There's a specific design flaw of the PSPgo I feel I have to point out to Sony. It is a particularly worrying design flaw due to the fact that it can kill your PSP Go. I am not saying this out of jest. Do not take it as a personal attack either, I am still (even now) a firm believer that Sony always intends to deliver the highest quality of electronics and accessories to its customers all around the world. It is just that the power switch on my PSP Go was the death nail on its tiny rounded-side coffin. Let us examine the features of the power switch and how its variety of functions might have turned my $250 portable game system into a 5 ½ oz brick.

So the power switch toggles up and down. Found on the lower-right-hand of the console, it's flat featuring bumps to add gripping action. Once the operator presses their thumb to it, they now must navigate a treacherous road from this point on. Flick the switch up and it turns the system on. Flick the switch the other way and it locks downward to function as a hold button. The fact that the amount of force necessary to unrest the power switch from this position is so much so that if you're not careful you can easily find yourself with a powered off PSP Go should foretell a life of pain in the eyes of a product tester.

The feeling of mistakenly hitting off was not unlike “accidentally” slapping a loved one, then coaxing them afterward while saying that you never meant for this to happen. Even when I finally learned how to unlock my PSP Go without inevitably turning it off, the accidents would persist. Fortunately for me, the PSP Go bookmarks the spot you were last in any given media (except that I am not certain the same applies to games, but we'll get to that later), so I could get back to where I was last within seconds. However, and this is where our tale turns into a travesty, please do take a few seconds few turning your PSP Go back on.

As I exited my house, one of my not favorite songs started playing on my PSP Go. It was so not one of my favorite songs that I needed to unlock my PSP Go... oh shit. Ok, well I need to turn on my PSP Go right now, as soon as friggin' possible, because technology must bend to my quick-tempered will as fast as it can. Well, I slid the switch back up the moment after I had turned it off.

Then again after that.

Once more... Uh.

(Actually gives the PSP Go a second to turn off.)

Tries one more time.

God damn it.

I have yet to buy a game for the system and it is already broken. I have yet to spend a cent on it, outside of the screen cover, and a major flaw has already presented itself. I bought it a week into October and it's a 14 gig paperweight in the first week of November. Wow. My disappointment is complete. I have never experienced this amount of pain with a portable console before. Every Nintendo portable console I have ever played has been a tank. Surviving a dip in the ocean (GB pocket), my sweaty, cheese-dust covered hands smearing the crevices around the buttons (GB), and devastating blows to its bumper buttons (GBA sp), has taught me that a portable console relies on durability.

While this might not be the most representative test of the PSP Go, I do believe that I can tell when a system has failed me and not the other way around. What I suspect to have taken place is that either I jammed the “on” side of the switch or it is somehow stuck in a permanent state of hold. A practical phantom zone of malfunctioning equipment, my PSP Go has reached the top of my shit list and will never come down. This could be a combination of software and hardware failure, but I cannot be sure. I only hope that I am one of a thousand that experiences this terror, but I believe I am not the only impatient and clumsy gamer around. I guess it's just one more reason to dislike the PSP Go.

Somehow I am still optimistic about the whole ordeal. Outside of the fact that it is now not actually functional, my PSPgo was a fun romp into the world of the mp3/mp4/downloadable video game playing portable system. I did get a chance to play the demo of Patapon 2 (fun as a demo) and the free guitar hero game (it's confusing to have to transition between instruments) that accompanied the system. The button scheme took a little time to get used to and the analog stick is still as sticky as I remember it to be, but the package is styled in a superior fashion compared to the original in my opinion. It looks so sleek. Watching tv on something that can compact itself down to only a screen is really a sweet feature. In the end, though, it's basically an iPhone you can play Final Fantasy 7 on.

I know this ends kind of like a review, but it's really more of a love letter to what could have been a more fulfilling relationship had I only been given more time. How sad.

In the Venetian sculpture exhibit at the National Gallery of Art there is a helmet, or burgonet as the Italians might have called it back in the day. This burgonet brought me back to a simpler time. A time when PS2s were still the rage. A time when DLC had yet corrupted our innocence and WW2 FPSs were still dominating the market in a sad, sad way. When we felt incorruptible, no?

