Despite what Sony said about the gameflavor-dubbed shockaxis, that it was merely a dualshock 2 controller with sixaxis functionality, Equity Groups is reporting that Sony (*gasp*) lied to us.

"This doesn't appear to be the case, though, as several sources, including 1Up, have put their hands on the new controller and found the rumble actually comes from different spots."

Although, you don't have to take their word for it. 1up is reporting that in their play-through with MGS4 that the controller shook in separate places.

"We did enjoy the various rumble effects employed by the new Dual Shock 3 controller, though: As explosions rattled around Snake, we could actually feel the direction from which they were coming based on what part of the controller vibrated."

There you have it, and 1up would never lie to us now would they?

It's easy to look at Voodoo PC, Alienware, Falcon Northwest, or even HP's new Blackbird and think that gaming PCs cost thousands of dollars. I mean, you can't get a PC that plays games well for under three grand, right? Not even close. Remember that Get Your Girlfriend To Build Her Own PC thing we did? That total system upgrade project cost under $1,500, and it plays games great. A couple times a year, we feature an $800 Budget Gaming PC in the Build-It section of the site. You can't crank up the settings on every new game on these boxes, only most of them.

But say you don't want to build your own PC. We understand—it can be intimidating. I went to Dell's website today and configured an Inspiron 530 with a 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo, Vista Home Premium, 2 gigs of DDR2 800 RAM, a 320GB hard drive, and DVD burner for $1050. That's with integrated graphics because the graphics options offered aren't too great. You gotta tack on $300 to buy a 320MB GeForce 8800 GTS from anywhere else on the web, which you can install yourself quite easily (no, really. It's not like "building your computer." Your mom can do it.). Oh, and that's with a 22" widescreen monitor.

That machine will play literally every modern PC game at its super-duper-pretty settings at 1680x1050 (take that, 720p console games!) for less than $1,500. You can do the same thing with computers from HP, or Gateway, or whatever your mass-market PC vendor of choice is. Just buy a system with a medium-grade processor, 2 gigs of fast RAM, and choose the cheapest graphics option they offer because you'll replace it with something good. Hell, even a 20" iMac with one gig of memory and a graphics card not half as fast will cost you $1,500, and people seem to pine over those.

Of course, $1,500 isn't chump change. It's far more expensive than a $300 console system. But of course, you do a lot more with it, right? You're probably reading this on a PC. It's where you watch all those game videos and read those gaming sites and blogs. It's where you get your email, download music, sync up your iPod, subscribe to podcasts, IM your friends, and all that good stuff.

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After the cost of entry, PC gaming is actually a better deal than consoles. For starters, top-tier PC games cost $50, while console games have bumped up the price to $60. And while you can hardly ever find good deals on hot new console games, new PC games are discounted in many retail stores all the time. Just today, I saw the brand-spanking-new triple-A game World in Conflict is on sale at Frys for $40. Older games are available on digital download services and in stores for often $20 or $30. Digital download systems abound. In fact, the best deal in gaming anywhere is the PC-only GameTap. For $10 a month, you can play almost 1,000 full games (and the list grows rapidly), including pixel-perfect emulated retro arcade games, console games, and PC games—many a year or two old and some even very new.

Let me give one specific example. Valve's The Orange Box is coming to Xbox 360 simultaneous with its PC launch, and to PS3 shortly after. It's $60 for the 360 and $50 for the PC, and both have $5 off pre-order deals. If you preorder on the 360, you get it when it comes out. If you preorder on the PC through Steam, you get access to Team Fortress 2 right now, and of course you can pre-load the games before release and just download the last little stub right away when it's released so you can play it immediately. Which is the better deal? Don't ask me, I'm too busy having a blast playing Team Fortress 2.

Consoles are just getting into the whole free demo download thing, but the PC is king of that realm. You could spend hours a day doing little else other than playing the dozens, even hundreds of PC demos that are released each year. Not to mention the astounding number of free games out there for the PC. On the consoles, almost nothing is ever free.

Oh, and next time you get nickel-and-dimed for every little content download for a game you paid $60 for, sometimes even charging you for what amounts to a cheat code, ask yourself if that inexpensive console is really saving your more money than the guy on his PC downloading oodles of free user-generated content, often of equal or better quality, and playing online for free. Continued...

Myth #2: PC gaming means nothing but broken releases, updates, and patches

It's true that the greatest strength of the PC, its breadth of hardware and rapid pace of improvement, is also its worst enemy. Game makers have to test their PC games against loads of configurations, instead of just the one console. That, combined with the lack of certification process by a console manufacturer, means that some PC games release with bugs and need to be patched. Okay, virtually every game gets a patch.

That's not nearly as dire as it sounds. Internet forums and blogs act like an echo chamber, magnifying the apparent problem rate to ridiculous proportions. The vast majority of customers simply play the game, and never encounter any bugs or serious technical problems. On a console, if one person encounters a bug, it probably exists for everyone—because the hardware's all the same. Because of the infinite combination of hardware and software on PCs, the same is not true. So when you read about a bug in a PC game, that doesn't necessarily mean you're likely to encounter it.

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More to the point, have you checked out console games lately? They're shipping with bugs, and being patched rapidly and frequently. Everyone is nuts about BioShock, and rightly so, but even on the console it needed a patch to "improve stability on autosaves, fix a bug where an AI will not utilize health stations properly, and fix a music bug in the title menu." Even so, this fix apparently caused some users to have freezing or hitching glitches.

These days, Windows does a good job of auto-patching itself. And despite what you may have heard, Vista is less prone to errors and crashes than Windows XP (it's just that Vista is new, and we're used to five years of XP crashes and bugs, so everyone talks about Vista more). They update the Xbox 360 firmware all the time—sometimes to add features and sometimes to fix bugs. Do you own a PS3? If so, you must be intimately familiar with the way-too-long firmware download and update procedure that seems to happen every freakin' week now. Some of it is new features, some of it fixes bugs, just as it is with PCs. But the days are long gone when we can say consoles are way ahead of PCs on the whole "patches and updates" thing.

