Oh man this new Final Fantasy XIII looks simply amazing, I can’t wait for it to come out.

The graphics look stunning! The storyline looks very immersive as usual for the FF saga.

To all the doubters as to whether Grand Theft Auto 4 for the PC would be any good… you were sorely mistaken. This game takes it to the next level! For those of us with high end computers who do not yet have 300-400 dollar consoles, this is the next best thing.

The graphics in the game are astonishing, everything is smoothly rendered and all the cars and vehicles looks amazing. You need a 728MB graphics card to fully appreciate and run all the stellar graphics. Even if your not into graphics, the storyline is great. Much better than it’s predecessors. You don’t start out working for the mob, your more of an ex-soldier who ends up getting a nudge towards working with the underworld and it’s shady dealings. You come to the U.S. to check on your cousin and find out he’s not living the American dream that you thought he was. I won’t give away anything else about the plot, since it is phenomenal. There is a lot more depth of character and relational atmosphere. You are more connected, through mobile phones, internet, and sometime just bumping into new people outside of missions.
The game play has re-playability in mind. The map is huge with two extra areas to unlock, you have to find restaurants and comedy clubs in order to have them on your map. There is GPS to help you navigate your way through gigantic Liberty City. LC was always my favorite of the various locations throughout the GTA series. So a return to the old city is nostalgic, but it is way more immersible atmosphere than in the first Grand Theft Auto.

There are some return features and some that went away. You can still do Police Vigilante missions which are fun, but they made them more realistic. When you shooting at the criminals you will have a couple stars, but once you eliminate the suspects then your stars immediately go away. I don’t believe they have the taxi, EMT, or firefighter missions anymore. Either that or they are extremely hard to unlock.
The physics engine in the game is amazing! Your car move and reacts to turns and crashes with utter realism. Your car doesn’t explode if the engine isn’t hit, so if it is in the back and you smash the front, it won’t blow up. Also, your car doesn’t explode after a few crashes, like most cars in real life, it would take more than a few bumps and scratches to explode. The hand to hand fighting is life like as you block and throw punches and your opponents have a circle life meter. The gun fights I enjoy the best as now their is a ‘take cover’ option that make the gun fights realistic and last longer. Plus you have more accuracy when you crouch.

The game developers worked very hard to make the game realistic yet still fun for gamers. I have only tested the multiplayer a little, it seems to be all right, but I’ve heard a lot of gamers say it wasn’t up to their standards. This makes sense, as anyone can see most of the effort for GTA 4 must have gone into the single player mode.

This Blokus Board Game has become the new holiday craze! Blokus is a strategy board game that is easy to learn but is not so easy to win. Players put down transparent tetris shaped pieces onto the board trying to block their opponent. The only caveat to placing a piece is that it may not lie adjacent to your other pieces, but instead must be placed touching at least one corner of your pieces already on the board.

I’m sure this game sold a lot of units during Christmas. You can buy the board game at your local Wal Mart. There is also a free online version of the game that you can play multiplayer or single player. It sounds fun and I look forward to trying it out some time.

Well, you are either going to be in pure bliss or in pure agony depending on how you view World of Warcraft. Comcast has managed to kill WoW for the majority of the U.S. What occured was the lastest patches from Blizzard are being downloaded through BitTorrent. However, Comcast has decided to block BitTorrent because one can download free movies and games from them. Because the majority of WoW players use Comcast as their internet provider this kills the WoW game until Blizzard or someone else creates a solution. I can’t imagine their embarrassment if they have to ask someone else to “borrow their internet provider” so they can download a patch for WoW. Then they might realize how obsessed they are with a horrible game.

The Gears of War 2 combustible map pack is set for a 12AM pacific/3AM east time release today. The pack will add three new locales to the multiplayer mode including Flood, Fuel Station and Gold Rush! The pack is estimated to cost 800 Microsoft points. Go here to download the pack.

That’s right there will be another installment in the Call of Duty series.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has been announce as being in development. It is slated to be released in the fall of 2009. The most recent game in the series is Call of Duty: World at War which is based in the World War II theatre. This is a real quick announcement as the last Call of Duty game just came out less than a month ago. I see a trend of flipping back and fourth from modern to WW II to keep their fanbase from getting bored with one era or the other. Activision hasn’t said for sure whether it will be called Modern Warfare 2 or something else.

