At least, that's what Gamespot's tally on my Games List page says. This latest milestone came courtesy of the latest game to arrive in my mailbox, The Getaway.

I've known about The Getaway for a while. And actually, I was watching a King of Queens re-run last night, and Lou Ferrigno (of The Incredible Hulk, and played himself in King of Queens), said The Getaway was his favorite game. Heh.

But it only got a 6.9 at Gamespot. Despite this, I love games like Grand Theft Auto and True Crime (am I the only one that actually liked the first True Crime? I dunno), so I figured I'd probably like The Getaway as well. But unfortunately, I just played the first driving and shooting stage in The Getaway, and I noticed a number of obvious flaws, giving the game a pretty rough first impression.

The worst of these flaws is when you take damage. When you first start playing, you're driving, and chasing after some bad guys. While I was getting the hang of the controls, I obviously smashed up my car. One really annoying thing is the car not only slowed down, but also started pulling to the left, so I had to constantly push right to make the car go straight. I guess that's realistic, but this is a game. It's annoying.

To my dread, a similar feature occurs during the on-foot shooting sections. When you take a bullet, your character drags his ass through the level at a snail's pace and hobbles around like, well, like he just took a bullet. It's annoying because you move so slowly. Your character moves slowly even with full health (I was searching for a run button but apparently there isn't one), but man, don't get shot.

So, it's pretty boring so far. I also don't like how you can't skip the cutscenes. But, some of my favorite games have a bad first impression, so I might like it if I play it more. I dunno.

I also finally finished XIII. It struck me as pretty lengthy for a FPS. I reviewed it as well. Czech it out if you get the chance. That's all. I'll catch ya later.

Hear me out here. This is just speculation on my part. Mainly something I'm just curious about. I'm sure other people have brought this up elsewhere as well.

Now, we've already seen the Wii, it's all motion-based. Meanwhile, we have the PS3 which introduced the Sixaxis at first. I'm not sure how many games actually support the motion controls to any real degree, but it's there at least. Then we got Microsoft introducing the new motion thingamajig for the Xbox 360.

It seemed Nintendo always had motion controls in the back of their mind since the Power Glove. They just waited all this time in between because the technology wasn't there yet. It's pretty much here now. The Wii is the undisputed king sales-wise, a huge leap from the Gamecube which was the distant third in its generation.

The Wii is still flying off the shelves, which is important to note because it's been around a few years and yet people are still buying it. This has apparently inspired both Sony and Microsoft to follow suit with their own takes on motion controls.

If the Wii had flopped in sales, I'm sure that probably would've been the end of the motion control experiment. But since the Wii seems to be catching on in a big way, and its competitors are following, could we eventually see all home consoles use motion controls as the main input device for games?

A lot of people cringe at the thought, myself included, but it seems to be the future. I mean, for the last few generations we've basically been using similar 3D technology, but making it bigger, adding more possibilities for games and improving the visuals.

As someone who's played the current-gen consoles but hasn't felt the need to actually buy one yet, I feel inclined to say the leap from PS2 to PS3 was much smaller than the leap from PS1 to PS2. The graphics especially, are not nearly as big of an improvement. Also, PS2 had many types of games that, technology-wise, were simply impossible to accomplish on the previous hardware. The PS3 and 360? Not so much. That's why most of the games you see on the PS3 and 360 are just sequels or games in similar genres that could've easily been made for the PS2 or Xbox. The visuals just wouldn't have been quite as good.

I think there's going to be a point where visuals in games peak, and it's just going to be impossible to make games look any better. We're already close at that point when you think about it, at least with standard technology. In many cases, you have to buy an expensive HD television just to see any discernable difference in video quality between PS2 and PS3 games. That should be an indication that the "graphics race" is almost over and the hardware makers should be finding other ways to advance their new consoles.

It's hard to imagine console games replacing the standard controller. But I think the PS2 in particular was really the defining moment for a lot of aspects of gaming. There really is no way to improve upon the Dualshock. You can add gimmicks to it but really, with the shape, the amount of buttons on the controller, each of which is perfectly accessible and perfect for every genre of games. I think we've finally exhausted the concept of the NES-esque "d-pad and buttons" controller as far as it's willing to go.

So, anyway, I kind of ranted about this, but there was a lot I wanted to say. In the future, will all consoles be motion-based? I'm not sure. I don't necessarily want that to happen. If I did, I would've bought a Wii by now, but instead I'm still playing the PS2.

But, with all the other enhancements usually made to new consoles showing signs of starting to peak (at least in my eyes), unless someone invents a truly 3D television, or a fourth dimension for games, or a better controller than the dualshock, I see motion controls being a new advancement that, if it's a viable business option, could be the new trend for video game development in the future.

That's all for today. Bye everyone.

R.I.P. Mitsuharu Misawa - The greatest of all time.

Hey everyone. I got a few things to talk about today.

First, I finished the main story in GTA: Liberty City Stories. Spent just over 22 hours on it since Saturday. Extremely lengthy for a handheld port. Man, as behind the times I am with the home consoles, I'm even more behind the times on the handhelds. Are there a lot of handheld games as long as Liberty City Stories? I mean, I did spend some time on the distractions, but by and large I think the main story is at least 15 hours.

Secondly, I got Capcom Collection. I'm extremely happy with it so far. Obviously as soon as I got it, I jumped right into Street Fighter 2. Man, it's amazing just how timeless this game is. I remember I played the Super Nintendo version back in the day a lot more than the arcade. It's harder than I remember it being, but that's probably because the SNES version might not have been as punishing as the arcade version. But man, it's still so much fun to play.

As for my favorite Street Fighter character? Well, that would easily be Sheng Long of course! But, I could see why you wouldn't count him, so other than him, gee. My favorite character when I played on the SNES back in the day was Blanka, but so far on this version I've mostly played as Ryu.

As for the other games in the Capcom Collection, this is one of the most stacked game compilations I've played on the PS2. Final Fight is one of my favorite games (although I always preferred Streets of Rage over it), 1942 and Commando are as fun as I remember. I never played any of the Ghosts & Goblins series before and they seem simple but really fun to me. My only problem with most of these games is they're so hard, they outright kicked my ass. But that's pretty much how quarter munchers always were. Luckily a good number of the games in the collection have infinite continues.

I also got a package of 3 games from Ebay. Legends of Wrestling, Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Cabela's Dangerous Hunts. I didn't have huge expectations for any of them due to bad reviews, but I only ended up paying 6 dollars for the package and that's including shipping. Funny thing is, I looked at the package, and it turns out the guy who sold me these ended up paying $5.75 for shipping. So after paying the shipping cost, he only made a quarter. He was probably just trying to get rid of them.

Legends of Wrestling is one of the most boring games I've played on the PS2 so far. I'm such a diehard wrestling fan that I'm trying to track down as many wrestling games as I can find. LOW is one of the worst I've played. Return to Castle Wolfenstein seems fun to me so far, but I haven't played it enough to make a determination.

Cabela's Dangerous Hunts leaves a horrible first impression, it's pretty boring so far but I can see myself getting some enjoyment out of it once I learn its intricacies. One thing I find odd is it's a Greatest Hits title. I've always been perplexed by the fact that there seems to be a big enough market for hunting and fishing simulations that these games are able to be successful, yet they're so obscure to most gamers that they don't even get reviewed by Gamespot and other sites most of the time.

And that's about all I gotta talk about here. Still enjoying games. Hope you are too.