Oooh, Notvraze. I dunno about the "if you can only get one the 360 is the best way to go" as , tbh, you can only play PS3 exclusives on a PS3 but you can play many 360 "exclusives" on a PC, and often at better resolutions and better framerates AND in the case of L4D better EVERYTHING.

I wouldn't wish to be without any of my gaming machines(even the handhelds which have been AMAZING this year-bar my USELESS iPhone-piece of crap)but think that the 360 would be an easier one to miss than my PS3 just because you'd lose out on a few fewer games my way AND Live is a totally indefensible con, imo. There's NOT £40 worth of difference there for ANYONE and if you have three kids as I do you'll start to understand how much of a con Live really is-plus I actually prefer the lack of cross party chat on PSN as it killed TF2 on Live for me!

Better PS3 list than 360 one, tbh. I won't harp on about the usual "you can play those better on a PS!" BS that PSfanboys always bring up about the 360/PC "exclusives" but will say that L4D on the 360 was a massive rip off. It's the worst case of a watered down PC to console port this generation and GR should have the guts to point that out. It looks worse, runs worse, has no community or mod support and less dev support than the PC version-and guess what? It's dearer too! Seriously, PS3 owners should be jealous of the incredible PC experience and NOT the woefully over expensive and under featured 360 effort that Valve vreated to make a quick buck that they wouldn't have to bother much about-then sold it to 360 zealots by hammering the PS3 and it's community/. The sooner we get them back to JUST making PC games the better(the efforts on 360 are VERY weak ports compared to what other PC based devs produce these days-and though WAY,WAY better than the terribkle EA made PS3 port of tOB the Valve made 360 port still isn't great)as then we might get to see some HL again this century. Honestly people, I LOVE L4D(and L4D2)but I'd NEVER put it down as something someone would want a 360 for as the 360 versions are so pale as to be virtually transparent by comparison to the gull gat, exciting mod fuelled PC games so wuill everyone stop eulogising about what amounts to a quick, lazy money making scam as Valve don't care about CONSOLES-you can pretend they love our 360's but you'd be very wrong-nd they just don't try as hard on them or care wat console ciommunities get from their games either-ewhy no mod support Valve?MS? Sony managed it for the lower selling UT3 so whjat's the problem as it's something that would give L4D some value on the 360 and make me feel that the £40(still hurts as it's more than twice what I paid on Steam)was, sort of, worthwhile.

Otherwise, however, with the Mass Effects of this world you can justify getting a 360 to play them on as the quality is close enough to the PC games(esp if you install the games to HDD)that the advantages of console gaming still make them a good choice here. Some great games for 360 this year(after I barely played mine this!)with SC:C and AW maybe the games that , finally, break the PS3 hold on the best looking console exclusives titles as they seem like they had both the same kind of dev time AND budget of your KZ2s of this world. Reach should see Bungie flex some creative muscle on a Halo game for the first real time since the
Marmite flavoured(but at the time AMAZING to look at) Halo2 and 2010, Natal and all should be a better bet for the 360 than 2009 has been. Could really have pointed out a gew more 360 things though, GR, as to me the PS3 part looked better and I think this year is a LOT more equal than any so far this generation between the two-that said did you not put GT5 in?

As for the Wii: It'll be a good year for the white box, imo, with the NMH and RS sequels, SMG2, New Zelda, FF CC CB, Fragile coming west(where's my Fatal Frame 4 Ninty? Where?)and both HVS new games looking pretty sweet. Articles like this make me pleased I kept faith with all three consoles(though I fell out with MS for a while over "warranty" issues which made me realise they REALLY aren't happy about having to do it! AND woindered where the games were comin from in 2007 for the PS3 and often since then for the Wii!)as they're all giving us some good gaming love this year coming with, ginally, some truly interesting multiplats arriving among a slew of great platform exclusives-if anything there are way too many this year after the delays(which were stupid in many cases)and when EVEN Yakuza3(thank the lord) is finally comingfor western PS3 owners there's only one massive worldwide injustice left, imo. I know certain PS3 adopting SE fans won't agree seeing as they're YET to see a game from them on the console they wanted them to buy for years BUT spare a thought for those Japanese FF fans cajoled into 360 ownership by the promise of, now multiplat, exclusive jrpgs like Tales and SO4. Why are they the only HD gamers In THE WORLD left out of the FF13 party? Van't we help these poor guys and gals who've possibly had the biggest reasons to complain in 2009? These are the true casualties of the console war, imo, and why I feel that if you say, in an ad, that something is exclusive it should stay that way for good-I don't care if that means just fewer 3rd party exclusives at all if we stop more gamers getting screwed over like the Japanese 360 owning JRPG fan.