So with game buggyness and patching being a very real problem on consoles and not being as big a problem as advertised on the PC, and with the OS auto-updating, where's the big hassle on PCs? Drivers, mainly. So once a month or so, you should check a couple of websites for new drivers. Yes, it seems as though a new graphics driver is released with every new huge graphically demanding title. In truth, many users (even most) can run these games just fine without the new driver. They're there to fix a problem that affects some cross-section of the user base; some combination of hardware and software that, odds are, you aren't afflicted with.

And hey, lets not look at all patches like it's a bad thing. Don't like 2K Games' decision about how widescreen was handled in BioShock? If you're on an Xbox 360, that's just too bad. The open-access nature of PCs means that a user-created widescreen hack to fix the issue was available within a day. Continued...

Myth #3: PC games don't sell, and are falling far behind console game sales

Sales tracking firm NPD said there were "over $970 million" in PC game sales, and $7.4 billion in total game sales. So, roughly a billion in sales for the PC, and $6.4 billion for consoles. Consoles are slaughtering PCs, right? Actually, it's not that simple.

First of all, it's a stacked deck. The PC is one platform, the Xbox 360 is one platform, the PlayStation 3 is one platform, the Nintendo DS is one platform, etc. If you make a game for the PS3, it doesn't magically run on the 360 any more than it magically runs on the PC. PC game sales as tracked by NPD are being beat over 6:1 by the combination of all console platforms. Of course it is! NPD did not provide a breakdown by platform (except for the PC), though. Divvy up that $6.4 billion in console sales into its respective separate platforms: Xbox, PS2, Gamecube, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, Gameboy Advance, Nintendo DS, and PSP. There are at least nine major "console" platforms, each as incomparable to each other as the PC is to consoles, contributing to that $6.4 billion in sales. If the distribution were even (and it's not), you'd have about $711 million per console platform. Now, the PC is leading! Of course, consoles like the PS2, Nintendo DS, and Xbox 360 had the lion's share of game sales, while newer and more expensive systems like the PS3 with a more limited software lineup had less. It's safe to assume, in the absence of specific console-by-console data, that PC game sales fell somewhere in the middle of the pack—behind the top few console systems, and ahead of several others. You could certainly characterize the PC as selling games at retail "just as well" as "the average console system."

If, by NPD's own data, the PC is selling games at retail as well as your "typical" console system, why spell out the doom and gloom message? Is every console that doesn't sit in the top 2 or 3 spots for software sales "doomed" and "failing?" Is it only worthwhile to make games for the Nintendo DS, Xbox 360, and PS2, because that's where all the game sales are? Of course not, and the same is true for the PC.

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But there's even more to it than that. First of all, NPD only tracks retail sales, and only in the U.S.. Yes, the U.S. has the strongest retail games market, but PC games are very popular worldwide. Especially in Europe, and Germany in particular, PC game sales top sales charts. Most importantly, the PC is well ahead of consoles in online game sales—which NPD does not track. Whether it's GameTap, Steam, Direct2Drive, TotalGaming.net, or even the direct download store at the EBgames site, buying games exclusively online is huge on PCs. And that doesn't even include things like recurring payments or digital item sales for online games like World of Warcraft. Research firm Strategy Analytics said that the global online games market generated over $3.8 billion in revenue in 2006, and is growing at over 25% per year. Yes, some of that is buying downloadable content on Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation Network, or Wii Virtual Console, but the money pulled in by those are a drop in the bucket, globally, to the online revenue generated by PC game sales.

Unfortunately, nobody is yet providing the kind of apples-to-apples data that lets us get a true picture of PC game sales. Take that "over $970 million" sales of PC games from NPD. That's just retail and just the U.S. Nobody is tracking online game sales for just the U.S. in a reasonably comprehensive way. Or if they are, they're not proving data, breaking it down by platform and by game sales & addons vs. recurring subscription fees. I don't think it's a stretch to say that several hundred million dollars worth of games & addons have happened online in the U.S.

All of a sudden, PC game sales don't look too shoddy. And they're especially attractive when you consider that third-party publishers don't have to fork over $7-10 per sale in royalties to a console developer.

So are the consoles grossly outselling PC games? Yes, in aggregate, but it's hardly fair or rational to compare multiple platforms against one. Viewed against any other single platform, PC game sales are quite good. Do the industry tracking firms show sharper growth among console game sales than PC game sales? Again yes, but this is a factor of PC game sales increasingly moving online, and thus not being tracked. Continued...

Myth #4: Online gaming on the PC is a mess, and no match for the likes of Xbox Live

Everybody love Xbox Live, and the way it gives you a nice unified friend list, voice chat, cross-game invites, and so on. You can access all that stuff right away within any game, and send or receive messages and voice with your friends who are playing other things, or nothing at all. And the PlayStation 3's online experience is catching up, through a series of never-ending large firmware updates (see Myth #2). The PC world has nothing like that, right?

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Here, I'll just bring up two examples: Xfire and Steam. Both are free. Both give you a unified friends list, and the ability to just click and join your friend's game. You can access your friends list and message your buddies from within games. Both offer free voice chat (and by the way, it's of noticeably higher quality than Xbox Live's). In fact, both of these services offer something neither Xbox Live or the PlayStation Network do—the ability to form groups or "clans". Xfire even has a built-in patch and mod peer-to-peer downloading function built in, and of course Steam will keep up to date any game offered through the Steam service (you can easily add other games to your Steam list and see your friends playing them and so on, it just won't auto-update). Both are simple, fast, and easy to use.

So, does the PC have anything like Xbox Live or PlayStation Network? No, it has at least two such things, that are better. Oh, and to play anything at all online on your Xbox 360, you have to pony up $50 a year for a "Gold" Xbox Live account. Online on the PC, with the obvious exception of MMOs like World of Warcraft or Lord of the Rings Online, is almost always free.

Of course, awesome software like Xfire and the new Steam Community stuff only makes the paltry Games for Windows Live offering look worse by comparison. But that's Microsoft's failing, not a failing of the PC as a game platform. Continued...

