I remember when Retroids first opened. A large portion of us at the time had a large void to fill because of the then-recent closing of the Team Fremont Live forums. (An interesting fact of PSNation trivia: The original idea for the show was created prior to Retroids (then VGEvo) existing on those exact forums). I have been here since practically the beginning. I have made many friends, virtual and real as a result of this site.

And now I have to say goodbye. Not because I want to, but because I have to. I officially received word today that December 3rd is the move-in date for our new property. The bad thing is that I will not have my internet connection transfer with me, and thus my career of playing games is done, probably for good. I want to thank all of you that have become my friends over Steam, XBox Live and PSN over the years.

I want to thank each and every show host on the Retroids Podcast Network for hours upon hours of entertainment that I have enjoyed since the site's inception in 2007. I know that I will more than likely never meet any of you, but I hope that we may cross paths sooner or later in one way, shape or form.

And finally, I want to thank the co-founders Trickman Terry and Ken along with the moderation and social media teams for making this hands-down one of the best communities I have ever been a part of, and may it continue upon it's success.

So Long and Thanks For All The Memories,

Michael "mikeohara" O'Hara


*EDIT* 11/29/2011

Well, I have somewhat good news. I was notified by my mother a couple of days ago that the new property WILL have internet, but in what capacity we will have it as a household is unknown. The date for the move has also been pushed back indefinitely due to the house needing renovations, and allow me to explain:

A chain of events happened one after the other. First it was college stressing me out over classes, then this came along, and on top of that I've been fighting with Chandra (my darling wife) a lot lately, so I've not been in the best way. I'm truly sorry to have made a post such as this, but I am extremely grateful to know that if I did leave for good; I'd have more than my fair share of friends to wish me goodbye. But for the time being, the internet issue is resolved and I can play games (maybe!)

Sometime ago, I had said that I was done with PC Gaming as a whole and was focusing on consoles. Now here I sit, my XBox and PS3 haven't been turned on in over a week and I've not played any of my games I own for consoles. My arcade stick stares at me, begging to be used for games of SSF4 or Blazblue. I haven't touched them because I've had a ton of PC games to play, but I also picked up some fierce PC hardware, which is why the consoles haven't been turned on in a long time.

While I was waiting to register for Quakecon this evening, I looked back over 20 years of playing PC games (yes, I've been playing stuff like Doom and Quake longer than some members of Retroids have been alive) and realized that I've had some of the greatest times whilst sitting at my computer playing all kinds of games. Only recently have I realized how big of a difference the hardware you put in your machine makes. I had 8gb of memory and a decent mid-range graphics card in an ATI Radeon 5870. Last week, I made a trip to Fry's Electronics and picked up a 3gb GeForce GTX580 and 16gb of memory and a couple of days later, installed them along with three of my newest games: Brink, Dragon Age 2, and The Witcher 2 and the detail on the three games was enough for me to justify spending as much as I did. Every game I own now can be run at either High settings (I'm looking at you Witcher 2, my system can run it at Ultra but it's choppy as all hell) or completely maxed out (Dragon Age 2 with High-Res texture pack and Brink along with Assassin's Creed Brotherhood). If you're looking to step into the world of PC Gaming, I can't recommend a better time than right now with lots of good games out and more coming down the pipe. But a word of advice, stuff can get costly. That video card I bought last week was $520, but it's worth every penny. Now all I need is a SSD ...

Anyway, thanks for reading.

-- MPO

I know we're a month and a half out from Extra Life this year, but I'm gonna share some of my plans now. Here's a little taste of what you can expect:

a.) Live streaming via uStream - this will happen for the entire 24-hour marathon via a LifeCam from Microsoft. It's supposed to transmit 720p video, but I won't know how good it works until the product is in my hands. It'll be hooked into my soon-to-be bought Sony laptop showing the action.

b.) Multiple Consoles - I had planned for playing the majority of the marathon on 360/PC, but it's definitely possible that I will have my PS3 back in time. If that's the case, I'll be purchasing some of the games in my list (yes, I have a list of games) for PS3. This would be primarily for stuff like Super Street Fighter and Blazblue, since I don't own a arcade stick for my 360.

c.) Requests - I know that the podcast shows are gonna be doing requests for donations to Extra Life. I will be doing the same thing to an extent. In due course, I'll post my game list in a blog entry in the future to pick and choose from.

d.) Portable Gaming - There may be some portable gaming going down (whether it be PSP or DS I don't know). I'll have to figure out how to broadcast that if I do buy either one.

