RAGE!

I've had my eye on this game for some time now. I know that a lot of people have lost faith in id over the years because of their lack of innovation, but I've always found their games to be very well put together with an amazing production value and excellent execution....plus they have the Godfather of graphics, John Carmack, at their disposal.

I remember reading about storage issues on the 360 discs and the problems that it's created for id and possibly condensing the world to save money when the game ships to keep it on one disc. I sure hope they go all out for the PS3 at least.

IGN gave RAGE the E3 award for "Game of the Show" and I don't think it's hard to see why.

This isn't helping....

I've been reading about new 360 Slims that are already faulty. This isn't helping and I'm sorry, but this only frustrates me more about that company. They can claim all the international sales numbers they want, but you know they can't be too accurate when every person I know that owns one has purchased at least 2.

Retarded.

A way around the Sixaxis

Just an interesting find when I was messing around with the PS3.

I was saying in my Killzone 2 review that it's a bummer that I have to use the PS3 Dualshock and not my awesome new Afterglow controller with the better joysticks because it lacks the extra 20 bucks for the Sixaxis. I figured that I could use my new controller and just unplug it and turn on the Dualshock when I need the Sixaxis, but this didn't work. It just auto signed in under player #2. Well I found that I can switch, on the fly, the number player that the controller is assigned to when I hit the PS Home button, under "system settings," and it worked! I can just switch the Dualshock to #1 and back to #2 when I'm done with it!

I know it's not a huge deal, but still worth a post.

Crackdown 2 Demo Impressions

Hardly worthy of a full review, but definitely worth mentioning is the Crackdown 2 demo.  Giving you 30 minutes of play, the demo gives you some pretty good looks at how the world can change and develop, and how your character is going to change with it.

Liked

The World : Pacific City hasn't changed much (architecturally speaking) since the first game, which is cool because it gives a real sense of familiarity right when you boot it up.  It takes a few minutes to get your bearings, but when you do it all comes flooding back to you.  I explored a lot in the first game, and it looks like I'm going to get that and more in the follow up.

Day and Night:  In Crackdown 1, night basically meant that there weren't nearly as many cars on the road, a great time to get some of the driving challenges done.  In 2, there are these infected zombies and monsters that come out at night, giving the world a real sense of busyness. The zombies bugged me at first, (why are there all these zombies in my Crackdown!?) but I think it will create a much better balanced game experience in the end, cause it means that there isn't any down time as night and day cycle.  The cycling did seem a little quick if this is the goal, but it's probably going faster than usual so they can showcase both aspects in the short lived demo time.

The Announcer: He's totally back and already encouraging me to be awesome.  Like the time cycling, I do hope he's toned back a smidge in the real game... he's overloading me with info, and intel, and news, and compliments, and criticisms...  give me a break, guy. At least he's hilarious.

Disliked

New Crosshair - I liked the old one more.  The aiming mechanic is about the same, still frustrating to quick target certain guys, but it works well enough.

Objective Missions - Just a preference, but I liked the way it was done before.  "Hey Agent! There's a boss over there... get him!"  They've included missions where I need to flip a switch to do X activity for _______ purpose.  It all in the name it seems of creating a better narrative with it, but they really don't need to.  I'm playing this game because it's fun to jump over buildings and to use a small sedan as a melee weapon, not for character development.  When they first announced that Crackdown 2 was going to continue the story from the first game, I literally had to think about what the story was, if it was even there to begin with.  The new story does fit in well enough to the first, but it still doesn't matter.

- - - - - - -

I'm excited to pick this one up.  I know my brother and I are going to co-oping it up a lot in this, so anyone who wants to hop in and clean up the city (... again!) is more than welcome! Should be a great time with 4 player co-op.

Killzone 2 Review

This is the very first game I've played to completion on my PS3 and it was an awesome and trying time.

