Are you the best Halo 3 player in South-West Ohio?

Thousands of dollars in prizes, the best of the best in the South-West Ohio turning out to be crowned the king of Halo 3. Do you think you have what it takes to survive? With an estimated hundred+ expected to turn out to what could be extended to a weekend long tournament, this is sure to pay out to the top contenders. More information coming shortly.....

E3.

Those two characters are enough to send most serious gamers into convulsions of ecstasy, complete with pelvic thrusts. They are enough to glue most of that same crowd to their computers and TV’s in a desperate bid to feed on every scrap of information they can get their eyes on. Because of those two characters, we more than willingly leave our significant others, family, houses, pets, possessions behind to fly into another city and be dazzled by the biggest and best the gaming industry has to offer.

Awesome, right?

That’s actually a heavily loaded question. Is it awesome to meet and greet the developers and publishers of our favorite games? Absolutely it is. Is it great to be the first to know some of the biggest announcements in gaming each year? Youbetcherass.

So, Veilsix, why on earth are you being so downtrodden about it, you might ask?

Simple. E3 is no longer the boisterous, loud and energetic event that it used to be. Ever since the 2007 reformat, it has not generated nearly the same hype and buzz that it used to. This is not only painfully obvious at the actual event itself, but after having viewed the online videos and feeds presented to the public, it looks downright gloomy and … dare I say boring?

The image isn’t really far from the truth. When you get past all of the neat displays and mockups, it’s really no different than reading an article with pictures. So why is it that when the internet and media age have evolved to the point of effectively delivering the experience to the at-home viewer, that E3 has dialed down the excitement and fun so drastically? What happened to the desire and pride of generating a buzz in your target audience?

It saddened me to see these guys come out on stage when you could see the excitement in their eyes, and be met with a mostly polite applause at best from an audience of reporters who (for the most part) have no idea who they were looking at. Most of the audience seems to be clueless outside of their press kits and a few bits of broadly general information. They had no real grasp on the significance of anything at all… about all they know is “Clap if the announcement contains the words Gears of War, Halo, God of War, and Grand Theft Auto”.

E3, I’ve loved you for many years but this is not good enough. It’s not good enough for your audience and it’s not good enough for you. E3, you feel like Major Nelson’s Weekly Update on Xbox Live: forced upbeat enthusiasm put on for 1 camera and no audience. At least Nelson has an excuse, whereas you could easily pack an amphitheater full of screaming fans and give yourselves, the live audience, and those at home some real energy and enthusiasm. I want to be exuberant again when I hear people talk about the likes of Gears of War 2, Resistance 2, Halo Wars, Rock Band 2, Fable II, Final Fantasy XIII… the list goes on. I want to feel real disappointment when Bungie fails to come through with their “big announcement” they’ve been hyping up (granted, we all know it’s going to be Halo 4 but still…).

E3, my sincere wish is that you liven up for 2009. Make some changes and get an announcement out later this year that makes us excited for it. Go back to your old self and give your fans a chance to enjoy you and in turn give you the atmosphere you are sorely missing these days. Next year, Versus EE should want to close and attend E3, instead of playing it in the background somewhere. At the very least, it should be something that can play with pride on the big screens where everyone can see it, and more importantly, FEEL it.

That is all.

Veilsix's Gaming Update & The PS3 stirs and wakes!

Let's face it: since I bought it, I've gotten some serious mileage out of my Xbox 360. Mr.PS3 sat back in jealousy during my seemingly everlasting and torrid love affair with Bill Gates' lovechild. However as I ate my way through 360 titles like I was PacMan, I find that the well has pretty much run dry for the moment. I sat in my basement/gaming altar at a loss one day, wondering what to do next when suddenly I swear I heard my PS3 clear its throat and scoot forward on the tv stand a couple of inches in preparation.

So I popped in Ubisoft's Uncharted: Drake's fortune and played the last bit I had left. I have to honestly say this was one of the best games I have ever played. It had such a mix of different genres in it, and they were so well put together it felt like you were playing through a blockbuster movie. In terms of graphics and soundtrack, it was all brilliant and spot on. Uncharted had a unique look to it, almost a cellshaded cinematic quality to it. Think "A Scanner Darkly" but more gritty and real looking, the facial reactions especially giving things a real life feel.

The action involved everything you can think of: 3rd person shooting with emphasis on obtaining cover (behind destructible environment areas and items) done largely in a Gears of War style with shooting from the hip and also aiming (even a zoomable sniper rifle is utilized from time to time). Also involving hand to hand combat and combos, riding vehicles like jet skis up a river, area puzzle solving. The platform based action was great too, including death defyingly high swinging action and climbing (much like Assasin's Creed's highlight moments).

