I won’t lie. It feels weird clicking Playstation 3 for the category. I’ve had one since January, but this is the first game to get me excited about owning one. 

So? Are you? Have you not been playing the fuck out of this game since it came out yesterday morning?

Every spare minute I’ve had has been spent playing this game. It is that fun. One thing I find interesting is the more I play the more I notice just how damn pretty this game is. No screenshots do it justice. Once you get to that point, you realize that there are 31 other players flying, bombing, shooting, driving, and rocketing their way around a massive world. Simply amazing.

They’ve cleaned it up. A lot. It seems to run much, much smoother than the beta, which should always be a given, but you never know.  Every weapon has a feel about it. Hold down the lock while flying a Warhawk. You actually get a difference in feeling between a standard missle and a homing missle. Sit in an anti-aircraft missile turret and pelt oncoming enemy aircraft. It feels wonderful. A lot of this can be attributed to the amazing audio in this game. When launching the missles from these turrets, the audio feedback is great: you know you’ve just unleashed nearly inescapable hell on someone. What’s more, it sounds great without surround sound. You can get fully immersed in the game, catching yourself spinning to watch for stray bullets and rockets, by simply cutting your TV up louder. And honestly, because of this great audio and visual feedback, I never missed the rumble. I actually never thought about until writing the word “feedback” so many times in this post. Don’t kid yourself though. Running this thing though a 5.1 system will send chills up your spine when a rocket whizzes past your head from behind. I haven’t gotten to try it in the final retail version yet, but my experiences in the beta left a wonderful memory.

What do you find yourself gravitating towards? Do you hop in the first Warhawk or Nemesis you see? Do you like to run around on foot? Snipe? I find myself posted up in the missle turret, mostly because I love the feel and sound, but a big chunk of it is because I kick quite a bit of ass in there. The problem with stationary guns like this is that you have to be alert. Always. When I am on the offensive, I find that too many of these can be taken out by rockets and guns because the people controlling them aren’t paying attention. Nothing pisses a turret operator off more than you standing on top of them throwing grenades at them, when it is there own fault for not getting out. So a word to the wise: be quick and attentive when in the turrets. Watch all your surrounds. Keep your bead on the closet blue dot. Don’t be afraid to bail out. If you see missiles incoming, bail and duck. They’ll blow your turret, thinking they’ve got you. It’ll respawn, you’ll be back in, and they’ll never know.  That’s how I’ve already gotten nearly 200 kills in one.

Out.