Liked:

Graphics - Say what you want about the PS3 only playing almost every game in it's library at 720p, but this game is gorgeous. I think that some of the poorer looking games on PS3 were just lazy ports of 360 games, but I truly believe that the 360 couldn't handle this game. There's simply too much info on the discs. If I remember correctly when the game was being shown one of the developers said the first level was 2gb.

Style - Again some people may hate on the browns and grays, but it looks really good and fits the world, Helghan, really well. I LOVED the depth of field of what was in and out of focus. The way your hands and guns would be blurry one moment depending on the action or how close your instruments of death were to your face works really well and is easily the best implementation I've ever seen in a game.

Guns - Holy crap these guns are meaty. All of the weapons have a more primal look and sound to them that only add to the atmosphere.

Movement - While the controls took some getting used to I really enjoyed the "weight" or "heaviness" of the movement. Makes you feel more like a person in a firefight than a Green God of smooth walking and gunning that many other shooters have. Only other games I've seen use weight well in an FPS are "Riddick" and "The Darkness" (I'm gay for Starbreeze Studios btw).

Audio - A good soundtrack that never gets overdone and the sound effects are top notch.

Length - The game was teetering on the edge of overstaying its welcome, but I did enjoy it the whole way through.

Gameplay and Cover - It's pretty run of the mill gamplay, but they do throw in a curveball with letting you "stick" to cover and stay in first person mode. When it works it's awesome, but it's also broken.

Sixaxis - As dumb as it is to admit I really liked arming charges with the sixaxis. Hold R1 to grip and the move the charge accordingly. It was a lot more fun and even immersive than "Hold X" or "Hit X Repeatedly."

Brian Cox - He does the voice acting for the head Helghast and I'd be totally lying if I said his speeches weren't compelling or dare I say....moving?

Dislikes:

Controls - Don't know where to start really. It took me a solid 20 minutes of tinkering with the controls to get something workable (doesn't help that it's my first PS3 shooter game too). You crouch and get into cover with the same button and this creates a HUGE problem. Holding L2 will crouch you down and while you may be working around a corner trying to kill a guy you may get to close to a wall or box and get sucked into it. Then while you're being fired upon the wonky cover system won't let you peak around the corner for some reason, but you're afraid to let go of L2 because you'll get blasted. This is a very common problem in the game.

Bullet sponges!!!! - I played the game on "Hard" difficulty and it definitely ran me through the paces. I really enjoyed the challenges and there were some admittedly very tough parts, but holy crap the Helghast take a ton of damage!!!! (after beating the game I went back just to see the game on "Normal" and they died in what most would consider an acceptable amount of time)

Iron sights - It took me around 4 hours of gameplay to finally realize you're a much more efficient killer not using the iron sights. This is the exact opposite of what it should be. I think it has to do with the chunkiness of the shooting, but I found it much more effective to stay crouched and shoot in short bursts.

Sixaxis - I got a great 3rd party controller recommended to me by Lead Salad that has a joystick layout similar to the 360 controller and it's awesome. The downside is that it doesn't have the Sixaxis support so I HAD to use the Dualshock to be able to play the game fully.

Characters - Very very cookie cutter with plenty of bad dialogue and cheesey voice acting.

Final Thoughts:

The game was a total blast that was hard to play at times due to some control issues and poor iron sights.

Get the game if you like shooters and be sure to play it on Hard if you're in the market for a new controller because I almost broke mine more than once.

360 Loyalist Finally Takes the Plunge

Finally got a PS3 as a Great Father's Day surprise from the wife! I already have quite a few games that I've been getting from goozex and the 2 that came with the system. I have God of War Collection, Heavenly Sword, inFamous, Killzone 2, LBP, Resistance 1 and 2, MAG and Uncharted.

I've had the last 2 days off and I've put a considerable amount of time on the system since I got it and so far I love it. I will admit hooking it up and waiting an hour for the update to finish and then updating all the games was a pain in the ass, but I really like it.

brjahu said it best when he said it's more of a computer than a console and I would agree. From the way you have to install everything, to the menus and the far larger amount of options for everything from video to audio output its definitely a more PC styled console.

