To be honest, I feel like it belongs in an art museum, one of those high ideal “interactive journeys” that would be placed between the room sized ceramic Chuck Taylors and the minature wrought iron diorama of Main Street USA in the 1980s.

There would be several stations, each with a monitor and some headphones and a simplified gyroscopic controller with one button instead of a PS3 control pad.

Really, it’s that esoteric.

I don’t think that the mainstream gaming audience is ready to drop $10 on an experience of this nature.

Made by the fine, fine people that brought you Cloud and Flow, the people who work at That Game Company.

You know, that one.

As in, right now.

Just catching up with all of the announcements and everything.  So far the most interesting things so far are the MadCatz Street Fighter IV tournament edition stick and the tiny DLPs from Wowwee.

Finally there was the Palm pré which is just, “Wow.”  They’ve come a long way since I owned a US Robotics palm device.

The fighting stick looks like it’s shaping up to be the way to play Street Fighter IV.  They’re using Sanwa parts from the Vewlix Japanese arcade cabinets.  Additionally, I’ve seen pictures that seem to indicate that you can actually open the stick and swap parts out as needed.  Which is great.

Now, if only they would get around to making a universal controller for both the PS3 and the 360.

Why even bother making them USB if they can’t be used on both consoles?  This whole proprietary controllers thing has got to go.  I know it’s a pipe dream, but I’ll just continue to have it.

The cinemin (cute) projectors from Wowwee look interesting, but I’d like to see image quality in person before I drop $300 to be a beta tester.

I don’t know when or where, but it just screams future to me.  I can’t think of a time when I’d actually use them, considering I use the PSP for media and don’t actually need a tiny projector, but the other day, I was on the street and I ran into an old friend of mine.  I mentioned that I was in a wedding over the summer and then she demanded proof when I told her who the two culprits were.

So I had to break out the iPod nano and show her the pictures on this tiny screen in broad daylight.

It was like ‘05 all over again.  Granted, the pico projector still wouldn’t have helped in that situation, but I still wouldn’t mind having one on hand.

Finally the Palm pré.  They’ve been super quiet for a long time.

I guess the pré is why.  The accented e is just their way of branding it.  I guess it’s better than not using vowels or slapping a lowercase i in front of the product name.

That’s right.  I went there.

It looks great, has a multi touch interface, and it’s got a keyboard (hello, iPhone 3.0, I’m looking at you).

I picked it up for the toys r us buy two get one free sale, and then put it away and didn’t give it a second thought.

Until last night.

Wow.It’s amazing.  Maybe it’s the PS3 Eye integration, I don’t know.  But for a karaoke game, it just does everything right.  You can pick the song you want right away.  No ridiculous unlocking of songs, if you just want to sing, you can sing.  It’s just that easy.  The game uses the original videos and tracks of the original artists.  Which, themselves are also funny, especially if you’ve picked up the 80s and 90s SingStar packs.  With the latest patch, you can actually put in the PS2 versions of SingStar and play the tracks from those volumes.

What makes SingStar excellent is that the developers of SingStar have taken the Karaoke experience and changed it into a great party game.  The interface never gets in the way of singing songs.  This is important.  Additionally, it gives you the option to pick a short or long version of the song you want to sing.

I highly recommend short versions, which are about a minute and a half long.  If that sounds short, keep in mind that four minutes holding a microphone and singing is an interminably long time, if you are waiting on your turn to sing.  The short versions allow more people to get time on the mic.  If you are fortunate to also own a PlayStation Eye, you will want as many people having a turn on the microphone because SingStar actually records a part of the performance.

This is a major selling point for the game, and honestly, one of the best parts about SingStar itself.  If you have a PS3 Eye, it takes a quick snippet of video to review after the song.  If you so choose, you can save to the hard drive for later viewing.

Watching the videos afterward is recommended.  I believe that I saved every snippet from that evening.

I only wish that the videos themselves weren’t hidden away in the walled garden of the SingStar Store.

The launch is scheduled for today, December 11, for the PlayStation Home Beta.  I like the “beta” subtitle.

I’m looking forward to the place getting populated by more people, although I don’t know why.

I know I am not going to spend too long in the application itself.  I view it mainly as an interesting social experiment.  It’s as if a Sony exec asked, “If we add Second Life features to the demographics of PlayStation 3 owners, what will we get?”

It’s a question I would not have asked, and ultimately, the answer to that question may not be one that Sony’s going to like.

The application feels dated in comparison to equivalent offerings There and Second Life.  Without a keyboard, text chat is slow and clumsy.  I will say that it is a fairly aesthetically pleasing environment, but seems really limited in terms of space.  Zoning is a punishing affair, and after I patched the game once, I had to download zones and sit and wait until they were downloaded.

How dare I want to leave my luxurious oceanview apartment.

I don’t understand the point of the app, and maybe it’s not for me.  Little Big Planet was the same way.  For PlayStation Home, I can see myself logging on if there’s a press event or some sort of exclusive content.

Otherwise, it doesn’t seem very compelling.

It’s all right. It’s nothing that I’d spend money or time on.

But, I did check it out, so the first thing I did was create my avatar. Through various tweaking and fiddling, I managed to create something that looked like an uncanny valley version of me.

If you squinted.

And were drunk.