Embrace your illicit affair with forbidden hardware! Thin about it. MS and Sony don't care about you anyway. They're going the same way as Ninty and splitting their love with those newcomer "casuals" anyway, so drop the Halo avatar obsessions, drop the frankly worrying over emphasis on the particle effects in KZ2 being more complex than life itself and stop pretending that you ONLY like Mazza! Wall o TEXT

I loved the first game-amazingly good shock getting a game like that on the Ds, imo, and this looks to have weeded out the very few flaws that game had. The save point spacing was an issue and seems to be fixed now and my other , slight, moan was that it fot a bit repetitive after a while so if they can just spice up the gameplay with a little more variety(which with the dual wield with torch and new enemies they do seem to be doing)this could be ione of the very best experiences on DS this coming year.

Didn't these fellas make last years Moon FPS on DS as well? It felt like they did anyway! The shooting mechanics in that were even more crisp than the combat in the first Dementium tbh(even if it DID suffer with samey enviroments)and, IIRC and they DID make Moon too, RK are really shaping up as the FPS kings of the DS scene in my book as I enjoyed both The Ward and Moon better than any other FPviewed game on the system bar Metroid Hunters.

ReCap-In Bedouin.

Looks a lot more interesting than the series wrecking FO3(seriously, did NOONE play the infinitely better 1 and 2 except me? 2 borked combat systems, short and dull storyline and a bagfull of Bethesda's usual QA avoiding bugs do NOT make a great sequel in my eyes. Certainly, alongside Resi5, FO3 is my biggest disappointment of this generation-they even messed the atmosphere by recycling a little too much of Oblivion)-it seems to be truly oppressive and that's some high praise right there from the book's author to boot.

Thing is, every time I hear about a game like this it just ends up being a let down and I REALLY share GR's fear that they'll stoke it up by cheap, unbalanced means and after doing a lot of the hard things right that wouldn't half be sad. Resi5 was killed, for me, by them neglecting the SP in a desire(oddly) tomake co-op king of survival horror when anyone who ever watched a scary film both alone and with a mate knows that scary is impossible with a friend-it just becomes funny. Played on your own and forced to put up withj the risavle AI of Sheva tha game sank into a babysitting/frustration sim exercise that I never want to see repeated.

Dead Space did better but as a new IP didn't quite push it's ideas far enough(maybe next time?)whereas Metro2033 has ideas and atmosphere to burn by the looks and sounds of the game. High hopes IF tghey can avoid the many pitfalls of both the SH genre AND those that FO3 fell into by trying to be too many things at once and messing too many up as a result. BTW, I'm not saying FO3 is a poor game-it isn't-but it's easily worst in series, worse than Oblivion, gets a free [pass for some of the biggest bugs in gaming and gets way too much praise from sites which fail to say that it's not a patch on the rest of the (non bethesda) series. That's all-it's just a lot more disappointing than many realise.

Zigs-that's because the demo available to people with this cose is the E3 demo and not the amazingly good looking TGS build you prolly played mate. The upgrade is astounding when the E3 build was already pretty awesome!

Whatever, GOW3 seems to follow the PS3 exclusibe tradition of adding a LOT of late in the cycle polish and by the time it really arrives it should look incredible for a mere console game! Kratos would be proud!

Oh well, after all that build up it hasn't got the decency to either truly suck OR shine! Even the score screams "meh" at you!

IDK is I'd have preferred it to be awful than wantonly average!

I don't think the new PS3 ads belong here as they're just way too gentle compared to the other stuff AND you can tell by the way our man at Sony talks about candles that he HAS to know all about women! Seriously, the guy knows about candles! You saying that he's pretending to know about candles to keep the woman(who's right to moan godammit!)in an ironic dig that aims to keep them repressed? Anyway, be careful what you wish for or Sony might well go back to those ads you heed a masters in philosophy to even get a handle on-and noone wants that.