Platform: XBox 360 and PC
Price: $59.99
Date purchased: May 3rd, 2010 @ Best Buy



I got these after my wife gave her thumbs up to them. I’ve used them for about 10 hours now across games such as Battlefield Bad Company 2, the Halo: Reach beta and Splinter Cell: Conviction and can give my (somewhat) complete thoughts.

Construction:

For $60, I was expecting a cheap piece of plastic. But this is sturdy and well-made! I have only two gripes about the construction of the device.

1.) The headphones have a somewhat heavy feel to them after prolonged usage.

2.) The ear padding tends to sweat a lot.

Game Sound:

Let’s not get fancy here, this isn’t a 5.1 headphone set. This is a simple stereo (aka 2 channel) headset at first glance, but the audio coming into the headphones from my actually helped improve my game a little bit, especially in BFBC2; where I was able to actually distinguish when someone was trying to knife me in the back. I was also able to spot audio cues fairly easily in Splinter Cell thanks to the X11s. The game sound for me came from my HDMI A/V box that I bought when I got the 360 via the RCA jacks on the box along with the included RCA splitter that hooks into the main 3.5mm connection.

Chat Sound:

The microphone works with a little cable that runs from the volume box to the 2.5mm jack on the 360 Controller. The best thing about the chat sound on the X11s is if you have some little kid/teenager being annoying as s**t, you can turn it all the way down and still have full control over the game volume. That means the aforementioned idiot yells at everyone else except you, and your online gaming experience isn’t ruined. The chat sound otherwise works very clear and without distortion.

Cabling:

The X11s are powered by 1 USB port on your 360/PC. The cabling is also near 25“ long, making it ideal if you have to sit far away from your TV. But if you sit close to your TV/Computer Monitor, all that cabling may make your wiring situation very bad, so plan ahead if you get these.




Final Score:
Design/Construction: B+
Game/Live Audio: A-
Cabling: B+

Final Score: B

I went this evening and put a $100 deposit towards the 360 Elite Bundle that's out right now, and I wanted to share my experience with you all.

I had heard initially about this when I had called yesterday and had inquired about some trade-in values.

Upon entering the Gamestop, I saw fliers advertising the Layaway promotion. $25 minimum required for the initial payment with a six-week payment period, however there are limitations on what can be put on this.

XBox:
2009 Elite Holiday Bundle
Arcade Unit

Nintendo:
Wii System
DSi System

That's what is eligible. The Modern Warfare 2 Bundle for 360 isn't eligible, and neither are any Sony products. When I inquired further, it was revealed to me by the employee that basically, what the store has the most stock of is eligible for this program. I find this really surprising to say the least. Overall, I was asked a total of two times about reserving or trading in anything towards the cost of the system.

Thanks for reading!

In my last blog post, I said I would tell you all why I ended up not wanting to buy or build a new PC ... the main reason is ...

MONEY!

For the amount I was looking at to build or buy a new PC, I could easily buy a nice Plasma TV and build up a good collection of Blu-Ray content.

I've given up on PC gaming once and for all. I'm now fully embracing the PS3, which I should have done the moment I got the fracking thing! A more detailed blog post on how this all came to be is gonna come soon (hopefully!)

Title: Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3
Publisher: Electronic Arts Los Angeles
Price: $49.99 Regular Edition PC/$64.99 Premier Edition PC/$59.99 XBox 360 (prices were obtained from Amazon.com on 12th November, 2008)
Platforms: PC/XBox 360
Rating: Teen by the ESRB/16+ by PEGI
Edition Reviewed: Premier Edition (PC)
Reviewer: Michael O'Hara (mikeohara)

Overview:
This is one of the most popular RTS (known as Real-Time Strategy, but henceforth called RTS) series ever made. Originally made by the now owned-by-EA studio Westwood Studios during the 1990s, the Red Alert subseries of the Command and Conquer series of games focuses on a World War between the Allies and the Soviets.

Tutorial Impressions:
From what I had played of the Red Alert 3 beta earlier this year, I was expecting nothing short of greatness. After all, I have had only brief time playing the very first Red Alert and I've never played Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge. Needless to say, I was very impressed with the Tutorial, which teaches you the basics of your movement, attacks, and special abilities. There is a lot of humor during the tutorial, which has tanks of the three factions (the Soviets, the Allies, and the Empire) guiding you through the motions with occasional potshots at each other.

