Tales of Vesperia
Grand Theft Auto IV
Condemned 2: Bloodshot
Just Cause
Alone in the Dark
Too Human
Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise
Operation Darkness
Lost Odyssey
Diablo
Diablo II
Bully
Ninja Gaiden II
Culdcept Saga
Devil May Cry 4
Assassin’s Creed
Army of Two
The Club
Beautiful Katamari
Resistance: Fall of Man
Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds
Blue Dragon
Enchanted Arms
Eternal Sonata
Oblivion
The Orange Box
Braid
Penny Arcade Adventures Episode 1: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness
Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction
Siren: Blood Curse
The Last Guy
PixelJunk eden
Castle Crashers
Okami
Manhunt 2
No More Heroes
Super Mario Galaxy
Super Paper Mario
Shadow of the Colossus
Yakuza
Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
The Red Star
Persona 3: FES
God of War
God of War II
Patapon
The World Ends with You
Bangai-O Spirits
Contact
Trauma Center: New Blood
Fallout
Fallout 2
Sins of a Solar Empire
The Witcher
Spore
God Hand
Killer 7

Sunday, August 17, 2008
Lord of the Rings Online
Over the course of the day I managed to put in a few hours in LOTRO. I hit level 21 with my Lore-master doing quests, which included my first Fellowship party with one other person as we decimated Elite spiders in Minas Eriol for a quest. I think I saw my first Fellowship maneuver opportunity, but I wasn’t sure because I’ve never seen one. If it was, I totally wasted whatever it was I could do for epic win. I also have managed to accumulate over 1 gold in this time. After that I started doing low-level quests in Buckland and The Shire to hit 22 because everything else I have flagged is either to high of a level or requires a Fellowship to complete. It is nice that I can walk past a ton of level 10 mobs, right up to the item I have to retrieve as part of my quest, get it and walk right back out without a fight. With only about 9k XP left, I’ll probably hit 22 this week so I can spend some of my silver getting new Lore-master skills. Am I a nerd yet?

Monday, August 18, 2008
Bionic Commando: Rearmed
Finally got a chance to try this out this week. I realized I had my NES copy of the game, but since my NES isn’t hooked up at the moment, I didn’t get any practice in before BC:R was released last week. I remember I used to be so smooth with swinging around with the bionic arm and getting through levels. I am definitely rusty. Most definitely. I defeated the first boss on my third try, that’s how sad it was. 16 minutes just to clear the level.

Lord of the Rings Online
More LOTRO. What I have become. Continued the easier quests to hit level 22 until I got greedy with a quest that required a Fellowship around level 18. Deep in the Old Forest, after a bunch of spiders, there was a big nasty Elite Haunted Barren-oak tree, with some bad tree root friends. I managed to get it down to about 24% before I died. The thing is, I was stupid. I only had one add that I could have kept indefinitely stunned or I could have kited the tree away a bit and maybe, just maybe I could have outlasted the Elite tree. Not going back to this until I am a higher level. Or with a Fellowship. Quit the session with 1.2k before level 21. All these low level quests are less than 200 XP each, so it’s slow going.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Lord of the Rings Online
Yes, more, more, more. Soon I’ll be treated for OCD. Or be found in an Internet cafe in Korea. Hit level 22 finishing one quest and defeating random things in the Old Forest. Picked up my one new Lore-master skill (Cracked Earth) which I’ve read is useful later on and completed the requirements to get the Apprentice level for Weaponsmith. I have a bunch of recipes for Scholar and Weaponsmith that require Journeyman level. So maybe soon, after some farming. I sold some stacks of crafting components at the auction house. I also gained two new class traits–Healer and Beast-lore. Too bad I only have one more free until level 27. Anyhow, I hit my goal so I can take a break on LOTRO for now. Just occurred to me tonight that I should have been taking screenshots to go with my updates.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Galaga Legions
Wow, this totally kicked my ass. This isn’t quite as tight or brilliant a remix as Pac-Man: Championship Edition was, but this is right up there regardless. The vintage, retro skin is where it’s at. Don’t even bother with the new or “standard” skin. Obviously I’m still struggling getting some of the game mechanics and patterns down so I can get better, but I do like the idea of side-pod guns that can you place in one of four cardinal directions whenever you want, even if they aren’t near you. This makes it feel like there is a rhythm towards clearing some of the stages because of how, where and when waves come at you. I know I’ll never get to the point where I can really maximize bonuses. Definitely going to keep playing this. I want to play more Pac-Man:Championship Edition now too.

