Playstation Home

Playstation Home is something on the PS3 that looks pretty much like Second Life. It's kind of a social network for PS3 gamers. At first I didn't really like it because it just seemed like a way for people to waste their time asking for pictures of each other (at least that pretty much all I saw when I got on with my PS3). Although I looked into and when it's explained more as a gaming social network it sounds like a really good idea. You can meet new people to play games with if you don't have many friend's on your list. Sony can even profit for it by selling people stuff in the virtual world for actual money (I don't really know who would buy stuff for their in-game avatar, but apparently people do). There's also events with prize-giving events to entertainment events in the game world. Since it's free to join, it's at least worth a look for anyone with a PS3.

Playstation Network

Plastation Network is the PS3s online community. It's what you use to play online and buy things from the online store. One thing the PS3's online store has started doing is selling PS1 games as full games for the PS3. This seems like a really good idea on their part, because some PS1 games are really hard to find and instead of having the people that want to play them look for a used one somewhere and buy it so a store can make some profit, Sony can just sell them a digital copy of the game and make the profit themselves and make it more convienient for the consumer. The only thing that seems like they could improve upon that would be to put PS2 games in that market, but they can't do that since PS3s cannot play PS2 games. There was a program on the marketplace that supposedly would let you play PS2 games, but I tried to get it and it didn't work. I also have talked to other people that have downloaded the same program and they couldn't get it to work either. I think if they could get that software up and running, their profit would be increased immensely by all the PS2 games they would sell online.

Singularity

Singularity is a Sci-fi shooter that takes place in present day (2010 which is when it comes out) and takes place on an island called Katorga-12 where there's Russian experiments involving the element Einsteinium which took place at the height of the Cold War. During 1950, an event known as Singularity occured on the island. You play as Nate Renko, who is an Air Force pilot sent to investigate bizarre radiation coming from the island and crash lands there. Nate finds a Time Manipulation Device and finds out the island is constantly changing between the times 1950 and 2010. The goal is to stop the Singularity from happening back in 1950. This seems like a great concept for a story since there aren't many games that have to deal with time manipulation like this, and definately not during the Cold War. This game looks like it will incorporate interesting uses of time control with an interesting story. It could be a good game, but there's not enough information about it out there yet to make a definite opinion.

Braid

Braid is another game that is on the Xbox live arcade that I've seen on gamespot.com's front page quite a bit, but never actually looked into. Turns out it's a puzzle/platform game with a guy named Tim trying to save a princess from a monster. Gamespot describes the story as a deep plot that makes you feel what the character you're playing as is feeling. Tim has lost his love because of a mistake he made and throughout the game you see Tim's thoughts on subjects that are eating away at him. The puzzles also emphasize clever thinking over quick reflexes, so it would probably be a fantastic puzzle game because you're encouraged to think more than act fast. It got overall great ratings ranging from 9-10 out of 10. A game that got that good of ratings from everyone seems worth looking into, even if it is more expensive than most arcade games at $15.

Castle Crashers

I've only heard of Castle Crashers because every once in awhile people tell me it's a good xbox live arcade game. Other than that I know pretty much nothing about it. It's eesentially a side scroller with RPG elements. The game got overall high ratings and seems to be mostly geared towards multiplayer play. In each level, the objective is to save the princess and if you're playing with more than one person the players have to fight it out at the end to see who gets the princesses kiss. In the game you can level up and purchase items with coins you get from defeated foes, so it seems like it has a certain party fun essence to it. It seems to me like it's a 2D Gauntlet game, which was an extremely fun multiplayer hack and slash game (although it was a lot less fun when not playing with other people). This game seems like it would be a good buy if me and a friend or 2 are just bored one night and looking for something to do, but other than that, I think this game might be not for me.

3D Dot Game Heroes

3D Dot Game Heroes is a game that will be coming out on the PS3 and will be taking an old graphic style, 8-bit, and popping it up into 3D. It brings up nostalgia for the old days in a new way. The play style will be based on The Legend of Zelda in the way it's designed gameplay wise. The story is that the king of Dotnia decided that things were to boring in 8-bit land and decided to make everything 3D. This caused demon's to come out and steal the 6 magical orbs that were keeping the place safe. The game seems to have a good new concept of trying to merge the old and the new graphics and bring in the old dungeon delving concept. It also seems to have a good variety of items to use such as different swords and boomerangs. It is set to come out May 11, 2010 and will cost $40, so I might wait for the price to drop. It looks like fun and everything, but a game I would buy just for nostalgia doesn't seem worth $40.

Xbox Live Arcade

The Xbox live arcade is an online place where you can download smaller games for about $10-$20. It used to be when I think Xbox Live Arcade, I thought about a waste of people's time and money since they're wasting small amounts of cash of many games, which adds up. I also thought that this would probably make bigger game companies stop making good games and start making tons of little games with half the effort. After looking into some of the games I found that many of them are made by just little companies or single people that are just looking for a way to make money doing what they like. Also since I actually got live at college, I've seen some of the games and have become interested in some of them myself. Now I've only bought one, but I wouldn't be ashamed of buying more because they actually can make fun games in the arcade. Now I actually think the Xbox Live Arcade is a great idea because it provides little time waster games for when you only have 10 or 20 minutes to play, which isn't enough time for a fully immersive game on a disk, so you can just play a little arcade game to take up some time. Along with being easy to pick up and put down, it's also providing business for the little people out there.