I have had a smart phone for 2 month now, or something like that. I have tried MANY games on it, and found a couple hidden gems like Game Dev Story and things like that..

Well, I continually read news every day as always online about how consoles are ending, it's all about gaming telephones now.. PC's are dying, tablets are the future.. blah blah blah.

I really do not agree with this statement at all.. With the absolutely terrible selection and no quality control whatsoever on the smart phone market, it is a fucking treasure hunt to try to find any good game at all. While consoles may release bad games, they don't release 1000 bad games every day and hide 1 good one randomly in the mix..

With the steam box out next year, PC gaming is hardly dead. PC has 5 times the number of exclusive IP's now going to be available on your TV with controllers.. If anything, the Console will be putting everything else to shame, and PC gaming will sort of merge with consoles.

I think that these ios or phone games are like when you go to a doctors office and pick up a random magazine and skim through it until your appointment, then you drop it and forget about it forever. Whereas a "real" game for consoles or PC is like getting into a very well written book that is part of a trilogy or something. You don't want to put it down, and you go out of your way to read it and you remember your experience.

If there is one thing I want to see die, it is not consoles, pc, or smart phones. I want to see an end to those "consoles are over" "PC are now obsolete" articles. That would be sweet.

I don't know if you have had a chance to pick up Far Cry 3 yet, but if not you probably should. This game is outstanding in every aspect. This is the first game I have ever played that actually feels like it is a next gen game (Next gen as in post 360/ps3). Everything moves so fluidly in the game, and there are no lag issues or screen tearing which sometimes haunts such impressive games.

I was so blown away with the character animations. The NPC's both in cut scene and in game move so realistically that you feel as if you are watching an actual person on your screen. The voice acting is absolutely astounding. Such amazing voice actors and mocap in this game it is truly amazing.

The sound is fantastic too. Many times in games I find the sounds of the weapons can actually make or break a game. I never played Army of Two because all the guns sounded like cap guns with silencers on them, was terrible. But I also REALLY got into Soldier of Fortune: Double Helix. Not a great game at all, but the sound effects of the weapons made you feel like such a badass playing it, actually improved the game overall and I loved it.

I have noticed a few things that just blew my mind as well, little things, like I was hang gliding off the top of a mountain, and you can hear the wind blowing and nature sounds, and then I hear a hawk. I look around and there is a hawk flying in formation with me! Is this part of the game, or a random occurrence, I have no idea, but if felt so amazing, almost like the hawk thought I was another hawk and joined my hawk squadron. Another great little thing, I was racing around in a car and happened to go off the side of a mountain and splashing down into the ocean. The car was completely sideways, and I went to exit and I exited through the door closest to the water, the farthest door, not the drivers door like in many games. So realistic, the little things you notice really make it amazing.

The Music is fantastic and really gets into the groove when you are in battle, but even just walking around exploring, the background music is amazing and reminds me a lot of the ambiance on fallout 1,2, and 3.

One thing though.. the ONLY thing I have to say bad about this game, is what Ubisoft did. I hope it is only a temporary thing and gets either patched out or fixed, but Ubisoft implemented forced lag into my game. When I press the start button to access my crafting and skill trees etc, I am greeted with a nice message saying "attempting to contact ubisoft servers" or some shit. This stays on the screen for a good 20 seconds EVERY time it happens. After the time is up, it either connects or it gives a fail message, and then shows me the start menu.. It makes no fucking difference at all to be connected or not connected, and just forces a random 20 second time delay into my game at random opportunities. I was playing last night and became so frustrated that I almost threw my control against the wall. It happened at least once every 5 to 10 minutes.

Other than that though, man, what a great game. I think it feels like a true next gen game for sure, try it out if you haven't already. Happy new years.

So the Mayan Calender has come to an end, and I think it is time we reflect on the worst video game release during this Mayan Calender's long count. It is the end of one era, and the beginning of the next, so I was trying to find what the worst game of this past era were (After all, we all know that video games travelled back in time to actually introduce violence to human kind, and without video games there would never have been violence in human history)

With all the talk lately of The War Z scam, I was checking it out. Looks fucking horrible, and god damn I feel sorry for whoever bought into this. I noticed though that the creator had made a brutal game before with absolutely terrible review scores (4 out of 100 on Metacritic). I checked out some videos and yeah, it's bad, but then I found this one video and I could not stop laughing. I almost puked on my keyboard.

Please check out this video, and you will see the worst game of this Mayan era in action, but, the video is just so amazing you HAVE to see it. Seriously, watch this and prepare to laugh. It's not new though, so you may have seen it. Sarcastic as hell, and amazing.

Enjoy.

Worst game of this Mayan Era:

Yesterday was a fantastic deal on Xbox live during their countdown to 2013. Every day is a new sale which is actually quite fantastic. Yesterdays was platformers, featuring great games and one that I had always wanted to play, Rayman's Origins, $10 off, now at 9.99, from 19.99.

I logged on to my xbox and saw the message right there in front of me. There was 50%'s and whatnot on the arcade titles, and it said Rayman Origins, $10 Off. I then clicked on it and tried to buy the game. It came up asking me for $19.99. I backed out, restarted my xbox, and checked it again. Listed at $10 off, normal $19.99. I clicked on it, and again, it asks for $19.99.

