Last Thursday, during March Break, some friends of mine decided to have a video game gathering at their university. We found an empty room with a projector and played Xbox360, PS2 and Gamecube all afternoon.

I was happy to hear that a few of the people who showed up knew how to play Tekken. I don't mind if they're not as good as I am, I just like to play people who don't just mash all day. My arcade controller was sticky from dropping sangria on it earlier that week, so I had to switch to my **** 10$ Gameshark controller or whatever it is. I still beat the guys, but I would have preferred using my stick. (no innuendo here!)

We also played some Gears of War, which I sucked at. I really need to practice moving around and aiming with a controller. I'm way too used to the mouse and keyboard. Gears of War is still an amazing game though, no doubt about that.

Now, before I start talking about Guitar Hero, I'd like to mention something. I've been a fan of the music game genre for a very long time. I believe it started with Parappa the Rapper. I also played alot of Beatmania on Gameboy, Um Jammer Lammy, a little bit of DDR during college, Stepmania, and I do own Amplitude (which is made by Harmonix, authors of the Guitar Hero series).

I had never played Guitar Hero until last Thursday, but I knew I would love it. I just can't make myself pay 100$ for one game. Regardless, a friend of mine brought the game and I got to play. I'm happy to say I played two songs at Medium difficulty and got 4 stars for each of them. Not bad for a first try, right? One of my buddies was pissed at me because when he failed I told him it shows it's the first time he plays this kind of game (this was before I played).

Afterwards, we played some Tony Hawk 3 on Gamecube, which I was okay at, but not great. I've played some Tony Hawk in my days, if you've played it you know it can be addictive. I ended up winning one round and losing one. Then my hot geeky girlfriend showed up so I stopped playing

I left my PS2 there so people could use it a bit longer, and in exchange the guy who had brought Guitar Hero II lent it to me. I played practically all day yesterday, beating all 40 songs at Medium difficulty, plus some bonus tracks too.

Long rant over, I'd just like to say that if you are still in school and have rooms with projectors (with the proper outputs), you should definitely organize a gaming gathering. It's really loads of fun and you might get some unforgettable memories out of it.

So I went to the Arcadia Festival on Friday night. It's basically a small E3 open to the public, right here in Montreal, Quebec (Canada). www.festivalarcadia.com has more info.

I got to try out the Wii (Warioware: Smooth Moves to be more precise), Gears of War, Table Tennis, Geometry Wars, and a bunch of other games. Yes, I know some of those games have been out for a while, but since I never really got my hands on an X360, it was nice to try them out.

The Wii is tons of fun, but it seems to be the kind of console you'd get if you have lots of house parties or if you have a kid brother or something.

My buddy and I had ALOT of fun playing Table Tennis and Geometry Wars. Gears of War was also very nice. You can really feel the intense action, and the graphics are a notch above anything I've seen at the moment. Now I really want an X360 :(

I also saw Sonic for X360, Bully for PS2, Marvel Ultimate Alliance for PC but I was too lazy to wait in line to play them.

X360 Sonic looked like alot of fun, the demo was in a very vertical level rather than the usual horizontal levels you'd expect in a Sonic game.

I also got to try a game where you stand inside a half-sphere on which a game is projected on all 360 degrees. The concept was innovative, and I only felt queezy for about a second when my character fell to his death. The devs were present to answer questions, and they mentioned that they were planning on making Quake 3 work with their 360-degree setup (id released the Quake 3 source code a while back).

Sony was not present at the event, which made me very disappointed.

A lady was making water-color "tattoos" for free, I got myself a nice Tetris piece.

I'll update my blog later on with some pictures.

Feel free to ask questions!

I wish Tekken was on X360 instead of PS3.

I`ve been registered for almost 3 years, and only now do I decide to join the Tekken union, rate games and make a blog post? Odd...

Gamespot = Ol' Faithful. Never lets me down in terms of news and such.

Can't wait to play Tekken 5: DR. Also, I sure hope Namco will have a surprise for us at E3.