PS3

New Playa, Same Game

HIGH Jumping out of a plane to discover that there's a minigame associated with the landing.

LOW Finishing a stressful mission only to have my 360 lock up before I had a chance to save.

WTF Not being able to adjust the bust and hip size of female characters.

Playground of Tedium

HIGH Blowing up people and vehicles from inside the safety of a helicopter never gets old, does it?

LOW Actually, it does. And surprisingly quickly, at that.

WTF For some reason EA refused to include any licensed characters as a fun secondary skin. Sure, they don't have access to Lucasfilm characters the way the first game did, but aren't they making a James Bond game right now? Meanwhile, the Sean Connery skin is just lying around in a mainframe somewhere, gathering dust.

Game Description: Mercenaries 2: World in Flames is an explosive open-world action game set in a massive, highly reactive, war-torn world. When a power-hungry tyrant messes with Venezuela's oil supply he sparks an invasion that turns the country into a war zone. But for you, international crisis is all upside: You are a mercenary, and you profit from chaos. You are not a soldier. You don't have to play by anyone's rules. You have your own code: you will fulfill the terms of the contract, no matter what. If you see it, you can buy it, steal it, or blow the living crap out of it. Play your own way, or play with the help of a friend in the new co-op multiplayer mode.

The last few days have been absolute hell on my productivity. Fallout 3 was just released, and pretty much everything else going on has been put on indefinite hold while I make my way through the irradiated wastelands.

To be brutally honest, the game didn't make a strong first impression with me once I actually had the disc. I wasn't the biggest fan of Bethesda's Oblivion, and the first day or so spent in post-apocalyptic D.C. is guaranteed to seem like nothing so much as Oblivion with guns.

A case study conducted by the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and published in the October 2008 issue of the American Physical Therapy Association's journal found that when a teenage boy with cerebral palsy played Wii Sports as part of his regular therapy, "there were positive outcomes at the impairment and functional levels," according to the abstract.

While I couldn't find a full-text version of the article, SpecialKids.com reports on the study in more detail:

[T]he patient was a 13-year-old male with spastic diplegic cerebral palsy. In a school-based setting, he participated in 11 training sessions, over a four-week period, using the Wii while continuing to receive physical and occupational therapy. The sessions were each between 60 and 90 minutes long and used the Wii sports games software, which offers boxing, tennis, bowling, and golf. He trained in both standing and sitting positions.

“ 'Improvements in visual-perceptual processing, postural control, and functional mobility were measured after training,'” the researchers reported.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I still don't own a PlayStation 3. I'm one of those guys who picks up every console in every generation--then when something exclusive releases, I don't have to give a crap. The PS3, though, has remained a bit out of my price range and didn't have anything I was dying to play for quite awhile. That's changing now (well, not the price part, but the games I want to play half) with MGS4, Disgaea 3, and now, Burn, Zombie Burn!

Looking at the screenshots for this title, the first thing that pops into my head is "damn, this looks like a next-gen version of Zombies Ate My Neighbors"--which was a great 16-bit era game that appeared on the SNES and Genesis.

Although the game's only been out a little over a week, EA's Dead Space is already generating a lot of "potential franchise" buzz. Variety's Ben Fritz posted some tantalizing morsels in his blog, The Cut Scene, earlier this week.

Speaking to EA Games label President Frank Gibeau and Dead Space executive producer Glenn Schoefield, here are the highlights:

Schoefield confirmed that EA is "talking to movie studios right now" about the prospects of the game becoming a feature film. It should be noted that there's an animated film, Dead Space: Downfall, already slated for release.

The producer added that EA and a publishing partner are "talking about Dead Space novels as well as a line of toys".

Finally, he also mentioned that a Dead Space sequel was already in the works. Judging by the early fan response to the game, this is good news.

To read more of the blog (including news about sequels to Army of Two and Battlefield: Bad Company), head on over here.

Welcome to the premiere episode of the GameCritics.com Podcast!
This week's topics include:

• Reviews of Saints Row 2 and Art Style: Cubello
• Why game criticism matters to us
• Can games make us cry?

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When I gave Grand Theft Auto IV the insultingly low score of 85%, quite a few people suggested that I had some kind of a secret grudge against the game that kept me from giving it the glowing adoration that it so obviously deserved. Well, I'm finally ready to admit that yes, I did have a secret predjudice against the game, one that I'll reveal through the medium of crudely-edited video:

I doubt I can be much clearer than that.

The 8-Bit Blue Bomber is Back!

HIGH Playing a game that was designed correctly to be a true challenge.

LOW I miss the slide feature of later Mega Man games (and a downloadable character does not count!)

WTF Finally figuring out how to use the Black Hole Bomb correctly! It took me way too long...