Here are 10 of my suggestions:

1. Individual player game stats. I am not talking about Luongo’s game stats, but stats for the physical player playing the game. It would be great to know how many assists or hits each individual player gets during the game. It would be great for bragging rights, etc. Think about the comments that Bond on N64 used to make about each player… something like that after each game. This is mainly for multiplayer - both on and offline.

2. User selectable player colours for the icons above player heads. This should be a no brainer. Depending on the tv quality it can sometimes be hard to tell apart certain colours like blue and purple. Why not add more colours or make them user selectable? Why not automatically keep similar colours off the same teams? Why not include patterns for players that have a hard time telling apart the colours or even for colour blind players? This would be an easy fix and would certainly cut down on in game confusion.

3. Shooting and hitting with the same joystick works, except when you expect to get a pass and it instead goes to someone else. This very often results in a cross check rather than a shot being taken which means a stupid penalty. Either the game needs to compensate for this or the control needs to be changed. I vote for the first option.

4. Better goal tending AI. There have been so many occasions where the puck will bounce off a goalie and have him stand there and watch a goal get scored rather than dropping on the puck and covering it up. The goalie does stupid things over and over again. He might not realise that a puck is on his shoulder or back and can easily kick pucks in. I think there should be a major overhaul as to how the goal reacts to action around the net in order to make it more realistic. It is also pretty easy to get some cheap goals in through wrap arounds that would normally be saved.

5. Deflections. Sometimes goals will get scored through impossible deflections that rocket the puck into the net. A shot could be taken from near the blue line but if it hits the right player its angle might change drastically resulting in a goal that doesn’t make sense.

6. More action after the whistle has blown. Some of the best hits happen in the few seconds after a play has been called dead. This is significantly improved over 2008 and should continue to evolve into 2010. Its great fun to take cheap hits after the whistle has blown and it would be neat to see this improved. Brawls or fights or even penalties for post whisle actions would make things more interesting.

7. Fighting. Right now quickly alternating the dodge and punch buttons means one punch knockouts. While the fights are fun, they are very far from being realistic. This could easily be improved. Again, to go along with the last point, it would be cool to have multiple players fighting at the same time.

8. Updates to commentary and soundtrack. I know these two are big things that EA will continue to use to get us to buy next versions of the game, but I’ve really noticed that the same commentary gets used quite frequently. It would be nice to see an update to the commentary and soundtracks halfway through the virtual season, even if it meant releasing it as DLC.

9. Local offline games should mimic the roster updates of online games. There is no reason why playing online means updated rosters while playing locally offline means being stuck with outdated team configurations. Again, I understand this as a strategy to get players to buy next years update, but teams should be kept current for the whole hockey season.

10. The last point I want to address is rumble on the PS3. I know the 360 players have it, but there is no reason why 2010 should not have rumble as well. I played 2008 a few times at a friends house and feeling the rumble on big hits really added to the fun.

There are tons of fan boy arguments on the internet that bash the complain station 3 and the sexbox, but one thing that unfortunatly cannot be argued are the number of consoles sold. Thinking about this, I realized that I know far more people with PS3 consoles than I do XBOX360 consoles.

Here is how its broken down by my console owning friends:

PS3 (13 friends + myself = 14)

jamie (me)
vittoria
tim
mike
adrian
ted
scott
david
chris
playstation at our office
james
adam

jeremy

matt

XBOX360 (8 friends)

ryan
ryan
rae
bill
martin

jeremy

geoff

rob

Makes me wonder if Canadians buy more Playstations than they do Xboxes? Note these numbers include only real life friends and not the internet users I have added to my PSN list.

I was one of the (un)lucky 100,000 people to get a Playstation Home beta key on Friday. I was pretty excited to try it out but when I got home and installed it out I quickly found out that it’s pretty boring. There isn’t much to do apart from running around and text chatting with other people. None of the stores had any items, the gaming area was pretty empty and the options for customizing your personal space were next to none. I really hope they do something to change all of this before launch because as of writing this all I can say about Playstation Home is that it’s an over-hyped version of the Sims.

EDIT: Tuesday Nov 25, 2008:

Ok, so after taking flak from the Reddit people I logged in again last night to give it another try. Again, I have to say I found nothing much to do. My home area is limited to a few pieces of furniture, clubhouse is the same sort of thing - can’t really do anythign. Could not set up the game launching with Resistance 2 even though it’s supposed to be supported. 

The movie theatre seems to be limited to one game preview, and the games area is just too limited. The arcade games are always occupied (except for echocrome - but who wants to play that) and bowling never had any open spots. I am sure there will be more content for the full release but honestly, in it’s current state I can’t see much point to using it, even if it is just a beta.

Got a Resistance 2 beta code in my email last night. It was a 2.2gig download and while it started fast ended up taking quite a while. A friend recieved one as well - both of ours came from the Playstation Underground.

2 maps available in the beta and the game runs multiplayer only. From the 30 minutes or so I put in last night it seems like a pretty fun game though I had it crash on me several times each requiring a hard reboot. The 40 player map that I played was pretty chaotic and I can tell that this will be a popular online shooter - though it will be interesting to see how it fairs against COD5.

Keep checking your email, maybe there is an invite waiting for you!

Why are people so bent out of shape about having to install games to the PS3’s hard drive? There has been a lot of uproar about install times for MGS4 as well as the other new games that require it (remember how pissy the fanbois were about the install for DMC4?). The install is there to IMPROVE the gaming experience by reducing load times!

I guess the arguement will be made that the PS3 is a console and that hard drive installations are for PC’s. I guess the argument is valid but I would like to point out one thing - the hard drive installation improves the way the game plays! No developer would ever make a player sit through an install if it did not contribute to the quality of the game. We should be happy that developers are starting to take advantage of the luxurys afforded by next gen systems and actually using the hardware tools made available to them.

Further to that the online play is down! From what I have been reading a lot of people are having problems with this. I dont understand how these issues are not worked out in beta testing before the game is launched. I’m not too impressed that I’ve twice now lost my mission progress due to a crash. A fix better come soon.

I downloaded Gran Turismo Prologue the other day and I have to say that I am blown away by how beautiful the graphics are. The menus are so smooth and the game graphics are exceptional. I was also really impressed with the vehicle sounds. It seems that wind noise has been introduced and adds a level of realism.

Other than that, this is standard Gran Turismo with souped up graphics. I find that the game is a little sparse and I am having issues downloading the update. I keep being told that I need to set my time and date but when I try to download the update it errors out and never completes. I will say that I am really looking forward to the full release.

Oh, the Dual Shock 3 works great with this game. I almost forgot what rumble felt like.

The first game I tried with my new Dual Shock 3 was  Half-Life 2 in The Orange Box. Much to my suprise and disappointment there was no rumble! There were no options that I could find to turn it on either. Looks like the PS3 version is without rumble and from what I can tell there are no plans to add it.