Rob's Gaming Blog

GTA4 sucks.

GTA4 sucks at being a horrible game that is. The game is freakin awesome.

I went to the midnight opening at Gamestop near my house to purchase the game. That was interested because it was first midnight release party that i had ever been too. There were about 100 people split into 2 lines. Our local mall has 2 gamestops in it. One for the bottom floor and one for the upper floor. So, i assumed that you were supposed to get into whatever line of the store it was that you pre-ordered the game. So, i went in the upstairs line.

They us in the mall around 11:30 pm. So, some people were out there waiting for an hour. Actually, i was expecting a bigger turn out, but i guess most people were waiting til the next day to get the game. Well, i am a game addict so i needed to get it the day it came out. Also, being a former employee of Take 2 Interactive, and this being the flagship product from that company, made it all that more interesting. I have played GTA since GTA came out on the PC so many years ago. The game was controversial then and its controversial now.

Grand Theft Auto 4 is definitely not for kids. Don’t let them play it. In fact its your job as a parent to “torture” your kid. So don’t let them play it eventhough they are dieing too!

Anyway, so i got the game at around 12:15am and made it back to my house for a nice gaming session. I played for about 2 hours and I text my cousin who also got the game. We are all playing it on the PS3. So if you want to challenge me leave a comment on my blog and lets something up.

The game is well improved over San Andreas. The largest improvement besides the graphics upgrade is the addition of multiplayer. FANTASTIC! It’s so much playing online with my friends and going crazy in the big city. I haven’t really ever had this much with a videogame before. It’s total fun.

I’ll be writing more on this game too as i plan to be playing it an awful lot.

For now, i am signing off to catch some ZZZzzzz’s.

TYLER - please stop posting your comments to my site dude. It’s getting annoying deleting all of your comments. Please say something worth posting and I will allow it to be visible on the site. All comments have to go through me before they are made live to the site.

Rob

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I Pre-Ordered Grand Theft Auto 4 Today!

The Gamestop in my area is having a midnight sale of GTA4 on the morning of April 29th. I might go to this event and see who else is buying GTA4.

Pre-ordering guarantees you a copy on opening day. I’m totally psyched about this one.

Finally, GTA4 has multiplayer capabilities — thats going to be off the hook!

Filed under: PS3, Games by admin
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Excellent HDTV

I finally did it friends. I broke down about a week ago and ordered my very first HDTV. This is a big leap for me. I went from a Sony 24″ WEGA regular standard TV set to a brand new Panasonic 46″ 1080p plasma screen. This set is awesome!!! Its the latest model out there. In fact it is so new that they dont even have them yet in Circuit City or Best Buy. I bought it off of Amazon, which to me was a little tough to order a TV set from a non-brick and mortar store. But, here was the deal that I got.

Circuit City sells the same TV for $2199. Best Buy - $2199. Amazon - 1,797.86.

So, immediately i saved $400. I saved at least $60 for shipping and handling. And i probably another $150 - $200 because of no sales tax. I don’t think you can beat that deal anywhere.

The TV arrived on Friday. They called me the day before to let me know that they could deliver it the next day. So I setup the time and they gave a ballpark time between 12 and 5pm. They arrived around 2:30pm. The receipt said that it would be delivered by 2 guys and they would unpack it. It was actually delivered by 1 guy and i helped carry it into the house and down the steps. That part i wasn’t too impressed with. I expected two guys to come in unpack it and set it up. He basically just took apart the box and plugged the TV in to test the remote and the TV set. Everything worked and the TV looks fantastic. The delivery guy bolted after i signed the paper.

All in all a good experience. They were prompt and the customer service was on the money, i just wish i didn’t have to set the base up and put the TV together. I needed help putting it on the stand. I guess I would Amazon a 4 out of 5 stars if we were rating this. I definitely would recommend them to everyone.

So anyway, now let’s talk about the TV.

Panasonic makes some of the best TVs out there. I think there mid-range models have a better picture quality then some of the Sony. Its a plasma screen so the glass on the front is quite shiney, but it has a antireflective screen on it so this minimizes the glare. Also use it with low light in the room and your ok too.

