MLB 09 The Show - Gameplay Trailer

So Ive picked up MLB 09 The Show for my PS3, and I have to say its awesome. Its easily the best baseball game of this console generation. With 2K sports failing for year after year to provide a truly compelling experience on the 360, I knew 09 was the right year to make the switch and I have no regrets. With retailers offering deep discounts and used PS3s popping up on ebay for fraction of their new cost, now is a great time to pick one up if you dont already have one. After an awesome year in 2008 and a tremendous start to 2009 with the release of MLB 09 The Show and Killzone 2, Sony's console has finally hit full stride.

Mother Nature Doesnt Do Bailouts

Thom Freidman - The New York Times

Sometimes the satirical newspaper The Onion is so right on, I can’t resist quoting from it. Consider this faux article from June 2005 about America’s addiction to Chinese exports:

FENGHUA, China — Chen Hsien, an employee of Fenghua Ningbo Plastic Works Ltd., a plastics factory that manufactures lightweight household items for Western markets, expressed his disbelief Monday over the “sheer amount of [garbage] Americans will buy. Often, when we’re assigned a new order for, say, ‘salad shooters,’ I will say to myself, ‘There’s no way that anyone will ever buy these.’ ... One month later, we will receive an order for the same product, but three times the quantity. How can anyone have a need for such useless [garbage]? I hear that Americans can buy anything they want, and I believe it, judging from the things I’ve made for them,” Chen said. “And I also hear that, when they no longer want an item, they simply throw it away. So wasteful and contemptible.”

Let’s today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”

We have created a system for growth that depended on our building more and more stores to sell more and more stuff made in more and more factories in China, powered by more and more coal that would cause more and more climate change but earn China more and more dollars to buy more and more U.S. T-bills so America would have more and more money to build more and more stores and sell more and more stuff that would employ more and more Chinese ...

We can’t do this anymore.

“We created a way of raising standards of living that we can’t possibly pass on to our children,” said Joe Romm, a physicist and climate expert who writes the indispensable blog climateprogress.org. We have been getting rich by depleting all our natural stocks — water, hydrocarbons, forests, rivers, fish and arable land — and not by generating renewable flows.

“You can get this burst of wealth that we have created from this rapacious behavior,” added Romm. “But it has to collapse, unless adults stand up and say, ‘This is a Ponzi scheme. We have not generated real wealth, and we are destroying a livable climate ...’ Real wealth is something you can pass on in a way that others can enjoy.”

Over a billion people today suffer from water scarcity; deforestation in the tropics destroys an area the size of Greece every year — more than 25 million acres; more than half of the world’s fisheries are over-fished or fished at their limit.

“Just as a few lonely economists warned us we were living beyond our financial means and overdrawing our financial assets, scientists are warning us that we’re living beyond our ecological means and overdrawing our natural assets,” argues Glenn Prickett, senior vice president at Conservation International. But, he cautioned, as environmentalists have pointed out: “Mother Nature doesn’t do bailouts.”

One of those who has been warning me of this for a long time is Paul Gilding, the Australian environmental business expert. He has a name for this moment — when both Mother Nature and Father Greed have hit the wall at once — “The Great Disruption.”

“We are taking a system operating past its capacity and driving it faster and harder,” he wrote me. “No matter how wonderful the system is, the laws of physics and biology still apply.” We must have growth, but we must grow in a different way. For starters, economies need to transition to the concept of net-zero, whereby buildings, cars, factories and homes are designed not only to generate as much energy as they use but to be infinitely recyclable in as many parts as possible. Let’s grow by creating flows rather than plundering more stocks.

Gilding says he’s actually an optimist. So am I. People are already using this economic slowdown to retool and reorient economies. Germany, Britain, China and the U.S. have all used stimulus bills to make huge new investments in clean power. South Korea’s new national paradigm for development is called: “Low carbon, green growth.” Who knew? People are realizing we need more than incremental changes — and we’re seeing the first stirrings of growth in smarter, more efficient, more responsible ways.

In the meantime, says Gilding, take notes: “When we look back, 2008 will be a momentous year in human history. Our children and grandchildren will ask us, ‘What was it like? What were you doing when it started to fall apart? What did you think? What did you do?’ ” Often in the middle of something momentous, we can’t see its significance. But for me there is no doubt: 2008 will be the marker — the year when ‘The Great Disruption’ began.

Virtua Tennis 2009 Trailer

Just some shots of the player models they are using, no in game footage, but its still pretty impressive. The player model quality equals or surpasses Top Spin 3, and knowing the Virtua Tennis franchise, it will maintain a stable 60 frame per second even with the graphics upgrades. Hopefully the same fun, simple to pick up yet hard to master controls will still be present. Also the minigames will be playable online, which is something a lot of people were asking for and Im sure will be a huge hit. Looking at the whole product, unless something goes horribly wrong, its hard to imagine that SEGA wont have the undisputed best tennis game on the market come this May.

Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection Impressions

If you even have a whiff of retro gamer in your blood and own a 360 or PS3, do yourself a favor and pick up Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection from your local digicrack dealer. At $30 brand new, this collection is positively the best value on the market. You get almost 50 classic SEGA Genesis and SEGA Arcade games, and they are emulated perfectly. Also included is the ability to zoom and stretch the screen slightly for 16:9 displays, and a smoothing functions which does wonders for removing the pixellation of the older titles and giving them a slightly more impressionistic look. Also included are system level save states - you can save any game at any point, which makes otherwise impossibly difficult games like Comix Zone playable.

Even if you take out all the other games, just for the Sonic games, Streets of Rage 1-3, Golden Axe 1-3, and Phantasy Star 1-4, the collection would still be an absolute steal. That there are over 30 more games (Fantasy Zone, Shinobi III, Zaxxon etc) included is just positively ridiculous. Its a gift from SEGA to retrogamers. Sure, there are some stinkers in there that might only be fun for 5 minutes or an achievement, but the cream of the crop is so good, and the value is so great, that complaining about the omission of Gunstar Heroes, or anything else for that matter, seems pettty. The best $30 you will spend in 2009.

Little BIG Contra

If the sound isnt working for you, goto IGN Videos, it should work.

Empire: Total War IGN Review

Another awesome entry in the Total War series.

The Perfect FPS Controller?

mLani Studios is gearing up for a spring release for the MoBi, a wireless PlayStation 3 and PC controller that's one part mouse, one part analog stick.

The MoBi basically takes a PlayStation 3 controller and splits it in half. Movement is controlled by the analog stick on the bit held in the left hand, while a 2000 DPI, 500 megahertz laser mouse takes the place of the right analog stick. It's mouse and keyboard control, only without the pesky keyboard taking up all that room. Of course you'll still need a flat surface for the mouse, but that's what TV trays are made for. On a PC, the MoBi functions like any other laser mouse, with the WASD keys mapped to the analog stick on the left hand device.

It really sweet looking, and the concept is great, but will the price and actual performance of this thing make it worth buying? Im not sure. A normal controller is by far the most ergonomic way to interact with a game; using a mouse for hours on end can really stress you finger and hand muscles as many of my MMO dedicated friends will testify. But the other reality is, you just cant play Unreal 3 very well with a controller. The game is just too damn fast. It built from the ground up for M&K controls. So for fast, competetive online FPS games like Unreal 3, CoD4, and Killzone 2, this looks like it could be a very effective solution for PS3 owners, and a cool alternative for PC gamers.