Go look for BIGMercenary on my friends list and add me again if you want to. Once that's done you can go ahead and delete this profile, or not. It's up to you since it'll take me some time to transfer reviews to Word so I can rewrite them all.

In the meantime...

Keep Playing.

Brand new. Not second-hand. And I registered it a couple days after I bought it (kept slipping my mind). At least if this one breaks I know I can send it in.

I, of course, got the Arcade version. With the 20G HDD that I had with the last one, storage is no problem. What I like about it though is that it comes with the built-in memory, which means the Jasper chipset.... which means that there's a very low chance of RRoD? I'm sure you've heard of it.

The games it came with have caught some flak on Gamespot, but they're decent. I still have my previous games. Well... the ones that weren't eaten by the last 360.

Uhh... I'm playing on a bigger TV with stereo sound? Albeit the TV is very old and fuzzy.

Oh let's face it: without an HDTV and constant high speed internet connection this was pretty much a waste of my money. Everytime I get on Live no one else is on. And if someone's on they don't care enough to talk.

The only game I'm looking forward to is Prototype, that shouldn't be a let down.
(I fear I may have just cursed the game... bullocks.)

Dah well, if you want to add me and not talk, you know where my gamercard is located on this page.

Keep Playing.
Even though I might not for very long.

I picked up Oddworld: Munch's Odysee a few weeks ago at Play N Trade. After playing it twice I was supremely disappointed. The game seems to be nothing more than a tech demo for the Xbox, showing off graphical and AI capabilities. The gameplay is horrid, the storyline uninteresting, and right now the game should only be bought by a true lover of Oddworld or a collector.

If the Xbox had not advanced in several areas, if the latter of the console's games resembled Munch's Odyssee, I would have never thought the Xbox would make it next to the next generation.

Luckily, later on in the cycle we got games such as Forza, Unreal Championship 2, Black; the games that used and even pushed the limits of the hardware.

Fast forward to today, or at least a few years ago, YOU GET THE POINT! With the release of Crysis finally came the next generation of games. Large areas and limitless possibilities. I know I'm singling out when I name Crysis, but it WAS the game that forced PC gamers to upgrade and gave every console gamer a glimpse of the future.

So at some point we had to go through the previous ages to get to where we are today. From Driver on the PS1, with its few yards of sight radius, to FUEL, which earned the Guinness Book of World Records title of "Largest Playable Area In A Console Game." (Suck it GTAIV.)

If the same is true for this generation, then Crysis was just the beginning. Imagine what the games will look like just before the next age of consoles is released. Keep in mind, we've already got "Largest Playable Area In A Console Game."

So what's next?

Well as some of you can tell I bought myself a PS2 finally. Yes you read that right, I finally bought a used PS2. Not Three. Two. I got a couple of Ace Combat games and I have to say its now one of my favorite series.

I hit up Play N Trade yesterday and rekindled some old memories by buying some original Game Boy games. Only $2 each. Good deal. It occured to me that after I beat Kirby's Adventure in only 20 minutes that the original GB games were mini-adventures. They weren't meant to go on for hours (except for later games like Pokemon) and were more for a short trip out of town. But who cares? I still enjoy them. I'm going to have to go back sometime and pick me up a couple more.

I know I haven't been blogging here as much, seeing as how the earliest (or newest) game I bought was Prince of Persia for the PSP (sucks, don't bother playing that one). I started a Blogspot account and post on that one more than I do on Myspace. Check it out and leave some comments. Just let me know you're from Gamespot. And please: no fanboy idiocy.

*UPDATE* I've changed the settings to allow comments from unregistered users. That still doesn't change my policy on fanboy idiocy or general stupidity.

As a very select few of you may have heard 1up.com has been bought by UGO.com. You may be thinking: what does this have to do with me?

Well nothing, really. It's just a sad day in gaming history. Worse than the GerstmannGate debacle of Gamespot last year. I stuck with them and the site has survived through it. The content remained the same and the site still had it's appeal.

Those who work for Gamespot should take off there hats for a moment of silence for those who have lost their jobs, as a respect to those in the gaming journalism profession.

