This holiday season has turned out to be a disappointment all around. The Xbox 360 sure has Gears of War, the PS3 launches with... well, Resistance (and that's really all there is to it), and the Wii launches with, guess what... a game that was supposed to be out on a previous console, even though the newer console looks exactly the way the previous one does.

The report card for this holiday season is looking bleak, imo. The franchises that have held the video game industry high are slowly in deterioration. People panned Call of Duty 3, Tony Hawk's Project 8, the EA brand of games (NFS, Live, etc), and most of the new games out on the newer consoles (i.e. the Wii and PS3). Where have this industry gone too? Have we too much to prove by just essentially throwing out every single idea we had before?

And when, in all of the history of gaming (and this is directed to Christopher), have games been massively unplayable due to a lack of a peripheral for a console?! Yeah, you heard me Nintendo. I'm talking about your cheap, plastic Nunchuk controller that you REQUIRE to play Zelda. Back in the 64 days, you'd never find a Zelda game anywhere. Now, I can't even fucking find a peripheral to actually PLAY the damned game? There is nothing more frustrating than being a kid, getting Zelda with your Wii this Christmas season, only to have the following words appear on your screen:

THIS GAME REQUIRES THE NUNCHUK ACCESSORY TO FUNCTION. PLEASE INSERT THE NUNCHUK ACCESSORY AND PRESS Z TO CONTINUE.

That kid will probably learn his first curse word the day he sees that.

This rant isn't necessarily to bash Nintendo wholly, I have a beef to settle with all three of these first parties for being irresponsible.

Sony, you did a great job with the construction and design of the PlayStation 3. Now, you've basically upped the ante by releasing even crappier games for the console. Remember those shitty Agetec games that came out back in 2000? Imagine that, multiplied by 4.

Okay, so I'm exaggerating. So far, I've played the following titles in the launch line-up:
Resistance: Fall of Man
Genji: Days of the Blade
Untold Legends Dark Kingdom (or whatever the hell it's subtitle is)
NBA 2K7
NHL 2K7
Marvel Ultimate Alliance
Tony Hawk's Project 8
Call of Duty 3

Resistance is THE best PlayStation 3 game out there... but that doesn't mean shit. The graphics are on par with the blurriness of the textures found in a game like Killzone for the PlayStation 2. Sure, you have surfaces and all that shit, but that doesn't appear anywhere in this title until much later in the game. It's so subtle that you think that you've had a filter placed infront of your freaking eyes just to make everything look drab. The gameplay's great, and the sound's awesome, but that's it!

Genji sucks. People who loved the first one will not enjoy this one. Why? Well, your character is roughly about 1/3 of the screen and the game frames him so tightly that it's near impossible to know where the enemies are. Guys, preset camera angles are so PS2. Let's go ahead and remedy this alright?

Untold Legends is basically Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance. Buy Baldur's Gate... it's $10-15 bucks.

NBA 2K7 doesn't retain the airiness of the players' shirts from last year (it seemed as though the chests of the players were emitting some sort of air to make the shirts float), nor does it retain the correctness of the players' faces. Last year had some great faces on the 360... what the fuck happened?

NHL 2K7 is a very, very poor translation to the PS3. Playing this at 720p, all the menus and characters seem ripped from the PS2 version and slapped onto a Bluray disc. That's another one in my "must trade" list...

Now, Activision titles have been a hit or miss - I love CoD3, Tony Hawk's Project 8, and MUA. HOWEVER... they do not offer voice support. What gives people! The most intergral part of online gaming's been removed... and don't get me started on Project 8's lack of online support and MASSIVE SLOWDOWN. MUA was running at 10-13fps at 1080i. CoD3's the only one half-way stable, and that had a patch on day one! Sheesh.

So really, you could hold off on a PS3 until.... maybe March when Heavenly Sword comes out. But honestly, I'm a bit hesitant. I just got a copy of NFS Carbon and I'm afraid to open it. I'm probably just going to return it to get Ridge Racer 7. At least I know what i'm getting.

And last but not least, the 360. This holiday was supposed to be the greatest holiday ever. On my radar? Only ONE GAME... Gears of War. And of course, all the other games coming out on other consoles. Good job with Gears of War. Played it for like about 2-3 hours and dropped it. If you ever wanted that style of gameplay, then check out Killswitch for the PS2.

