I went up to Walmart today with the intention of buying a lint roller, light bulbs, and absolutely nothing else.  I walked out 30 minutes later with my wallet significantly lighter.  Among the things that contributed to this were a DS Lite, New SMB, and Brain Age.  I haven't been able to spend much time with it yet, but I'm pretty impressed so far.  I'll be honest, I've steered clear of the DS for the last year and a half because, well frankly it looked like crap.  With the DS Lite, I now have a device that I'm somewhat less embarassed to pull out in public.

Whenever I walk into a game store, I make a habit of checking through all the used games to see if there's anything that catches my eye.  Specifically, I'm looking for rare games that they aren't charging an arm and a leg for.  Call me elitist or whatever, but there's some kind of satisfaction to be had from owning a quality game that few other people have had the pleasure of playing.  So it was that  stumbled across a copy of Ikaruga yeterday at EB Games.  I haven't played it yet, but since my 360 is still in Microsofts clenches, I'll probably be spending a lot of time with my Gamecube over the next couple of weeks.

It's been a while since I picked up a controller.  My 360 is still broken since I haven't been able to find time to go to the post office.  I've also been on the road a lot, and while I had my computer with me, I forgot to bring my mouse.  Instead I've been ocupying my time with other ativities.  I've been reading The Fountainhead, which is an excellent book.  I also watched Boondock Saints again and I'm halfway through season 4 of The Sopranos.  If you haven't seen Boondock Saints, I highly recommend it.

I've kind of seen this coming for a while now, but my 360 finally kicked the bucket. I knew something was wrong when I kept getting disk read errors while playing Oblivion, but I powered through it. The other day it stopped reading disks entirely. The DVD drive seems to be the only part broken though, so I've been ocupying myself with Geometry Wars while I wait for the packaging to get here from Microsoft. I'm getting pretty good. My high score is now over 500,000.

I finally got my high def cable hooked up to my set too, and holy crap! I mean the 360 looked great but live broadcasts are even better. I've had a lot of beef with the new HD video formats, but after finally seeing it I may have to pick up an HD-DVD drive if Microsoft releases the 360 one at a reasonable price.

Well E3 is finally over and that means one thing: we all have to blog about it now. So without further ado, here is a short list of things that piqued my interest this year.

1: Fable 2- While the Halo 3 trailer got me excited (there's just something about Marty O'donnell's music), I anticipate getting a lot more enjoyment out of Fable 2. While the first game fell short of a lot of its initial promises, there was a lot of potential and ambition that showed through. If Fable 2 capitalizes on even a fraction of that, I will be one happy gamer.

2: Spore- If you haven't seen the videos of this game, stop and go watch them right now. Done? Ok, then I shouldn't have to explain why I would be excited about this game. I'm going to go ahead and call this as GOTY '07.

3: Lumines on XBL Arcade- "Freakin' Sweet!"

4: New Mario Games- Nintendo is on a bit of Mario game spree lately and I'm loving it. Super Paper Mario and Super Mario Galaxy both look fantastic.

5: Mass Effect- New video of this game was pretty sparse, but pretty much eveyone who got see the "behind closed doors" look at it seems to be putting it up next to Spore for game of the show. I was stoked for this game already, now...

6: Lost Planet- Official sleeper hit of E3. Where did this game come from? I sure wasn't expecting it.

7: $600- Nuff said.

8: Ubisoft- Best lineup of the show IMO. What's up with Assassin's Creed though? First it was a 360 game, then multi-platform, now it's only for PS3?

So what news at E3 cought your eye?

I'm not surprised that I haven't been hearing much buzz about this little tidbit. In fact, I'll forgive you guys if you've already completely forgotten about the announcement altogether. The thing is, some of the biggest news of this year's E3 was announced in one of the most underwhelming ways possible. Lets face it, Bill Gates, for all his supposed business accumen, is probably a worse public speaker than George Dubya.

If you haven't figured it out by now, I'm talking about Live Anywhere. At first, I was pretty undewhelmed by the announcement myself. After thinking about it for a while though, a few things started to occur to me. The most obvious impact of this new service is going to be the much needed overhaul it will provide for online PC gaming. People have been saying for years now that they wish that there was something like Xbox Live for the PC. Now we actually have Xbox Live for the PC.

The other aspect of this is a little more subtle. In the end though, this is what is going to make Live Anywhere so big. If you could name one consumer product that Live Anywhere reminds you of, what would it be? I'll tell you what it reminds me of... the iPod. Seamless integration across diverse hardware platforms: check. Slick and easy to use UI: check. Transparent integration with the Net: check. Simple digital purchases: check.

It's all there. People have said all along that it wasn't iPod that made the iPod so big. It was iTunes and how it connected the network, your computer, and the portable device so seamlessly and easily. Likewise, XBL has always been one of the strongest features of the Xbox. But it was always just the Xbox and XBL, kind of like having iTunes and a computer but no iPod.

It's going to be a while before the effects of this start to show. After all, Vista doesn't even come out till next year. But mark my words, this is going to be BIG. Bigger than Halo 3, certainly bigger than Sony's controller, and maybe, just maybe, even bigger than the Wii-mote.