I first tested regualr TV. The picture is better then my old TV because its so big. Its not an HD picture because i haven’t upgraded my cable box yet. That is next on the list. So, cartoon network looked pretty good.

The next thing i tried was hooking up my PS3 with a new HDMI cable to the TV set. This is a very exciting step. The first time seeing your PS3 in all its glory! When i turned it on it asked me if i wanted to register the new tv and up the resolution to 1080p. I clicked the HELL YEAH button! The screen goes black and then turns itself on looking 10,000 times better! The colors are vivid, the picture ultra sharp. This is sweet! So, i wanted to see what a DVD picture would look like. I punched in Spiderman 1. It looked decent but because the picture is so big you can see the artificacts in the picture of the video (mainly in the menu video where spidey is swinging from building to building). The movie itself was sharper and looked really good. It was a joy to watch it.

The next thing I tried was putting in a Blu-ray movie. This is where my jaw really hit the floor. I put in “The Corpse Bride” and holy shit man, this movie looks fantastic. I have 4 other blu-ray movies to watch on the TV set and I’m planning on getting The Transformers and some other good movies too obviously. I might also pick up Rock Band while I’m out there. So, the picture quality is incredibly sharp, detailed, and just ridiculous - its sooo clear. Get a HDTV for sure if you have a PS3 or Xbox 360.

The last thing i tried was I popped in Call of Duty 4 and played some online. Just like the blu-ray movies the games looked jaw-droppingly awesome! Very, very pleased with how the TV performs. I played for like an hour or so online. The only thing I noticed was every once in awhile I would trails when I move fast, but its very subtle and i think my eyes are more sensitive then most peoples.

The TV is the Panasonic 46″ 1080p Plasma screen model number: TH-46PZ85U. Kicks ass. Pictures coming soon.

until next time….I’m going to mess around with the TV settings some and also try hooking a computer into it, that should be interesting.

Filed under: PS3, Games by admin
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Grand Theft Auto 4 Coming on April 29th!

Finally, Rockstar lets us know that Christmas will be held in April this year as well as in December!

The game looks truly amazing — I have a PS3 and I’m looking forward to this game big time!

Filed under: Xbox 360, PS3 by admin
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Call of Duty 4 - Excellent Game

I’ve been playing Call of Duty 4 for a little over 2 weeks now. I haven’t had as much time to play it as I would have liked to play but everytime I’ve sat down to play it it has been non-stop enjoyment and I’ll play for a minimum of 3 hours. Once you pick up the controller and start playing multiplayer online, its just so much fun. My name on the PS3 network is IJoeR316 — so if you see me in a game, just try to snipe me.

I’ve mainly been playing multiplayer online, but I am 1/2 way through the single player campaign - which so far is excellent. I think I am about 8 missions into the game.

From my friends who are playing the game now they have already completed the game and beat the game so they tell me the next mission I have in single player campaign is a doozy! Probably one of the hardest missions in the game.

I’ll tell you all about it in my next post, until then…

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Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - I just got it!

It was almost a really, really freakin sad Tuesday night. I went to the local Gamestop. When i got there some guy was trying to return an Xbox 360 with a serial number that didn’t match the one on his receipt and well Gamestop basically told him that they wouldn’t accept the Xbox360 unless the serial number matched the receipt. So remember that. Don’t go out and buy a new one and think you can put your old one in the box and return it. Gamestop is on to you already fools.

So why was he returning it? Apparently whenever he put a disc into the Xbox 360 he gets an error saying that its not a valid Xbox 360 disc. The remedy from what I heard from another customer is you have to keep opening up the xbox and closing the xbox until it reads the disc. I’ve never had this problem with my PS2 or PS3 yet, knock on wood. So there is another reason why you shouldn’t get an Xbox 360. They are expensive and the hardware is cheap = rip-off.

Ok, sorry for starting this topic off with that little story, but when I went to Gamestop I waited 10 minutes for all that to happen only to find out that Call of Duty 4 had sold out. I had them call the White Marsh Gamestop and they were sold out too. This is really starting to suck.

So, i remember years ago when i bought my PS2 the day it came out, I went to Toys R Us near my house. I’m not sure if people have forgotten that it is there or what not but everytime I’ve needed to get something like a PS2 or a game, they have always had it in stock. So, I pressed my luck and gave it another try. Sure enough they had like 10 copies of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Winner, winner! 5 minutes later I’m the proud owner of a new PS3 game.

