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Although Lost Planet: Extreme Condition is published by Capcom, playing through the game brought an old SquareSoft game to mind; specifically, Xenogears of PSone fame. Just as in Xenogears, you begin Lost Planet as an amnesiac young man who remembers little of his past, but knows how to pilot giant mechs. Of course, there are many differences. Xenogears was a PSone title by Square that delivered turn-based RPG epic storytelling that, today, would seem awfully dated; Lost Planet is a PS3 title (originally Xbox 360) that is anything but turn-based, delivering all-out shooter action in full HD quality visuals.

Yes, Lost Planet: Extreme Condition is a game that’s over a year old on the Xbox 360 and can be obtained for about $10 less than the full retail of the discounted PS3 version (roughly speaking, about $30 on 360 these days, compared to $40 on PS3). So are there reasons to buy this version? Sure there are.

First, the PS3 version is more like a director’s cut, offering all 16 of the downloadable multiplayer maps that Xbox Live users had to shell out points to obtain; additionally, players can unlock two new characters that can be used in both single and multiplayer mode, as PS3 exclusive characters; namely, Frank West of Dead Rising and Megaman. There are others as well, although those may be more familiar to veterans of the Xbox 360 version of the game.

The story is essentially unchanged; you are Wayne, part of a group of snow pirates who are trying to run the planet E.D.N. III of a savage, bug-like alien race known as the Akrid. Wayne’s dad was killed by one such Akrid, named Green Eyes, and shortly after that, Wayne was injured, lost his memory and rescued by the snow pirates. As one of his only memories remaining is the memory of how to pilot the giant mechs that are particularly effective at ridding the planet of Akrid, Wayne soon becomes key to the battle against the Akrid.

One problem; the Akrid carry this glowing orange goop in their bodies that turns out to be a great energy source, so total annihilation of the monsters may not be the ultimate goal, here; harvesting their goop is apparently a great way to deliver low-cost energy to the galaxy, so… well… you can imagine where things might get dark from that point on.

E.D.N. III is, by the way, an ice planet full of blizzards and howling winds, about as far removed from a Royal Caribbean atmosphere as carrots are removed from bicycle shorts. In other words, it’s a very atmospheric game that delivers action-based horror and chills in the same spirit as horror classic The Thing, only louder and with a lot more action and shooting and explosions. And it definitely delivers that sense of being on a lonely, nearly lifeless frozen planet, kind of like a trip to Lambeau Field.

If you like shooters, Lost Planet: Extreme Condition’s not a bad choice. The story segments are nowhere near as extended as a more RPG-style shooter title like last November’s Mass Effect, and there’s far more action at a far faster pace. Gamers who appreciate a shoot first, ask questions later approach to their gaming will find a friendly experience in Lost Planet: Extreme Condition.

The single-player campaign mode is initially the heart of the experience. Lasting a decent amount of time for an action-adventure shooter title (12 to 20 hours, depending on how you play), Lost Planet has a terrific storyline with plenty of surprises and a shocking end that still has the Xbox community buzzing a year later. This is one of Capcom’s better but less-heralded efforts of the past couple years, so it makes a welcome addition to the growing PS3 library.

Yet what gives the game lasting appeal is the online mode, in which you can team up with, or fight against, up to 16 players at a time; and since this game is now on the PlayStation Network instead of Xbox Live, you don’t need a Gold subscription to play online; on PSN, the online gaming is free, a nice bonus for those PS3 gamers late to the Lost Planet party.

The game looks sharp in both standard definition and in HD; however, this is where the port-over exposes some of the game’s shortcomings. Little was done to take advantage of the uniqueness of the PS3 platform; those playing with the SixAxis controller are offered no motion-sensitivity, which makes the loss of force feedback even more noticeable; although the DualShock 3 will be released soon, there’s no word yet on whether Capcom will support the new controller, once released, with a patch adding force feedback back into the game.

