An early present....

IF ONLY I could get my hands on Killzone 2 before most other gamers.....
Well, it looks like I can! After checking play.com on Sunday night, I did a quick check to see stock and pricing of the much-anticipated game, due out this Friday - and was amazed to see it was in stock and ready to ship!
I checked the forums to see if there was a catch, apparently there wasn't, so I ordered it Monday morning, and early Tuesday checked the order to find it has been posted! Woo hoo!
So hopefully it will arrive Thursday and I can get an extra 24 hours head start on the rest of you!

Let the rumour-mongers be right!!

THERE are always plenty of folk on the web making stuff up and writing things on forums about what they say is going to happen, but it never materialises.
Well, after hearing the latest gossip, let's hope they're right.....
It has been reported on the web that a Sony employer has leaked details of the next firmware update, and its a biggie - at last, people should be able to start chats from inside a game, just like our friends over on the Xbox can!
If it's true, its been a long time coming, and hopefully Sony will make us all happy and finally get to grips with the fact that, now that online gaming is the driving force of most PS3 games now, people do actually want to find it easy to go online with their friends and chat, and not do as they do now, where you start a chat, quit it to join a game, and then try and speak to them if you manage to join the same game more by luck than judgement!
Apparently you will also be able to surf the web while you are in-game, which will also be a handy feature.
Here's hoping.......

A tale of two demos

THIS weekend the PlayStation Network has demonstrated quite effectively how game demos should - and should not - be done correctly.
The first to mention is the hugely-anticipated Killzone 2 demo. After downloading it and booting it up, negotiating the start menus (the slight shakey camera-style is a little off-putting), the game started - and absolutely blew me away.
Fantastic graphics, smooth and fluid gameplay, intelligent AI (where the baddies actually run out of the way and hide if you throw a grenade at them) - it was all I had wished and waited for.
Add to that the fact that you can choose different configurations of controls to suit your play - in ways that actually suit different gamers, not just ones that are put in their because they think they should - this demo will definitely shift copies of Killzone 2, including the one I buy.
But, on the other side of the coin, comes - Resident Evil 5.
Again, this was highly anticipated, but once I had downloaded it, I went to the options screen - and it all froze.
I restarted my PS3, booted the demo up again, started the game straight away, got through the first cut scene - and it locked up my console again!
I reset it and deleted the demo! Later that day I went round to a friend's house on whose console it actually worked, to find that, even in these advanced times, you still can't run and shoot at the same time!
Yes, the graphics are impressive, but hasn't gameplayed moved on a bit?
So, thanks for the demos - it has definitely made my mind up on what I will and won't be buying!

To trade, or not to trade....

I'M facing a dilemma at the moment.
As always happens this time of year, cash is in short supply, but as a keen gamer, I don't want to miss out on the latest big releases.
And with just Killzone 2 (a must-have) just weeks away, I'm pondering how I'm going to find the cash to buy it.
Now, my friend has made the bold decision to trade in his copy of Resistance 2 at Gamestation for a £20 credit note.
I have the same game, but am only a third of the way through the game and still enjoy the online aspect - but as has been pointed out to me, will I really play both games?
So, do I trade in a game I still enjoy for one I really want, or do I keep both, and try and find some other way of finding the cash? Ideally I would own both, but I don't think that's an option.
And if I do wait until near the Killzone 2 release, the trade-in value will go down - decisions, decisions.....