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When I first heard of the concept of down-loadable content in console gaming, I liked it; it made sense to use the HDD and internet capabilities of this generation of machines to advantage by offering gamers a way to spend even more time in their favorite games.

However, it’s getting a bit pricey in some cases.

Disgaea 3 is a good example. I love Disgaea as much as anyone, but really, do I look like a rube who wants to spend another $30 or more buying extra characters for my party? Nope. Much as I loved Laharl from the first game, I’m ready for someone else’s story in Disgaea 3. There’s just no way I’ll ever collect all the downloadables for Disgaea 3.

Then there’s the other end of the spectrum (and not the one near SEM Chicago). And by that, I mean that some games keep the amount of DLCs offered down to a reasonable number, but they are price-and-HDD-space hogs!

For example, in Mass Effect 2, I have purchased all the DLC currently available, but I have an original 20GB Xbox360, so I’m already thin on space and each significant mission added in DLC is averaging 0.8 GB of hard drive space. That adds up quickly when you only have eight GB free to begin with.

Heck, Dragon Age: Origins’ Awakening add-on was so massive and expensive, it fit right in on the shelves with new games, and the prices were not that far apart. Yikes!

I finally forced myself to finish the original Mass Effect. The main reason? Finally owning Mass Effect 2! You need a completed mission file in order to bring your Mass Effect character over into Mass Effect 2. My Captain Shepherd is a female named Torah Shepherd, but as I soon found out, a lot more than just her name, appearance, stats and character level survived the import.

You see, BioWare had promised that your decisions and the way you played Mass Effect would deeply affect how the story plays out in later games. So far, I’m seeing that to be a case of truth-telling, not just hype. For example, my character took the Paragon path and chose to save the Council at the end of the game; my Mass Effect 2 game started with those events taken into account.

Had I let the council perish, my Mass Effect 2 experience would have been immediately different. And while I haven’t searched through the game enough yet to know where all the electric fireplaces are, I can say that BioWare is rather unique in actually delivering a notably different experience based on how you play. In a few years, we might look back on this story-branching approach to game design as simple, rudimentary, even a bit dated… but whatever we’re playing by then, the branching storytelling with genuine differences in play revolution started here.

Mark it down in the chronicles.

After opting to get Dragon Age: Origins instead of Mass Effect 2 last winter, I’ve been waiting for Mass Effect 2 to come down in price before getting it, since I knew it eventually would drop. That finally happened recently as Mass Effect 2 fell from $59.99 to $39.99. So I finally grabbed it.

Sure, I could have waited fro ME2 to become a Platinum Hit before snatching it up; that would have saved me an extra ten dollars. However, while I have to be frugal with my gaming dollar these days, my wife and I had waited long enough to obtain the sequel to the best SF RPG on the 360 or any current system. Yes, that includes Star Ocean.

Playing videogames like Mass Effect 2 almost qualifies as one of those crash diets that work, since it hooks you in so effectively, to tend to forget about other priorities in your life, like sleep or, you know, eating. Not that I recommend that.

Also, by buying Mass Effect 2 now, I got the Cerebus Network for free with the included card, rather than having to pay for it on Xbox Live, which is what will likely be the case once the game becomes a Platinum Hit.

That brings up one of my big gripes; I still dislike Xbox Live’s point-system for buying game add-ons and the like; I wholly prefer the real-money system found on the PlayStation Network; it’s a system most Apple’s iTunes in that respect. It also eliminates the need to over-buy; if you have game add-ons that require 560 points to purchase on Xbox Live, it’s not like you can just purchase 560 points — you have to buy 800 points and then have a balance sitting there for a while. Ugly.

Anyway, I never finished Mass Effect when I reached the final mission because I’d just purchased an add-on and was hoping to find a way to go back and play it; now, if I want to start Mass Effect 2 and keep my original character of Shepherd, I’ll have to finish off the original first.

So I haven’t dug into ME2 just yet; I want to complete the original ME and bring my Shepherd over. Sure, I could start a new Shepherd, but what’s the fun in that, when the game was designed to allow you to import the character you started with?

