Well, I've completed Psychonauts. If you were to ask me to sum up the entire experience in one word, it would be this: extraordinary. From beginning to end, Psychonauts was one of the best video games I've ever played. It was funny, it looked great, and the gameplay was pretty good, too. The difficulty ramped up all of a sudden in the last level, however. But despite that, go buyPsychonauts. Sell your kidneys to get the money to buy this game if you have to, but just buy it.

And then I went and rented Half-Life 2. While I'm not enjoying it quite as much as I enjoyed Psychonauts, it's a great game, too. Some sequences seem like they drag on longer than they need to, however. Aside from this, it's one of my favorite shooters. I'm currently in Ravenholm, and it scares the crap out of me. Maybe I just scare easily, but it's seriously creepy. Ravenholm is a dark town, where the only reminders of what it once was are the abandoned buildings and blood-stained walls. It's currently inhabited by zombies and headcrabs.

My bithday is on October 31st, so it's not quite here yet. I went up to my grandparents' yesterday, and since I probably won't see them again until Thanksgiving we celebrated my birthday.

My grandmother cooks quite well, and she often will make me a pumpkin pie for my birthday. However, not this year. You see, I like pickles quite a bit. So this year, they decided to stick a candle on top of a pickle jar and give that to me instead of a pie. I can't say I'm disappointed, but it did raise a few eyebrows. (I wouldn't have said "no" to the usual pumpkin pie, however).

Well, I finally got an Xbox. That's the old one, mind you, not the 360. I bought it at GameCrazy for $70 or $80 (I don't remember which.) The reason I bought it at GameCrazy was because I was running out of free rentals from when I purchased my Wii there, so now I'm fully replenished!

Anyway, I got a pretty substantial amount of used games for the Xbox. Here are some of the standouts:

The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay
Max Payne
Psychonauts
Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath
Unreal Champsionship 2: The Liandri Conflict
Jet Set Radio Future
Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30

That's all I can remember for now. No Halo yet, but I'll get it eventually. I'll be quite busy with all the games I've received!

Most video game journalism isn't very well written. A good bit of it falls into the category of "unbearably awful", too. GameSpot's writing is about average, but they also have a much larger problem on their hands:

Their review and scores don't make any sense. I'll use three examples to prove my point: the reviews for Metroid Prime 3, Super Metroid, and BioShock.

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption was scored an 8.5. It received the emblem for a Great Sequel. However, this is quite contradictory and a little confusing coupled with the fact that the game itself was criticized for being too familiar. Why would those two go hand in hand?

Super Metroid also scored an 8.5. Here's the tagline: "As 2D action adventure games go, Super Metroid does nearly everything right." Yes, you read that correctly. Such a tagline was given to a game that scored an 8.5, and with a review that's only complaint was the game wasn't new (a rather stupid complaint in itself), one has to wonder why this game was given an 8.5.

Then we come to BioShock. BioShock scored a 9.0, Editor's Choice. You may not think I have much to complain about, but just you wait. What BioShock was docked points from scoring a 9.5 is absolutely ridiculous. Most complaints were essentially nit-picking, and the biggest one was the easy difficulty level. I ask you, what kind of reasons are those to dock a game points?

Earlier, I made a comment in someone's blog about a similar topic. I said Iprefer short, poorly written journalism to long, poorly written journalism. I'm rescinding that statement. While GameSpot's reviews may not be poorly written, it's inexcusable for how much detail they go into. There's almost none. You have the good parts of the game, the bad parts of the game, but you have no idea what those would be in the context. You know nothing about the game itself, only what's good and bad about certain parts of it. And those parts aren't even gone into much detail. The shooting isn't very good? Okay, thanks. How so? If you have not read the preview for Super Smash Bros. Brawl yet, I highly recommend you do. The detail they go into is absolutely laughable.

I've written my very first review. It's for Medal of Honor: Frontline.

However, I've written this quite differently than most reviews. Instead of giving your average analysis of the game's pros and cons, I've penned the review from a second-person view. Hopefully, this makes it quite unique. I'd like some feedback on this review. Is it good? Bad? Do you think I would be better off writing a review normally?

Everyone who owns a Gamecube owns Super Smash Bros. Melee. Except me, that is. It's tons of fun. It's the multiplayer game of the Gamecube, and definitely in the running for "Best Multiplayer Ever." And I've spent hours upon hours playing it at friends' places.

Despite all of this, I've never owned the game. It's a crime to call yourself a Gamecube owner if you don't have Melee, so I hid in shame for the longest time. Everyone laughed at me, they hit me with blunt objects, and they threw sharp ones at me (nah, just kidding.) But anyway, I'd been meaning to buy the game forever. I have RE4, I have Wind Waker, Animal Crossing....I have a bunch of Gamecube c lassics. But I'm still missing a few, and Melee was one of them.

Until yesterday, that is. For once in my life, I decided to buy the game right then and there. Then I took it home and played it, realizing I had forgotten how truly awesome it was. All is right in the world now. I have Melee and it will be sitting in my Wii for quite some time (or at least until Brawl comes out.) Next up on my list is Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem.

I let a friend of mine borrow Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes for a while. However, he kept getting himself caught and killed at the Heliport. I don't blame him, though: this game is pretty hard. The awkward-at-first control scheme and the fact that he hasn't ever played a stealth game before might make it difficult. In disgust, he returned the game to me after quite a while (I wasn't able to go get it for a bit.)

Now I'm horrified to find that I'm stuck, too! Of course, at first it was attributed to the vague mission objectives. When I needed to contact Meryl, I was told that her frequency was on the "back of the package". What package that was, however, I couldn't figure out. Naturally, I came up on GameSpot and took a look. 140.15, but where the heck was it?

Anyway, then I had quite a difficult time with the tank in the canyon. More because it was difficult than anything else. And now I'm stuck again: I'm supposed to use the guided missiles to destroy a power supply something-or-other that controls an electrified floor. But I don't know what it looks like! Maybe I'm just hopeless.

This usually happens for extended periods of play for any Wii game, but I've noticed it the most with a game I've rented. Recently I rented Mario Strikers Charged for the Wii. You see, having purchased my Wii at GameCrazy I get free rentals there, and am almost fresh out. My latest one was spent on this game.

Quite addictive and fun, but sometimes overly chaotic describes Mario Strikers. But that's beside the point. When I play the game, I find the Wii remote to grow uncomfortable. It seems too small to accomodate the size of my hands. Maybe this is just me and a few others, since I have longer fingers than anyone I've ever met. It's quite troublesome, though, since I am unable to play for long periods on the console.