Bioshock Infinite is Bioshock in the sky, only it seems this city is on the other side of the political and social spectrum. Instead of social libertarianism and amoral scientific progress got awry, this successor revolves around nativism and I assume religious conservatism. This is the game we all wanted after the original Bioshock. I wasn’t even interested in its sequel (I’m still not), but I can’t wait to get my hands on this game.

Remember when you first saw that trailer for BioShock where the Big Daddy drilled a hole through that guy’s hand and you were convinced it couldn’t have been rendered in real-time? Well, the following gameplay video isn’t quite that impressive relative to its time, but it’s probably the most exciting early-game footage I’ve seen since then.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLFy7P0isE0

I can’t believe it’s not coming out until 2012. What a fucking tease.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8toHfZm6jNE

Leave it to Infinity Ward to tingle my balls with this epic trailer. It’s better than pretty much 95% of movie trailers. If it were a movie trailer, the music would be the Requiem theme or some similarly overused song, the voiceover would be done by one of the three guys that does it for a living, and the reveal would have been handled like total shit.

Modern Warfare 2 is going to totally destroy everything in its path. Even though I barely follow the gaming scene, I do know that plenty of games have been moved away from its release because companies are afraid of this fucking beast. Apparently this trailer was aired during the Sunday Night Football game — I bet at least 5 million of the guys watching that game already have 60 bucks put aside to give to Infinity Ward.

A note: The music in the very beginning sounds similar to the TDK trailer music, right?

The public is about to get the most addictive demo I’ve ever played dropped on their Steam clients and Xbox Live Marketplaces. While I’ve played the PC version way too much, I haven’t had a chance to play its 360 counterpart, but almost every impression I’ve come across on the web with regards to the latter is exceeding positive. Even moreso than the PC version — but that would be due to shitty matchmaking taking the place of a server list. Console gamers may be used to matchmaking. but if Valve doesn’t at least add a custom server browser in the PC version, there will be internet rioting. Nonetheless, once a game is up and running on a good server with four people, it’s easily the most fun I’ve had gaming this year.

The brilliance of the game lies in the simple premise of surviving a zombie apocalypse taken to its highest level of replayability and unpredictability. The two go hand-in-hand, and the difference in every playthrough can be attributed to The Director, the AI constructed by Valve that controls zombie attacks, health pack location, weapon drops — pretty much everything other than the physical structure of the level itself. Does your group suck? Then the Director won’t spawn that tank zombie right around the corner. Taking too long? Zombie swarm incoming. The Director — combined with the variation between human partners — makes for an amazingly unique experience every time. And this is just the very first (not even full) two levels out of 20. I’ve played the demo for 10 hours. Ten hours for less than 1/10 of the game, not including the other modes. Some of that may be due to not wanting to touch my 360 games until my new HDTV arrives, but the demo is undoubtedly incredible.

It is so transcedent that I may have to double-dip, as most of my friends will be buying it for 360, and I want to kill zombies with the same people I would kill them with if there were a real-life zombie apocalypse. We need to formulate strategies and assign roles. Not to mention the split-screen capability. I’ll just have to see how well I get accustomed to using the 360 controller to play a Source-engine game. That’s going to be weird.

My own PC leanings aside, Left 4 Dead is poised to become the massive word-of-mouth hit of this holiday season. This demo just might be the Call of Duty 4 beta of 2008. We will see starting tomorrow. Don’t let me down, my fellow gamers.

Edit as of 11/12/08: 360 demo is vastly inferior. Oh well.

That would be each and every person that bought a Wii in August. STOP BUYING IT. It should be AT MOST $150 at this point. And it still wouldn’t be worth it. But because all of you won’t stop, this embarrassment to humanity continues to roll over the competition at it’s original $250 price point. There are going to be SHORTAGES TWO YEARS AFTER IT WAS RELEASED!!

I hate every single one of you. I hope someone throws a Wiimore into your television and shatters it. I hope you pull out your back playing Wii Fit. I hope your kid never plays the Wii, and says he really wanted an Xbox 360. I hope your TV revolts and refuses to display a signal coming from the Wii.

And don’t give me “Oh, but it’s the cheapest console!” crap. Because if that’s the reason, I better see progress on the 360 front next month, or you people are dead. $199 for the Arcade pack. Yeah, it doesn’t have a hard drive, but neither does the Wii. So shut up and buy it.

