First up, I want to let you all know that I’m heading down to LA with my good friend Sean Chin, who accompanied Eggplante to E3 2010 where we had an absolute blast. He founded and runs Live In Limbo (www.liveinlimbo.com), a great source for music, movie, concert, and of course video game reviews. So check it out! Now on to our predictions…..

This year will hopefully not be the year of the sequel as it was last year. 2011 brought us a lot of threes, actually: Modern Warfare 3, Gears of War 3, Mass Effect 3, yada yada yada. This year, hopefully we’ll see a lot more original IP, or at least games that, while they’re based on existing story lines, tell stories in a brand new way. For example, Halo 4 isn’t going to be a true sequel. The storyline will pick up from where it left off, but it’s a new studio developing it, it’s a new trilogy, and of course, it’s been five years since Halo 3 launched. My excitement about Halo 4 can’t be tempered, and I can’t wait to get some hands-on time with the game. I just hope they delay it if it isn’t finished because holiday 2012 seems quick for such a massive title, and I really hope they nail it!

The Wii U is obviously going to play a huge role at E3 2012, and while I don’t think we’ll see any new Zelda for Wii U or 3DS this year around, I think the focus will be on Mario games like Super Mario Galaxy 3 (although truth be told, I’d prefer a new start to the Super Mario series, myself), Super Smash Bros., and of course a ton of third-party support. Speaking of Zelda, however, I do think we’ll be seeing a Majora’s Mask remake for the 3DS. You can get the game for Virtual Console on your Wii right now with Club Nintendo points, so that could be good or bad. On the bad side, people might play it now and get it out of their system and not buy a 3D remake again. However, Nintendo might be using the adoption rate on the Virtual Console to see if it would be a viable game on the 3DS. If the latter were the case, I’m not sure there would be enough time for them to conduct the research and then make the game if there is enough demand for it. But one can hope!

New PS Vita experiences will also be on display, of course, although with the handheld out and about, I hope that Sony announces something regional for the console. By regional, I mean something that makes it awesome to use the Vita in these big convention centre spaces. Last year, we were all crazy about our StreetPass functionality with the 3DS, and if Sony has people pulling out their Vitas all over the place to play around, it certainly couldn’t hurt more than the announcement that they’re using AT&T for their 3G service. Awkwaaaaard.

Speaking of Sony, it would be great if we would finally see something about The Last Guardian. I still remember that trailer as almost making me cry, but we haven’t seen anything about the game since E3 2009, and truth be told, I’m not sure it’s going to be worth the wait anymore!

On the Microsoft front, I don’t think we’ll be seeing any new hardware from the folks in Redmond. We’ll of course be getting the Kinect-blast again this time around, but hopefully in more hardcore games, and with much speedier voice-recognition support. Halo 4 will be there, of course, and I’d say a mention of the next chapter in the trilogy would be there, but before we play Halo 4, they can’t hint at what happens next. I mean, what if the Chief dies or something?

In terms of what we will be seeing from Microsoft, I think the big thing will be new experiences for a new console vision like Nintendo showed off with the Wii U last year. While we won’t see hardware or specific tech specs, there will be tech demos showed off. In the off-chance that we do actually see some hardware, I think the controller will remain mostly, if not completely, the same (it is widely regarded as the best controller of the current generation, after all), and Kinect will be in the box, but not physically built-in to the console. Doing that would force the person to put the console under their TV, or worse, on top of it, which just isn’t always possible. Hard drives will be standard across all the units (no “core” models here), but Blu-Ray is a toss up. It would only serve to fuel Sony’s position in the Blu-Ray space, but they do need a higher-capacity medium if the rumours of 6x the power of the XBOX 360 hold true.

So what will happen at E3? The above is all just musings on the industry and what I see happening. Stay tuned in May for our “E3: What Will, What Might, and What Won’t” post that is quickly becoming an Eggplante tradition.

Oh, and Splinter Cell 6 will finally be announced. Just saying’. In the meantime, take a look at some of the biggest events from E3s of years past.

