(Actually, it’s pronounced “sai,” but you get the idea.)

As other blogs, both here in GAP and elsewhere, have mentioned, Xi has begun within PlayStation Home. I’ve played it. It’s moderately fun, but the real excitement for me comes from the potential for Home that the Xi game reveals.

Xi is basically an Alternate Reality Game, except that this one already takes place in the alternate reality that is Home. So far, it’s a scavenger hunt / puzzle, but frequent updates promise fresh content each time one logs into Home.

If that in itself isn’t enough to get excited over, then the possibilities within Home that Xi has shown us are. Having completed today’s “expeditions,” as the Xi ARG calls them, I believe that I have seen the future of Home.

Experience Xi for yourself (go now).

…

Or read on.

For all those who preordered in the US and Canada from the Gamestop family, the Killzone 2 demo is out. It’s pretty cool, though if you really don’t like supporting Gamestop, I’d put my preorder in at Amazon.com because their preorder bonus (Home costumes) will last longer. The demo offered is only around 5 – 15 minutes long, depending on your aim and how much you like to run, which brings me to the topic of controls.

COD and Resistance have been my shooters of late, and often I’ll find myself blowing myself up with grenades or crouching or something when I just wanted to run. It’s a minor thing that I have to get used to each time I play one of them. In the Killzone 2 demo, running is COD style, clicking on the LS, and aiming is Resistance 1 style, clicking on the RS. Having moved on to Resistance 2 since though, I am glad that Killzone 2 offers up the option to change aim to the L1 button, which should make the transitions between playing R2, COD, and KZ2 that much easier.

I am disappointed though that of the six preset controller layouts available, none of them give you the option of reassigning the Crouch / Get into Cover button to something other than L2. Now, this isn’t the full game, and I don’t know what kind of balance there’s going to be there, but it seems like cover will be a big deal throughout the campaign, and L2 is just not a good button for actions that require you to hold it down for extend periods of time. So, here’s hoping for a patch for more controller options down the line.

Of course, there is no Cover button in multiplayer, so this may not be a big deal in the long run.

All in all, it’s a decent demo if you want to get a feel for the game. Other than that, it’s quite short, and we’ve seen all of this in trailers released long ago. If you absolutely must have the demo, Euro account or just waiting till the public release on the 26th are the way to go. Then you can get the Helghan Home costume! (Home will be cool. I promise.)

Oh, the SIXAXIS thing in the title? If you move the controller around during the load screen, it moves the screen. (see video) The effect is pretty cool. Like the first time you rotated around Issac’s holographic iventory display in Dead Space. Don’t get the demo for this of course. It’s just something to look for when the full game comes out.

“No more game purchases till I achieve 100% or Platinum on all of the games I’ve purchased,” is the goal, and while renting should keep me up to date as far as the newest Playstation going ons, I’ve just realized that PSN games mean no renting available.

Super Stardust Portable, I’ll see you in 2010. Maybe.

In good news this week, I finally received my first Platinum Trophy for completing 100% of the Trophy challenges in Call of Duty: World at War. Yay!

Call of Duty: World at War: 100%
Continuing from last week, I decided I needed a break from slugging it through the game on Veteran, so I switched modes and went gunning for, what I call “stunt Trophies,” things like “Shoot 3 enemies with one bullet,” and the like. The one that gave me the most trouble involved pistol shooting someone from sniper range. I’ve done stuff like it before in other games, but in this situation, the target was so small, and holding the gun up to aim pretty much covered him from my view. A glitch that gave me way more ammo than I should have had may have helped me out on this one.

But what glitch giveth, glitch can take away as my save game from just after my two hour battle to the first checkpoint in “Relentless” mysteriously decided not to work anymore (something about not being compatible with my version of the game.), sending me back to the beginning to try it all over again. Sucked, but by the end of that level, I think I learned something. COD on Veteran is less like a modern video game and more like real life.