Thursday, August 21, 2008
Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty
Shamefully I’ve never played a Ratchet & Clank game, nor have I played the most recent iteration, Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction. Therefore I felt a little dirty playing this episodic “sequel” of sorts–I’ll definitely have to myself the favor of grabbing the full title next week since what little I played so far was pretty fun.

Braid
I went back to Braid after a lengthy hiatus because I felt stuck and couldn’t figure out some of the puzzles. I’m still missing one puzzle piece in World 2 that I’m almost tempted to look up a solution for, but I won’t… yet. I solved the World 4-3 and then immediately got stuck and frustrated with trying to wrap my head around World 4-4 (“The Hunt”) so I gave up. Instead, I took a quick peek at World 5 and I was totally not ready for the shadow mechanics I encountered. Still managed to get a few puzzle pieces off of this one before I called it a night.

The highlight of the session was being completely stuck on World 4-3 thinking I had ruined my playthrough because I rewound too far when it turned out I had solved the puzzle by accident. One could say “eureka!” if one was old, which I am not, so I didn’t.

Q.E.D.

I mentioned this to Nayan, who unfortunately hasn’t had a chance to play Portal yet. Talking a bit more, lead to the following bit of exchange:

• me: max payne is another good one.
• Nayan: Is max an unreliable narrator? there’s a lot of doubt that you see in his dreams
• Nayan: like, in Max Payne 1, you kill yourself after you kill your own family…but i always thought that was a metaphor for essentially killing your family for being married to your job
• me: if only you take it far enough to question whether his dream sequences have affected his judgement in reality.

That was just the start of it. It was nice to read something last night that got me thinking a bit more about some of the games I’ve played with, ones that I especially hadn’t considered from a more critical point of view. Even better was that Nayan’s post generated discussion between me and a few other folks about storytelling in games.

Last night IGN put up a story about how Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune would get a patch to add Trophy support “very, very soon.” Which it is. In the piece there is a short video that shows Trophies in action in Uncharted (below). Along with that there’s a brief interview with a Naughty Dog rep, Arne Meyer, about the Trophy paaa…

Oh wait. Yeah, that’s me.

Guess now it’s “official.” Even though it’s just words on a screen, this feels as awkward as watching yourself on video or listening to a recording of yourself — I still have nightmares about my totally stellar (not) podcast spot with the G-Pinions guys. Thankfully I manage not to sound like a fool, so there might be more where these come from. Now, time to cease the auto-critique…

Flickr user Matthew Johnston has put together a pretty sharp photoset showing key Liberty City landmarks and their real-world versions around New York City. I still haven’t spent much time at all in Grand Theft Auto IV yet but this is great stuff!

Matthew Johnston’s “Sightseeing in Liberty City” photoset

The Winter Music Conference is in town, as evidenced by many of the clubs mentioning the WMC in their marquee and by the folks I see walking around — I think. However, I’m here for work. The event I’m flew out to staff is one of the few official WMC events on Tuesday to kick off the conference. Ben, one of my colleagues has put together quite the event: Paul Oakenfold is playing with members of the Florida Classical Symphony and a three-piece band, featuring the soundtrack he did for our game, The Bourne Conspiarcy, while Cee Lo makes an appearance as a special guest. The entire thing is being streamed live on Yahoo! and you can get there from the Bourne Sessions web site.

If you happen to live in Florida, or near it, and want a guaranteed entrance to the show, enter Joystiq’s Joyswag giveaway for a chance to get in — note that entries close at 12:00 PM ET.

Ouch.

The reason? Joystiq quotes Rigopulos as saying, “The cost of wireless technology on the Microsoft side is higher and to be able to offer those bundles at a price point that would be reasonable for consumers it was necessary … on the 360 side we are also bundling a hub.”

