CONGRATULATIONS INSOMNIAC GAMES ON 15 AWESOME YEARS AND BEING THE 5TH BEST PLACE TO WORK IN CA!!!!

Congrats to the full moon crew! You guys deserve it! Now hurry up and get a new full blown R&C Future out there—been waitin’ a long time for my next fix!

Et Tu Bill Gates?

Ok, yes I know the Gates man is no longer technically at Microsoft. But, I am kinda tired ATM so that was the funniest headline I could think up, I bet later on I will look at that and assume myself to be an epic tool LOL! Anyways, I want to make sure you all reading this understand somethings:

A) Yes, I am a Sony fanboy. Have been since PSone days.

B) No, that does not mean I immediately hate all other systems for competing with Sony. That is stupid. Competition drives innovation and, as awesome as the PS3 is, it wouldn’t have been as awesome if it was in a vacuum with no competition, it probably would have been a hyped up PS2 instead of the uber beast it is. So I do NOT begrudge people competing. I owned all 3 major systems last gen and loved them, and I never felt pressure like that was a bad thing or betraying ‘my company’ or any BS along those lines.

C) As clarification, I define fanboy as a fan, nothing more. People who yell at others or make them feel like crap because of their system choice are NOT fanboys, they are whiney little posers who have mixed their own hidden buyers’ remorse with enthusiasm. I say we take the term ‘fanboy’ back and let it stop being negative–and, thusly, come up with a term for these other individuals who plague the game industry and even plauge owners of the same console (because, if they are insecure enough to berate other console owners, they will just sign into PSN or Xbox Live –or pretend to sign online with the Wii– and berate other people online for being ‘less’ than them). Maybe Posa-Gamers? (like Poser and Gamer?) Ah, whatever that isn’t what I am trying to say ATM:

With all of that cleared up, read THIS article. Yeah. That is a load of crap! Gene (one of our artists) has a 360 Elite he treats like gold. I kid you not, this kid once bought a controller he thought squeaked too much, so he returned it and got a different one because it wasn’t good enough. He has high standards and protects his gaming gear. Yet, his Elite red ringed. He was NOT (I repeat NOT) mailed a box to send it back in. So all of this BS of MS sending out boxes is just that: BS. Not to mention, when Gene got his 360 back, the little door meant to hide USB ports when they aren’t in use was snapped off! So now the Elite he has cherished and taken care of so well has a gaping hole in the front. Great way to reward your customers Microsoft! No company is perfect, Sony and Nintendo sure aren’t, but this goes beyond that. Lying to the press while sticking it to your loyal customers is way out in left field and it severely bugs me. But ah well, the news (not to mention Posa-Gamers over dependent on their personal opinion of the 360) have been preaching pretty heavy recently about how Red Rings are on the decline, right? Right?

Wrong. Check THIS out. Oh I get it alright, your extended warranty says 3 years for any failure causing a Red Ring. While this isn’t conclusive, it seems newer models will fail with a single red light in lieu of a Red Ring. Wow, yeah statistics do say Red Rings are on the decline, especially since the newer chipset apparently (according to the artcile) has a higher occurrence of this failure instead. Seeing how the guy on the phone couldn’t distinguish a difference between the two, it could POSSIBLY (keyword: possibly, I am guessing here honestly) that all the new chipset did, besides some minor fixes, was redo the section that knows to illuminate those three red lights during a failure, illuminating one solitary light in the lower right corner instead. What is the difference? Well, it is obvious! First, if the warranty says the repair is only free with a Red Ring, if the customer doesn’t have a Red Ring it doesn’t matter that they have the same hardware failure, they have to pay! Secondly, gamers who have been acting like evangelists (that is an actual marketing term, I am not referencing Religion here–and evangelist can be used in a positive way in this context too) will preach from the roof tops about how RROD is yesterday’s news and that the only people who would talk about it are obviously Nintendo or Sony fanboys who are nervous/scared. Yes, with this advent RROD could very well become yesterday’s news, but in its’ liege the E74 One-Light-Of-Disaster (E74 OLOD–my own term) has risen, again that article says a google/yahoo search shows this to be a rising trend with newer 360’s. For the record, I did a Yahoo search on ‘E74 XBOX’ and got similar results, including several ‘how to’ videos on how to try and home repair a E74′d 360, just like how people have figured out how to repair Red Rings. Long story short, it seems like MS isn’t content with cleaning up their act, they’d rather pretend they did and stick with the same hardware build (or, a sufficiently similar one) that has grieved their loyal fans since launch. They need to back off on the corporate ‘bottom line’ mentality and realize that, while our industry can easily support 3 consoles (heck, probably even more), they are compromising their name and brand loyalty at the end of the day. Just ask Sega or Atari, Mr. Gates. Once your good name in this industry gets charred enough, it can be a horrific uphill battle to win trust again, and it is a battle very few have won.

