Finally the PS3 has my attention.  I wasn’t a big fan of the Socom series before as I did not have a Playstation 2 however I heard some great things about the online play which prompted me to go ahead and buy Confrontation.

The Socom series could easily be compared to the Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (G.R.A.W.) series.  The game is played in the 3rd person view, soldier versus soldier combat.  The emphasis is on tactical maneuvering and working together as a team.  Socom Confrontation is an online only multiplayer game ad can downloaded via the Playstation Network or purchased at your local game store bundled with the Official Playstation bluetooth headset.

The graphics in Socom are decent, there is not much that is mind-blowing but it certainly is not sub-par either.  What is really well done is the sound and the ease of control.  Each gun sounds realistic and each shot feels as real as the sound it makes.  Socom also uses the rumble feature of the Dual Shock 3 so making the upgrade is recommended.

There are a total of 7 maps available, each map is scalable to the size of the party you are playing with.  Some game modes allow up to 16 players on each team while the comfortable games are played with 8 players on each team.  The Playstation Network does host the ranked games while a player match is hosted by the game creator.

There is also clan support which allows you to recruit and fire players in your clan and of course play clan matches.  Socom Confrontation is an exciting and addicting experience.  It certainly is a reason for gamers to buy or keep their PS3’s.  There is a good amount of lifelike military violence and a very slight amount of language. 

This game is fantastic and is highly recommended for any PS3 owner looking for a good game for their Playstation 3.

Buy/Skip/Rent:

Buy

Many of you may remember the so-called “Gerstmann-gate” fiasco last year, where Kane & Lynch got a bad review from Gamespot reviewer Jeff Gerstmann. Gamespot subsequently fired Gerstmann under extremely shady circumstances, presumably under pressure from Eidos.

Shacknews is reporting that Eidos now has hired a PR firm to pressure reviewers to delay their reviews of Tomb Raider Underworld until Monday if they have given it a score below an 8/10, saying they want to keep the Metacritc score high, “…just to ensure that we don’t put people off buying the game…”

Tomb Raider Underworld was released this past Tuesday, November 19th.

Here it is.  Super Nintendo’s top game.  Guess what.  It had “super” in the title.

1.  Super Mario World

That’s right.  How could Super Mario World not be number one on the top SNES games list.  Super Mario World was release in August of 1991 and has become the best selling SNES game at 30 million copies.  Mario is, once again, out to save Princess Toadstool from Bowser.  This game is basically an update of Super Mario 3.  It a side-scrolling platformer.  There are a few upgrades to the Mario formula in this game that include: being able to hold an extra item at the top of the screen that will drop to help you when you get hit; mid level continue points; a few different power-ups (most notably the cape or feather that replaces the racoon suit from Mario 3); and the addition of Yoshi.  Yoshi was your dinosaur friend that you found along the way in some levels.  The player rode Yoshi and then had the ability to eat some enemies and spit their shells back out (fire if it was a red shell).  While riding Yoshi, Mario was invincible but when hit riding Yoshi he would be knocked off and the player would have to scramble  to get back on Yoshi so they were invincible again.

This was probaby the SNES game I played the most.  Although I did not finish it until a few years back when I beat it on an enumlator on my computer.  This game was so awesome.  It is my third favorite Mario game and that is saying alot with Mario 3 and Mario Galaxy just ahead of it.  How many game series have that many great games in it.  Nintendo just knows how to make a first party game and no one does platforming better.

So congrats Mario.  You have done it again.

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Where in the world am I going to find the time to play all of the games I have now? I was stupid, I went out and bought all of the new ones. Gears 2, CoD: WaW, Left 4 Dead, and Quantum of Solace. Can you tell that I’m a shooter kind of guy?

I had had Gears 2 and CoD preordered for a long time. So those games I was definitely getting, and I won’t have any trouble finding people online to play with in those. Then Quantum came out a week before the movie. Being the James Bond freak that I am, I had to have this game. It turns out that it is really good. I was disappointed that the game kind of spoiled the movie for me, but I’m happy with the game. The only problem is, like Dan stated on the podcast, it will get lost in the shuffle. I fear that after another couple of weeks the MP will be devoid of players online.