So does the game hold up to our recent review of Forza Motorsport 4? Well, based purely on numbers, yes. And based on gameplay, well, sort of yes. On numbers, GT5 XL easily blows Forza 4 out of the water with more than double the cars, although Porsche is still missing (damn you, EA). However, when it comes to gameplay, while this game is absolutely on par in terms of look and feel of state of the art, right up there with Forza 4, there just isn’t as much content. But I have to clarify that.

See, in Forza, you’ve got Top Gear, wicked awesome Kinect support, and that in-car mode that just can’t be topped. With that said, if you’re a car buff, that stuff all goes out the window if what you want is CARS. I can’t stress just how many cars over 1000 actually is. If your favourite car isn’t a Porsche, I can virtually guarantee you that it’s in here. And when it comes to value, this is the XL edition, which means you’ve got to be getting something more than you would’ve got when you bought the original title way back when, right? Actually, yeah, you get quite a bit, too. There’s more than $20 of add-on cars, tracks, and other goodies that will do their best to

Probably one of the best reasons to own this game is something that has more to do with the console it runs on than this specific piece of software: 3D. You’re just not gonna get 3D from Forza 4. In one of their developer interviews, they said that 3D just didn’t make sense unless they could create a new way to show driving off. I don’t think they could be farther from reality, and GT5 XL exemplifies it: when you’ve got a car going 120mph on a straight track, sometimes having 3D on is the only way to tell what’s going on. Okay, not really, but my God it’s beautiful.

Let’s not beat around the bush: Gran Turismo 5 XL is Gran Turismo 5 with some add-ons. If you’ve already got the original, don’t buy this one, or you’ll be wasting your money. But if you don’t have the original, you owe it to yourself to buy this one. I’m not a huge racing game fan. In fact, I kind of loathe racing games that aren’t Ridge Racer or Wipeout. But Gran Turismo 5, and more specifically the XL edition, makes me love the virtual leather-wrapped steering wheel all over again. It’s a fantastic game, it’s visceral, you feel the love from it, and it deserves your dough. Just remember when you’re done playing and actually driving on an actual road, speed limits do apply.

1) Tauntaun Sleeping Bag – $100 - Because let’s be honest, the actual cutting open a Tauntaun and sleeping in it would just be too much work.

2) The Big Bang Theory Stuff – $17-$62 – It’s a nerd’s show about being nerdy. Get with it.

3) Star Wars Cufflinks and Tie Clasps – $60 - May the force be with you (holding together your garments). Bonus: get 10% off with coupon code “E10″ at the link below!

4) Pretty much anything from ThinkGeek.

5) Elemental Rings – $205-$6500 – If you’re a nerd and you don’t want these things, you’re not a nerd. They have pendants, too. PS – it just might get your girlfriend into the whole nerdism thing. It is jewelry, after all.

So there you have it – our first, albeit short, guide to some pretty awesome nerdy things you can use to nerd up your life a bit more than it probably needs to be. But either way, enjoy!

The classic Mission formula is there, sure: the gadgets, disguises, rogue agents, and split-second decisions that really put you on the edge of your seat are all intact. But they’re all elevated, literally and figuratively.

If you have any interest in this movie, well, you’ve already seen it and made a judgment for yourself, and/or you know about the massive action sequence at the top of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Tom Cruise did his own stunts for that one, including running along the side of the building, jumping out from it, and swinging through the window a half dozen floors below him. Don’t believe me? YouTube it – it’s really him. But all that aside, was the sequence worth it? I’ll tell you that I have actually never been on the edge of my seat in any movie theatre from a jumping sequence. The movie does such an incredible job of really getting across the feeling of height, danger, and improvisation, which in real life, would all add up to one really long fall. However, this is Mission: Impossible, so of course, it’ll all work out in the end. It’s an incredibly gripping sequence, entirely unnecessary, but at the same time necessary.

The girls are not your typical James Bond hotties, but in the Mission series, they never have been. Don’t get me wrong – they’re all gorgeous – but they aren’t supermodels or perfectly-built maidens. They’re just real, hot women. And seriously, that makes them hotter.

The storyline wasn’t contrived the way I felt Mission: Impossible 2 was, nor was it too simple. There were some moments that the technology simply wouldn’t be possible – a magnet so powerful for example, that could keep a person suspended about eight feet in the air without damaging the computers and circuitry all around him. But if you let yourself believe that stuff, you’ll be in for a really great thrill ride.

