Great GS, great... you could have guessed that many gamers from around the globe want to see the press conferences. You could have been prepared for the huge amount of traffic. Still I'm getting nothing but a slide show. Worse than that actually with hardly a picture every minute. The sound is worthless, too.
But I want to be fair. I'm sure you tried hard, GameSpot and at least there is the ticker.

So what can we say about Nintendo's conference? Probably "YAWN" or something.^^
Here are some pictures I had to watch for several minutes because of the streaming problems.

UPDATE on Sony's conference:

This was a better one. But will the movie service come to Europe, too? The European store still sucks compared to the American one. It offers less content and is worse sorted.

Gamer Cards... nice.

So that's why the ending of Ratched and Clank was such a cliff hanger -.-

Just a short comment about the Microsoft Press Conference before I go to bed.

MS showed no shame when they proudly "introduced the concept of the avatar". Honestly, who didn't think of Miis at that point? Also Xbox gamers will get their version of Singstar with Lips, their Buzz with Scene it! (not new, I know) and their Eye Toy game with We're in the Movies. They are also getting their version of Final Fantasy XIII, well actually not only a version.

Xbox users get everything (the Lips microphones do even have motion sensing!). And Sony fans can't help to feel at least a little bit ripped off. But I can only compliment MS for this. They find out what the customers like and give it to them. Everyone is copying from one or another sometimes. I own no 360 but it's probably a good time to own one. Sony can talk and make big announcements but in the end they keep us waiting and waiting. And I really like the online party function MS showed.

Let's wait and see the other conferences!

Ok, Neon Ninja can probably be more proud on his blog post about the completion of Ninja Gaiden II since Dragon Sword was easy but if you are still interested in my review here is the link

Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword Review

My score for the normal difficulty setting is 6025825 which must be really bad since everyone else in the ladder has 999999999 points -.-
Without the mask Ryu looks like a girl. He looks better in DOA^^ And his father's name is Joe? Joe Hayabusa? Now that sounds like Ninja... Joe...Hehe

I also finished Crisis Core FFVII. I don't understand the hype for this game. It scored a 9? Ok, it looks good, at least the cut scenes and the characters do. I cannot complain about the sound either but the most important thing is still the game play. Square Enix must think we've gotten dumber since FFVII. Only one character to control and 6 skills to choose from in battle. Limit breaks, summons and bonuses are random. That doesn't leave much of the greatness of the FFVII system. The only interesting part is to power up your equipment but to do that you have to play many of the 300 missions that mostly work the same: You start in one of a few different dungeons and have to fight your way to a certain monster and beat it. *YAWN*.
The story was not bad but not really reasoned either. But enough of the rant. I still liked the game (but not that much that I'd give it a 8 or 9) - mainly because of Zack who is a great character. Oh the ending was so sad ;_; I knew it had to happen but they managed to make it even sadder than I imagined.

I played both games mainly at home even though they are portable games. How about you? Do you play portable games mainly when you are on the road? Or can't you stop when you are at home like me?

Fare will pink banner and Garfield icon! I found this Duellist X picture among the wallpapers GS offers and liked it. You know, Duellist X is a huge hero and well known amongst the Moogles. But otherwise I, Mog, have nothing to do with this mysterious, good looking guy. Completely nothing! I don't know who he is! I don't even know him in person! ... But he sure is great!

Other stuff:

Sadly the German soccer team failed to win the final match. Congratulations to Spain. It was a well earned victory! And now we are going to kill the Euro mascots in our fury!

Yeah! We did it! Germany made it to the semi finals of the EURO 2008! I honestly had my doubts that we could beat Portugal after the last two weak games but the team got its energy back and scored three beautiful goals. Portugal wasn't bad either and with a little more luck they could have won, too. I love the German team. Every player is sympathetic and non is a conceited star. If we win it is because of good team play (or weak opponents).

Poldi gave his shorts to the fans after the game.

In other news I finished MGS4 yesterday. It was a flawless experience. Every portion of the game was well made and fun to play. I'll go and buy the strategy guide and play it again trying to find all the easter eggs. The whole MGS story is so weird. If they just had talked to each other and explained their goals instead of using all the weapons possible against each other... but that would have been boring. And the last boss fight - I don't know why they were fighting at all. Probably just because an MGS game needs a proper boss fight against a main character. Anyway best game on PS3 so far.

I also put my hands on the free Spore creature lab and created this little Wurli:

The editor is really easy to use and it comes with a video capture tool and an avatar creator option. You can share creatures very easy, too. They did a good job here. The creator is a bit limited though. Can you even create assymmetric beings? Also you cannot paint your creation freely. The parts you can use are limited in this free version but I guess there will be tons of parts in the game. Have you tried the creator yet?

That's it for today. Read you soon! (I'll try to read more of your posts than in the last weeks.)

Mog

Hey party people!

I wanted to build a home page for quite some time. I thought it might be a good possibility to show my programming projects to a potential future employer. But in the end I didn't feel like making a businesslike, stark thing. I like to use colloquial language. So it became a site primary designed for me to keep track of what I've done in the past and what games I played. And I show it to you because it's no fun to have a homepage that nobody ever visits.

Unfortunately it is written in German (mixed with the usual English names for technical stuff and games). I would be glad if you'd take a look anyway! Thanks!

http://mog.eirogge.de/ (kindly hosted by EiRoGGe)

Have you visited the revamped Playstation store yet? It's nice but the font is hella small for my little SDTV and why do the icons take 10 minutes to load? I hope the latter issue will improve with time. Anyway it's better than the old store!
I downloaded the Patapon demo for PSP. Patapon costs almost 40 Euro here. Else I would have just bought it. Keeping the beat is harder than it looks and I wonder if the whole game will consist only of entering one of three button combinations. Graphics and interfaces look really good.

How do you like the new store and my homepage?