Too much!

Hey, sorry been busy lately... Picked-up a lot of good stuff :)

I bought the PS2 versions of Guitar Hero Encore Rocks The '80s and Guitar Hero III on sale last Monday; grabbed the last copy of each in the store. They're both wonderful, but I do have a few qualms with III. Some of the character designs and animations lust look scary, they got rid of Eddie Knox, I miss the old look of the new dots on the fretboard, some of the rhythms for familiar songs feel pretty awkward (perhaps that's just because I'm an actual guitar player), and some songs seem to have extra notes and riff changes thrown in simply for difficulty's sake... I don't dig that. Still, the heart of the game is the same, and it's a hell of a lot of fun. Rocks The '80s is really solid, but awfully expensive for only 30 songs... Oh, and there's slowdown! Not acceptable! It's still playable though.

On my PSP, I've been progressing through Castlevania (unlocked Symphony Of The Night and the original Rondo Of Blood last night... So good :) ), got my hands on a copy of the God Of War: Chains Of Olympus demo (so gorgeous), and I'm trying to like Dead Head Fred... The thing is, all this Ratchet & Clank hype because of the new PS3 game has me itching to play Size Matters on PSP, but I really want to give Dead Head Fred a chance. Oh, and I picked-up Manhunt 2, but haven't really played it yet.

Jericho is still keeping me enthralled, but it's playing out a little more like Call Of Duty than Undying. The level structure (take a point, engage in a firefight, move to the next point) and team management (keeping your team from immediately getting their asses handed to them by giving effective orders and controlling the right characters for the situation) can get really frustrating at times, as I've found my whole team dying more often than I'd like to see despite my best efforts. It's getting better though, as I continue to come up with new strategies of playing specific teams and possessing different characters. Oh, also, despite my 12-0-0 record in NHL08, the game is actually still challenging. I'm playing it on the normal/medium difficulty setting, and a lot of games have been down to the wire (though I have had three shut-outs ;) ).