Project Thursday

Ah, a soft breeze, warm sand between your toes, and the gentle lapping of the ocean. Wait, not really your thing? How about the crisp mountain air and the cozy feeling of a roaring fire? Still nothing? Fine, let’s go to the Orient. The silk kimonos, ethnic cuisine…and teleporting ninjas.

Whatever your poison, the Sims 2: Bon Voyage expansion pack aims to deliver. Not only does the game offer three new locations for your Sims to travel to, it also gives you all new social interactions and objects. Hell, your Sim can even own a personal vacation home.

Eight years; that’s how long I’ve been waiting for this game to be released. Eight years. As the spiritual successor to System Shock 2, this game has been highly anticipated by both myself and, thanks to some great marketing and feedback from the media, the rest of the world (the part that owns a killer PC or an Xbox 360 that is).

With such high hopes resting on a single game, it’s easy to fall short of the high mark that hype tends to set for all of us. So does Bioshock rise above this mark, or fall short like so many other games that get wrapped up in hype?

Just a quick Warhawk update for anyone interested out there. Dylan Jobe, Incognito developer, has announced on the official Playstation forums that a patch is currently being deployed and should correct both network issues and the stats recording bugs we’ve all been encountering.

The update is being rolled out as I am writing this. During the process, the Warhawk servers will be brought offline from 4:15 pm PT to 6:15 pm PT. Needless to say, I’m thrilled that everyone of my kills will now be officially recorded and rewarded for all time (or at least until some other network issue arises).

For those folks out there with a copy of Warhawk, you’re no doubt already aware of the issues the game has had since it’s release; namely a broken ranking system and occasional issues when trying to join a game. It’s unfortunate to see such an incredible game plagued with such small (but annoying and obvious) issues out of the gate.

Thankfully, it looks like Sony and Incognito may have recognized the issue and have release a new firmware update for the PS3. While the update has been widely speculated to be a patch specifically for the issues encountered with Warhawk, nothing has been confirmed as of yet.

Either way, we’ll be sure to keep you guys updated once we’ve had a chance to test the update ourselves (or feel free to comment on your own gameplay experience with the firmware update).

Update: Well, apparently, the firmware update had nothing to do with Warhawk whatsoever…nor anything else cool for that matter (custom soundtracks sure would be nice Sony). As for Warhawk, the wait for a fix continues.

Anyway, in case anyone’s interested, here’s the lowdown on the update:

• New Flash-based Wallpapers
• Improves and Updates the Web Browser
• Controllers will Turn Off After Inactivity
• XMB Icons Load Faster
• More Backwards Compatibility

After a short delay, followed now by an earlier-than-expected release, the highly anticipated Lair has arrived for the Playstation 3. Lair, a product of Factor 5, is the dragon-riding action game that Sony is banking on to bring some hot exclusives to their expensive paper-weight. Relying solely upon the Sixaxis’ motion sensor for control, Lair is supposed to show us just what these fancy (albeit rumble-less) controllers are capable of.

Sadly, it looks like the game may not deserving of all the hype it’s received. Gaming news giant IGN has release their final review of the game, condemning it with a 4.9/10 score overall. It seems that while the game is passable in a majority of areas, the use of the Sixaxis controller is the downfall of the entire thing.

Lair’s terrible controls and god-awful lock-on system make this a mission worthy of swallowing the business end of a shotgun to avoid. -Greg Miller, IGN

So is Lair just a pile of shovel-ware? God knows I’m sucker enough to drop 60 bones and find out. We’ll let you guys know in a review when we finish it.