Well, Final Fantasy 12 MMORPGed up the joint. The true break from the traditional FF turn-based formula. Now even the most Internet-less person could enjoy the feeling of power grinding in the same way as any PC gamer without the nuisance of human interference. More importantly, Venetian-style garments were back in vogue. Anybody and everybody could stat buff whilst looking like a Renaissance (Wo)man. It was beautiful, if it weren't for the ease through which one could beat the game it could have been so much more rewarding.

Dear reader, this helmet encapsulates the last Final Fantasy to be released of its own accord without the benefit of accompanying titles or a sequel already in the making even before its release. This helmet is dedicated to a simpler time and to a great enthusiast for the pixelated past. Chad Concelmo, here is the helmet for you.

Space Orks. The anti-space marine. They're a clanky, unrefined race that stretch the limits of realism in terms of space-travelling war machines. In Dawn of War 2, they have vehicle units that spew smoke and appear to be Frankensteined out of any parts available to the ork engineers and mechanics. Ground units are ultimately specialized.

With exception to the ork heroes, no single ork unit can be fashioned to become a stand alone unit. There is only one unit that wields grenades and only grenades, Jumpaboys jump (sometimes to their kamikaze-style death), nob squads smash, and shootas shoot. The two most dynamic units are sluggas and the rokkit unit. The former can repair and melee, while the latter can function as artillery and anti-tank.

However, the point of this article is not to break down strategy or give stats, but merely to discuss my own interest in this strange, albeit physically strong race. How it functions as an exception to most races in the RTS format. The manner in which their quirky strategy, or lack thereof, and characteristics as a race bend the rules of conception in terms of building an RTS faction.



The closest science fiction-based relation the space ork has is the reaver from Firefly. If you have yet to see Joss Whedon's Space Western, then I will just have to say go watch it, and you will be searching the racks after ward for a browncoat to proudly display your unwillingness to fall under the wheel of somebody else's concept of what progress "should be".

Well, much like orks, reavers just barely function as a space-travelling band of raping and pillaging aimless scavengers. In order to compete with their technologically superior foes they push their engines to the limits. They persist by raiding others and recruit through intimidation, torture, and mutilation. They revel in a world of ultra violence, yet still have managed to form a society all there own.

Unlike the zerg, which are creatures that maintain their society through a hive mind, orks survive through brutishness moving with a raider mentality. A religious or corporate-run society does not appeal to their lifestyle. If there was one word to best describe the style of government that an ork society would most likely adopt it would be decentralized.

The ork borrows from all races, absorbing almost none of the real intelligence necessary to innovate their army, focusing mainly on improving their ability to smash one as gruesomely as possible. Similar to the Viking, they thrive on war. However, they are less reflective about the afterlife. It's a civilization where all revolution of logic has ceased to exist.

A society without sentimentality, organized religion and business, self improvement, and vanity. They're not even necessarily efficient. One can only assume there is one belief/edict/hope/want/will/wish to understand here: strife.

So I finally got back into playing Okami on the Wii. It's really a surprising game. I find the combat to be repetitive and the dialogue to be a bit questionable. A lot of the items and weapons are useless. Even the graphical quality could've been improved just a bit for the Wii. With all of this riding against it, it's still an amazing game.

It's like that supposed new "category" of game created by a Sony exec, the Zen game. It's not about being innovative in game play, blowing your mind with its storyline, or even really challenging the player in any specific way. You are only expected to marvel at its beauty.

The shifting landscape, bright colors, and the bringing to life of classical Japanese scroll art all propel me along, more so than anything else. It's like Wind Waker, when little Link is just sailing around this astonishing ocean, I enjoyed exploration for the mere experience of traversing this amazing world. I still am not a fan of Zelda games, but that's another story altogether. I liked Wind Waker, because it dared to be colorful with no regrets.

