Heavy Rain is a difficult nut to crack. On many levels, the latest Sony exclusive for the Playstation 3, is a breath of fresh air that updates an old game style for today's modern gamers but its not a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination, regardless of what some people would have you believe. Developer Quantic Dream would like you to call Heavy Rain an Interactive Drama, I prefer the term I grew up with when playing games of this sort, Adventure game. It is what Quantic Dream's last game Indigo Prophecy was and it is what Heavy Rain is.

You would think that with Uncharted 2: Among Thieves being the biggest Sony release of the year that a salesman at a particular gaming store would know what Uncharted was all about. Oddly enough though, when I went to pre-order the title a couple weeks before its release I was asked by an employee of this company what Uncharted was. After overcoming my shock at this individual's ignorance I gave him the following description, “Its like Tomb Raider with a dude, but better.”

Obviously that description is very generic because Uncharted, as a series, is so much more than that. However I stick by that description because on a base level Uncharted is Tomb Raider with a dude, but better. So much better.

Last week rumors were swirling about a possible delay for the upcoming God of War Collection on the PS3. Well, Sony has debunked those rumors and the US Playstation Blog has brought us the first trailer for the game. The remastered title will feature HD graphics running at 60fps as well as PS3 trophy support. In addition to those improvements the collection will also include a voucher for the E3 2009 God of War III demo.

The God of War Collection is scheduled for release this November.

Recently retailer movement foreshadowed the announcement that Sega's Alpha Protocol was being delayed until 2010 and now it seems that Sony's God of War Collection may be delayed as well. Based on retailers adjusting their release dates it seems like the upcoming God of War Collection for the Playstation 3 may miss its November release date and move closer to the release of God of War III in early 2010. At this time though there has been no word from Sony on any official delay.

While everyone is salivating over next week's arrival of Uncharted 2, Insomniac Games has finished work on their latest Ratchet & Clank game, Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time. The game, according to the PlayStation Blog, has officially gone gold and been released to manufacturing to begin printing the discs in preparation of its 27 October 2009 release date.

If you are a Ratchet fan in North America, a variety of pre-order bonuses are available at some of the biggest gaming retailers, although none quite match up to what has been announced for Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

I am going to come right out and say it, I never finished Resistance: Fall of Man. I liked it well enough I guess, The story seemed interesting enough and at the time I got it, there really wasn't all that much else to play on the PS3 but I got bored with it somewhere around half-way through and then got distracted by games that did the genre better, like Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4. It came as somewhat of a surprise to me that I was interested in playing Resistance 2.

However Insomniac, one of my favorite developers, seemed to have really upgraded everything that I had complaints about in Resistance: Fall of Man so I caved and bought it. This time though I didn't even get the chance to get bored with the game as I purchased it but let it sit on my shelf so I could spend time with some other high profile games, like Mirror's Edge, Gears 2, Call of Duty: World at War, Prince of Persia, etc... Eventually, enough became enough and I forced myself to sit down and play the game.

What I found was a mixture of some really good gameplay, some refinements and additions to the formula over the previous title, and a weaker overall narrative, which I took exceptionally hard. When I play games by myself, I generally prefer to have a strong narrative, something with some reach and tied together well through intermittent cutscenes. I felt the strongest point for Resistance: Fall of Man was its story, that's unfortunately not the case with Resistance 2. The story is still interesting but the way its told is very hacked together, and lets just say the ending to the game, while dramatic and fittingly appropriate, was a pure letdown.

This all brings on the question of how on earth did I finish Resistance 2 but not Resistance: Fall of Man? Well, let me get this out of the way first; as far as playing first person shooters on a console goes the Dual Shock does not offer me the control I seek. That being said, Insomniac has taken their formula from the first game and refined it to as near perfection as the Dual Shock controller will allow. The gameplay is fun and fast. It all controls very well and while I wouldn't put it up in the same category as Call of Duty or Halo gameplay wise, it is very near and certainly an upgrade.

The game offers a mode for every type of player, from the single player campaign to a separate co-op mode to the now requisite standard multiplayer modes. As I said earlier, the single player campaign is a little bit hacked together and can feel very disjointed as you jump around from location to location. The levels themselves are all very well designed though and while it never strays to far from the standard mission types of the first person shooter genre, Insomniac has done a great job of integrating their experience making platformers into the levels so they all feel very different.

I also must give some credit to thee atmosphere some of the levels create. Creating tension in a game is not an easy thing to do but Resistance 2 had me clutching my controller on more than one occasion as I navigated through dark areas with limited ammo. It may be uber cliché but there is little that is more tense than dark areas and zombie like creatures attempting to kill you.

While the general game does a good job of creating some tension, especially at some key points in the game, I felt it failed at doing it when it should have been at its best. Specifically the boss battles. Resistance 2 is loaded with boss battles. Boss battles, if they are going to be in a game, should generate a feeling of awe, excitement and a general feeling of "HOW THE FUCK AM I GOING TO BEAT THAT THING?" Sadly there was not single moment of the latter in Resistance 2. Insomniac's development of platforming games is a detriment here. Sure the bosses inspired awe and maybe even an initial spark of excitement (Freaking A! I'm going to take on a giant squid) but after you easily take down the first boss and the second is along the same lines you realize that the battles themselves are all highly staged and can be beaten with a rinse and repeat approach. The final boss in particular is extra boring and upon finishing him off I kept saying to myself, that can't be it.

Co-op on the other hand offers a completely different type of experience and can't really be rinsed and repeated to get through the levels. To successfully play co-op you will need to work with your teammates as each class offers something that is needed to the team as a whole. Depending upon which class is picked the experience of playing co-op can be drastically different. I found it best to play with people I knew though as playing with strangers, as in any game, can lead to some unfortunate gameplay incidents. I questioned, on more than one occasion, if people truly understood the meaning of co-op while playing.

