If you’re reading this site, it’s likely you indulge in the occasional video game. Though you may not want to admit it to your loved ones and friends, you’ve probably at least tried an MMO at some point in your life. It’s OK, we’ve all been there. What’s important to note is that your little antisocial indulgence probably took place on a computer. You’ve got your keyboard, mouse, headphones, microphone, and near limitless access to a bevy of software. Yep, the computer is the perfect environment for your every MMO need. How else could they possibly be played?

Computer games thrive on being highly customizable, from having access to more keys than a console controller to being easily altered by those looking to enhance their experience with modification programs. Still, there’s something to be said for kicking back on the couch with snacks and a drink, controller in hand, blazing a trail of glory across the vibrant world projecting out of your gloriously large HDTV. The problem is, can you even conceive of playing World of Warcraft on your PlayStation 3?

The MMO genre is one that, in general, does not agree with the console environment. Sure, attempts have been made, but you can’t say there have been any huge success stories. Released in early 2003, EverQuest Online Adventures is a PlayStation 2 version of the popular EverQuest franchise that is still up and running. Likewise, Final Fantasy XI’s PlayStation 2 variant is still alive, though it can be assumed that its PC counterpart boasts a larger user base. The more recent Phantasy Star Universe is still around, although not many positive things can be said about it.

The Phantasy Star franchise does deserve credit though, as Phantasy Star Online for the Sega Dreamcast was one of the genre’s first attempts to break into the console market. Though admittedly a bit light on the “massive” aspect of MMORPG – every stage was instanced and there were a limited number of stages to play through – the game did attract a large following right up until Sega left the hardware business and shut down all related servers. Xbox and GameCube versions did follow, eventually leading to the release of the PC only Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst.

Though EverQuest and Final Fantasy are respectable products, the genre has seen more failures than successes on consoles. Cancellation after cancellation has left gamers wondering if more console MMOs are ever going to happen. True Fantasy Live Online, a game being developed by Level-5 for the original Xbox, was a high profile title until it was ultimately canned. Then there was the announcement and subsequent cancellation of Marvel Universe. And lest we forget, Ensemble Studios was once hard at work on a Halo MMO. Who knows how many other projects were ended prematurely before have any light shed on their existence. Such has been the genre’s console fate. One could argue that a lack a titles is better than 10,000 games with identical gameplay mechanics (I’m looking at you, Korean developers), but something would be nice.

Don’t fret though, as there is still hope. Now that broadband access and internet-ready consoles are becoming ubiquitous, the number of hoops an MMO must jump through to be successful on a console is lessening. Plug a keyboard into the USB port of your PS3, grab a Bluetooth headset and it’s just like being at your computer. Hard drives allow patches and downloadable content to be possible. The technology is in place – all we need are the games.

And they are coming, or so we’re being told. Square Enix announced Final Fantasy XIV Online at E3, which is set to be released in 2010. Out of all upcoming console MMOs, this one is poised to have the most success if done properly. Other projects are shrouded in a bit more secrecy, but we do at least know they exist. Funcom is said to be porting Age of Conan to the Xbox 360, though when we’ll see it remains a mystery. Turbine, creators of Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online, is supposedly working on or investigating the possibility of a console project. Warhammer 40K, not to be confused with Warhammer Online, is rumored to be in development for both PC and Xbox 360 alike, though the only evidence to support this is a job posting.  And let’s not forget Sony’s The Agency, which has actually been shown to the gaming press.

But how many of these games will we even see? As evidenced by the recent E3 press conferences of Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, motion sensing devices are all the rage. If we are to believe the hype being dished out, fake bows with fake arrows and invisible steering wheels are the wave of the future. There is much success to be had, but the risk versus reward ratio associated with the development of an MMO is keeping many away. It’s also easier to sell the public on fully interactive games as opposed to ones that many require part-time job hours. From a marketing perspective it’s hard to blame them.

