- I'm finishing up Etrian Odyssey 2 for review. Damn, if that isn't a torturous game to play through when you hold down a separate day job -- and an intense one no less. If you've played the original Etrian Odyssey, you know what to expect in terms of the kind of dedication it demands of you. But holy hell is it a great time for tinkerers. There are so many little things you can (and will need to) tweak inside of this little DS card. Each character c|ass has upwards of ten unique skills that can be learned and leveled up through extensive and exhaustive use of a skill tree, in other words demanding that you open up said skills by first distributing skill points to base skills and character traits.

To the story-hungry role-playing gamer, yeah, this sounds nauseating -- but anyone who likes customizing their characters will love taking their own personal paths through each of their five party members' skill trees. The other thing is that there are upwards of ten c|asses to mess around with too, and you can recruit them all into your guild -- so you can spend one save file just swapping characters in and out, leveling them up, and seeing where the wind takes you. Only problem is that you only get one skill point per level-up, and you're capped at level 70 (normally) -- so not only do you gain your skills reeeaalllly sllooowwwlly but you also really have to think about what you're going to sacrifice since there's no possible way to level up every skill. Personally, I don't see it as a "problem" but some people might.

It can be incredibly difficult too, with enemies that take can one of your guys down in one or two blows and the extremely slow pace at which you can accumulate wealth. It's shaping up to be one of those "you'll know you'll love it if you don't throw your DS out the window when you get killed after your fourth battle and lost the work you put in over the past hour" type of game. Obviously I don't have a choice but to hold on to my DS, but even so, I've enjoyed a great deal of the punishing hours I've put into this

- 100th episode. Yeah. We're trying to come up with ideas. Among them were: (a) have people send in questions en masse with the motivation of the 100th question yielding a special prize, then read and answer every question on the air in a rapid-fire manner; (b) list our most memorable games on an individual basis, combine them to form a definitive list of 100, and then spend 60 seconds trying to comment and talk about each game in rapid-fire manner; (c) film us at another game night being foolish and silly (and hunting down Slunks on XBL), having that as a bonus to a normally-recorded and themed podcast. So far we haven't settled on one, and as silly as I wanted to be with it, maybe answering 100 questions isn't really practical. If you've suggestions, let us know -- but quick, since I need us to be ready with planning well before we record next week. Oh, and as I noted earlier this week, we're taking this weekend off. 100th episode records on the 12th, not the 5th.

- Computer. I didn't talk about this much on the podcast, and I never mentioned it here -- but I jumped on a deal for an 8800 GTS 512MB for a grand total of $177 after shipping and rebates. This was back before June, and had I waited I probably could have gotten a 9800 GTX for about $30, but no matter. It's still a pretty sweet deal on a good card, and playing Crysis at a smooth framerate is just glorious. No, I don't have Vista, so I'm not rocking all the DX10 sweetness, but just seeing Crytek's tech running without a hitch makes me giddy. Oblivion also runs fantastically. I've yet to re-install Gears of War PC, but since that was already looking and running very nicely on medium with my old card, I can't wait to see what it's like with all the bells and whistles on. Do I hear 60 fps?

Problem is, I messed up on the reinstall. I tried to be lazy and take shortcuts, so I looked up articles on how to change motherboards without reinstalling Windows completely. (I had to buy a new motherboard to accomodate this PCI-E card, since I was running on AGP prior.) I found several articles that said different things: I just needed to do a Repair install; I just needed to uninstall my old mobo drivers and then delete "ghost drivers" that stuck in the system that referred back to the old install; yadda yadda. I'd done Sysprep reinstalls before, and these worked beautifully. But, I decided on Ars Technica's solution getting rid of my old mobo drivers. Boom. I got into Windows fine, but I would get intermittent stop errors because the drivers were still conflicting. Apparently there were some that I hadn't gotten rid of but I had no idea what or where they were. So I said "**** it" and did a normal reformat and re-install like a good boy.

In truth, I should have done that from the beginning. My computer was back to running much faster, just like one always should after a re-install, and it's free of all the gunk accumulated over the last 8 months. A full reinstall REALLY isn't that bad, especially if you keep your documents and downloaded install files on a hard drive that's separate from your OS. Literally it's just nuke your boot drive, put Windows back in, and make sure your handy dandy book of install CDs by you (you DO take responsible care of the property that you spent time and money to accumulate, right?). Reinstall takes two to three hours. Watch a movie. Do it, and then just load programs in as you need them. You have all your docs. No sweat. Don't try to be lazy like me. I'm just an idiot.

- The backlog just grew. In an attempt to reconcile with Diablo (an editorial on my personal gripes with Diablo is forthcoming) I downloaded Titan Quest from STEAM. I can't wait to not play this game for another 9 months! I also got Devil May Cry 4 for Xbox 360 on a GameFly deal ($20) and Super Smash Bros. Brawl for Wii on an Amazon deal ($40 and then they kick you a $10 gift card), so yeah, I can't wait to play THOSE until next year. Meanwhile, I owe a whole bunch of my contributors posts on Trigames.NET. It's been really tough during the week to sit down and proofread them. GabuEx, SophinaK and SonicBoom, I'll get you guys Saturday. Promise. I mean it this time.

S'all. I need to sleep. To my fellow Americans, hope you all had a happy Fourth. To my non-American friends, hope you had an otherwise kick-ass friday.