It's been interesting seeing how not just one game on the PS3 does shooters, but all of them. They all control primary and secondary firing from the shoulder buttons!? What the hell sense does that make? Getting used to playing Killzone 2 was a huge pain in the ass especially because of the "weight" your character moves around with. After I nailed it down I've loved every second of it. MAG and Resistance are set up similarly.

I guess that it's seemed a little like a breath of fresh air after being with the 360 since launch. Not that the 360 is bad at all and honestly it's vastly superior to the PS3 as far as the friends lists goes and partying up. I guess I've just slowly felt myself turning on the 360 when I think about how much money I've dumped down the drain on just the hardware for that thing. Admittedly I haven't had to purchase it all, but I just feel taken advantage of. I've had to purchase 2 360s, HD DVD drive, LIVE for 6 years, wireless adapter and a 120gb hard drive and extra controllers. That's over 1400 bucks there.....just on hardware (waiting for Amateria's avatar clothes jokes).

Also, MS has always had a bad attitude about monitoring everything that goes in and out of their service. Basically they don't want to give out anything for free and that's their business, but it is a little annoying after so long. Goofing around in LBP for a few hours and having some of the neatest interactions I've ever had online with other players has proven to me that user created content is not the devil!

Bottom line is that I've been so impressed with the PS3 I'm going to start buying multiplatform games for it starting with Dead Space 2. I'm also looking forward to replaying my favorite 360 games on the PS3 just because I can.

E3...highlights and thoughts thus far

Xbox Specific

Games

Gears 3 - 4 player co op looks excellent, looks like they've ramped up pretty much everything another notch, graphics, animations, weapon swapping, moves...cant wait.
- Beast mode - new take on horde mode where u play as the various locus, only seen some brief footage so far but from wat i've read it could prove to be a winner.

Halo: Reach - campaign footage shown looked good, cant really form too much of an opinion of it just yet considering wat we saw. MP we know will just be more of the halo action but news just came out that firefight mode with matchmaking will be included which is long overdue, sharable customised gametypes for that also, standard stuff these days i guess.

Nothing surprising or exclusives/new IP's were announced which was a bit disappointing.

Hardware

Kinetic - pretty interesting to see this kind of technology making it's way into our homes, i couldnt care less for the gaming revolations, tho i was kinda impressed by the use of kinetic for navigation and operation of the xbox....but i'm no way buying into it.

New xbox slim (or watever they're calling it) - like it, if it goes cheap enough i may even upgrade.

Sony

Games

Killzone 3 - looks a notch up from KZ2, loved the first so sure i'll be picking this one up regardless.

LBP2 - such a creative approach to a game, pretty much make any style of game u like and share it, having played some of the most creative levels in LBP i cant wait to see wat some ppl come up with.

Twisted Metal - finally a sequal to the sony classic, should prove to bring some light hearted entertainment to online gaming.

Hardware

3D - not sold on this yet at all...need to see it for myself before i judge.

Move - i'll pass thanks

Multiplatform

Dead Space 2 - looks fantastic, if u havent watched the footage on the web already go see, very impressed.

Medal of Honor - Single player sounds great, authentic story, realism etc. MP - footage looks like a cross between MW and BC which will hopefully produce something special, it's being developed by DICE which is certainly a good thing. Beta starts 17th(early adopters i believe, 21st for everyone else) worth checking out i'd say.

Portal 2 - only a brief glimps but liked wat i saw, outdoor enviroments improved graphics, looks forward to this one.

AC: Brotherhood - looks like a proper sequal to AC2 and set in Rome, seeing Ezio standing ontop of the Collesseum was pretty awesome. some footage of the MP has come online and looks very interesting, beta coming exclusive to PS3 sometime so will be checking that out.

