Just when I had my 360 RLOD stuff sorted out my PC supercrashes and as of now not a single thing happens when you press the power button. So now I have a bricked PC instead of a bricked 360. I am writing this from the laptop and I will probably be without my PC for at least the weekend until my parts arrive so I can repair it. It kinda sucks being without everything I had on my PC. Its wierd, you dont know how dependant you are on your PC until it crashes on you. Being without my music, TV, movies, games, bookmarks e.t.c feels kinda wierd. Anyways, I hate writing stuff on a laptop keyboard so I probably wont be writing here again until I get the PC up and running again. If Im lucky its done by Monday or so, if Im unlucky I actually have to turn it in for repairs wich will take way longer. Just had to get it out there.

Playing some more Dark Sector wich im kinda divided about. Its so good in some parts and so sloppy in other parts. Overall Im digging it tho and I will easily see the adventure through.

I also cancelled my PS3 preorder for GTA4 today since appearantly theres a shortage in Europe for the release so everyone wanting it on the PS3 are kinda screwed. So I changed my preorder to the 360 version so I should be fine now.

Also decided to get Ikaruga for XBLA. Im not a big shmup fan and I have never played Ikaruga before. So yea, its hard, really hard. I downloaded the replay from the no.1 dude on the leaderboards and its unreal to watch him go at it. I cannot believe my eyes at the precision in some parts, unbelievable.

In other news the weather here is finally starting to resemble something called spring. The sun is shining for real for the first time in like 7 months and maybe, just maybe, the last snowstorm has passed. I actually sat outside and ate a McFeast menu today wich was hella nice. So maybe the timing with my PC breaking down wasnt the worst thing in the world right now.

Anyways, hopefully my whole motherboard isnt fried and Ill see ya next week on my real computer. Over and out!

I am currently on the 2nd boss in Dark Sector and the design is sooooooo dumb. The boss has no appearant weak point AND there is no life bars for the bosses at all in this game. There is also no way to tell by the body language of the boss if hes almost dead (since he looks like hes almost dead right from the start). So I spent the last hour depleting all of my ammo and throwing my glaive at it over and over and over and over, and hes not dying, and I dont know if I am actually doing any damage to him. I dont know how much HP he has left or if Im supposed to kill him in some other special way, because there is no indication of that either. So after this long boring hour of repeating the same pattern I now had to turn off the console to get ready for work. The bossdesign overall is laughable. What were they thinking?! There is no way he has THAT much health, I have to be doing something wrong, but the game isnt even hinting as to what I am doing wrong. baaah!

*EDIT* Found a thread about it here. Check it out if youre stuck at the same spot. Gamespot community ftw.

I´ll be adding my HDD, Memory units, wireless controller, 360 vision & wireless networking adapter from my dead 360 so I am in good shape. Probably premiere the new 360 with Dark Sector.

I love how its a sticker on the front of the DVD drive now that says "Do not move console with disc in tray" since so many people keep messing up their discs that way.

The whole world keeps telling me to play this game so I finally decided it was time since I think it will enhance my MGS4 experience greatly in June. I spent like 40 good minutes reading through the story from MGS1 from the main menu and then I spent hours running around on the first mission (the freighter) not knowing where to go becasue the game didnt teach me how to disable the laser beam trip mines so I assumed you werent supposed to get past them. So I just spent hours on something that should have taken 10 minutes wich is the worst possible way to start up a new game experience. Controls are extremely clumsy (good luck aiming at ANYTHING. Cant even hit a wall), graphics dosent hold up as well as I thought blown up on my HDTV, camera is really bad and I cant stand the "get spotted and autoloss" gameplay that the game aims for. I just end up running past everyone since the "aggro" resets everytime you enter a door to another area. So I just dont see the point at all with being stealthy (so far). Just run and occasionally shoot someone who stands in your way. The story better be frikkin worth it. Totally not giving up by the way, I am way set on completing this game no matter what at the moment but the first impression is pretty awful. Im going to cut it some slack since it is a pretty old game and to play older games without having a nostalgic relationship to them requires you to have alot of patience, so thats what Im going to have here. At least the PS3 upscaling/smoothing works nice. But if I blow it up to widescreen it ends up stretching it out to much making the edges go outside the screen wich is annoying.

