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.