Well, here we are, almost a year since I reviewed Out of the Park Baseball 10, and I am honored once again by the fine folks at Out of the Park Developments to be given a chance to review their newest edition, Out of the Park Baseball 11. Fortunately, as a videogame blogger in no need of pronexin, I have the maturity to offer an honest review even though I’ve been offered a review copy of the game.

I’ve been able to watch Out of the Park Baseball 11 develop from its late beta stages to its current and more recent release, and I will say that I’ve been impressed once again, as I have been for the last few versions I’ve reviewed, with how in-touch Out of the Park Developments stays with the feedback of their beta-testing team as well as the users of the game. Issues that have been brought up have been addressed and patched with reassuring frequency, and issues that created problems early on have been addressed. This sort of ongoing support is likely why OOTP Developments has endured through ten editions of its game and is now beginning its second decade.

As usual, I prefer to judge a baseball game by looking at how accurately they capture the Minnesota Twins. This isn’t purely capricious on my part; first, the Twins are my home-state team and the only team I feel I actually know well enough to compare them to their videogame representation. And as a smaller-market team, if a developer gets the details on the Twins right, you can usually be assured they got the Yankees, Red Sox, Angels and A’s right as well.

First of all, I must point out that OOTP 11 has been surprisingly accurate on the Twins this time out. Their entire minor-league system is correct down to contract details, including the staffing of those minor-league teams; for example, Joe Mauer’s brother Jake is listed as manager of one of the Twins’ minor-league teams; I checked it out and they got it exactly right. That’s something that can’t be said for 2K Sports’ MLB titles, or even for Sony’s, over in the console world.

So what about simulation accuracy? Well, I simulated the Twins 2010 season up to the current date without making any changes to the team other than those generated by the game, such as injuries. To eliminate bias, I even had the CPU manager shuffle things around when such injuries arose.

As I write this review, the real-life Twins are 33-24. At 57 games into the 2010 season, the Twins in OOTP Baseball 11 stand at 32-25. While the scores were obviously mildly different from the real-life results, to get within one game of reality, albeit with a fictional injury list generated by the game, is proof to me that the folks behind OOTP Baseball 11 are NOT just making wild guesses and designing the game around biases toward favorite or popular teams.

Of course, I’ve come to expect this sort of accuracy from OOTP Baseball over the years; their game isn’t always a perfect prognosticator, but it does a better job than most baseball fans on any given day of the week. I’ve also gone on to play the off-season, and it’s a valid engine for simulating the sort of trades other clubs will agree to and which ones they won’t; it isn’t often that one robs another team blind in a trade in OOTP 11. To get someone of value, you must surrender players of like value.

The closest I’ve come to any sort of “steal” in OOTP 11 is a trade for center-fielder Andrew McCutcheon; I offered up one legit starter of 4.0-star value and two young prospects, but that wasn’t enough to get the deal done; the team I was bargaining with countered, asking for any one of five other prospects to be added to the deal.

I tossed in one of those players and they hemmed and hawed, but finally agreed to the deal at the Winter Meetings.

I gave up a starter and three very good young players to get a 4.5-star quality center-fielder. The four-for-one deal reflects the sort of deal-making that must be done to obtain someone of value. While it looks one-sided now, my McCutcheon deal reminded me a bit of the Twins-Giants trade that sent A.J. Pierzinski to San Fran in exchange for Francisco Liriano, Boof Bonser and Joe Nathan.

At the time, none of those three had proven themselves in the majors and Pierzinski was well-thought-of. That Pierzinski bombed after that, while Nathan became one of the best closers in the majors, Liriano had an amazing first year for the Twins before injuries set in, and Boof Bonser was a journeyman is the hindsight of the deal.

The talent I gave up to secure McCutcheon might blossom as well; McCutcheon seemed a great fit with the Twins when I made the trade, but his career was marred by injuries in successive seasons that held him back from fulfilling all my expectations, though he warmed the seat nicely for a draft pick center-fielder I’d picked up the summer before the trade. Also, the deal freed up salary space for me to keep much of my Twins intact for a few more seasons.