Including characters that are in no way relevant to Nintendo franshises but that I think would work and fit in the games fighting engine. The probability of us acutally seeing some of these characters in Smash is of course pretty much non existant but its fun to play with the thought. The inclusion of a character also means you need to have a stage for that character as well so I´ve included those as well.

5: Bile Demon (Dungeon Keeper)

Stage: The Hatchery

(A Dungoen Keeper Hatchery room with the standard Stage Theme from the game)

4: Guybrush Threepwood (Monkey Island)

Stage: Plunder Island Town Center ( The center of town, above the barber shop of Plunder Isle, with the Monkey Island theme, preferrably both a MI1 midi-styl3 theme and a MI3 more carribbean esque there )

3: Dante (Devil May Cry )

Stage: Temen-ni-gru tower Roof (The rooftop with heavy rain as in Devil May Cry 3 with the typical Techno-Metal battle music playing in the background)

2: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (yes, all of them)

Stage: Outside the Technodrome (An underground level with the technodrome in the background, buried deep in a cavelike environment. Music is of course the TMNT theme, straight from the 1987 cartoon.)

1: Mega Man (Mega Man / Rock Man )

Stage: Air Man Stage. (The Mega Man 2 Air Man stage with the same stage music. Complete with helicopter platforms/clouds and giant robot heads with drills coming up on the edges)

So after the sad demise of my last Xbox 360 I have finally deicded to not ship it off to Germany for repairs. I chose to do this mostly because I do not have a UPS anywhere even remotely near me and that was the only way to ship it there for free. If I want to ship it with UPS I have to either drive all the way to Stockholm to drop it off and let me tell you, thats quite the drive, especially of you have to also pick it up when it gets back. Or I could order a pick up. This tho, is very expensive and having them pick my 360 up and returning it once its done will probably cost me nearly as much as buying a new one. On top of these UPS problems its the fact that Ive heard alof of bad things about the repaired 360s (and some good to of course). They have taken weeks to repair and I recently read on a Swedish gaming forum that a guy got RLOD instantly again after 5 minutes of play, then sent it back AGAIN, got it back AGAIN and RLODed YET AGAIN after a day or so.

And sure, I have heard that they are actually putting in the NEW and better hardware into your machine when they repair it but I really want to be on the safe side this time and pick up a new console from the shelves that Im sure has the newer technology that wont RLOD on me again until the next generation of consoles. I guess another option would have been to not care at all and just wait until the next "must have" game arrives for the 360. I guess that would be sometime in the fall. But thats not REALLY an option for me.

SO. I ordered a new Xbox 360. Arcade Bundle, including a wireless controller, a couple of arcade games that I actually dont own yet, a copy of Viva Piñata (that I already have, ill add that to my other duplicate 360 titles that Ive accumulated over the years), & 3 months of free Xbox Live Gold. I get free shipping and it should arrive within 2-3 days so all in all its a nice package. The price on the Core/Arcade bundle is now really low and since I already have all the accessories and cables from my last 360 its really a bargain for me. I guess free would have been better but I really cannot be bothered with the whole warranty thing. If I could just go turn it in where I bought it in town and have them fix it for free that would of course be the obvious choice but as it stands now, my bricked 360 will continue to lie there under a pile of clothes where it is now, maybe ill screw it open and start messing around with all the components of it to see how it looks on the inside or maybe ill record a video of me dragging it out on the street and smashing it to pieces with a baseball bat, Office Space-styl3 yo!

Alright, so whatever you do, do NOT but a Radeon X1950XT if you´re looking for a new graphics card. Sure its actually quite powerful but its warm as heckfire. This card get so hot you´ll see artifacts in the game after about 30 seconds of gameplay wich will then escalate and lock up your whole computer. Now I have been adressing this issue on and off since I bought my new computer 10 or so months ago. I actually thought it was the drivers fault for a good amount of time and just waited for ATi to release new Vista drivers. I ended up blaming ATi and Vista for my artifacts problems. Anyway. So I finally got it under control. I manually underclocked my card and manually upped the fanspeed on the card with ATi Tray Tools. I Then ripped off the side of my case and took a big ass table fan, made for people, not computers, and pressed it against the side of the big monster of a graphics card and put it on full speed. Seems that now I can maintain a constant 58 - 63 C temperature while playing demanding 3D applications.

