Radical

ODST was rad. $70 rad? No, but then I'm not really into the multiplayer aspect of it all, and ODST surely offers a wealth of multiplayer value for the Halo 3 experience. It is, however, a very enjoyable single-player campaign that shows us some new versatility within the Halo universe; would be nice as a $20~$30 product for those of us not particularly interested in multiplayer, or those of us who have already purchased much of the multiplayer content included. The save system still sucks, but re-playing the first few levels wasn't the end of the world.

I think I've given-up on my current attempt at completing Majora's Mask... I'm tempted to restart the game on Wii (The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition) with a walkthrough for heart pieces and the Bomber's Notebook stuff. I've already re-started The Adventure Of Link on NES.

Expansions

The new Assassin's Creed II downloadable content, Battle of Forli, was pretty cool. Nothing special, pretty short, and it didn't really add to the story (some barely-developed characters show-up and manage to outsmart the group of assassins that just saved the world!?); but $4 for an hour's worth of new content and some added replayablity ain't bad. I was a little upset that my character didn't continue with the sword I had at the end of the game (or any sword for that matter), but I managed. It was also weird that Ezio's facial hair seemed to come and go... Whoops ;) Regardless of its faults, I lok forward to the next installment of DLC.

Halo 3 ODST is really good though. Instead of being a supreme badass following an epic story arc, you get to be relatively insignificant in a much more humble setting, all while feeling lost and lonely in a very real way; that's some impressive storytelling. I do not appreciate, however, the fact that after finishing about half of the game and choosing to save and quit from the hub level, my progress was not saved. Sure, I could revisit the missions I'd unlocked, but I couldn't continue my progress... Which meant that I had to re-play one of the previous missions and then manually choose the next one from the hub map. What's even better is that I'll have to re-play the other three missions in order to actually finish the game! Yeah, that's just amazing; I'm so stoked for that. Ugh.

Aw, nuts...

Oh, Google Chrome version 4.0.249.78, I'd love to use you as my default web browser on my Windows 7 workstation, but you keep randomly overlapping the taskbar (it remains inaccessible even if I "restore down" your window!) and seem to have issues with various Facebook pages when other browsers don't :( I would've gone back to Internet Explorer 8, but Firefox 3.6's speed increase kinda made the decision for me.

But wait, there's more!

Traded my NFR copy of Gex for 3DO, along with Metroid Prime 1 and 2 for GameCube, and Sonic Heroes and Sonic Mega Collection Plus (both "Platinum Family Hits") for XBOX toward complete copies of Gex and Out Of This World for 3DO, as well as Fight For Life for Jaguar, and Axelay and Michael Jordan: Chaos In The Windy City for SNES.

...But I didn't stop there.

No, I went ahead and bought an Hori EX2 arcade stick (PC-compatible) and Fracture for my XBOX 360, as well as Star Fox Adventures for GameCube and NHL Stanley Cup for SNES - that last one was only $2.

Anyway, I've been thinking about how much I'd like an updated NHL game for PSP. As much fun as I'm having with NHL 07 after installing and tweaking fan-made roster updates and settings to make it more realistic, it'd be really nice to see a more streamlined menu system, better AI, and some bug-fixes.

Aside from being slow and unresponsive, is it really necessary to ask me if I want to use the autosave system every time, then warn me that i'm using the autosave system every time, then load the intro movie every time, then select game modes, leagues, loading options, a game file, and then confirm that it has loaded... EVERY TIME!? That's no less than eight painfully sluggish button presses before I can even look at the actual game menu! Why not just let me set the autosave options once, then have the system remember them? Why not have a load option on the main menu? Seems so obvious... The sluggish menu also makes tweaking rosters and lines unduly arduous, though that may be intentional to keep people buying yearly official updates... Except there haven't been any official updates in four years.

Better AI and bug-fixes would just make the whole experience a lot more fun; no more players who run away from a loose puck in the open, goalies who don't cover the short side with reasonable consistency, disappearing players, lightspeed passes flying around the rink, checks that literally send players soaring across the ice, and the list goes on... I'm not asking for a lot, am I? Even a port of the latest PS2 update with some tweaks to make it play a little more like the 360/PS3 version would do.

