Killzone 2 is by far one the best looking first-person shooters I’ve played in a long time. It is similar to Gears of War in story and gameplay (in fact since the first Killzone came out two years before Gears of War, I wonder if Gears or War was meant to be an Xbox 360-only clone of a popular PS2 game), but Killzone 2 isn’t nearly as frustrating to play as Gears of War, playing much more like your typical first-person shooter.

The single player campaign story is intriguing, the cut-scenes are some of the best I’ve seen, the in-game graphics are unreal and the gameplay mechanics are smooth and familiar. My only complaint has been some dropped frames when you are loading a new section. It never happens during any action, but it does break up the immersion into the game and what is happening.

I haven’t dived into multi-player mode yet, since I don’t know anyone else with the game. I expect the game lobby and matchmaking to be about as poor as every other online-PS3 game, but hopefully I’m wrong.

For now, certainly worth a rent just for the single-player.

I know both Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour have been out for a while now. But I finally got time to play both of them as a full band and feel like I understand both of their pro’s and con’s now. Both are good games and fun to play, but they both have their shortcomings too. One game stands out as clearly the better game, but I will get to that at the end.

Rock Band 2 ( 2 Stars )

If you’ve played the first Rock Band then there will be no surprises with Rock Band 2. It is really just an upgrade. In fact I can describe Rock Band 2 in just six words: new songs, wireless, easier kick pedal. And that is about it.

The Pros: The drums are quieter (meaning you don’t have to hit them as hard, but likely still will). You can import the songs from Rock Band 1 (for a fee) and there is a lot of new songs available to download from the online store.

The Cons: Playing as a band is still really the only way this game should be played. You can play it solo, but I found little enjoyment out of it and gave up after about a dozen songs. The guitar is the same crappy guitar from Rock Band 1, just wireless. And the singer still has to deal with a corded microphone which is surprising as the first role that should be wireless should be the singer.

But in my opinion the worst detriment to Rock Band 2 is the songs. First just like with the first game, you end up playing the same songs over and over. In order to unlock venues and build fans you need to play several gigs where you pick the songs. But to get the good stuff you need to play showcases, which is usually a bunch of randomly assigned songs you’ve already played once before. In the first 20 songs we played the other night, about every fourth one we’d already played, meaning 25% of the songs we did we had to do over.

This wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t without the second problem, the songs. Meaning if you haven’t watched MTV in the past ten years, prepare to perform a lot of songs you’ve never heard of before. You can still play them and beat the song, but it can be a challenge and not very fun. It seems the key to have a really good rhythm game party, not to mention getting good at the game, is playing songs that you know. I’d estimate that 60-70% of the songs we played we’d never heard before. I felt that number was much smaller in the first Rock Band.

Oh, and this only applies to the folks playing Rock Band 2 on the Wii or the PS3, but the instruments require a little dongle that connects to your console and allows for wireless play. There are frequent posts on forums all over that they lose their connection mid game and from my experience with the PS3 is it will, a lot. You just get used to the signal dropping out every minute or too and losing notes (and your streak). If you aren’t playing competitively, it’s not to bad to deal with, but it can be frustrating and there doesn’t seem to be a consistent fix.

Guitar Hero World Tour ( 4 Stars )

I read a lot of reviews that said that Rock Band 2 was the superior game to Guitar Hero World Tour, the new band game from the makers of Guitar Hero. After buying the Rock Band 2 kit, I wanted a second guitar, so I bought the Guitar Hero World Tour guitar only kit, which gave me the game and one wireless guitar. After playing it in both solo mode and band mode, I feel it is clearly the superior game.

I haven’t played the Guitar Hero drum kit, which I read mostly bad reviews on. Though most of the reviews were from people that preferred Rock Band over Guitar Hero, so now I take them with a grain of salt. Add that it is seems like a massive number of people are having problems with the wireless connection on Rock Band 2 drums and having to return them one and two times, I wouldn’t believe everything you read.

The Pros: If you’ve played any of the Guitar Hero games, you know what to expect. The Highway (the notes you need to play) in World Tour, like the earlier games, is much clearer than Rock Band and better layed out. You can clearly see what you need to play and how you are performing. Like the guitar roles, with drums or vocals you can deploy your star power at any time. You also rock or get booed, accumulate star power as a band, not as individual performers. This means you help each other out and work together more closely than with Rock Band, making you even feel more like a real band.

The vocals are more sensitive and do a better job of canceling out the background. In Rock Band you really don’t need to sing very well as the microphone picks up the background vocals and applies it to the score. Guitar Hero you need to perform, making it a bit more challenging and definitely more fun.

The guitar that I got with World Tour is fair superior to the Rock Band one, and even better than any of the previous Guitar Hero guitars I’ve used. It has a good wireless connection, is sturdy and the raised buttons feel more comfortable. They’ve added a Star Power button below the fret board in case you lifting it up screws you up, and a touch sensitive slide area for certain solos.

The drummer in Guitar Hero has three pads and two cymbals and a kick pedal, one more input than Rock Band. But the makers of Guitar Hero made World Tour compatible with Rock Band drums, reducing your highway from five to four. Like with all the other instruments, I found no problems playing World Tour with a Rock Band kit (though I’ve heard that you can’t use the World Tour kit with Rock Band, but I’m not sure). You plug them in and they all work seamlessly.

A big bonus with World Tour is the solo mode. I’ve played the solo mode with both the guitar and the drums and found it to be really fun. You could never play in a band and be totally satisfied. Unlike Rock Band, the Guitar Hero franchise has already worked out how to play in solo mode really well and carries it over to World Tour.

Finally the songs and the gameplay. In Guitar Hero you play a clear succession of songs, grouped in sets, each with its own encore. No repeats. Each set has at least one song that your band will know. We found that usually we’d know all the songs but one. There are a few sets that have several songs we don’t know and we can skip them and just move on to the next set. Eventually we’ll need to conquer them, but we are in control of what we want to play.

The Cons: There isn’t nearly as many songs available to download as Rock Band, so you are kind of stuck with what you get with the game. Even though I didn’t feel that held back the game, it is kind of a bummer. On the guitar there are select buttons on either side of the star power button, making it really easily to mistakenly pause the game mid song. And that is it.

Like I said I haven’t played the World Tour drums and I’ve heard some bad things. But from my experiences with both Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour, I would easily recommend Guitar Hero over Rock Band. It is a solid game that is fun both alone and in a group. If the guitar is any indication of the equipment that comes with World Tour, I would expect them to be more reliable and better made, as I haven’t seen the same connection issues with Guitar Hero instruments in my searches.

For the Xbox 360 it was BioShock, a game that looked so great I felt compelled to purchase an Xbox 360. While I wanted a Blu-Ray player, the game that justified getting a PS3 was LittleBigPlanet. Now that I’ve played it, I have to admit it was worth every penny (meaning the game plus the $400 console).

Rarely does a game come along that I think to myself, “Wow! I haven’t seen that before.” The gameplay for LittleBigPlanet isn’t revolutionary. If you have played a platformer, like Super Mario Bros. before, then you know what to expect. Jump. Dodge. Run. Jump!

What makes LittleBigPlanet so freakin cool is a.) the style—it is amazing to look at and play. It creates a completely unique world both familiar and odd. And b.) customization, meaning you can customize your character and the world he or she plays in. After you’re done decorating the worlds created for you, you can create your own worlds to play in using the level creator or download levels that others have created and shared online.

The level of creation, and how amazing it looks when you are done, creates a whole other dimension of play, that I’ve rarely see in video games, making LittleBigPlanet, in my opinion, the best game of 2008.