Some of the attention given to little details really stood out for me: if you take too long trying to figure out how to proceed in an area, the game gives you an option to hold L2 down, which shifts the camera to the general direction of the answer you're looking for; also, the in-game trophies, treasures and rewards system. The trophies/medals were setup very similar to Xbox Achievements, asking to you achieve X event or kill X enemies in X ways, just to name a few. It really encouraged me to use as many of the different weapons and moves that were available. The treasures were the hidden items in the game, however (unlike Call of Duty 4's enemy intel items and other similar games), these were small shiny glints of light hidden behind trees, in corners and such that you had to pay attention to spot -much like a real treasure hunter- and once rewarded you were told the specific treasure was with a nicely rendered image of it. Finally, the rewards system was based on the medals and treasures, unlocking previously hidden treats for those who like bonus content.

Plot and characters were on par with a Hollywood movie. The story was great, with lots of twists, turns and nailbiting moments. The acting and voice talent are amont the best I've seen -if not the best I've seen to date. I found myself really caring about Nathan Drake's If you enjoy action-mystery-adventure movies sprinkled with bits of good comedy, you will thoroughly enjoy this game.

I really have to say that if you have not played Uncharted and you are a PS3 owner, you are really missing out on a fun, solid quality game that exceeds expectations, and really drops a surprise turn during the last 10-12% to change things up. This game will go on my "keeper" shelf of non-trade-in games.

You're probably wondering by now what this update has to do with the picture under the title. Well, there's no need to fret about it. On Sunday I ceremoniously unwrapped Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and inserted the game disc into my PS3.

After about an 8 to 10 minute install time, during which the game does make a decent attempt at entertaining you, I began Solid Snake's final venture through the MGS series. I won't give anything away just yet, but I will say that I'm thus far blown away by the story and gameplay mixture. The game renders every detail imaginable. You really feel more than ever like a passing ghost in the middle of an all out open war between two factions. Also (thank God) So far there hasn't been a single issue with controls, everything works smoothly in and out of combat so all those issues are laid to rest.

The weapon customization, item variation (even an iPod with tracks you can play) are enough to keep you entertained for a long while. Once you meet Drebin, the arms dealer, these options go through the roof. That's about as detailed as I'm going to get in terms of characters and storyline, as it would be a disservice to spoiler this game to any wandering fan.

My only complaint so far is how long the cutscenes and sequences can take sometimes, but even so I have to admit this is almost necessary and seems to really work for the deep storyline, which would probably suffer without these extended storyarcs.

Metal Gear Solid 4's excellence is clearly a result of Kojima's painstaking care and development. I'll give my beloved audience a spoiler free wrap-up rewport after the smoke clears.

In conclusion, the only games I hadn't finished or played at this point in my library are MGS4, Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, and Heavenly Sword. There are also several other PS3 titles I've yet to pick up. With this in mind, and taking into account that the Playstation 2.43 Update is releasing today granting us new perks including but not limited to trophies (Sony's answer to Microsoft's Achievement system), and with Playstation Home coming this year, it looks like my PS3 is officially out of hibernation for quite some time.

Youth + Violent Video Games = Peaceful society.

As we here at Versus countdown the days to the opening of our gaming euphoria, I have been doing research on the impact of increased amount of gaming to our society. I stumbled upon what I consider an extremely well written, and researched article by Duke Ferris, who writes for Game Revolution(link above). The picture that you are looking at is a chart that Mr. Ferris pulled from the US Department of Justice, and ONLY edited with the release dates of the PS1, GTA1, PS2, and GTA3.

Duke's article is directed at the naysayers and "Blame Canada" type parents and political figures that want to point fingers and blame anyone but themselves, or just plain bad parents, for crimes in America. It's not our fault that certain people fail at parenting and thus lead to a midly retarded, most likely abused, mentally and physically child who grows up to shoot up Toys-R-Us and then you blame it on Grand Theft Auto, or Eminem (hey it wasnt my fault eminem told me to do it again). Stop by and check out the full article and do yourself a great justice. In the meantime I will be planning the GRAND release of a store full of video game violence that will house countless youth's and teen's day in and day out. Hey im doing my part to clean up the streets, what have you done lately?