Ghost Recon - loving wat i've seen so far, very tactical gameplay and looks graphically impressive as expected these days i guess. full 4 player co op campaign which is always a Pro.

Call of Duty - more of the same, no massive interest will wait and see.


Games that were missing.

Mirrors edge 2 - pitty no mention of this yet, love it to be announced.

Last gaurdian - guess there holding this one back till TGS



I'm sure i've missed a whole bunch of stuff so interested to hear your thoughts.

Bionic Commando

Bionic Commando, up until a little over a year ago, was only a game I had read about every once in a great while on some "All Time Top Games" list. It was originally released for the NES and was known for it's difficulty and smart level design.

While I never played the original I did have the great pleasure of playing the amazing remake by "GRIN" called Bionic Commando: Rearmed. Not long after Rearmed released the full fledged long awaited sequel came out on modern consoles. I had read very mixed reviews on the game. Mostly the professional game reviewers were running it through and all the regular players that gave it a shot really seemed to enjoy it. Couple the good stuff from the regular players with the game trailers that gave me a huge 80's action movie vibe with awesome Terminator-esque music and I was very interested in giving it a try.

I just finished the game and I can honestly say I'm really impressed at how much I enjoyed the game and how GRIN brought the game to a 3D world.

Since Lead Salad has made a "Like/Dislike" setup I'll do the same.

Like:

Story: As ridiculous as it is and as terrible as the voice acting is in spots I found myself laughing again and again and just how bad some of it was. I know I probably shouldn't like that, but it's too over the top cheese at times to not enjoy.

Bionic Arm: It has a pretty steep learning curve to get use to and I can absolutely see many people putting the game down because it can be difficult to get the hang of. It honestly took me a good hour or 2 of play to feel comfortable with the arm. It has many functions in combat, swinging and grappling and it can stick to anything. I know it sounds cheesy, but in many spots where you're swinging and fighting regular enemies or boss's at the same time a feeling of exhilaration occurs because there's so much going on and you can't believe you're controlling it all at once and actually surviving!

Swinging: It's just a lot of fun. Whether you're in combat, shooting through valleys as fast as you can to avoid snipers or just navigating some structures it's always a lot of fun.

Difficulty: I was telling Lead Salad about this, but it's been really nice to play a game again that tests me as a player. The game is pretty unforgiving in the first place, but your character also doesn't take much damage so if you screw up you're going to have to do the whole section over again because of the weird level structure (more on that in a minute). The game isn't difficult because of shoddy design, but because there can be so much going on at once with controlling your swing and fighting enemies and avoiding radiation.

Boss Fights: Awesome!

Music: I can't pin it down and it probably has more to do with the new game paying homage to the original, but the soundtrack is amazing. It feels like a modernization of old school soundtracks.

Graphics: 1 point for not using the Unreal Engine, but seriously the game looks great. Not groundbreaking or anything, but I always found the environments and enemies to be pretty spiffy looking.

Dislikes:

Hair: Holy Hell who designed this guy?! Worst idea for a haircut ever. Whoever drew this dude's hair in production should be shot, but the guy that okay'd it should be have his entrails hung from the Blarney Stone because it's bad. Why the hell couldn't they have just updated the old model or the model from Rearmed???

Loading........: This game loads like it's all it has to do.

Level Structure: Goes hand in hand with loading. Basically you load up a section which could be very small or pretty big, but as soon as you hit the end of it here comes a load screen! All the time this thing would yank me out of the game world and show me a diagram of my controller reminding me how to play. It made the game feel less like a game and more like a large series of challenge rooms that happen to make up a story.

Arm in Combat: Once I had acquired some moves to where I could hook a guy and throw him into his buddies it's about the only move I did. There are bigger enemies that will beat the piss out of you though so I'm not talking about them.

