Kinda forgott to mention two other series I follow. Lost - Started great but now the story is slowing down to a painfull level of "I`m not getting any answers (just more questions) and the progression pr. episode is slim to nill" Witch is just what I was afraid of. Better get better fast or else. (who am I kidding, I cant stop watching Lost now!) Numb3rs - This show is just great. Making math this interesting is a real pluss for me, and the series is developing quite nice to. Only thing I don`t like about season 2 is the switch of female FBI agent, but she might come around.

Ok, the season is now well on it`s way, but how are the shows shaping up? How are series staples looking for this season? Here is a short sum up of my impressions of the shows I watch. CSI - CSI is still as excelent as it always has been, the stories aren`t even getting thinner inn my opinion and that`s pretty impresive in the sixth season. Grissom is still the king of crime. CSI New York - This CSI spinnoff turned out to actually be a good thing (unlike other not to be named CSI spinnoffs). Gary Senise really carries the show and the cast is excelent. Also the series really has the urban New York feel to it (don`t now if it`s real because I have not been in New York). Excelent runner up for best crime show. NCIS - This series is amazing. It`s extremly unrealistic, they abide to now common known rules, and yet it`s great entertainment. In fact, this show is often more funny than CSI clone. The stroke of genius is how it doesn`t try to duplicate CSI, but defines it`s own style wich is a great on to. Gibbs smacking Denozo in the head is still fun to watch. The O.C - Ok, the next episode of O.C better contain som of the following : someone gets pregnant, someone kills someone, someone cheats or someone robs a friggin bank. This because a more dull O.C has never existed. Instead of high point drama that really gives a "must se next episode" tension, I`m boored out of my skull. So far every episode has had some problem in the characters lives, and these problems have been solved neatly and nicely. Not the O.C way people! The O.C better shape up or I`m calling it quits. Gilmore Girls - Excelent, I`m not quitting my Bledel and Graham addiction anytime soon. And that`s it, basicly all shows are great except for The O.C

Now that the series are starting up and the tv week is getting plotted down. I can`t help to think that keeping up with all these shows is almost like work. I spend a serius amount of time just plotting down when and where the different shows run and when they start. This is off course the result of tv shows beeing to damn good. And in the end that`s not a bad thing.

So I finally left Bodin and I have finally been given back my freedom, finally I can play games whenever I want! Sadly though I started to work ca. 2 days after I left the service and delivering ice cream in the summer is just plain crazy here in norway, lots of hours and lots of money but less time to sit down and enjoy my two latest DS titles : Kirby Canvas Curse and Daigasso. I have played them both and I really like them to, I hope to complete Kirby during this week and to understand more of Daigasso even though I already enjoy it when I manage to make music that sounds good :) . I`m currently planning my next PC purchase wich will allow me to finally play Half Life 2 for all it`s worth. If Day of Defeat Source comes soon I will probably be in gaming nirvana.

Seven days until I regain my freedom and can do whatever I want to do! It involves off course a lot of gaming :) Yesterday we had a party to celebrate the ending of one year of military service, I ended up sitting and drinking with my lieutenant talking about anything, you can not imagine how fun that was!

In more gaming related news I just ordered Band Brothers and Kirbys Canvas Curse from play-asia.com, also my mother bought Wario Ware Touched for my little brother so it looks like my DS gaming is not going to stop any time soon. Can`t wait to leave Bodin and start playing some games with my friends back home.

Today I finished my last field trip, it was kind of a social non military thing really. We set camp and then we went around on different stations to shoot with different weapons wich was kinda coll really. But that`s enought of my booring military service.

So finally the reviews are out for two anticipated games for the DS, I`m talking about Kirbys Canvas Curse and Goldeney Rogue Agent. I can`t say I was surprised by the reviews, I expected Kirby to become the first great "traditional" game wich is entirerly based on stylus control. With Goldeney Rogue Agent I did not expect it to be a great game, I was really more interested in weither or not FPS could really work on the DS, I did not really doubth this seeing how amazing the Metroid demo was, but I still was a little anxius if a pure fps game would work. Only thing I was disapointed over was that EA again proved that they often don`t really care how a game is when it comes out, as long as it comes out at the set time, sadly they actually make a lot of money with this tactic but it has almost never produced a great game. Here`s hoping that Metoid Prime Hunters will be to Goldeneye Rogue Agent what Kirbys Canvas Curse is to Yoshi`s touch and go.

Fire broke out in Bodin today with respondig firetrucks and all, but unless the whole place burns down I really couldn`t care less seing as there are 11 days left until I`m leaving for good. But enough of my booring military life.

Playing games that are pure gameplay games is a thing for gamers. That sentence was really bad I know but it`s true, some games are ok for regular folk and some are ok for people who loves a good game no matter what the theme or look of the game is. Gran Turismo and Grand Theft Auto being excelent examples of games that are ok for everyone, Pokemon being a great example for the other camp of games that are good but only people who can enjoy a good game no matter what the package it comes in would play (or in the case of pokemon only gamers and kids under the age of 14).

