There has been pages and pages already written about this game, and quite frankly, I don't really have much to add to what is already out there. What I will do is lay out a list of my pros and cons, perhaps with some comment.

Pros:

• Gorgeous game
• Incredible single player campaign
• Most powerful in game level creator ever - You can literally do anything that single player campaign does and the tutorials are the best I have ever seen.
• Endless supply of quality user generated content
• User controlled level rating system - Allows you to weed through the endless supply of shitty user generated content.
• Networking issues have been completely resolved

Cons:

• Sackboy likes to slip off edges really easily
• Layer switching mechanics are not perfect
• Sony is ridiculous with it's level moderation - Thankfully they can be reasoned with.
• Most powerful in game level creator ever - You can control every single detail of every little thing you put in your levels. Creating levels that rival the quality of the single player campaign will take days of your life. And even then, Sony might just delete it. :-(

Conclusion:

Buy this game if you own a PS3. It is the best fun value for the money so far this year.

Let me make this clear, I don't care about the singing, the drums, or the bass playing in Guitar Hero World Tour. I didn't buy the big pack with everything in it, I just purchased the Guitar Pack that only comes with the guitar and game.

I have played Guitar Hero 1, 2, 3, as well as Rock Band. This is the best one out of all of them in terms of the guitar game.

The control is as tight as ever. Every time I screw up, it is because of me, not the controller or the game. That is important in rhythm games, and GHWT has it down.

The guitar itself is my favorite so far. It takes the lower fret board innovation from Rock Band, makes it a touch pad. I have not gotten used to this, but it isn't completely necessary for the game. The beefed up the whammy bar, and made the select button huge so that you don't have to lift the guitar to activate star power, which can really screw you up during a long note streak. And it is wireless, although you still have to use 2 AA batteries for it instead of having an internal pack (kinda disappointing). Plus, it is compatible with Rock Band 2.

There are zero covers in GHWT. None. All I have to say is: it is about fucking time. The songs selection is pretty good too. I would put it ahead of GH 1, 3, and Rock Band, but behind GH 2.

The best part however, is actual game play innovation with the guitar game. They introduced two new note concepts. First being the sustained note hold together with other notes to be played. You could have a green hold, and have to play sucessive red, yellow, blue, or orange notes while keeping your finger down on green. A nice difficultly addition. Second, is the addition of the note string sections. This is very similar to Rock Band's Solo sections. Both allow you to use the lower fret board to remove the need to strum, but GHWT's version allows you to also tap through with the original frets. The difference between the lower and the higher fret boards in these sections is that you have to tap the fret every time on the higher fret board while you simply need to touch the fret on the lower one. Mastering the lower fret board is not easy. In my opinion there is not enough feel between the frets on the touch pad to make it intuitive. The game attempts to help out by lighting up massive column of the color(s) you are currently touching, but it not something to try and use on Expert out of the gate. I have not had trouble getting through songs just tapping through on the higher fret board as of yet, but I am nowhere near beating the game yet, and I will probably be forced to learn the touch pad frets in order to finish the game.

Like most recent games, you can download additional songs in game, and the interface is quite fast and intuitive.

GHWT includes a create song feature, but it seems greatly underpowered and will probably not elicit many quality downloadable songs from users. But once again, I couldn't care less.

I play Guitar Hero to play fake guitar. GHWT does that part better than any other game of it's kind that I have played. Well done Activision.

I am not really sure how to approach a review of Mirrors Edge, because it is so different one really doesn't have a basis for comparison. Based on that, I guess I could start by saying that Mirrors Edge is a groundbreaking game. Based in a dystopian future, like every other game nowadays, you are a elite private courier, or as the game calls it, a runner. In this city, all electronic communications are monitored and the city is under constant video surveillance. The only way to get a secure message through is hand delivering written letters to and fro all the while evading innumerable police. You play Faith, one of the runners.

The plot starts from there and ramps up very quickly, none of which I will spoil here.

The game is set in a first person perspective without deviation, and does not use pre-rendered cut scenes outside of loading between chapters. This fact has a profound impact on the way the game is played and experienced. Mirrors Edge is the first game to successfully distort the players perception of their own body to the point where you no longer feel like you are controlling some floating torso with a gun. You are a human being. And like all humans you need to look where you are going.

To give a very concrete example: the height of your jump is attenuated based on where you are trying to go. Need to jump forward? Look forward. Need to jump up? Look up. This sounds very natural and obvious, but no game has really done this before. Taking this even further: where you are looking even effects the audio experience. During the games many in-game cut scenes, Faith's head will look in several different directions while someone is talking and the volume and location of the sound adjusts based on that. If you have surround sound, the effect is quite astounding. The game is filled with little details like this, and at no time is the effect broken. While the whole look thing sounds like it would be very frustrating to adapt to and control, it was completely natural after the first bit of training.

Graphically, the game is stunning. The entire city is before you at all times, the draw distance is seemingly infinite. Look off a building and you will see cars moving, police walking, trains moving, etc. You can tell that they didn't make too much stuff to actually put in the game. Every fence is the same, every pipe is the same (but may not be the same size), every A/C unit is the same, etc. While this may seem like a drawback, it only re-enforced the idea of the top to bottom control, the uncompromising conformity of the entire city.

Color comes and goes with entire buildings. Go into a green building, the entire building is based around green; all the chairs, the paint the doors, everything is green. Once again, this may seem to be a drawback but it serves a very important purpose. Things that you can interact with, jump off, swing from, or crash through turn red when you see them. This is the games way of telling you where to go when you are dropped on a rooftop and are not sure where to go. That combined with the hint button, the game keeps you moving in the right direction at all times. However, that isn't to say that you cannot use your own ingenuity to come up with a faster route on your own. In fact, during many chases and escape sequences, you are told where you have to go, but not too much else, which gives a certain physical challenge puzzle element to the game.

Controls are simplistic and intuitive. One button controls all upward vertical actions and another controls all downward vertical actions. Another controls attacking, with a gun or not. There is a quick turn around button, a button to pickup, disarm, and discard weapons, the hint button, an action button, and a reaction time button (which I never used once). You are trained in all of the actions that you can do, right from the get go and you are expected to put them together yourself to make your way through the game. Awesome.

Fighting is tough. But it should be. You are a 150 pound girl with no body armor that has to take down SWAT Team-esque cops. You are quite the fighter, and can disarm any foe if they try to hit you with their weapon, but when you are around five bad guys, by the time you disarm the cop, you usually no longer have a lead deficiency. Faith is not the best shot, but I always go for the easy win first (the weakest cop with the least armor and weakest weapon), then use his gun to kill the next most powerful guy, and continue until they are all dead. Thankfully, you recover health if you hide and avoid damage for a while a la Gears of War, because you will be shot excessively during your first run through the game. Oh, and don't expect to be able to run along walls carrying a assault rifle either, your movement is impeded in relation to how big of a gun you are carrying.

There are bonuses to the game including searching for the runner packages hidden throughout the game and the time trial courses to run through, but the games single player campaign is the only real reason to own it.

All of this amounts to a video game experience that doesn't really have an equal. It is an orange among apples. It stands as one of the biggest achievements in game design this generation and deserves any accolades it receives.