So with about a month left to go until GTA4 its time to decide wich platform to pre-order the game for. Since I have both systems I have to carefully weigh in Pros and Cons with each system to find the best one and I am having a very hard time to decide. So I am going to list some pros with each version here and maybe you can help me decide wich ones are more important.

Grand Theft Auto 4 - The Playstation 3 version - Good stuff !

+ The devs have history with the Sonyconsoles and even tho they wont admit it the PS3 version might be the "better" or the "original" version of the game. This is a very vague argument since the version will probably perform and look pretty much the same.

+ A more stable and more quiet console. My 360 has been freezing a bit lately and recently suffered from some RLOD wich fixed itself, how long will it hold up? The PS3 is a quiet compared to the 360 DVD drive and I am pretty tired of the noiselevel from the 360

+ Multiplayer with friends. I will probably end up with several friends that will get the PS3 version and seeing as the multiplayer seems pretty nice it should be cool to try out even tho it will never be the primary need with a GTA title.

+ In my opinion a better controller (but with no rumble, yet)

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Grand Theft Auto 4 - The Xbox 360 version - Good stuff !

+ Achievements !! Lets be honest. The achievements in GTA4 will probably be really good and relate to a huge variety of stuff that can be done in Liberty City. These will be extremely fun to get even for someone who dosent really like achievements in the first place..and I really do!

+ Exclusive downloadable content. The official word is that the 360 version will have exclusive downloadable episodes after the release that simply will not appear on Sonys console.

+ The Xbox Live community. I really prefer my Xbox Live over my PSN. And with that I mean that I have my MSN account linked to my 360 so I can stay online while I play the game. I have around 60 people on my friendslist wich will probably all play the game so I will be able to really get into the multiplayer even if its not with close friends but rather with people met over community sites. I love the Xbox social options like watching other peoples achievements and the way you can link your profile all over the internet. I feel way more connected when playing a 360 title.

+ Rumble in the controller (but its not as comfy as the ps3 controller)

Easter is upon us and we are all hiding from the evil easterbunny for a full weekend. In sync with this alot of onlinestores have ridiculous sales on games so I picked up these for pretty much nothing except for Army of Two wich I actually payed full price for because I think it seems like a blast despite of what reviews has been saying. I wanted to play TimeShift when it came out but in the storm of awesome games that was released in fall of 07 it kinda got postponed. Also, the boxart for TimeShift is seriously one of the coolest ever. As I saw it for ~15$ I decided to get it. Open Season was a pure "points" purchase. I heard a good while back that it was mad easy to get the full 1000 out of it with only a couple of hours put into it as far as actually playing it. Not like I plan to get stuck in the Achievements addiction again since thats pretty much impossible with 3 consoles but hey, why not, it was so cheap! Concerning Shadowrun I dont really know. That game seems kinda awful so dont ask me why I bought it. It just kinda slipped in there. I guess a part of me wants to see what its like to play 360 vs PC in a fast online shooter.

Speaking of purchases I bought both Brain Challenge and Poker Smash for XBLA yesterday night and spent some hours with them. TVs own Jeff Gerstmann spoke highly of Poker Smash a while back so I had to give it try. I downloaded the trial and got instantly hooked.

The European No More Heroes version is finally out. I cant say the ash is annoying me too much so far but of course blood would be better. Getting some crazy Blade wibes from all the ash killing. FANTASTIC sense of humor in this one so far. Suplexmoves feels a bit unprecise. I never manage to pull them off correcly no matter how I wave my controllers around.

New arrival: Super Smash Bros Brawl US Import + Freeloader.

The game wants to update my firmware after I start it with the freeloader so I am currently researching if it will brick my EU Wii if I Update. If thats the case I wont be able to play it. Gottahurry to work now so I´ll check up more on that later. Hopefully I´ll be able to play some SSBB over the weekend.

[UPDATE] Working! Been playing for a couple of hours now. 2 player Brawl and Subspace adventure. Both SUPER fun. Totally glad I imported instead of waiting!

Alright. Seeing as I have an iPod now its time to start listening to / watching audio and video podcasts for real. I have pretty much just been tuning into Jeffs & Ryans Arrow Pointing Down podcast once a week up until now. Well, things are going to change. I decided to sit down and really browse through iTunes for podcasts that really caught my attention. The following are the results of some podcasts that I ended up subscribing to. I dont know if I will be listening to them or watching them a month from now but some of these are podcasts I should have been interested in a long time ago. To find these and subscribe yourself just open up your iTunes store and look up their names.

