Of course the big news right now that everyone is talking about right now is the Xbox 360 pricing. I'm not going to spend too much time talking about it, mainly because I'm not a good enough writer to hold your attention through all of the points I would want to make. I do want to touch on a few things though.

Personally, the announcement doesn't bother me. I'm lucky enough to be a young, single guy with a relatively low cost of living and an engineer's salary. I've been planning for months now to buy an HDTV at the same time as my Xbox 360, so $100 doesn't factor in all that much to me and I would have ended up getting the headset and remote anyways. My biggest concern right now is how much LCD prices will fall between now and November.

What has really surprised me though is the just plain vitriolic reactiion that a lot of people have had to the news. I mean, yeah it's a bummer that it's not cheaper, but a lot of people on forums out there are acting like Microsoft might as well have defecated on the tomb of the Pope.

The other news that came out this week that has me bummed a lot more than the Xbox 360 announcement is the delay of Twilight Princess. Game delays are always a bummer, but "no sooner than April 1st" is an especially long delay. This year's holiday lineup was already looking pretty thin, especially next to the gaming heaven that was last year.

I've been meaning to do an entry about podcasting for a while now. I started getting into it when iTunes 4.9 came out and it's really been growing on me since. In my opinion podcasts are one of the best ways to make a tedious job or a long commute go faster. There are literally tens of thousands of podcasts on just about every subject you can think of.

This of course leads to the first of my two gripes with podcasts: it can be pretty hard to find a show that will interest you, particularly if you're looking for something gaming related. iTunes doesn't help much either. Their system for organizing the podcasts is pretty weak. My second gripe is that it eats up that 6Gb on my iPod that used to look so huge like nothing. But back to my first problem. I've spent the last couple of weeks going through quite a few podcasts and here are some of my favorites in case anyone out there is interested but having trouble finding what they like.

Diggnation: This is probably my favorite podcast that I have come across so far. Hosted by Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht (formerly of Tech TV), they cover the top stories of the week that come up on Digg. It has a very easy going and entertaining tone to the show and they even offer video downloads of the podcast. The fact that they're "reviewing" beers while they do the show just makes it that much more entertaining.

Major Nelson: This is my favorite podcast that focuses on gaming so far. For those who don't know Major Nelson is Larry Hyrb (Xbox Live's director of programming). Although he obviously focuses mostley on the Xbox 360, he gets some great interviews and offers some interesting views on current gaming news.

The Hotspot: As with just about everything else on this site Gamespot's podcast is great. Four members of the Gamespot staff get together and discuss current gaming news every week. I have only two complaints about The Hotspot. First is that it's only 15 min a week. Most podcasts average somewhere around 45 min a week, so it's pretty short by comparison, not even enough to pass a decent commute to work. Secondly the intro is awful (I think it's Gerstmann's voice). They seriously need to change it.

This Week in Tech: Another podcast made up of former Tech TV hosts. John Dvorak, Steve Gibson, Leo Laporte, and a few others discuss current tech news weekly. Like The Hotspot, one of the best things about this one is how many hosts it has. I've found that (up to a point at least) the more people on a show, the more lively the conversation is. They limit themselves to 70 min so you can burn it to a CD and it's good and long too.

So the last couple of weeks I've been on a bit of a game-buying binge. I picked up San Andreas, Pirates, Warrior Within, Psychonauts, and Jade Empire. So far I've only beaten Jade Empire (which was awesome in some ways but lacks depth in others) although I'm pretty close on Psychonauts. I'm about halfway trhough Warrior Within and San Andreas and Pirates I've hardly touched.

Anyways this has got me thinking about all of the other games that are still out there that I really want to finish before I move on to the next gen. Off the top of my head there's:

Paper Mario
Metroid Prime 2
Twilight Princess
Shadow of the Collosus
FF XII
Oddworld: Strangers Wrath
Prince of Persia 3
Fable: The Lost Chapters
Ninja Gaiden Black

I'm sure I could easily think of half a dozen more too.

I've never been one of the "we're not ready for the next gen" people. I want the biggest, best graphics you can give me. With all these games that I have yet to play though, I'm starting to wonder if maybe I'm not ready. The PSP was my first system that I've bought anywhere close to launch and as amazed as I am by the hardware, it just hasn't seen much use. On top of all this I'd really like to save up for an HDTV so I can get the full "next-gen experience".

The Xbox 360 looks like it's going to have a pretty stong launch library, but I'm starting to wonder if it wouldn't be all that bad to wait a couple of months before picking one up.

I had a pretty interesting discovery today. As most people around here know, the Xbox 360 had a pretty disapointing showing at this years E3. Although the games looked pretty good, most of them weren't the huge leap forward that we were all hoping for and that Sony was promising. In fact some of them didn't really even look a whole lot better than the current Xbox stock. One such game was Call of Duty 2. Here's one of the COD2 screen shots released at E3.



Microsoft of course tried to play down the disapointing showing. One of the reasons that they cited as why the games were somewhat less than expected was because developers had not yet received the complete development kit. The actual Xbox 360 would be much more powerful than the Power Macs they had been using.

