Unfortunately, our economy is hurting many things. Blu-ray may have won the fight against HD, but can it withstand the battle in our threatened economy?

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I spent all day yesterday playing Spore and I must say it’s one of the best games I’ve played in a while. However, I feel like the game should be patched already. I literally played the game about 10 hours straight. I received the achievement for playing the game from a single cell organism to a space civilization. However, when I quit the game, everything was lost and I had to start over!

It’s not too clear how to save in the game. I was creating buildings, creatures and vehicles though out my game. There is a save button you can click on as you did in the Spore Creature Creator. This was the only way I ever saw to save. When you are a space faring race you can NOT save on the planet. The save function is grayed out. I had no idea what to do so I went into a building creation mode and click the save there, since it’s the only way I could save. Well that wasn’t the right save after all. When I quit the game, all my game history was lost. What happened to “Would you like to save and exit?” Apparently, you can only save the game while in the solar intersteller view (this is very inconsistant with the rest of the game).

This makes zero sense since I can view all the saved versions of my creature from a cell organism up to civilization. Additionally, and vehicles I built are still in “My creations”. Yet, when I load up my game to continue, I’m still a very early form of myself just out of the primordial soup. Talk about frustration. Well I’m not going to bother playing the same species all over again after that. I guess I’ll start another. But talk about a complete waste of time. If you played spore already, you know how it records a complete timeline of everything your species has done and accomplished. My sporelings were literally erased from the history of time. Read the rest of this entry »

OK, so I took a long time to really come back from vacation… So much has really happened. I eventually got my replacement Xbox 360. Aside from popular belief, I got it back relatively fast, Like under 8 business days! I’ve been playing Too Human, Mario Kart Wii, Final Fantasy Tactics A2, Braid, and Bionic Commando for the 360. Spore is just around the corner to add to that list.

…the Ring of Light, (rol) or at least that’s what Microsoft so lovingly calls it. Most gamers know this light as the Red Ring of Death. My Xbox was purchased in May of 2007. It as very short lived.

In the meantime, I’ve been playing games on Steam. At least I can earn generic achievements there till I get my replacement Xbox.

Sorry for the lack of posts. I’m on vacation. I’ll BRB late next week!

Good news I liked from e3 2008:

• Wii Motion Plus
• Netflix on Xbox Live
• Final Fantasy XIII on the Xbox 360
• Wii Speak
• PS3 Greatest hits line of $30

The not so good news from e3 2008:

• Microsoft’s Mii’s (I just feel they could have come up with something else, instead of a copy of Mii’s)
• No solution for the Nintendo Wii’s “Out of Space” issue
• No major innovations this year

Some people are getting all giddy over Microsoft’s recent announcement of their ‘Miis’ (they can call them whatever they want …they are Miis), but I’m very excited over their deal with Netflix. If you are an Xbox live gold member and also a Netflix member, you can stream the digital movies in your Netflix queue to your living room using the xbox. On top of that, you can watch movies Multiplayer… or is it Multiviewer? You can watch that same movies with friends through the Xbox360. What this means is, If I rented ‘Star Trek: First Contact, I can force ask my buddy who lives in New York to watch that same movie with me. It will stream that movie to him as well. I imagine, as with multiplayer games, you can carry a conversation through voice chat.

This service is exclusive to the Xbox 360 unlike Miis.

I’m absolutely speechless. I feel like they heard me complain that the ps3 was too much money for me to buy strictly to play Final Fantasy 13. They must have heard me regret that I only bought a ps2 to play Final Fantasy X. Once I beat it, the ps2 essentially collected dust. They must have heard me wish every night that Square-Enix would Start developing for the Xbox 360. They must have heard me when I also wanted other Square games like Star Ocean to be developed for the Xbox 360.

Nintendo has announced in it’s press release a Wii MotionPlus accessory. As explained in the article this will provide true 1:1 motion control. I find this very exciting. Yes, this means you can have a Star Wars Light saber game where the movement of wiimote matches exactly on the screen. This is of course, if it is in fact true 1:1. This also means a new Legend of Zelda game could have 1:1 sword controls. In other words if you lean the wiimote to the left, the sword in Link’s will lean to the left, If you lean the wiimote to the right, up, or down the sword  in Link’s hand will match those movements. A well crafted game could take traditional fighting games to another level. Instead of simply pushing up, up, down, down, you could just act out the sword motions for each combo. This would also allow room for a more personalized experience with combos. It will be all about how well you’d be able to wield the wiimote.

Since E3 is next week and I won’t be there, I have nothing to do but make a wish list of things I’d like to see.

1. A DS light redesign
2. An active Hard drive for the Nintendo Wii. This could either be an external USB hard drive or allow SD cards to be used for this purpose (Am I really the only one that has 0 blocks left?).
3. The game Sadness will be released. And if I’m lucky Duke Nukem Forever will be released in my lifetime.
4. Blizzard to surprise us with an August 1, 2008 simultaneous release of Starcraft II, Diablo III, and Wrath of the Lich.
5. An awesome non-turned based RPG from Square-Enix or from any company for that matter.
6. A new adventure game that is neither a sequel or a prequel
7. Google to announce the G-Box gaming console
8. All consoles to ditch their online models and join Xbox live. Why not! Most PC’s run windows, why not have most consoles run Xbox Live. Fine! If you don’t like Microsoft, then they can all join Valve’s Steam. As long as they are all in the same place.
9. Companies to be fined for delaying or pushing back game launch dates.
10. For one of the major console makers to invent an idea I had for a long time. A “Single Avatar Character Model”. What this super-awesome idea would mean is you create one ‘Mii’ or whatever. You would have the option to use this avatar in almost every game available for that console. This avatar would not only keep track of all scores, achievements, games beaten, and your entire history of playing anything, it will also look the same in any game you play. You should have the option to customize this character whenever you want. Treat it like a virtual you. Also when you take this ‘You’ online, other players you meet can view your history of anything you have achieved in all your gaming since you created the character. Plus this way you can say “Hey I remember you from Halo 2, nice to see you again! I see you put on some weight.” It’s taking the Mii/PSN Home idea to the next level. Hey, I’m allowed to wish for whatever I can dream up!