Radiation: Since the game is primarily played in a city that had a nuke go off there's some radiation to speak of. It's pretty easily identifiable by it's blue color, but man oh man I died more than a few times (especially when you're in a pinch) by crossing over too far into radiation. It's a very fast death btw.

Swimming: Someone get this man some water wings! In a game where the goal is to move across the maps using a swing arm you have to expect some areas with water. If you fall in the water you drown in about 4 seconds. You're only hope is to fall near enough something you can latch on to to pull yourself out.

Repetition: As much as I enjoyed the game it got a little repetative towards the end. The last 2 big boards were great and totally new, but during the last couple leading up to it I found myself just wanting to get to the final confrontation. This wasn't because the game is boring, but killing the same enemies over and over is.

Final Thoughts:

This game was a lot of fun and using the arm is a blast and actually works. I think this game didn't get a fair shake because of it's steep learning curve and next to no promotion. While I really enjoyed it I would have a hard time recommending it to others because of it's complexity.

If you're up for something fresh, fun and with an old school challenge then give it a go because it's definately a gamer's game!

Sidenote: It wasn't long after the game released that GRIN shut down for good. Just another example of great talent, while maybe not seeing their full potential, go down the drain.

Red Dead Redemption review

Alright, so I was able to finally finish the game last night. It took between 21 and 22 hours to complete the campaign, and man, did it ever seem like it took longer than that.

This game went on for way too long, and I think I know why. It's because 90% of the missions are exactly the same! Follow someone on your horse or ride with them in a stagecoach and listen to them talk about "whatever" (boring). Get to wherever you're going and take out a group of bad guys. And then (the worst part) is that often you'll have to ride BACK to the original location where the mission started while continuing to listen to the "blah blah blah" of the NPCs. It's been said that the writing in the game is stellar, but I hardly think so. There was a string of missions where the only thing Marston ever said was some variation of this sentence: "If you don't give me what I want, I'm gonna put a bullet in your head!" Not only does that get old, but I didn't play the game that way so it made no sense to have my character talking like that.

Towards the end of the game, I kept thinking I was on the last mission, but it just kept going...and going....and going. I couldn't believe that some of the final missions involve shooting crows and HERDING CATTLE! And the ending......I don't think it made much sense. Maybe I missed something. Or maybe I didn't and I just think it's weak sauce. However, I do like how they let you continue on after you've completed the campaign.

There are a lot of things about this game that bother me:
-The aiming is either far too easy or far too difficult. If you have the auto-aim on you'll never miss anyone. If you take that feature off, good luck getting your pin-sized crosshair (dot, rather) on anyone in time with the sluggish control and be prepared to abuse the Dead Eye feature.
-Running is ridiculous. Why do I have to hold "A" to run and tap to sprint? Haven't we had analog controllers for, what, 15 years now?
-The cover system blows. I still don't even know if there's a button to get me out of cover. I usually just held the stick AWAY from whatever rock I was on and that takes a good few seconds to pull you out.
-The horse mechanics are terrible and that's a shame since riding a horse is one of the most frequent activities in the game. Whenever I get off a horse to pick a flower or something, the camera angle changes and it's disorienting. When I stand back up, I'm facing a different direction and the horse is in a different place or moving around. Also, whenever I whistled for my horse, it ALMOST ALWAYS comes from the direction that I'm trying to go (and it will often run about 10 feet past me) so when I hop onto the horse I'm facing the wrong direction and have to turn around. ANNOYING!
-Precision walking and platforming are impossible. You bump into door frames, can't walk up a few steps easily. Jumping is so slow and clunky. What a joke! Also, I hate how when I'm standing RIGHT in front of something (like a bed to save the game or an animal to skin it) sometimes the game won't give me the prompt to do so unless I clumsily shuffle around a bit.
-Traveling around is just...too time-consuming. I know, there's the fast travel, which I abused heavily, but that just seems cheap somehow.
-If you have a mission at night, good luck seeing anything. I don't know what it is about this game, but if it's dark, you're not going to be able to see bad guys moving around unless you're using Dead Eye or if they shoot you first.
-I didn't really love how the narrative was structured. I feel like the end goal is to get Bill Williamson and Javier Escuella. You VERY rarely even see them or hear from them, though, which makes them weak adversaries in my opinion. Then after you deal with them, there's ANOTHER guy you're supposed to get that's barely even been mentioned before that point.


