Here's a great little piece detailing why the Xbox sucks. I'm prone to agree. That said, I still wouldn't mind one, especially since one of the, oh, 4 games worth having for it comes with the system now (cough Jet Set Radio Future cough), thereby saving me $$!

Not that I'll be getting a Box for quite some time though. I thought that Steel Battalion would get me excited, but while I would like to at least play it, I'm not as enthused as I was before (esp. concidering it's so expensive and hasn't been getting the greatest of reviews).

Saw Treasure Planet tonight. Sweet movie. It's everything Titan A.E. should have been.

It could have been better, but I think that since it was a family movie, it did the best it could with the constraints on it.

Absolutely amazing animation. Very Spelljammerish feel to the whole movie (age of sail meets space travel).

This is interesting news.

"Two of the biggest Japanese game publishers will join forces early next year.

Enix and Square have revealed plans for a merger that will take effect next April. The merger will exchange Square shares for Enix shares, so Enix will be the dominant corporation when the deal is complete."

I'm not sure if this is good news or bad news. Granted, I love both companies, so as long as the resulting company takes the best of both rather than the worst of both, it should be good.

I'm such a geek. I just ordered a Penny Arcade skin for my GBA.

I finally watched my UHF DVD yesterday.. watched it w/ the commentary... oh man, it was funny. Al would call people up and talk about the movie and they'd put him on hold to get another call... he was reading the horrible reviews UHF got when the movie came out... way too funny.

Just when you thought you saw everything there was to see on Ebay, someone is selling an Air Guitar.

Yeah... at least the shipping will be cheap...

And Metroid Prime AND Fusion rule.

I've hit this wierd spot now where there aren't any games I'm really super pumped about on the horizon for quite some time (Zelda is probably the only one, and it's not slated until at least February or so now) and I don't even really want to go into EB. It's not a usual feeling for me.

Not that there aren't any games that I want to get, but I've got all the ones that I felt I MUST have, so the others can wait.

AH!

I sure wouldn't mind getting the Best Of Lucasarts CD for Christmas...

Oh man, Metroid Prime is SO good. I pity those who have no Cube.

Hee hee.

It's really nice. Looks beautiful, plays super smoothly (though I keep hitting the Morph-Ball button when I mean to hit the Missile one) and I think it was made especially for me, as there are tonnes of things to examine in each room you enter. I just shoot whatever nasties are there, then spend 5 minutes scanning everything and reading all the lore and research.

Lots of fun.

Well, I got my Metroids today. Prime & Fusion arrived and I got them.

I played about 30 minutes of Fusion already. It's great. Pretty much a classic Metroid game, a la Super Metroid. Lots of little changes though, but I like it. Samus seems to be a lot faster too this time.

I haven't tried Prime, but if it's half as good as everyone is saying it is, mmm...

Oh my, this is a very funny video poking fun at Star Wars nerds.

Well, I think our fridge is officially dead.

How much did it snow?

There wasn't any snow yesterday afternoon. This was taken a few minutes ago... That's how much it snowed.

Holy cow, it sure snowed a lot last night.

Grr... I sat down to work on No One Lives Forever 2, which I hadn't played in a while, and the sound just wasn't there. It probably had something to do with my playing around with the audio codecs earlier in the week, but suffice it to say, I had to reinstall NOLF2 to get the sound to work.

No biggie. I've got my saves backed up... But when I tried to load up an old game, nada, zilch, zero. Sigh. Looks like I'll have to start all over again. Good thing I'm on a game hiatus now. I'll try to plow through a bunch of my games I already have and see how that goes.

I did spend a good chunk of the night playing Medal Of Honour: Allied Assault instead. Great WW2 game. Esp. what with my watching Band Of Brothers the last 10 weeks.

Yessir, I need one of these.

Oh yeah...

This is from Gamespot:
Let's get right to the point: Metroid Prime is the best GameCube game to date. It's one of the best games on any platform this year, and, for good measure, it's also the best game yet in Nintendo's highly acclaimed Metroid series.

Gamespy must be on crack. It usually has the best and most thought-out reviews of all the game sites, but it only gave Ratchet & Clank a 78% when it has been getting consistent 85-90% scores on other sites. Wierd.

I personally really like R&C. It's been a fun diversion from Suikoden 3 and GTA:Vice City. Sadly, I'm back at Suikoden 3 again. Not that it's a bad thing, but I really SHOULD be playing Vice City! Oh well.