Campaign Impressions:
From what I have played of the single-player thus far, Electronic Arts has outdone themselves in the live action video department from the Command and Conquer 3 games. The single player campaign videos easily rival that of big-budget Hollywood films, and no expense was spared. The cast of actors includes George Takei, Jenny McCarthy, Tim Curry, JJ Simmons, Gemma Atkinson, Ivana Milicevic, Kelly Hu and Jonathan Pryce alongside current MMA superstars Randy Couture and Gina Carano. The only regret is that I haven't put much time into the single player outside of playing the first mission of each faction, but the videos between each mission do play out very nicely.

Multiplayer Impressions:
Multiplayer is pretty much unchanged if you've played Command and Conquer 3 or Kane's Wrath, but it is fast and furious. It's also powered by Gamespy's horrible excuse for multiplayer, to which I have an unending hatred against. You can also have your matches broadcast for other players to see online or possibly be featured on EA's community show called "Battlecast Primetime". Overall, I've played about 25 matches online and have won 5 ... which is a little below average for me.

Final Thoughts:
If you like real-time strategy games, I would highly recommend this game if you don't already have it in your collection. If you're wanting to give this genre of games a fair try, Red Alert 3 is a great game to start learning your RTS skills in. A word of warning though, this game does have SecuROM on the DVD itself and does limit you to a total of 5 installations ala Spore, but EA has said that any future installations of RA3 will be painless as long as you've purchased the game. On a secondary note, the Premier Edition which is being reviewed here does contain a few goodies. The full Red Alert 3 soundtrack is provided on one CD, while the other DVD contains some behind-the-scenes on the making of Red Alert 3 as well as Red Alert 3-centric episodes of EA's "Command School" and "Battlecast Primetime" along with a voucher for a map pack download for Red Alert 3 on one side, and a guaranteed beta entry for a future Command and Conquer product on the other side and a voucher for a code for a in-game item for Warhammer Online: Age Of Reckoning.

Final Score: 9.2/10

and finally, some shots of the in-game movies:

by request of one Trickman, I do give you my page for my 2008 EXL vBlog videos, which I'll list starting with Part 1:


Part 2:


Part 3:

I downloaded version 3.1.2 of Safari today to put together a series of posts focused on this little browser-that-could. Has it really changed from the beta that I used for five minutes once and uninstalled and swore to never touch again? My four-part blog post will explore various intricacies of Safari, the majority of which will be PC-focused with a little emphasis at the end on the mobile version of Safari.

My initial impressions of Safari:
Being a die-hard Mozilla Firefox user for the longest time (noted fact: I used Firefox ever since before version 1 came out), I was kinda skeptical at the new Safari at first given my previous experience ... but it's really a good browser. The only bad thing that I have to deal with is ads where I didn't have ads before with Firefox due to a plugin ... Apple, if you happen to ever stumble across this blog entry, please put ad filtering into your ****ing browser!

I've been up here at my fiancee's house now (currently on day 3 of 10), but I've been busy tackling some games in my backlog :)

1.) Battlefield: Bad Company - Coming from playing the Battlefield games on PC for many a year before this game came out, I had been impressed early on with the development of this game, and more specifically, the Frostbite engine that had been developed for this game, while not perfect, is more than adequate for this game. The characters are somewhat memorable and there's plenty of ways to accomplish your mission. The story was also somewhat short, although not as short as Heavenly Sword was. I'll probably start a new game in the future to pick up all the collectible items.

2.) Dragon Ball Z Burst Limit - Granted, I never played the DBZ games on PS2, but I grew up watching the dubbed versions of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, so bringing back the familiar characters of Toriyama's most known (and perhaps only) anime series did bring back some childhood memories for me, but they were there for all of about 5 seconds. I like the fighting engine and how the characters look, but it was a lot of the same stuff over and over. I was stuck on the final stage (which pits Goku as the computer and you're playing as Broly) for the longest time, but I fired up the game yesterday and cleared the stage on the very first attempt. For this game, I will probably not put the game back into my PS3 again for some time.

For now, I continue to work on progressing through GRID and hope to beat it soon.

So, I finally got up enough time to want to check out the newly added Gran Turismo TV section to Gran Turismo 5: Prologue, and I'll be outlining the positives and negatives of the service in this review.

First up, the positives!

1.) Content that has rarely been seen outside of it's native Japan (Best Motoring, Video Option, the Super GT series, and the D1 Professional Drift Series), unless you know where to look, the Gran Turismo TV service will be your first chance to check out these long running programs. Also note that Top Gear was not mentioned, as it is readily available through North America (BBC America) and Europe (BBC2 amongst other stations) respectively.