Furthermore, even though the game is now on Blu-Ray disc on the PS3 format, Capcom did not take advantage of the extra space to offer the game in full, true 1080p HD resolution. Sure, you need a HUGE HDTV in order to appreciate the 1080p difference, but gamers who have that sort of set-up will be annoyed that the game looks no better on PS3 than it did on the Xbox 360, thanks to the lack of 1080p support.

Still these are details, not deal-breakers. Designed by members of the teams that brought such Capcom classics as Onimusha and Devil May Cry to life, Lost Planet: Extreme Condition is an incredibly fun title that excels at kick-butt boss battles and levels featuring the Akrid. Levels featuring evil snow pirates are less engaging due to flawed enemy AI, but the AI on the Akrid and bosses are much better. The only disappointment is that most Akrid opponents all have the same weakness; shoot them in the orange glowy part of their body and they are easily dispatched, even though getting clear shots in on that part is not always easy; it’s just disappointing that it’s variations on the same strategy for nearly all the Akrid opponents.

That said, in the balance of things, Lost Planet: Extreme Condition is a fun game; there’s absolutely no reason to buy the game again if you already own it on Xbox 360 and also happen to own a PS3. However, if you only own a PS3 and missed out on this action-horror classic, this is one game that’s not quite as spendy as most new PS3 titles, yet delivers the goods.

One game I don’t need trade show displays of to create excitement in me toward playing, once it’s released, is Final Fantasy XIII. From every bit of video footage I’ve seen, the game looks gorgeous and truly deserving to be on the PS3 platform.

While I’m not one to condemn most RPGs for not being on the cutting edge of graphics … after all, one of my favorite publishers of RPGs is NIS America … I can certainly get excitied when a title like this comes along and is on that cutting edge. While I am not sure if it will be released in 2008 or not, I can say that it is already one of my most enthusiastically anticipated games of the year.

Christian Slater has been transparant since he began his film career back in 1985, in a film called The Legend of Billie Jean; he’s a Jack Nicholson wannabe. Worse, he’s a poor imitator of Nicholson. For years, I thought he’d grow out of it and develop his own acting style, and the only glimpse I ever really spotted of his potential to do so came in the 1992 film Untamed Heart, but he never had the courage of his own talent to stick with the Nicholson-free version of himself and soon reverted to form.

Love Lies Bleeding is a film that summarizes the sorry state of Slater’s career as it now stands. Following bouts with alcohol and drugs that slowed his career, he is reduced to playing a “corrupt and increasingly crazed” DEA agent in a film where he is the biggest star and the second biggest star is… well, just pick any name at random from this list full of nobodies.

The title role of an Iraq war vet goes to Brian Geraghty, while the female lead is Jenna Dawson. No, I haven’t heard of them before, either. So it is that Duke and Amber (their characters) stumble onto a bag full of drug money after a shootout leaves all principals in the drug bust gone bad dead or, at least, incapacitated.

Thinking they can take the money with no consequences, they hit the road and head toward a new life, only to be tracked by Slater’s Pollen character. What follows is an increasingly hard-to-believe chase movie that, while delivering a fair amount of action, is too full of mindless violence, pointless characters and unbelieable (yet somehow still sadly predictable) plot twists. The profanity ratio is off the scale, too, so this flick earns its R rating in just about every way conceivable.

Which wouldn’t be so bad if this were a stylistic send-up by Quentin Tarrantino; but it’s not. This is the kind of film Tarrantino lampoons while also celebrating his his movies. Slater doesn’t even look that good in the role, and appears to be, at this point in time, a man in need of some weight loss pills.

One thing Slater never learned from Nicholson is how to pick great roles in great films; as an actor entering his 40s, Slater’s no longer young enough to be this desparate for work while at the same time being this hasty in his selection of roles. After a career imitating Jack Nicholson, it’s clear all Slater can achieve so far is to get down the voice and mannerisms to some degree. What he can’t duplicate is Nicholson’s talent, judgment and wisdom.

