Today only Amazon.com are selling New York Times Crosswords On for the Nintendo DS, at $9.99 reduced from $19.99 with free shipping if you add another $15.01 to your order.

A fine way to pass the time

It seems that grabbing the lime light at the expense of the game Grand Theft Auto is no longer reserved for soul less lawyers. Now people with aspiring political hopes and non profit organizations are jumping on the band wagon also. Earlier this week US presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama made sure to chime in with his thoughts on GTA IV and the video game industry as a whole and now Mothers Against Drunk Driving have lowered themselves to using Grand Theft Auto IV to promote their agenda.

“Drunk driving is not a game, and it is not a joke,” MADD said in a statement released Tuesday. “Drunk driving is a choice, a violent crime and it is also 100 percent preventable.” MADD is also calling on publisher Take-Two Interactive and developer Rockstar Games to consider stopping distribution of the game. MADD is upset by the fact that in the game the player has the option to go to a bar and have a few drinks. When the player exits the bar he is stumbling drunk and actually falls down every few steps. The screen is extremely blurry and it becomes almost impossible to control the character with any sort of precision. The player then has the option enter a vehicle and attempt to drive away.

Now lets look at all the facts first before passing judgment to quickly. First and fore most the game gives the player the option to easily hail a taxi to take you to your destination. But in the game the main character Niko Bellic’s brother Roman owns a taxi service and makes the offer to you that you can call and use his taxi service free of charge any time. Second, when you enter a vehicle an attempt and I do stress the word “attempt” to drive while Niko is intoxicated it is the next thing to impossible to drive the vehicle. If anything MADD should be praising Grand Theft Auto IV for its efforts to try to educate people to the dangers of driving under the influence of alcohol. After reading this article I tested this feature in the game, after knocking back a few at the local Irish bar in the game I attempted to drive home. The ride to the bar took me a total of two minutes, the ride home took almost ten minutes. By the time I got to my destination I had ran into several people and countless cars. I found while under the influence operating a vehicle to be almost impossible. One thing that publisher Take-Two Interactive and developer Rockstar Games should consider is increasing the chances of being pulled over and arrested by the police if the character chooses to drive while drunk. In my little test I did pass at least three police offices and never once did any of them attempted to stop and arrest me. I think it would go a long way to building some good will toward the game if Rockstar Games would consider making this adjustment in a downloadable patch update of the game.

I have always applauded MADD for their efforts in their fight against Drunk Driving. But here is a little hint to the members of MADD. You should probably have one of your representatives actually play the game before you start making statements about it. If some virtual people are run over and killed in a videogame it may go a long way in making real people see the real dangers drinking and driving in real life.

Link

So after 11 hours I’m finally done with DMC4 on normal, it’s definitely more palatable than the previous outings that were as tough as nails. It was a fun playthrough as a rental, but I don’t have the patience for playing through on a tougher level, after already having to do each level twice and fight each boss about 3 times just to complete it once, it gets a little old. I was a little disappointed about only getting 80 achievements for completing the game, I feel a little shafted but decides replaying some of the totally over the top cut scenes, it’s time to set this baby to rest.

I’m also still working my way through mystery dungeon, I’m on chapter 19 after many, many hours of play and it is seeming like I may have just 1 chapter left, it’s a really fun game and I hope to have a review up by the end of the weekend as soon as I’ve completed the main quest, that’ll clear out my games to play list just in time for GTA4 on Monday night! I plan on hitting up a midnight release for my collectors edition and then taking a couple of days off work to see if I can get through the game and throw out a early review, I’m pretty stoked that it’s coming out so soon, I’ve not looked forward to a game like this in a while.

Just wanted to let you all know what I’ve been up to, hope you all have a killer weekend.

</elk>

There’s a lot of hubbub about Bully’s achievements, even though it’s been over a full month since they were first announced. Of course I’m talking about going over the rainbow by kissing 20 boys about campus. I guess I shouldn’t be shocked that so many people have a problem with this, I’ll admit that I found the choice of achievements surprising at first, but that’s likely just Rockstar humor shining through. I have to imagine that the achievement list is Rockstar’s choice as the brand of Rockstar is pretty synonymous with controversy at this point.