Overall, it’s a great movie, with an incredible action sequence smack dab in the middle of it all, bookended by a historical explosion – the Kremlin, of all things – and a great finale in a simple way that is classic to the series. I won’t give anything away, but let’s just say that even though he isn’t credited officially, Luther Stickell makes a great appearance in true Mission fashion.

It’s a must-see movie, and this is in fact the best Mission: Impossible yet, even with classics like the first and third in the series. This isn’t a mission for you to choose to accept. Just accept it.

It’s not all bad. In the end, this is a board game on a console, and while those tend to be pretty lame, this one is better than most. Bright like Mario Party, entrepreneurial like Monopoly, the game suffers from a really slow pace that I just couldn’t get away from. I mean, Risk plays faster than this game, and that thing takes a half hour just to set up!

The game functions almost identically to Monopoly in its most basic way: you land on spaces, purchase them, they become your property (a store pops up in Fortune Street), and other players who land on it have to pay you cold hard moolah. You can upgrade your shops, increasing the money charged when a player passes them, thereby increasing your net worth all the same.

The game splits from the Monopoly-style at that point, however. You play in one of two settings, and while you might think that changes the computer’s strategy, it actually changes the rules. I played in Easy mode most of the time, if only because I didn’t want to bother changing my play style. But in standard mode, the game switches into a district set up where you have to pool your properties in the same area to get bonuses for multiple properties.

Then you can throw in stock market fluctuations and chance encounters in mini-games that switch things up a bit, taking the entire game away from pure skill and throwing in the requisite chance element. The game gets very interesting when you really want to mess with your opponents. If you’ve got a lot of cash to burn through, you can forcefully buy out your opponent’s properties (albeit at several multiples of the asking price), or offload a bunch of stock your opponent has invested in to make its value plunge. Just be aware that your opponents can do the same thing to you!

Overall, Fortune Street is not a bad game. I’m probably a bit let down because of what I was expecting out of the franchise, and when I saw Dragon Quest characters in there as well, a game I’m not a huge fan of, it pulled me away from the experience a bit. With that said, it’s a title that is staying in my collection if only simply because it has the business and gaming aspects of my life that I love all rolled into one tidy, albeit slow-paced, little package.

If you do a search for “Lights” on Eggplante, you’ll get quite a few hits. She happens to come up a lot on this blog, and with good reason: she’s awesome. Her latest album, Siberia was given a great thumbs up from yours truly, and I got the chance to see the last show of her latest tour at the Sound Academy in Toronto.

Now, she’s played at the Sound Academy before, the first time with Owl City who, at the time, had a huge hit “Fireflies” on their hand. That fizzled out, and Lights took the stage solo this time, and she killed the crowd. Sound Academy is a massive venue, and there’s really nothing between it and the Air Canada Centre in terms of size. Short of Justin Bieber’s level of fame, Lights has hit the big time.

Her set had a bunch of classics as well as the required new stuff, but all of it was top notch. She didn’t start with a slow instrumental or sweet ballad, either – she came out, blasted her voice to Banner, one of her hardest hitting songs on Siberia, and didn’t let up until the night was over.

I’m not sure how many more ways I can say that this girl has talent. Sure, if you’re not into synthesizer pop/rock, you’re probably not going to be too interested in her music. But if you have a chance, I urge you to at least listen to a few songs on the album. They’re quite catchy, deserve more radio airtime than they’re getting, and are a definite hit among fans of the genre. Take a look at some shots from the night and tell me you can’t imagine the show being awesome!

Let’s start with what Nintendo gets right: this is Mario Kart. Now, while that is also my problem with the game, at its core, it is a good arcade driving game. The power ups are fun, although very repetitive, and the tracks are well designed. The 3D doesn’t do much here, but that is the case with most 3DS games sadly. It provides a bit of an experience upgrade, but not enough to warrant the purchase like Super Mario 3D Land does.

