Microsoft pushed Sony into lowering their price down to $299. Now Sony has no more room to lower that price for a few years now since they reported a $1 billion dollar lost in the first quarter of 2009 because of the PS3. In November the Xbox 360 sold over 100,000 more units than the PS3 showing that the PS3 price cut boost is starting to fade away and so is the hype around Uncharted 2. Modern Warfare 2 is the hype for some time to come. In 2010 Xbox 360 will drop the price of the Elite to $199 and the Arcade to $149. Natal is coming out next fall for around $79 and will also be bundled with a Xbox Natal system for around $279. Now the two big system seller that Sony has for 2010 are God of War 3 and Grand Turismo 5, but Sony has no room to lower its system price in 2010. Bluray is still a good selling point for the PS3 but gamers buy gaming systems to play games first. I eagerly wait for God of War 3 so that I can play it on my PS3, but I don't expect it to sell as many systems as a Halo 3 ever did. Microsoft is a company that plans its strategy ahead in everything they do, having invested billions of dollars and over 10 years developing their Xbox business. Microsoft is not playing checkers, they are playing chess.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the sequel to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is the most anticipated game of 2009. Before its release Modern Warfare 2 broke the record for the most pre-ordered game in history. On November 10th of 2009 Modern Warfare 2 was released for the PC, Playstation 3, and the Xbox 360. It went on to become biggest launch in entertainment history by selling 4.7 million units and generating over $310 million on its first day of release, a title previously held by Grand Theft Auto 4 in 2008 and Halo 3 in 2007.
Now the question everyone is asking, does Modern Warfare 2 live up to the hype? Yes it does, this is the best game of 2009. The Modern Warfare 2 experience is composed of three different game modes consisting of the Campaign, Multi-player, and Spec Ops. For this article I will be mostly reviewing the Xbox 360 version of Modern Warfare 2.
The Campaign: is the single player story mode, which follows after the events of Call of Duty 4. You see and play the story through the eyes of various soldiers and a terrorist. You fight in different events around the world in what seems to be the beginning of World War 3. I will not give any details on the locations or the events that take place in the campaign because it is something that is best experienced unspoiled.
Some hardcore gamers might consider the campaign to be short. I was able to complete the game in 6 hours playing in the regular difficulty setting. I have to say that it was one of the best 6 hours I had playing a video game in recent history. The gameplay is top notch with slight improvements over Call of Duty 4, with new weapons and vehicles available.
Instead on relying on cinematic cut scenes the story is told within the actual gameplay just like in Call of Duty 4, it plays like a high action Hollywood movie that never has a dull moment in the game. Hans Zimmer who is better known for composing the soundtrack for The Dark Knight composed the soundtrack for this campaign. This campaign rivals the best of Hollywood movies in creating an adrenaline rush while making you feel heroic at times.
There is a small short fall in this campaign, that is in between the levels they could have done a better job by adding some cut scenes to provide better storytelling for gamers that have been spoiled by the storytelling in such games as Halo 3 and Metal Gear Solid 4. Instead gamers are left to pick up the story from the events and actions that takes place in the gameplay through the eyes of the different characters that you play. Regardless this is still one of the best single player campaigns of this generation.
The Multiplayer: Infinity Ward has follow up on their great multiplayer experience of Call of Duty 4 which two years after its 2007 release is still one of the most played online multiplayer games out there. In Modern Warfare 2 they have added more maps, weapons, and character customizations to keep players coming back for more.
They have improved their matchmaking in very significant ways. I have experienced jumping from the game title menu into an online multiplayer game in less than 45 seconds here is a video clip. The multiplayer mode in Modern Warfare 2 is one of the best of 2009 and should remain that way for a long time to come.
The Spec Ops: Special Ops allows players to perform standalone missions either on Solo or with a friend via online or split-screen co-op. Different difficulty settings are offered for each Special Ops mission. Gamers playing in harder difficulty will be able to unlock more in-game goodies providing a lot of replay value.
Online multiplayer note: For gamers that own both a PS3 and Xbox 360 with Xbox Live Gold should buy the Xbox 360 version of Modern Warfare 2 since it has been proven to offer better networking and matchmaking capabilities. The day after the release of Modern Warfare 2 Xbox Live reported having over 2 million players online playing simultaneous, which was the same day I recorded the video clip of matchmaking in less than 45 seconds. On that same day PS3 gamers were not able to play Modern Warfare 2 online on the Playstation Network because of servers crashing not been able to handle the high amount of players.
Infinity Ward has release updates for the Playstation 3 to fix some of the problems been experienced on PSN. Also the Xbox 360 version of Modern Warfare 2 has sold more than double the PS3 version, which you should consider if you plan on doing online matchmaking as you want to be playing the version with the most players online.