2.) Sony and Polyphony Digital have made a pact to keep the store constantly updated with content. I see this as a good thing, primarily due to the dates of each Super GT and D1 season, as it should allow them to put fresh content up for consumption, alongside the video magazines already showcased.

3.) The price is absolutely right for these episodes to watch ($1.99USD regular price, I got my four episodes at $0.99USD as the introductory price), but it's also a bane (as you'll see here in a second).

Now, here are the negatives!

As much as I like the Gran Turismo TV option thus far, it does have its fair share of drawbacks, so without further ado ...

1.) Not enough content to start with - This is a big problem, but also the most understandable. The service was officially announced at E3 this year, so there wasn't much time to put content online. At most, there's two to three programs available to download, with some of the content only having one program available (I'm looking at you, Best Motoring).

2.) Pay-per-view format/acquisition - I thought this would be a great idea, be able to watch these programs as many times as I want ... WRONG! Once the purchase is made, you have 14 days (two weeks!) to watch the program as many times as possible before the program is deleted from your PS3's HDD and if you want to rewatch the program after it's deleted, you have to rebuy it! Now it would be unfair for me to criticize Sony and Polyphony Digital respectively for this, after all ... with the exception of Top Gear, none of this content has available for distribution outside of Japan digitally as well as on physical forms of media until recently, so I have to guess that foreign licensing of the Japanese programs will have something to do with people who own Gran Turismo 5 Prologue and who will use the Gran Turismo TV interface not being able to own this content permanently. I can only hope that in the retail version of Gran Turismo 5, this is fixed and we will be able to own these shows permanently.

Overall, I say if you're interested in giving Gran Turismo TV a try, go ahead and do so. It's a good service and has nowhere to go but up.

-- Mike

I've been playing Soul Calibur IV pretty much since around lunchtime today ... and I'm finding myself very impressed with the improvements over Soul Calibur III (which I own on the PS2 in Greatest Hits form). The only thing I really haven't tried yet is the online play, which I'll probably set down and delve into on Friday with some VGEvo folks. Let me go into the things I like and dislike the most about SCIV ...

Likes:

1.) Balancing of the Star Wars Characters - From what I've played against and with The "Apprentice" as the game calls him as well as Vader, the stories that bring them into the Soul Calibur universe are a bit short if anything, but they control just as well in the game as the returning characters. Namco Bandai was really in my opinion looking at the potential in major gaming tournaments where this would get played (the Evolution series of tournaments primarily along with some lesser console tournaments), which in the past have banned pretty much any console-exclusive unlockable characters (Soul Calibur II comes to mind here) because there wasn't really any balance between them and the arcade characters. The Force bar is a great implementation of balance to keep the aforementioned characters in line with the rest of the fighters.

2.) Character Creation - While I liked the fact that the Create-A-Soul mode was available in Soul Calibur III, I felt it was limited at best and was greatly surprised by the new Character Creation option in Soul Calibur IV. I think I'll get quite a bit of use out of the new and improved mode.


Dislikes:

1.) LE Voucher - I received a voucher in my limited edition copy of the game, with really no clue from Gamestop, Namco Bandai, or anyone for that matter as to exactly what the voucher is for. I'm hoping it's for the rumored "Yoda" DLC that the PS3 is supposed to be getting.

Also, thanks to the one and only Torgo (and Savory Cade too) for pointing me into the limited sale that's going on right now on the PSN Store, as I picked up PAIN and Pixeljunk Monsters for $5 a pop and 1942: Joint Strike for $10 ... I'll be busy the next couple of weeks for sure until I buy another game.

First of all,


Allow me to take the time out and thank the people at Planet Zero Anime Center in Houston, TX for having the cabinets setup (yes, there were two back-to-back cabinets set up) running the Japanese version of Tekken 6 (since the release of this to arcades in Japan, a free update was also made available to arcade operators which made some balance changes, but I was unable to determine if the versions available for play were indeed the updated versions). The following are my written impressions, as my verbal impressions will be recorded in the next day or so.

