Everything Wrong With The PSP...And Its Commercials

Kevin Butler? Proof that a giant company like Sony can come back into the public limelight after years of abuse. Then again, all the Playstation 3 really needed was some good marketing. It's a more powerful, albeit more expensive, game console than the Xbox 360. And it offers just about everything the 360 has, often for less. And the only major region the PS3 has undersold the 360 thus far is in the US.

How To Keep Your Computer Running Smoothly

One question I'm frequently asked is this: how do you keep your computer running smoothly all the time? I have two solutions, based around two different schools of thought on computing. Both are simple and anyone can do them.

Alan Wake Semi-Review: I...JUST...CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!

Alan Wake has an 83 metacritic score. Yet the only thing I can think about when I read through this list is how many of these publications are even more than full of it, or have seriously never read a decent book or seen a somewhat good movie. I think this for one sole reason: I couldn't play through Alan Wake.

What Alan Wake does is take a narrative, which by itself is pretty decent (my younger brother played through the entire game and liked it, up until the end), and undermines every line of dialog, ever cinematic and every action on screen by telling the player that he/she is a complete idiot. After two full levels, I was offended enough and ripped the disc out of my 360, promptly put it back in it's Gamefly envelope, and it's now sitting in my mailbox.

I don't know where the hell Remedy gets off on describing every little detail as a thought Alan has. We don't often get to read the minds of people in real life, nor in film or books, or even most stories of any sort. Sure, there are exceptions, and often those exceptions work great. Here, it doesn't. Not only is Alan a criminally dull participant in his own game, he's blessed with an enlarged Prefrontal Cortex which transmits his thoughts at the worst opportune moment. Had I wanted to play a game that told me everything that was happening, I'd have let my brother come in and tell me what to do, when to push buttons, when to fire, etc.


The reason I just can't take it anymore is because not only is the narrative effectively ruined by Alan, the actual writing is pretty awful it itself. The book he wrote, from what I gathered in two chapters, is crap. Much of the dialog is garbage. Characters are, besides for Barry, not characters at all, just graphically designed automatons. I don't know what's worse, that the most anticipated narrative-driven title about a writer is poorly written, or that the writer himself is equally bad.

Perhaps my old editor's mantra was true: there's no such thing as a bad writer, only a bad editor.

Point being, I couldn't finish the game. I barely got past the second chapter. I don't want to play any more, and refuse to. I don't see how so many "reviewers" could have liked Alan Wake...then again, I guess I do.

Inception Review

Mind-thrillers, or films which dance around an idea that we all have at one point or other in our lives, are often the most complex and most emotionally draining and intensive movies we can see. Inception is no exception, and if the trailers raving that it’s from Christopher Nolan mean anything, we know that seeing this film means watching perfection.

For Nolan, this means perfection to a fault.

Attempting to be this decade’s The Matrix, Inception stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Cobb, a sort of industrial espionage agent working for a nameless mega-corporation to discover the secrets buried deep within the minds of the biggest corporate enemies. In his attempt to return to his children, Cobb embarks on a journey deeper into the mind than anyone has ever gone, doing something no one has ever done.

This film takes viewers on a sort of roller-coaster experience, doing its best to describe what we are capable of dreaming about. In this respect, Inception is stunted by, ironically enough, a general lack of imagination and interesting characters. While Nolan’s The Dark Knight raved fans with the late Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker, no characters in Inception were captivating. Performances were fair enough, though possible rising star Ellen Page failed to provide any flair, instead playing the role of know-it-all psychologist.

The blandness of the characters, with the exception of the ever charming Ken Watanabe, is offset by visual spectacles and mental gymnastics that will cause any viewer to think through their own personal experience with dreams, and perhaps even judging reality. However, the dreams shown were nearly always drab, unremarkable segments that at the most resemble famous cityscapes. Some visual effects were exciting to witness, such as Escher's Infinite Stairs or seeing the world fold upon itself, with a ceiling another person’s floor. These unique designs are far too rare, and although clocking in at 2:28, I’d have liked to have seen more.

A tale of dream invasion, thought privacy and the power of the mind certainly resonates with today’s audiences, and indeed I expect some to come home to a sleepless night, pondering this film’s true meaning, coming to grips with reality as we see it. Therein lies the strength of Inception, driving home the idea, which like a virus that infects our very being, our dreams feel real until we wake up, and perhaps we’re all just dreaming right now, in this very instance, waiting to wake up.

Yet while Neo’s story gave us a bland hero in Keanu Reeves, it also gave us a great orator, tumbling us further down the rabbit hole with Laurence Fishburne. His speech of which pill to take, red or blue, was infinitely more memorable than any one scene in Inception, which ultimately leads us to its biggest flaw: in the end, no one will care. We may all question our sanity, but a few days after seeing the movie we’ll go back to our lives as if we’d never seen it. With no defining characters, no incredible moments, and only a clockwork, almost robotically made film, Inception left me feeling empty. An utter lack of humor, a general disregard for emotion and a cast equally limited makes Inception a mediocre film at best.