G4 - Street Fury Video Podcast

Covering the lovely world of hot import cars, drifting, Tokyo and hot street racing babes.

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The Official LOST Podcast

As I die hard LOST fan this is something I should have listened in to a very long time ago. Now I need to catch up and listen to old episodes!

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The WireImage Entertainment Report

Covering Hollywood in that typical "hyping the celebs" kind of way. Something I dont entirely swallow but hey, getting news about the actors I love the most in Hollywood direcly converted to iPod format for free, why not!

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G4 X-Play Video Podcast

The daily newscast for gamers that most of you know about already where Jeff Gerstmann recently announced Giant Bomb.com. Probably gets alot of subscribtions because of the insanely hot Co host Morgan Webb.

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Arrow Pointing Down Podcast

Yea of course I have to mention this one. I already listened to this but If I can get a couple of people more to listen to it, its only good. So far Its Jeff Gerstmann and Ryan Davis with occasional guest Alex Navarro rambling on about everything and nothing. Maybe it will convert into the Giant Bomb Podcast soon!

Some other podcasts of interest include "BlizzCast: The Official Blizzard Podcast", "Command & Conquer TV" & "GeekBrief TV". At the moment I feel like I dont really have more time on my hands to be listening to podcasts. These are probably all obvious choices for someone who have an interest in technology, film, series, cars or Jeff Gerstmann but for someone new these are all welcome additions in my daily schedule.

My new iPod touch arrived today. Very sexy piece of machinery. Came in a Legends John Lennon box. Also bought screenprotection and a silicon sleeve for allaround protection. I really dont want to scratch this baby. Heres some pix!:

Might record a video later of me messing around some in the menus and checking some video and whatnot. Stay tuned.

*UPDATE* I recorded 5 minutes of playing around with the iPod and then went ahead and edited it and put a soundtrack to it and stuff, but my rendering program decided to completely screw it up so no matter what I do I cannot be watched once you have rendered it. Shame..

Lost Odyssey Disc 3/4 complete. Total playtime 29 Hours, 46 minutes.

The longer I play this game the more painfully aware I become of the old combat system the game uses. After 30 or so hours I am actually hella tired of random encounters and turn based combat. I find myself thinking back on Mass Effect and what a bliss it was in combat compared to this. It was fine at first but its really growing old when you´ve gotten so far into the game as I have now. Not only is do you get loads of random encounters when you least want them but once you´re in there you might end up facing a combination of random enemies that you cant beat once they are paired up together and you are forced to flee. Sometimes the flee-attempts fails and you are dead meat. There are always a pre set number of types that can be paired up together in a specific area and in some areas its insanely imbalanced. I am tired of the slow pace of chosing "Spell" and "Attack" over and over for 30 hours now.

At a certain point on disc 3 you were forced to split up your party in to smaller parties. With the leveling system the game has it was a real pain. The game forced me to use my lvl 19 character that I didnt bother to level together with a lvl 30+ character that effectively scaled the combat to lvl 30+ making my other dude completely useless. Soon enough you ran into a boss with some of the people not yet ready levelwise wich leads to some serious levelboosting. As if random encounters and turn based combat isnt boring enough by now I gotta run around in circles HOPING for one to appear so I can boost my low level characters.

Its lucky then that the story still rocks and more characters are added all the time. The adventure is still going very strong and it feels very "larger than life" by now and I am sure it will be something I wont forget for a while. The conclusion of this game should be really awesome.

Lost Odyssey Disc 2/4 complete. Total playtime 20 Hours, 39 minutes.

Half of the game complete. The story is really kicking into high gear and the relationships between the characters are getting more fleshed out. I´ve also picked up some new party members and gotten to see some really memorable locations. The more I play of this game the more I realize its probably one of the best JRPG experiences I´ve had so far. I have always had a hard time completing these kind of games but something about LO makes me go on for hours and hours to get further into the adventure. The sense of adventuring is really great. Your little group of people go to loads of diverse locations and rest at the local inn at many small villages or local cities.

The game is still very hard tho its getting a bit more manageable now since the level ups have started to really flow in. I am also getting the hang of most encounters when it comes to **** and group setup. Part of that is also because I now have more members to chose from to make up my main formation. I have also collected some new weapons and some really nifty rings and trinkets. Skill linking is also picking up speed and my immortals are starting to really show their stenghts. The last part of Disc 2 was very dark in tone with much ghosts an old mansion, a cursed ghost town and so much sorrow filled piano tunes you really felt the sadness all the way. Talking about music, the soundtrack in this game is unbelievable. One of the best RPG soundtracks in years and years.