The reason behind the wired guitar in the bundle is rather unfortunate. I believe this is one of the few times that Microsoft should have worked to ensure parity between the bundles across the different platforms at all costs. This is one of those times where the folks in charge of these third-party relationships and third-party accessory licensing should have been thinking about the best interests of the brand and the platform as a whole. It seems that other factors were more key — most likely not setting the precedent of reducing or subsidizing the cost of the technology for accessory makers.

I can see that being an important factor, among several others, all extremely valid. However, it’s just a shame that it provides the PLAYSTATION 3 bundle of Rock Band a competitive advantage when Microsoft should be doing everything in their power to slam the door on one of their competitors. And that is a strategy that I feel remains valid despite Microsoft’s current lead in the global marketplace versus Sony.

First community summary for 2007 and it’s JULY. So awesome. – Ed.

• Microsoft Extends Warranty to Three Years for Xbox 360 Consoles Afflicted by Three Red Lights
• Circuit City Weekly Circular Reveals $100 Price Drop on PLAYSTATION 3

Microsoft Extends Warranty to Three Years for Xbox 360 Consoles Afflicted by Three Red Lights

Microsoft announced this week that they will be extending the warranty to three years for any Xbox 360 consoles afflicted with a general hardware failure, as indicated by the three red lights. In addition, the warranty would be offered retroactively to customers who have already had their consoles repaired by offering refunds for any out-of-warranty repairs that have been paid for. The announcement was accompanied by an open letter from Peter Moore and a posting on Gamerscore blog. An analyst conference call with Microsoft executives, transcribed by Joystiq, provided more detail as well. As part of the announcement, Microsoft also revealed that they would take a $1.05 billion to $1.15 billion pre-tax charge in fiscal fouth quarter as part of the warranty extension.

The announcement was far and away the discussion with the highest volume among the community this week both because of the nature of the warranty and, subsequently, the implications of the pre-tax charge Microsoft will take. Initial reactions from bloggers and the community were mostly positive at Microsoft’s move to reassure their existing customer base, exemplified by comments such as “Classy show, Microsoft. Real classy. Let’s hope this move is coupled with hardware revisions to keep your customers — and shareholders — happy.” from Joystiq. However many did say that they felt it was about time for Microsoft to address the growing discussion and media attention the console was garnering in recent months as pointed out by Chris Kohler over at Game|Life where he states that it looks “like this issue finally caught up to Microsoft. With a renewed interest in the problem and E3 coming up, they couldn’t just continue to deny that it exists.”

Community members on forums also felt the apology and warranty was an unprecedented move by Microsoft in support of their customer base and that, given the consistent denials of any issues present in the console in the face of media inquiries for the past year or more. Over on the massive NeoGAF thread, posters were initially happy about the news (“Wow, didn’t expect this. Even an apology. Pretty good! Clever that they did this before E3.”) and felt that they could “game without fear” now. One poster did some “napkin” math and using the (obviously flawed) calculation of dividing the $1 billion charge by $400 for each console, theorized that Microsoft expected upwards of 2.5 million consoles rendered inoperable by the three red lights. Curiously this figure was later cited on at least one mainstream news story. Later on, discussion turned more cynical on how Microsoft either had to have been aware of the issue for a significantly longer period than they had let on and that the warranty was only now extended because the bottom line and increasing customer dissent had forced Microsoft’s hand — in addition to some speculating that this move could pre-empt any class action lawsuits that may have been pending. As time passed since the announcement many, such as Xbox 360 Fanboy, began to wonder if this move was enough to instill confidence in those who have been disheartened by or even dissuaded from the Xbox 360 console due to the reports of hardware issues.