A couple of quick things about the game. #1, its beautiful. The graphics are astounding. But more importantly, #2, the gameplay is exciting and fast paced. I don’t want to give anything away, but the first mission is really well done. I felt I was in a movie. So go buy it, play it, and tell me if I’m crazy. I think this game totally owns Halo 3. The Multiplayer game is alot of fun and unique too. You start of with no XP points. The more kills you make, the more XP you get and you get to unlock things in the game by earning XP. A very neat feature to make multiplayer even cooler then it normally is. Now, you’re actually out there fighting to get XP.

Well, i just wanted to tell you, I give this game clearly 2 thumbs up, 10 out of 10, 5 out of 5 stars, and so on.

So, stop reading this and go buy it. Meet me online sometime to you punks…my name on my PS3 is IJoeR316. Don’t be surprised if i snipe you.

Filed under: PS3, Games, Game Reviews by admin
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Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune Arrives on 11/19/2007

Uncharted Drake’s Fortune looks to be one of the hot games of the Christmas season and its about to be released in a couple of weeks. So what is this game like? Well, remember back in the old days when Atari 2600 kicked ass and there was an awesome game called Pitfall? Picture Pitfall on Steroids and on next-gen PS3 console and thats what makes this game awesome OR if you want compare it to Tomb Raider or Indiana Jones, feel free.

The environments, the animations, the graphics everything looks top-notch. I’ll definitely be spending my dollars to get this game when it is released in a few weeks. 11/19/2007 is the date. So look for this one at your retailer.

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When will Sony hit a homerun?

I don’t know about you but as a PlayStation 3 owner, I’m a little disappointed. Sure the PS3 has superior graphics, great audio capabilities, good size hard drive, built in wireless and wired internet, and boat loads of other features too. So, when is Sony planning on taking over the console world? Well from recent news you’d expect never.

This is really kind of old news, but still a hot topic because those 60GB PS3 versions are about to go up in value. I got my hands on the 60GB PS3, which still has the PS2 compatibility built into it. In case you live in a cave, Sony decided to remove PS2 compatibility from the newer versions of the PS3, which by the way has always been one of the best reasons to stick with Sony through thick and thin — to me it was always like they weren’t leaving last years technology behind. So, instead this time around, they removed backward compatibility from the PS3.

So Sony saves a buck by removing the hardware that makes those PS2 games run but is it worth it? Well a couple of things happened very recently that make it not so bad. First, Sony is releasing a new version of the PS2 at a pricepoint of $99. So, now you can get a nice PS2 for under $100 and its brand new too.

Basically, Sony cut the price of Sony PS3 by $100 and added a 5 free blu-ray movie disc offer on the PS3. But shortly, you’ll be able to get a PS3 and a PS2 for the same price as having them both in the PS3. Not a bad plan. It reduced the price of the PS3 which is really what Sony needed to do since the day the PS3 came out. It was priced way too high to begin with.

At first, it appeared that Sony had made a huge blunder by removing the PS2 backward compatibility, but instead they accomplished the ultimate goal. This holiday season Sony will have a full line-up of PS3 and PS2.

Let’s look at the Sony PS3 models that are out right now. There is a Sony PS3 with an 80GB drive. This is the top of the line model right now. This is the one that replaced the 60GB version. At a price point of $499.99 including 1 game, thats a reasonable deal. It was regularly $599.99, but Sony recently dropped the price by $100.

The other model is the Sony PlayStation 3 40GB with Spider-Man 3 Movie Pack.

The good news is that both of these models have the HDMI 1080p out interface built into them, unlike the lower versions of the xbox360 which removes the HD output plug. It looks like they are identical except the hard drive size. But don’t quote me on that one. Check with your retailer before you make a purchase on which system fits your needs the most.

Sony has also decided to continue the 5 free blue-ray movies with your purchase of a PS3. It doesn’t matter which model. Take your pick, your still getting 5 free movies no matter what.

All of the information I got straight from the ebgames.com website.

Filed under: PS3 vs. XBOX360 vs. Wii by admin
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