1.) Tekken 6 looked and played absolutely amazing on the cabinets. There was a steady stream of competition lining up to play Tekken, and the cabinets were well maintained, as they were something I would find in Tokyo going through Electric Town, not something I’d find in the United States at all.
2.) There are four new playable characters in Tekken 6, but the only ones I was able to see in action were Zafina and Bob. Zafina is a Nina and Anna-type character while Bob is basically a fat version of Paul. I saw both being used in high-level competitive matches to some degree of success.
3.) There are also several new features in Tekken 6, including a new “bounce” juggling feature, some multi-tiered stages, the introduction of of a “rage” system, which gives characters more power once they get below a certain health percentage, and the introduction of “Item Moves”, in which characters can use an equipped item to attack the opponent.

Overall, Tekken 6 was a experience to behold in the arcade and I cannot wait for it's eventual release here in the United States.

I finished up two games today, Grand Theft Auto IV and Heavenly Sword. Here are my opinions on both:

GTA IV: This is the first GTA I've beaten, despite having bought the PC versions of GTA 3 and Vice City. I've also never played San Andreas, so I went into GTA IV expecting quite a bit of change based off of the footage I saw, and I was really pleased throughout with the game. Another bang-up job by Rockstar!

Heavenly Sword: This game made me want to really buy a PS3 when it came out almost a year ago. This was the second cheapest game I bought when I made my haul of PS3 games last month (the cheapest was Skate at a even $30) and at $35, this game surpassed all of my expectations, even if it was a bit short. Ninja Theory did a great job with Heavenly Sword and is a greatly underestimated title in the PS3 library.

For those of you who are wondering about my internet problems, I'm still having them. It's all thanks to my lovely cable company here (Suddenlink Communications, formerly Cebridge and Cox), and all end-user problems have been solved on my end.

I've now had my 60gb Playstation 3 for 3 weeks, and last week on Monday I went out and bought 4 additional games (skate, Grand Theft Auto IV, GT5: Prologue, and Heavenly Sword) to flesh out my month's purchases, but recently I've come across my first major problem and it might be something along the lines of something I've done or something my ISP has done.

Anywho, this problem has been the bane of my existence the past few days. I've been playing some Gran Turismo 5: Prologue and I enjoyed the GTTV feature built into the game itself ... but I've been trying to download the only one feature that's there to download, which highlights the Lancer Evolution X ...

For three nights now, I've tried to download this feature (which is 578mb) through the game, and three nights i've been greeted with a error message about halfway to 90% through (the error message coming up actually woke me up this morning). I think it's because I've been having some problems with my internet as of late, because my downloads for PSN have gone extremely slow, even with suggestions from fellow VGEvo members they're still slow! So I'm thinking that the errors are a direct result of the problems I've been having with the internet. Hopefully I can get this issue resolved very soon.

Last Friday, I picked up my 60gb Playstation 3 and so far, I've been really happy with it. I bought Tekken 5 the day I picked it up and on my recent trip to Houston, I picked up Burnout Paradise. Between these two games and my rental of Grand Theft Auto IV from Blockbuster and Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction (which is supposed to be here tomorrow via Gamefly), I barely have time to do anything else!

I'm supposed to be out of town next weekend (in Houston, TX) for Chandra's appointments, but while I'm in Houston ... I'm gonna get to spend some time with Tekken 6! I'll be recording my experiences with the game (and hopefully some of the experiences of the H-Town fighting faithful) for the following week's episode of the PSNation podcast. The arcade that I'm going to has imported Tekken 6 from Japan and is one of a select few arcades in the United States to do this.

Yes, I'm seriously contemplating it.

Something clicked inside me today and made me start contemplating where my path in gaming lies. Of course, there's something to be said also with having a dozen games installed and maybe playing two of said dozen games. Or having a collection of maybe 35-40 PC games and having just a few installed. I'm not the hardcore PC gamer that I used to be, and it's too difficult to be able to keep up with hardware and stuff like that. So i'm officially retiring my moniker, and going back to console gaming soon.

Look for me back around on Wednesdays and Friday's soon!

-- Mike

So i've been sitting here all this week using my computer which currently has 1gb of memory sitting in it. How did it get to this you ask?

