Curse you Microsoft - you've won, OK!

As I've said before, I'm playing inFamous at the moment. It's, well, 'OK', I suppose - nothing out of this world but it rolls along at its own pace and gives you plenty of toys to play with. In short, somewhat giving away the review that I intend to write when I'm done with it, it's fun - an engaging way to spend your gaming time.

It's just that.......it's a bit longer than I thought it would be. I'm not sure how long I've been playing it (if only Raptr worked with PS3) but it's been a while and it's certainly the most I've played my PS3 since January, when I played through Uncharted. Since then, I've dipped in and out of Little Big Planet and Burn Zombie Burn, I've played a fair few Wii games and spent time on the handhelds (anything to escape the X Factor) but this year I reckon I've spent at least 75% of my gaming time on the 360. I didn't think it would ever bother me but I am concerned that my current gaming isn't increasing my Gamerscore!

When I first got my 360 I can honestly say I didn't care about Achievements. I took quite a low gp yield from my early games - Bioshock, Crackdown, Battle for Middle Earth II and others - as I never gave the Achievements and gamerpoints available a second thought. My disquiet over the time spent with inFamous has made it apparent that now I do, in fact, care about them. And that's made me angry with myself and with Microsoft (though the latter is tinged with a crudging respect at how they've played me).

Hopefully, this self-realisation will be enough to 'scare me straight' and I'll just concentrate on the games from now on. I'm getting Uncharted 2 for Christmas and God of War III and Heavy Rain look the most interesting games on the horizon, so I need to stop thinking about my Gamerscore and go back to thinking like a gamer.

God of War III & Dante's Inferno

Unfortunately for Electronics Arts, the Dante's Inferno PS3s were set up adjacent to the GoW3 ones at the Eurogamer Expo. Dante's Inferno has a similar gameplay mechanic to GoW - use melée weapons to thrash your way through hordes of reasonably weak (individually) enemies with regular, harder, bosses - but suffers in direct comparison.

GoW3 enjoys much smoother textures and and seems to flow better. It also has a more attractive setting - Hell/Limbo is, as you can imagine, a bit of a downer. Ancient Greece, even when plagued by harpies, chimeras, centaurs and titans, is a prettier sight than the underworld plagued by the restless souls of the damned.

Gameplay-wise, GoW3 follows that of the previous two games -light, heavy and special attacks chained together in insane combos (I chained over a 100 without too much trouble). But the I don't think that anyone thought the third instalment would offer a change of pace, did they - Kratos Kart Racing, anyone?

On the evidence of GoW3 and Heavy Rain, next year could be a big one for the PS3, building on the foundations laid by Uncharted 2.