Myth #5: Copy protection on PC games is a major headache

Okay, I'll kind of give you this one. Some PC games have some pretty annoying copy protection schemes that make it difficult to take your legit, store-bought PC game and play it on whatever computer you want to. You can easily take that store-bought PS3 or Wii or whatever game and pop it into any other PS3/Wii/whatever. But the consoles are becoming no stranger to what the crowds are calling DRM headaches (though DRM is pretty ubiquitous on even older console and PC games, and DVDs, and many other things when you think about it).

Want to play your Xbox 360 game on a different console but use your profile so you can earn achievements on it? You'll have to "recover" your gamertag on that other console first, which means sitting there and watching a progress bar for 15 minutes or more. Or you can put it on a memory card, but that costs extra money. If you buy an Xbox Live Arcade game, it's tied to your gamertag and the specific console you bought it on. So even when you're not online, other profiles on that console can play it. But if your 360 ever breaks or you for any reason play on another one, your game is still tied to that original box. Now nobody else can play it, and you have to be logged into Live to play it yourself.

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Most games from the Playstation Store on the PS3 work the same way. Except when they don't. Perhaps the most coveted game on Sony's digital distribution system is Warhawk. It also happens to be the most expensive game there, at $40. It is tied only to the Playstation ID that bought it. Others on the same console can't play it.

There are some advantages to the mish-mash of PC copy protection schemes out there. Buy a game through a digital distribution system like Steam or Totalgaming.net, and you can log in with your ID to any computer you want, download it, and play it. Some games require you to type in a CD key and then don't need the disc in the drive ever again, something multi-user households that are constantly swapping discs out of their console can probably appreciate. (And of course, there are "no CD" cracks and "virtual drives" for just about every other PC game that will let you do the same even if the game normally requires there to be a disc in the drive.)

So yeah, PC copy protections can be a bigger annoyance than the console "just pop in the disc and don't worry about it" model, as evidenced by BioShock's PC activation nonsense. And other times, it can be even than that box in your living room—it's "pop in the disc to install and never worry about the disc again." Taken together with the DRM shenanigans of the console games from the new console digital distribution systems, and you could call it a wash. Continued...

Don't Miss Out

No matter what you read on your favorite gaming website or forum, PC games don't play second-fiddle to consoles. The games aren't selling worse than console games when you look at the big picture. The copy protection stuff isn't really that bad—the bad cases are the only ones that people talk about. PCs have online gaming communities that rival anything found on consoles. PCs aren't nearly as unreliable as you may have been led to believe. Besides, how many people have dealt with Xbox 360s due to the infamous "red rings of death?" I had to return my Nintendo Wii within weeks of buying it, because the video chip died. Garnett Lee over at 1Up had a faulty PS3. The consoles are pretty reliable relative to PCs, but it's not as lopsided as the world would have you think.

Read an older article in the same vein: Ten Gaming Myths Debunked.

I'm not arguing in "favor" of the PC as a gaming platform. Like I said before, I have all the major consoles and portables. I play most of the hot console games, quite a lot. I'm a fan. But after seven or eight years as a professional game journalist and now four years as a more general PC and tech enthusiast journalist, I know that great games are where you find them. If you're not gaming on your PC, you're missing out on a lot of great games, and sometimes playing inferior versions of the same games. If you haven't played Company of Heroes, you missed out on one of the best games of the last couple years, on any platform, period. If you're thinking, "but I don't like real-time strategy games," then you can get in line behind the half-dozen friends that said the same thing to me, until they played it, and couldn't tear themselves away.

PC gaming isn't going away. It's not about to become a barren landscape of only casual game titles and online subscription model or pay-for-digital-items games. In fact, over the next three or four years before the next generation of consoles comes out, even the perfectly affordable PCs are going to become dramatically more powerful, and developers that want to make something really incredible without working within the console's constraints will gravitate toward it. If you consider yourself a "gamer," you better put in some quality time in front of that keyboard and mouse if you don't want to lose your gamer credibility.
]]> 1190834289 Wed, 26 Sep 2007 19:18:09 +0000 http://www.7gears.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1190834041&archive= ORIGINAL SOURCE

TOKYO (Reuters) - Sony Corp (6758.T) sold about 250,000 units of the new version of the PlayStation Portable in Japan in the four days since its launch, a game magazine publisher said on Wednesday, roughly matching total Japanese sales of the original PSP in the two months through August.
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Sony launched the new PSP, which is cheaper and slimmer than the initial model, on September 20 in Japan in a bid to compete better with Nintendo Co Ltd's (7974.OS) hot-selling DS Lite.

Both Sony and Nintendo released their handheld consoles, the PSP and DS, respectively, late in 2004.

But sales of the PSP, which can play movies, music and games, have recently been outshone by the DS Lite, the lighter version of the DS.

Sony sold 250,702 new PSPs in the four days through September 23, compared with 275,223 units of the original PSP it sold in July and August in Japan, according to data from videogame magazine publisher Enterbrain.

The new PSP sells for 19,800 yen, which is 5 percent less than the original model and compares with 16,800 yen for the DS Lite.

]]> 1190834041 Wed, 26 Sep 2007 19:14:01 +0000 http://www.7gears.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1190833984&archive= ORIGINAL SOURCE

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Microsoft hopes the launch Tuesday of its much-anticipated "Halo 3" game will turn into another blockbuster that will fend off challenges from Nintendo's Wii and Sony's Playstation 3.
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With plenty of hype and talk of record-breaking sales, Microsoft was to release the game in the United States at 12:01 am Tuesday (0401 GMT) and in 37 countries by the end of the week with a series of high-profile events.

"With nary a pirate, a spider or a wand in sight, day-one sales of the highly anticipated video game are expected to shatter entertainment sales records and top the biggest entertainment launches of all time," Microsoft said in a statement, comparing the event to movie releases like "Harry Potter" and "Pirates of the Caribbean."

Microsoft said it had received a record 1.5 million pre-orders for the game. Midnight launch events were planned at 10,000 retailers across the United States, featuring contests and appearances by local celebrities and athletes.