Still, both Sony and Microsoft are committed to 10-year life cycles, so it seems more like a matter of when as opposed to if. Final Fantasy XIV Online seems a safe bet to at least be released, with pretty much every other project in an unpredictable state. Is it a market companies want to tap? Absolutely. Are many going to do it and do it well? No, probably not. But that’s OK. Does your console really need rehashed versions of Mabinogi and FlyFF? For the foreseeable future, the console MMO market will have fewer titles than its PC counterpart, but, from a quality control perspective, that’s probably a good thing. We will wait patiently, controller in hand, for the triple-A titles to start trickling in. One day, not all that far off, we’ll be grinding out low level quests with analog sticks and shoulder buttons and you won’t have it any other way.

Though we all sort of assume that E3 is about games (and, overwhelmingly, it is), it’s technically the Electronic Entertainment Expo, which means every once in a while we get the chance to see something that’s not exactly a game. In years past, these little discoveries would almost certainly have been relegated to the dank pit that was Kentia Hall (where games go to dieeeeee), but with E3 not quite fully returned to its former glory, Kentia Hall was turned into a parking lot and the lesser-known stuff was instead tucked away in the myriad meeting rooms surrounding the two main halls of the Los Angeles Convention Center.

In one such room were the good folks at Yoostar, who have managed to not only roll out an interesting concept — a little 2 megapixel webcam on a tripod that captures video of anyone sitting in front of it, then injects them into scenes from famous Hollywood movies — but has actually managed to garner a rather impressive amount of support from the movie studios themselves. MGM, Paramount, Universal, and Lionsgate have all signed on to contribute clips, and public domain clips like presidental addresses and even kids stuff like Sesame Street have all been licensed, making for 800 different snippets to insert oneself (or selves, as the case may be).

The $169.95 package includes the aforementioned camera (which has a built-in mic with echo cancelling to deaden any funky acoustics in bigger rooms and the ability to white balance or chroma key things to try to match the original lighting), a green screen and a remote, plus the usual PC/Mac software to get it all rolling. You simply pick a scene, set yourself up in the little bounding boxes provided, and do your damndest to match the original performance (or just spaz out like I did and completely ruin it) as the script is delivered for the typically 30 or less scene. The software then takes your performance, does a little bit of basic cleanup and then plays back the video with you now in it. Yoostar painstakingly scrubbed/cloned out the original characters and painted in a new background to then superimpose you over. In cases where foreground objects were needed, an additional layer is thrown on top of your performance to properly seat you in the right layer.

I gave it all a shot, swapping myself out for Veep Joe Biden during one of President Obama’s Congressional Addresses (the caps make it seem more official, y’see), and it worked fairly well. There was still some cleanup that needed to be done to match the lighting and green screened masking, but that’s where the rest of the Yoostar service comes in.

See, dumping yourself into scenes and hamming it up is all well and good, but if only people in your household can see it, there’s nowhere near the impact of, say, a YouTube submission. The clips can be uploaded to the Yoostar portal, where their could-based servers will do additional cleanup and then allow the community to rate and comment on the videos. You can easily blow a few hours just watching other people’s stuff for inspiration (or a little finger-pointing), and Yoostar supports uploading to other social networking sites for maximum exposure (though YouTube is out due to their rather strict copyright rules, even if the clips are studio-approved).

The idea, of course, is to allow people who shell out cash to get the whole setup then have as many tools as possible to interact with the community, and it’s all pulled off with a patented interface that feels like a suped-up version of Apple’s Cover Flow interface where thumbnails can be flipped between by scrolling across or up and down among the different layers. Hovering the mouse over a window — even ones that aren’t in the closest layer — will then play the clip so you can see that part without having to blow it up (though you certainly can). Interestingly, Yoostar is aiming at making sure it all works on laptops, which means that the typical crapfest integrated graphics chipset will indeed play things with few problems. More high-end hardware will only help smooth out and speed up the whole interface and process, but the laptop Yoostar was running wasn’t some kind of killer gaming rig.

A product like this will live or die based on two very important factors: ease of use and studio support. In all honesty, the interface seemed simple enough that even technophobes would be able to grasp it in just a few minutes (if not seconds), and it’s clear Yoostar is pushing studios hard to make more and more of their libraries available for scene insertion. The hundreds of clips that are there now will be bolstered by daily updates and packs that can be downloaded (for a nominal fee, of course). The asking price is rather steep for all the tech, but if they can get enough users to jump on board early on, the community may well make it all self-sustaining.