This means that I can FINALLY play Crysis. So I actually clicked "New Game" on Crysis yesterday and I might come off sounding like a complete delerious fool now but its one of the best shooters ever made, ever! It it! Jason Ocampo was not lying in his 9.5 review (go check it out if you havent). It increases what we expect from shooters from now on when it comes to graphics, sounds, atmosphere, open ended gameplay and awesome shooter action. I can run the game at the highest widescreen resolution (1440 x 900) with everything set to Medium except a few things wich I have cranked up to High and it looks AMAZING! I really cant see how it can look any nicer and I am only running it on mostly medium settings. The framerate isnt really good. This game eats any computer thrown at it so the FPS kinda drops in firefights and large areas but its playable. It dosent make it hard to play, its just noticably bad in some spots. But its so gorgeous I really dont care. It _IS_ truly the best looking game ever made and I dont think anything will beat it for a good while on any platform.

Play this game. Screw the "If you have the computer to handle it, play this game" because, lets face it, you dont. No matter your system this game will laugh at it. So go with what you have, scale the graphics down a bit and play this one. I cant wait to get some more free time so that I can really sit down and get through it.

*EDIT* Fixed about a 100 grammar and spelling errors. Man I was in a hurry when I wrote that blogpost. *EDIT*

.. My EU release 360 finally gave up. Im not sure about if I want to go through the weeks/months of hassle that is sending it back for repair or just go out and buy a new one since they are so cheap now.

Alright. First of all the second part of my eastersale shoppingspree arrived. It consists of Transformers - The Game and TMNT - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Both for the xbox 360. Both are probably pretty awful games but the pricetag, the potential pointsboost and the fact that its 2 of my favorite childhood franchises came a long way for me to put them in my pile of games that I might crack open a rainy sunday when I have no other games to play, I like to have such a stack at all times. The old Turtles games was some of my favorite games to play when I was younger. Even the old NES game that is really an abomination of a game kept me glued to my TV because thats about as huge of a Turtles fan I am. Ask me a question about Turtles and I can probably answer it, no matter how obscure. And I can do that even tho I havent really done anything TMNT related for 10 years except watching the recent CG movie and playing the 1989 Arcade version of TMNT on XBLA (Maybe my favorite XBLA game so far despite the impossible achievements). So with that said I really felt I needed to get my hands on the new official TMNT game because no matter how bad it might be its still Turtles, pretty much like the new movie. It wasnt very good but it was still Turtles. Oh, and I am not going to answer who my favorite Turtle is, so stop asking.

In other news I got the typical early spring cold yesterday and ended up at home, sick from work. Constantly blowing my nose, having a headache and randomly crashing on the bed sleeping for hours is really not my thing. Anyway, it resulted in me tearing off the plastic around "Open Season" for the 360 and firing it up. Its a kids game, yea, no surprise there. The challenge in the game is non existent and the mechanics are made for a 5 year old. But the points are supereasy. This is pretty much a secure 1000/1000 points release so Im going to power through it. And its actually not completely worthless. In some spots it can actually be kind of fun, at least when you´re delerious from a cold and the graphics are actually kinda neat. The voiceacting is done by Martin Lawrence and Ashton Kutcher just like in the movie so it holds up very well and the dialogue is actually way funnier than in the movie. I´ll probably end up finishing it off today together with some more Army of Two. I have now played through that game 1 full time with the AI, another 4 or so missions in splitscreen and another couple of missions all over yet another time to gain some more of the achievements. The points in Ao2 is really all about patience and about how many times you can bring yourself to replaying the game over and over. Its not a long game mind you, so its not that much of a hassle and I am actually enjoying the game far more than anyone else it seems, Ao2 is not a bad game. Its not a masterpiece by any means but it is really fun and its extremely nice to look at.