Many retailers were to hold special openings for the sale, and some expected customers to queue up for the first copies of the game, which sells for 60 dollars for the basic version and 130 dollars for a premium edition.

The game developed by Microsoft and its partner Bungie Studios is the third in the Halo Trilogy, a so-called "first-person shooter" action game that has been a big success.

Microsoft was pinning its hopes on the game to bolster sales of the XBox 360 console, which faces stiff competition from Nintendo's Wii and Sony's PS3.

"This is kind of a make-or-break season for them," said Matt Rosoff, analyst with Directions on Microsoft.

Microsoft recently cut the US price for its Xbox 360 to better compete with the Wii and PS3 and its reputation was tarnished by a design defect that Microsoft says it has fixed. The company set aside a billion dollars in its most recent fiscal quarter to repair or replace flawed consoles.

Microsoft has shipped 11.6 million Xbox 360s since the consoles debuted in 2005. But Nintendo is riding a wave of popularity and has been selling Wii consoles as fast as it makes them since sales began in November 2006.

Still, XBox 360 has outsold its key competitors in the US market so far this year, according to data from NPD Group.

David Cole, an analyst with DFC Intelligence, said "Halo 3" may help Microsoft but is aimed mainly at those who already are committed to the platform.

"Microsoft's biggest challenge is to grow beyond that 'converted' base," he said.

"The buzz around Halo 3 is truly unprecedented, and while many want to take sides around the next-generation console wars, I'm more of an optimist who thinks this launch will be good for the entire industry," said David Riley at NPD.

"It's exactly what this industry needs to kick off the holiday shopping season.

Gaming review site MetaCritic gave the new game a 96 rating out of 100 and says it provides "the thrilling conclusion" to the events begun in the first Halo.

"The Master Chief is returning to Earth to finish the fight. The Covenant occupation of Earth has uncovered a massive and ancient object beneath the African sands -- an object whose secrets have yet to be revealed," MetaCritic said.

Analyst Michael Gartenberg at Jupiter Research said Halo 3 "will likely be a killer app," or application, for XBox 360, which has been struggling against the Playstation 3 and Wii from Microsoft's Japanese rivals.

"I've had a chance to play with a review copy for a bit and now the embargo is lifted it's safe for me to say, this is going to be a monster hit for Microsoft and it's the type of game that will sell systems, probably a lot of them," Gartenberg said.

"Halo 3 has been one of the most anticipated titles in the history of gaming and Microsoft and Bungie delivered well."

]]> 1190833984 Wed, 26 Sep 2007 19:13:04 +0000 http://www.7gears.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1190833939&archive= ORIGINAL SOURCE


NEW YORK (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) is offering to replace damaged discs of its just-launched "Halo 3" game for the Xbox amid reports that special limited-edition packaging is scratching them.
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On its Xbox Website, Microsoft says the disc replacement program covers the "Halo 3" limited edition game disc and essentials disc at no charge through the end of the year.

Microsoft began selling "Halo 3" on Tuesday, and the acclaimed alien shooter game is seen as the $30 billion video game industry's equivalent of a new "Harry Potter" book.

The Associated Press said that blogs were brimming with reports that special limited-edition packaging is scratching the videogame discs.
]]> 1190833939 Wed, 26 Sep 2007 19:12:19 +0000 http://www.7gears.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1190833896&archive= ORIGINAL SOURCE


SEATTLE - Just hours after die-hard fans finally got their hands on a copy of "Halo 3," blogs brimmed with reports that special limited-edition packaging is scratching the video game disks.
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While the scratches don't appear to be keeping gamers from playing the last installment of the popular trilogy, it's a rough patch that Microsoft Corp., which has faced several Xbox 360 glitches in recent months, could have lived without.

Microsoft, which owns the studio that makes the Xbox-only "Halo 3," responded quickly on its Xbox Web site with details for a replacement program. Customers can fill out a form and send in their scratched limited-edition disks for a free exchange through the end of December.

"We have identified that there are some instances of blemishes on discs as a result of the packaging," said Microsoft spokesman David Dennis in an e-mailed statement. "This is a small fraction of the total number of Halo 3 games shipped and sold, and is a limited production version of the game."

Microsoft is selling the limited-edition version, which comes in a tin with bonus behind-the-scenes features and a making-of-the-game documentary, for $70. A regular copy of the game costs $60, and a "legendary" version, which comes with a replica of the helmet worn by game protagonist Master Chief, costs $130. The game officially went on sale early Tuesday.

Richard Mitchell, the lead writer of the Xbox 360 Fanboy blog, said one of the disks that came in his limited-edition set is scratched but the damage didn't seem to interfere with its playing.

The AP received several review copies of "Halo 3" in limited-edition tins. Both the game disk and an "essentials" disk had come loose from plastic housing designed to keep them in place. The game disk had been scratched but seemed to work fine.

"It sounds like it's just an aesthetic thing, though who wants to pay full price for something scratched?" said Brian Crescente, managing editor of Gawker Media's Kotaku.com video game blog.

Microsoft has been plagued by Xbox 360 problems in recent months. In July, the software maker said it would spend more than $1 billion to repair broken Xbox 360 consoles, and in August it disclosed that some Wireless Racing Wheel game controllers were overheating and smoking.

Since its launch, the Xbox 360 has outsold Sony Corp.'s next-generation PlayStation 3 console, but it hasn't been as popular as Nintendo Corp.'s Wii. Investors and analysts are watching whether Microsoft can turn a profit in the division that makes the Xbox 360. Microsoft, which expects to hit that milestone in the current fiscal year, has said "Halo 3" is one part of its strategy for reaching that goal.

]]> 1190833896 Wed, 26 Sep 2007 19:11:36 +0000 http://www.7gears.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1189065039&archive= ORIGINAL SOURCE

Action heroine Samus gets to face her evil twin in "Metroid Prime 3: Corruption," the final game in the science-fiction trilogy and the first for Nintendo's Wii.

The Wii's focus on casual games has meant a bounty of simple titles for the whole family.

But there's been a dearth of action for the hardcore gaming set. "Corruption" finally provides Wii owners something meatier than bowling or tennis.