Sure, it took Nicholson a while to get there, too; but by the time he was entering his 40s, Nicholson had already made Chinatown. Slater seems unable to recognize the difference between Chinatown and Plan 9 From Outer Space. Unless he changes course, his career seems destined to pale in comparison to Nicholson’s, just as much as his imitative performances pale in comparison to saucy Jack himself.

Long before the History Channel, Biography, A & E, or Discovery, PBS proved itself pretty effective at doing documentaries. They still make them, and this six-hour DVD focusing on American Jews proves they can still pull out a decent documentary from their taxpayer supported rumps every once in a while.

Thanks in large part to its six-hour length, The Jewish Americans has a chance to really go in-depth in their study of this people and culture, unlike the other documentary I recently reviewed, NFL The Leaders: Breaking Racial Barriers In the NFL, which brushed over much of the depth of detail that one desires in a good documentary.

The Jewish Americans, however, gets its style down just right; the approach is Ken Burns-esque, mixing solid narration provided by Liv Schreiber with well-edited interviews with prominent American Jews of all ages, as well as old footage, newspaper clippings and other methods of presenting the historical information at hand, most notably through beautiful photography. But the emphasis here is on telling stories – real stories about real Jews and their experiences throughout their history in America.

One aspect that surprised me was how the documentary related the pre-World War I and World War II tensions between German Jews, who seemed eager to immigrate and blend into America other than inside their own homes, and the Eastern European Jews, who held on more tightly to their heritage and had a lesser desire to “blend in.”

While there are plenty of Jewish folks in entertainment, and actor Fyvush Finkel is interviewed throughout, the documentary, to its credit, does not focus overmuch on just the entertainment community Jews. Instead, the net is cast wider to encompass tales of Jewish folks who came to inhabit all levels of society, be they a family that ran a market in a frontier town, a mayor of some village, or even a tailor who would go on to spawn the Levi Strauss & Company brand of denim jeans.

The two-disc set is brief on extras, but with six hours of history-filled stories to explore, there’s plenty to like about this package even on the merits of its four episodes only. More than just a cursory treatment, The Jewish Americans is a significant and well-detailed coverage of the topic it tackles, and delivers some information that is sure to inform nearly every viewer of some new fact they didn’t know previously. Was the creator of billet grilles or the founder of Lehmann Brothers Jewish? This documentary is long enough to give you at least one of the answers to that question.

While I’m not exactly ready to make PBS-watching a regular habit in favor of History, Biography, A&E, or Discovery, any network that released a package like this would have a solid documentary to air. This one will stay on my video shelf for a long time to come.

The makers of Mega Brain Boost may not claim to be able to deliver you an acne treatment that works, but they do want to lay claim to being a brain-training game that gives Brain Age a run for its money. Unfortunately, the bar for impressive and entertaining brain training games was set pretty high by the Brain Age franchise and, in their first outing, the makers of Mega Brain Boost simply fall short of the target. Well short.

My wife, who is a fan of Brain Age 2, played the game longer than I did, and, given that she is familiar with the competition as well as the product under review, I trust her word on the matter. What she noticed while playing Mega Brain Boost is that the game is too puzzle oriented and lacks the variety of activities found in Brain Age 2. She also mentioned that although the game boasts about eight different game types, they’re all too similar and therefore she didn’t feel the game was as effective as Brain Age 2 at delivering any sort of “brain training.”

Personally, I also found the game to be lacking; the design’s a bit bland and unmemorable, and while it is appearing on the DS platform, Mega Brain Boost doesn’t deliver quite as much in the way of incorporating the touch-screen in creative ways, another area in which Brain Age 2 is head and shoulders above the crowd.

My time playing the game was OK, but it’s just not a game that seems fun enough to capture my attention long-term. And let’s face it, folks; if a game isn’t entertaining enough to keep you coming back for more, not a whole lot of brain-training is going to take place in the long run.