Mirror's Edge

I was introduced to this game when the first screen shots came out about 6 months ago. Why this game caught my attention is because of the quality and realisticness (is that a word?) of the game. Just take a look at the screen shot above. When I first glanced at the screenshot, I thought I was looking at an actual city in Shanghai or Beijing. But no, it’s an actual screen shot from the game. One word: Awesome. Using Epic’s Unreal 3 Engine and Beast, a new lighting system developed by Illuminate Labs, makes Mirror’s Edge more realistic, brightly colored style different from other first-person shooters. There are a wider range of actions you can do, such as sliding under barriers, wall-running, tumbling, shimmying across ledges, and greater freedom of movement. There is no HUD, and the legs, arms, and torso of the character are visible on the screen at some points. View more screenshots here: http://media.ps3.ign.com/media/949/949457/imgs_1.html. View the trailer for the game (which is all gameplay), here: http://media.ps3.ign.com/media/949/949457/vids_1.html.

Mirror’s Edge is an action adventure game, so the focus isn’t on the gun, but on the person. Gameplay mainly focuses on finding the best route through the game’s environments, with combat taking a secondary role. Guns can be obtained in the game, but carrying them slows Faith down. The heavier the gun, the more it hinders her movement. This introduces an element of strategy in determining when to trade agility for firepower.

The game is set in a conformist dystopia in which communication is heavily monitored by a totalitarian regime. A network of runners, including the main character, Faith, are used to transmit messages while evading government surveillance. Taken from Wikipedia: “The only playable character in the game is a runner named Faith. The story follows Faith and her struggle to free her sister from a corrupt government. Her parents were killed while protesting against the government and she was forced to grow up on the street, later becoming a runner. Faith was taught not to rely on modern forms of communication, partially because the ruthless police state prefers eavesdropping every chance they get. As Faith attempts to rescue her sister, while running messages for the criminal underworld, she gets caught up in a series of events which lead to her being pursued by the totalitarian government. Acting as Faith's guide is a mysterious character named Mercury, who will help Faith in her attempt to outwit and overcome the many government agents that are out to eliminate her.”

The game will be released on the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. A release date has been set for November 2008, so it’s possible that it will be pushed back until it is completely finished.

Possessing the Coveted Holy Trinity: A First Hand Account.

For the first time in my life, I've upgraded my social status to Multiple Console Owner. My television stand proudly displays the latest techno marvels that the gaming industry has blessed our ever hungry consumer appetites with. I no longer bitterly read console-specific game reviews for a franchise I'll never get to play, for as of last December I now have the next-gen triple console crown.

As I write this, I'm coming off a weekend that saw me 91% through Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, halfway through Mario Galaxy, starting the second island on Grand Theft Auto IV, fighting through New York on the third level of Ninja Gaiden II, racing through the circuits of Mario Kart Wii, downloading the latest map pack for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, starting the Bringing Down the Sky expansion to Mass Effect, contemplating between finally putting in Heavenly Sword or unwrapping Metal Gear Solid 4, all the while buying Golden Axe and Ikaruga on Xbox Live to feed my retro kick.

Six months have passed since the supposed completion of my being. Six months to flex my techno muscle every time a guest comes over and sees my gaming room. Six months through which I reveled in every major release without fail. I've been to more midnight releases than I care to admit. I know every employee by name at my local Gamestop -hell, they've even granted me a nickname there.

Six months in which I was finally able to discuss every single great release and never had to endure the shame of "I haven't played that, I have an Xbox only... but have you ever played Halo?"

For these past six months, I've been a walking, talking encyclopedia of godlike proportions on gaming for my co-workers. I'm consulted before any purchase is made, and I've loved every minute of it.

So what have I learned during these six months?

How about Becoming A Gaming A.D.D. Basketcase 101 for starters. I've never had a period in my gaming life where I've felt as rushed to get through a game in my life. Keep in mind, I'm only buying the top rated, most anticipated or most talked about titles that get released for each console. Even so, I barely finish a game before I'm opening the next one. I'll admit, sometimes I don't even wait to finish before I'm hitting eject on the Playstation 3 and switching on the Wii to cram a title in, all the while an Xbox 360 game is still in its cellophane wrap in front of me like the next pack of cigarettes lying in wait for me to stamp out my current smoke (I'm a strict non-smoker, by the way).

Frankly, I've become a little worried.

Worried about my wallet, for one thing. It's not cheap to buy titles for three consoles, even when you're only buying quality games.

Worried that I'm not getting the intended experience the developers wanted me to have for of each of the triple-A titles I've burned through at break-neck speed.

Worried about what's going to happen once the massive influx of recent blockbuster games runs out, and I've played the well dry. What will I do once these games are done? Twiddle my thumbs until Gears of War 2 comes out? GO OUTSIDE??