Between this and Starcraft II, it’s going to be like middle school all over again. Basically all you need to know is in this video:

Red Alert 3 Walkthrough

The game looks freaking gorgeous, and the amphibious aspect seems pretty cool. The gameplay won’t be as perfectly balanced and deep as SCII, though — just like when the first iterations of both series were released when I was a wee lad. But the Red Alert series has always delivered over-the-top fun in spades, so I’ll most likely pick this up. It’s coming out for both the PC and 360, like C&C3. I don’t understand why they don’t plan on releasing it on PS3, since that console actually has mouse+keyboard support. I guess they know 360 owners eat up games like Joey Chestnut at the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest. Yea, that guy is an American hero.

But yeah, PC version FTW. I tried playing the C&C3 demo on 360 and it was just awful. EALA says that they’re trying to make RA3 just as playable on the 360. Hey, maybe a new generation of kids will grow up accustomed to playing RTSs with a controller. A chill went down my spine while I typed that.

I guess I shouldn’t talk, since I loved COD4 on 360…

This Sunday (or Saturday night, if you’re hitting up a Best Buy midnight launch) Guitar Hero III will officially be hitting store shelves. In less than a month, the makers of the first two Guitar Hero games will be releasing their new massive game pictured above – Rock Band. The former is the standard 5-button plastic guitar affair that gamers have come to know and love — or possibly get sick of — while the latter comes in a $160 or $170 (depending on whether the graphics are next-gen or not) package complete with game, guitar, drums, and microphone. But you already knew this.

What you might not have known is how Red Octane made the guitar peripherals for the first two Guitar Hero games, but is part of Activision now, so while Harmonix moved on to make Rock Band under EA, Red Octane is still with the Guitar Hero series. Together with Neversoft (famous for creating the Tony Hawk series) they have created the third installment. For some reason, they’re deciding to be fucking douchebags and are locking out the Rock Band guitar somehow, which means it will NOT be compatible with Guitar Hero III. Complete and total bullshit. At least the 360 GH2 guitar works with 3, though. Over on the PS3 side, it seems that the GH3 guitar will not be backwards-compatible with the old games. On top of that, the adapter that was created to allow gamers to use their old PS2 guitar controllers doesn’t work well at all. What a mess.

Naturally, Harmonix is being awesome and all the previous Guitar Hero controllers (including GH3!) will be compatible with Rock Band. On the bad side, their will be only two packages available this year. Game-only and the massive package mentioned earlier. These will be released for the 360 and PS3 first, while a PS2 version will follow a few weeks later (Wii LOL). I NEED the drums and I NEED the game immediately, so they’ve got me hooked. I’ll never sing and I could conceivably buy GH3 for my 360 and use that guitar, but the Rock Band guitar looks about as cool as a fake guitar possibly can (just look below) and has more functionality. So massive Rock Band package it is. God, I never thought I’d write so much about peripheral compatibility.

So I guess the real question is: Rock Band or Guitar Hero III?

I’m going to have to say that Rock Band is required. If the price seems a bit too steep, think about it: Two friends could share the price of a massive package, buy an additional game-only, and then share the peripherals for $115 each. That’s only $15 more than the game+guitar package for a next-gen version of Guitar Hero III. Of course, maniacs like me will buy both. GH3 does look to raise the difficulty to even a higher level, which is what is pulling me towards it. Plus, I can’t wait a month to get my fake musician fix. But really, looking at these songs, which are supposedly on Expert, Rock Band looks to be pulling a Nintendo in regards to the guitar. (Rock Band is really about the DRUMS to me, and I know that’s going to be hard as hell, so I’ll be more than happy.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xjpu_DYCpeM

To be fair, most of those parts aren’t solos anyway. And “Epic” does look like it’s difficult enough to make me miss some notes. And Rock Band definitely looks a shitload better than Guitar Hero III. As much as I can gather from a shitty YouTube video, anyhow.

So there we go. I’m spent. Buy Rock Band. Buy Guitar Hero III if you’re really good at the past two games and aren’t sick of the formula yet. The setlists are both awesome, but the DLC (downloadable content) puts Rock Band over the top. Who’s Next and Nevermind (entire albums!) right off the bat. Unbelievable.