Okay so there’s like…a bajillion games that I took an active interest in, so I’m going to eschew my typical jibber jabber and bring my impressions by bullet points. Or at least I’m going to try to make it look like bullet points, anyways.

Killzone 3 – Looks as badass as ever, if not moreso. The Arctic/Oceanic environments look intense and the jetpack action looks fucking sweet…especially right after you ice a Hig in one. The WASP looks absolutely overpowered, shooting 9 missles at one target…I can’t wait to unleash THAT bitch online, either. With Arctic and Jungle environments, Killzone 3 looks to stuff its cock into the mouths of the whiney little fags who complained about Killzone 2’s color palette…lmao.

Seriously…when people are whining about the fucking color palette of a First Person Shooter named “KILLZONE”, you know they’re fucking gay.  KZ3 looks to shut those stupid hos up with a robust presentation of the visible color spectrum…just for you whiney fags who didn’t get enough fucking sunbeams and rainbows in the last one. First day buy…potential GotY.

Metal Gear Solid Rising – this game is going to cause some debate.  MGS fans are going to HATE the game’s apparent lack of stealth, and then there’s the fact that the game appears to center around Raiden.  Now, if you’ve played MGS4, then you know Raiden as a sword slingin, gravity defying, cyborg ninja badass extraordinaire who can cut bitches in half WHETHER OR NOT HE HAS ANY FUCKING ARMS…

…but if you’ve played MGS2, then you know Raiden is also a whiney little bitch with emotional baggage akin to that of Lindsey Lohan.

We’re all hoping that MGS2 Raiden is gone and never coming back.  And please God, do NOT include Rosemary or any fucking references to Raiden’s empty fucking bedroom.  Do Not…please…I’m begging you…just don’t.  Thank you very much.

Haterade for Raiden aside, MGSR is going to be walking a tightrope.  First of all, MGS has always been a stealth game, and while this game is sure to incorporate “some” sneaking, it’s clearly NOT a stealth game.  Secondly…Hack N Slash isn’t quite Konami or Kojima Productions’ bag, so we are treading virgin waters here.

Also…I’ve got all the Hack N Slash I need with God Of War III.  That along with the fact that Raiden is largely viewed as a second tier character in the MGS canon (and a fairly reviled one at that), this game is going to have to be damn near perfect to have relevance appropriate to the genre and the MGS franchise itself.

I’m not doubting that Kojima’s team can make it work…but I’m not quite drinking the Kool-Aid yet, either.

Little Big Planet 2 – Single player looks to get actual cutscenes as well as many different variables with regard to levels and modes of transport.  Likewise, Play Create Share gets the same bonuses, ensuring that users will be creating racers, shooters, and even horizontal scrolling shooters that hearken back to games like Space Invaders.

Oh and all the content out there for Little Big Planet works on LBP2, as well.  LBP and LBP2 will be Move compatible, so that should make the creation aspect of the game/working the Popit much smoother.  Not quite an urgent buy for me, but it’ll take some kind of catastrophe to prevent me from buying it eventually.

MotorStorm Apocalypse – I’m hoping that this game is more like the original and less like Pacific Rift.  Despite Monument Valley being an absolutely fucking EPIC setting for the original, the varied environments and Tropical Island theme of Pacific Rift were a nice change of pace.  Inclusion of split screen multiplayer was also quite the welcome addition.

Unfortunately, the game screwed up on two things that made the original so fucking awesome.  Bullet time, high detail, HD crash sequences and intuitive track design.  The crashes in PR looked like garbage in comparison, there wasn’t any of the flash involved in it and I found myself lost on tracks several times because of how obtuse their design was.  Got high hopes for this one…but again I’m not pre ordering yet.

inFAMOUS 2 – Never played through the first…didn’t really fall in love with the demo…I may or may not rent it before this drops, but this game will not in any way be a priority for me.  Of course, I’m on record with my opinion that the whole Sandbox Open World thing has been tired and beaten down for a few years now…perhaps inFAMOUS or inFAMOUS 2 is/will be the Tetanus Shot that the genre needs…

…fucking Christ knows that GTA IV wasn’t.

Crysis 2 – Ummmm…FAIL??  Seriously…I d/l’d the trailer on PSN expecting to see the most amazing graphics since Uncharted 2.  What I got was a game that looks like a cross between Gears Of War 3 and Battlefield Bad Company 2.  Don’t get me wrong, those games look great, but for all the shit I’ve heard talked about the CRYTEK engine – I was left wanting more.

The game itself looks badass as hell…but the problem lies in the fact that so does Killzone, Bulletstorm, Spec Ops The Line, SOCOM, Gears and Halo.  As a family man on a budget during a Global Recession, Crysis 2 is looking like something I’m going to have to pass on.

Sorcery – So SCEA revealed Sorcery…a game developed exclusively for the Playstation Move…and yeah – this thing totally looks like a gimmick game.  It drew hoots and hollers from the Shrine Audience but frankly the graphics didn’t look great, the animations themselves were far too cartoony for this Tolkien fanboy’s tastes and the game itself looked like a Harry Potter rip off.

