666... 6

Last year, I wasn't aware of Direct2Drive's anniversary sale until its last week but I have certainly learned my lesson since then. The direct download company for Personal Computer games is currently celebrating their 6th anniversary and for the next four weeks, they will be selling selected games for only $6. Depending on the games of course, that could mean tremendous amount of savings so everyone should check out what they are offering both on a weekly as well as daily basis. They don't have anything that I want thus far... I do hope that they are not going to follow the pattern of pricing the games in conjunction of the year that they have been in business. I don't think $20 game deals for their 20th anniversary would work but who knows, maybe in the year 2024, that amount of money may equate to nothing. But at least by then we would have world peace and people won't be fighting over religions and political ideologies right?

Still don't have Titan Quest? Today is a good day to get the game!

Random Game of the Day

Fantavision (2000)

Developer: Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.

Platform: PlayStation 2

Induction Date: 03/24/2001

What's more fun than chasing after a huge comet?

Well, watching colorful fireworks while doing so, of course!

Fantavision is one of those seemingly simple and shallow puzzle games that will grow on you if you allow yourself to be enveloped by its madness. I was intrigued by it when it accompanied the launch of the PlayStation 2 and it became the 7th game I purchased for the system. The game has a some quirky play mechanics: basically, you use the left analogue stick of the controller to aim and lock on to a bunch of flares launched into the air. You have to manually detonate them but you can only do so if you matched 3 or more of the same color. If you fail to denote them, your Play Meter will continue to deplete and once drained, completely, it's game over. The game is more complex than that - at later stages, the flares shoot from every corner of the screen in less obvious sets of colors. You can also chain different colors by locking on to power-ups and special flares. Those that you can't manually detonate will also automatically explode if they touch the exploded flares of the same color. The game is less technical while you are playing it. You just have to absorb yourself in the moment and the color-matching will become second nature. I really love the retro-futuristic vibe of the game, especially the non-sensical progression of the stages and the live actors interactions that show up every so often. The game still looks amazing when I played it today and the varied soundtrack is very pleasing as well. There's even a two-player versus mode included in the game, though the options for it is rather limited. One of the console's best games.

LIBRARY STATUS: 5 out of 5

Review: Piranha 3D

Piranha 3D (2010)

Genre: Horror

Format: Theatrical Release

Director: Alexandre Aja

You would think that after the success of Avatar, movie makers would want to replicate the intricacies of 3D that the movie was able to bring to the audience. Instead, Avatar's success seem to obsess Hollywood with post-process 3D at an alarming and annoying rate. Piranha 3D is another victim of this trend and what is worse than that is the fact it it is only released in theaters in 3D - a local drive-in is showing it in 2D however - forcing us to endure its cheap effects. The most problematic thing is that "blue screen" cardboard effect where the depth is there but everything looks mighty flat. Thankfully,the movie is entertaining enough that I could forgive its hefty price tag and unnecessary 3D gimmick.

Piranha 3D should be self-explanatory when it comes to its plot and it surely is. If you are a horror fan, you want to watch this movie for one thing and one thing only: the river party massacre. There's nothing more fun (and sick) than seeing beautiful people with perfect bodies being eaten alive by a bunch of hungry fish, especially when there's that no-holds-barred attitude on how the entire carnage is presented. It takes a while to get to the meat of the movie but the build-up is paced wonderfully. The piranha themselves look pretty convincing but that realism is often taken away by the forced 3D moments. For a movie about an unstoppable nasty legion of man-eaters though, which should be a pretty standard kind of affair, it really doesn't know how to end itself. It's disappointing that a movie that could give you some nasty looking violence would shift its focus to some "family friendly" sequences to bring everything to close.

Until the 3D technology is perfected, there is no reason why a movie release is limited to 3D so let us hope that Piranha 3D does not encourage future movies to do the same. 3D doesn't really add anything to this movie. While the effects can look good, when they are not, they look really really terrible and that can easily take you away from the movie experience. If you are looking for a fun horror movie though, Piranha 3D is entertaining enough, especially with the one death orgy sequence that is thoroughly satisfying to watch.

RATING: 3 out of 5

New Game Alert: Dial M for Melodrama Edition!

My copy of Metroid: Other M for the Nintendo Wii has arrived today. The game definitely isn't like any of the other Metroid games as I discovered its heavy usage of cut-scenes and full motion videos - they do look mighty impressive however. Team Ninja's involvement in the making of this game can already be felt in the extra dramatic and cheesy dialogues, the shameless sexploitation of Samus, as well as the action-heavy gameplay. It is a mystery why Nintendo didn't just design this game using the straight up classic Metroid formula of 2D exploration but with 3D graphics since traces of that are certainly evident in this game. Good thing that the game is still fun to play but I doubt that it will come close to matching the excellence of any of the previous Metroid titles.

I am missing the silent Samus already...

Microsoft's Insatiable Hunger for Money

I may be several days late on this but I am still completely baffled to find out that Microsoft will be increasing the X-Box Live's subscription fee in North America (amongst several other unfortunate nations) starting on November 1st of this year.  The yearly subscription - the one that I am on - will be increased by a whopping $10 because of some additional as well as worthless features that will be included into the service:

An unnecessary move in that PlayStation Plus kind of way.

Let's review the new features shall we? The ESPN thing, well I am not a sports fan so it has no value to me. Even if you are a sports fanatic, I bet you already have subscribed to some great high definition sports channels on your cable so this is going to be so redundant - after all, you jump on your 360 to play games not to passively watch sports. Video Kinect? Really? You can already video chat now on Live and has anyone ever heard of Skype? It's a free video chat on the Personal Computer and yes, you CAN hook up your PC to the big screen, you don't need a 360 console for that! Hulu Plus? Another passive activity on the 360? I want to play games while I am on my gaming consoles! Will I be renewing my subscription when it's up? I have kept my subscription setting on no auto-renewal when that feature became available and I will keep on the lookout for cheap renewal codes from online retailers because they sell those quite often. As a matter of fact, that has been the way that I renew my subscription over the past several years. One thing is for sure, I will never pay $59.99 for the yearly service, ever! Microsoft is trying to soften the blow by offering a $39.99 yearly subscription right now before the eventual price hike but the only way they can recover from this offensive move is if they abandon this whole thing and issue an official apology to all of the current Live service subscribers.