E3

Well another E3 has come and gone. There was no earth shattering news (except for maybe FFXIII on xbox 360...I think everyone was expecting it though), but tons of great games were on display:

Far Cry 2 looks amazing. So do RE5, Left 4 Dead, and Dead Space (I'm a sucker for survival horror). Fable 2 looks to be coming along well, I love that you can literally buy every shop, castle, etc in the game. And who can forget Fallout 3? I'm a big fan of the original two and had my reservations like lots of people about the free-roaming Oblivion-style gameplay that Bethesda was pursuing, but after seeing the demo, I am absolutely pumped. Finally on the Lucasarts side of things, Force Unleashed almost brought tears to my eyes, as did Mercenaries 2.

I sat there and literally watched all the coverage, except for the Nintendo press conference which I couldn't get up in time for, but still only got 2 emblems...I was hoping GS would give out separate emblems for each conference like last year, but I guess 2 is better than none.

Other Things

In other news, Jeff Gerstmann's Giant Bomb website is now live. It is an absolutely stunning website with tons of features to explore. That place will seriously give GS a run for it's money. Check it out: http://www.giantbomb.com/

State of the Blog

Not sure if anyone really follows this blog, but apologies to all of you who've been peeking in. I've been so busy with school, work, etc, that I haven't had the time to blog regularly. I'm still here, though, and I read all comments, so feel free to leave me a note!

it has taken me over 2 months, but today, i have finally defeated the evil metal slime and gotten past the DREADED LEVEL 20!!!!!

i wonder if there's a level cap on GS or if you can just keep leveling up forever...

i'll just let this exchange speak for itself:

*sigh* the people you meet on system wars

link: http://www.gamespot.com/pages/forums/show_msgs.php?topic_id=25956862&page=1

You may not be a Halo fan, you may not be an FPS fan, hell you may even hate MS and the 360 to bits, but you've gotta admit this commercial is pretty damn cool http://www.gametrailers.com/player/24927.html

A Halo movie with this kind of epic feel and somber mood would be amazing, but I don't want to get ahead of myself here

well i have to say i'm really disappointed with how it scored here: 9.0, and i was hoping for a 10. i know it doesn't reflect very well on me to say that a site is losing credibility just because a game i am really excited for did not score the way i hoped it would, but honestly, when the game has been scoring perfect or near-perfect on every other gaming website, i really have to wonder at the criteria being used to judge games here on gamespot.

from jeff's review, it seemed the 2 biggest things that got on his nerves were frequent hitches and hickups during gameplay, and a number of minor bugs. first of all, even the best games have minor bugs in them, and i don't see that as a reason to deck an entire point or even half a point if it isn't causing major disruptions to gameplay. second of all, and more importantly, i really have to wonder about these so-called performance glitches when none of the other reviews i have read mention such a thing. from the looks of it, it was jeff's hardware (X360) that was acting up, not the game, and it is not fair to review a piece of software poorly if it was the hardware that was causing the problems. not only is it not fair, that's just faulty reviewing, pure and simple.

finally, let me just put this whole review in perspective. according to jeff:

Gears of War > Bioshock

Warioware: Smooth Moves > Bioshock

did GS lose some of its credibility with me today? you bet it did.

well, i've finally reached the dreaded level 20. apparently there's a bug that makes progression very slow once you reach this point. ah well, guess it just means i'll have to post more often