I have all my games paid off from now until Christmas and won't be buying anything fun until after the new year. Sob. Let's see how long this lasts :)

Yay! My Lord of the Rings:Fellowship of the Rings Special Edition DVD arrived today. I'm really impressed. I got it in the mail the same day it was available in stores. Not too shabby, Amazon.ca. Take that Chapters"We like to process your order a year late".com

This article is pretty good. I remember being in almost the same boat a few years ago before I got back into console gaming. Everything I played was either a PC strategy game, PC FPS or a PC adventure game. Thankfully I now have a bunch of different things to play now!

This is a screenshot from Metroid Prime. The cool thing is that the face you see is Samus' (your character) face reflected off the inside of the helmet visor due to a particularily big explosion. It's cool touches like that that have me really looking forward to this game (about a week away!)

Oh, and I spent a bit more time playing with an Xbox and I hate the controller even more... Who ever thought that was a good controller?

Ratchet & Clank is very fun.

I'm not sure if it's really easy, or just seems like it though. But it is just dripping style.

But not as much as Sly Cooper... at least not yet.

Had a lot of fun helping to run the Youth Group videogame night this evening. We had the projector running with the Gamecube and played Super Monkeyball for the WHOLE NIGHT... then the kids went home and we played some Soccer Slam... so fun.

And I realized that you need a TV or projection screen that's about 6 feet wide by 5 feet high to truly enjoy split-screen gaming.

First really nasty kind of snow hit today. I was driving home and taking the backroads, which was fine till I got close to home and realized I was now driving INSIDE the cloud that was dropping the white stuff. Then I started sliding backwards at a stop sign. That's when I chickened out and took the well-travelled roads home :)

Probably the #1 best thing about Vice City. Especially when you take one off a roof.

Just finished watching the first season of Sopranos... not bad... watched about 10 hours in one sitting, then the last 3 tonight. I'll probably take a day or two off before I tackle Season 2 :)

And jumper cables...

I need one of those little 'Ring For Service' bells... just in case...

I've spent the last 8 hours or so watching the first season of Sopranos. Yeah, it's taken me a bit of time, but I finally borrowed the second season from my brother and so I rented the first season.

All I can say is WOW.

Great show... and ok... Dave was telling me that the first season of Sopranos wasn't that good, esp. when compared to second season..

If this is bad, I can't wait for second season... I'm just finished ep. 8 of first season and it's friggin amazing! I wish there was more bad TV like this.

Next in the signs that the apocalypse is just around the corner, my wife, Julie, was playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and actually laughing and having what seemed to be... fun!

EEEK!

She also liked just listening to the music. Though for someone who doesn't like violent videogames, she seemed to enjoy running over people with that truck she hijacked...

Yes... that is a duck in armour... and yes, it's in Suikoden 3, not Vice City :)

I've also been busy with Suikoden 3 for the last day or so. I was hoping to take a bit longer to finally pop the disc into the PS2 because I was really busy working on Suikoden 2... but then it started locking up and I couldn't progress further, so I finally gave in and put Suikoden 3 in the machine. And I have to say I'm impressed. Especially when I see references or characters from Suikoden 2 popping up... Suikoden 3 is definately a game which has Cel-Shading down right. Beautiful graphics.

I am kind of annoyed I couldn't finish Suikoden 2 though. But I'd been having problems with the FMV for the whole time I was playing the game on my PS2. Maybe I need to find a PSX to try it in to see if I can proceed past that crash-o-matic video. Oh well. I was about 2/3rds through it and really enjoying it. If Suikoden 3 stacks up, esp. in the castle department, I'll be very happy.

Anyway, I'm off work for the weekend and have been jonesing for Vice City all day, so I'm off to play it! Hopefully I'll update this before next Thursday :)

Only 2 more weeks till Metroids Prime and Fusion! Woo!

Well, let's see... Vice City is excellent, as you can see by the stellar reviews it's getting. It also seems to be selling quite well.

I think I'm definately enjoying it more than GTA3. It just seems more... finished, well-rounded... I don't know... but while GTA3 was one of the best games of last year, Vice City has taken everything that was good from GTA3 and added even more greatness to the package. Heck, I was having a blast just driving around a crappy little moped delivering pizzas. Any game that can have me going from mad-dog killer gangster dude to mild-mannered Pizza Delivery Boy within the space of 5 minutes and still be fun is a good one :)

And the music and talk show radio stations are amazing. I think Rockstar did a great job of really capturing the 80's. The fact that I grew up during the 80's also helps as I get a lot of the ol' nostalgia going when I am driving around listening to 80's pop and running over pedestrians... just like I remember :)

hmm... haven't updated for a couple days.