Welcome back to the GearGames weekly video game release feature here at Gear Diary! Wow … what a big week! We have the third entry into the classic Playstation-exclusive God of War franchise (the first two are two of the best PS2 games made, and the PSP version is in the top few games for THAT console!), and also the next entries into the amazingly long-lasting Pokemon franchise, Pokemon HeartGold Version and Pokemon SoulSilver Version, and much more.

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Welcome back to the GearGames weekly video game release feature here at Gear Diary! The irony of a game with a title of FINAL Fantasy reaching its 13th franchise entry (not to mention numerous spin-offs and add-ons) is not lost, yet the high quality of most of the games helps fans cut Square Enix some slack. Those fans are being tested again with the release of Final Fantasy XIII, which is coming for both the XBOX360 as well as the PS3. The ‘tests’ in this case are related to the fact that the graphics on the XBOX360 version are significantly scaled back from the PS3 version due to the PS3 using the much larger Blu-Ray disk for storage (for those keeping score expect a Force 5 Nerdstorm on Wednesday). Also, the game itself has been criticized for having very slow pacing and being extremely linear and removing many of the key features of previous games.

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Uh oh, Amazon…hope you’re sitting down for this one. Looks like a survey of future ebook buyers shows everyone’s waiting on the iPad. According to Changewave, specifically 40% of prospective ebookers are marking April 3rd on their calendars. The real bad news, though, is for Barnes and Noble and Sony. At least Amazon claimed 28% of potential future sales. Poor B&N and Sony are only picking up a 6% and 1% share, respectively.

(Image courtesy Investors.com)

So what’s going on with these numbers? Has Apple pre-emptively won the ebook war? Maybe not…let’s put some context into this.

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Just a quickie here: Sony’s flagship Playstation 3 has been struck with a bug that is related to a clock setting on the online PSN system, but that bug ‘infects’ systems that connect to the network and make it impossible to play any games with Trophy capabilities. Unknown to many, Sony requires ‘Trophy Sync’ to occur when a game starts up, and this bug causes errors and therefore will not let you start any games with trophies. That just happens to be most of them – including last week’s hot release ‘Heavy Rain’ as well as most other popular games. The only bright spot is that apparently the bug doesn’t impact the more recently released ‘PS3 Slim’ systems.

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Welcome back to the GearGames weekly video game release feature here at Gear Diary! The dust is still settling from the Winter Olympics, but it is time to get ready for spring with this week’s annual barrage of baseball games! We get both MLB 10: The Show and Major League Baseball 2K10, the former released for all Sony platforms and the latter coming to everything but your toaster! This games are generally solid and fun and really intended for serious fans who stay on the treadmill, paying $60 a year for minor gameplay and graphical tweaks and roster updates. I tend to grab one of these games every few years which provides more granular and noticeable changes.

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Welcome back to the GearGames weekly video game release feature here at Gear Diary! Some pretty cool stuff this week, including the high profile release of the PS3 exclusive Heavy Rain, made by the same team that brought us the solid adventure game Indigo Prophesy a few years back. Heavy Rain has been highlighted as an example of the ‘uncanny valley’, the point where virtual characters look so real that the most subtle differences from actual behavior make them grotesque. As a game, it has gotten solid reviews so far – reviewers have had the game for several weeks and while I haven’t heard anything revolutionary, it sounds like a great game. The XBOX360 finally gets the port of Risen (my PC review is here), and it appears that the time spent polishing it might have helped based on differences from the earlier European X360 release.

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I recent reviewed SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo 3, having gotten it for my PSP Go on the PSN (Playstation Network) store. Getting anything through PSN requires having a full account linked into the store, and purchases tie in to your credit card and are permanently linked into your PSN account. In other words, if you have a PSN game, Sony knows you haven’t pirated it or gotten it used. In exchange, I can re-download the game on any of my (four) PSP systems tied to my account, so that anyone in my house can play any of the PSP games I own easily.