Declaration For Honesty’s Sake

Just so you all know: I have toasted 2 PS3’s in the past. One by accident, the other technically by accident although it was a dumb move. ATM Mom, Trev and I live with our grandparents (long story short: back in 2002-2003 dad ditched us when Trev got sick, dad left 180K in debt, we had to go bankrupt, lost everything and had to move in with Mom’s parents). Anyways, this house was a 2 room shack back in the 50’s, Grandpa added a lot onto it despite not knowing really how things work or how to build to code. So, long story short, it peaks above 100 degrees in my room every day during the summer. So, I left my first PS3 on 24/7 the whole summer straight in this weather (I was doing Folding@Home when not gaming, which is why I left it on). So, by winter time, My PS3 wouldn’t work unless a fan was directly on it. Sony was nice enough on the phone, they mailed me a coffin to send it back in and mailed me a new one. At the same time, I got some settlement money in from the car wreck I was in back in 2005. So I bought my second PS3 and gave the one Sony mailed us to Trevor so he could finally have his own. This PS3 I THOUGHT I was playing it smart by buying an external snap-on fan. Yeah, dumb. move. I didn’t know it at the time, but after a while the belt that connects the motor to the fans snapped. So, I heard the motor spinning and assumed it worked, but the fans weren’t moving, so they trapped all the hot air inside my second PS3 and, over the summer (again, I was Folding@Home when not gaming–the fan provided a blanket of false security), it died and acted just like my first one. Sony was cool about it again–their system glitched so I got 2 coffins this time around, although I bought a GameStop warranty on this PS3 so GameStop helped me find a new 80 Gig Backward Compatible MGS4 PS3 (note: not the gunmetal PS3, just the black one that came with MGS4), this one I am playing it different. No Folding@Home during the summer until we get our own air-conditioned house. No snap-on external fans EVER. I mean this people, I disobeyed what I already knew to be a cardinal rule. I had heard the horror stories, especially from the 360 crowd trying to avoid RROD’s. Some 360 external fan types even can melt themselves onto the power supply and console itself, trashing everything involved. Yet, I was dumb enough to think, “Well, maybe PS3 fans are better built,” never caring about the fact it is the same companies building both. So, even if you own a 360, do not EVER use an external snap on fan, regardless of how well it looks to be built or how it works, it will only cause heartache in the end.

And, to those who think I am just slamming XBOX for the sake of slamming XBOX, explain 2 things:

A) How is it that I was so jacked for the 360’s launch I organized the making of a parody video where we made a church to Microsoft? How could someone do that if they’re a mindless fanboy? Answer: I am not a mindless fanboy I am mad at the 360 because I feel MS has made an inferior console to the original XBOX. Not graphic power wise, but thinking wise. I don’t care if they couldn’t get the original down in price to ‘compete’ with the PS2. The original did not die out last gen and did very admirably, plus MS had a lot of forward thinking ideas back then (such as the hard drive)—now they ditched forward thinking for profits and the here-and-now, evident by the optional hard drive of the 360 which makes it impossible to use by developers unless they want to bar Arcade owners (as in XBOX 360 Arcade, the model sold with no hard drive) from being able to buy their game.

B) One of my top 10 games of all time is a 360 exclusive: Amped 3. Amped 3 doesn’t do a lot of ‘New’ stuff, the developers (now-defunct Indie Built) actually apologized for this 360 Launch Title not being ‘Next Gen’. But, it does everything well. It allows people like me (who don’t snowboard) to get a taste of snowboarding fun and culture without having to freeze outside. Also, the story in it is downright hilarious, it starts as a typical snowboard flick type story and spins so far into left field no one (and I MEAN no one) could guess at the get go how the story will turn out. Also, every group of videos in the game are done with a different art style. Some are 3D, some are comic book, some are sock puppets, some are Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer style claymation while others are anime, live action or done in scrapbook form. The creativity, soul and heart of this game is astounding and it makes you mourn Indie Built, these guys (in my opinion) matched a level of quality in their production that so few studios can, the only people I can think of who could make a snowboarding game of equal ilk would be Insomniac Games or NaughtyDog, so it always brings a tear or two to my eye to start up that game and realize what a great studio was lost in the shuffle. All because 90% of 360 early purchasers weren’t looking for a snowboarding game. I still have a near-mint copy (Trev found one last year for 5 bucks, played it all the way through on Gene’s Elite before it fried–great copy!) and I will hold on to it for quite a long time! I guess this explains my hissy fit with MS. I am mad because I want a console, but I am not going to support them because of their arrogant and ignorant decisions, the slam the competition while making sub-par quality systems. Yet, I want a 360 so I can play Amped 3 whenever I want, and there is a few other games I’d like to try too. Maybe Star Ocean 4 (although, seeing how I never finished Til The End of Time, maybe SO4 won’t be that great to me either….) or Castle Crashers (watched Gene play it–I thought it was brilliant! I didn’t like all the Live issues Gene had with it–he still can’t play an online game without getting kicked regardless of whether he is at my house or his) –there is some good games on the console, I am just so frustrated with Microsoft that they mar the good name of these games with a system that breaks left and right. I feel MS owes it to their loyal fans and developers to show a little more respect and dignity, in other words drop the heartless Corporate America facade—being the exact opposite works wonders, just ask the game studio praised above for being selected 5th best place to work in California! (note: on this subject, Insomniac was the only gaming company to make the list!).