I watched the live stream of Microsoft’s E3 press conference while I was at work today. I felt it was a productive use of my time. Here’s what I thought.

They opened up with a new Call of Duty game, Black Ops. This one is by Treyarch, who are the guys who DIDN’T make Modern Warfare. The first 10 minutes or so of Microsoft’s conference was one of the developers playing the game. He didn’t talk about it, he didn’t narrate, it wasn’t a cutscene… he just played. It was super boring. I was working on reports while that was going on, so all I got was the audio. It sounded just like the other ones.

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By now you’ve probably seen the commercial for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 racer Blur, because I don’t even watch that much TV and I’ve seen it probably 70 times. This commercial is awful and represents a lot of what’s wrong with video games these days.

Also, yes, I know Kotaku kinda wrote about this today, but I was going to write this up yesterday but decided to do the contest instead. Whatever. I didn’t steal the idea.

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I love achievements. There is nothing more satisfying that hearing that “buh-doop” after completing an in-game task and knowing your Gamerscore got a little larger. They add a new layer to games, and oftentimes add replay value that otherwise wouldn’t exist.

Today is the debut of a new feature here at PK Bloggin’! entitled Snap Judgements. I have a GameFly account now, and as a result I’m renting games for the first time in about seven years. I’m adding anything remotely interesting to my queue with a “throw everything against the wall and see what sticks” philosophy. I’m not going to like everything I play, which is where Snap Judgements comes in. I’ll give you my thoughts on the first half hour or so of a game, and whether or not I plan on continuing. It should be fun and generate a lot of hate mail, so why the heck not.

Today’s Snap Judgement is Darksiders for the Xbox 360. I heard about this game a little while ago, and until I put the game in my console all I really knew was “it’s like Zelda but darker.” Well, I thought “Zelda but darker” was Twilight Princess, but what they hey. I’ll give it a shot.

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I want to talk about Final Fantasy XIII for a bit.

If you’ve been following my thoughts on the game leading up to its release, you’ll remember I’ve been kinda up and down on the subject, my interest fluctuating much like the wave pools at a water park. At first I wasn’t even sure I’d pick it up on release day, but a few days before my cynicism got hit by a Limit Break of excitement and I decided I’d get it day one. Come on, it’s Final Fantasy!

Or is it?

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It’s official. The console wars are over. Everyone can pack up and go home. Microsoft wins.

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We’ve gotten some new readers lately, people who don’t know me in real life. These people don’t know a lot about me, so I’m going to take this opportunity to let them get to know me a little better. A big part of my personality is that I like things that are rad, and also things that are awesome. Something that is both rad AND awesome is Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, which I picked up over the weekend.

It’s no secret that I love Sega. I sided with the Genesis during the Console Wars of the early 90s, and I love my Genesis and my Dreamcast dearly to this day. I love Mario games, but I’ve always preferred Sonic as a character (that is, until his fans start writing fanfiction… gross). Sega’s roster of superstars might not be as recognizable as Nintendo’s best, but with Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, Sega may have just out-Mario Karted Nintendo.

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Okay, so, I’ve been working really hard on the apartment all weekend. Yesterday I got up to go to work at 4:30 am, came home at 11, and worked on the apartment until 4 pm. Today I got off work at 3:30 pm and spent six hours wiring and hanging a ceiling fan. It’s been rough, folks. I’m ready to spit some hot fire.

I’m not a negative person. All my posts thus far have been about things I like (except when I wrote about Matt Casamadingdong, but I LIKE to call him a douche so I’m still putting that into column “A”), but tonight I’m going to write about the worst game I’ve ever played.

Space Giraffe, for the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade, is like being punished for doing the worst thing imaginable. Like, I imagine if I got drunk and ran a forklift over some nuns and schoolchildren, the cops would taser me, drag me into an alley, and plop me in front of Space Giraffe. I imagine Hell is really just an endless fiery room filled with gorgeous, giant LCD screens with Xbox 360s hooked up to them, that ONLY PLAY SPACE GIRAFFE. So in a way, playing Space Giraffe is a religious experience.

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