It’s Friday, which means that everyone should be happy and excited for a weekend full of relaxation, activities and of course, gaming.

In the spirit of our old Flamebait Friday posts and everyones newfound weekend energy, we thought it would be fun to set up a post for people to debate, exchange opinions and make their opinions heard. Our comments threads can sometimes get heated, so we have created a post where anything goes and your comments dictate the pace.

To kick things off, I thought I’d start with something nice and cliche – the age old debate of Xbox Live vs PSN. PSN’s free, Xbox Live has parties and private chats, but which one do you think is better and why?

Let’s hear it.

Heavy Rain has finally arrived and after many months of discussions over visuals, a controversial control scheme and Quantic Dreams’ ability to deliver solid titles, we finally got to see what all the buzz was about.

By now most of you know that Heavy Rain is not your traditional videogame. Some have had trouble calling it a videogame at all while others believe that it’s the next step in interactive story telling.

We put on our raincoats, opened our umbrellas and ventured forth into the storm to bring you the full review, after the jump.

[Please note: As Heavy Rain is entirely story driven, we have ensured that the review remains 100% spoiler free]

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Last year, around about the time that Killzone 2 hit the world, I posted an article titled Killzone 2: The Best Thing To Happen To The Xbox 360 . While the title confused people at first, it made sense once you read it and my point was made. Many people agreed with me and I even had the honour of having my article discussed on the great 1UP podcast.

I have always believed that Halo 3 was never what it should have been for the Xbox 360. It was the next-gen Halo, the first ever of its kind to grace the HD era of gaming. While the addition of forge mode as well as the replay theatre definitely added a great deal of depth to an already popular formula, the game really felt like it was lacking in the technical wizardry department.

The marketing slogan for Halo 3 was “Believe”, and I believed that it could have been so much better. I was right.

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Kazunori Yamauchi, head of Polyphony Digital and creator of the Gran Turismo series has been playing competitors games and it seems that he isn’t very impressed.

In a recent interview with Eurogamer, Yamauchi was asked if he was thinking about implementing any of the ideas or features that he has seen in other games since Gran Turismo 4 released in 2004.

To this, he had the following to say;

“Actually I find it difficult to play the other games in more than five minutes at a time. The game’s low level of quality really shines through in the other games and I can not hold them out!”

Now, with all due respect to one my industry heroes , are you friggin’ kidding me? How could you possibly even have a concept of what a standard in quality is supposed to be when you have been developing a game for 6 years at the cost of roughly $60,000,000.00?

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Every now and then, a videogame comes along that changes everything that you thought you knew about gaming. A game so epic, so magnificent, so deep and so emotional that you are blown back in the realization that a new era of gaming is upon us.

Unfortunately, we didn’t receive a review copy of Karaoke Revolution, so we opted to review Mass Effect 2 instead.

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In this, the “Information Age” it has become ridiculously easy to seek out and find any sort of information that you want.

What’s the capital of Ghana? I don’t know, but I could tell you in about 15 seconds. (It’s Accra, so leave Google alone and keep reading). What about the information that you don’t want, though?

New and exciting games come out all the time, and some people want to know all about the game, without knowing too much (especially big spoilers), lest they have the entire experience rolled out for them before they even have the cellophane rapping off of the box.

It all comes down to three major reasons. You guys, writers like us and the folks who actually promote the game.

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Like many other people, I have spent a lot of this past week playing the heck out of Mass Effect 2.

One of the interesting new additions to the game is the ability to interrupt certain conversations with a Renegade or Paragon action. This got me thinking… who else has made good use of this wonderful ability?

Hit the link for the full comic image.

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So, the Bermuda Triangle wasn’t a myth all along.

Dark Void enters the gaming world as a combination of third person shooter with a difference and a strange type of action flight simulator. If you have ever wanted to know what it feels like to strap on a jet pack and zoom off into the skies then Dark Void is the game for that.

The question is, does it all work well when it’s put into a videogame? Find out, full review after the jump.

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The Aliens vs Predator videogame franchise has been going for quite some time and has always had a very decent following. This, due to the fact that they have all been pretty good not to mention that the multiplayer modes were some of the best in the business.

Movies have also surfaced over the last couple of years using the same title but don’t be fooled as the videogames are not some sort of licensed attempt at a silver screen to videogame console conversion, these babies have been going for a while now.

With the new title’s release on the horizon, we’ve had hands on time with the game to find out if this next offering is worthy of it’s predecessors’ good name.

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Something that only really hit me this week, is the fact that I haven’t bothered to put my Modern Warfare 2 disc into my console at any point in this fine year of 2010.

You see, the last time I played Modern Warfare 2 was right before I left for my vacation in December, which also happened to be around the same time that the infamous javelin glitch was doing the rounds.

While I was gone, they got it sorted and although I haven’t purposefully avoided the game, I really couldn’t care to play it again any time soon.

Here’s why.

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Just yesterday I was walking past a Mass Effect 2 poster in a shopping mall and something happened to catch my eye.

Up until this point I hadn’t noticed it, but on closer inspection I realised that one of the new characters in Mass Effect 2 looked incredibly familiar. Anyone who watches the TV series “Chuck” will know that the lady on the ME2 cover is in fact, Yvonne Strahovski, the actress who plays Agent Sarah Walker on the show.

Now, some of you may have missed it in December, and thanks to the end of year rush I know that we did, but the cast of the game was announced by Bioware and in it is not only Chuck’s Strahovski, but Adam Baldwin as well.

Are actors going to start being themselves more often in videogames? Is this the future of entertainment?

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Sneaky, sneaky!

While many of you have waited in anticipation for word on the new Bioshock, we have been hiding in the shadows, playing it so that we can bring you this first report on what to expect.

We headed back to the underwater city of Rapture to see what’s what in the sequel to one of this generations biggest titles.

Now would you kindly hit the jump for our full impressions.

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James Cameron has once again proven his worth by rocketing yet another one of his flicks up to the top grossing movie of all time. This is quite impressive considering that he managed to do it by knocking off another one of his own films (sinking ship, iceberg, yeah that one.

That’s great and all but I just realised that I’m not Barry Ronge (phew) and this website is about gaming, so let’s get onto the videogame side of things.

Avatar, like many other blockbusters, come standard these days with a videogame adaptation.

To the dismay of my wife, I rubbed blue colouring all over my body, tied a dishcloth around my waste and started plugging my mustache into various objects just to see if I could form a bond with them, all in the name of bringing you a review.

I put some pot plants around the couch and headed for Pandora, see how the game stacks up after the jump.

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After months and months of hearing about it, we have finally been given the chance to actually give the Playstation 3’s new massive shooter exclusive a go online.

MAG promises huge battles, teamwork and a lot of other stuff that involves manly men frolicking around together and with a download size of over 2GB’s, not many folks have the spare bandwidth to give it a go.

This is where we come in, of course, and thanks to iPeg who sponsors our bandwidth, we can bring you this first look at MAG.

Hit the jump for our thoughts.

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Last week Friday I was lucky enough to be invited to an early preview of Rockstar’s upcoming open world western, Red Dead Redemption, which is the sequel to it’s 2004 release Red Dead Revolver.

Red Dead Redemption is a huge open world, free roaming western-styled sandbox game. You play as John Marston, a partially reformed outlaw who attempted to get away from a career of crime by living out his days peacefully on his ranch with his family.

That was until the Bureau (future FBI) arrived with a request that he couldn’t turn down… the line between good and evil is about to be obliterated.

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