Of course, this reflects the organic nature of the game; even a deal that seems one-sided at the time doesn’t always turn out that way. After all, for every A.J. Pierzinski trade the Twins have made and come away from looking wise, they’ve had moments when they’ve looked foolish, such as being forced to cut David Ortiz for no compensation, before Big Papi blossomed with the Red Sox. Or trading away Johann Santana to the Mets for, well… no one who’s worked out all that great. Might as well say, “nothing.”

In that sense, Out of the Park Baseball 11 is sometimes a bit smarter than the real-life sport it is simulating, since it allows fewer block-headed deals.

What has impressed me this season more than in previous years is the historical simulation aspect of OOTP 11, which goes back as far as professional baseball has been played, and brings you up to the modern era. While Baseball Mogul does this, it does so without an historically-accurate financial model. While not quite perfect, OOTP 11 is much better on even that front.

Specifically, the game allows you to select starting a league in pretty much any year since the inception of professional baseball. It then takes you through a six-step wizard which allows you to customize your historical simulation to a preferred level of historical detail.

One of the details you can select is an accurate financial model. As the game explains it, “If you select to begin in 1940, ticket prices, attendance, salaries and the like will seem low, but will increase as time progresses.”

While I haven’t had the time to test out all 100+ years of professional baseball history to be certain that this accuracy is maintained year-to-year in career mode, I can vouch for the fact that, whatever year you choose to start in, the financial model is accurate to that year.

In this respect, Out of the Park Baseball 11 is far and away a superior historical simulator compared to the only other PC baseball management sim I’ve played that has attempted this, Baseball Mogul. BM has an inflexible financial model, meaning that while BM allows you to start at the inception of baseball and play to modern day, it all happens using the modern financial model. That means that in the Depression Era, you have Babe Ruth in the 1930s getting paid $20 million a season, while 60,000 fans per day flock in at ticket prices ranging from $20-$250 per ticket, and buying concessions like $5 hot dogs and $7 beer. In the Depression Era? Some Depression!

That doesn’t occur in Out Of the Park Baseball 11; the 1930s financial model reflects a 1930s economy. The amount of historical research alone required to achieve this is nothing short of dizzying! And yet, here it is. A truly impressive accomplishment that has made its impact on me as a reviewer more strongly this year than in any previous release of the game. In fairness, OOTP has been at it for a while, fine-tuning this aspect of the game before OOTP Baseball 11… but the realization of it in this year’s release has really impressed me with its attention to minute detail.

Not perfect? True. But very close.

In fairness to Baseball Mogul, by the way, that game is made for a younger, less demanding audience; Out of the Park Baseball 11′s audience is the true stats-obsessed baseball geek, and their historical simulation, therefore, is far more accurate.

Does the game stick strictly to history? I don’t know. I remember, for example, when the Minnesota Twins’ Kirby Puckett became the first pro baseball player to be granted a contract extension that paid him in excess of $1.0 million a season. That happened in the 1980s. Does OOTP Baseball 11 allow you to start in 1921, for example, and not hand out a $1.0 million/season contract until Puckett breaks down that financial wall in the mid-1980s? I don’t know.

But just the fact that each year is accurate-to-history when you start it is, for me, more than enough to set Out of the Park Baseball 11′s historical simulation mode far and away above the competition.

About the only complaint I have that really sticks in my craw is that, although toned down a bit from OOTP Baseball 10, OOTP Baseball 11 still features an injury rate to big-name players that seems far and away more frequent than is encountered in real-life. While the code hasn’t taken out my top three batters and four of my five starting pitchers, as OOTPB 10 did, there have been stretches where I’ve had as many as four or five starters injured at the same time for stretches lasting from two weeks to five months.

While the shorter-term injury people cycle back in quicker, those who the game decides are injury-prone never seem to stay on-the-field for very long. So, although the injury rate, especially to major stars, has been improved in OOTPB 11 over last year’s version, I’m still not convinced it’s an accurate injury-rate model just yet.