OPTIMUS!!!

I don't get you.

How To One Man A Gaming Site

People think its impossible to run a gaming website singlehandedly. TNT couldn't be farther from the truth. Not only is it possible, it happens regularly, possibly on sites you frequent. But how cooed one person possibly do everything for a site entirely on their lonesome?

First, you must understand two main principles: first, they are only delivering editorial content, and second, they have financial backing.

Actually single-handedly running a game site is easy. All you need to do is report on games and gaming news, day in and day out. The hard part is finding a site that needs a one-man team, and trusts you to do it well enough to earn them money.

I offered this to someone awhile back, and explained that the best way to earn the most money is to find someone who can deliver unique content so that much larger sites would link to you constantly, while simultaneously creating stable and normal content so that you can grow your personal reader base. This isn't nearly as hard as it sounds. Standard content is easy: news, previews, reviews and events coverage are all things that, as a medium-sized website, one person can handle with ease.

Unique content is always more difficult, though a good writer with a deep imagination won't have any trouble with this at all. I myself have a file with nothing but ideas for possible game articles, and it's a growing list at that. Every time I have an idea, whether I can use it, implement it or write about it or not, it goes in. Someday, that idea will come to fruition, and for one of those ideas, it could be this week.

The point is simple: keep a steady stream of standardized content and a reoccurring unique article, perhaps that comes at a specific time. When your readers know what to expect and when to expect it, they will be there to consume it.

Of course, the best website would be one run not only by one individual, but by several. For gaming, I count at the bare minimum of five, and the only necessity is their location. There should be at least one person in each of these places: San Francisco, Seattle, New York, London and Japan (I know, Japan is not very specific).Why these cities? Because that's where the biggest gaming news comes from. (Japan, duh; San Fran is a huge port city with a lot of foreign developers with US offices, and Sony's gaming HQ; Seattle, close proximity to Microsoft, Nintendo and a ton of dev's; New York, closeness to some devs, but host to a wide variety of events, as well as plenty of hardware showings; London for all UK events and dev's). The numbers can differ, but a site like Kotaku clearly has the right idea. Cover all of the major gaming cities and you've got all-around coverage.

But, of course, Kotaku is a huge site that's really well funded. And they're growing. If you want to manhandle a gaming site on your own, you can't be dealing with the marketing, advertising, and anything that takes away from editorial or you won't ever have time to make the magic happen. Then again, if you don't have someone doing that already, chances are you won't be able to afford running a site on your own anyways...

Now, running a site on your own is still fairly easy. That said, sometimes there just aren't enough hours in the day to do everything. That's why you need to plan ahead by creating an editorial calendar for all the content you have planned for the month, with contingency plans, and a small supply of freelancers who you can call upon should you require the assistance. That, or interns.

Picking the location of this person is also extremely important. If you live in the middle of nowhere and have limited access to events, you probably won't get very far unless you're really good or get flown around often on the publisher's bill. The farther you are from most companies, the more flying time it'll be, so living on the west coast for gaming is probably best. If you're in the UK, that's great and all, but if you run a British game site, you may want to consider hiring an American to run the site. America is lucky enough to get early access to most games (compared to everyone else), everyone speaks or reads English, and if he is good enough to understand the nuances of British dialect, then you're golden.

I only say this because I, for the most part, do understand that thanks to writing for a British magazine for a good eight months. It helped tremendously.

That's pretty much it. It's not all that hard at all. Just find someone who can write well, pay him enough to keep him happy and make sure he lives in a reasonable area. Then give him some discretionary funds so he can provide unique content and give him goals to reach. Give him access to your analytics so he can actively work on gaining readership. Remember, a writer just wants his ego soothed, to know that the highest number of people are reading his material. A good one will get that and make you money. A bad one...well, you'll get rid of him soon enough anyways.

I'm Available!

It's weird to be a free man once again. Just left Tom's Guide, where I've been for a year, and I'm almost completely on my own now save for a few writing gigs I freelance at regularly. This same exact thing happened two years ago come October, when Gameworld Network officially closed down while I was the Hardware Manager. The only difference is that when GWN shut down, I was really bummed. When I became free of Tom's Guide, I felt good. Lighter, even.

Of course, I'm also now on a much lower pay-grade, and with such horrible timing pending the iPhone 4's imminent release, considering my desire for testing new tech. With the iPhone 4, I'm really looking for a phone that can easily replace my need for a point and shoot...while still remaining an excellent phone. Some phones have had excellent cameras, like the Palm Pre and Nokia N900...but the phones themselves were still lacking in comparison to the iPhone.

To make my life even clearer, I plan on finishing this final iPad article and all my E3 previews this week, doing some extra late spring cleaning and getting rid of a ton of crap collected over the past year, possibly catch up on a few games I missed (Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Alan Wake, for starters), and working on a few projects I've been holding off until I earned myself some free time.

That said, I'm also freely available for writing purposes, be it journalistically or otherwise, in tech or videogames. I don't think I'll be actively looking for work unless an amazing opportunity presents itself, but I'm a sucker for interesting projects.