So, getting to my point. I find it hard to have an issue with this achievement as I can’t say I got any kind of pleasure from completing the girl kissing achievement beyond the 20 gamerscore. Why should this be viewed as anything other than just another achievement to check off the list?

I stand by my 20 gamerscore points and I’ll even go as far as to question those who avoid the achievement and how secure they are with their masculinity.

I’m a big fan of Rockstar’s Bully, I still own a copy for the PS2 which I was thinking of going back to, but since the 360 version was close to release I decided to hold off and give it a rental. I’m sure many of you have heard that Bully’s got issues and I’m not familiar with the Wii version, so I can’t comment on it, but the 360 version has more issues than I’ve seen in a console game in a while.

Usually I’m not usually one who pays a whole lot of attention to frame rates, perhaps because I’m a PC gamer and my computer tends to be way under spec most of the time, but I was startled by how choppy my first sightings of the ingame engine appeared. The poor speed isn’t consistent throughout the entire game, eventually I just really got used to it, but it’s sad to see a PS2 game run so poorly on a 360, the graphical updates are nice, but don’t warrant this type of performance.
Looking past the framerate and onto the main game I believe I was suffering from a complete game crash every 4-5 hours, which seems to make me in the minority with people getting crashes within a matter of minutes rather than hours. This is pretty darn infuriating when a game has specific save points and no autosave, if you’re unaware of this little fault you could easily end up loosing an entire evening of gameplay while you sit and stare blankly at the frozen screen and hope that perhaps, this time, the start button will make it all better.
Fighting through the crashes I attempted to get 100% completion, this was hampered by another problem, errands. It seems errands will disappear randomly and will only come back if you quit out of the entire game and start it all back up. This helped me waste a good few hours wondering around and wondering why I was failing so bad at finding the bountiful remaining missions.

I did manage to wade my way through the muck of the Mad Doc port and get my 1000/1000 in about 24 hours of gameplay. I can’t blame the bad reviews, but I do hope many sites amened their reviews when/if the patch is released as these problems aren’t major gameplay flaws, they are just ‘features’ of a bad port and I hope they can be cleaned up in the future so others don’t have to suffer the same.

Now with that completed I’m a little unsure of what game to turn to next, I have GoW for the PSP that I’ve barely touched, my copy of PGR4 that I haven’t opened, Smash Bros Brawl that is simply screaming for more attention and then I have both Eternal Sonata and Medal of Honor: Airborne in the mail. Gamefly is beginning to become more of a curse than a blessing with games that I just can’t turn down.

While it seems everyone is going blu there days and jumping off the HD-DVD bandwagon. With major studios professing their faithfulness to the Blu-Ray format, it appears retailers are getting a bit nervous as well. For those of you who own a HD-DVD player or add-on unit for your Xbox 360, check out this bargain!  Amazon.com is begining to sell of many of their HD-DVD titles at 50% off.

Come one come all…. It’s a steal on a great selection of High Definition media!

Recent new announcements and updates from Sony have not exactly thrilled gamers. While the updates are appreciated, and some offer cool features. Very few really seem to address the desires that gamers are screaming for. Well now that may be starting to change.

Sony announced today that starting November 20th PSP owners will be able to download content from the PLAYSTATION store straight from their Computer. No longer will only the those lucky few that own both a PS3 and a PSP be able to enjoy the goodness that is out their on the PLAYSTATION online store, but now everyone with a PSP and a computer that is attached to the Internet can bask in all the downloadable goodness there is to be had.

There will be full games that are only available at the PLAYSTATION store. PSP classics that were previously only available on UMD media, will be available for purchase. Games like B-Boy, Go ! Sudoku, Crazy Legs, and Fired Up. Speaking of classics out there will be PS-One games. Now right from the comfort of your desk you can download old favorites like Crash Bandicoot, Medievil, and WipEout. Not sure if you want lay down the money for one of them nice new PSP games. Well now you can try before you buy with download playable demos of some of the big releases available on the PSP. Games like Syphon Filter, WipEout, and LocoRoco are already for you to try your hand at. Take in a little eye candy on the go with game trailers from recently released games and the popular up and coming titles that you are just dying to get your hands on.