There is some new stuff in the game, like hang gliders for soaring through the clouds and propellers for those underwater moments, but they’re just not enough to really make the experience fresh. It might be that Nintendo just doesn’t want to upset its fans – after all, people weren’t huge fans of Double Dash, even though that was spades better than this Kart game – but they should be taking a few more risks, even with their key franchises.

There are a ton of tracks in the game, I can give it that, and even more characters and kart customization options. What I can’t wrap my head around though is how short the game actually feels. Sure, they extend the length of the game by giving you three difficulties and really feeling like you need to complete each one. But let’s be honest: the 100cc races barely give you a challenge, and the 50cc ones are a joke. 150cc races are adequately challenging, and really are the only reason to play the game, but even with eight sets of tracks, the game feels very thin. You can race through it (no pun intended) in about an two hours, give or take. Not an ideal way to spend $40 in my opinion.

There is some extension to the gameplay, and that is multiplayer. It’s a much welcomed addition to the gameplay, and Nintendo pulled it off rather smoothly, I must say. It’s probably the best implementation of multiplayer I’ve ever seen on a portable device, and coming from Nintendo, that’s saying quite a bit, considering how long Sony’s PSP has been in the online portable multiplayer game (not to mention the thousands of iOS and Android apps with online mobile multiplayer).

If you haven’t played Mario Kart since the Nintendo 64 days (or even earlier), you’re in for a real treat here. It’s got classic tracks redone with some subtle changes, but all the best stuff you remember is still there. However, if you’ve played a Mario Kart game on the DS or Wii, you’re not going to see a whole lot of new stuff here. For the Mario die-hard, it’s a must have, but in that case, this review won’t sway you either way. For younger children, it’s a great game, and for the older ones, it’s a great time-killer. With that said though, there are a few better ways to spend your time on the 3DS. Can I suggest the red plumber and his brother in another game of choice? Super Mario 3D Land, if you didn’t catch my drift there.

Alyssa started out the night at the Tattoo Rock Parlour with some hits and some lesser known songs. She’s got some great heavy rock music as well as the requisite love songs, and she can hit all her notes with ease. She’s pleasing to listen to and she’s got attitude, but in the best way possible. Her mom was even in the audience to cheer her on, and was one of the three audience members brought on stage in a mini dance contest. All in all, she’s just a playful girl with tons of class.

Neverest followed her set with their own hits like Lovesick and About Us. They were the heartthrobs the audience was waiting for, and they delivered, even bringing a loving fan on stage to be serenaded by lead singer Spyro Chalkiotis. Neverest’s set was great – they know how to get a crowd riled up, have some fun, and really deliver. They had a bunch of laughs, some really beautiful moments, and brought a new sense of class to the boy band routine. And you know, they just got off tour with NKOTBSB and could’ve been total assholes. But they graciously played the smaller venue as if it was their job every single day. Honest, genuine, down to earth people. That’s what a band should be. And they are.

At the show, they act like they’re brothers and sister in a way – they’re cute, fun, and playful with each other. At one point during Neverest’s set, Alyssa came out and covertly started bombarding the guys with laser pointers as her manager looked on approvingly. These musicians are tons of fun, and their sets are awesome. Take a look at the pictures below. I wish I had some of Alyssa, but the lighting was just too harsh to get anything that didn’t wash her out completely in purple. Either way, please do go check out both Alyssa and Neverest on iTunes, YouTube, or wherever else you get your music!

Before I even get into the bulk of this review there are a couple of things that I want to get off my chest first. To begin, I have a small rant of the nature of PC gaming in general. It seems that publishers and developers are continuing to neglect PC gamers as a whole. Now this is probably because they make most of their money off of consoles but that doesn’t mean they can’t put a decent package together for computer gamers. When Modern Warfare 2 and 3 came out, console gamers were able to purchase the “Hardened Edition” which came with some extras that would be interesting for the collector such as me. Would it have cost that much more to do the same thing for the PC version of the game? I don’t think it would take too much effort to release something extra for computer versions of games, or even to really support them in general.