If you want to look like a painting, like Okami, every aspect of the game must reflect that aesthetic. Not unlike Jet Grind Radio, which embraced the punk, funk, and speedy game play, it takes the graffiti lifestyle and puts it to motion. The music, the level intros, and the anti-authority theme. It blares beats.

Instead of being overly forgiving like Okami, Jet Grind Radio may have been one of the hardest games to perfect. Some of the jumps and stringing together of many grinds were frustrating so much so I took month long breaks from the game after many fits of rage. I overcame its steep learning curve and grew to love the soundtrack more than anything else.

Side note: When Jet Set Radio Future came to the X-box, I was very excited to try it out. Then I did, and found it to be a watered down, less fun and exciting version of the original.

Another strange game that I like its artistic direction more than the actual interaction with it is Battalion Wars. A friend of mine even expressed a positive regard for the cartoon-ish quality of this war game. Never mind its sometimes clunky unit control, which frustrates me about 30% of the time when a unit dies needlessly because I couldn't rescind an order. The bouncy, high-pitched voice soldiers and overly constructed super tanks put a strange spin on the war genre as a whole.

Framing war as a Saturday morning cartoon is a strange artistic turn. The different nations are all caricatures of modern super powers. They're all horrible clichés and the entire world is bumbling about swinging its weapons about aimlessly looking for the next major conflict, while the real enemy sits their lurking in the shadows. It's all very expressive, open, and blunt. It's political commentary, not inept design and some might think. This outlandish world was made to reflect our own.

Whether the world is brought to life by wacky generals or the stroke of a brush. The creators of these wonderful games are exposing their audience to absurd worlds, astonishing beauty, and even social and political commentary. Why, look at Okami once more. It's about reviving nature. You run through a wasteland filled with poisoned waters, desolated trees, and even some pieces of land that are so scorched that they harm the main character to even step foot upon.

You want to know what I think this game might be an allegory for? Post-war Japan. The bombs that were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. They irradiated the land. Fouled the beauty that is mainland Japan. Poisoned the waters. It's a wish of a painter to return the world they live in to a one of the past with magnificent landscapes that fills scroll art from centuries past. I think it's a statement worthy of a game so beautiful. Whoever said a video game can not be a piece of art must be a soulless mass of flesh living in a dark unimaginative world.

The question I want to pose in this piece is, "why play 60 hours of multiplayer, when I could play 60 hours of numerous other games?" Where did my life go when I connected to XBL? My eyes have burned bright images of gunfire and claymore blasts. I could have spent that time chipping away at the other 20 games in my ever-burgeoning stockpile of story-rich RPGs and vocabulary-enhancing "My _____ Coach" games. Am I a poor unfortunate soul who can not help himself from having complete sensory deprivation within a hectic world of mind-numbing explosions and quick, yet painless deaths?

I can not help but feel the answer is an easy yes, but there are those times when there seems to be something insidious hiding around the corner to be the next ten-point kill. I am not a shy kid out in the world. I participate in class discussion. I live in a house full of eleven other people, with who I have very well-rounded friendships. I am a member of numerous student organizations. I go to parties and bars and enjoy myself. However, something about playing CoD 4, a game with a very specific purpose and set of goals, sucks me in and holds me there for hours longer than I can even gauge with a clear mind. The bullets fly and my brain becomes so attached that the time rattles by without notice.

With that said, I do not think I could say the same for any single player game. Oh yes, I play through my Final Fantasys and Bioshocks like I absolutely need to see the next smart line of dialogue or find out what happened to my favourite black mage character. Once I am done, I will not pick up that game for a long time. The memory remains fresh for a while and I have a fairly good amount of plot recall, so I do not feel the need to invest 40 more hours into the game. Call of Duty 4 however does not play the same.

This is one of those topics that has been of great debate. The "jacked in" feeling. The belief that when I shoot player x, then person x will be on the other end of that controller feeling a mixture of emotions. I would expect some anger, resentment, loss of pride, shock, embarrassment, despair, and possibly (if it was a really smart or impressive kill) respect. Those bits of feelings slowly filter into me. Every kill I execute feeds that expectation. I control the amount I want and when I make a perfect ass of myself then I can escape it whenever I want.