This $49.99, T-rated title pushes the Wii to its limits.

The graphics — while not up to Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 standards — surpass anything else available for the Wii, which lacks high-definition output.

Most importantly, the wireless controls actually work. The game makes full use of the Wii's remote and nunchuk attachment for looking and moving around, shooting and jumping.

The controls are perhaps the biggest initial obstacle players will face. I found myself wrestling with them instead of the enemies.

But like anything new, you just have to give it some time. It took me a several hours, but I eventually came to appreciate how motion-sensitive controls can enliven a first-person shooter. The controls become an extension of your arms.

The tactile sensation of flicking the nunchuk to throw a grapple beam and yank something off a wall is unlike anything I've experienced before in a video game. Instead of tapping a button to pull a lever, simply twist and move your hand around to pull it, like you would in the real world.

And then there's the satisfying rumble of a fully charged Power Beam blast.

Fans will appreciate how "Corruption" wraps up the story of armor-clad bounty hunter Samus, and her evil twin, Dark Samus.

There's no multiplayer, but the deep single-player saga includes a cast of fellow Galactic Federation pals in a continuing battle against evil Space Pirates. It's not as corny as it sounds, and the enemies, ranging from packs of crawling bugs to oversized fire-tossing dragons, are quite scary and devious.

There's more than just running and gunning, too. Sometimes you'll have to solve puzzles, while other levels are more of a carnival shooting gallery. The overall experience is one of exploration, puzzle-solving and action that kept me wanting to push farther.

Owners of rival consoles can boast all they want about exclusive blockbuster titles like "Halo 3" for the Xbox 360 or "Warhawk" for the PlayStation 3. With "Corruption," the Wii has an excellent new video game all to its own.

Three-and-a-half-stars out of four.

]]> 1189065039 Thu, 06 Sep 2007 07:50:39 +0000 http://www.7gears.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1188795998&archive= ORIGINAL SOURCE

The image you see above isn’t some generic image we grabbed off the net - it’s my personal Xbox 360. I know what you might be thinking - another one? Yeah, another one - but there is a bit more to this story. This Xbox 360 you see above has been used for all of 20 minutes. You see, about three weeks ago my old box 360 crashed and was giving me the three Red Lights of Doom. I sent it in for repair, and today I finally got a replacement. This actually is a replacement - they didn’t fix the one I sent in, they just sent me a new one. This one happened to have been manufactured on 8/15/2007. Anyway, I got it in the mail, hooked everything up, went through the Dashboard configuration, and started playing a demo. Fatal Intertia. We got tired of that after about ten minutes, and decided to boot up the demo of Stranglehold. We got through the opening sequence when everything froze. Fair enough. I had to manually turn the Xbox 360 off because it wouldn’t even respond to the guide button. I turned it back on, and was presented with yes another Three Red Ring Circus.

Now, if that isn’t enough, this flies right in the face of something that Peter Moore told Engadget and Joystiq back at E3 - in mid-July:

I think that there is a lot of confusion with the consumer in exactly how this issue has been remedied. Not just with the extension of the warranty but with the hardware. Exactly what has had to go on to fix the problems that people have been having?

I’m not sure that the consumer needs to understand the complex technical fixes that we need to do for the multiple different problems that come together to create the three flashing red lights. I think the ability for us, all the consumer cares about is my console going to be ok? And if it isn’tm are they going to fix it and take care of it immediately? And if I [already] paid them to fix it, will I get my money back? And the answer is yes to those questions.

But are you guaranteeing or insuring that the systems that are rolling off the assembly lines now and the systems that will be returned to consumers will be fixed properly this time. It won’t be a situation where there are multiple replacements.

Yeah. I mean, nothing is perfect, guys. And the other two hardware companies have their problems as well. I can’t guarantee everyone in the world that we go fix one thing and then something else [won’t] happen. No I’d be stupid to make that guarantee. But I feel very, very good about the quality of hardware now. You guys know this, every day in the factories where we are building these and where we are learning more about it. Sony’s very good at it, Nintendo is very good at it, and we’re very good at it. You’re constantly tweaking, moving parts around, you’re renegotiating with suppliers because your goal is to continuously raise the quality of the box, and bring the price down. Because you have to get your costs down to be able to move your pricing to the level you want. If your costs never came down, then price would never change.

So yes, you can’t guarantee that something won’t go wrong - we get that. But at the very least, Microsoft, you should be able to guarantee that if something like this does happen, that you have some sort of expedited method for dealing with it so that your consumers who spend hundreds of dollars on your hardware aren’t sitting without it for 8-12 weeks because of your hardware problems. Also, I think it is a fair expectation that if you said everything would change in mid-July, that a console manufactured a month later would be clear of these issues.

UPDATE: As always, there are trolls who are claiming that this story must be made up, because a console manufactured over two weeks ago could in no way make the 8 hour plane trip from where it was made all the way over to here in Seattle in that timeframe. I must be some sort of Sony or Nintendo fanboy, just making up the story - they want images to prove I’m not lying. I grabbed a couple of shots of the back of the console, which you can check out after the break.

The Xbox 360 Messenger Kit has been hyped for months now, and it finally hits stores on September 4, 2007. The Kit includes the much anticipated Xbox 360 Chatpad - a QWERTY keyboard accessory that snaps onto an Xbox 360 controller - along with a newly redesigned Xbox 360 headset. The new headset features a simple audio connector, with the mute and volume switch located on the wire itself - much more user friendly, and it looks better too. If you are tired of all the mundane typing that it takes to enter redeemable codes or to write quick messages to friends on the Xbox 360, this is definitely one to consider. We were able to get our hands on a Messenger Kit pre-launch, and have put up an Unboxing gallery giving you a look at both pieces of the package.


]]> 1188795789 Mon, 03 Sep 2007 05:03:09 +0000 http://www.7gears.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1188795601&archive= ORIGINAL SOURCE

Next-gen adaptation to be downloadable screensaver with SIXAXIS controls.
Sony today provided new information on its upcoming PlayStation 3 adaptation of the popular PSP title, LocoRoco.