That's pretty much what was going through my head after the Sony press conference. First of all, let me get the controller thing out of the way. Don't get me wrong, I think it's nice that they've added this functionality as well. However, the whole thing just seems sneaky and underhanded. I don't believe for a second that this was what they had in mind when they showed off the baterang last year. Also, I think Sony's kind of missing the point to it all. The whole idea behind the Revmote is that current controlers are too complicated. Sony's controller just adds another layer of complexity to the current design. The unknown here is how this will effect the 360 as the only console without this kind of functionality.

The other thing that keeps bugging me is the price. I mean, $600, holy crap! And everyone thought the 360 was too expensive. If Microsoft lowers their price before X-mas, I don't know how well Sony can compete. On the plus side, Sony seems to have crammed just about every piece of modern technology into this thing.

Still, $600 is more than I'm willing to play. Maybe it was the low bitrate I had to watch it on, but I didn't really see a whole lot that excited me in that press conference. Oddly enough the one thing that made me think "wow that's kind of cool" was the eye-toy demonstration with the cards. I know it wasn't really anything special, but I just really liked the look of it for some reason. Reminded me of that chess-type game they play on Star Wars.

This last week before E3 is starting to remind me a lot of the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Everything seems to be building towards this crescendo of excitement that we all know is coming.

Of all the pre-E3 stuff anounced so far, the thing I'm most stoked about is LEGO Star Wars 2 coming to the 360. I never actually played the first one. This was something that took quite a bit of effort on my part. On one hand, I couldn't help but take note of all the good word that has spread about this game. On the other hand I strive to avoid anything associated with its source material at all costs. So when the sequel based on the original trilogy was anounced, I was instantly interested.

Still, there was something that bothered me. I know it's snobbish, but after dumping well over $2500 into a new HDTV and a 360 my appreciation for non-HD titles on last-gen systems has changed, as if they are somehow... unclean. I don't think I'm alone in this trend. Pretty much everyone who I've witnessed who has purchased an HDTV has gained a sudden aversion towards standard def content, be it video games or otherwise.

Now that the 360 version has been anounced though, I won't have to sully my setup to experience this game.

My situation with E3 appears to be both better and worse than I had originally thought. It turns out I am able to download video on my current internet connection. So while I can get low-res trailers and gameplay footage, I think streaming the Nintendo press conference might still be a little optimistic. I was pretty disappointed today though to learn that Microsoft's E3 content will only be available during the week of E3. Most of the video's I should be able to get here on Gamespot, but I was really looking forward to getting some play time with some of those demos.

Well my employer picked a lovely time to send me on another little business trip. I will be spending the entire week of E3 in the middle of nowhere. I do have an internet connection out here, but it probably only clocks in around 100 kbps. While this is good enough to get me press releases, and screen shots if I'm patient, video is out of the question. Audio is give and take right now. My 4 Color Rebellion and Team Fremont podcasts downloaded ok, but Penny Arcade timed out on me.

I was really looking forward to being able to experience all the coolness over Xbox Live too.

I guess the upside to this is that when I get back home, I'll have all that stuff waiting for me and I won't be fighting anyone for bandwidth. Plus, I'll be able to skip over the crap and get straight to what I want to see.

Ok, so the name sucks. I don't really feel the need to go into to it, since it's pretty much an irrefutable fact. My only question is, who the hell decided on Wii?

I'm pretty impressed with the new video blogging feature. Where the hell are they getting all that bandwidth by the way? Anyways, most people are pretty much just treating it like the confessional room on Real World so far, but I've seen a few interesting videos surface. Carrie's video of the Gamespot staff's reaction to Wii is my favorite so far. I'm excited to see how some of the more creative Gamespot users make use of this new feature, especially around E3 time.

Luckily for you guys, I don't have a video camera. So you'll be safe from my ugly mug for at least a little while longer.

When I was in college I watched hardly any TV at all.  My viewing was pretty much limited to Seinfeld reruns and the occasional Daily Show.  I pretty much detested everything else on TV and steared clear of it as much as I could.  However, in the last couple of months I've found myself liking TV more and more.  What's more, there are several shows that I just can't get enough of.

At first, I attributed this shift to a similar shift in the quality of shows being aired.  While it does seem like we may finally be on the downslope of the reality TV fiasco, that didn't quite explain all of it.  For instance, one of my favorite new shows (The Sopranos) isn't new at all.  In fact, I'd watched whole episodes of it in the past and never really found it all that appealling.  So why the sudden change?

The answer, I decided, was DVD's.  Nearly all of the shows that I now watch regularly I started out with watching the first season on DVD.  Watching TV on DVD's offers two distinct advantages.  First, I don't have to wait for the next show to come out and I can watch them at my own pace.  Waiting two weeks for another 20 minutes of plot really kills it for me, and by that time I've usually lost interest or forgotten about it.  Second, I can watch the shows in order.  I seem to only discover shows after they've been out for about a year, so being able to start at the beginning is a major benefit.

This got me to thinking about the growing trend in video games with episodic content.  It seems like episodic content will introduce a lot of the elements to gaming that were keeping me from watching TV.  Shorter play times, mean that I'll likely spend a lot of time more time waiting for the next installment.  There's no way a developer will even approach the regularity of releases that TV offers, meaning I'm all that much more likely to lose interest in a game while waiting for it to continue.

Luckily, plot isn't quite as central to a video game as it is to a TV show.  I'm going to be pretty disappointed though when all of these episodic games start having Halo 2-esque cliffhanger endings.  Downloadable content probably means that old "episodes" will be around for people just getting started long after sequels have been released, so that shouldn't be too big of a problem.