In the end, Mega Brain Boost is, at best, an average game that simply doesn’t deliver the challenge or variety of exercises needed to hold the attention of most gamers. It’s unfortunate, since I enjoy watching franchises compete against each other, with the efforts put forth spurring both companies on to bigger and better realizations of their franchises down the road. But so far, I doubt the makers of Brain Age 2 are losing much sleep over Mega Brain Boost.

Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane explained the rationale behind making an all-Star Wars episode the best way possible: “We were doing so many Star Wars jokes that some of the network people were worried about getting sued by George Lucas, so we set up a meeting with him.” As it turned out, Lucas was a nice guy who loved the cartoon and got on board with the Blue Harvest concept pretty quickly, apparently.

Family Guy: Blue Harvest is the big, hour-long Star Wars retelling the show opened the season with last fall. There are several guest voices that range widely and even include such obscure celebrities as radio host Rush Limbaugh, who basically plays a version of himself as a pro-Alliance, pro-Darth Vader establishment-loving radio talk show host. Other cameos are more mainstream, like Judd Nelson, Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo, among others.

The show adds some gags they were unable to fit into the one-hour episode that aired on Fox, mostly stuff that was cut due purely out of time constraints. All the familiar Family Guy cast members appear, with mostly obvious takes on their Star Wars alter egos. For example, Stewie is Darth Vader, Quagmire and Cleveland are C3PO and R2D2, and Lois is Leia and so on.

What’s amazing about the episode is that it packs just about the entire two-hours-plus plot of Star Wars: A New Hope into about 40 minutes of satire without cutting much. The obligatory screen-crawl gag-text to open the episode had grown old by now, but McFarlane punches some freshness into it by getting about as nasty as network censors would allow, including talking an awful lot about Angelina Jolie’s kissing habits in general, and in the movie Gia especially.

But anyone who’s seen the episode already knows what it contains, basically; what’s added is what makes the DVD presentation special, and that includes a hilarious commentary track led by McFarlane, a making of documentary, a “conversation” with George Lucas himself, and a load of other, minor features. Special collector’s edition disc are also available that pack in some Family Guy/Star Wars-related collectible goodies, like t-shirts, 3D glasses, trading cards and the like.

While hardly an original concept, it is how the episode was pulled off and melded with the Family Guy characters that makes this one unique. If you’re not into Family Guy, this might not be the episode to convert you – unless you’re a Star Wars fan, perhaps. Loaded like most Family Guy episodes with lots of pop culture references, from a Deal Or No Deal tribute to nonsequiter punchlines about seemingly random topics, like small business phone systems or the lke, Blue Harvest – like most Family Guy video releases – has it’s trademark humor intact, as well as plenty of extras and features to make the purchase well worth it.

I’m over the whole Paris Hilton-Nicole Richie thing. The Simple Life was goofy fun the first season and went downhill from there, but when I had a chance to see the E! Channel-exclusive fifth season DVD, I figured why not. Even if it’s a tired concept by now, made so by the one-joke nature of the show, at least it’s some brainless fun on a boring Sunday afternoon.

Well, I was wrong on a couple of counts. First, I didn’t watch it on Sunday afternoon; my wife and I watched it together over a couple of weekday nights to fill time left void by the writer’s strike – even though it’s resolved, the airwaves are hardly filled with new content quite yet.

The second thing I was wrong about was assuming it would be too stupid, boring and repetitive to be worth the time invested. Were the pranks of Nicole and Paris silly, stupid and worn out? Well, for the most part, yeah. We’ve seen the “brainless bimbo” routine they pull on this series too many times now.

But what captured me were the small touches of charm, mode possible mostly by the non-celebrity cast members. Having the girls become camp counselors at a summer camp provided plenty of variety without tons of travel, and a core supporting cast who weren’t always completely shocked and Paris and Nicole’s narcissistic obsession with themselves. That provided a by-now-jaded viewer like me with some characters to relate to on the show.

The show throws Paris and Nicole some curves, from a weight loss camp to a couples camp to an actors camp and more. Through it all, the prankish hijinks Paris and Nicole devise are the most annoying part of the show; but when one of the male camp counselors starts falling for an allegedly newly-unattached Paris, the show provides some real moments.