LocoRoco Cocoreccho!, while in its essence a game, will actually be an interactive screensaver that can be downloaded from the PlayStation Store. The main objective will be to collect as many colorful LocoRocos as possible and lead them to the goal by using the tilt-sensitive controls of the SIXAXIS controller. Three separate mini-games are placed throughout the stage as a way to grow the number of your LocoRocos.

As for leaderboards, Cocoreccho will offer two separate types of online ranking. The first is a total score ranking (which ranks players depending on how many LocoRocos were collected + mini-game scores) while the second tracks how much time it took to reach the goal.

]]> 1188795601 Mon, 03 Sep 2007 05:00:01 +0000 http://www.7gears.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1188795536&archive= ORIGINAL SOURCE

by Greg Miller

August 30, 2007 - It was somewhere in the neighborhood of my fourth pass over a bridge filled with two warring factions and a bunch of evil rhinos that I went from thinking Lair wasn't that bad to wondering if Lucifer himself pressed this Blu-ray disc in the pits of hell.



See, the time had come for my Asylains to draw up a peace treaty with a group of neighboring bad guys called the Mokai, but when the peace process soured, a huge battle erupted and I -- Rohn, one of the best dragon-riding sky guards around -- needed to make sure our troops came out on top.




No doubt, that sounds interesting and fun; however, Lair's terrible controls and god-awful lock-on system make this a mission worthy of swallowing the business end of a shotgun to avoid.

Oh, how far Lair has fallen.



Sony and Factor 5's dragon-riding adventure title puts you up against gigantic sea snakes, a life-threatening wasp and hordes of hostile dragons in a 1080p game that requires you to use Sixaxis controls to pilot your creature through the hostile skies. When the game first showed up on the industry's radar in 2005, fanboys and critics alike marveled at Lair's stunning visuals and began chomping at the bit to get their hands on it. Now that it's here, most are wishing it would just go away.



At first, Lair doesn't seem like the letdown it is. For two years, everyone has been talking about how great this game looks, and at first glance, it doesn't disappoint. As Rohn smacks his dragon to make him fly faster, the creature's slick wings shine, and you can't help but marvel at the sun-drenched buildings of Asylia as you soar above them. When you get your eyes on the FMVs, the visual delights just get better.



Lair's first FMV introduces you to Rohn and a few of his sky guard cohorts, and as they chat it up, it's easy to get caught up in checking out the pores on their faces, the detail as their armor shifts and the action as the Mokai attack unfolds. Even the stage-select menu -- set over a yellowed, worn map on a shimmering globe -- and the pause screen seem polished and perfectly set in the game's medieval style.

This looks cooler than it is.

However, that wonderment won't last as you wrap your head around the mandatory Sixaxis control scheme -- especially when you get to "Crossing at Dawn," the fifth mission on the main screen and the bridge battle that ruined any chance of me finding a silver lining in Lair.



With the fight in full swing, I started by flying around breathing fire on evil dragons and proceeded to land and wipe out some dimwitted troops with my beast's talons. With the masses in check, the toros arrived. Opposing dragons dropped these bull-like creatures onto the bridge, and the game informed me I needed to swoop in, snatch the creatures by their horns and toss them into the ether.



Here's where the cursing begins.

To snatch these bad guys, you have to lock-on to them. To lock-on to them, you have to wait for a white circle to appear around them and press L1 or R1. The catch: there's no way to rotate the white circle. The computer chooses who and what you can target.



So, these toros arrived and started crippling my universe. I swooped in with my dragon, saw a toro and pressed the lock-on button. However -- even though I was coming at the Toro straight on -- the computer was looking at a turret on a tower. That meant I ended up locking on to the tower, passing the rampaging toro and heading back into the sky.



Argh.

Death from above ... if I can just get him to go that way.

Worse? You can't corner or move with any precision in Lair. I missed the toro and thought that I could just turn around and go back to the beast, but my turn was so wide that by the time I was facing the right way, I was already over my foe. The only strategy was to go waaaaaaay out over the water, turn around and slowly come back to the bad guy so that the computer knew exactly who I wanted to take down. Even then, it wasn't unheard of to pick up a trooper by mistake. True, you can jerk the controller to pull off a 180-degree turn, but like all of the Sixaxis controls, I found it horribly unresponsive. Eventually, I just gave up on it -- even though the game refused to let me and had me doing 180s and speed bursts (another wrist-flick move) against my will.



Take too long to get all the bulls -- whether it's because the computer's screwing you or because you're taking too long to turn around -- and you'll lose the level and start the whole thing over again. Beat the toros, and your reward is doing the exact same tedious task with a group of rhinos. It's enough to leave you ready to punt the next lizard you see so that you can extract some level of retribution for the bubbling cauldron of hate this game has created inside you.

Worst fireworks ever.

Please don't think that this one level is what I'm basing my opinion of Lair on; it's just the first time I understood how painful this game can be. These problems continue throughout the game, and that's a shame. Lair had so much potential -- the game will score your performance, award you medals and toss your scores on an online leaderboard -- and above all else, Lair has a great story.



Although Asylia and Mokai are at each other's throat now, they used to be one nation that worshiped one deity. Then, a volcano erupted and split the land in two. Over time, the factions grew to be enemies, and neither remembers the good times now. Rohn's journey from being a faithful servant of Asylia to seeing the treachery of the Diviner to realizing how similar the Mokai and his people are is impressive in scale, scope and emotion. Add the fact that Lair features a sweeping orchestral score with big pieces to match the big events of the game, an impressive vocal cast and some beautiful FMVs, and this could have been a benchmark for where this industry is going -- could have.

Sure, the FMVs are graphically impressive and so are parts of the gameplay, but there are lots of times I found myself rolling my eyes at what I was seeing on the screen -- I'm talking about tearing, square waves, a chugging framerate and water effects that look like sand.

Even if you could turn off the goodtime neutering Sixaxis controls -- and you can't -- the actual things you would be doing in the game would be a grab bag of neat and lame mechanics. Some levels will have you taking out troops on the ground via swipes or boats on the sea via fire, and that's fun. Other levels will have you fighting dragons, and that's lame.

