As a kid I was introduced to a pile of video games by our trusty Atari 800XL 8-bit computer. Atari and Commodore fanboys went at each other back then just as PlayStation and Xbox fanboys do now. Ah, those were the days.
Later I went to university and mostly stopped playing games (except for Wing Commander) until I bought a PS2 at launch, mostly because my brother Jonathan was enjoying his PlayStation One so much. Then when I heard about the PS3, I started a blog called PS3Blog.net. I've been blogging the PS3 since March of 2005, long before its physical manifestation in my home in November 2006. Here are three posts about getting my PS3: link link and link.
Video Games
At work we have eight dedicated gaming machines on which we played Call of Duty 2 and now Call of Duty 4. I continued the CoD tradition at home on my PS3 by playing CoD3 (not so good) and CoD4 (awesome!). Call of Duty 4 is my favourite FPS and is tied with Rock Band as my favourite PS3 game. The leveling up system draws you in, compelling you to keep going to get just one more level. The perks are great fun and allow you to customize your character in ways not seen before. Putting together a certain set of perks that work well together and fits your playing style is a very satisfying experience.
I really enjoy top-down action RPG's like Baldur's Gate and Champions of Norrath on the PS2. A friend and I have played these games and their sequels for many many hours in backwards compatibility mode on the PS3. So I really wanted a good PS3 top-down action RPG of the same type. The only such game as of this writing is Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom. The reviews of this game were quite bad, so I delayed getting this game for quite some time. One day, though, I rented it and was hooked. I now own a copy and enjoy it quite a bit, even with its many flaws. Here's a blog article I wrote on the good and bad aspects of Untold Legends.
As far as racing games are concerned, this is a sore spot for me. There are no four player split-screen racing games on the PS3 (or 360 for that matter). I'm a very social gamer and do most of my gaming with others. So the lack of a good four player racing game has been a sticking point for me. MotorStorm is an excellent racing game that would be great to enjoy with my friends, but its lack of splitscreen prevents the game from being played much. I hope MotorStorm 2 corrects this problem.
The closest I have is SEGA Rally Revo, a two player split-screen rally racing game. It's a lot of fun, but it's quite limited and I was hoping for more. For example, why does split-screen have a vertical split instead of horizontal? That makes sense for an FPS, but not a racing game! But it's the only PS3 split-screen racing game that I like.
So what are my favourite PS3 games? They fall into several categories. I like shooters, action RPG's, racing games, and music/rhythm games. So here are my PS3 picks for those categories.
I've been a fan of Harmonix since they released Frequency for the PS2. It's a great four player game, and I've been following along with more Harmonix purchases like Amplitude, Guitar Hero I, II, and Rock's the 80's. I also bought Activision's Guitar Hero III. But I don't plan on buying any further Guitar Hero games - Activision's attitude is leaving me cold. My new love is Rock Band. While the song selection isn't quite as good as Guitar Hero's, I still like Rock Band better. It just feels like the next evolutionary step, even just playing the guitar campaign. (I wasn't a fan of the boss battles in GH3.) I've even bought a few Rock Band songs online. I hope they come out with more songs for my aging taste! Here's my blog post about Rock Band.