I check the internet. It seems many people are having this trouble, and lots from UK. I am in Canada.
I log into Xbox.com, to see if it is the same there. It is listed at $10 off, and when I click on the button, it shows buy the game ($9.99). I Found it! I click on the link, and it fails to process.

Now, I actually called Xbox (1-800-4MY-XBOX) and waiting 20 min, then spoke with someone who was really nice and helpful. She looked into it and we tried everything. She had no idea why it was not working for me and actually tried to log into my account and buy it herself and same thing. In the end, it turns out that this particular game's $10 sale price was US ONLY. Now that is all fine and dandy, but why am I being showed an ad that it is $19.99? Why is everyone being shown this? It is saying $10 off, and comes through naturally at $19.99, making whoever does not know think that this is the sale price, but it is actually it's normal price! I have been checking on it often because I really wanted it.

So it is being shown as $10 off to everyone, but only US citizens get it for $9.99. Everyone else pays full price for it even though advertised as $10 off.

I kinda wish that XBL followed the Canada's Scanning Code of Practice. This is something where if you are in a store, and an item scans for a price that is more than listed on their shelf/item, you get $10 off the item automatically, and that is $10 off the lowest listed price. If an item is listed at $100, and actually costs $500, you would have to pay $90 for it under the law, or at least those who follow this practice. It is the rules. Now, if an item is under $10, it is actually supposed to be given FREE to the customer.

If Xbox live did follow Canada's Scanning Code of Practice then I would have been able to download the game for free, and so would everyone else who wanted to buy it and couldn't at the advertised sale price. That would be so awesome, because this actually has happened a few times before with other games, listed as sale and secretly not.

Either list your sale as US ONLY, which is totally fine, no problems with that, or do not show that ad to people who can not use it. As it was yesterday it was actually false advertising.

In the end, I bought the game and man is it ever amazing. I am actually glad I paid $19.99 rather than $9.99 for Rayman Origins, as it is absolutely amazing in every way and I like to support quality things and great game development. I tried the new one on WiiU and actually find this Origins much better.

I have been a HUGE fan of Xbox since the Xbox came out. I have had a lot of great systems over time, and had a PS2 when the Xbox came out but pretty much went exclusive Microsoft at that point because of their controller. It was like the PS dual shock, but the thumb sticks were finally far enough apart that I did find my thumbs doing battle while I was trying to defend myself on the television screen.

The 360 pushed everything to the next level with Xbox live, and the games, it was amazing. Lately though, I am becoming more and more jealous of PS plus users. They get such a fantastic deal that it makes my old Xbox live is the best service irrelevant. It used to be, before PS plus.. But now with every new dashboard update we get farther and farther from gaming, and ads shoved in you the paying customer's face.

Yesterday I was reading up that Steam has now announced a new console for next year... I had heard rumors earlier, but this pretty much confirmed it. I have been on steam recently and checked out their "big Picture" thing and it seemed very cool, then days later saw news of the console. I do not know the specs yet, but I am very much thinking of jumping on the Steam roller and going for a ride as it paves it way over Microsoft and Sony's sales charts.

I was looking into exclusive releases for the upcoming year. Nintendo Wii U had a decent number, as did Sony. Microsoft had 1 listed.. Only 1, Gears of War Judgement. Then next to all those was PC with around 60. Now what that means is that probably at least 50 or all 60 of those PC exclusive releases will be available on the steam home console. That with the current massive warehouse of games online, and it really stands out as something special. The online will supposedly be free (as it is now on PC), and with steam sales you can just point and laugh when Microsoft or Sony announce a sale on their services.

As a heavy Xbox 360 user, I am getting worried that Microsoft will not be up to par when their next system comes out, and am very much considering Steaming up my Xbox Room (Basement).

I just hope their controllers are 360ish or Wii Uish in their thumb sticks.

Hey everyone, I just wanted to post something because I am pretty excited. I have been gaming for decades, and it is as normal to me as breathing air to live. I have been making add-ons or mods for games since I was 12, and am 31 now. Started with simple things like Doom/Doom 2 maps (those good old .wad files you know) to re-recording and changng every sound and all music in the games. Then went on to Duke3d/Shadow Warrior, C&C, heroes of might and magic 2-3, civilizations, the sims 2 (over 5.5 million downloads of my items) and many others. Some tracks in Trials HD, maps in Far Cry's etc.. the list goes on and on.

Anyways, all the experience I have making items and using graphics software and whatnot is coming in quite useful right now. With the experience of making game add-ons and mods I have had to be pretty resourceful in some ways. This has come in handy in developing a website because my knowledge is somewhat limited, but I am very resourceful and do things differently.

I launched a website a few months ago, and it is now getting over 1K unique visitors every day now. I am not running it like a business though, even though it does make money. I am actually "playing" it like a strategy game. Thanks to Google analytics I can watch in real time what is happening and plan my moves accordingly. All the money I am making is like getting a high score, and I am trying to always increase my score. It is really quite fun. I have a couple new websites on the way and can't wait to see how they play out.

It really does remind me of a lot of strategy sim games, sorta like game dev story, or even lemonade stand. I hope to win this game one day. Winning will mean I don't have to get a job or go to work. I can stay at home playing video games all day, while I have automated websites conjuring money out of thin air like a powerful wizard. Wish me luck ;)