The competitive multiplayer is all pretty standard stuff, except that it can be played on a bigger scale. If you played any of Resistance: Fall of Man's multiplayer then you know it was fast and extremely frantic gameplay wise. Ratchet that up by a multiplier of four and you'll get a pretty good understanding of the chaos of Resistance 2's multiplayer. It is a lot of fun and the new leveling system is a blast, although it is not anywhere near as good as what is in Call of Duty. Resistance: Fall of Man generated quite an online community and Resistance 2 is better and more polished in every way so I envision the community will stay quite strong.

As a package Resistance 2 offers a lot and fans of the series and Nathan Hale (from the game not America's first spy) will be pleased, at least until the ending. Overall I was left impressed but a little saddened that Insomniac developed the multiplayer modes (competitive and co-op) so thoroughly yet skimped a little bit when developing the single player narrative.

4 out of 5

Leave it to Konami to create possibly the most ass-backward way of playing a game online, it is seriously worse than Nintendo's friend code system. After spending a good five hours downloading the 1.01 update I then went to work creating a Konami ID which also made me create a game ID, because god forbid I use the same name to log in to Konami and play their game with. Luckily all that was done before the game actually went live which you would think I should be able to just jump right in and play, right? Wrong! No I had to download update 1.02, which thankfully only took a few minutes and then I was set to play. Or was I? Well not really. I first needed to create a new character which was kind of cool because I don't want to be like everyone else. Unfortunately I had to name my character and evidently I can't name my character what my Game ID is. This frustrated me to no end so I decided to name my character Rubber Poop Monster (Kevin Smith reference) but that was too many letters, so then I went with poop monster but poop is evidently a naughty word so I had to rename him again, this time going with poo monster. Bingo the poo monster is on the prowl.

Ughh... so that took way too long and I haven't even played yet. Fortunately once all the preliminary bullcrap is out of the way it doesn't take long to get into a game. I was playing Team Deathmatch on the Blood Bath map in a matter of minutes. I like that I can select my gear and that based on performance I gain more points to spend, very Counter Strike like in that regard. Unfortunately I haven't played an Metal Gear Solid game since Snake Eater came out and it took me a few minutes to get acclimated to the controls, in the meantime I died five times and that is an award of sorts according to Konami. After figuring out how to shoot I nabbed a kill and felt like the poo monster was really on the prowl and then somebody shot me in the gut. The controls are very Metal Gear Solid and unfortunately they don't quite work in this setting. The controls work well when you are in a stealth setting and playing an AI opponent but here they seem slow and awkward. When I play a shooter I want to be able to switch between weapons quickly and I want to be able to toss a grenade without having to know astrophysics (heavy exaggeration mind you). I don't know, I am sure people will say the controls are fine, or they take getting used to but I'm kind of soured on them already and there is probably very little that can be done to change that.

The beta comes with two maps. One is a muddy industrial setting with a tunnel system (Blood Bath) and the other is a Russian industrial site (Groznyj Grad). They both offer a different tactical experience with Groznyj Grad offering better vantage points for potential snipers. The game is sure to be a hit amongst the SOCOM crowd, at least while they await the next SOCOM game but I'm not sure it is going to catch on quite like Konami hopes as it is too far removed from what makes Metal Gear great, yet at the same time too entrenched in the Metal Gear way of doing things to grant you a solid multiplayer experience.

One final tidbit before I leave you. My favorite part of my playtime yesterday was playing Team Deathmatch on Blood Bath. While running towards an enemy firing, a teammate runs in front of me also firing but hitting nothing, I hit him with my fire because he jumped directly into my line of fire, my gun locks up because I have now fired on a teammate and the guy I had my sights on kills us both because my teammate couldn't hit the broad side of a barn(with auto aim on no less) and my gun was useless because of him. Yes, my favorite part of the game by far. I love tactical shooters, everyone is just so damn tactical.

Gaming in 2008 really kicked off for me on Tuesday with the release of much awaited Burnout Paradise. While the game is multi-platform (PS3/XBOX 360) I decided to go with the PS3 version being as it was the lead platform for the title. That said, having played the demo of both, aside from some very rare framerate drops in the 360 version both games are very much the same.

I won't go into the details too much being as a review will be coming in the very near future but I will say I am having a blast with Burnout Paradise. This iteration takes the series in a whole new direction having the entire game take place in an open world. While that may seem like a drastic turn for a beloved franchise, it actually does work, although not always as well as it was intended and Burnout Paradise is a Burnout game through and through. Insane speed, brutal crashes and an addictive progression scale will keep you playing for a good long while.

There are some problems with the game though. First off the on screen map is at times useless and will sometimes do more harm than help, often at crucial points in a race. The other is the lack of a retry event option. While the design choice makes sense to keep you in the open world, it is quite frustrating to lose a race by a fraction of a second and not have any events doable in the area. Also it is bound to drive perfectionists crazy. All in all though my early impressions of Paradise City are favorable.

That brings me to Devil May Cry 4. The demo was released this week (on both PS3 and 360) and I once again will be deciding to go with the lead platform for the game, the PS3. Over the last month or so I have been hearing some unfavorable news about the loading times on the 360 version due to the lack of an install option. The demo's seem to run at the same clip but both are also installed on the hard drive.

I've played through the demo and am pleased to announce that the game seems to be shaping up nicely. It seems more like the original Devil May Cry than either of the two PS2 sequels were. What I have played of DMC4, which is surely only a small amount of the overall experience is very well crafted. This is one of the best looking games that Capcom has ever done. I am certainly excited for the 5th of February.