The PSP Go seemed like a system that was doomed to fail from the very beginning. Having a new system is nice but what’s the point without the games? I personally can’t recall being excited for a PSP game in a very long time. Well, there is that Persona 3 port, but that just shows another problem with the PSP. Who the hell is playing the thing? Everyone and their mother have either a DS or an iPhone that does the portable gaming way better than the PSP ever did. I bought one two years ago and I don’t think I’ve played it in about a good year. The PSP has no niche that it can call its own. I’m wondering who is left to buy it other than insane early adopters.

The reason why I think that Sony would release a new PSP would be to try and cut down the horrifically high piracy rate. While that is a noble effort, it’s pointless now. In this age there is absolutely no device that can be pirate proof. Companies gotta realize that pirates have an infinite time and resources to crack whatever you release. This means that this whole effort is almost pointless.

One other thing that this thing has against it is the price. Who in their right mind would buy this thing when you can get a PS3 for fifty dollars more?

Should Sony just stop and cut their losses? I say yes, what of you?

In the world of video games and music, one piece of news is getting a lot of attention. During this past week a feud between Courtney love and Activision has been becoming more intense. Love is disgusted by Activision’s use of Kurt Cobain’s image in Guitar Hero 5. Cobain is an unlockable character in the game; this lets players use Cobain for any song they choose. Love is now threatening legal action against Activision in order to compensate for the ill use of Cobain’s likeness.

This scuffle brings to light a bigger trend in video games in general. The level of realism in games is constantly on the rise. I believe that in the future more and more events like this are going to occur. Because games are becoming more and more lifelike, it’s becoming easier to identify games with real life. I can easily see how love and fans of Cobain could feel ire against Activision for their use of Cobain’s image but, I think there is a bigger issue to consider.

Since the use of a real person’s image in a game is causing such a stir, why doesn’t the deluge of first person shooters cause such a commotion? In theory the same kind of shenanigans are taking place. The myriad of shooters are trivializing the grim nature of war and turning it into a game. The mass audience has no problem taking all of these things as mindless entertainment. I’m wondering why everyone is getting into such a rage about the use of Cobain in Guitar Hero when there are more troubling trends taking place. While Cobain’s appearance might be tampering with musical continuity, the top tier holiday games are trivializing life and death. Surely there is some priority over the latter, or at least I hope there is.

This story has been a great piece of sensationalism but it leads me to consider a bigger, darker trend in gaming. I’m completely dumbfounded as to how this double standard can exist without the general gaming audience knowing. 

I just spent the last week of my free time mopping up the final achievements for the Force Unleashed. For some reason the trivial award of a bleep-bloop and an increase in a completely meaningless number drove me to waste precious days of summer. There are many things I could have been doing yet I chose to spend it running the the TIE fighter factory over and over again just to get some points. This obsessive compulsive behavior has been confusing me for a while now. I still have no idea why I spent so much fucking time with the broken game. I found this game very fun the first time through. I played it on easy after hearing so much frustration about it. After playing this game over again of hard and replaying missions countless times, every single annoyance this game had was made exponentially more infuriating. Even with the constant stream of curses and enraged ramblings, I still chose to finish this game. Instead of feeling satisfied, I feel relieved. Surely everyone has had some case like this happen to them; or maybe I'm just crazy and have too much time on my hands.   
 
Have you ever spent way too much time on a game? 

I waned to get me a copy of Guitar Hero Aerosmith and saw that GameStop were selling them for $10. After playing I'm gonna say I got my moneys worth. There was a decent selection but there was no "Don't wanna miss a thing." Which is an obvious downfall. I feel sorry for anyone who payed full price for this. All I can say to those people are, patience wins.

While I was there I also bought Burnout Paradise. I did have this game before and traded it away. Of course I traded it away before all of the DLC came out. After getting into it again I realize again why I traded it in. The new content was cool to mess around with but its that compelling. I do like the bikes though.

Two good purchases from GameStop, and no pre-order badgering or accessory shenanigans this time.

So, a new Pokemon game has come out. I have no shame in saying I robbed my cousin of his copy to see how it was. I'll sum it up for you in this lovely peice:

Guess what time it is,
Time to catch them all again.
Played one, played them all.

So essentially the game I have been waiting for my entire life has arrived, in trailer form! The MTV Multiplayer blog has put out the first trailer for Scratch: The Ultimate Dj. In all seriousness this game looks like its going to be a tremendous failure. The over the top view on urban culture and brief upskirt shots are not great signs for this game. Other than the questionable art design the actual graphical quality was not so hot. The models don't have any style to them. Its a really generic cell shaded look that does not seem to fit right. The major issue however was the gameplay. There was a few seconds of actual note charts but the controller was no where to be found. In any rhythm game how you play the game is the most important part. Also, I did not see any familiar rhythm game developers mentioned in this title so I'm worried how fun this game will be to play. The thing with Guitar Hero and Rock Band is how organic the note charts feel. My hopes are not very high for this game. There is alot of stuff that really needs to be thought out more throughly first.

The release of this game also brings to mind another question. Does anyone have anymore need for more rhythm games? The genre seems pretty well fleshed out. I personally don't want another plastic controller taking up more room in my house. A entry into the rhythm genre with a hip hop vibe in interesting in concept but I have a feeling that it won't be the smash sucess that Guitar Hero and Rock Band are.

That’s why I’m no longer psyched about Army of Two: The 40 Day. In a similar move to the Prince of Persia series it looks like the sequel will take the dirtier, grittier approach to the story.  The one thing that Army of Two had going for it was the complete over the top insanity. Without it, Army of Two becomes yet another generic third person shooter with mercenary dudes.

I’m sick of this realism movement in shooters. Why can’t shooters be fun? The action movie motif has been done to death and it’s time for something new. I think the complete insanity of the two heroes made them more endearing then space Spartan 10432. Army of Two walked the fine line between stupid and funny like a professional trapeze artist. Now it’s yet another shooter, which are a dime a dozen nowadays.

How do you feel about realism in games?

My friend lent me a spare copy of World of Warcraft that he had and never used. I installed the games and though alright lets do this. Only to realize that I was currently under version 1.0.0 of the game. Then found out that this game went up to version 3.0.8. It sooned dawned on me that I would not be playing this game for a while.

Its been about a day's worth of time now. I have done quite a bit of downloading and I'm getting kind of tired of it right now. For some reason Blizzard is telling me that I need to download and install two gigs worth of stuff in order to make the game go. I'm about three quarters of the way through now. This is one of the many reasons why I never mess with PC stuff. Soon I will finally sucumb to the plauge and be absorbed into the trap that is WoW.

If this happens to be my last communication to the outside world, It was a great run.