With that said I still have alot of issues with the game and I often feel that it could have used alot more polish in many aspects. Still I also feel very sorry for many old school RPG fans that dont own a 360. Because they are really missing out on a story and an adventure that is something I will not forget for a long time. Anyways. Very excited to see where the adventure takes me on the third disc and it will be interesting to see if I will eventually become overpowered with my characters in contrast to the first disc. It has been a long time since i dived head first into a long, heavy RPG and I gotta say, Its very time consuming and requires alot of patience..but I have missed it!

Lost Odyssey Disc 1/4 complete. Total playtime 11 Hours, 20 minutes.

This game is HARD. Oh man this game is so hard. Thats really all I have to say after the first disc. This game shows you no mercy. Theres no way to change the difficulty and it dosent adapt at all depending on how much you bang your head against something. Bosses takes several hours a piece and some random encounters can totally crush you straight outta nowhere. Battles always takes several tries where you try to figure out the perfect order to do things and wich party members needs to be kept alive when since theres pretty much no way to avoid members getting KOd. You always end up running out of mana potions when you need them the most and a clear win can always be turned to a complete failure in 2 turns. Alot of luck needs to be involved to actually advance in this game. Luck with what the enemy chooses to do and with your own attacks. On top of that there was an extremely frustrating sneaking part where getting discovered meant starting over from the beginning and theres minibosses around every corner just when you think you can relax for a cutscene or two instead of them going bad and triggering a bossfight. Seeing as I am no way experienced in this type of game I am really pushing myself to the limits of my gaming skills to pull through.

It has to be said tho. I really WANT to push myself to hunger, red eyes and sweat on my brow because the characters, the dreams, the relationships and the story are all VERY well crafted and often extremely beautiful. The "This game is going to make gamers cry" slogan was actually not very far away at one point where the backstory, the main characters and themes like death, life, time and extremely well directed emotions all came together. Speaking of tears, the tears in this game are probably the best looking ever ;) I dont ever think Ive actually seen tears rendered by the ingame engine before but this game has plenty because yea, the characters do cry here. Loads of emotions are put into this game and they are all thrown at your face.

And I have to admit, they get me every time. The emotions in this game really makes you FEEL for the characters like probably no other game before it.

I am now hella tired from finishing the last part of Disc 1 and I am going to bed. Might have time to start Disc 2 before work tomorrow. But there will probably be a fight taking 1 hour or so off my time and I will end up having to turn the game of between the savepoints that can be veeeery sparse sometimes and extremely plentiful when you dont need them.

The 2nd boss in Lost Odyssey is completely impossible. I have been trying the same battle over and over for 2 hours straight now and no matter what I try to do I always end up losing baaadly. One of those things is enough and when you defeat it another one appears. Its like a sick joke. Its bossbattles like these that stops me from completing turn based RPG´s in the first place. Theres no way you can beat that with the turn based system that allows it to wipe everyone in your party before its their turn to do anything. And if you waste a turn healing someone it dosent matter since the next attack will do more damage than you healed up so you just wasted one turn. As it looks now this is the end of the Odyssey for me. I cant stand imbalanced turn based boss battles at all. I can just stand there and realize that my characters will not be able to do anything until theyre already dead, just by looking at the little graphic that shows whos going to attack next. My guess is that it wont get any easier further on either. I guess i´ll take some hints from people that have beaten this boss if you have any. Might end up taking another swing at it later if I can find the motivation. I dont need to spend 2 hours on 1 single boss when the game is 40+.

[UPDATE] ** After probably around 4-5 effective gaming hours I finally managed to beat it. I went back to levelgrind my way up to the point where Jansen got his Zephyr (mass heal) spell and then tried like a dozen different variations of the tactics I tried before. Also LOADS of luck is required for this boss. You have to have crazy luck with what the little shell creatures does and with not missing any hits on them. The satisfaction of FINALLY beating this boss was actually so huge I jumped up and screamed something like "YEA BABY YEA. IM SOO FKING GOOD". Something I havent done since I was a kid playing Super Probotector. Without doubt one of the hardest bosses in my 17 year or so long gaming career. And it was just the 2nd boss in the game.....