I should also add that the interface has been updated mildly, and while it improves the readability of the text on-screen, the layout is still a bit complex and requires a somewhat steep learning curve. Once you get accustomed to the layout of the game, the interface becomes less of an issue, but it’s not a game the newbie is going to pick up and understand completely, intuitively, within the first 30 minutes. The learning curve is probably pretty steep for the first couple hours, then tapers off for another few hours before becoming comfortable and normal.

As I said last year, I don’t employ a star-system, a 10-point score or a letter-grade in my reviews. That makes reviewing a game of this caliber a dumbed-down experience that allows readers to skip over the body of the review to see the final “score” of a game. I’d rather readers of my blog read the full review, then decide for themselves if a game is worth their hard-earned sheckles or not.

I can’t imagine, however, any baseball fan not enjoying Out of the Park Baseball 11 much more often than the time they spend finding minor faults and complaints about it. Right now, there’s just no other PC baseball management sim on the marker that even comes close, and even the baseball games in the console world cannot match OOTP’s accuracy. Well done, Out of the Park Developments!

I’m genuinely beginning to appreciate the depth of Out of the Park Baseball 11, which I will soon be posting a complete review of. The game has grown by leaps and bounds this time out and I’ve really taken some time during my recent vacation to play the game and explore it in depth.

While the game is like Lipozene compared to the bloated EA Sports console-based baseball sims, I happen to appreciate that style of game. I can hardly wait to share my observations in detail. Look for the full review to be posted in this space quite soon!

My long-suffering PSP-2000 has finally bit the dust; I had it in my pocket when my boat nearly capsized at the dock at Webb Lake this past week. Despite a long drying-out period before trying to restart it, the Sony handheld, which was already showing signs of age since I first bought it in the fall of 2007, finally bit the dust.

Fortunately, I had the wherewithal to replace it with a shiny refurbished PSP-3000 without spending a ton of money. Yay! I did not opt for the slick PSP Go! because I hate the “Your UMDs Are No Good To Us, Buy The Games Again” business model Sony adopted with that platform.

So I now have a great, tidy PSP-3000 and couldn’t be happier with it. It charged quickly, the screen does indeed appear to be brighter and GameStop even had it updated with the latest system software. I’m ready to rock-n-roll again! Still, losing my old friend was a bit of an appetite suppressants for a couple days.

Gran Turismo 5 will be the most recent full redo of Sony’s signature CarPG racing title, once it arrives, and the latest word on the oft-delayed title is that it’ll land this November, only six months from now. How realistic this timetable may be is anyone’s guess, but the upcoming E3 event should shed plenty of light on the game.

Sony’s Polyphony Studios, responsible for the franchise, has teased gamers with previews ever since the PS3 launched; a single-car, two track foretaste was released around the same time Sony debuted the PS3 version of the PlayStation Network.

Since then, a somewhat abbreviated version of the title, Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, is the best the company has been able to manage. Even though it lacked the depth of cars and tracks its predecessors featured, the game still had more depth than most racing games on this or any previous generation.

Plus, last fall, Sony released the PSP version of Gran Turismo at long last, almost simultaneously with the PSP Go! system.

But now, with November as the next tentative target date for Gran Turismo 5, one wonders if this will finally be the year it’s actually released. The game is said to feature 16-player online play, and if that’s done over Sony’s free PSN network, the company could finally have a title that puts Xbox Live to shame, rather than browsing www.bestdietsupplements.org in peace..

Ubisoft is really stepping up the pace of their development; hopefully, it will be without a sacrifice in game quality. After releasing Assassin’s Creed II only last fall, the company has announced the next installment, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, featuring online multiplay for the first time, for a November 2010 release.

The game appears to still focus on Ezio, the central character of Assassin’s Creed II, and his neverending quest for how to get rid of blackheads… err, I mean, how to off a whole bunch of famous people. Since the game does not appear to have the expected “Assassin’s Creed III” moniker, it appears this may be a side-story to the main series.