But, being the overachiever I was, I had skipped out on the mandatory tutorial, so I was prompted (rather, not allowed to log in until I completed it) to take the tutorial before I could enter the Home beta. During the tutorial process there was a bit of confusion and I ultimately, I entered into the PS3 virtual space with an entirely different avatar, this one, a female.

I’ll be honest, I play games with female protagonists. I will usually defer to a female model in games that feature character creation. So, I thought nothing of entering PlayStation Home with a female avatar.

I’ll summarize. For the first time in my life, I was embarrassed to be a man.

It’s all new for me. Guys trying to start conversations for no reason other than I happen to have a female appearance. Guys frequently stopping in front of me as I attempt to read or watch advertisements in the virtual space. Guys running up to me looking at me, running away, and then running back, with their friends to look at my model and not even say anything.

And don’t even get me started about the dancing.

My avatar was just that, an avatar. No special sexy clothing, no ridiculous bust to waist to hips ratio, and in fact, I thought she was rather plain.

After about half an hour of constant annoyance, I decided to log off.  The next day, I found I had about four messages from random people insisting that they wanted to get to know me better.

Astounding.

To my female friends who frequent the internet, you have my sympathies.

Seriously, I had no idea.

Here’s a quick video highlight of how Eye of Judgment works on a technical level. Pretty seamless overall, however the gameplay ultimately leaves something to be desired unless you’re playing with someone else.

Then it gets really fun. If you like collectible card games.It plays like Hollywood Squares, only replace the D-List stars with computer generated fantasy creatures, and replace the whole tic tac toe element with “take over five squares.” That’s right, put five creatures on the board and you win. Which sounds simple at first until you start losing creatures every other turn. Also, I started skipping the fight animations. While impressive, they really slow down the gameplay.

Overall, not a bad way to get a PS3 camera. Not a must buy unless you really like CCGs, and have other people just as crazy as you are. Overall, it’s probably something most people are going to pass on. To be honest, I’ve used the video chat on the camera more often than playing the game, it’s just too much of a hassle to get the table out and get it prepped for use. If I were involved in a league, I’d enjoy making a deck and setting it up for online play, but for right now, it’s on the back burner for more conventional titles.

No, not really. But if there was a movie with the above concept, then Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune would be the videogame adaptation of that movie.

Circuitious introduction aside, when I first saw previews of Uncharted, I blew it off as a Tomb Raider clone with a male protagonist. Granted, the previews were all based on a very early build of the title that even Naughty Dog (the developers) admit was shown too early. I lost interest and it fell off my radar, as many games do.

I didn’t think about it again until the demo showed up on the PSN Store on the PS3.

I watched the first cutscene and I was hooked. After playing it, I was sold. In fact, I went out and bought it on release day.

The demo sold me because it started with a cutscene that showed plot development and characterization. Showcased in the first cutscene is witty dialogue, great voice acting, and most importantly, a likeable main character that I immediately wanted to root for. Not to mention detailed backgrounds and stellar animation.

I found it odd that I immediately understood the character from such a short cutscene, and it impressed me that they were able to convey so much in so little time. Then I got it.

Nathan Drake’s character in Uncharted is Captain Malcolm Reynolds from Firefly. The voice actor sounds like him, the facial models, the bits of dialogue, even the animations have Nathan Fillion’s characterization of Malcolm Reynolds down. If I get a chance to ask the Naughty Dog crew whether or not that’s true, I’m betting that it would be an unequivocal, “Yes.”

If not, “Yes,” then I would expect a curt, “No comment,” followed immediately with, “Firefly and Serenity were SO. AWESOME.”

“SO AWESOME.”

My take: It doesn’t hurt that the main character resembles a certain captain of a certain space western television series that got canceled way before its time.

Back to the demo.  Instead of being something to whet my appetite for the real game, the demo served as as the cold opener for a movie that I didn’t even know I wanted.

The demo did eventually serve its purpose, I went out and bought the game after all.  I do have to point out that it was only after the storyline’s context and characters had been established.  Their construction of the demo shows that Naughty Dog puts dialogue and characterization first, then showing off technical gameplay elements.  The order of emphasis is critical here, because it shows that they know something that many other developers forget:

Their game will stand out because of its focus on storyline.

Not because of its gameplay or amazing water effects or fluid animation or really big explosions. Those help, but a lot of other games have those. What Uncharted has is a story that drew me in and characters that made me want to see what happened to them next. There are very few games that have those elements.

Great story, characters, and voice acting all combined with a really fun game made Uncharted one of the most compelling (and fun) video game experiences that I’ve had in a long time.

I’m looking forward to the sequel.

Thank you, I’m here ’til Friday.

But with Ratchet and Clank: ToD, I played all five minutes of the 1.6GB demo and I was pleased with what they’ve done so far with the series.  Of note, the “Groovitron” weaponized disco ball.

Drop this in a target rich environment and your foes are compelled to dance.  I went through the demo a couple of times just to see how many different animations there were for different enemies.

I have the feeling that this is going to be a favorite of mine in the retail game.

I call it the superior model because they are getting rid of the PS2 emulator chip in future models.

Also interesting is the HD-DVD drive for the 360, since they also offer five free HD-DVDs.

Effectively, that’s $150 worth of free movies for each item.

What a horrible predicament.