On January 15th, I made the trip to a Fry's Electronics store (if you don't know what a Fry's Electronics store is, see the Wikipedia Entry. It's basically a giant electronics store, bigger in size than Best Buy and is stacked to the roof with every single possible thing imaginable with computers and anything computer related. The nearest Fry's to me is in Garland, TX (which is a suburb of Dallas). Anyway, I walk in that day and pick up some Corsair memory, more specifically the TWIN2X4096-6400C5DHX, which is a 4gb set of memory, because I was planning on moving to Vista Ultimate (I still am planning on it though). Anyway, I get home and plug the memory into my PC and it works fine for about a day. I get to play a ton of Team Fortress 2, some Gears of War, hell even some Universe At War. All of a sudden, I'm getting BSOD's in windows ... so I end up testing my memory ... and one of my sticks is getting a lot of errors ... a ton of errors to be specific. So I had to wait until Monday of this week (yes, a national holiday no less) to send the memory off to California. I hate it when stuff like this happens.

with my recent announcement that I was taking back over community administration duties for the Steam community here @ VGEVO, I have a bit of a dilemma, and it is as follows. I bought the XBox 360 for the unique games that are exclusive to the console, Halo 3 being the most prevalent example. With games like Guitar Hero 3, Crysis, and The Orange Box being released recently on PC and games like Assassin's Creed coming down the pipeline in 2008 for PC as well ... I wish to pose the following question to fellow VGEVO members, that being ...

"How do you keep a balance between PC games and console games, and how do you typically avoid buying multiple copies of the same game for more than one system?"

It's been a little over a week since I bought my 360, and while I have had next to no time to play due to various issues that have arisen in my personal life, I do not regret my purchase one bit. I have a list of games that I plan on purchasing soon, including skate. I actually play this demo more than I have actually played Rainbow Six: Vegas and Viva Pinata.

But I have pretty much decided to put my PC gaming on the backseat for the time being, and I'm also looking for someone to take over the administration duties for the Steam Community Group.

Well,

There seems to be a bit of a issue regarding what I had wrote in the blog entry dated Friday. It is not my intention at all to be misleading in my decisions that are posted here. I had set myself on coming home with a PS3, but here's the situation.

1.) I draw disability pay from the Social Security Administration, and because of that, I receive a little over $450 a month and as such I had to make a decision. I skipped the Playstation 3 and picked up a XBox 360 Pro (actually, it's the premium system without the HDMI port in back ...) and picked up Halo 3, and Rainbow Six Vegas along with Viva Pinata.

2.) If I had more money, I would have bought a PS3 along with Heavenly Sword on Friday, but since this happened I picked up the 360. The hardest part of was tracking down a used VGA cable for the system. I left Longview (my hometown) around 5pm and ended up in Texarkana, AR at the local Gamestop about 3 and a 1/2 hours later and came out with the VGA cable, which also came with the adapter I needed as well as a gender adapter for hooking the cable up to a CRT monitor.


I still have plans to buy a PS3 down the line ... who knows what'll happen??

Today is the day ... the final part of Decisions, Decisions ... why the games and the community matter. Without further ado ...

Day 3: Upgrading With Ease, The Online Community, and Games plus the winner is revealed!

Ease of Upgrade Process - Looking at the processes needed to upgrade the hard drive space for each console, the Playstation 3 and the XBox 360 are the same ... yet different. Now to be fair for the sake of comparison ... I will point out that both the XBox 360 Pro and the limited edition Halo 3 XBox 360 do come with a 20gb HDD out of the box, where as the XBox 360 Elite comes with a 120gb HDD out of the box. Let's also make the following note ... the 120gb Hard Disk Drive that comes with the XBox 360 Elite is also the highest capacity drive that Microsoft allows to be used with the XBox 360 systems, and currently has no further plans to introduce any larger drives. If I were to upgrade to a 120gb drive in the future, it would be very simple to transfer the content from the 20gb drive to the 120gb drive. However, with these drives Microsoft went with a proprietary cable with a single USB connector, presumably to keep with the somewhat closed-ended nature of the XBox Live service. The Playstation 3 however uses a industry standard known as Serial ATA, or just simply SATA. The Playstation uses 2.5" Serial ATA drives (most commonly found in most modern laptops) and can accept drives up to 250gb (which is pretty much twice the space of the XBox 360's largest Hard Drive, even after being formatted!)

XBox 360 - The 120gb Hard Disk Drive retails for $179.99 from Microsoft directly, but as of this posting, there are online retailers that are selling the drive for as low as $159.99.

Playstation 3 - The systems come with 60gb and 80gb SATA drives respectively, but for the price of the XBox 360 120gb HDD, you can buy a 250gb SATA drive from Newegg or Zipzoomfly and have the drive delivered to your house. Also note you need a external drive that's formatted FAT32 (which is pre-Windows XP) to backup your saved data.

