Sony has seen no end of bad press since just after they confirmed the early leak of the PSP Go. There was the lack of a second analog stick, the high price, the lack of clarity on what happened to UMD libraries, the price, and so on. But now the system has been released, and I’ve had it in my hands for several weeks and been able to evaluate the reality of things compared to the hype. So how does it measure up? Read on and find out.

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Anyone who has played at least a few hours of Dragon Age: Origins knows that over the course of the game certain areas become overrun with Darkspawn and are no longer accessible. The announcement of the first DLC since the launch of the game pretty much tells you that Ostagar is once such place. Read on for more details!

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This has been a while in coming … since the launch of the PSP Go I have been annoyed that many games are coming out on UMD but not on the PSN Store, and many that DO come out are a few days or even a couple of weeks later. Certainly none of them are on sale, whereas Amazon had the wonderful new Half Minute Hero for 1/3 off the other day! Of course, that game also took 2 weeks to transition from UMD to PSN after release. OK … but those are all third party games and Sony has to negotiate with publishers to get them to release digital copies.

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(image courtesy of Techcrunch)

Hello and welcome to another “State of the ebook!” We have an avalanche of news this week, from smartphone news to international expansion and beyond!

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(photo courtesy of Mobile Read)

Sony is proving they are taking their ebook reading customers very seriously. If you bought a PRS-500 (the first Sony Reader I believe), you can choose to send it in for a firmware upgrade or trade it in to save some money on the price of a newer model.

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Welcome back to the GearGames weekly video game release feature here at Gear Diary! Now we begin the ‘post MW2 period of the season. But while many games were moved to get out of the way of the big release, we still have good stuff, most notably Left 4 Dead 2. This game was the subject of a big boycott effort because some felt not enough DLC was released and the sequel came too soon. Have they never played Madden? Anyway, the game looks great and personally I can’t wait for an excuse to get back to more zombie-killing madness!

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Welcome back to the GearGames weekly video game release feature here at Gear Diary! This we get the game claiming to be ‘the most pre-ordered game of all-time (not coincidentally by folks who make money off pre-orders!) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The early word is that this is a fine addition to the franchise for console gamers, offering a similarly short single player campaign, but loads of fun in multiplayer. I say ‘for console gamers’, as the PC version has been ’stripped for parts’, with the multiplayer neutered, the ability to modify the game in classic PC style removed, and the price increased. Bleh. But for fans of console shooters, this is considered a ‘must have’.

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One of the most anticipated and overly-hyped games of the year has finally arrived – Dragon Age Origins from Bioware. Like any other game ever made, there are good and bad points. For fans of role-playing games (such as me), the facts that it was made by Bioware and was being called the ’spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate’ was enough to get me to pre-order as soon as it was possible. But there were several things that made me very wary – in particular a puerile advertising campaign that focused on blood spray, heavy metal, gore and sexual overtones to the point I thought the game might well have been called ‘Dragon Age: Blood & Boobies’. Now that the game has been released, I have already played ~30-40 hours and wanted to share a few quick thoughts. Continue Reading

Welcome back to the GearGames weekly video game release feature here at Gear Diary! Anyone who is a fan of role-playing games (RPG) is very excited for this week as perhaps the biggest RPG release of the year (we can debate whether Risen is bigger in the comments) – Dragon Age: Origins. The folks who have brought us the Baldur’s Gate series, Neverwinter Nights games, Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, Jade Empire and more are back – with the ’spiritual successor’ to Baldur’s Gate. I am rushing to finish everything else on my plate so I can be ready for this one on Tuesday. Recently it was announced that the PS3 version was un-delayed, which is nice since it means everyone gets it this week!

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The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has announced to voluntary recalls.

The first involves two Halloween themed flashlights which were sold at Target stores between August 2009 – September 2009.

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Welcome back to the GearGames weekly video game release feature here at Gear Diary! OK, you might be wondering why this is the only place NOT highlighting DJ Hero for this week. Well, while that game looks amazingly fun and will sell millions, I chose the expansion to one of the absolute best games of 2008 that got relatively little attention because it is a turn-based strategy game – King’s Bounty: Armored Princess. Of course, since we are in the midst of the Fall Gaming Avalanche, those are but the tip of the iceberg!

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There are few franchises that have cast a larger shadow over the history of console gaming than Final Fantasy, and the core series of role-playing games has been constantly tweaked and upgraded through the years to stay current. There have certainly been games that have strayed from the usual jRPG format – the classic strategy game series Final Fantasy Tactics, and more recently the RTS-like Final Fantasy XII Revenant Wings for the Nintendo DS. But one of the most anticipated entries in the series is the fighting game called Dissidia Final Fantasy. Square Enix released a demo on the PSN Store, and more recently released the full game in UMD version only. I took a look at the game based on a copy provided by the publisher, so does it live up to the years of hype? Read on to find out!

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Welcome back to the GearGames weekly video game release feature here at Gear Diary! Last week was strong … but this week is just crazy! Some highlights include Borderlands, a hybrid FPS / RPG / Co-op / open world / post-apocalyptic shooter that hits PS3 & XBOX360 this week and PC next week. Also huge this week – albeit with a younger audience – is Bakugan Battle Brawlers, the first game based on the very popular ‘catch em all’ style game featuring magnetic balls that transform into monsters.

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As I’ve tossed out before while talking about the Wolfenstein iPhone releases, my history with Wolfenstein is nearly 30 years old. I’m not sure how I initially found out about it – it could have been an impulse buy at the local computer center – but from the moment I started playing Castle Wolfenstein on my Apple ][+ I was hooked. Locks that told you they would take 75 seconds to pick – and that was *real time*! During which you were vulnerable to the ever-roaming guard patrols.

By the time Wolfenstein 3D came out in 1992 the gaming press was better so I knew it was coming and got it quickly after release (day of release rush wasn’t the sport it is today). I played the heck out of that for quite a while, and still love that game, having gotten it for the iPhone recently. My wife bought me Return to Castle Wolfenstein when that arrived, and I have recently replayed that on my netbook, and it is still a wonderful experience. So I was a natural ‘easy sell’ for Wolfenstein. Except for the fact that I found nothing particularly intriguing in the pre-release press.

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Since the PSP Go arrived I have lamented at the cost of the MINIs, those bite-sized games that have so far mainly been retreads of games from the iTunes App Store. For example, Fieldrunners costs $2.99 on the App Store and $6.99 for the PSP; And Hero of Sparta costs $1.99 on the App Store and $4.99 for the PSP. At first I assumed it was part of the whole ‘we charge more because we can’ Premium Pricing model for the PSP Go. But according to Andrew Yoon of Joystiq, it might be in part due to the steep cost of getting ESRB rating approval for games in North America.

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