Oh Yeah!

Totally forgot to mention that I played through a whole bunch of XBOX 360 demos!

Dante's Inferno was kinda meh. Solid graphics, silly exposition, derivative gameplay... Nothing really wrong with it, I guess.

Dark Void was pretty cool... Until I wasn't using my jetpack anymore. I did appreciate that I was allowed to use my jetpack in a cramped hallway, promptly fly into a wall, and die upon impact. Maybe once it hits the bargain bin...

And I finally dipped into the indie game pool and checked-out I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1. It was fun for a few minutes, and then it got very weird. Arkedo Series - 03 PIXEL! was very interesting; I love the aesthetic, but the gameplay was a little dry. Leave Home was just plain cool.

I don't know what came over me...

I stumbled across a new copy of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, so I bought it. I also bought Saints Row 2 (new for 360, $25) and de Blob (new, $19), and I'm looking for OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast... I didn't get around to buying it after seeing it everywhere for years, and now it's suddenly nowhere to be found! Regardless, I've now officially spent too much money on games this month :(

What have I done!?

I bought Night Trap for SEGA CD 32X today.

I'm not sure what I should be more ashamed of; that I bought a copy of Night Trap on any system, or that I now have all five SEGA CD 32X games.

Discontinued

I bought Metroid Prime Trilogy for Wii because it started disappearing around town once Nintendo announced they'd stopped making it. I also noticed copies of New Super Mario Bros. Wii in white cases while I was out, and mistakenly assumed that's what the new shipment looked like; turns out they were just display copies, but I had already informed some friends in the retail end of things that new shipments were in white plastic... Oops.

I also snagged complete copies of Afro Samurai and Halo 3 ODST for 360 together for $50. Considering that ODST is still going for $65 used in most places, I think I did alright.

Life's getting busy again, and I wish I at least had the time to finish-up Wario Land: Shake It!... I also wish I could choose between Intel's Core i7 860 and 920. The 5-series platform (860) seems to be heading more so toward the mainstream market while the X-series platform (920) seems to be heading toward an increasingly multi-core market... I just can't decide.

Alternatives

New acquisitions: Golvellius for Master System (way better looking than the NES Zelda games, much more ecclectic in terms of gameplay, and fricking hard!) and Street Fighter II' Champion Edition for PC Engine (just because it's amazing to see such a great port that no one thought possible). Still looking for Golden Axe Warrior and considering Zillion II for Master System.

Different

Things I don't like about my QuickSilver 2002 Power Mac G4:

• Can't play HD Flash video.
• I don't like Finder as much as Windows' Start Menu.
• Mac OS X's default keyboard shortcuts mostly suck.
• There still isn't a maximise button, is there?

Things I do like about my QuickSilver 2002 PowerMac G4:

• Everything else.

So I guess I could become a full-fledged Mac user with a Windows PC for specific tasks (gaming and Windows service, mostly); all I'd really have to do is adust to the Mac OS X workflow and buy a more powerful machine... Except I haven't really cared all that much for any Mac case designs since the iMac G4s and the QuickSilvers.

Ergh

Eternal Darkness gets better, and restarting actually made the first third of the game much more enjoyable, as I had a better idea of what the hell I was doing... Though this phenomenon casts an unflattering light on how the game establishes itself. Essentially, we have a unique game with an interesting presentation that leaves you hanging when it comes to gameplay and story. Once you slog through the first few chapters, things don't make much more sense, but they do get more manageable and thus far more entertaining. I've got three chapters to go, and I'm coming to the conclusion that I'm playing a disjointed but clever Resident Evil clone with super powerful melee weapons. None of these obseravtions sound particularly flattering, but I'm actually having fun and I can see why so many people felt this game was underappreciated in its day.

I also sat down with Majora's Mask last night and got to the boss of Great Bay Temple... Only to realise that I was woefully unprepared to defeat him. Thanks to the timed nature of the game, it looks like I'll have to redo the entire dungeon after hunting-down masks, jars, fairies, and heart pieces elsewhere in the game. I really hate wasting time like that.

And finally, a local video game shop is relocating, so I stopped by their old place over the weekend and came away with Pitall II for 2600 and Berzerk (w/overlay) for Vectrex. They'd just recieved a Jaguar CD, but it was suppoesdly already spoken for :\

Brilliant.