Hop on over to the store and check it out.

Via Press Release

The guys over at Pixel Perfect put together a list of all the things that suck about each of the consoles. It is a fairly common list of complaints that you will see on any blog, forum, or website. But it is interesting to read through their thoughts.

The one thing on the list I do not agree with is the comment about non standard PS3 headset support. I like the idea of having a simple Blue Tooth headset. It is easy to work with and it allows the user some flexability.

Via Pixel Perfect

Joytiq is reporting that EA plans to shut down 42 servers as of September 1st, 2007, and another 7 as of November 1st, 2007. As a gamer who has not completed all of Madden 2006 yet this is a little disturbing. Not to mention that this is clearly EA’s way of pushing gamers into purchasing the latest sports game expansion pack …… excuse me I mean latest versions of all their roster changes for sports games …. Whoops slip of the tongue I mean latest full version their sports games line up and other games that have newer versions out.

Microsoft seems to be able to keep the servers up for the Xbox version 1? And it has always been a Mystery to me why exactly EA needs to maintain servers aside from the Xbox LIVE servers? It always seemed like a great way to obtain email address to send advertisements (Cough, SPAM, Cough) about their new products not to mention data mine the other information they force you to enter. Aside from Square Enix, it seems that EA is the only other company that needs to maintain redundant servers to allow online game play. Since Square Enix does this to charge extra and allow cross platform play it leaves one to wonder what EA has up their sleeve in the future, and I doubt it is cross platform game play.

I am sure there are a pages of statistics and an army of bean counters over at EA that can tell you that hardly anyone is using those servers, and that it costs truck loads of money to keep them running. But here is the deal, if we as gamers can only use these sports games for a year or two maybe we should not have to clean out our wallets to buy your game. Maybe games that require EA servers to be maintained should only cost $30.00 or $40.00 to buy. I also think that EA should be much more forth coming about the fact that you will only be able to play these games for two years or probably less in the future. I would bet that within a few years they will shut off their servers the day that the next versions are released. I honestly hope that Microsoft and Sony step in and do something about this, because I think it is really a black eye to both platforms that EA can swindle money from customers using their respect platforms. I would encourage anyone who has purchased games that are affected to send emails to EA, Microsoft, and Sony about your feelings on this matter. I hope this makes everyone think twice about buying EA games and additional EA content. Lets all hope that 2K Sports can step up to the plate and give us all a true online gaming experience.

Check out what the guys at Penny Arcade think about EA, I definitely agree! Click here!

Here is the schedule for the mass unplugging

September 1, 2007 Online Service Shutdown
Arena Football for PlayStation 2
Arena Football for Xbox
FIFA Soccer 06 for Xbox 360
FIFA Soccer 06 for PC
FIFA06 for PC
FIFA Soccer 06 for PlayStation 2
FIFA Soccer 06 for PlayStation Portable
FIFA Soccer 06 for Xbox
FIFA World Cup 2006 for PC
FIFA World Cup 2006 for PlayStation 2
FIFA World Cup 2006 for PlayStation Portable
FIFA World Cup 2006 for Xbox
Fight Night Round 3 for PlayStation Portable
Fight Night Round 3 for Xbox
Madden NFL 06 for Xbox 360
Madden NFL 06 for PC
Madden NFL 06 for PlayStation 2
Madden NFL 06 for PlayStation Portable
Madden NFL 06 for Xbox
Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects for PlayStation 2
Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects for Xbox
MVP 07 NCAA Baseball for PlayStation 2
MVP 07 NCAA Baseball for Xbox
NASCAR 06 Total Team Control for PlayStation 2
NASCAR 06 Total Team Control for Xbox
NBA Live 06 for Xbox 360
NBA Live 06 for PC
NBA Live 06 for PlayStation 2
NBA Live 06 for PlayStation Portable
NCAA Football 2005 for Xbox
NCAA Football 2006 for PlayStation 2
NCAA Football 2006 for Xbox
NCAA March Madness 06 for PlayStation 2
NCAA March Madness 06 for Xbox
NFL Head Coach for PC
NFL Head Coach for Xbox
NFL Head Coach for PlayStation 2
NHL 06 for PC
NHL 06 for PlayStation 2
NHL 06 for Xbox
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 for Xbox 360
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 for Xbox

