In the meantime, I’ll be playing “Splinter Cell: Conviction.”

Yes, this game is that hard.  When I read reviews the game that state that it’s challenging, they weren’t kidding.  I consider myself pretty good at gaming, and I usually laugh at games that market themselves as “difficult.”

This game is hard.  And unforgiving!  You die, you start from the beginning of the level.

YOU CAN’T EVEN PAUSE THE GAME.

I don’t know what kind of sick individual who would create this punishment of a game.

I need to play some more.

Now, of course there is no such thing as a free lunch: the current official version has problems with Snow Leopard and/or OS 3.0 of PS3. Skip the official version and go to the latest bleeding-edge version and everything will work as advertised.

Whew! And I almost broke down to buy MediaLink

Now, let me do a rebuttal on the common complaints with the naysayers of this game:

• It’s pretty much a “Gears of War” copycat. OK, so what? I would see it as a negative if it has worse controls than GOW…but the funny thing is, I’d go out on a limb and say that DS has better controls than GOW. With GOW
• Graphics is nice but not much better than anything that’s out there. DS IMO is so much better than any Unreal Engine game out there? Why? I got two words for that: consistent framerate. And while it also suffers with the “everything blue or brown” just like most Unreal-Engine-powered games, it has better textures and particle effects (for the most parts)…
• …and one other thing I have noticed: weapons physics is frighteningly accurate. Shooting with a rifle has lag and recoil that’s very similar to a real rifle, shooting with a gatling gun is so much different than shooting an uzi. And the best part: controlling the mech-like thing called the “Jackal.” Controlling that thing has never been satisfying since…Chronicles of Riddick (controlling the mech towards the end of the game)…NO! forget about that POS “Lost Planet”…not even close.
• They say there’s a “lack of compelling story.” Holy crap. This isn’t “Indigo Prophecy.” If this was an adventure game, I’d whine about that. But it’s not. GOW doesn’t have a compelling story, either…but I didn’t hear anybody bitching about that.

Negatives? Of course, there is…but not enough to keep you from thoroughly enjoying the game.

• Yes, I *somewhat* agree that there are some parts of the game that all you do is kill zombies and soldiers. But with the glaive, each kill is satisfying. I nit about this is that there’s not much animation for decapitations and finishers.
• It’s short.
• Boring multiplayer.

There you have it. It’s a very good game, but it’s a bit short of making it to “great game” status. At least it should keep you busy while waiting for GTA4, MGS4, and GT5P.

Score: 9 out of 10.

• The song selection.  The sub-title of the game is “Legends of Rock.”  The song list is laughable.  Some of the bands…never even heard of.  The game becomes increasingly difficult very quickly.  I’m playing this game on Medium…and I’m telling you this is HARD.  There’s no way a casual user can finish that battle with Lou on MEDIUM on less than TEN TRIES.
• Graphics suck.  I’m not a graphics whore…but there’s just no reason for these developers NOT to go 1080p with those simplistic polygonal characters.
• The Guitar controller suck.  There’s always a delay no matter how many times you calibrate it; the tilt is overly sensitive.  It gets VERY ANNOYING when doing battles…you will find yourself screaming “OMGWTFBBQ!!  I DID NOT WANT TO EXECUTE THAT BATTLE ATTACK YET!”
• Sound.  It’s not on all songs…but sometimes there’s no STRUM SOUND!  WHAT THE HELL?
• It’s TOO EXPENSIVE.  OK, so they made the thing wireless. BFD.  It’s not even Bluetooth on the PS3; you have to use some stupid dongle…and they packed AA batteries instead of rechargeables…what a bunch of cheap bastards.  Compare this with Rock Band that will sell for about $160.  Yeah, I know…HUGE RIP-OFF.

I’m so glad I pre-ordered Rock Band.  I should have never bought this game.

Score: 4 out of 10.

Just about half-an-hour ago, while starting it up for that Skate demo (for the 934th time), it locked up…then when i reset–ta-dah–the awesome Red Ring of Death.

Good thing I bought it at Costco.  Last I checked they have a 2 year replacement warranty on electronics bought through them–i.e., if it breaks within 2 years after purchase, they replace it no questions asked (I’ll be damned if I need to go through Microsoft’s atrocious warranty repair delays…which could mean I won’t have my XBox until the year 2047)

Unfortunately, this may have changed due to retards abusing the policy.  We’ll see…

Update: Costco is the best!  They gave me a full refund when all I wanted is a replacement!  Good, I’m holding back the purchase for now until MS comes out with a new revision that doesn’t die due to overheating.

In addition to their off-the-wall blog, Ectomplasmosis, they also started writing for that OTHER another awesome gaming blog that I rarely visit.  No, it’s not Joystiq (I said “awesome,” not “atrocious”).  I found out about this just today when they officially joined the family three weeks ago.  Like I was saying: worst stalker evar.

That’s a very welcome change, as I really don’t dig their Cthulhu obsession–try as I might.

First of all: the load times. Whaddahell?! It’s not loading from the DVD, it’s from the hard disk. And the load times is still retarded long.

The frame rate is inconsistent. This is basically a side scroller; it should always be 60fps. For pete’s sake, Virtua Tennis is fluid at 1080p. The animation is a little choppy, too…hard to ignore that it throws me off.

The controls is just not good, IMO. i think mapping the movement to the analog stick was a bad idea. There’s a DELAY in pressing the buttons and the response on the screen. It’s a constant struggle for me…especially in swordfights.

And, lastly, it’s one BORING game. It’s probably because the gameplay itself didn’t age well.

That’s a waste of $10.

Updated: I played the whole game to the end. I guess it’s one of those games you need to finish no matter how bad it is. I still think it could have been a much better game, mainly because of the horrible controls. There’s a delay, and it the button presses are BUFFERED; it gets annoying not only in combat, but also when trenching through those blades…these guys mentioned the awful controls…but said it’s not a deal-breaker for them…PSSHssssffft…I wonder how much Ubisoft paid them to give an 8.5 for a flawed game?

Well, I’m not really sure what went into Hideo Kojima’s head for changing the classic MGS camera control scheme, one of the reasons why I love ths MGS series: Before MGS: Subsistence, The camera scheme has always been on top, not behind the character, which makes control (at least for me) great compared to the behind-the-character camera scheme similar to Splinter Cell.  In Subsistence, you can turn this off…in Portable Ops, you cannot.  It’s gawdly-annoying.  It’s so annoying I cannot bring myself to finish it.

My only hope is this camera scheme does not propagate to Metal Gear Solid 4, because that will be a deal-killer for me.