Then everyone kept asking me if I was getting L4D. I guess I just fell into the peer pressure, and went out and got it. The game is fun, but now what do I do with my time? My only hope is that everyone else in the world continues to love these games the way that I do. That way there will always be plenty of people playing all four games.

So, if you ever want to play sometime, feel free to send me an invite. You know that I have all the games, and I’m always up for a game.

A few days ago we posted the results of a Eurogamer test that showed installing Halo 3 to the hard drive with the new NXE actually caused load times to increase. Bungie has posted an update on their site explaining the reasons for this. It’s fairly technical, but the short answer is that Halo 3 already copies data to the hard drive, so when you install the game to the hard drive, the hard drive is doing twice as much work to read information from the cached data and to also read information from the installed game. A hard drive can’t read data from two places at once.

The full explanation is over at Bungie’s site. They also don’t seem optimistic that a fix for the issue will be forthcoming.

Valve released their cooperative zombie shooter Left 4 Dead this week, but it’s important not to forget the past. This week marks the 10th anniversary of the release of Half-Life, the classic shooter that put Valve on the map and redefined the first person shooter genre in 1998. To celebrate, the game is available from Steam for only 98 cents. Download Steam, pay your 98 cents, then get to work stopping the alien invasion. From there, feel free to download The Orange Box to complete the series. The deal only lasts until tomorrow though, so be quick!

Here we are again.  Top ten time.  This time it is the Super Nintendo (SNES).  Brings back memories.  Defeating Bowser yet again.  All your favorite NES games updated with the word “super” in front of them.

2.  Killer Instinct

Killer Instinct was first released in the arcade in 1994.  It was released on the SNES in August of 1995.  Killer Instinct was a 2D fighting game like most other fighting games with one big difference.  This game had combos.  You may say that wasn’t unique but you could keep the combo going and have one long combo that would never allow your opponent to get a shot in.  The opponent could break the combo by entering a combo breaker into the keypad.

There is not else to say about this game other than it was super fast.  Animations were fluid and it used the 3D rendering system from Donkey Kong Country.

This game was awesome.  My friends and I would play this game for the longest stretches.  We would see how long of combos we could produce.

Here we are again.  Top ten time.  This time it is the Super Nintendo (SNES).  Brings back memories.  Defeating Bowser yet again.  All your favorite NES games updated with the word “super” in front of them.

3.  The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

Link to the Past was released in April of 1992.  It shared the top-down perspective that the original Zelda had but added things like multi-layer dungeons and new equipment.  Link was given more control as he could move diagonally.  Many things that are the rule in Zelda games today were introduced in Link to the Past.  Some of these items include; the master sword, ocarina, Hookshot, and Pegasus Boots.  Heart containers were split into 4 sections.  This game also introduced to the series the dual worlds that Link must navigate.

Game Trailers has a really great retrospective on the Zelda series.  Also this game can be bought on the DS or Virtual Console for the Wii.  If you at all are interested in the Zelda series, I suggest you check out this game.

Thanks to the kind folks at Valve I was able to get my hands on Left4Dead a day early, which really wasn’t that early as it turned out that 2 others from our community had the game last night as well.  After a straight two hours of game play I can farely say that Left4Dead has fully exceeded my expectations.  My only recommendation thus far is if you play on any mode other than normal is it’s imperative that you have a full squad of 4 players to play with.  Read more after the jump…

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A bunch of sites have previews up for Ensemble Studios’ upcoming RTS, Halo Wars. So far only the regular campaign has been touched on, with the story and multiplayer elements being kept under wraps for now.

Giant Bomb - Hands-On: Halo Wars

Gamespot - Halo Wars Updated Hands-On

Crispy Gamer - Halo Wars

Also out are a few rather candid interviews where the developers discuss their feeling on being shut down my Microsoft and what the future holds in store for them.

Shacknews Interview

Crispy Gamer Interview

CVG Interview