And Viva Pinata? Gimme a fucking break. Animal Crossing wasn't my cup of tea, and a pseudo MMO featuring breakable and smashable pinatas aren't the way to go for me.

When all else fails of course, Microsoft offers you downloadable HD movies. Guess what though? If you wanna get a ton of them, you gotta buy a $100 20gb hard drive. Even Sony wasn't hard pressed to ask for THAT much for a drive... in fact, they aren't. I'm upgrading my PS3 hard drive to 100GB for the $500 version - because I CAN... oh, and that 100GB is the same price as the 20 gigger.

The most surprising thing about this holiday season is how strong the PS2 is in its lineup. You got all of the above, plus Final Fantasy XII, Bully, and Guitar Hero II. Sure, they ain't Zeldas, Gears of Wars, or Resistances, but they definitely hold out in their longevity. I guess while Sony's busy getting their PS3's ready, they still really haven't forgotten about the poor chumps who still have the PS2. And, of course, unlike Microsoft's 240 titles offered for backwards compatibility, that similar number is what the PS3 lacks in compatibility. Still, having 240 incompatible titles out of the 1000+ titles on the PS1 and PS2 combined is better than only 240 working. Shame on you, Microsoft! And of course, Sony promises to patch these titles to make the PS3 100% backwards compatible.

By the way, didn't Microsoft say that they're going to have 5 million Xbox 360s by June? They just hit 2.1 million now. But wait! Didn't they hit that number back in June? Someone keep tabs.

It looks like Q1 2007 is going to become the next Christmas. The promise of the World of Warcraft Expansion Pack, FEAR for PS3, and Heavenly Sword are definitely making me salivate, but with the quality of games deteriorating, I'm hard pressed and even terrified to buy anymore games.

So, Merry Christmas you PS3 owner with only one game, you Halo 3-less 360 owner who were promised a sequel by the PS3's launch, you Nunchuk-less Zelda Wii remote waver, looking so cool in your spandex. I'll be happy with me bullying some jocks in the corner and, perhaps, maybe revisiting some memorable moments in FFXII.

So it's crunch time at work today, and last night was hectic as all hell. But before I go into that, let me start by chalking up a storm about Video Games Live.

As many or a few of you know, Video Games Live is this thing Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall have put up every year to celebrate music in games. The problem with this concert, is not that it's not innovative, but it's repetitive. The same song selections which were played last year graced the Hollywood Bowl again this year, much to the dismay of many individuals. Sleeper hits such as Beyond Good and Evil never made a return, and Tommy's Advent Rising score once again graced (read: bored) the heck out of people in the bowl.

Essentially, the playlist was as follows:

• Classic game medley: From Pong to Space Ace


• Myst medley


• Halo 3 Trailer theme


• Warcraft


• Civ 4


• Super Mario


• Zelda


• Frogger


• Space Invaders


• LucasArts Medley

And that's pretty much it. Of course Christopher will add to this list, once he finally writes about it, but I'm sure Soo will appreciate and love the idea that a small stuffed Kirby walked onto the stage.

So finally, I'll get to see Vanessa this coming Friday/Saturday. The drive will be atrocious, just mainly because it's a straight shot from Santa Monica all the way to Santa Barbara. At least the gas problems won't be my own though, as she's gonna help me out with it. The drive isn't necessarily what kills me - it's the cost!

I've joined my friends in playing City of Heroes and Villains. The art style's cool, but the character models and game performance are atrocious. I'll stay for a month tops - but I don't know if I'm willing to stay for the long haul, given that I'm more enthused about World of Warcraft.

And no, I'm not planning to join any end-game raiding guilds in WoW thank you.

Speaking of which, credits are finally in COD3. I'm upset that the special thanks section got cut, but from what I understand it's still in the manual itself. The testers were originally gonna get cut as well. Yikes! But at least, i have a nice title to support my role in the project... and I'm the only one in that position! :) At least for our shift.

With that, work has been hectic over the past 24 hours. It's always like this when games are getting ready to be shipped. It's only going to get busier over the week or so, and I hope that they don't make me go to work on my day off. The pay would be nice, but I need to recover from the sanity within the week or else I'm not going to be able to cope with the project going forward. A day's rest is all I ask, and I'm sincerely hoping they grant me that luxury.

What am I saying - of course they will! I can't state the reasons why, but it's quite obvious.

I'm considering getting Vanessa WoW and the Burning Crusade. We'll see what she thinks when she gets her present this Friday :).