Based on this self aquired and practiced knowledge I have started to classify people as either A) Only play acceptable main stream games or B) Plays any game as loong as it`s good. I fall in the B category and most of my friends do to allthough sometimes they (and I admit that I do it to) don`t play the game because of it`s appearence or the things that are linked to the game. In my militiary service I mostly meet category A people and when I`m with cat. A people I tend to dampen my enthusiasm for proclaiming the latest amazing game for everyone. But yesterday I was really surpised by this one guy in my troop. I had just gotten back and had my DS stuff in my backpack, I sat down in the tv quarters for the Transport department that we dispose on our free time and watched tv. We are three people in the room, then K. starts to rumage my backpack looking for the DS. I have often gotten some dissing from K. that I`m a geek and so on in a typical friendly manner so I was expecting him to tinker with the DS, proclaim it as childish crap and say something about the PSP being better. That did not happen at all, instead he asked me to put in the "falling down" game he had seen me playing with others in the barracks, he was asking to play Puyo Pop Fever. Now personally I love Puyo Pop, but the game looks very childish and is packed with super sweet anime music and looks. Also the game is very simple in princible but has lots of multiplayer depht and requires the player to get under the skin of these falling blobs of color. I don`t consider Puyo Pop fever a cat. A game at all so I was expecting that he was going to try it for ca. 5 seconds and then proclaim it as crap. This did not happen either. Instead he played for ten minutes, then he asked for some explonation of the rules and gameplay. After ca. 5 minutes of him playing while I explain he got the hang of the basics and played for another 10 minutes. He then said that he needed some more explaining (this was my fault really because I figured if I said all the rules at once he would just call the game silly right away, something I expected anyway so I didn`t put much effort in the help I gave), I gave him the full low down of the rules and dynamics and he played on for hours to end!

I was qutie frankly a little shocked over K`s enthusiasm for Puyo Pop Fever, I did not expect him to enjoy it at all, instead he sat and played the rest of the day. He would play, get stuck and put the DS down, then pick it up again ten minutes later. Just as any gamer would take small breaks when the game got to frustrating but can`t stop the desire to pick it up again after a very short pause.
The point of this little story is that I can now se the DS being accepted in all social layers, the one real advantage I saw the PSP having for itself was the coolness factor and how social acceptable it would be to sit in public and play it. Personally I play the DS any where any time, something I thought that cat. A people would be more hessistant to, but seing how K. just could not stop playing Puyo Pop I now belive that playing the DS will not be something you will be embarassed to do in public. And hey, with the possibility that Nintendogs will be for girls of all ages what Pokemon was for boys of all ages, maybe flipping up your DS and a copy of Nintendogs in public will increase your chance of meeting others? :question:

So im sitting here in the middle of the night just waiting to get back to Bodø for the last time ever. With me I will be bringing my more and more trusty DS with brand new games and all. My latest additions to the DS game collection are Electroplankton and Pac Pix. I was extremly impressed with Electroplankton as it really blew my mind on what a game can be. As for Pac Pix I was very pleased with the games design and fresh approach to an old genre, it gets frantic very fast and thats when the ugliest Pac man to ever gobble the earth get drawn from my shaking hands.

Seeing the DS future lineup, the current sales numbers, the sucess of Nintendogs on the female market, I can`t help to think that this is the year of the DS and that the future for the console is a very bright one. The lineup from Nintendo is actually nicely mathced with third party titles to and that is a very good sign. The title im perhaps looking most forward to getting my hands on is Mario Kart DS. I was really excited when I first saw it announced, add online play and lots of retro karting on old tracks and im gitty as a school girl for this possibly first good racing title for the DS.

Importing has been a great sucess for me and now I`m considering Band Brothers wich I`m hearing good things about. So this year I`m probably getting somewhere between 7-10 DS games. Penny Arcade was right when they said that DS owners went from a good games drought to a good games overload, not really a problem for me though :)

So I wake up, check the mail and find to nice presents from the postal service, my package from Play Asia had finally arrived. I rip the package open and quickly opened Electroplankton and stuck it in the DS. This game is unlike anything I have played before. I select the "fish" mode first and start to manipulate the leaves and angle of the spitting of fishy plankton, sounds start plinging and water splashes and I`m hooked on the weirdest game to ever hit my mailbox. The ten modes are very different from each other and some make more catchy sounds then others, but the general impression is that they are all unique and fun to tinker with. I hook it up to the stereo and soon these amazing creatures are filling the room with super mario bros beats and sound effects in a strange way. I show the game to my 16 year old brother who is dazed with the weirdness of the beast. I let him try and soon he fills the room with fishy plankton bouncing of green leaves and splashing into the water, making sounds of wonder on the way.

Now having explored the ten modes doesn`t mean I`m done with the game, it`s the perfect time killer game or app becasue you just tinker and listen. However I really got hungry for more interactive gaming music, that`s when I scout the forums and hear only good things about Digasso. When I first read about this game I really didn`t think it would be any good or that I would be interested, but now it looks to be my second import of an japanese game, meaning that Elektroplankton being the first and Digasso the next meaning that music is really entering my Nintendo DS, what an amazing console!

Puyo Pop Fever is a game from my dreams, growing up spending hours playing Tetris on the gameboy it`s a contuining saga or something to play the excelent aggro puzzler on the Ds. Even though Puyo Pop Fever doesn`t use the DS in all it`s ways it captures you, sucks you inn and turns you into some kind of peppy anime fever frenzy character that lives to crush others with transluscent globs of Puyo. It was an instant hit with my younger brothers and even greater hit with the guys at camp. My next goal is to play four player and the possibility is in my grasp!

Importing games seems to only have upsides for me, I get the games sooner and cheaper. So as a result of the success of Puyo Pop Fever I ordered Electroplankton and Pac Pix.

The multiplayer DS vision in my mind is coming to life! Next out is BOMBERMAN!!!!