Otherwise I feel it reflects a lot worse on adverstises by showing how little they think of male gamers(we already KNEW they think nothing of women so I'm desenstitised to their douchebaggery in that direction-however crappy it is)and maybe we can, kind of, forgive a couple of the older ones but for KT andTN to still be pumping out tit based ads(and gaming gimmicks too-why the movable tits? WHY?)in 2009 is lame as it can possibly get without actual rape being used in gaming ads.

I just can't get my head rouind that Juiced ad though. Sometimes you have to feel guilty about owning your own penis you really do-though the fact a woman also happily involved herself in this is equally sad(did my mum burn her dra for nothing? Where's the sisterhood , eh? I just DET you had a Playboy purse as a child woman! Way too complicit in all this)-in fact the only thing worse is that two males could sit there long enough to make this ad while thinking it was fine for them to do so or that they wouldn't look like the biggest tools in history in the process. A sad day for feminism and sadder for realising EXACTLY what the mainstream thinks of male gamers. I guess I'll have to ditch the Dostoyevsky and Satre and go buy a copy of Nuts.

Decent read GR. Thing is I concur with Red and heavytank here-the games themselves allow for this boring and self degradingly dull work by the players WANTING their services. Until hat stops GF's will prosper at some level.

Also Red is right there's a rude majority(it often seems anyway)among MMORPDers that ruin it especially when you're starting out. I've tried a trial on WoW and a couple of others a few times and every single time it was assholes(and not always towards myself)that made me think it just wasn't worth it. Unlike griefers ina FPS(and they can be bad enough) in an MMO where you invest more time inot the character griefing becomes more personal, imo, and therefore just ruder in general. Seriously, I've been ridiculed like mad for just asking what a particular bit of slang meant and life's too short-maybe if you're in at the start of one it's more matey-or maybe when they land in a real way on consoles we'll see a more tolerant crowd(though judging from some of the rudeness I've come avcross on Live , esp, I doubt that somehow!).

Whatever, it's been the MMO layers themselves that have put me off rather than anything like GFs!

MMM. With MNR on the way, MKWii alresy here and Split/Second also tying up the(more mature in it's case) power up racing scene will Sega be able to shoulder their way in to the crowded market?

I dunno myself as the creation side of MNR looks a bigger hook than racing as Sonic when he shouldn't REALLY need a car in the first place anway! Also the DESTRUCTION side od S/S looks like a better hook than the list of Sega characters that fw really care about these days-though chuck in a few laps of a Valkyria Chronicles falvoured track and I'm possibly closer to being in!

As it stands though this really does look like it's very much an HD Sega answer to MKwii-and will that be enough when other power up racers of differening methods are coming up fast with seemingly far more than cute and retro chracters up their sl;eeve?

I love some non serious,no modding needed, no commitment karting on console, don't get me wrong, nut they really need to do a little more to distance themselves from the plumber and his mates on trackday. It's like-if GR is worried about 3D Dot Heroes being sued over similarities to LttP or whatever then just how much will Ninty be sending their lawyers after the former poacher turned spiky blue gamekeeper when it seems he's altered again and run off with Mazza's Karting blueprint? To me this is a LOT more likely to arouse a court case as Ninty STILL make a current game like this on two systems and haven't made a true 2D Zelda in an age and 3DDGH pays a ,lot wider homage too(and to other games) than this one looks to do, imo.

Under the radar? Well, in the Uk sdome aren't even getting releases-Demon's Souls and Excite Bots for two! Anyway, personal moans aside I'd heard of all of these before release(FFS the aaaages it took Trine to release was embarrassing andeveryone knew about it-justfew of us, sadly as it's pretty cool, didn't care!)and can't really call any of them belowthe radar in truth. Maybe they weren't expected to be as good as they were in some cases but it's not like many pulled up any trees in the sales world anyway!

And Shodow Complex is possibly the single most hped XBLA game ever made! Uner the Rasar? It was born on the radar while it's mum weas transmitting it's existence and amazing-ness well before conception! I think it might have MADE a few radars myself.