In the end, this game may turn out to be the coolest thing since sliced bread, but from what I saw at E3 it looks like Shovelware.  Oh and the use of the words “Fairy World” was cringe inducing.  Please fix that…thanks.

The Sly Collection – Fanboys rejoice to celebrate Sucker Punch’s previous generation darling platformer upscaled and remastered in HD for the PS3…but honestly I’d have rather seen the ICO Collection.

The ICO Collection – wasn’t there.  Baby Jesus wants to cry.

The Last Guardian – WASN’T.  FUCKING.  THERE.  WHAT.  THE.  FUCK?  Yeah, yeah…I heard…Tokyo Game Show for The Last Guardian.  Look…the only acceptable reason why The Last Guardian wasn’t at E3 would be because Fumito Ueda and his team are too busy helping Bluepoint port Ico and Shadow Of The Colossus over to PS3 for The ICO Collection.

Everything else is just useless jibber jabber.  Sony REALLY dropped the ball by not even having a trailer of The Last Guardian at E3.

SOCOM 4 - Uhhh…SOCOM 4’s only mention was as part of a list of games that will be Move compatible upon launch.  Yeah…uhh…I found that out a while back at GDC.  No new trailer?  No news on single player, co-op, leaning, UCRRs, tiebreakers and clan ladders?  How about the game…will it actually work??

Will there be single player??  Will SOCOM go for that blockbuster Hollywood bullshit that MW and BFBC have been churning out, or will Zipper keep it Hardcore and come with the low key yet ultra realistic Black Ops nature of the first two games?

Yeah…given how integral SOCOM has been and continues to be for the Sony Playstation brand, despite how badly fucking botched SOCOM: Confrontation was, I would’ve liked a little bit more than “SOCOM 4 will be Move compatible.”  Something along the lines of: “SOCOM will be fucking awesome again, we promise” would’ve been nice.

And I’m out of time again…more to come tomorrow or Friday about the two suprises at the end of Sony’s conference and any of the other shit that’s popped up since then.  Chuuuuch.

Killzone 2 was and is a firebrand of a game.  From the very moment the game was “officially” announced back at E3 ‘05 to this very day, it has inspired “spirited debate” among a whole host of people.  And of course by “spirited debate,” I mean idiot fanboys squealing at each other like Ned Beatty in Deliverance.

Overzealous PS3 fanboys heralded it as the second coming of Jesus H. Christ.  It wasn’t.  Insecure 360 fanboys said the game would be recycled garbage.  It wasn’t.  Call Of Duty fanboys swore up and down that the controls were broken.  They weren’t.  Wii fanboys exercised their right to remain silent, because they and the Wii sucks ass.

Honestly, as I’ve said before, the game is just plain fucking awesome.  Like every other game out there, it’s complete awesomeness fell somewhat short of perfection, and with the impending release of Killzone 3, PS3 gamers are coming out of the woodwork with their suggestions for improvement.

Now…certainly Co-op and splitscreen MP are two things that were missing from Killzone 2 and should absolutely be included in Killzone 3, but if you read the Killzone forums, the Playstation forums and even a few articles on IGN, you’ll find people asking for things that they call “improvements” that would really only serve to bring the quality of the game down.

The prime example of this would be the weighty controls.  Killzone 2 didn’t allow for unlimited sprinting, the weapons all had a very real sense of heft and recoil to them and melee attacks typically required two hits to be lethal.  Not to single anyone out, but CoD fanboy hates this.

For those who aren’t aware, CoD is an arcade shooter.  There’s almost no degree of combat realism to the gameplay:  a simple slice of a knife that would more likely than not cause only a flesh wound is a one hit kill, all of the weapons have the heft of a squirt gun, the rate of fire is incredibly jacked up, the recoil is incredibly subdued and with perks like Marathon, Slight Of Hand and Lightweight, things like running, reloading and snap aiming can all be done with the speed of someone on a meth binge.

One of the reasons that Killzone 2 is the heighth of badassery is the feel of the combat, which is best described as frenetic.  Not “frenetic” like running through teems of enemies who respawn infinitely, not “frenetic” like run here, do this, run there, do that, sprint there and ZOMG!!!  ZOMBIES!!!!!

No…not at all.  The game is frenetic in that the combat just continues and continues.  There’s no infinite respawning of enemies but the waves of enemies continue to come at you, they come at you from directions you don’t expect and the AI doesn’t repeat itself, rather it reacts to the situations that confront it.  Killzone 2 is a game where the player slogs through teems of enemies who utilize cover, flank you and find new and exciting angles from which to shoot you…and that’s what makes Killzone 2’s freneticism more realistic.