Despite all this, I had an OK time playing. I guess what bothers me is that this game has been praised so highly. 24 scores of "100" on Metacritic. I mean, how can people overlook all the things I've mentioned? I didn't make them up! That's only a handful of stuff, too! I'm tired of overhyped and overrated games! I think Rockstar must have a lot of reviewers paid off or something, because I didn't like GTA IV at all and was just kinda "blah" about this game yet both of those have MOUNTAINS of praise heaped on them.

Is it just me or is MP getting boring?

Seriously, I know I've been saying it for a bit now, but I could almost care less about MP gaming anymore. Even with you guys (who are some of my best friends) I just don't have a desire to play. Coop is about all I can handle. Maybe I'm going gaming impotent or I am so old now that I'm returning back to my childhood as old people do an all I want to play is SP stuff. Speaking of SP stuff The Saboteur is a lot of fun and once you get past the learning curve Bionic Commando is a LOT of fun and pretty difficult to boot!

Bad Company 2 is all that I'd play competatively anymore and MAG (at least giving it one hell of a go/try) whenever I get my damn PS3.

Am I alone in this???

Goozex (a more full blown explanation for brjahu)

It's awesome. I've been able to get many games that I wouldn't have actually spent my own cash on like 50 Cent and Bionic Commando or The Phantom Hourglass.

For those that don't know, it's all a person to person video game and movie trading system. The most a normal non-limited edition game will run you is 1000 points. Points are worth $5 dollars for every 100 points so a 1000 point game is $50 bucks. A brand new game on launch day will only run you 1000 points, but you will have to wait for others to actually purchase and trade the game before you get it.

The LEAST any game can be worth is 100 points.

All you ever pay when sending a game out is shipping which can run anywhere from 1 - 3 dollars. Depending on the person's trading history you may decide to send the game with shipping confirmation if you think them to be dishonest. This will run you another 80 cents.

When receiving a game you have to have "trade tokens." A trade token is the only charge you will ever get for getting a game. You can buy as many as 50 tokens at once or as little as 5 and they are 1 dollar apiece.

Games point values transfer to cash amounts that are very close to the same price GameStop would charge you so as you can tell if you straight out purchased points from the website to get games you would be retarded because you wouldn't be saving any money.

Where the real hook of Goozex is is in that it gives you the same points when you trade a game as it does to get the same game. The newest Prince of Persia was going to net me $27 bucks at GameStop, but I got 1000 points for it on Goozex.

The only annoying thing that you could run into on Goozex (and it's really more the user having crap/old games) is if you have a ton of games only worth 100 points cause you're only making a couple bucks on each other them, but the math still works out in favor of the user. If you wanted to get the new Prince of Persia it's going to run you 60 bucks new from the store or 55 used from GameStop. You only have to trade 10 crap 100 point games out to get the game you actually want. If shipping for each game is 2 bucks and you have to cash in a trade token it's only around 21 bucks for a new game. It's obviously much much less if you have something good to trade.

This is is no way meant to be an attack on GameStop because I think that they're a good store, but as far as getting the most bang for your buck as a consumer you win with Goozex every time....unless you want a game on launch day....then you're boned.

Alan Wake = Bamboo Shoots Under My Fingernails

I just purchased this game today, based on some decent reviews. That is $60 down the drain. I can't believe someone would design crap like this and package it up as a game. Writing a cool story and then giving it some of the lamest gameplay to ever come in contact with a game just disgusts me. The premise is cool and the story starts to draw you in... until you are forced to die & respawn, die & respawn, die & respawn, die & respawn, die & respawn, die & respawn, die & respawn cuz there isn't enough ammo in the whole entire world and the dodge mechanism works half the time and every enemy can run much, much faster than you can... even while you are sprinting... And I was missing one out of every 10 or more shots fired. I was doing some serious conserving.