Eternal Darkness has no checkpoints or auto-save feature, and doesn't bother to prompt you to save your progress. I was just about finished the fourth chapter (about a third of the way through the game) when I was killed unexpectedly and forced to start the entire game over... That's not fun. I think I'm gonna go play something else instead.

Mano-a-mano

I finished Assassin's Creed II with most of the achievements, and it was great! Right up there with Brütal Legend as a serious game-of-the-year contender, as far as I'm concerned. I have a few complaints, but don't let them dissuade you from checking this game out. First, teaching the player a relatively tricky new technique during a timed mission that cannot be restarted while surrounded by numerous platforms that are likely to interfere with that technique is bad design; thankfully, that mission is optional. Second (and this one contains some big spoilers), whoever wrote the dialogue for the scenes surrounding your fistfight with the Pope (yes, a fistfight with the Pope!) should be fired. We went from intriguing and beautiful science fiction/history/conspiracy story to big dumb action movie for one of this epic game's pivotal scenes, and it just felt so very wrong; it didn't completely ruin the experience for me, but it certainly was disappointing.

I've started playing Eternal Darkness, and after the first two chapters, I'm wondering what all of the hype is about. The dialogue is painful, the story is barely cohesive so far, and combat is pretty frustrating... Maybe it gets better later.

I've been on a bit of a Klonoa binge lately. Since picking-up the Wii remake of the original PlayStation game, I've tracked-down the PS2 sequel, as well as the two Game Boy Advance releases. These are beautiful games, and reminiscent of Ristar in terms of gameplay.

Ooh, and I got to play with a PSX DVR the other day! A local shop got one in, but wants $500 for it :(

I'd love to see something like Broadcom's Crystal HD chip as an add-in card for older computers (especially my Power Mac G4). The ability to play HD Flash videos would make just about every computer from 2000 on capable of functioning as a solid day-to-day workstation.

Speaking of old computers, I got Soul Reaver running on Windows 7, but it stutters so badly that it's pretty much unplayable. Now I'm debating whether I should shell-out for the Dreamcast version instead of having to hook-up my Windows 98 SE machine to play it...

Gadetry

Windows 7 Gadgets (and possibly Windows Vista Gadgets as well) are broken. I like to put the default analogue clock, calendar, weather, and CPU meter (and somtimes a newsfeed) on there, but they're nothing I can't do without. While the only issues I ever had in Vista were with online feeds not synching, the weather gadget in 7 stopped working, and so all gadgets stopped working. When I tried to open the gadget menu to remove the weather gadget, it tried to open the gadgets first, which, since they weren't working, would cause the entire gadget engine to crash. I had to remove the wetaher gadget's folder from the Program Files folder to even access the gadget setup menu, so I just turned them all off and left it at that... Until today, when the weather gadget was suddently back, all by itself. Rather than bring them all back, I've opted to keep them all off.

My little brother surprised me with Assassin's Creed II and Modern Warfare 2 for XBOX 360 for Chirstmas, and so all else (including sleep) has been put on hold while I plough through Assassin's Creed II. Three gaming sessions in, and the end is in sight; I'm about two thirds through the story proper, and I've finished the majority of the side missions and collectible treasure hunts. The storytelling in this sequel is still a little off in terms of pacing and dialogue, but the gameplay is much more streamlined than it was in the first game. All of the repetitive missions that a lot of people complained about in Assassin's Creed are now completely optional, and the story progresses much more cohesively. If you're like me and enjoyed completing every last (seemingly meaningless) mission in the first game, don't worry; you can still do that here, and then some... Yeah, the amount of stuff to do is overwhelming, to say the least. Hunting down treasure chests, eagle feathers, statuettes, codex pages, and glyphs, solving brain-teasers, buying art, designing our outfit, reading about the places you've visited, checking out vistas, or just bombing around... You often don't need to go anywhere near the main story for hours. I'm loving the game so far, and I think just about anyone can find something fun to do in there.