The gaming tree's branches that've been so ripe for the picking lately are starting to thin out, and I haven't stashed anything away for the next crop. I'm watching all of my summer safety games (such as God of War 3) get pushed into next spring, and suddenly this little Emperor is starting to notice his lack of clothes. What am I going to do for the next 5 months?

I've come to terms with my big mistake. Besides allowing myself to believe I had to have each release on launch day, I tried to have the last game finished before the next one hit. If I wasn't doing this, I was leaving a game a quarter or half done before moving on.

I should have been stockpiling the latest releases until I was done thoroughly enjoying and exploring each game. After all, this is a hobby, not a job, and my mid-year resolution is to finish -really finish each title I spend my time and money on before moving on to another.

I'm serious about this. I'm going to stick to my guns.

I will finish Uncharted before that pesky little Halo 3 critter decides it wants to finally put that Legendary Map pack to good use. Or before I download another Rock Band track, no matter how much Avenged Sevenfold they release on it.

I will. I swears.

(Are you a multiple console owner? Do you have any pro's or con's to share? Let's hear them! Remember there are no cons to playing on every single console when you don't have to own them and pay for the games, that's what Versus: Entertainment Evolved has your back for!)

Battlefield Bad Company Destructible Environment Demo

I have recently downloaded the Battlefield Bad Company demo off of Xbox live. I am very impressed with it. The one thing I love is destructible environments. I remember back in the day playing Red Faction, where you could C4 your way to the enemy team base when playing capture the flag. Or you could use a rocket launcher and blow out walls and take out places where snipers would most likely snipe from. I absolutely loved that game. After the destructible environment of Red Faction, maybe 1 or 2 others games came out with a fully destructible environment. Now, thank God, we have one of my favorite franchises (Battlefield) entering into the fully destructible environment market.

The demo was a lot of fun. Being able to blow out walls of a house so I could kill the enemy behind it, is pure awesomeness. What other game can you do that in? In the single player demo, you are defending this town when a tank comes to take you out. That tank shot at me, missed, hit the ground, and left a decent sized crater. That’s sweet. Of course you can’t blow off limbs, like in Soldier of Fortune, since that would be tough to stay fighting when you’re playing multiplayer.

Battlefield Bad Company will hopefully open the door to future fully destructible environment type games. Bad Company hits shelves June 24.

Versus Update

The blue prints for the building are coming along. I realize that we don’t have as much space as we thought. I have the layout set up for nine 46” 120HZ 1080P LCD TV’s on the right wall, and nine on the left wall. The left wall will have more space between TV’s, since it is mostly going to be the Wii area (people will need more space to swing those controllers around). In the center of the building we will have back to back 92 inch screens set up with HD 1080P projectors. This is the main tournament area. 92 inches is the biggest we can go, since any bigger would limit the walkways on the left and right side of the screens (currently at 3ft wide).

We want the building to be a open, fun, social environment, not a cramped one. If the building was a little bit longer, we could fit more tv’s on the sides and add more projectors in the center, but that’s not the case. We’ll have to make do with the space we have. So in grand total we are looking at 18 LCD’s and 2 projectors. If you have any suggestions, such as bigger TV's or smaller TV's, or any ideas whatsoever, lets us know by leaving comments.

Blizzard to anounce Diablo 3 next Friday

All though I love all types of games, my love for PC games (Blizzard's in particular) is unmatched, so allow me to go off the console road for a minute. We are weeks away from what could possibly be one of the biggest video game announcements we have seen in years. Allow me to explain.

We have been counting down the days to Diablo 3 since Diablo 2 was released on June 29th, 2000, and the expansion, Diablo 2: LoD June 29th 2001. In the recent months Blizzard has gone out of its way to drive the Diablo fan base insane with slight hints of a new announcement that they are going to make another.... announcement on the weekend of June 29th, 2008 at the Blizzard WWI. Does that date look familiar? Yeah maybe because its the 7 and 8 year anniversary's of the 2nd Diablo.

The Diablo fan base is massive, so it is easy to understand why hundreds of thousands of fans scour the Internet daily, even hourly looking for any update, or leaked information leading up to the weeks before Blizzards announcement. The best site with the most up to date information to check out can be found at http://www.diablofans.com/ . No one can officially say for sure IF Blizzard will announce Diablo 3 next weekend, but with all of the recent teases and the anniversary of the games release coming up I am willing to more than guarantee the announcement at the WWI. Blizzard also used the 10 year to the day anniversary routine to announce Starcraft II just last year.