That's right: the dragon fights in this dragon game are no good.

Feeling hot, hot, hot.
Feeling hot, hot, hot.
The takedowns -- which have you fly up on a foe, jump onto the beast, kill the pilot and take out the dragon via some quick action events -- are cool, but they seemed to be the minority. One of the more prevalent attacks had us flying side-by-side with a bad guy and shaking our controller left to right. Although it was unresponsive, eventually the controller would read the action and our dragon would drift into the side of the other dragon, which would then fall away and die. The next battle method had our dragon and the opposing dragon face to face falling toward the ground. Here, we'd hit square to stiffly blast the foe with fire breath and then alternate between X and circle for talon attacks that never appeared to connect.

Sound cool? It wasn't, and that pretty much sums up Lair.

Closing Comments
You might think I'm being too hard on Lair, but if you do, you clearly haven't played this game. Although there are levels where wide-open environments and spread-out objectives trick you into thinking the Sixaxis stuff isn't that bad, whenever a handful of enemies are on screen, your flight space becomes limited or you need to be precise, this game falls apart.

At one point, Lair looked like one of the most promising titles coming to the PS3, but the final version -- even with its interesting story, occasionally impressive graphics and amazing score -- falls well short of anything you should be playing.

]]> 1188795536 Mon, 03 Sep 2007 04:58:56 +0000 http://www.7gears.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1188795394&archive= ORIGINAL SOURCE

• Game: Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix ($9.99)


• Add-On: Tekken 5 Dark Resurrection Online ($9.99; with game $29.99)



• Demo: Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2008 (free)
  


• Demo: All-Pro Football 2K8 (free)
  


• Demo: NASCAR '08 (free)



• Video: Heavenly Sword "Episode Four: The Sound of Combat" making-of video (free)
  


• Video: Heavenly Sword "Episode Four: The Divine Birth" animation (free)


• Trailers: Folklore "Surviving the Netherworld"; Clive Barker's Jericho, "Beowulf" and "Bee Movie" (free)

CORRECTED Responding to consumer demand, Sony has restocked the 60GB PlayStation 3 online.

After a complete sell-out of its online supply (first discovered by GamePro earlier this week), Sony has replenished its 60GB PlayStation 3 supply on Sonystyle.com.

60GB PS3s are back in stock online.

When GamePro first reported that the 60GB version of the PS3 became listed as on "back order", Sony's Dave Karraker confirmed that there was no longer any 60GB inventory remaining in SCEA warehouses and that it all had been shipped out to retailers.

Sony has responded to the online demand and now has replenished the online supply of the 60GB version, shipping ample retail supply back to fulfill online orders.

CORRECTION: We errantly attributed statements to Dave Karraker that the $599 80GB PS3 bundle may be reduced down to $499 once the complete supply of the 60GB version dries up. Though widley believed by many, Sony has made no official announcement, either on or off the record to GamePro.


]]> 1188795329 Mon, 03 Sep 2007 04:55:29 +0000 http://www.7gears.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1188795261&archive= ORIGINAL SOURCE

Sony elaborated on previous comments made about 60GB PS3 inventory stock on Wednesday, confirming that only retail supply of the $499 machine remains and suggesting that the expected 80GB price drop is imminent.

80GB PS3 bundle to drop to $499?

"We no longer have any inventory in SCEA warehouses. All inventory has been purchased and shipped to retailers," Sony's Dave Karraker said in an email.

"We don't have visibility as to if that is on their store shelves or in their warehouses at this time. However, based on inventory reports from our retailers, there is ample supply still left in the channel."

On Tuesday, it was revealed that Sony's online inventory had been fully depleted. In July, after slashing the PS3 price by $100, the company said that the now discontinued 60GB PS3 would be available for several months. At that point, Sony alluded that they may also reduce the price of the $599 80GB PS3 to $499 as many analyst expect.

"We won't be making any further announcements regarding our PS3 model hardware strategy in North America until the 60GB model is exhausted and market conditions are evaluated," the company said at the time.

UPDATE: According to Sony, SonyStyle.com is shifting inventory from its retail stores to the site to meet web demand.


]]> 1188795261 Mon, 03 Sep 2007 04:54:21 +0000 http://www.7gears.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1188795175&archive= ORIGINAL SOURCE

You shouldn't play Lair. Not unless you have some morbid interest in experiencing what is quite possibly one of the worst control schemes ever devised. It's a shame because as a cinematic experience, it's stunning to watch. As a game, it's a nightmare and an embarrassment. It sounds like a fantastic idea: You fly around on a dragon, spewing fire and clawing at other reptiles while generally wreaking havoc. Too bad you're forced to use Sixaxis controls that destroy the possibility of fun and replace it with the constant need to scream expletives at your television screen.

Go right, dammit.

You play as Rohn, a dragon rider in the Asylian army fighting against the supposedly evil Mokai. You can sense from the start that there's something creepy about the religious dedication of the Asylians, so the story twists that appear later aren't exactly shocking. However, the cutscenes that move the story along are terrific, giving you a real sense of the culture and backstory. They are also frequently intrusive, interrupting gameplay every two or three minutes with a brief clip to remind you of your mission objectives, as if the last four cutaways would let you forget.

You might think that flying around would be the easiest thing to do in a flight sim. Well, not in Lair, unless you're flying straight ahead in wide-open skies, without needing to turn or get close to anything else. It sounds simple enough: Accelerate by tapping X, pull back on the reigns with R2 or L2, and tilt the controller to steer. But flight is a mess. You can't make tight turns, yet you're constantly placed in levels with narrow canyons, looming towers, and a ton of enemies in the air, at ground, or at sea. All of these things are surrounded by an invisible, slippery wall that pushes you off to the side, or up, or down if you bump against it. So if you get too close to anything during any of these stupidly wide turns you're forced into, you'll be sliding off of stuff and into a direction that bears no resemblance to your actual destination.