Ooh, and I bought the Eidos Collector Pack (Batman: Arkham Asylum, Deus Ex 1 and 2, Hitman 1 to 3, Just Cause, Kane And Lynch, Mini Ninjas, Thief: Deadly Shadows, Tomb Raider: Legend and Underworld, and eight more Eidos games) and the Telltale Everything Pack (every Bone, Sam & Max, Strong Bad, Tales Of Monkey Island, and Wallace & Gromit game by Telltale) on Steam for $100... Individually, all of those games would cost over $450... I love holiday sales :)

Can't remember...

...I know I picked something else up since my last post, but I can't remeber what it is.

Wait, I did find Tiger Woods '10 for Wii (sans MotionPlus) for $29, and that was pretty sweet; there was something else though... I'll hafta get back to you on that.

Anyway, I finished Shadow Complex, and it was really good. The game was a little on the easy side and the dialogue was horrible (though the actors struggle through it admirably), but everything else was top-shelf stuff. Gorgeous graphics, visceral gameplay, plenty to explore, room for creative problem-solving, and compelling reasons to go back and find what you may have missed.

I then took some time to get into Muramasa, and quickly realised just how similar it is to Odin Sphere... But with a far less overwhelming inventory/forge/whatever, and with an amazingly fluid combat system. After the Bayonetta demo (which, like Devil May Cry, was very pretty but played very much not to my liking), Muramasa was a nice reminder that the hack-'n-slash/beat-'em-up genre hasn't completely left me behind in the '90s ;)

Before I got too far into Muramasa, I set aside an evening to finish LostWinds 2. I cannot stress enough just how amazing this series is. These two games, at only $10 each, are reason enough to get a Wii; they employ the Wii's controllers in a way so intuitive that I almost never paused to marvel at how well it worked; the graphics are beautiful; the music is hypnotic and suitably mysterious; the gameplay offers a challenging, but not overwhelming mix of puzzle-solving and platforming; and everything is bursting with character, from the animations and lighting to the musical cues and journal entries. The second game adds a great selection of new obstacles along with new tools to overcome them, and really feels like a new game instead of just another episode in the series. My only complaint is with the time between releases, and that's more of a compliment than anything else.

More Stuff

I bought two original NES controllers, Mario Pinball Land (GBA), Phantasy Star Online III (GC), and GRID (360) today for $27.

I also picked-up Jet Grind Radio (GBA) and Soul Reaver (PC) the other day, but forgot how old Soul Reaver was... It won't run on anything newer than Windows 9x :( There're unofficial patches to get it running on XP, but they're pre-SP3 and IE8, and don't seem to work. I've read that it works on Vista, so that or Windows 7 may be worth a try.

...Menacing?

I was buying a DVD the other day, and saw a new copy of Deadly Creatures for Wii for $20... And then a new copy of Elebits for $15... And then the cashier told me that it was buy-two-get-one-free, so I picked-up SEGA Rally Revo for XBOX 360. Now then, if only I could find the time to play them :( Still chipping away at Shadow Complex, then the priorities are LostWinds 2, Muramasa, Eternal Darkness, Wario Land: Shake It!... And it just doesn't stop.

I also bought a complete copy of Terminator 2: The Arcade Game for Genesis and dusted off my Menacer... That was fun :)

Splurge

Teddy Boy and Zillion for SMS; Mike Tyson's Punch-Out and Journey to Silius for NES; Chakan and Panic On Funkotron for Genesis; Jurassic Park, Killer Instinct, Super Punch-Out, and Tetris & Dr. Mario for SNES; as well as NBA Showtime, the "Sonic bundle" pack-in of Sonic Adventure with the Sonic Adventure 2 demo, and a second copy of Soul Calibur for Dreamcast.

Bullets

Recent Purchases:

• Samurai Shodown Anthology (Wii) (No SSVS!? Boo!)
• Sonic Gems Collection (GC) (It was $5)
• Gauntlet Legends (DC) (It was cheap, and I had credit to spend)
• Space Channel 5 (DC) (My copy was in a sorry state; traded it in)

Current Windows 7 dilemma:

• Ardour (Linux; FireWire Solo relegated to acting as a pre-amp)
• Cubase (Industry standard, good personal experience so far)
• Sonar (Supposedly great product and hardware support; 64-bit)
• Pro Tools (...But 8 still doesn't officially support Windows 7)