If the Yoostar folks are reading this, I have but one bit of advice: get the awesome Brandon Hardesty a unit and have him record a ton of stuff. You couldn’t ask for a better way to pimp your product. Seriously. Do it.

Over in our news section, we started doing something called [DLC Depot] where we try to highlight some of the more stand-out releases that are shoved into our inbox, but I wanted to take the time to actually properly dissect a couple of the bigger releases in the past few days (okay, weeks. Okay, months — yes, I’ve been extremely lazy about this stuff).

Though the games being called out are pretty fundamentally different, there is a link between the two that goes beyond the fact that I was lazy and procrastinated for way too long in getting these up. Both are actually rather intensely social experiences, and ones that need to be played with other people. In the case of our first game, it’s pretty much forced, but with the second, it’s a little less obvious. Even still, both games really opened up when I learned to stop worrying and started to love their bomb-ass nature. Ew, that was a nasty segue. Oh well, on with the fun!

[Resident Evil 5 | Versus DLC]

Price: $4.99

I’ve already voiced my displeasure at how Capcom navigated the possible routes for the Resident Evil franchise, but what’s done is done, and rather than harping any more on the choices, it’s probably better just to live with ‘em. In truth, to properly enjoy the modes that the Versus add-on pack has to offer, you need to not just tolerate the particular eccentricities of Resident Evil 5’s controls but properly embrace ‘em. Like, big ass bear hug-style. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t… resistant to jumping back into playing RE5, but in a very real sense, this is lemonade being made out of lemons.

Mercenaries Mode, the additional bit of arcade-flavored, time-crunched fun that’s unlocked when you finish the story mode of Resident Evil 5 is deceptively similar to the main game, and by extension, so is the Versus Mode offerings — Slayer and Survival in both “single-player” and co-op flavors. I use the quotes only because the two modes aren’t entirely driven apart by vast similarities; if you want to mess with the other guy, he’ll happily soak up your shots and then give you a few precious seconds of free not-zombie killing action.

The game’s at its best, though, when you do either force yourself to work alongside or against someone with a clear goal. The fun that comes from knowing you’re supposed to gun down the other guys or stand back-to-back with ‘em, taking on the red-eyed hordes lets you concentrate on that basic idea. That Survival actually penalizes you for shooting those zombies, however, turns the weird lock-n-turn combat into a game of selective targeting; don’t shoot the normal enemies and instead try to get a bead on the guys that are scrambling all over the place. Thing is, the normal Mercenaries maps that are re-used here (as are the characters and the weapons loadouts) suddenly feel new when you’re constantly trying to juggle weapon range, damage and getting the drop on someone. That guy or gal trying to run around to get the drop on you almost makes it all feel like a sniper duel, which isn’t something I expected.

Conversely, the kind of communication and teamwork (even within the confines of Versus’ complete lack of customization or even rematch options) needed to rack up the kills to unlock new (okay, old) maps in Slayers makes it feel new too. Headshots and chaining kills while using the environment while not stealing kills or wasting spare explosions changes things again. For five bucks, this is actually not a bad way to make something old (or at least familiar) feel new. One could argue that it could (or even should) have been included on the disc as a playable option after beating the game like Mercenaries, but there’s no denying that what’s here is added value, and the price is right.

[Buzz! Quiz TV | Rock Legends Quiz Pack]

Price: $7.99

There’s not a whole lot to say here about the latest Buzz! add-on that wasn’t already covered by my last dive into the 500 post-release questions Sony’s cooked up. The difference between this one and the American Culture Quiz Pack is that it’s [i]clearly[/i] designed around those that have a semi-encyclopedic knowledge of rock music; Glam, Hair Metal, Blues, Classic Rock… hell, there’s even a few Jazz questions in there, though I’m not complaining. Needing a breadth of quick-recall info on the various types of music is hardly a bad thing, exactly, as it actually helps multiple age groups and interests get into things. It [i]does[/i] mean, however, that this is something best served up to those that have Rolling Stone subscriptions because nothing will turn someone from a cautious player idly tapping at the Buzz! buzzer into a whooping “TASTE MY HENDRIX SCIENCE!”-screaming know-it-all like nailing a couple of questions.