The Verdict: Regardless if you get the Xbox 360 or PS3 version of Modern Warfare 2, you are still buying one of the best games ever. Infinity Ward has created an outstanding package that significantly improves on their previous masterpiece (COD4) while offering a lot more options to keep gamers coming back to play this game over and over for a very long time. Expect this game to be nominated for game of the year by all major gaming publications and awards. This is the game you do not want to miss, I give it a 5 out of 5 stars!
Starting next month, U.S. PlayStation 3 owners will finally be able to stream high-definition movies and television episodes through Netflix's rental service via PlayStation Network.
This is good news for PS3 owners who don't own an Xbox 360. I own both game systems and I currently stream Netflix on my Xbox 360 and it is great. Watching Lost stream in HD is nice. I decided to order the Netflix disc for my PS3. Both systems are great and is really a matter of choice and opinion. I own a PS3 because of some of their exclusives and Blu-ray. But I do most of my gaming on Xbox 360 because I try to play all multi-platform games on Xbox 360 because they usually run and look slightly better and Xbox live is still a lot better when it comes to multi-player games. PSN is good and games like KZ2 and MGS4 play really well online and all the Sony exclusives.
My Xbox 360 will still be used the most because I do most of my gaming on it and Netflix streaming, I also got the early XBL update so now I got Facebook , Twitter, and Last.FM and the new Zune HD 1080P streaming. Now for all the fanboys PS3 is still running in 3rd place when it comes to overall global numbers and the Wii as much as many Xbox 360 and PS3. Also the fact that the Xbox 360 has an 8.7 games per system attachment rate means that the Xbox 360 will still get more 3rd party support than the PS3 for sometime to come
I bought my Xbox 360 on launch date in 2005 and Microsoft has been able to evolve my Xbox 360 experience over the years. The PS3 is a great piece of hardware which I believe has great potential to be unlock but soon we will be entering the fourth year of this generation and Sony better start adding more features and games to keep their sales up.
At E3 Bungie revealed Halo: Reach but did not give any other detail about the game except that is coming in 2010 and that there is a multi-player beta coming soon and that keys to that beta will be included in Halo:ODST.
Today rumors around the industry is that Halo: Reach will be based on the science fiction novel Halo: Fall Of Reach written by Eric Nylund in 2001.
Microsoft Games Studio has confirmed that Bungie & Epic game studios are currently working with Project Natal. Project Natal is the code name for Microsoft's Xbox 360 motion sensing & speech recognition technology that was reveal at E3.
Lionhead Studios Peter Molyneux also presented a small tech demo of what his studio has been able to accomplish in the last four months with Project Natal. With Steven Spielberg also giving a small speech about Project Natal at E3, it is possible to assume that his production company is also tinkering with this motion sensing technology.
Kojima Productions finally unveiled all the details behind the games on the countdown teaser site. The site showed clues such as Raiden and Big Boss from Metal Gear Solid, but a third mysterious clue was a mask. As must predicted one of those games is Metal Gear Solid: Rising(2010) feature Raiden which was announced at the Microsoft E3 Conference for the Xbox 360. The second game was Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker featuring Big Boss unveiled at the Sony E3 Conference for the PSP.
The third game(Mask)was unveiled today at the Konami E3 Conference as Castlevania: Lord Of Shadows(2010) for the PS3, Xbox 360, & PC. Castlevania: Lord Of Shadows is being developed by studio Mercury Steam under the supervision of Kojima Productions. This game is to be release sometime in 2010.
Keeping up the strategy of purchasing exclusive rights to the biggest games, Microsoft today used its E3 conference to confirm that two multiplayer maps will be timed exclusives on the Xbox 360.
Honestly when I first saw Raiden fighting in MGS4, I asked myself why they didn't make him selectable. Raiden was genetically engineered and carries better nanomachines than Snake. Raiden was very badass in the cutscenes in MGS4. Solid Snake might be back in the future but I'm very positive that Kojima will be sticking to Raiden and probably Big Boss in the potential sequel to Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater that might be announced tomorrow. Kojima express that he liked the jungle setting a lot, and is the reason why he made MGS3 a Big Boss game instead of Solid Snake. But Big Boss is the genetic DNA donor of Snake, so Big Boss is the same as Snake in a lot of ways. Snake and Big Boss are only different in personality.
Guys don't forget that Metal Gear Solid 2 was released on the original Xbox and Metal Gear Solid was remade for the Gamecube.
The only reason I'm talking about MGS on Xbox 360 is because during the last few months PS3 fanboys were giving Xbox360 wishful gamers a very hard time. Until yesterday even reporters from Cnet said that it was not likely that MGS franchise would be announce for Xbox 360. The unthinkable happened today, never say never.
