(Image blatantly and obviously stolen from NewEgg.com)

My current twenty-something inch computer monitor has an aspect ratio of 16:10, and it isn’t advanced enough to perform any kind of scaling. That means it doesn’t work with my Playstation 3, which outputs a 16:9 aspect ratio. A bit of the image is lopped off of one side.

I am. Really. I know it’s hard to believe, but bear with me.

I’m a pretty self-important consumer.

Let’s look at gaming. I own a PS3. I want to purchase an Xbox 360 soon, I wouldn’t mind owning a Wii, but I like PC gaming best. I can play PC games anywhere I have a computer. I can use nearly any input I want–Xbox controller, PS3 controller, keyboard and mouse, classic gamepad, joystick, etc.

For a while it was enough for me to say that if a game wasn’t coming out for PC, I wouldn’t buy it. In truth, there are enough good games out on PC to keep me occupied for years. Eventually games like Uncharted 2 came along to make me finally buy a console (the PS3 being a Blu-Ray player I could stream files to from my PC helped make that decision, too).

I still have a bit of a chip on my shoulder. I was considering not buying Red Dead Redemption because it came out for 360 and PS3 but not PC. I probably will buy it soon, but why isn’t it out for PC? I’m sure it will be in a few months, just like GTA4 was, but it’s still a letdown.

The other day, Attack of the Show’s segment “The Loop” asked the question, “Is PC gaming dead?” It’s a very troubling question for me, I am a PC gamer. There are a lot of different issues involved, but I’m going to try and tackle a lot of them in this article. (SPOILER!!!–PC Games RULE!!!)

I beat Uncharted 2 yesterday, here are a few notes (mostly comparing/contrasting with the first Uncharted game):

This game kicks ass. I was a little suspicious of some of the scenes I’d seen in trailers. Running on a train, for instance, while a helicopter is firing at you looked cool but I worried in the game it would be overwhelming and too difficult. For my money, they balanced it perfectly and it was great fun.

I like to game, so it follows that I’m ridiculously good at it. Playing Uncharted for the first time, when I got my ’100 Headshots’ trophy I thought, “Great, but what am I going to do for the next 19 chapters?” I will admit it was hard work getting 100 headshots in the first three chapters. I shot heads that weren’t even supposed to be in that level. I climbed towers and sprouted the heads of innocent people picnicking on adjourning islands.

If that weren’t awesome enough, my headshots have headshots–translation–my bullets, on the way to some dude’s head, pull out their own tiny guns and headshot some other dude with even tinier bullets before slamming into the original dude’s head that they’re aimed at. No shit. Just wait till I train my bullets to launch tiny grenades or better yet, wait for me to perfect the grenade headshot–it’s not a myth.

When I beat Uncharted the first time I didn’t even have a television. I plugged the audio from the PS3 into my headphones and beat the whole game blind. What’s your excuse, Horatio Nelson? Oh, right, you’re dead. Didn’t stop John Paul Jones, and he was a TERRORIST!!!

I got so good at Uncharted that on my second playing, in the fourth chapter, in Crushing mode mind you, a dialog box popped up and gave me the option of playing the rest of the game with Nathan facing backwards, lining up my shots with a hand-mirror he holds. What do they think I am, a n00b? It’d be nice to have a challenge for once. In the last level, when you’re supposed to beat Navarro in hand-to-hand combat, Navarro just laid down on his stomach and put his hands behind his head. I killed him anyway.

To be clear–my Uncharted is so strong it makes Kevin Pereira’s ping pong look like Helen Keller’s ping pong. Don’t even get me started on how I make Helen Keller’s Uncharted look. Shitty, that’s how.

Just making sure everyone out there knows exactly how good of a gamer I am. Very.

Lark

You know what the two lamest devices nearly all PS3 developers use are?

Number 1: Quicktime events. You know how sometimes you think you’re watching a cut scene, and out of nowhere a dialog comes up prompting you to quickly hit a key or else your character dies? Yeah, that doesn’t get me more involved in the game, it doesn’t make the cut scene any less of a cut scene, it just makes me really annoyed. Maybe I’d like to put the controller down every once and a while and have a drink, hmm?

Number 2: That BS where you are supposed to be turning a knob or something, or unscrewing a hatch, and you have to roll one of the joysticks in a circular motion, as if you’re actually unscrewing the hatch. Am I supposed to be tricked into thinking I’ve just began a hyper-realistic VR hatch-opening simulation? Is the game supposed to be enriched by this maneuver? It isn’t.

Resident Evil 4 and 5 are decent games, but stuffed full of quicktime events. I’ve read many reviews pointing these events out as annoying, but I’ve never read any review complimenting them. Who likes them? Anybody?

Uncharted is also guilty of such quicktime events, but they are very few and far between. (Does Playstation require their developers to include these gimmicks?) Uncharted is far more guilty of making the player rotate the joystick to open a hatch. It’s only a slight blemish on a very good game, but I still have to wonder, what do they think it adds? For me, it adds nothing and just makes me roll my eyes as I wait for the door to finally open.

Lark

There seems to be a workaround for playing Uncharted on PS3 firmware 3.0 relatively freeze-free. If your problem is like mine, then you’re freezing every few hours, and restarting the system or deleting game data isn’t helping. Play another game–a completely different PS3 game, not another Uncharted saved game. I don’t know how long you have to play another game for, or if it matters if it’s a disc-based game or what, but it completely explains for me why it unfroze after days of being stuck in the same place, because after it ‘s frozen the past few days I’ve just been playing MGS4 instead. Playing another game unfreezes whatever spot you’re stuck on, and I was able to get a few more hours of play in before it froze again (which you can get past by playing different game, get it?).

I haven’t had the time to test it properly, I just just froze for me again but I was going to quit to do some more work anyways. When I get a chance later, I’ll see if just starting the Little Big Planet demo is enough to un-freeze it for a while, so I don’t have to switch discs.

Lark

Hey Sony, I have the internet again, so you can release that PS3 firmware fix to un-freeze Uncharted. Cool? Cool.

A few hours ago I posted the following on twitter: “Uncharted–no, unfreeze!! Please?!? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Curese you, PS3 firmware 3.0. CURSE YOOOOOOUUUUUUUU!”

I thought it was funny at the time, and no, the misspelling was not intentional. I just bought a PS3 Slim, with Resistance and Uncharted. Well, the game ran fine, until I right before the end of Ch. 8, where’s you’re shooting other vehicles from the back of a jeep (spoiler alert?), when the game would freeze up. This was a few days ago, and I couldn’t get past it. At first I didn’t think the freeze was PS3 firmware 3.0 related, as a lot of people have had freezes at that part long before firmware 3.0. Regardless, the more I read about it, and the more things I tried to fix it, the more I started to believe that was in fact related to the recent upgrade.

Every message board mentioned the thing to do was erase game data and start over. I did not want to do this, as I wanted to keep my saves. I knew at this point trophy date is synced online, it should be with you forever. Then I saw a post that said game data and save data are two different things and even have their own icons in the menu. Deleting game data will not affect your save games. So I deleted the game data, re-downloaded update 1.10 (I think) for Uncharted, and resumed my saved game. I got past the freeze. I played a few hours. I’m happy.

For now.

So if you’re have that specific freeze, and not the freezes that occur every two to five minutes, try erasing the game data. Well, try it anyways, really. Not like you have anything to lose, and you might not have to wait for the patch Sony has said they’re working on.

Lark

So the Playstation 3′s price has dropped $100 (to $299), and they’re releasing a 120GB new slim-design in September. You can get the current 80GB model for $299 on amazon.com and places like Gamestop, though I think Sony will soon stop producing those.