So long as Ubisoft keeps delivering the 1080p eye-candy combined with great play mechanics and a solid storyline, and they can issue new installments endlessly, as far as I’m concerned. However, let’s hope the series doesn’t travel down the Lara Croft path of diminishing returns by maintaining too steady a stream of titles to allow for actual improvement in the game.

Bethesda Softworks isn’t taking time to catch their breath, lately; the company has scheduled their newest chapter in the Fallout universe, Fallout: New Vegas, for release this coming October; that’s only five months away, and a lot sooner than it is taking the company to come up with a follow-up to Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.

Not that I’m suggesting their project management software needs upgrading or anything, and I love the Fallout world as much as anyone; however, A new Elder Scrolls title would be a welcome thing, too, and not premature at all.

OK, I’ll admit that when I’m on the go, Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness has been consuming mass quantities of hours on my PSP system. It’s an addictive game and after progressing to a considerably challenging point, I had to stop ignoring the Item World and start leveling up my weapons and armor in order to stand a snowball’s chance of getting any further in the game.

Trouble is, Item World is almost too addictive, like the appeal of setting money aside in a health savings account. I’ve leveled up weapons for all my party members, but in the process, found even better weapons that also needed leveling up along the way and, well, at what point does one say, “Enough’s enough! Let’s get back to the narrative already!”

Well, umm… I’m not there yet, even though I know I ought to be. After leveling up 2-3 rounds of weapons for my party members, I’m now starting on armor… OY, the endless power-up possibilities… I’ll never get past it to take on another Disgaea title!

Currently projected as a November 2010 release, Microsoft has announced the development and impending release of Fable III as an exclusive for the Xbox 360 system. As a fan of the series from the beginning, I can’t wait to get my hands on this one, and I’m sure my wife will feel the same way.

The scope of Fable III is expected to expand from personal morality to social morality; as the tale begins, the world of Albion has evolved into the age of an industrial revolution and while the player begins as a revolutionary against an evil tyrant of a ruler, you are offered the chance to rise to power yourself, ascending even to the throne of Albion – and then ruling it, and beyond.

Now, not only do your decisions for selfishness or the benefit of others affect your own personal growth, the affect your dog, your friends, even the entire kingdom of Albion! Will you administer justice fairly, look to enrich yourself, or even offer credit cards for bad credit? The choices are in your own hands and the consequences have never been greater, it appears.

Nice advance in the Fable concept!

There are a lot of intriguing games out on the market right now, and most people can’t afford them all. This makes choosing the right handful of games more important than ever. Enter the new Xbox 360 title, Alan Wake.

Wake was first announced six years ago by the team that brought us the Max Payne titles; however, those crime noir shooters bear little resemblance to what is billed as a “psychological thriller.” In point of fact, Alan Wake draws more from videogames like Silent Hill and Heavy Rain, as well as TV shows like Lost and Twin Peaks, that it does Max Payne.

Now, sometimes this genre can trigger click here nightmares of poorly executed games of a bygone, point-and-click era. Fortunately, Alan Wake appears to be nothing like that; it works with a solid “light versus dark” theme that is simultaneously basic and effective.

The game features a novelist, Wake, who is trying to track down his missing wife in the Pacific Northwest, with pages from a novel he doesn’t remember writing as his only clues … pages that seem to reflect the reality unfolding with each passing moment.

It’s a primal concept that reminds me of Silent Hill at its best, which for me was Silent Hill 2, the first appearance of the franchise on PS2, and by far the one with the more basic and visceral premise: a grieving husband being beckoned by his dead wife to “meet her” in Silent Hill.

Similarly, Wake offers up core, primal fears and motives that make this 360 title one of the more intriguing options on the market right now; it’s on my “seriously consider getting this” list, along with Heavy Rain, Mass Effect 2, White Knight Chronicles, and Cross Edge.

In fact, it’s likely to stay near the top of my want list right up until Fable 3 is released near the end of the year (if it stays on schedule).