While this offered some hope, many of us were still skeptical of whether or not the Xbox 360 could even come close to the kind of graphics being shown for the PS3.

Yesterday Activision quietly released two new screenshots for Call of Duty 2 for the Xbox 360. As you can see below, the difference is unbelievable. It's like two completely different games. It looks like Microsoft's talk about the developer kits was more than just a little spin after all.

Ps - It's probably hard to see these on my journal page. I really wish Gamespot would give us more room on the page to post. You might want to check out the shots here for the full effect.

By now everybody probably knows that the big news from the Square-Enix party is that they have finally set a release date for Final Fantasy XII. Drum roll please... March of freakin '06... for Japan. The means we should expect it more like June or July (at the earliest) here in the States. Do the math and you'll find that adds up to a four and a half year gap between Final Fantasy XII and the last, true, stand alone Final Fantasy (FFX). Now I'm sure that FFX-2 and FFXI are both great games. But I'm having enough trouble keeping up with one MMO as it is (not to mention the HDD doesn't work with my slimline), and I'm really just not that interested in a sequel to FFX, nor am I interested in a bunch of FFVII spinoffs in totally unrelated genres. The point here is Square is letting it's core franchise languish. For a decade and a half now Square has churned out some of the most beloved and memorable games ever. How come all of the sudden they decided that it just wasn't good enough. Another thing people have been talking about a lot lately is the possibility of a FFVII remake in the works for the PS3. Although the current speculation is based on pretty shaky grounds, I wouldn't be surprised at all if this happened at some point in the future. The problem is, given the current development time for a Final Fantasy game it will be 2011 before we finally see it, assuming that they've already begun work on it. Come on Square, I'm not asking for a lot here. While everyone out there is continually griping to all the other developers about how games aren't new and innovative enough, there are millions of people who would be more than happy to see you do exactly what you've been doing for the last 15 years. Hell a lot of people don't even want a new game, just prettied up versions of old ones. It's not a tall order.

I picked up Psychonauts the other day. I was a little hesitant to get it. It looked interesting but I just wasn't sure if it was going to be worth my fifty bucks. In a nutshell: it's superb! Psychonauts has immediately earned a place next to Sands of Time on my "Most Underappreciated Games of This Generation" list. The gameplay is a pretty basic mix of platforming and action/adventure. The presentation is really where this game shines though. Each level is a truly unique experience. One of my favorite touches in the game is how when Raz is in someones mind, up and down are arbitrary directions. It's a simple trick but it pays off big. The story is great too. It starts off pretty mild and but there's an almost Tim Burton like dark humor running underneath of the story that eventually takes center stage in the game. I highly recommend this game to anyone. I've been spending a decent amount of time playing WOW lately. I've been splitting it between a my Human warrior (Itchyeyes, level 17) and my Dwarf paladin (FuzzyBunny, level 13). I haven't quite decided which one I want to be my main character but I'm leaning towards Bunny right now. I'm not sure how much longer I'll be playing for though. Since I had to cancel my credit card, my first month of subscription is going to run out before I get my new one. Even at the exclusion of all the other great games out there right now, I'm just not sure if I'll have the time that it takes to put into this game. It's kind of sad because I was really enoying WoW.

I had my first brush with identity theft today, and it's been a pretty scary experience. It all started a couple of days ago when I started getting questions from eBay buyers about a motorcycle for sale. Needless to say, I wasn't selling a motor cycle. Somehow someone had gotten access to my account and posted this. For what reason, I don't know. I changed my password and removed the item and contacted eBay, then chalked it up as a close call and promised myself to be more careful in the future. It was then that I started getting all sorts of suspicious emails about my account being suspended, and asking me for information to activate it again. This was made even more confusing by the official emails I was getting from eBay about the same thing. Anyways, long story short it turns out they got access to not just my eBay account, but my Paypal and my credit card too. Luckily I was able to close the credit card before any charges were made and eBay refunded the fees for the item they had listed. However, my bank won't send me a new card for another month because I'm at a new address and they don't have a branch within about 150 miles. This whole situation has left me frustrated and scared. Thankfully I caught it in time, and hopefully the steps I've taken to secure my accounts are enough, but I can't help but worry that there's something that I've missed. In much, much happier news: Gamespot now has their own podcast up and running. I brought it up in the site enhancements forum a couple of days ago, but I had no idea that they would have one up so quickly.

