I've been lucky with my recent selection of games. I'm playing Siren 3 and Valkyria Chronicles on the PS3 and Prince of Persian: Warrior Within on the PC. I'm really enjoying all 3 of them, despite the fact they're have very distinct $tyles and are from 3 different genres.

I bought the Japanese version of Siren. The game is in English but I've chosen to buy the blu-ray version instead of downloading the chapters.

I'm still on chapter 6 but so far I think it's an easier and more streamlined version of the first game. I haven't been required to find hidden items or complete obscure actions in order to unlock a second or third version of a chapter. Also, the story is being told in chronological order, or at least it appears to be. It's a big change from the original concept but the feeling of being in a movie has improved due to the episodic nature of the game, not to mention that there are a lot of scripted deaths that really do add spice to the story.

Leaving the other 2 games for another post, I'd like to jump to the bad choices part.

Though I do make a lot of bad choices myself, I honestly did not expect Activision Blizzard to do such a series of mistakes about an important game like Starcraft. First, they've decided to sell the game in 3 packages. It seems they're too good for the $50-$60 price range and came to the conclusion that their products are worth $100-$150. There's no official prices yet but there would be no reason to release 3 $20 games instead of a full $60 experience. So, it's fair to expect 3 $40~$60 products. One game for each campaign.

Am I the only one that thinks that this is bad? I mean, the standard RTS package is a campaign for each race and then an expansion (or more) with additional material / level for each race on the following years. So, the game provides something for each race, a starting point to get the hang of the game and start playing. Now, what was once considered a full product was divided into 3 pieces and only Activision Blizzard would know how many expansions.

As if that wasn't enough, the giant company has decided not to include support to LAN. Such a decision can only have one reason, to fight piracy, even though Act Bliz claims that it has worked hard on the new Battle.net and want players to enjoy the game to the fullest.

First, they do not want gamers to enjoy, they're forcing gamers to enjoy the game to the fullest if they decide to go multiplayer. Hey, sure no one has to buy the game and I'll talk about that in a few but once you purchase, you're limited to a multiplayer on Act Bliz servers, even though you might be at a LAN house with 3 other friends at your arm's reach.

It's a personal experience but I've only played on Battle.Net a couple of times and very much prefered to go to a LAN house and play the game with 3 or 7 other players on a local game.

What's worse, removing LAN support will only hurt the ones that actually bought the game since hackers will most definitely allow a pirate copy to connect to a non Battle.Net server, where you'll be able to set up the game and tune it to your taste. Just like DRM, it's a limitation imposed on a legit copy. There are hundreds of private wow servers to prove that redirecting a connection to another server is easy and will most certainly be done to Starcraft shortly after its release.

I have been following the development of those games (no longer a game) and those news really let me down. If Act Bliz does decide to release a game for $ 150 and to deny LAN support, I'll refrain from buying the game.