I still would have liked to see these Quiz Packs uh… pack in more stuff; more video, more audio clips and, [i]please[/i], guys, more stuff from Buzz himself and the announcer. It’s a bummer that the same quips are used constantly — especially because there were so few of them on-disc to begin with. I realize the game probably isn’t tapping much of the Blu-ray’s capacity, but I wouldn’t mind a bigger download size if it meant some cool old footage of The Who or rare live recordings of bands as part of some of the questions. As it stands now, this is all basically piggybacking off the content that’s already on the disc, and it doesn’t quite feel like it’s completely worth the asking price. Even still, all my bitching still can’t deter me from recommending this to those of you looking to stretch [i]Buzz![/i] just a bit further.

And there you have it. Two passing glances at games that I actually found rather entertaining despite them being mere morsels compared to their parent games. Both worth picking up, and though for entirely different reasons, both serve as great ways to extend a game past its on-disc life, which is the idea behind DLC anyway, right? Right.

Once in a while a piece of entertainment stands out so clearly in our world of constant and never ending irrigation that it manages to grab me, turn me upside down, shake me until everything falls out of my brain’s deepest cracks and totally changes my view on the happenings in this messed up world. Don’t get me wrong: I love this messed up world, with all its misfortune and seemingly endless chaos. What fascinates me most however is how it has a way of surprising always in the right moments with its sudden perfect symmetry. Entertainment sometimes captures that perfect symmetry best.

After having seen WATCHMEN in a dirty little Frankfurt cinema last night I feel like being on a pill. A fucking weird, thought provoking pill that just makes me feel good all day. What has always intrigued me about the geek world is how we try and look at things from a deeper perspective. People who do not know us or our world mostly think we’re a bunch of superficial idiots with fried brains in our world of violence and false heroism. They are wrong! Plain and simple. WATCHMEN proves them wrong by demanding many questions that need asking. Watchmen is more than simple entertainment. Some are going to be turned off by that, just as much as they would be turned off by the sheer thought of using their brain (I know this sentence is a paradox…). But Watchmen does the impossible: It combines pure and classic entertainment with fantastically deep and thought provoking philosophy. And you know what? It looks damn sexy while it makes you think, and fear and cry and laugh for one hundred and sixty eight minutes.

Believe it or not but the majority of us like to be entertained with something more than just action and romance once in a while (at least that’s what I like to think concluding from my own appetite for something deeper than the clichéd mass of daily media routine). Lucky me, once in a while our wishes and prayers are remunerated with a deep and thought provoking piece that at the same time serves stunning and satisfying entertainment. Some, might be turned off by the sheer size of it (of course I’m not only talking about its length). Zack Snyder’s blockbuster is one of those rare pieces of art that divides opinions and critics. Not even the professional press was able to make up their minds in the end with deranging scores between poor 3.0s and perfect 10s.

All the Watchmen madness and hype that started flooding the Internet and even the mass media long before the movie was even done almost kept me from following the masses into the movie theaters. Finally I cherished my hopes and surrendered myself to the movie. Before I continue let me admit that I am one of those kids that completely missed out on comics — I’m sorry, Graphic Novels – in general, not just WATCHMEN. All the more it struck me when I got my hands on Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, two authors I had never heard of before, shortly before seeing the film. A comic book that’s in the top 100 of Time’s most influential English language books truly deserved my attention prior to seeing its port to another platform.

I read until about one fourth of the book until I realized: I NEED to watch this movie, NOW! As soon as the movie began its way of portraying the American country, its people and the world during the cold war immediately sucked me in: This is the perfect translation of a superb comic onto the big screen! A comic many, including its creators, thought wouldn’t survive a porting. Snyder and his team of filmmakers and actors brought this world of Watchmen to life. I immediately fell in love with everything in it and most of all its sad and broken heroes as well as anti-heroes. Especially commendable is how Snyder didn’t try to copy the book but instead rather enhanced it at those corners where it needed enhancing. And he did this with such subtle care that he never betrayed the source material and its heritage.