In theory, you can lock on to other flying enemies and spew flames at them or dive into them from a fair distance. But the targeting system is a tragedy. You can't choose what to lock on to, so all you can do is keep an eye out for the fuzzy white circle to appear on an enemy dragon. From here, you have a couple of equally unappealing choices. Possibility one: You press circle, at which point, you zoom headlong into your enemy, which normally kills it instantly. It's like Joust in 3D, only shallower. During the kill, the game goes into a dramatic slow-motion mode, but the tilt controls stop steering your dragon and now inexplicably control the camera.

During this period, you can tilt the camera around and pray that another dragon in view gets the magic white circle plastered on it, in which case, you can make it a combo kill. But there are multiple insane issues with the setup. One is that during slow-mo, you can only pan the camera horizontally, so you can have foes above or below, but no chance of stringing them into a combo because you can't lock on to them. The other is that once the kill is done, the tilt controls go back to steering your dragon. This forces you to constantly adjust and invariably results in your dragon going off somewhere you don't want it to go. All the while, the camera moves from the cinematic kill angle to its original position and you have to figure out what direction you're facing. It's frustrating and dumb, considering that the analog sticks control the flight camera at all other times.

No, you idiot--the other right.

Possibility two: The targeting circle appears, and you press L1 or R1 to initiate the lock-on function. Once you're locked on, you can spew fire toward your enemy, which works reasonably well. Or you can fly alongside and whip the controller toward your enemy to ram it. This usually works OK, but there is a delay between your own motion and that of the dragon onscreen, so it makes the sideways bash rather unsatisfying.

The lock-on and auto-targeting function works with aerial enemies, as well as enemies on the ground. Missions often require you to lock on to a specific target to take it down, but as already mentioned, you can't select your own target. For instance, you may need to take down one of the elephantine creatures on the ground by locking on and hitting triangle, but you may end up getting a lone soldier instead, or a turret, or a dragon. Then, you'll need to struggle to circle around or try a 180-degree turn to head back, which requires you to pitch the controller upward and doesn't work half the time anyway. Amazingly, these ultraprecise mission objectives are coupled with a time limit most of the time, which just makes you feel that much more out of control.

You're not stuck in the air. You can land and set fire to ground troops, or eat them, or whip your tail around. Here, you use the analog sticks to move about, which is a welcome relief from all the gesticulating you'll be doing most of the time. Supposedly, tilting the controller moves the camera while you're on the ground, but it never seemed to do much of anything for us. The moments on the ground don't last long because as soon as you get used to the more intuitive analog controls, you'll need to switch your brain back and head to the skies.

You're fighting all of this madness all of the time, and it detracts from the moments that prove Lair could have actually been good in some alternate dimension. Sometimes you'll engage in melee combat with other dragons. During these times, the camera zooms in close, tribal music kicks into high gear, and you're teased with the momentary thought that, yes, this could be cool. But after some brainless button mashing, you kill your foe, the camera zips around in some ungodly fashion, and you're back to the struggle to retain sanity. There are some other context-sensitive kills, where Rohn hops off his dragon to perform some spectacular feat of derring-do while you shake the controller up and down or press the left stick in any direction you feel like. It's awesome to watch, but your part in the onscreen action is remarkably limited.

Alright, fine. Go left instead.

It's obvious that all the development effort went into Lair's production values, rather than into making it fun to play. It's often a stunner to look at, with environments that are huge and richly detailed. Its artistry is also dripping from every nook and cranny. Rolling hills, arid deserts, rocky seaside cliffs: All of these elements are rendered beautifully. When you throw in the splendor of distant aerial battles, undulating seas, and lovingly crafted dragons, you've got a gorgeous way to enjoy your high-definition display. But all this beauty comes at a cost. The frame rate dips and rises erratically--not enough to hinder gameplay usually, but it's an annoyance nonetheless. You'll also be treated to occasional screen tearing, seams in the geometry, and plenty of pop-up as objects get closer. The soundtrack is quite lovely, while the voice acting and sound effects are good too, so at least there is a lot here to please the senses. But the constant voice-overs reminding you of your mission objectives are repeated so often, you'll be screaming that yes, you know you need to destroy the navy ships, but you can't get your dragon to fly in the right direction.

But great visuals and sound mean absolutely nothing in Lair. Factor 5 should have made a movie--not a game. This is the ultimate example of how gameplay suffers when all the work goes into making everything look pretty. There is nothing fun about it, so forget the online leaderboards and don't worry about unlocking a few dragons in the stable or gunning for a high score. Forget Lair entirely. It really seems like the developers forced themselves to stick with a barely-workable control scheme just to make use of the PS3's flashy new tilt sensor support.
]]> 1188795175 Mon, 03 Sep 2007 04:52:55 +0000 http://www.7gears.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1188794792&archive= ORIGINAL SOURCE

While there was some confusion about just when Lair was actually going to be shipped out, we have gotten confirmation from multiple sources that it's actually in the stores right now. That's right, you can go out and get your dragon on immediately. It's a little odd that it was released on a Thursday since almost all retail games go on sale on Tuesday, but why look a gift horse in the mouth?

If you do go out and pick up a copy of Lair today, why not come back here and leave your impressions in the comments section? The reviews have been pretty controversial so far, so it would be nice hearing what the fans themselves think.

]]> 1188794792 Mon, 03 Sep 2007 04:46:32 +0000 http://www.7gears.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1188794695&archive= ORIGINAL SOURCE
This is coming from a long line of "is it, is it not" scenarios for John Woo's action title Stranglehold. First it was held back, then region locked, then region free, then delayed for the PS3 indefinitely (but not really). So forgive us if another delay announcement doesn't exactly spark a very violent reaction with us -- we've run this course before. This time, though, both the PC and PS3 versions of the game get held back.

While the 360 gets their white dove action on September 5th (in Europe, 14th), the PS3 has to wait until the end of September, slated now for the 25th with a vague October listing for Europe. Still, we should be getting a demo of the title over the PS Store soon, right? With all these delays, it'd be silly not to have that demo up before the game hits. Otherwise, we just might lose interest. Probably not, though, since this game looks pretty slick.

]]> 1188794695 Mon, 03 Sep 2007 04:44:55 +0000