Now…there’s also the issue of Gun Turrets and Aerial Sentries.  If you look over the PS forums, you’re bound to find people crying about them.  DON’T YOU LISTEN!!  Seriously, turrets and bots are absolutely perfect.  They’re NOT overpowered and it doesn’t take an Act Of God to destroy them.  Compared to the Sentry Guns and Air Support Killstreaks in MW2, they’re fucking nothing.

Seriously, getting the Turret Ribbon (8 matches with at least 5 turret kills) and Aerial Sentry Ribbon (8 matches with at least 5 airbot kills) were two of the more challenging things to do in the freaking game.  In MW2, Sentry Guns are fucking GATLING GUNS that cut people down in two seconds and Harriers, AC 130s and Chopper Gunners will typically net AT LEAST five kills when called in.

So please…don’t listen to the whiners who complain that turrets and bots are overpowered and too hard to destroy.  Those bitches just fucking suck at Killzone 2 online…probably at life, too.  Fuck that.  The turrets and airbots are just about perfect the way they are, and anyone who thinks differently just needs to get fucking good.

Also a subject of woe for some was “the story” behind Killzone 2.  I never really understood that.  Certainly, there wasn’t much “story” in the first place, but the game is a chronicle of a Special Forces Sergeant taking part in an interplanetary invasion.  Guerrilla chose to forego melodramatics, plot twists and 20 minute cutscenes in favor of presenting what is probably the most accurate representation of what a ground war is like from the perspective of infantry.

I would imagine in such circumstances there’s a definite lack of 10 minute Tarantinoesque monologues, dramatic pauses and schwerves…at least that’s what common sense tells me.

One funny note is that a lot of the people who bemoaned the lack of cutscenes and narrative in Killzone 2 also complained that Metal Gear Solid 4 had too much narrative and overly long cutscenes, proving that there are some people who simply cannot be appeased.

However some people also complained about the curse ridden script, which I think had the in game characters use the word “fuck” roughly 1,376 times.  Personally, I’m a fan of the word “fuck,” which you’ve probably noticed by now.  Like college basketball legend Robert Montgomery Knight, I find the word “fuck” to be one of the most versatile words in the English language.

My own preference aside…THESE GUYS ARE SOLDIERS IN THE MIDDLE OF A WAR!!  I and many people that I know have used the word “fuck” pervasively in times of stress and/or anger…AND NONE OF THOSE TIMES WERE WE IN A HAIL OF BULLETS OR A STORM OF SHRAPNEL!

Seriously…back at the battle of Stalingrad, when the Nazis were fucking their shit up, I’m pretty sure the Russian soldiers let their equivalent of the words “fuck” and “shit” go.  Not sure why anyone would really question the language of soldiers in such an instance, but I guess it probably has something to do with either naivety or stupidity on the part of those who had a problem with it.  Probably a little of both.

Finally, one thing that Killzone 2 definitely skimped on was variety of weapons.  Games like Halo, Modern Warfare and Borderlands showered gamers with a multitude of weapons and a veritable bevy (if you will) of attachments with which to outfit said firearms.  In fact games like Modern Warfare 2 become addicting to people because most firearms and attachments are only unlocked by levelling up or hitting certain benchmarks with weapon use through multiplayer.

Killzone 2 offers three assault rifles, two LMGs, a single shot midrange rifle, a shotgun, a sniper rifle and a few RLs and GLs for the bitches who aren’t good enough to kill people with bullets.  There are no attachments to be had, no dual wielding capabilities to unlock or any of that stupid shit.  It’s you and your weapon against the other guy and his…no bullshit perks, no cheapass killstreaks, no gay fucking deathstreaks…it’s simply soldier vs. soldier and may the better player win.

Shotguns won’t get off 4 blasts in a second, you can’t strafe left and right with a fucking Gatling gun in your hands, there’s no Blast Shield or Danger Close to make you impervious to grenades…it’s Killzone and despite the fact that you’re a space Marine or a space Nazi, the game offers the most realistic combat experience that a console FPS has to offer.  Please let that stand pat.  Leave the arcadey bubblegum nonsense to those other games, please.

Now, certainly with the addition of Jetpacks, the degree of “combat realism” will take a bit of a hit…but that’s just Fucking A fine with me.  Jetpacks = awesomeness.  They were pretty cool for the brief moments that they were in Killzone Liberation, and I’m positively drooling about trying one out in Killzone 3.  From the little I’ve read from the priviledged few who’ve been able to test them out, you guys nailed it.  Thank you…jetpacks complete me.

So please, Guerrilla Games…don’t dumb down Killzone 3.  There’s games like MW2, Resistance 2 and a whole host of others for the Arcade Style FPS crowd to fawn over.  Killzone is a badass experience…both single player and online multiplayer…and it provides as realistic a depiction of infantry combat as possible on a gaming console.

True greatness is found by carving out your own niche and making the absolute most of what you have once you’ve gotten there.  Killzone 2 was pretty fucking great.  Please, GG…don’t take a step back.  Keep taking steps forward.  There will be haters, but they come out whenever someone pushes boundaries.  Fight through that shit…fuck them and their inability to see past their noses.