If you don't believe in Blizzard's anniversary announcement theory then take in to account the all so powerful dollar bill. Blizzard has what can possibly be described as a strangle hold on the PC gaming industry of almost all Genre's except the FPS market. With World of Warcraft still completely dominating the MMO market you'd be ignorant to even consider that any future MMO dated before 2015 will put more than a nick in WoW's dominance of the MMO industry. Starcraft, yes the 1 year old Starcraft, still accounts for over 79% of all Real Time Strategy game time logged and although you don't have to pay to play, it still shows dominance of the RTS industry. Oh yeah and that little game Starcraft II on the horizon might have something to say about the other 21%. Diablo still has hundreds of thousands of players logging on Battlenet every day to play, and a majority are not Starcraft or Warcraft players. These stragglers combined with the other Diablo fans spread out all over the gaming world make up another huge chunk of the PC gaming industry and Blizzard has every reason $$.... in the world to make a Diablo III.

Wrath of the Lich King, and Starcraft II have the other 2 franchises covered leaving 2 options, a Diablo game, or a complete new franchise Lost Vikings Online???... No... So if you want to think that Blizzard's big announcement that *coincidentally* falls on the anniversary of D2, and D2: LOD is not going to be Diablo III go right ahead, but you wont stop me from believing.

Versus Status

Today I started working on the interior design of the building. Man, no wonder I majored in management and not architecture :). I drew out some decent plans on how many TV's and gaming units we could fit into the store, but space is REAL tight the way I have it set up now. Well, it isn't necessarily real tight; there should be enough space for people to walk around, but if we have major crowds in the store, then it's going to get tight. We want to set up a 92" projection screen in the middle of the store, where the main head-to-head tournaments will be played. But that size might have to be lowered depending on space. If we only had a wider building, then we could have plenty of room for the set up I have now (even on the crowded days). Alright, back to this architecture plan...woot.

Halo 3 Single Player

A lot of people tell me how they hated the single player on Halo 3. They complained it was too short. Well, I am one of those guys who actually enjoyed it. I loved the story and the characters. The voice acting was top notch. And the best of all, the music was pimp. I got that soundtrack and listened to it for about 3 months straight. I still listen to it. When I'd be running through the forest and the Last of the Brave song would come on, man I tell ya, I felt invincible (until some brute smashed me with those damn hammers). Anyways, there were flaws of Halo 3's single player, but even with the flaws, it's one of my favorite games. I'll most likely start playing it here again in the summer to try to beat legendary by myself (which I quit earlier in the year becuase it was so tough when solo'ing it).

Grand Theft Auto IV vs. Saints Row

It's me again, and I wanted to post about something that's been bothering me...and that is lack of content in Grand Theft Auto IV. Don't get me wrong, GTA4 was badass; the graphics were pimp, sound was great, excellent story, incredible voice acting, but there was still something missing. For example, for open environment type games, I like to customize my character in any way i want to. In Saints Row (yes I know the picture says Saints Row 2), I could get tons of cool tatoos, body piercings, clothing (a hundred times more in Saints Row than in GTA4), facial configuration (make your own character), and vehicle customization. I LOVED being able to add NOS, spinner rims, body kits, and different colors to my cars. You couldn't do that in GTA4.

Also in GTA4, you only had 4 or so save points. Not so in Saints Row, which numbered probably between 10-15. All the little things that annoyed me in GTA4 added up, and right after I beat the game, I went back into playing Mass Effect. I sometimes go back and play GTA4, and if I do, it's only for 30 minutes or less. With Saints Row, (SPOILERS) even though you died at the end (thank god I saved it before then), I always continued to find cool cars and outfit with them with new parts.

What do you guys think? GTA 4 or Saints Row? Throw me back some comments below.

Welcome To Versus

Welcome everyone! This is VersusEE's first official blog post. WOW!!! I am Brett, one of the founders of Versus. My business partner is Billy.

What is Versus do you ask?

The video game industry is evolving and progressing as one of the fastest markets of any product available in the civilized world. Versus, Entertainment Evolved takes advantage of this extremely popular and ever growing industry in offering a completely unrivaled environment to play all of the leading consoles and games. Customers will have access to all of the most popular games on the newest systems that will be playable on LCD flat screen TV’s. Versus will be a fun, social environment. In addition to video games, customers will also look to Versus for a complete entertaining experience. We will offer constant themed events, on the spot tournaments, challenges, and interaction with our customers that will never leave a stale experience with even the most dedicated of customers. Versus will best be described as an “experience” not just a store.