My second rant has to do with first person shooters in general and their development. It used to be (not too long ago) that you bought a game for its story, for its campaign, for the characters, but nowadays all the focus seems to have shifted to multiplayer. In my experience, when a developer shifts from a solid campaign to focus on multiplayer, the campaign suffers significantly. Using Call of Duty as an example, the first Modern Warfare had one of the best campaigns I ever played. I replayed that game a dozen times on various difficulties, and was one of the only times that I consistently enjoyed the multiplayer experience. But as we have progressed through the series, the development teams seem to have focused more and more on multiplayer and the single player stories have suffered as a result. What we need to do is make sure that we have covered both fronts. We can’t let campaign suffer to better multiplayer and we can’t let the multiplayer suffer to better a single player game, at an asking price of $60 the developers better have a solid footing for both.

Now, unfortunately, I have to talk about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and I will get into why that is unfortunate shortly. As I prefaced in my Black Ops review, when I play any game in general, I am looking at it only from a single player perspective as I don’t particularly enjoy multiplayer.

The setting in Modern Warfare 3 takes place directly after Modern Warfare 2. World War 3 has broken out, and Russia is at war with the rest of the world. Captain John “Soap” MacTavish was stabbed in part 2 and is being rushed to a doctor by his mentor Captain John Price. The two of them have been condemned by the rest of the world, and have been branded traitors, along with the rest of Taskforce 141. As with previous games, you experience the story for multiple perspectives, and in many different parts of the world. The problem with the story in Modern Warfare 3 is that it just wasn’t very interesting or compelling. As a direct sequel it seemed like such a rehash of everything that has been said or done before. After being treated to a great story in Black Ops, MW3 just seems to fall flat. Other than Price, and Soap there aren’t really any characters that I care about, the dialogue seems so repetitive, and the story in general seems so cliché and one-dimensional.The sound in the game has never been better, but is not that much of an improvement either. Not only does each weapon have a clear, and distinct sound, but the overall environment really draws a player into the firefights taking place around them. The game is accompanied by a full orchestral score that you can barely notice unless you’re listening for it, which is really what a score should do. It should highlight the emotional ups and downs in the narratives without making itself obvious, and the score for MW3 does exactly that. The voice work is superb, and even though I don’t like the script itself, hearing Price’s voice always brings me back to my first experience with Modern Warfare.

Graphically, little seems to have changed from the previous iteration. The mission briefings while the various levels load have been ramped up slightly but the actually direction of the game seems to be all over the place. The screen is often too dark for me to be able to clearly make anything out, and the ability to use night vision has been reduced down to one single level. A recent complaint I have for games in general is that they have become too cinematic. There are too many times in MW3 where you’re taken out of the action and shown an in-game cut scene and all it does is reduce the tension or the adrenaline a player is supposed to get from the experience. What the developers have tried to do is to make you do mundane tasks while in the cut scene to make the player feel involved but really it feels half-assed and is more annoying than it is engaging.

The game play in MW3 is just so, “been there, done that”. There is really no better description that I can come up with. When I picked up MW2 two years ago I thought it was too similar to this first one in many of its mechanics but I still enjoyed it because it offered new levels such as snowmobiling, and a speed boat race at the end. In this latest adaptation there is nothing that I can now look back on and say, “Well at least we had that one new thing”. Other than instances where you just have wave after wave of enemy come at you, or random running from building to building, regardless of the location, it is all just a rehash of the first two games in some respect. It seems that the developers took what was a lot of fun in small amounts in the first two games and just drew out those moments so they became tiresome.

I could keep going but describing the derivative nature of the game has just made me more irate. It is really just sad to see a series held in such high regard fall so far.

If you got this far through the review and you’re still thinking you would like to pick up Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, I would simply ask “why?” Other than multiplayer, which includes a new subscription service called Elite (also, not available for PC), there is nothing redeeming about the story mode. The graphics, while sharp, have no significant improvement from the first two, the game play is the same wave after wave of increasingly dumb A.I. from ridiculously large distances that shooting is impractical, and the direction takes you out of control far too many times, far too often. The game is a constant barrage of explosions to the point that your character is knocked down, and dazed about half a dozen times in the game only to be greeted by someone telling you to “get up and get going” over and over again. This is a game that was designed for the monotony of multiplayer, and while those who play online might consider themselves ‘gamers’, without an authentic and engaging story, what is the point?

