That's right, I finally got my Xbox Live Diamond Card. Finally! I signed up when this thing was first announced, which was like five months ago, and it only arrived today. In June. >_> So I see all of this promotional stuff on the fold-out it came in, and there was a coupon for Quizno's. I love Quizno's Sub! So here I am, at Quizno's, and they don't even accept the coupon! They have some lame excuse about it not applying to stores in Hawaii, so I just bought one sub instead of two... but it was damn good. Anyway, I don't care if it doesn't get me discounts... I just wanted the cool card. ^_^ Have any of you guys gotten your Diamond Cards yet? I think I was like the only one without it already...

I'm beginning to think I have insomnia; I can't sleep! I'm sitting here at midnight, writing this blog... probably more like 5 in the morning where most of you are. But seriously, I haven't been able to sleep very well lately. I don't know if it's playing games or browsing GameSpot too close to going to bed, because I know how your brain can become overstimulated... it's not fun. I lay there, start thinking about games, and all the achievements I could be getting, and how I really should buy God of War already. Then it starts turning into how I should really pick up a good book, and how I should get some more exercise. Then I start thinking about all of this stuff I have to get caught up on, and then start getting depressed, and then it turns into me pondering the meaning of life. Oh, it's wonderful. So I guess I'll lay down for now. I probably won't fall asleep for the next couple of hours. Been thinking about MotoGP '06 lately. It looks pretty good... and so does Over G Fighters. Then there's THAW, which I really should finish up soon. It seems that whenever I sit down to play a little, I get side-tracked with messaging people and stuff. I tried to score some online achievements earlier, which is really tough do to the game's craptastic servers. Oh well... I'll talk to you guys later.

Weirdest thing happened last night... so... I felt like some garlic bread for some reason, so I looked in the freezer. We had some old frozen garlic bread in the freezer (crappy Safeway brand). I put it in the toaster... started smokin' up and such... lucky the smoke detector didn't go off. So it was way burnt. I scraped it and ate it, and it was horrible! Oh yeah, and I'm really close to 7,000 gamerscore.

That is all.

So I just casually logged onto Xbox Live today... yes, casually. I wasn't really pumped up or anything. >_> So yeah, I logged on, checked the Marketplace like I always do (I'm such a filthy Marketplace whore) and found some Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting content! That's right, one freakin' awesome theme, and three, count em, three, SFII picture packs. Naturally, I bought 13 dollars worth of points, and used that to buy two out of the three picture packs, and the theme of course. Soon thereafter one of my friends noticed my Ken gamer picture (Which, by the way, Jeff from GameSpot is also using. DAMN YOU JEFF!!!) and messaged me about it, saying something about Street Fighter coming out soon. I sure as Hell hope so! And just to show off that sweet new gamer pic, I'm gonna put my gamercard in my blog. Again.

Damn, this blog is starting to look a lot like the last one. I also used the word "gamer" like eleventy-bagillion times. Yeah... the reason I started writing here was to tell you about Hitman: Blood Money. I love that game... bye!

Yes... I finally broke 5,000. With the help of sports games, of course. Damn, that Madden achievement took me four friggin' hours... what a waste of my Sunday morning. Anywho... I'm gonna earn several hundred more in NHL2K6 before turning these abominations back into Blockbuster. I can't believe people actually call these things "games". So... I'm buying Hitman: Blood Money later today, that should keep me occupied...

Oh yeah, and this is my 100th blog post. Hooray for me!

As you can probably tell, I've been thinking about achievement points a lot lately. That's how I got the idea to actually finish Oblivion! While I have put over 75 hours into it, I still only have 20 out of 50 achievements unlocked. You know why? Because I was wandering around looking at the damn grass the whole time! So I've made a goal: By the end of this summer, I will have unlocked every single achievement in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for the Xbox 360. Hah, who am I kidding, I'm not really gonna do this. I'm gonna beat Hitman: Blood Money. But it's worth a try, right? It means I have to finish up several guild questlines, and finish the main story. I've already decided how I'm going to go about doing this. First, I'll get the story out of the way. Right now my save file has my character standing somewhere in the middle of Sancre Tor, so I've gotta get that magic armor and bring it to Jauffre and stuff... I should have that done within the next couple of days. Then comes the hard part. I've only finished one of those questlines, and that was the Arena questline. So that means I'll have to finish the Fighters' Guild, Mages' Guild, and Dark Brotherhood questlines, not to mention starting and finishing the Thieves' Guild questline. Damn. I've got quite an adventure ahead of me.

I got my Xbox 360 on launch day; November 22nd, 2005, yet I'm still not at the 5,000 point mark. Some GameSpot editors have massive gamerscores, but got their 360s later than I did. What does this mean? Does it mean I don't achieve enough? Does it mean I don't own as many games? Does it mean I should rent more sports games? You guys have gotta help me out!

I found a sweet new GameSpot-themed gamercard:

...and for those with GameSpot Total Access, like me...

In the URL, just replace "JoeyHawk" with your gamertag. Oh, and props to Askanison4 from the LiveCard.net forums.

I'm thinking about buying a new game, but I'm having trouble deciding which one to buy. It's between Hitman: Blood Money, and Battlefield 2: Modern Combat. Now I know that Hitman has a substantially higher score, but the thing is, I've been playing the BF2: MC demo like crazy these last couple of days. I realize that it doesn't have the greatest production values, but it's damn fun, to me at least. Then there's Hitman: Blood Money. I was told by my friend Zach that Hitman wasn't all that great, and I think I'm gonna take his word for it. Besides, I'm not downloading that 700mb demo, that'd take forever! So, what do you guys think? Hitman: Blood Money, or Battlefield 2: Modern Combat? Oh yeah, and check out my new profile banner - I made... er, cropped it myself. UPDATE: I bought Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, and I'm having a blast! Not to say I won't pick up Hitman eventually, though. ;) UPDATE 2: MGS: The Twin Snakes has arrived!

I find it strange that GameSpot would make a Tournament TV special on GameSpot Live when it's just a decent game. They gave the game a 7.5, which is by no means bad, but judging by that score, not a game you'd really want to buy unless you were a big fan of the series. So, I watched the entire tournament, and the game actually looked really fun! I don't know if the score was the way it was because it was similar to the Xbox and PS2 versions, or maybe the PC versions, because I don't want to the assume that. Far Cry: Instincts Predator is a good example of that. I thought the score was low because it was a rehash, and I hadn't had any past experience with the series, so I went ahead and bought it. That was a BAD idea. That game freakin' sucks. So I want to know if this game is worth it or not. The combat looked really fun, and there didn't seem to be any technical issues with the game... I'm just really confused here. Can you guys help me out? Oh yeah, and I just got a confirmation email saying that MGS: The Twin Snakes was shipped. It should be here by next week!