Black Ops II - release trailer

Now set in the near future, based on the trailer and only watching it once as of right now, the single player story seems to be about some enemy taking control over the unmanned drones of the US military, and I would assume that you're fighting to take back control.

Its an interesting choice, and I know it leaves a few people hesitant on the actual game.  But here's the way I look at it.  The Call of Duty series has always been about hyper reality.  The tech they portray in the game is realistic, and its just the characters and events that are the fiction, so will we see really futuristic weapons like lasers and such?  No.  We'll see a lot more drones, since that is something the US military is actually expanding to now, but at the same time, you'll still be shooting bullets and rockets in the game (with the exception of zombies).

Also, given that this is just the single player preview, and I don't spend more than six to eight hours in the single player versus the hundreds/thousands of hours in multiplayer and zombie modes, this trailer doesn't change my mind about buying the game.  I'm just hoping Treyarch learns from what was wrong with MW3, and moves things forward.

New Maps for Call of Duty MW3: Foundation & Sanctuary

So far they are pretty good.  Foundation has is a decent size map with some good vantage points that so far seem to be well balanced.  Sanctuary has a decent flow to it, but just wished there were some more elevation around the map but there is some variety and some long sniper lines.  There are a lot of paths to get to the objectives on Sanctuary.

Foundation reminds me a bit of the COD4 map Pipeline, gound level is relatively open, but there are lots of places for snipers to get onto higher ground and pick people off.  Lots of things to climb up on which is kind of like Quarry from MW2.

Can't wait to see what's coming out in May with 4 maps scheduled for release.

Mass Effect 3 Trailer...

Well, saw this on TV last night, and it really got me wanting to get into the series.  At first I thought it was some new movie coming out, till I realized what it was.  If they made a tv series, I'd watch it.

Skyrim - Review

So finally had the chance to get deeper into this massive game a couple weeks ago.  Now that I've got some more time into the game, and completed some more of the bigger side quests, I am hooked.  Now my character is around level 36, I'm the archmage of the college, a Companion, and taking part in the Stormcloak's side of the civil war.  I have yet to finish the main quest, but I'm in no hurry at this point.  I'm now working on getting better equipment, and saving up to buy some of the homes.

PS Vita - I'm going to wait a bit...

Its a great peice of technology, at a good price for the hardware.   But as always with gaming devices, its all about the software.  Since I have yet to even touch the Uncharted series games on the PS3, I don't have that much appeal for the Vita game.  I would love to eventually play a new Final Fantasy game on the device, something that would provide 20+ hours of gameplay.  There is Ninja Gaiden Sigma coming out for the Vita a week later which might be interesting since I am a fan of that series.  Or maybe a Dark Souls game would also put me in line for a Vita. 

I am very tempted by the Gamestop offer to trade in 4 games for $100 towards the unit.  I'll definitely be thinking about it over the next little while.  If I do get one, I would only get the Wifi version, 3G is not really worth it right now given the lack of multiplayer games.  I figure battery life is already going to be fairly low on a device of this type given its screen size and power.  But how much more juice would a 3G radio eat up?  It also is harder to justify since there are not that many oppertunities for me to play the game on the go.  I'm either driving, or busy doing something else to be sitting in one spot long enough to enjoy the game.  If I am at home, I have my PC and my consoles... Maybe if I do end up travelling more then it would be easier to justify.

Also, when will Sony give up on their proprietary memory? 

List of Vita games and their release dates:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PlayStation_Vita_games

Call of Duty Elite - ways to improve it.

Other than the obvious speed and performance issues of the elite website, here are a few things I feel that should be considered for future updates.

Stat Tracking:

As someone who really likes to look at numbers and analyze things, it would be nice to be able to export the recent match data in some text of excel format.  So I can have some e-bragging rights, or at least look at how I've improved month to month, week to week, etc etc.  The data is there, but I just can't easily get it out of the site and into a format that I can work with.  It would be nice to be able to see how well I perform on a map level.  So I can see which maps I do better on versus others, and determine if I need to change my gameplan around for those maps.

Competitions;

A few things can be improved here which in my opinion will make it appeal to more people and make it a bit easier to police.