I guess, in a sense, I like the control of participation. Unlike interacting with an actual full and complete human being, given these terms I get to exercise the feelings I want to onto a fraction of another person. We mutually partake in this give and take scenario. I take their life and they come back to give me more if I wish (or have the ability) to do so. Whereas in Bioshock, I take from it the atmosphere, the story, and lives of AI-driven players, which in some sense are given to me by the developers. They are not active, though. The developers must slowly permeate the ideas they wish to impart upon me in a slow and deliberate fashion. CoD 4 allows for a quick and wild exchange between up to 16 players in the immediate now with surprisingly fresh quality.

These players all have their own concepts of how this showdown will play out. As much as there are teams (for certain game modes), they are certainly not all going to be tidy and go well together. They might as well all be there to kill each other in a split second. Thus this control of participation falls into place. In the English language there are many words to be said in an infinite amount of contexts in which they could be said. In a primarily multi-participant game such as CoD 4 words carry little meaning. The language is a brutal one. It is one where one person interacts with another by sharing each other's demise. A controlled participation. One with little room for mistaken meanings or with fairly limited real world repercussions.

All interaction is a reward for just having participated.

Thank you for reading this. I hope this does not seem like a lot of repetition. I did not mean to waste your time with this. My intention was to sort through my long time love affair for FPSs such as CoD 4, Battlefield 2, or Shadowrun. The feelings I have felt and the time have spent with these games have, in my mind, been significant. I wished only to offer this up as some sort of token to those gods that have controlled so much of my time. I hope this in some way to bring about some kind of understanding about why people (or at least just why I do) like to play games like this for such a sobering amount of time.

It just occurred to me that is this what Video Game Journalism is for? To report objectively whether these hyped games are over hyped or not. I'm sure Sterling (in reference to the recent Midway post) and the rest get that a lot, second hand remarks by publishers and developers about how great this or that game will be, but then those same people get angry when the people whom are supposed to be reporting the details they themselves so love to aggrandize in their potential. I guess this relates to my last article, and theme I see rising in my writing here, "Nothing is new".

When companies like to stake claims about expanding the boundaries it always ends up to be disappointing no matter how satisfying the experience. They set themselves up for bigger and even more embittered disappointments when they create such fantasies and mysteries about their products. If you give people your purpose in creating this game straight rather than trying to up the bid in comparison to one other's work (unless you're The Beach Boys and The Beatles) it seems the more contented the consumer is likely to be with buying said game.

With lots of hype, one is unsure what they're really buying (the dream of the game or concept of the game, I leave it to you to decide which is better). Well, I guess the problem is that this isn't incidental a lot of the time. Sometimes this is used as a smokescreen effect to confuse the ill informed. Also the recent tension between media and medium has certainly become very apparent as of late, so allowing a reviewer the chance to stop development in its tracks or hurt sales is certainly on a lot of project leaders' and company execs' minds. So how much does industry unease enter into it is a problem. As well as advertising is certainly a concern for marketers.

However all this distrust and shady practice certainly has not helped either side. So how does a journalist look at the comments made by a developer? Well, obviously by reputation and a certain amount of reflection on the part of the individual speaking. Their name is attached to those words, so their job is on the line, but silence speaks volumes in this industry as well as seems to be the primary course of action for any big name developer. A lot of money on the line. So the journalist must know when it's worth to be so bold as speak derisively about anything specific and when letting things stir in order to allow the developer to make their own mistakes is a strength one must be well aware of in order to remain friendly with the machine that keeps on feeding.

Pussy footing aside, the journalist is a filter that the public should appreciate. One simply could not be a Mr. Universe of the real world and remain a functional individual. That is what I thought the intent of a newspaper (blog or, ugh, seven'o'clock news) was for, to be the middle man between the action and observer, not as a scary outsider. This might be overkill or a rehashing of past posts, but do you think so? Is reporting on hype really a report or more of a dissection? I appreciate the rumors, but sometimes the developers sound like a sound bite about every potentially "new" game on the market.

Also, cocks.