PSWii60For those of you wondering, I passed my cert tests! Yeah It's awesome. It's great. I'm MS something certified and MS somethign certified. I forget the acronyme. That's awesome.

I have a new job that doesn't require me to work weekends and they close at 4. It's pretty slow now so I actually get to leave at noon because there's nothing to do. Next week we are suppose to get new computers for the classroom labs so I'll be setting them up and it'll get a bit busy.

I'm enjoying summer. It finally got warm enough to wear shorts. I can't believe we recieved snow in May. I got a new phone yesterday which is pretty sweet. I can finally use that bluetooth headset that I bought. Now I get to look like I talk to myself.

Now that it is summer, i might be able to finish some video games. I have a large list of games. I bought a few games too. I bought the Prince of Persia series (except for Warrior Within) and I'm enjoying the Sands of Time. The sound quality kinda sucks, at least for the dialogue. It's great dialogue, it's just the volume level for it is so low that I have to crank my speakers to listen to it. Other then that, it's a perfect game (taking into account the age of the game.)

I also bought the Unreal Anthology. I've been playing some Unreal. The game looks great considering it was made 10 years ago.

I also picked up No More Heroes for the Wii, because Target had it for 30 bucks. Not bad for a highly reviewed game. I think that's all that I bought for video games.

Nope I also bought Castlevania Dracula X Chronicles for the PSP. It was on clearance for 15 bucks so I had to get it.

I have a huge list of games to start/finish. Let's see if I can list them all. Here it goes: Prince of Persia Sand of Time, Prince of Persia Two Thrones, Castlevania Dracula X Chronicles, Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass, Unreal, Unreal 2, Okami, Heavenly Sword, Assassin's Creed, Gears of War, Crysis, and God of War Chains of Olympus. Seven of the titles, I've started and need to finish; five I need to start. I'll let you think of which ones I need to start. I've mentioned them in the past.

There's a few games that are coming out this year that I might buy. Most of them were listed in Games To the Video Thrice, but a few more popped up.

Resistance Fall of Man looks good. It's out now, but I have a lot of games that I need to play. So I'm waiting for an announcement from Sony on the Greatest Hits program in North America. They've launched it in Japan, and Resistance was on the list of games. For those of you not in the video game in, Greatest Hits is a program that Sony has for video games that sell very well (I think 250,000 units) and have been out for nine months (at least for the PS2, and PSP it is, but may change for PS3) and they are sold at the fraction of the price. I'm thinking 35 dollars. I hope less, but if the exchange rate from yen is right, it'll be 35 dollars. Moving on.

Haze is another game I'm keeping an eye on. It gets released this week. It looks interesting. It's from the developers of Time Splitters, which was haled the best First Person Shooter for the PS2. It takes place in 2048 and governments have outsourced military operations to corperations. You get some cool powerful weapons because of this, including Nectar. Nectar is performance enhancing stuff. I don't know. It's makes you awesome I assume. Looks good. I'll read some reviews once it is released.

Video Gamers argue amongst each other a lot. It's a fact. There's Wii haters, Xbox 360 Fanboys, Nintendo Fanboys, Sony Fanboys. There's people who say PC games are dying. There's evening people who think that pirating video games is legit. So where do I stand in this mess? I think I'll explore that today.

Well as you know I own a gaming PC, Wii, and Playstation 3. I bought each one for games. Period. Before the Playstation 3 was released, I was going to get a Xbox 360, and I hated Sony. Then E3 hit, and I noticed that a lot of games that were coming out for the 360 that I wanted, were coming onto the PC. Then any other games that I wanted, were also on the PS3, so with a few more selling points, one of which included me getting a high def TV, and i felt the cost for the PS3 was worth it. So that's what made be turn around and buy a PS3. I bought the Wii because there were games I wanted for it, especially Mario games. Love Mario. So in the end, I love the Wii, Playstation 3, and PC.

Which leads be to the next point: Do I think PC gaming is dying? No. For a few reasons. First Person Shooters (Cyrsis, Unreal Tournament, Half Life, etc.) play the best, in my opinion, on the PC. There's not enough buttons on a 360 or ps3, controller for modern first person shooters.

Example is while playing Halo I have been killed several time because the reload button and swap weapon are the same button. You'd think it wouldn't happen often, but I have been killed on several occasions because I just finish a fire fight with another person, and I notice another enemy is come on the radar, so I want to quickly reload, and turn around and shoot... and I'm shooting a crappy weapon that I wasn't expecting. That was a long example. I haven't had this problem with any FPS's on the PC.

Real Time Strategy games also play better on the PC also. I guess I haven't played any on consoles but I don't see how it would be better then the PC.

For now, Mass Multiplayer RPGs (World of Warcraft, etc.) work best on the PC. You see consoles are dated. PCs aren't. So as long as there is a player base for the game, the game can still live on. I think Everquest (the original one) still has servers up and running. I noticed that Playstation 2 servers are shutting down left and right. Maybe it's a week example, but it's one nonetheless.

The PC dying argument is running rapent because of Crytek not making anymore PC exclusives because of Piracy. They are still going to make games for the PC, just not exclusively.

So it brings be to piracy. I'm agaisnt it, because video game developers need money too. I like developers (although publishers are a different story) because they work hard creating awesome games and then let me play them, for a price that supports them to make more awesome games. People who are for pirating games say, "I pirate games that I'm not sure are good to see if they are fun." Most of them probably don't even buy the game even if they do love it. They already have it for free.

Plus the reasoning is weak. Now days you can download demos for consoles, and PCs alike. You have tons of review sites, an most of them offer player reviews. So if you think that the review site is getting paid to give it a high score, read the player reviews! That's what I do. This has worked great for me. That's what makes it great to be a video game player this day and age.

In the past you had to go to department stores and walk up to the cage and ask for a game, that you bought by faith because there were no review magazines or websites (the internet was so young). Now the industry is huge and has it's own stores like Gamestop and EB games. So support it! I don't like Gamestop for a few reasons, but I'm glad they exist.

That's where old Royfuss stands on everything. Well not everything. Doesn't solve anything. If I go into a forum and say a Playstation 3 version of a game is better, there will be a huge argument between 360 fanboys and Sony Fanboys. There will always be people who hate the Wii, and they have their reasons.

I stumbled upon this article on Gamespot by a user, and summed up what I think about video games. Here it is (link removed).

Well now I have that off my chest, I'm going to play some fun video games since it's extremely windy today.