Going back to Turtles its my strong opinion Turtles was at their peak during the old animated series that premiered in 1987. The animation and the overall looks of every character will probably never be as good again. Every try since then have pretty much been a failure (especially every try to make a good looking April O´Neal). Also the adventures were more exciting in those series than in any other try to make a Turtles series or movie since then and first and foremost the villians were not some random thugs. The villians back then were probably some of the best villians an animated series has ever had. Compare this with the crap that was called villians in the new movie. Awful. This was what I grew up with and If I am going to watch some more Turtles any time soon (wich I really SHOULD since I´m sick and all) its going to have to be the old animated series from the 80s. Turtles shouldnt have to be anything more than the basics that it was all about back then.

Well there you go. Me sitting here sick ranting about TMNT. I really should write a short rant about Transformers as well but that will have to wait until next time. I am going to dig up some lunch and check my favorite online stores if they have any DVD releases of the old TMNT series. Wich reminds me, Biker Mice from Mars..dude, awesome animated series and extremely well made toys. I think I still have my Biker Mice toys buried away somewhere. They were almost as awesome as the TMNT toys with shells that you could open and transform them to ordinary turtles.. Gah, I gotta stop. Food here I come. Just a fun fact before I go. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are known as Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles over here in Sweden becuase it was to voilent to name them NINJAS.

*EDIT* Turns out I was completely wrong on the voiceactors in Open Season, the game. Its not Kutcher and Lawrence and I can hear that pretty clearly now. Shame..

OK. First off. For the last couple of hours I´ve been having my Wii on in the background while doing other stuff just listening to the countless soundtracks that you unlock over the course of the game. Screw Winamp or any other music, my Wii with Super Smash Brothers Brawl spinning is the best music you can ask for. There is SOOOO much soundtracks packed into this game you´ll be amazed over and over on how far they have gone to get as many songs in here as possible and the fantastic Jukebox mode makes it possible to listen through all of it. On top of awesome soundtracks you have remixed versions of some of the songs with a modern sound and I find myself sitting here digging along to almost every song. From the remixed version of "Underground Theme" (Super Mario Bros.) to the remastered version of the "Airship Theme" (Super Mario Bros. 3) to the fantastic, all time great "King K.Rool / Ship Deck Theme" (Donkey Kong Country). I swear, that game had some of the best music ever made in a videogame and I totally forgot about it up until now.

Other absolutely fabulous tracks that can be found amongst the masses is "Dragon Roost Island" (Zelda: The Wind Waker), a remix with some male vocal work of "Opening / Menu" (Metroid Prime), a modernized "Yoshis Island" (SMW2: Yoshis Island) AND my absolute favorite so far, Famicom Medley wich takes 5-10 second clips from alot of NES titles and puts them together into a mindblowing remix that will have you guessing as to wich games it mixes together. Super Smash Bros Brawl is truly a celebration to everything Nintendo over the years and its really an overdose of nostalgia to sit and listen through all of this music. On a sidenote I spent some hours on Saturday Night playing 3 player Brawl and I dont think you can find a better Partypleaser at the moment. Thumbs Up! Rock Band / Singstar / Guitar Hero eat your hearts out.

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I fired up The Simpsons Game DS yesterday night and it is truly one of the best games on the DS so far. I am not really a simpsons fan but the way they chose to go with the Simpsons game combined with the 2D platforming game that is Simpsons on the DS instead of the a bit more confusing 3D version on the other consoles makes for a really great time. The 2D graphics are wonderfully drawn and every stage has so much detail you can easily stop and stare at every screen. The videogame jokes and the popculture references works very well and it will constantly make you smile. It makes fun of so much popular culture stuff and with you as a videogame player. It dosent take itself seriously for one second and constantly throws insane jokes your way that rubs me the right way almost every time. So if you own a DS and havent checked this one out yet, go and get it.

Alright I gotta go. I´m off to fight Mario, Ganondorf & Sonic with Toon (wind Waker) Link on The Pirate Ship Wind Waker stage. Then I gotta find out how you unlock Zero Suit Samus, something I havent done just yet. Over and out!