I've been wanting to play through Metal Gear Solid again for awhile now. It has been ages since I played through the original game and while I was hoping we'd see it get ported to the PSP through a PSN update it looks like that might still be a ways off. Instead what we're getting is Metal Gear Solid: Essential Collection which originally appeared on Play-Asia for $34.99 as a special pre-order.

Now the game has turned up on Gamestop with a retail price of $29.99 - not bad.

The collection includes the original Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid: Substance, and Metal Gear Solid: Subsistence. All in all it's not a bad deal for anyone interested in either getting into or re-playing the series.

Spore is one of those games that I'm just dying to play - unfortunately it's also one of those games that seems to just keep moving further and further away. Today we get some good news though.

Despite further delaying Mercenaries 2, EA was kind enough to give us a slight hint at when we might see Spore hit the market. While it's not set in stone it looks as though Spore will be hitting the market sometime before the 2008 holiday season.

Of course with this good news comes three helpings of iffy. As of right now Bioware's upcoming Dragon Age RPG, Pandemic's Mercenaries 2, and Battlefiel: Bad Company have all been pushed into EA's next fiscal year. The good news is that EA's next fiscal year runs from April 1, 2008 through March 31, 2009 - that's a good possibility for 2008 but leaves plenty of time for a 2009 release.

Admittedly I never got into the Highlander movies - I was totally hooked on the TV show though.

While the video below shows relatively little detail about the upcoming SCi title Highlander it does seem a bit promising.

It also got me thinking - how great would a Highlander MMO be?

If you're one of the PS2 holdouts looking to grab Rock Band before upgrading it might be time to reconsider. We all expected the PS2 version to be a step behind graphically but it turns out more than just sharper resolution is going to be missing from the PS2 release.

Joystiq is reporting that Rock Band for the PS2 will lack online play as well as downloadable content - one of Rock Band's major selling points I think. To make matters worse Harmonix has also left out the World Tour mode.

A final nail in the coffin for the PS2 version is a lack of customization. According to Joystiq "you'll play as a pre-made band each time you load up a song (the band differs based on the genre of the song you chose)."

Ouch - even the first Guitar Hero offered a choice of avatars. If you're desperate for playing Rock Band and haven't upgraded to a next gen system yet you may have no choice - I recommend waiting it out if possible.

If you were at all worried about the recent confusion surrounding the Rock Band release rest assured that a firm street date has now been set. This November 23rd Rock Band will be shipping for the PS3 and XBox360 consoles with a PS2 version following December 10th.

The MTV Multiplayer blog is also reporting that the next-gen versions have been set to retail for $169.99 while the PS2 version will be $159.99. If you've missed previous announcements both PlayStation versions will sport a wireless guitar while the 360 version will be tethered (a separate wireless guitar is rumored to be in the works for future release.)

FYI: November 23rd is the day after Thanksgiving and is also known as "Black Friday." If you're dying to get your hands on Rock Band be ready to brave one of the busiest shopping days in the US.