After a long bout of not updating my LJ for an entire month, I finally have the chance to while I'm at work and at lunch. Yes, I'm on graveyard shift right now, and I'm taking this time ... and some time during my shift ... to update everyone on what's going on in my life and of course, everything else around it.

For starters, International House of Games is dead. My love child for the past few months is "merely a shell of it's former self." Thanks to lack of updates on all accounts and the lack of communication with everyone in the team, it lays stagnant at its URL waiting to be updated. I can't necessarily say that I blame any particular person for this, but I just want to add that the reason why it died is because we stopped sending emails to one another. The whole forum idea was a joke, and essentially killed all communication between staff. To foster communication means a dialogue... and I knew a majority of individuals on the site do not succumb well to trolling in forums - thereby finally putting the last nail on the coffin for said site. May it rest in peace, along with the other fansite hopefuls in the world.

In other news, Activision's been pretty fun lately. Now that we've gotten rid of a couple of individuals who were more than happy to be relieved of duty (this is a pun), I now have a competent staff that knows what's goin' on and needs as little guidance as possible. It's been quite nice - and today marks the day that I'm actually running the show by myself - without my boss or a second lead to work with. So far, the day's been great and productivity's better than ever. Just the way I like it. I'm not saying anything else, but I hope this reflects well on my resume :)

I haven't spoken in Christopher for DAYS. In fact, I haven't spoken to anyone from the most recent iteration of Montecito house in weeks!

I have spoken to Robert and have convinced him to jump into World of Warcraft. Brandon says that Robert and I have a place in this end-game raiding guild he joined in. Hurray!

Robert's moving into his new apartment this coming Friday and is planning to have his Internet hooked up on Saturday - which means we'll be playing WoW this Saturday after two weeks of hiatus (his 10 day trial ran out).

More to come either later or tomorrow!

In only 3 days...

In light of my current fascination with level design... and my drowsiness... I had to cancel out on doing the podcast tonight. But, I finally mustered up enough courage to create custom textures in UnrealEd, in addition to playing around with the tools in the editor... like that one that cuts brushes in half and all that junk.

The result is a little bit underwhelming, but it definitely is a start. For the record, I haven't necessarily remembered how tall characters are in Unreal until I saw them on the map... which is why the bricks look insanely huge - as well as the room.









What do you think?

Famous last words:
Levels don't design themselves you know! - Me

I seriously should start just kicking ass and worrying about stuff later. I work better hands-on than I do just viewing stuff.

By my title, I don't mean the store. Working in 3rd Shift has many advantages... it allows me to visit Vanessa and hang out with her for 2 days (meaning daytime... this is assuming I'm going on overtime), allows me to do stuff in the morning, and it lets me be free in the evenings where I truly shine. I also don't have to content with rush hour traffic, as it basically is going in the opposite direction of where I'm headed.

The problem, however, seems to stem from the drastically changed sleep schedule that this kind of work schedule demands. I have to constantly make sure that I won't be staying up for 24 hours one day and, if I will, get ample sleep (i.e. 16 hours) on the day prior. It's a tough gig... you need to change your sleeping schedule constantly, and I've read many, many articles about how people can get super cranky just by being in a tough sleep schedule.

But I suppose the good news is that I'm actually working now and I have (some) hope that I will be hired full-time. As you may or may not know, Activision lost quite a bit of money last year due to the lackluster sales of several key titles in their lineup. This year will be a slow year... but from what I hear, next year's gonna be ramping up and that they need as many people as they could. Rumors abound of people "staying on until next year until they eventually get hired" are rampant in the office. To me, this is all a sign of dread.

And so today, I messaged my buddy DaveB (Dave Beaudoin) and asked for some advice in my other career ladder... web programming. He essentially suggested that I comment my code while I write it and take time to create a nice portfolio. There's an abundance of web programming jobs out there, and it's not surprising to me that I was considered for a couple... well, three, actually.

Did I forget to mention that I started up WoW? This is only momentary until Vanessa comes back... I really haven't had the urge to work on my portfolio or anything like that, but I am looking forward to getting new ideas once I'm finally settled in with work. After all... I've only been back a week there.

Also, I'm worrying about Christopher. I hope they aren't too late in hiring him.

Where the HELL is this place?! Oh, and we're going to go to work after going here LOL! We're crazy.