Winner: Playstation 3

Games - Here within lies the meat of the argument ... there are so many good exclusive franchises on both systems it's not even funny. The XBox 360 has franchises such as the Halo franchise and Mass Effect, which is a new franchise being developed by Bioware. The Playstation 3 has long-standing franchises such as the Metal Gear Solid franchise, the Tekken series of games, and the Ratchet and Clank series of games, and not to mention the role-playing game juggernaut that is the Final Fantasy series. Also, I am placing a hedge bet on backwards compatability. Any XBox 360 owner will more than likely have a list of 3-12 games that they want backwards compatable and I was no different, with a lot of the old SNK and Capcom fighting games being made available for XBox, I wanted to play them on my 360 ... but I never got the chance to. Out of the 15+ fighting games I had at one time ... I would only be able to play 3 on a XBox 360 (Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Guilty Gear XX #R, and Street Fighter Anniversary Collection), where as with the Playstation 3, I can play all of the fighting games released here in the US for the Playstation and Playstation 2 on my Playstation 3 with zero problems.

XBox 360 - Limited Backwards Compatability, A few interesting franchises (Halo, Dead Or Alive, Eternal Sonata)

Playstation 3 - Full Backwards Compatability, more franchises that I want to play (Heavenly Sword primarily amongst others, Ratchet and Clank, Gran Turismo).

Winner - Playstation 3

Community - This is gonna be quite interesting, as I'm gonna take two podcasts and match them head to head. As everyone here is well-aware, the voice of XBox Live is without a doubt Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb. He has a weekly podcast that is released on Sundays that goes into a great bit of detail about the Live service ... what's being made available that week for download, game releases, and is a great interviewer. Now that I have gotten the good out of the way, the bad news is that he is actually a Microsoft employee and 9 times out of 10 will tow the company line on the console and games. A good example of this was when Need for Speed Carbon was released for the 360, and with it came various microtransactions for that along with The Godfather game that had been recently released. Hryb had a interview with the person responsible for these transactions at the game's publisher, Electronic Arts. Needless to say, said interviewee was specifically asked about these transactions and basically gave his companies line and spun the hell out of it. In comparison to the Major Nelson podcast, there's the Playstation Nation Podcast. Hosted by Glen "Torgo" Percival and Jarrod "BadBad_LeroyBrown" Johnston, these two give absolutely unbiased reviews of current Playstation 3 releases, Bluray movies, and PSN store purchases. These two are destined for greatness with this podcast.

Winner - Playstation 3

My Final Thought: Writing this three-part entry has made me understand the process of choosing a current-gen console.

I also earlier in the evening had said that I had ordered a game for my system. The game I ordered was Heavenly Sword ... I did not pay full retail price, but I did get a new copy of the game for $45.96 shipped.

The Winner: Playstation 3!

Continuing With Day 2 of "Decisions, Decisions ...", Today I look at the online services offered by XBox Live as well as the Playstation Store and examine high-definition movies on the current generation of consoles. Without further ado ...

Online Multiplayer/Interaction - XBox Live and the Playstation Store are two very good online distribution and content services that are easily on-par with Steam (if you are not familiar with Steam, it is a online digital distribution service that sells PC games from various game companies such as Valve, THQ, Eidos, and ID Software). I do have previous experience with XBox Live coming into this, as I'm formerly a XBox 360 owner, but I have not owned a PS3. XBox Live is a really great service, as I played with it during the time I was a 360 owner. I like the general look and feel of Live and how it can be used along with how it uses matchmaking. From what I understand and from what I have viewed online through sites such as Youtube ... the Playstation Store is attempting to mimic XBox Live, with some limited success of course.

XBox Live - Has two subscription levels (Silver and Gold, and to play 360 games online, you need the Gold Level membership.) - A 13 month Subscription Card for XBox Live runs about $49.99 plus tax, which turns out to be around $5 a month for this level of service.

Playstation Store - one level of service with no monthly fee.

Winner: Playstation 3

Movie Playback - Yes, sometimes even gamers have to take a break from the marathon session of *insert game here* and kick back and watch the occasional movie, television show, or music concert. With major movie studios pushing two High Definition Formats (HD-DVD and Bluray respectively), when you pick a gaming system you're "locked" into one of the two and really can't switch over until a definitive format for high-definition DVDs emerges, if one does at all. There's a list of studios that support each of the formats over at HighDefDigest in their forums, along with reviews of both HD-DVD and Bluray discs. Of course, each format has studios providing exclusivity as well as format-specific exclusives (The HD-DVD Format has Heroes S1 and the upcoming release of the Bourne Ultimatium as well as the previous Bourne movies, while Bluray has The Simpsons Movie and Prison Break S1, as well as Independence Day).