What might be interesting to note, however, in the last month or so, we’ve had such massive releases that I think we can officially call this fall the best holiday lineup we’ve ever seen. And 2011 might just be the best gaming year of all time. Here’s the quick list of reasons why:

To mark Xbox’s tenth anniversary (infographic below), Microsoft re-released Halo: Combat Evolved in an Anniversary Edition. You’ve no doubt heard about it, and a review will be up shortly. At the midnight launch for the game however, there were a couple of other games that you may just have heard of. Games like Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, Need for Speed: The Run, and Saints Row: The Third. Also, some not quite so massive titles, but still big names like Mario and Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games, Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and Harry Potter Years 5-7.

That was one day.

In the month or so preceding it, we had huge games like Uncharted 3, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Skyrim, Batman: Arkham City, Super Mario 3D Land, and Battlefield 3. A lot of sequels, sure, but just look at the calibre of these titles. And look at your calendar. And now realize there’s no way in hell you’ll even make a dent in this list before the end of the year.

It’s worth noting that we’ve had an incredible five years. And with this being the best yet, I’m not sure how next year will top it. But then I think towards E3 (yes, Eggplante will be there for the fourth time in a row!) and realize we’ll be seeing games like Grand Theft Auto Five, the next Call of Duty instalment, likely another Splinter Cell, not to mention tons of other games like, well, HALO 4. And of course, we’ve also got things like the Wii U coming, and a rumour circulating that Microsoft just may announce it’s next console, in addition to the PlayStation Vita. I for one think that it would be interesting but I’m not sure it would do so well right out of the gate, since they’ve got such a great ecosystem going with Xbox Live and their platform right now.

So that’s the state of the gaming industry, and but what is each company doing right in their own space?

Microsoft has this platform thing down, which is much more than I can say for Sony and Nintendo. Microsoft has excelled at getting content for their Xbox 360 to really turn it into a living room platform. Netflix is available on all three platforms, but when you couple it with the other On-Demand content from hundreds of content providers from round the globe, Microsoft really has the platform thing down. And they’re focus is much better because they don’t have platform fragmentation with home consoles and portables. They’ve got their one platform and they’re focused on it. I can’t imagine what Nintendo is going to do when the Wii U comes out – they’ll have out five different platforms: Wii, Wii U, DS, DSi, and 3DS. Whew.

Speaking of Nintendo, they have a ton of excitement coming out of their offices just based on the fact that they’ve got so many fantastic ideas and titles launching so soon. Within the next year, we’ll have a next generation console in the Wii U, a bunch of classic games reinvented (say, another portable Zelda game?) and of course some Mario on Wii U, a Super Smash Bros. game, and maybe some bigger surprises.

I’m really not sure how to feel about Sony at this point. They don’t have much going on aside from a single exclusive (Uncharted) series, and some interesting hardware that no one is going to buy – their 24″ 3D PlayStation-branded TV set. It’s a great concept, but any traditional gamer is going to already have a great setup or is going to spend a hundred bucks more, skip the 3D, and get a 40″ set. The Vita isn’t really impressing too much. It’s got so much going on that it’s going to be another loss for Sony on a per-unit sold basis, and based on downloadable content as well as physical game content, they need to take a page out of Apple’s handbook and focus. The 5″ OLED touch screen is great, and dual analog sticks is fantastic. But a rear touchpad that no one is ever going to use as more than a tech demo seems like a massive waste. Also, going to a new proprietary physical media format… please Sony, take a hint: Memory Stick and UMD failed for simple reasons: they sucked and no one wanted to use them. Then you went download-only with your PSPgo, and now you’ve gone to both physical media and downloadable content? I just don’t see it.

With all that said, everyone’s got their strengths – the PlayStation 3 is still the best Blu-Ray player on the planet, and being one of the cheapest ones still, you essentially get a free gaming system with your home theatre player. Microsoft is leading with a great online and content platform, and while that’s Nintendo’s biggest weakness, they’ve got a ton of anticipation with their new console coming out in the next year.

Take a look at the Xbox Tenth Anniversary Infographic below, and sound off in the comments what you think each company’s strengths and weaknesses are. Getting stoked for E3 2012? E3plante’s almost back!