"For years now Nintendo has been pitching a philosophy that we're reaching capacity for bigger, better, faster, and that the returns for higher resolutions and more polygons are fast diminishing. If we really want video games to evolve, we're going to have to start exploring different avenues." For those of you who don't recognise that quote it's from the latest Freeplay. While I've been enjoying the daily format of the Gamespotting replacement, this quote encapsulates everything I don't like about it. While I have tremendous respect for all of Gamespot's staff (and a lot of the senior forumites at that), they tend to seem very focused on one particular issue in gaming today: the lack of original titles. Freeplay in particular seems to have been completely focused on this since day one. Perhaps this is the side effect of spending decades playing games over and over again. Certainly game reviewers are much more exposed to the countless knockoffs and wannabes that they work so hard to protect us against. I just don't see the problem of this so called huge lack of creativity in the industry though. Granted, the market is most definitely over-saturated with GTA clones and WWII shooters. I tend to think this is more a result of the shear number of games out there than an issue of these games replacing the good ones. I still am able to find more superb titles every year than I have the time or money to play. Furthermore, is it hurting me as a gamer that many of these great games aren't exactly one of a kind? Final Fantasy XII and Twilight Princess are both going to be the latest games in extremely long-running franchises. While each game in these series have gotten progressively better, neither of them has had any breakthrough revolutionary moments. Granted, 3D changed both of these series quite a bit, but when it comes down to it having 2D Link slide a block over a switch isn't all that different from making 3D Link slide a block over a switch. My point is this: The latest installments in these series are highly unlikely to make any great gameplay leaps over their predesessors, yet they will still undoubtably be superb games and as such are two of my most anticipated titles in the coming months. On the other side of the coin we have companies like Nintendo constantly touting their latest innovation (and yes I realize the irony that I am using Nintendo games as examples on both sides of the argument. However I consider Zelda to be the general exception to Nintendo's rule lately). As big of a hit as Nintendogs is in Japan, there is simply no way to it is ever going to appeal to me. It's not that these kinds of games don't have a place in the industry. I just feel like the gaming press (and Nintendo) place a bit too much emphasis on them. I enjoyed Katamari Damacy a lot, and I look forward to seeing anything Will Write puts out. Just don't ignore the old tried and true genres either. There's a lot to be said for companies like Blizzard and Bungie who take a tried and true formula and refine it to perfection.

Well I finally found a place to live, and although it's a lot bigger and a lot more rent than I was looking for it has everything that I need. Most importantly though it has internet! Just in time for the H2 map pack too. I haven't spent much time with the newest maps though. None of my friends have been on at the same time as me. I've been meaning to check out the GS Halo nights but I haven't found time due to my other newset obsession. That's right I finally bit the bullet and got World of Warcraft. I hesitated getting this one because I was worried about getting too much into it. Well it turns out those worries were 100% justified. I'm probably averaging about 5 or 6 hours a night right now. The game itself is great. This is my first MMORPG so I'm sure some of my impressions are simply from the initial exposure to the genre. I'm a little disappointed with the graphics. The scope of the game more than makes up for it though. I'm surprised at how demanding the game is in terms of system resources. I was running it on a 2ghz iMac G5 with 128 megs of video and 512 megs of memory and it was just barely chugging along. I bought another 512 stick and it's running pretty smooth now, but I still can't turn the graphics settings up too high. My biggest complaint with the game really isn't the games fault at all. I don't really know anyone playing so it's weird trying to form parties for quests. I've been meaning to check and see if there are any Gamespot guilds, but frankly I haven't been able to pull myself away from the game long enough to check it out. I've been meaning to write this entry for a good week now. I went and saw War of the Worlds with my brother last weekend and it is probably one of the best movies I have seen in at least a couple of years. Spielberg does an amazing job on every level with the story. The ending is a little weak, but that couldn't be helped if they were going to stay true to the source material. You really have to go see this movie. Lastly, if you haven't seen Google Earth by now you have to check it out. Visually, this is the most impressive use of the Internet I have ever seen. The coverage is still a little spotty in some areas, but one can only imagine where this kind of technology will be in a few years and what kinds of applications will be available for it.

I've come up with about 5 different topics for this entry over the past three weeks. Unfortunately I've been without internet so these have all kind of fallen by the wayside. Against my better judgement I went and rented Advent Rising. This was a game that I had really been looking forward to, but was really disapointed by when I saw the reviews.

I actually enjoyed the game pretty well. Don't get me wrong, this is no masterpiece and as a serious gamer I can pick out tns of areas where this game needs tons of improvement. That said though, I was able to let most of the problems with the game side and actually enjoy it for a while. I had a nice long journal entry written out in my head about how it actually wasn't that bad of a game. Then I hit a bug that prevented me from going any further in the game. I don't care what the quality of the rest of a game is, if a bug keeps you from going any further in the game, it is nothing but trash in my opinion.

I was also going to talk about the death of Gamespotting. This was kind of a sad moment for me because Gamespotting was one of the features of this site that influenced me to move from being a passive member here to an active member. It seems that Gamespotting has just been rebranded though and put in a daily format in the form of Freeplay.

I'm seriously thinking about getting World of Warcraft. For a long time I was really worried that it would just be too time consuming for me, but I've never tried an MMORPG and I don't know how long I can hold out on this.

I've been watching a lot of bad movies lately. When you're stuck in a hotel in a strage small town, there isn't much else to do but rent DVDs and play games. Over the last two weeks I've seen Sky Captain, Alien vs Predator, Day After Tomorrow, and Girl Next Door. Of these Sky Captain and AVP were both trash. I was pleasently surprised by Day After Tomorrow and Girl Next Door though. GND especially was not really what I expected it to be. It's a much more serious movie than the standard teen comedy that the previews made it out to be.