XBox 360 - The HD-DVD addon is priced is $179.99 through Microsoft, and is available at that price at all big box electronics stores and game shops.

Playstation 3 - The Bluray drive is built into the PS3 itself and is included with the system's cost.

Winner - Playstation 3

Tomorrow ... Games, The Community ... and The Decision!

Starting today I've decided to put together a three-part series on some of the decisions that I have to look at while deciding on the console I want to buy in 72 hours (that's in 3 days time). I've been looking at a lot of issues, which is why the full blog entry will run over 3 days. Without further ado, here's Day 1's entry.

XBox 360 ... or PS3 ....

Master Chief ... or Nariko ....

For the past 10 days I have been struggling with making this decision, which during this process I have been basing my decisions on the following categories, which I'll list below. On Friday, I will post the final part of the blog entry along with what console I have decided to purchase.

1.) Ease of Connectivity (Video) - I'm gonna be using my LCD monitor for the time being (which is a 22" Acer X221W Widescreen Monitor) for the foreseeable future until I scrape enough money together for a all-in-one solution that will let me watch TV, play my current PC games library, and switch between my console (whichever ones I buy) without any major adaptations or modifications needed (i.e. adapter cables or plugs) as I see fit. The methods that each console will be using are listed below.

XBox 360 - 1st party A/V VGA Cable (meaning this plugs directly into my monitor's VGA port) - Retail cost for this set of cables is $39.99 from Microsoft and is available at any game retailer or big box electronics store. I should also note that this can be found used at a local Gamestop or EB Games for about $10.

Playstation 3 - 3rd Party HDMI to DVI adapter (plugs directly into my monitor's DVI port) - cost of this cable is $12.79 plus shipping from Monoprice.com

Winner - XBox 360

Ease of Connectivity (Audio) - Here's where it gets somewhat even. Regardless of what console I purchase on Friday, to hook this up I will need a RCA audio splitter, available from Monoprice as well for $1.95 plus shipping. This will go into my line in connection on the backplate of my motherboard, theoretically allowing me to use my very nice Zalman headphones.

Winner - Tie

Tomorrow will cover online gaming and high-definition movie playback.

Today, I downloaded the demo for the upcoming game Medal of Honor: Airborne, which will be available for purchase 4th September for PC and XBox 360. I'm very impressed with the demo, which contains the game's first level. I probably will buy this on the day it's available :)

For a 100+ image slideshow ... go Here! to look at the pictures I took!

As we all know, the PC version of Game of The Year candidate Bioshock came out this week on Tuesday ... and people were happy to be playing the game, until today. Users on the 2K Games Forums for Bioshock have run into a wall for a lot of the users who have bought the Retail game or purchased the game via Steam, with an apparent two install limitation per user. As a consumer who spends on average about $150-$200 a month on PC games and software, I cannot help but worry about issues like this.

Elizabeth @ 2K Games has clarified the issue surrounding the install limitation issue with a post to the Bioshock forums with the following:

Originally Posted by Elizabeth @ 2K Games via Bioshock Official Forums

hey guys,

first, let me say this. you DO NOT NEED TO USE THE INTERNET EVERY TIME YOU PLAY THIS GAME. it is only the first time.

second, you can uninstall and reinstall this game, and if, by chance, you have 2 computers you want to simultaneously play this game on, you also can do that.

if by some chance you are reinstalling this game without uninstalling it first, a lot, there is a chance you may have to call securom and get a key, or deactivate some older installations.

but if you upgrade your hardware next week, you'll still be able to play the game. if you revamp your system and need to reinstall bioshock, just uninstall it before you go through the overhaul, and then do your reinstall.

calling it "hardware fingerprinting" is a bit alarmist. we do not transmit any of your data to any companies.

really, the only people who will be concerned about any of these security measures are those who are rapidly putting bioshock on many pcs... if you use the game as you normally do, you won't notice this at all.

Needless to say, I'm still gonna be very wary when I buy Bioshock. As good of a game this is, this issue should not have come up to begin with.

A great first post on the blog wouldn't you think??

Edit on Thursday, 23rd August:

Ken Levine has made a post this morning, in which the following was stated:

Originally Posted by Ken Levine via 2K Games' Bioshock Forums

I've followed up on the circular email with Securom and we are working on this issue. I agree, it sucks, and we need to get that sorted.

I've been told by 2k that we will.

-Ken

So, it's at least a good thing that they're aiming to fix the issue in short course.