The guy isn’t fooling himself; he admits to a fellow male camp counselor-buddy that he doesn’t expect the flirtation to last beyond the summer camp experience. There is a poignant moment, however, when his friend asks him, “I know you’re ready for that. But are you ready if it really does become something more?” The guy replied, “That’s a good question,” and it was.

Foolishly, the guy relies on Nicole for advice in capturing Paris’ eye, and being the devil she is, she misleads him consistently down paths that will humiliate him. While that works the first time to a degree, when she’s still doing it by the eighth episode, it just gets frustrating on a couple levels. First, why does the guy keep turning to Nicole, who’s never led him right once; and second, is it even remotely possible for Nicole to have an on-screen moment as real as the two male camp counselors had?

Sure, the show is pure put-on and one of the least-real of all reality shows; but this season as much as any shows why the show is so limited in appeal that it was booted off Fox to E! Namely, that Paris and Nicole’s adopted personas on the show are too flat and limited in their emotional range to either demonstrate any real acting ability, or to hold the interest of viewers who never see their on-screen characters grow or grow up.

I’ve never used Cisco routers or dongles; I’ve found that one can get by quite well, usually, with a less prestigious name brand just fine. For example, I run my PC off an Encore dongle and get completely acceptable download speeds, especially now that I’m using Windows Vista and have a stable driver for it.

However, I remember not long ago, when I was living in Wisconsin and only had dial-up at an affordable price, just how annoyed I was at the rush toward broadband. I didn’t want to be left behind, just because I lived in the sticks.

Now, I live in a major metro area and broadband is both readily available and affordable; it greatly enhances the online game experience and it’s hard to imagine going back to dial-up. But sometimes I still wonder if we’re not being a bit unkind leaving folks in low-population areas behind, technologically.

I love my PS3 and my wife and I hope to have an HDTV by the end of this summer. But with the digital switchover less than a year away, I still have concerns about the people being left behind technologically, even though I’m no longer one of them.

Recently, I had a chance to try out two things for the first time. One, as you can see above, is video blogging. It’s pretty raw and amatuerish at this point, but hey, we all gotta start somewhere, right? The second thing I had a chance to try out was Buy.com.

I first heard about the e-tailer/retailer based off word on an important difference about them; namely, that Buy.com operates a lot like some insurance companies do these days: by providing you a quote on not only their price, but the best prices from their main competitors.

Now, sure, that’s a gimmick that works for insurance companies, but for retailers? I mean, when’s the last time you saw Amazon.com or Overstock.com do that, huh? But it’s part of their everyday way of doing business at Buy.com, and that’s one reason why Buy.com rocks.

I mean, let’s say you want to grab the first set of PS3 DualShock 3 controllers that combine motion sensitivity with the return of force feedback to the PS3; sure, it wouldn’t take forever to jump around to ebgames.com, amazon.com, overstock.com, ebay.com and any others you can think of, keeping a notebook handy to remember what the prices were in all those places and more.

Or you could simply go to Buy.com, look up what you need, and let them do the work for you. The great thing about Buy.com is, sure, a lot of the time they do have the lowest price; but not always and even if it means you click through to bestbuy.com or amazon.com instead of staying at Buy.com to get your PS3 DualShock3’s, they don’t mind because they know you’ll remember who found that best deal for you, and you’ll come back the next time.

It’s smart marketing and ought to indicate the start of a trend.

But Buy.com goes one step beyond that, even; they count up the hidden costs in their price comparisons. For example, some companies will add hefty shipping costs onto your order, making any savings you might realize disappear quickly. Buy.com factors that in, so you know whose price is REALLY the best deal, and who’s just sounding lower, but catching you on the back end.

That makes Buy.com a bit more up-front than most, and that’s why Buy.com rocks. Top recommendation as the first place to stop and shop, no matter what you’re looking for!