1up has been forced to fire 30 staff. Those being the ones who produced the 1up Show, the equivalent of GameTrailers TV, and the 1Up FM podcast, just ONE of the many podcasts that they provide to the fans.

They claim they'll still bring the full range of quality as before, but how can they do that when the things that MADE the site great in the first place has been thrown out?

Another thing I don't understand is that most of the community, and I mean MOST of it, hates the merger. They don't want to give up what they love. I'm among that crowd. What I don't get is that if the staff that has remained and the UGO bastards see all of this hate, WHY are they still going through with it? The community will dwindle, the support will also, and the site may very well go under.

Gamespot was bought by CBS and there have, so far, been no noticeable changes. GameTrailers is owned by Spike, which is owned by MTV. So far I've seen a few site improvements.

1Up, however: nothing is being improved, it's being torn down. I, for one, will not take part in any of it.

It's just me thinking all this, and I could most certainly be wrong, but everyone has their own opinions and these are mine. Because, honestly, it's not like you get enough of other people's opinions when you're online. *sarcasm* Whether or not you agree with them, I don't care. These are just thoughts that have been going through my mind for a while now.

Point 1: Nintendo has not abandoned their core audience. I can hear the haters shouting already but let me get to the second part of this opinion: their core audience is in Japan. All the shovel-ware games like WiiMusic, Hula Wii, and the like are aimed at little kids in Japan. Here in America they're also aimed at the young as well as those who have never picked up a controller in their lives. Which leads to Point 2.

Point 2: "They've abandoned the hardcore audience." This depends on your definition of "hardcore." One example could be those who really get into the game, shout when they're losing, or play a game months after the hype is over. Another definition could be those who play a game thoroughly, look for and learn all the secrets, or are avid collectors of a certain genre of game. I remember once upon a time there were people who were "hardcore Nintendo" and wouldn't touch anything Sega made.

Point 3: If Nintendo cared about America, you'd think Shigeru Miyamoto would have learned English a long time ago. I guess since he spends all his time developing casual titles he has no time to learn English. Did you know Nintendo has a lifetime contract with him and essentially owns every thought he has?

Point 4: I know I sound like I'm attacking Nintendo and I probably am, but
fact #1: More American game-makers need to make Wii games, whether they use the Wiimote or find a way to make them compatible with a GameCube controller. Or. heck, they could even make GameCube games and just have people play them on their GCs or Wiis.

Point 5: Not all good Wii games have to be first person shooters. It seems like the "hardcore" crowd flocks to these expecting the Halo-killer and are not looking towards the Wii. I'm pretty sure that, despite it's flaws, Red Steel was okay as well as Metroid Prime being a must-buy for the Wii.

Alternate Point #1: There have been a lot of good FPS games that were overlooked by many people only because game sites compared them to Halo. Area 51, Project Snowblind, Goldeneye: Rogue Agent, and even Serious Sam 2 would brushed to the side.

Point 6 and this is for all those who are old enough to remember: the Virtual Console offers a ton of old school NES and SNES games to play. Not being a Wii owner I can't give you any examples of what games their are but I'm pretty sure you can find a list online. Go Google it. Thing is, most of the young kids dont' care for these old games, making the VC mainly for those who grew up playing them.

Point 7: I would like to see Nintendo create a newer version of the Wii without restrictions, but design it different from the currect console as to make sure the differences are known. The lack of restrictions would allow people to add others without friend codes, Brawl codes, Kart codes, or anything else. Just implement a name system and have it registered to one person. If the person decides to change their names then their friends are notified instantly.

This has been a public service announcement brought to you by me. But honestly, I never really know how to end blogs of this nature. I'm sure I would like Nintendo more if they just paid attention to people and stopped shipping in Japanese games. They could do so much better.

I was playing the Mirror's Edge demo and I started to notice little graphical errors but I thought it was just the connection. I got bored and caved in even though I said I wasn't going to play and the graphical errors were bigger this time. I shut it off and restart only to get

DUN DUN DUNNN!!