November 1, 2007 Online Service Shutdown
Burnout Revenge for Xbox
Burnout Revenge for PlayStation 2
Need for Speed Underground for PlayStation 2
Need for Speed Underground 2 for PC
Need for Speed Underground 2 for PlayStation 2
Need for Speed Most Wanted for PlayStation Portable
Need for Speed Most Wanted for Xbox

Via Joystiq

With the first hints of motion being the primary input of this future console code named the Nintendo “Revolution” the press went wild. Then the true name of the console was released and Wii all laughed, and the press went wild again. But shortly after the console debuted in November of 2006, Nintendo was laughing and they were laughing all the way to the bank. Even after taking into account all the press and anticipation prior to its release no one could have predicted the explosive success the Nintendo Wii would have. Eight months after its release spotting a Nintendo Wii in the wild on a store shelf is far more rare then an Elvis or UFO sighting. The Wii is sold off store shelves as soon as they arrive. Many have speculated and questioned how many Nintendo Wii units would sell if they could keep them in supply at your local retailer.

But all is not rosy. Rumblings on the Internet from many gamers have coined phrases like “Buyer’s Wiimorse”, and “Waggleware”. Many Wii games are simple ports from other consoles with dumb down graphics, and having the user simply shake the Wiimote or Nun-Chuck to take the place of pushing a button on other controllers. Where are the games that were promised to utilize real life motions to perform similar functions in the game? Wii Sports really captured this concept and its success rivals that of long standing franchises on other consoles. With its simple graphics, but captivating game play it has become an over night success in the video game world. Tiger Woods PGA Golf 2007, Trauma Center: Second Opinion and Cooking Mama are games that I feel really captured the vision of the Wiimote. While other games sense that the Wiimote was moved in some up to down or left to right motion and perform a completely different function in game then the real life movement. Many saw the quality of game graphics, stepped back and compared them to Sony PS1 or first generation Sony PS2 graphics. Many see games that come out on XBox 360, Playstation 3, and PSP are horrified by graphics in the Wii version. Eight months after the consoles release the online aspect of the Wii is still in its infant stages of development. And rumors are circulated that it will use the same structure that the Nintendo DS uses something that does not resonate with most gamers.

But these rumblings seem to come from only a small percentage of customers. Leading one to believe that most are very happy with their purchase of the Wii. One theory is that many long time gamers feel they have not received the real life game play experience they felt they were promised. In theory the vast majority of Wii customers may be first time gamers or people who played video games long ago but left the fold and now have been enticed back into gaming. People who were scared of controllers with ten buttons, two triggers, two control sticks, and directional pad thrown on there just to make the controller even that much more scary. You could say that Nintendo has succeeded in growing the gaming fold and helping to introduce many to recreational gaming. But if this is the majority of your customer base it makes me nervous about the how long term success of the Wii. Many casual gamers may only purchase one or two games and then play them over and over. Eric a friend of mine was given a PS2, and he still enjoys his copy of Tiger Woods Golf 2003. He has the same three games that he has had for years and has no interest in buying more. Now most of us know that game companies make money by selling games. But what you may not know that Console manufactures make a small amount of profit on each game or accessory sold for their platform. This questions what the long-term profitability of the Nintendo Wii may be. Suppose that a large percentage of their customer base just play Wii Sports or buy one or two additional games? This could cut into long-term profits of the Wii division at Nintendo. The sluggish sales of Virtual Consoles sales also lead one to believe two things. Many complain that the prices are too high, and that with no free demos available for download they are will not lay down $7.00 or more for games they may not enjoy. My second point is this, many play older classic games for the nostalgia factor. I find myself purchasing Virtual Console, XBox LIVE Arcade, and Playstation Network games that I enjoyed years ago when I was teenager, games that take me back in time and let me relive my childhood. But games that I never got around too playing in the past are not as much of a draw to me, they lack that nostalgic factor. Like me many new gamers may not be interested in older games that do not have that nostalgia them.

Can the Nintendo Wii survive the test of time? In two or three years will be the power house platform that it is charging up to be now, or will it peak quickly then slump like its older brother the GameCube?