After The Dark Knight I thought the peek for comic book movies had been reached. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I am probably going to regret this due to tons of hate-mail but I’ll go so far and say that Nolan’s movie is in many ways inferior to Snyder’s. After 300 I was very skeptical. Against all the odds, Snyder pulled it off. To me he has officially catapulted himself into Hollywood’s small circle of immortal filmmakers. I bow with deep respect. We have to ask ourselves: What is next in the ‘comic book goes movie’ world? For now there is only one thing I can do: Experience that piece of art again….and again…and again…

Oh, what a fitting title. After a particularly… interesting bender about a week ago, I decided it might be a good idea to swear off the hooch for a while, and it’s actually done wonders for productivity (I mean, have you seen TPS lately? We’re actually updating again!). Without my normal haze to cloud the daily routine of playing through all manner of crap games, though, it’s been something of a quest to actually keep my brain active. I’ve become a complete Jeopardy! junkie again (though not the PS3 game — we actually shelled out $15 here at the office and were so horribly disappointed that we wished there was a way to get PSN refunds; how can you have multiple-choice Jeopardy!? And without Trebek? Naaaah, bad mojo, that one), but then I’ve always been something of a game show die-hard to begin with.

Maybe that’s why I took so quickly to the Buzz! series in the first place. The PS2 games had just the right blend of smarmy host quips (it’s always important when the contestants get berated a little by a high-and-mighty emcee, after all) and great questions, plus a ton of different categories that usually ended up leveling the playing field a few times to keep those that would try to pull ahead by answering every question like their life depended on it (it’s called “The Sam Technique” around here for a reason, I suppose). Even when getting pies to the face constantly, though, the game was a blast, and we’d even turned it into a drinking game well before the PS3 version came out.

When it did, Sony was actually cool enough to send over beer and pizza (a seriously welcome gesture, as it was Round Table, and it literally disappeared from its little cardboard cage in about five minutes. Yes, we’re an office of Round Table lovers. The Heineken Light? I think there’s still three or four o’ those in the fridge, and we keep trying to pawn ‘em off on PR folks that stop by to no avail (what, no drinking at 11AM? Surely you jest!). In any event, Buzz! Quiz TV — that’s the PS3 one, mind you. Was a big hit here too, though that’s hardly surprising.

What did surprise, us, though, was how comparatively trimmed-down the whole experience was when it moved to the PS3. Yes, the graphics were quite nice and the game itself was classic Buzz!, but there were fewer modes and, it seemed, a few more repeats in the supplied questions, which had shrunk by a couple thousand. Granted, there was now the ability to create your own quizzes (some of which were pretty awesome, actually) and share them online, but clearly there was something else planned.

Turns out (surprise, surprise) that Sony had planned to release multiple themed question packs (about 500 Qs apiece), and have since rolled out Comedy, National Geographic: Safari, National Geographic: Undersea, Sci-Fi, Videogames and Horror Quiz Packs since the game hit back in September, which isn’t a bad run. For whatever reason (likely because we’ve all been insanely busy over the Holidays), I never really had the itch to jump in, but when Sony kicked over a code for things, I really couldn’t resist anymore.

The American Culture Quiz Pack is, surprisingly, pretty awesome. Any downloaded Quiz Packs just become an extra category, but they won’t always crop up, meaning you won’t burn through the 500 questions in week or something. American Culture pretty much covers the gamut of US geography, music technology, history, politics, people, places and so on, so there’s plenty of variety. I am starting to get a little burned out on how easy a lot of these questions are (and yeah, I understand, they have to make it accessible for anyone who drops coin for ‘em, but still). I also didn’t pick up on a whole lot of (if any; it’s been a while) new comments from Buzz himself, which the PS3 version desperately needs (especially if you’re playing solo, as it’s literally the same lines over and over and over and over…), but content-wise, things are exacty as billed.

Despite any little gripes I might have about things, running through the questions here both by myself and with some of the other staffers has definitely rekindled my interest in picking Buzz! up again, and we’ve already decided that we’d be stupid not to have some kind of contest (sadly, no drinking for me) with the Videogame Pack, so I’ll probably be grabbing that this week. If we make something fancy of it, I’ll be sure to update you guys with pics of the debauchery. Something tells me it’s going to end with Sunny making me shave my head or something. On second thought, maybe pics are a bad idea.