Here is the latest Mortal Online Trailer. I look forward to this game as it looks to have unique concepts that other games are avoiding. I like that you don’t have to level up and do a ton of quests. There is no levels, and the game is concentrated towards real pvp and adventure. Sure there is slight abilities and skills, but it will come down to who is the better fighter in the skirmishes. The graphics are also very awesome! Definitely my kind of game. Look for Mortal Online sometime in the summer of 2009.

Man this is hilarious! It will make your day. I never expected the Prince of Darkness to do a World of Warcraft TV ad but here it is. Ozzy Osbourne cracks me up! They have to put translations in the TV ad so people can tell what he’s saying. Very clever commercial as it ties in with new expansion the Witch King. There can only be one Prince of Darkness!

World of Warcraft should be the lowest ranked MMORPG, not the highest. People must have never played any other MMO and assumed that this was the best one. It’s sad how these first time gamers call themselves “hardcore gamers” playing a high fantasy childish game. There is no real combat, it is just click and press your spell or attack button over and over.

There is clearly no reason to pay any money to play this game monthly. The game is made up of grinding, which is killing mobs(monsters) over and over again. You try to get better armor and weapons, which gets repetitive. Players that have supreme armor and weapons dominate over everyone else.

PVP is almost non existent compared to other games. That leaves little end game content or replayability. You choose between Undead, Taurens, Trolls, Gnomes, Dwarfs, and Draenei. Then you battle it out for control over Azeroth. The quests are boring and monotonous like Everquest, Asheron’s Call, and other games.

Another problem with the game is the age range. It has the annoying 10-16 year old crowd that are not mature and grief people all day. Grieving is where you player kill people usually in large groups who are weaker by far than your character. An example would be a level 60 killing a level 45.

It would be more fun to play the single player Warcraft games then play the online version.

The world is very small compared to other online games like Age of Conan. There is only so much to explore before you get bored. Also, the graphics are not very good for today standards. Sure it will run better on old computers, but people should have upgraded to a duo core by now with a decent graphics card. If there into “real gaming”.

Supposing for argument sake that being number one, makes you number one. Let’s run with that. Well is Microsoft the best software company because they crushed any hope of competition? Was Ford the best car maker before japanese cars came along? Is Facebook the best social networking site because everyone uses it? My point is that monopolies don’t try to improve what they have and be super innovative. There is no need for them to, they don’t feel like they have to put money into developing better ways to do things. Essentially it’s because they are already making so much money they don’t have competition. We should all hope that better competition comes out against WoW. If it doesn’t then we are stuck either playing a horrible MMO or none at all.

This may be the best mmorpg game to come out this year. It supposedly will have one of the largest maps of any online game ever. There will be full loot of characters when you kill them. You can also siege any castle at any time. Their will not be a grinding/leveling system which is often boring in other games.

DarkFall will be skill based, you pick up a weapon and start fighting others. There will still be guilds and wars between guilds which most players enjoy. The game is somewhere between high and low fantasy as there are orc, dark elves, dwarfs, as well as humans. So there are still classes and attributes to have distinguishable characters which is always a positive. All but one class have racial mounts, which are mounts assigned to whatever race you choose. So for dark elves you would get a Shulgan Drake, aka small dragon.

Some gamers are looking at this game and worried that the graphics are not good enough. I say that graphics are not as important as game play. Just look at how Age of Conan has struggled due to this. Questing and grinding your level get boring after a while.

Intriguingly, this game has a new monster system. Where monsters aren’t on a timed spawn. They keep appearing if unchecked and group into larger and larger groups. They will fight other player cities as well as other monster groups depending on their predetermined behavior.

The sieges are different from other mmos by far. First off, there will be around 87 player city locations. Secondly, there will be cavernous cities and castles on the side of mountains. Another cool factor is all the trebuchets, ballistaes, catapults, are all crafted by players. Actually all armor and weapons are crafted by players as well. You can’t just kill a monster and pick up a sword or armor. There are also diplomatic states between clans. You can be at ‘War’ with other clans, and if your at war to long you get a war ‘weary’ state where you can’t declare war for a while. This will lead to clans not constantly at war with each other. So that one clan can’t form a monopoly on cities and dominate everyone. The cities will be more spread around.

There will also be ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’ alignment based on your actions with your characters. Some NPC’s will stop trading with you and some NPC guards will attack you on sight if you choose to be evil. This game looks to be very open ended and hopefully will lead to great gameplay.