Error E 74

RRoD

Well in 9 weeks I'll be able to buy a NEW one rather than a used. Screw used, I'm never doing that again unless it's a classic console. I'm never going to get Mirror's Edge or ANY game that I wanted. I changed my mind about Christmas and asked my mom to just give me money instead.

I don't think I can give it to Play N Trade, I don't know if they'll be able to refurbish it and give me credit or not. I'll call tomorrow.

I want to kick Irony in the teeth.

*Edit* I should also mention that this is a second-hand console and it turs out it will cost me $94 to send it off and get it repaired.

Not much new going on. As you can guess I bought myself a Dreamcast. When I was in middle school me and a friend would make fun of it for hours during PE. On a whim last month I bought one, along with THPS2, Vigilante 8, and a VMU. I can definitely say that the DC version of THPS2 has now knowcked the PS1 version out of my Favorite Game Of All Time position. I bought Sonic Adventure and F355 Ferrari Challenge. The latter being horrible I took it back only to buy a worse game: Re-Volt. I'm going to trade that back in along with a few other games and get Grandia 2 instead. If they still have it.

Also, if someone can guide me how to successfully burn DC games to a CDR I would greatly appreciate it. And no it's not piracy if the games have never been released and are openly available to the public. Games like Half-Life which was released to the internet by Valve itself.

I've built myself a computer finally. It's got a Pentium 3 933Mhz, 384MB RAM, 30G HDD, Win XP Pro, and not much else. But he: I can play my old games on it and that's what I really wanted. I'll have to add those to my Now Playing list soon. I still have to update it and it's taken forever to DL SP1 last night. I didn't get to sleep until after 5.

I've finally decided I want a DS. I might ask for one for Christmas.

My youth group gained a youth pastor and lost a youth pastor. Something to do with over $400 disappearing and him not able to pay it. But I get the feeling we just might do a little bit better without him. I just didn't like his attitude towards people: uncompromising and brash. It seems like my church just hang on to a youth pastor.

My cat has been going crazy/crazier. She's at that age where she can explore most parts of the house and that means plently of running room. I can't wait until she really calms down.

I have the tools to make my own podcast but nobody to join in with me. Any takers? Also I'm trying to start my own clan: Average Superheroes. It's for those who are just average players and don't expect to be pro anytime soon.

I don't have much else so I'll end it here.

Keep Playing.

I've noticed that in some user/community reviews, on all gaming websites, there's always the few that either can't win the game, have never even played it, or give a bad rating because of one small change from a previous game in a series.

Why is it so many people have the tendency to downplay a game based on JUST the things they hated about it? If the game is so unbeatable to you then try a lesser difficulty. With some games you're not going to get it right the first time. If you're one of the people who loves whining and crying about every little thing that's wrong with a game then this is certainly the wrong hobby to be involved in.

Gripe and cry and moan and we have to sift through your bad ratings, useless words, and run-together sentences. For the love of God and everything in existence: USE PUNCTUATION! You make English teachers cry.

There are also certain cases where a game tries it's own thing, different from a genre we've seen and next thing you know EVERYONE gets on to it citing that it takes cues from other games, combines two games in one, or is a complete ripoff of a GTA game (I've seen it done: Forza and an NBA game compared to GTA. Don't ask).

People annoy me.

But first: Tomorrow's mah burfdai!

Anywho. A guy from my friend's church is selling his 360 for $200. She said she'd get it for me and half of that would be my birthday present. The other half I'd have to pay her back for which I don't mind. I could be up and pwning by next week.

I actually got something this year form my parents. Although it was only a phone card and a PSP game it's better than last year's gift of practically nothing. On another note my mom is also getting a DS from the same friend. That'll be her birthday present.

There's a shakeup about to go down in my youth group and I fear I'm going to be in the middle of it. The youth were warned to keep their Myspaces kisher and failed to do so. When one of the adults discovered what one of youth had put for a status it came back on me as though I were to keep them in line. I started weeding people out today and one girl got mad because she didn't want to change her song. She's going to be the reason for the shakeup. Oh well, worse comes to worse they can find someone else to practically run the place for them.

It's late. There's nothing to do. I'm going to bed.

12:01. happy birthday to me.