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I have had a somewhat interesting history with the PSP SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo games. When the first one came out in late 2005, I was skeptical and rented it, and soon thereafter used it as an example in my ‘New Year Gaming Resolutions’ article earlier this year. Here is what I said:

“The SOCOM Confirmation of the Coded Arms Games Principle – SOCOM is the type of game I don’t like too much – small single player but mostly multiplayer (see Star Wars Battlefront Principle). So I rented it. Halfway through I was thinking I should have bought the game, but by the time the rental was over, I had played all of the offline modes at least once and had put enough online hours in that I felt done. So I returned it with no regrets.” Continue Reading

Welcome back to the GearGames weekly video game release feature here at Gear Diary! This is another interesting week, as we have the reboot of a video game based on two movies based that had in turn spawned a series of movies. And yet based on early looks it looks like it might all work. The other big release of the week is one of the few times a PSP game is one of the top releases, with the latest entry in the SOCOM franchise SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 3, which is actually pretty solid based on my time with a pre-release copy of the game.

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Still searching for a Valentine’s Day gift? Freaking out that the east coast Snowpacalypse is going to severely limit your shopping options? The eBook stars have aligned this week, with the nook back in stock, Sony Reader bundles, and of course, Amazon is prepared with plenty of Kindles!

Let’s start with Sony. They’re offering a special “Valentine’s Day Bundle“; a red Sony Reader Touch Edition, a case with booklight built in, and a free copy of “The Heart Speaks: A Cardiologist Reveals the Secret Language of Healing“, all for $329.99.

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Welcome back to the GearGames weekly video game release feature here at Gear Diary! This is a ‘Big Daddy’ of a week … ok, that was relly bad. The big release of the week is yet another delayed but highly anticipated multi-platform game Bioshock 2, the sequel to the critically acclaimed 2007 release. Early reviews are very positive.

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Welcome back to the GearGames weekly video game release feature here at Gear Diary! This is an interesting week, as we are once again seeing mixture of high profile releases and the usual January dearth of new games. The big release of the week is the highly anticipated new MMO (massively multiplayer online) game Star Trek Online.

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It didn’t come as a surprise to me when, just hours after Steve Jobs announced the iPad, the good folks over at Evernote announced plans to modify the current iPhone and iPod touch app so that it becomes one killer iPad App. In their own words…

Evernote is going to support the Apple iPad. Oh Yeah. We’re gonna support the hell out of it. We’re glad to see that the current Evernote iPhone app will run on the iPad without modification, but we’ll be modifying it anyway to optimize the experience on the larger device. Oh how we’ll be modifying it! Expect rapid improvements to our iPhone app which will benefit all of our iPhone, iPod Touch and, now, iPad users in the near future.

The blog post goes on to mention support for other tablets as the “Year of the Tablet” unfolds…

Ok, so we’re excited by the iPad itself, and by the HP Slate, and the Sony VAIO L series, and the Nvidia Tegra, and by the added light that these and other devices will shine on touch computing in general. I’m looking at some happy engineers right now.

But wait, there’s more Evernote news…

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Welcome back to the GearGames weekly video game release feature here at Gear Diary! We are now starting to see the games that were delayed last fall leaking into the release schedule – although the one that is dropping this week is more of a THUD than a leak! Mass Effect 2 is the follow-up to the 2007/2008 XBOX360 / PC game from Bioware. Wait – didn’t they just release Dragon Age: Origins? Yep – they’ve been quite busy! The game looks to fix the many items criticized in the earlier game (which still scored ~95%) and make it more of a streamlines action-shooter-RPG. So far the early looks are saying they’ve succeeded. Continue Reading

(Image courtesy Aurum3)
Didn’t get that Kindle 2 or nook for Christmas? Scraped together all your pennies and it still isn’t enough for a shiny new ebook reader?

Well, if you hit up the Sony Style Outlet, you can snag a Sony Pocket Edition for $159.99 (regularly $199.99), or a Sony Reader Touch Edition for $239.99 (regularly $299.99).

Neither device includes any wireless capabilities, but both support ePUB and have e-ink screens; if you are in the market for a basic ebook reader with solid hardware and a wide selection of store choices, you can’t go wrong with either of these!

Via mobileread