Space Truckin" by Deep Purple
• "Best Of You" by Foo Fighters
• "Double Vision" by Foreigner
• "Stacy's Mom" by Fountains of Wayne
• "Pain" by Jimmy Eat World
• "Painkiller" by Judas Priest
• "The End Of Heartache" by Killswitch Engage
• "Rock And Roll Is Dead" by Lenny Kravitz
• "I Want It All" by Queen
• "Sick, Sick, Sick" by Queens of the Stone Age
• "Master Exploder" by Tenacious D
• "Safe European Home" by The Clash
• "Pretty Fly For A White Guy" by The Offspring
• "Semi-Charmed Life" by Third Eye Blind
• "Dope Nose" by Weezer
• "The Takedown" by Yellowcard

  So first things first: Is it worth $60? Your damn right it is. Hell, I payed $100 for the limited edition and I still feel it was worth it (albeit mine came with the limited edition ODST controller). It also depends on what defines "worth it" to you. Is it long enough to be a full priced game? In a word, yes. I wasn't keeping track of how long it took me to finish ODST, but I've played it every night since Tuesday, for several hours a night and I just finished it. Hell, once I got the Mongoose I just hauled ass from one clue to the next, I didn't even find all the weapon caches or audio logs (I'm saving that for my Legendary play through). So to get the question of if it's worth it or not, yes, it's worth it.

 Common logic says that I should have been able to jump into ODST and feel right at home but that's not exactly the case. Not being the Master Chief takes some getting used to, requiring you to change your tactics when fighting the Covenant. Not having shields takes the most getting used to as you can't just run out into battle and wait for your shields to recharge after taking some hits, well not exactly anyways. In ODST you have stamina, which acts like shields but isn't quite as strong as Master Chief's shields in prior Halo games. Visually the effects of stamina look the same as when you take damage in a Call of Duty game in that the screen gets all red and your guy starts breathing heavy.

Don't get me wrong though, ODST is still unmistakeably Halo. The graphics really do the most work when it comes to letting you know you are in fact playing a Halo game, because the game looks almost identical to Halo 3. But that's fine with me because I love the way Halo 3 looks, but I could definitely see where improvements were made. There seems to be a slight film grain look that appears to try and represent what it would be like looking through the ODST's visor. The character's faces and animations seem a step up from Halo 3 as well. The lighting is amazing as usual and even better than Halo 3 in a lot of ways.

The new weapons, which are the suppressed and scoped smg and automag pistol, are really fun to use. The automag can be very deadly when laying down head shots and the smg is accurate enough to hit enemies at a distance but still enough of an uzi to handle multiple enemies in close quarters. I must say though, it feels weird not having the Battle Rifle, almost as if it were "less Halo" if that makes any sense. I found the best way to take down brutes quickly was to "noob combo" the plasma pistol and the automag. Also, it could just be me but it seemed like it was taking more shots to kill Covenant than it did in Halo 3 even though I was using the same weapons (from Halo 3) most of the time.Weird.

The story is really cool especially for someone like myself who has read all the books and generally soaks up as much "Halo" as they can. Bungie did an excellent job of flexing their creative muscles in order to bring some innovation to the tried and true Halo series. Some might argue that mechanically the game hasn't changed, and I would not argue with them. But that's the beauty of it, they managed to make it feel fresh while keeping it familiar. The way the game is set up is that you have the city of New Mombasa, in which you can roam through freely and as you make your way through the city you find clues, these clues when found trigger a sort of flashback that then puts you in the shoes of another member of your squad showing you what happened to them.

Other things like how the superintendent guides you through the city using pay phones, car alarms, police sirens, and detour signs are all really well done. Also, the visor which has been called a night vision visor in some media outlets, is not exactly that. It does provide limited vision in low light areas, but some areas you may be just as well with it turned off. The cool thing is how it outlines structures and things of importance like enemies, weapons, and clues. It's also a must for finding the audio logs scattered throughout the city. The audio logs are cool because they add another layer of story to the game and give you a better look at the civilian side of the Covenant invasion.

I think Bungie's decision to use the voice actor's likeness' in the game really payed off as well. Nathan Fillion is incredible as Buck as are all the other characters. The character development is some of the best yet seen in a Halo game and really shows how good Bungie has gotten at telling rich, compelling stories. I also enjoyed the fact that Buck and Captain Dare had once been a couple and the extra layer that brought to the story. This game really made me care about the characters and what happened to them. There are other things that are introduced later in the story that are really cool and well done, but I won't spoil the game here.

 I was checking my messages on my PS3 and noticed a message stating that on September 5th, PS3 CoD players would be changing their clan tag to "Mw2" in protest of the Xbox360 getting exclusive MW2 multiplayer maps. I was surprised by this because a.) it was this morning that I received the message which is well past September 5th, and b.) I had not heard anything about the Xbox360 getting exclusive maps for MW2. Upon investigation I found out that what is actually happening is that the Xbox360 will get the first 2 downloadable multiplayer maps first, not exclusively.
   I must say that I have noticed some anger from PS3 owners about the MW2 edition Xbox360. I guess some people feel like Infinity Ward is showing favoritism by partnering with Microsoft like this. The thing is, the Xbox360 version was easily the best selling version of the game and this would not be the first time that a developer has showed favoritism to particular version of their game. I remember John Davison from whattheyplay.com saying that the guys from Criterion told him he should be playing Burnout Paradise on PS3 and not Xbox360.
 
So what do y'all think, should developers that make multi-platform games avoid playing the favorites game?

I never played the original Army of Two. The closest I came to playing it was the demo that was released which didn't really impress me all that much, to be honest. Plus the fact that the lead guy on the game was out there dogging out Gears of War didn't really make me want to give it a fair shake either.

So when the sequel, dubbed "The 40th Day", I pretty much didn't care. I mean, I thought that the controls felt alright in the demo for the original game, but beyond that I wasn't really interested. But today something happened that changed my stance on "The 40th Day", I watched the quick look and came away pretty impressed.

The first thing I noticed was the graphics, they seem to be spruced up quite a bit from the first game.Shooting dude's helmets off looked fun as well as sniping heads completely off.The ai seemed to notice if you sniped a dude right in front of them which is always nice.The only thing that kind of made me cringe was the swapping of parts on guns. Stuff like putting the barrel from an AK-47 onto an M4 just didn't look right. And some of the stuff he was putting on his gun didn't even look correct, like putting a bayonet AND shotgun attachment on it (the bayonet was sitting right in front of the barrel for the shotty attachment). And some of the clips he added looked really odd on the gun, like the drum clip. I don't know, personally I prefer realism if your using real world things, but that's just me.

Anyway,if you haven't already watched it and want to check it out for yourself, here's the quick look :

I've bought tons of downloadable games in the years since the 360 came out. Although there is a limit to how much money I'm willing to spend on content that isn't tangible.

Just stumbled across this over at ign.com, it's a new live action trailer for Halo 3 ODST and man, it is frikkin' awesome.This one is alot better than the previous live action clip done for Halo 3,in my opinion.It's really intense,I really wish they would make a Halo movie.