It’s clear that regardless of where the discussion lay or what the nature of the discussion was, a large majority of the community felt very passionate on their views and what they felt they deserved out of both the console itself and from Microsoft given the announcement of the warranty extension. Writing on Aeropause, George Walker summarized the dissenting views among the community in a post titled “Microsoft Warranty Fallout (not the good kind)” by stating

What makes the mistake into a full-blown failure is when you strive to cover it up, pretend like nothing is happening, and then after months and months of ignoring the issue, then you finally decide to do something about it, only after it becomes obvious that it’s hurting your bottom line. See, if you were smart, Microsoft, you would’ve realized a LONG time ago that it could’ve been addressed for much cheaper than $1 billion if you had done so a YEAR AGO.

That’s what you get for trying to screw over your customers. Thanks for playing.

The announcement was picked up widely across the blogosphere this week by blogs such as Joystiq, Kotaku, Destructoid, Evil Avatar, Engadget, Gizmodo, Xbox 360 Fanboy, Aeropause, Game|Life, Ars Technica, Siliconera, GayGamer.net and Cathode Tan.

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Circuit City Weekly Circular Reveals $100 Price Drop on PLAYSTATION 3

A reliable forum member of the Cheap Ass Gamer (and DVDTalk) forums posted information from an upcoming Circuit City weekly circular which revealed that the chain would be selling the 60 GB model of the PLAYSTATION 3 at the reduced price of $499 on July 12, down from the $599 price point the console was released at in November 2006.

The circular and the subsequent scan of the circular (as posted by Kotaku) grabbed a significant amount of attention as many bloggers and community members have long griped about the high-price of the PLAYSTATION 3 console. Many have also felt that the exceptionally low monthly sales for the console as reported by the NPD Group is a clear result of the high price point. As a result, the price cut elicited an overwhelmingly positive reaction from the community as they felt Sony was beginning to understand what would make them be more competitive against two lower priced consoles in the marketplace. Many feel that this will help sales for the console a little, but at $499, the PS3, as one member on NeoGAF states, “will have a really nice price for what it offers. Still probably won’t be cheap enough for the masses to bite, well, en masse.”

The price cut was confirmed late Sunday night via a Sony press release which also announced a new, albeit limited edition, variant featuring a larger hard drive (80 GB) and Motorstorm bundled into a $599 package.

News of the circular was picked up widely by blogs such as Joystiq, Kotaku, Destructoid, Evil Avatar, Engadget, Gizmodo, PS3 Fanboy, Game|Life and GayGamer.net.

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The full release, in case it is removed, from KOTV.com is reproduced below.

New Version Of PlayStation 3 To Go On Sale In August; Sony Cuts Price On Older Model
AP – 7/8/2007 6:57 PM – Updated 7/8/2007 6:58 PM

Sony Corp. announced a revised PlayStation 3 console Monday with a bigger hard drive for storing downloaded content such as video games and high-definition movies.

The new $599 PS3 increases the system’s storage capacity from 60 to 80 gigabytes and also includes a retail copy of the online racing title “MotorStorm,” a company spokesman said.

Starting Monday, the current 60 gigabyte model will cost $499 _ a $100 price drop.

The larger capacity machine won’t be available in the United States and Canada until August.

It plays into the company’s upcoming strategy of eventually offering downloaded high-definition movies, video games, movie trailers and demos, Sony spokesman David Karraker said.

Karraker said further details on high-def movies for download would be released at a later date.

The announcement comes two days before the E3 Media & Business Summit in Santa Monica, Calif., where dozens of industry heavyweights including Sony rivals Microsoft Corp. and Nintendo Co. are expected to show off their latest games and related products.

In April, Microsoft began selling a version of its Xbox 360 with a 120-gigabyte hard drive and a souped up high-definition video connection. Called Xbox 360 Elite, the black-colored system sells for $479.99.

Xbox gamers who already own the $399.99 20-gigabyte model can buy a snap-on 120-gigabyte hard drive for $179.99.

Karraker said Sony would use the E3 show to focus on two areas: ways to increase the number of consumers who own PS3s and other products such as the PlayStation Portable handheld system, and expanding the system’s library of available games.

He said Sony would be releasing 100 new video games during the current fiscal year, including 15 titles that are exclusive to the PS3 such as the hack-and-slash action title “Heavenly Sword.”

UPDATE: The official Sony press release (via Joystiq) reveals that the 80 GB model is currently listed as a limited edition bundle only.