I just beat MGS4 for the second time. I already own MGS4, so I don't really want it on Xbox 360 . A remake of all the MGS games is possible on PS3 because Bluray can support that capacity.
I have to say that M$ and Konami could had just annouced MGS for Xbox 360. But sending Kojima himself there was probably hard on their relationship with Sony. But if you looked at the PS3 game case for MGS4, it does not say that is "Only on PS3" or "exclusive" anywhere. There was never an exclusivity deal on MGS4 between Sony and Konami. Kojima was just trying to remain as faithful as possible to Sony.
"kojima looked like he had a gun to his head and a sack full of cash to silence him"
My impression of Killzone 2 were mind blowing from the start. I was really impressed by the presentation of the game. This is the first time that I have loved a first person shooter on the Playstation platform since Alien Trilogy for the PSOne. Killzone 2 has great gameplay and graphics. I played the multiplayer game a few times and I did not experienced any lag. With all the good points made, I have to point out that Killzone 2 was kind of short and in the last level the difficulty gets high to an annoying point, like a cheap scheme. During the raid of Visari palace you will see that the same enemies you were fighting during the whole game now take a full clip of bullets or more to kill. The last level of Killzone 2 feels like it was rushed and it feels like the difficulty was raised as a cheap alternative to make the game feel longer to complete. Overall Killzone 2 is a great accomplishment for the Playstation 3.
Last week I completed the single player campaign of Call Of Duty: World At War for the Playstation 3. I have to say that the game was enjoyable, but not as much as Call Of Duty 4. The gameplay was good, the aiming with the PS3 controller was good. The biggest complain about this game is that it uses a lot of trial & error challenges to make the game last longer. What I mean by that is that in some instances the game has the enemies kill you or blow you apart with grenades in senseless ways. The enemy AI is not very good but in some parts of the game you get shot and attacked without even knowing where it came from. Besides this the game is very straight forward.
I had a chance to play the multiplayer campaign on the Playstation Network and I have to say that it was better than I expected. There was a few lag issues but not bad for a free service, plus we have to consider that other players might not have their PS3 and routers configured correctly. So I cannot blame any lag issues on PSN. Multiplayer was fun. The biggest let down of this game was not meeting up to the greatness of Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.
Last weekend I completed the single player campaign of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of Patriots. First I will start with the bad: When it comes to gameplay and control Metal Gear Solid 4 feels just like is predecessors, to some fans of the series my like this or not. If you liked got too comfortable with the aiming system in Gears of wars you might dislike the aiming in MGS4. As the gameplay does not feel Next-Gen or revolutionary, but it feels almost the same as Metal Gear Solid for the original Playstation, also given that the PS3 Dualshock 3 looks and feels identical to the Dualshock that debuted over 10 years ago with the Playstation.
Now that we got the bad out of the way, I will tell you about the best part of the game which is pretty much everything else. The cutscenes are amazing, the story is like always over the top hollywood fill with twist and turns. The game is divided into five acts and it will take anything between 16-18 hours to complete. This game ends with a bang that will satisfy anybody that completes the game.
Now all this talk about the Cell processor does not really matter much because all the graphics are done by the Nvidia GPU in the PS3. The Cell originally was supposed to do graphics but Sony scraped that plan when they saw its performance and hired Nvidia to customized one of their GPU into the RSX for PS3.
The CPU in the Xbox 360 and PS3 are only used for non video related instructions. I own every system since the NES including the Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360. I can tell you that as far as graphics I still have not seen anything on the PS3 that is better than on the Xbox 360. MGS4 had impressive cut scenes but they did not use as many textures and detailed environments as Gears Of War 2, so it was not hard to make MGS4 run smooth on the PS3.
The PS3 does have Bluray which is good for HD movies if you feel like paying $29.99 for a Bluray version of a movie you have already seen. Xbox Live is still on top of the game when it comes to online play. When it comes to games Xbox 360 is still the front runner. Hopefully Sony will step up their games and improve online play. As far as graphics do not expect any huge difference between the PS3 and Xbox 360 if any.
I just completed the solo campaign in Gears Of War 2 for the Xbox 360. The game was awesome from beginning to end. As you advance from level to level the game just kept getting much better. Great graphics, great gameplay, it was very fun to play with barely any aggravating moments. I also spend a few hours playing the online multiplayer, specially Horde which is my favorite.
I recommend this game to all Xbox 360 owners even if you did not play the first Gears Of War game. This is a most play!
I just installed Linux on my new PS3. Yellow dog Linux 6.1 and it took about 2 hours. Performance seems acceptable except for wifi not supporting WPA without installing additional packages to get it running. Later on I will be posting a video tutorial for those who want to install Linux on their PS3.
