Saturday, September 25, 2010

It Looks Like Gran Turismo 5 Is Probably The Prettiest Game Ever

I am currently in university so when I am not in class I try to take some time to catch up with the whole gaming scene. Recently I have been turning my attention to Gran Turismo 5 (GT5), I kind of forgot about this game because GT5 Prologue has been out for a while and the full version GT5 has been in development for an eternity.

As I was sifting through some GT5 videos on Youtube I was noticing how beautifully GT5 is shaping up. Just the amount of detail in the game is astonishing. I saw a clip of night time driving, from the in car view, with the rain on and I must say I was completely blown away it practically looked real. The level of photo realism in this game still boggles my mind. I was worried that the developers of the game would only focus on making the cars look pretty and half ass the tracks. But I was totally wrong from seeing song recent footage from the game. It has got me so excited that I'm really wish that I had the money for the steering wheel and pedals for this game. I played GT5 Prologue in a racing seat with the pedals and the steering wheel and it really made the driving simulator experience all the more better.

As I always do I will continue on the hype train until the games release. I wonder if can bribe Santa Claus this year, so I can wake up to a Steering wheel and pedals in my stocking.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Playstation Network Cards, Handy Little Things Aren't They

Since I recently got internet up in my new place I have been contemplating weather or not I should purchase some games on the Playstation Network (PSN). Finally, yesterday I decided to take the plunge.


So drove to the nearest mall, located the EB games/Gamestop and to my surprise they were out of PSN cards and had been for a month! So the cashier directed me to a drug store in the mall and to my surprise the drug store had plenty of PSN cards. I found that pretty funny, the cards were so tucked away, no wonder nobody had bought them. So I went ahead and purchased a $20 card and went directly to my place. I spent most about $18 and I decided to buy Crash Bandicoot Warped and Final Fantasy 7, both classics in my book. Currently I am plowing my way through both games, since I would like to finish them before my course work load picks up some more.

I remember the days without PSN cards, it was horrible since I don't have a credit card ( I applied for one but it's taking an eternity for me to get it) so getting my "hands" on some downloadable PS1 games was looking pretty grim. Now that time has past and I can enjoy all the old stuff that I grew up with. One thing the I like in particular about the PSN cards is the fact one PSN dollar translated to one dollar in the real world. I find things like the Xbox live points system can get a little messy. Once a new currency is introduced (ie. points) it can get difficult to keep track of what how much actual money you are spending or it becomes difficult to determine the worth of a game. This is just the way that I feel, it's kind of like going to Dave and Busters or Chuckie Cheeses and you buy a ton of points/coins for a pre-determined amount of money. But the catch is that you are probably in the mind set of spend coins not money, thus not really keeping track of the actually dollar amount your are spending to get X amount of tickets to win a crappy little prize. I guess you can tell by my little rant that I spent lots of my childhood money at these kind of places only to get lackluster prizes.

So for now I'm going to be using PSN cards, I might as keep using them when I get a credit card since it will help keep my spending in check. It still blows my mind how wonderful these little pieces of plastic called PSN cards are.

Monday, September 13, 2010

I'm Just Putting it Out There, Crash Team Racing Beats Mario Kart Any Day

As a child I used to have a Playstation (PS1) as many of you probably know and I enjoyed it very much. It was probably the main reason I have been feeding Sony all this money of the years.

One of the main reasons I loved my PS1 so much was because of all it's racing games, in my eyes they were far superior to those on the N64. Probably my favorite racing game next to Need for Speed 3: Hot Pursuit was Crash Team Racing (CTR). I always preferred CTR to Diddy Kong Racing and Mario Kart for some reason. It may b due to the fact that the Crash Bandicoot games were my favorite platforming games at the time, so that may create a little bias. But I think there is more to it, in my opinion the power ups and the tracks were far superior to the N64 racers. On the other hand it comes down to personal preference because Diddy Kong Racing was not my cup of tea due to the fact that it was not only kart racing. Regarding Mario Kart, I just didn't like the tracks all that much. So many people have disagreed with me but my arguments stands; PS1 had the best racing games in that generation.

Friday, September 10, 2010

Resistance 3, Finally Announced!

Yeah I know, I'm a little late to the party ( not having internet can do that) but I came across the Resistance 3 (R3) live action trailer and it got me very excited.

We all knew it was coming, R3 was bound to be announced pretty soon since Resistance 2 (R2) was released quite a while back. Besides the cliffhanger ending in R2 has had me waiting for news on R3 for quite some time, finally something has turned up. Although the trailer is just teasing us due to the fact that it's live action, it was very good it seemed like it could have been a movie trailer for a thriller or a horror film. I am just a little disappointed because the trailer did not show anything about the story. I am really impatient and I love the plot in the Resistance trilogy ( I hang around on the MyResistance.net forums a lot), so any little tid bit of information regarding the plot would have been nice. The only thing that the trailer kind of mentioned is that the game will take place in New York but we all knew that because the title of R3 that was leaked a while back showed a silhouette of New York in the letters. but I guess that is the point of making a teaser trailer, it's a tease (man I really hate teases!).

I guess the trailer is better than nothing and has got me pumped about another game. I'm just praying that it doesn't come out early next year because I am not going to be able to buy all the game coming out in the winter nor would I have the time to play them all.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

FanExpo 2010, Good Times...

In Toronto there is an annual convention called FanExpo and it's all about anime, comic books and video games. This year I decided to go again for the second time this past weekend.

I was very surprised when I got in line for the expo over the weekend, the line was absolutely massive. It seemed like the expo had a much more people attending this year. Aside from me sifting through a few Amazing Spiderman comics that I was looking to purchase I spent a lot of time watching people playing a bunch of new games that were being demonstrate (the lines to test out the games were extremely long and I didn't have enough time to try them out unfortunately, so spectating was the only way to go). First there was Kinect for the Xbox 360 and Move for the Playstation 3. Now that I was able to see these new peripherals in person, it solidified my preconceived opinions. They just seem like a gimmick that Sony and Microsoft devised to try and take a bite out of Nintendo's market share. Also, the players looked equally as ridiculous if not more (especially while playing Kinect) when they were playing some of the games. So that gave me a pretty good laugh. Gran Turismo 5 in 3D was also playable in a racing seat and steering wheel, I really wish that I got a change to try out some 3D gaming but people just hogged that game like it was the last time they would ever play it. The one game that got me really hyped up was seeing Halo Reach being played, graphically it is greatly improved compared to Halo 3 and slightly better than ODST. The new weapons and gameplay mechanics looked pretty cool too, so I'm looking forward to getting my hands on Reach when it is released. Regardless of my current opinions of the motion controllers I will still give them a shot when they have promising games.

Aside from that I managed to pick a little item that I have always wanted. Yes, it is a Buster sword from Final Fantasy 7 and yes I am extremely nerdy for buying one but hey it is still awesome.