Pick Up Post: I Bought A Playstation 3 That Supposedly Does Everything

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During the final day of Fan Expo, I came across a deal I couldn’t refuse. 20% off PS3 consoles, 30% games and 40% off accessories. I’ve been eying the PS3 for some time now, and initially had plans on waiting for the new SKUs to drop so that I could get the soon-to-be old 120 gig version for cheaper. However, 20% off would actually make it cheaper than what I was expecting the price drop to be, and the discounts on games and accessories only sweetened the deal. Before Fan Expo was over, I walked away with a PS3 Slim, an extra controller, an HDMI cable and Little Big Planet.

I’m not going to use this post to talk about the software lineup. I just wanted to share with you my experiences with the hardware and my first impressions of the Playstation 3 experience.
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Tony Hawk: Ride Hits Rock Bottom

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Less than a year after Tony Hawk: Ride launched in this region for $120, the value of the game has hit what will likely be its rock bottom. At HMV, new copies of Tony Hawk: Ride with the board are now only $20, which is a crazy 85% drop in price. I haven’t seen a price drop this drastic since I bought Rock Revolution for $3, which was 95% off the original price. Meanwhile, every other retailer I’ve seen that isn’t blowing this game out still has a stack of them collecting dust. Why must retailers go to such drastic measures to get this game off shelves?
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Using ‘Cost Per Hour’ to Determine the Value of a Game

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Over the past few years of following podcasts, message boards and reviews, there seems to be this weird metric that creeps into discussions in one way or another. For the purposes of this post, I will refer to it as ‘cost per hour’. It’s a metric that people directly or indirectly use to judge a game’s value based on how much it costs and how long the experience is. I will express it with the following formula:

Value = Cost of Game/Number of Hours Played

In a perfect world, where money directly translates into valuable experiences, these types of metrics could work as a means of judging a game’s value. However, this logic is flawed, because neither cost or value variables are consistent. You can’t make a blanket statement saying that Limbo is too expensive at $15 dollars because it’s only a 3-hour experience, because it might go on sale, someone may take longer/shorter to beat it, and subjective opinion may say that their time with it was totally worth that price.

The price you pay for that experience and the length of that experience are viable factors in determining a game’s value, but not the whole picture. However, what if we did take away all of the other factors? Is it possible to come up with a consensus cost per hour rate to determine whether or not a game is worth it? I take a few examples from my collection and crunch the numbers to find out.

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To Buy Or Not To Buy – Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game

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2D beat-em-up games used to be a healthy part of my gaming diet. I played a ton of the Ninja Turtles arcade games, Double Dragon and the X-Men arcade game back when the genre was in its prime. Watching the trailer for the Scott Pilgrim vs. The World game for the first time sent my mind back to a warm and mushy place where walking to the right and hitting the only attack button available was the coolest thing ever.

When I first played the demo, I only had 5 minutes with it before I got pulled away from my XBOX 360. Based on that first impression, I would have bought it in a heartbeat. Recently though, I played through the whole demo, and I’m starting to get cold feet.

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Pick Up Post: Nintendo Wii Fightstick By Hori

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Wii owners with a fighting game itch have very little to scratch it. While Tatsunoko vs. Capcom is awesome and there are no shortage of Street Fighter games on Virtual Console, it still pales in comparison to the plethora of fighting games on the XBOX 360 and Playstation 3. On top of that, joystick options are limited too. All Wii owners have are the Mad Catz SE fightstick packed in with Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, the Hori Wii fightstick and the Intec Combat Arcade Stick, which I don’t trust one bit.

I still want the Mad Catz stick, but in my country I can only get it with Tatsunoko vs. Capcom; a game I already have. Instead, I grabbed the Nintendo Wii Fightstick by Hori. My experience with Hori has been hit and miss, but after putting it through its paces, this one thankfully is in the former category.

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Labour Day Special: Games About Working Real-Life Jobs

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Labour Day weekend is meant to be a day where we celebrate the economic and social achievements of workers. As far as video games go, regular occupations in video games include space marine, normal boy who doesn’t know he’s destined to save the world and all-powerful  being with the ability to create farms from the heavens.

The following post highlights a few games worthy of a Labour Day of their own. These video games bravely go into the real-world for inspiration and do their best to make ‘every day’ jobs fun.

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Mass Effect 2 “Lair of the Shadow Broker” And The Mess That Is Shepherd’s Love Life

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For a game that I still consider the front-runner for In Third Person’s Game of the Year 2010, it hasn’t done a good job of keeping me playing. A number of DLC updates have been released, but I haven’t bothered to even put the game back in the system to check them out. Based on my experience with the game, any sort of addendum to that story wouldn’t feel right to me. I’m more than happy to let Shepherd and his crew wait for Mass Effect 3.

That is, till I heard about “Lair of the Shadow Broker”, which is scheduled to hit the XBOX Live Marketplace this week. At this point, the game hasn’t done much to interest me as far as the Shadow Broker goes. But my interest in this downloadable content has everything to do with the Asari researcher and my Mass Effect 1 lover, Liara T’soni.

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Game Music I Love: Mega Man 2

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In Japan, Megaman is known as Rockman. He wasn’t named after rocks you would find on the ground. He was named after rock music. Other characters in the series have rock music inspired names, such as Roll (get it? Rock and Roll?), Bass and his sidekick dog, Treble.

At the time, the developers of Megaman 2 wanted to make a rocking soudtrack. Unfortunately, the technology wasn’t around in the early 1980s to put the sounds of real instruments. Instead, they composed one of the most rocking video game soundtracks ever using 8-bit sounds. As a youngster, I had no idea that was the creative vision behind the music. I just thought it was awesome.
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Fan Expo Day 3: Victory Lap

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Unlike the first two days of the show, there weren’t any must-do events or things we needed to do driving us to the show. Having completed all of that stuff in the last two days, we figured our final day at the expo would be a victory lap of sorts. We’d take on the day as it comes and enjoy what was left at the show.

Because of this, we didn’t rush to get there. We arrived just as the doors were opening. Not the best move. This time, the lineup literally wrapped around the block, and was more than double the length of the line we stood in the day before.

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Fan Expo Day Two: Get Hype

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Day two started much like the first day did. My girlfriend and I found ourselves in a huge line, one that was actually twice as big as the one we stood in yesterday and growing fast. I was hoping that as with yesterday, luck would be on our side. Within 20 minutes of the show floor opening, we were in the building. Showing up as early as we did helped us greatly, as those who ended up arriving later were not as fortunate.

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