Not to mention all the ammo and weapons I horded from the first episode are COMPLETELY stolen from me! The game is a weak, not quite as scary copy of Silent Hill. This rant just had to happen, I was so pissed off someone would design this garbage.

If it wasn't meant to be scary, it failed miserably. If it was meant to really, really piss me off, it succeeded brilliantly. Please stay away from this dookie disguised as a video game.

Like
+ That I can trade it in on Goozex and earn points for a game worth playing
+ That I have several other unfinished games lying around that will now be completed

Dislike
- fear and suspense disguised as lack of ammo
- a protagonist who can knock a guy down in a cut scene but has no melee attack... at all... for all the times you have no ammo... at all...
- yet another game where water does not exist (up until the start of the game) and no one has learned how to swim during child swimming lessons, parents owning a pool, having a creek behind their subdivision, having a beach nearby, or even in gym class in high school
- that this game was scheduled to be released much earlier... and this is what everyone waited for?
- that someone play tested this and thought anything positive at all...
- and I thought FFXIII had bad gameplay!?
- some game companies have reviewers in their pockets...
- if uwe boll made a movie out of this game, it would be better than the game...
- music albums have Explicit stickers and parental warnings but video games do not have Bad Gameplay warnings...

Damn Ubisoft and their dumb UPlay.

I got the newest Prince of Persia about a week and a half ago because the whole series is a lot of fun. I've had some problems with the game.

First of all there are several rather large glitches. One is a game breaker if you don't know how to fix it. You basically get to a spot at the end of the game and if you die there you just keep respawning there because that's where the autosave last saves and you die and die and die. Many people had to restart altogether to get around this. Turns out the fix is to delete the autosave from your memory and fall back on the "backup autosave." It's annoying, but at least it's fixable.

Another glitch is where you rank up parts of your character and after saving and quitting and turnign the game back on all your stat points are either gone or redistributed. There is no fix for this. You're just SOL.

My glitch is the worst. The game hasn't been giving me any stats to even upgrade. I played the game for over 3 hours and the whole time it's telling me "You've earned another XP point! Hit the 'back' button to redeem." Every time I do this it shows I have "0" points. When I try to spend one it confirms that I don't have any to spend. I delete all my saves and start over....same problem. I delete it all again and start over again...same problem. It's actually worse this time because for some reason the game has some "ghost" memory of where I was at XP wise and starts leveling me up from my initial playthru and it's STILL not giving me points. I finally broke down yesterday and called Ubisoft. I talked to a guy by the name of Brian who said he's only heard of this happening to one other person and that Ubisoft is aware of the problem and is working on it. Turns out it's the Ubisoft UPlay feature that broke my game. UPlay is a feature in newer Ubisoft games that gets you more content for playing the game and admittedly has some kinda cool stuff in it. Anyways, one of the rewards in the new PoP is 2 automatic skill points. I guess me redeeming that reward broke my game because UPlay is still in beta.

Bottom line is that I'm boned. A game patch won't help me because it's UPlay that's broke and it's been in "beta" for over a year already. How much longer will in be in beta? The PS3's Home service has been in beta for almost 3 years now.

I asked the Ubisoft guy if he could just refund my purchase and he said there's nothing wrong with the game and that if I just play under a different profile it will work fine. Retarded. I want to play under I 3N3MY I. That's my gamertag and that's what I paid to play on.

Currently I can't find a way to delete UPlay from my gamertag and from what I've been reading on the internet there isn't a way to do it. My only other idea is to try to attach my UPlay to a different gamertag so I'll be trying that at home.

Pray for my patience.