It's the same one, except I made it so that the text was placed in a neat animation. ^^

I rented Burnout 3 for the Xbox yesterday. Although, yes, I don't have my Xbox yet, I invited a friend over to play games on his Xbox. After missing two buses to where I need to go to rent the game, we finally caught a third bus up. We got it, and went home--simple as that. I had briefly played Burnout 3 for the Playstation 2 at my friend's birthday party the previous weekend, and let me tell you: the game just doesn't seem to suit the PS2. The controls are screwy on the PS2 controller, the game doesn't look that great, and I didn't really enjoy it. In fact, I felt that the style of Burnout 3 was a lot different than Burnout 2's: drift, if I recall correctly, works different in each game (In Burnout 2, you simply ease on the gas while turning and then press back on the gas to drift). Now that I rented the Xbox version, it just feels like a perfect fit for the Xbox: the triggers do a great job for accelerating, braking, and reversing, and the game simply looks awesome on the damn 'Box. Jeff Gerstmann is absolutely right about the Xbox version being a lot better. I dunno. Maybe there were two aspects that led to me enjoying the Xbox version so much more than I did while playing the PS2 version:

Xbox version: I'm playing it close to a 32ish" TV; PS2 version: I played it a good distance from a 19ish" TV

Xbox version: I played the game with one friend; PS2 version: I played it with eight friends Oh, well. The fact is that this game, so far, is awesome. I love all the bonuses, I love all the ways you can earn cars, and I love the gameplay. In fact, when I'm done writing this entry, I'm gonna go pick up the controller, and play it some more. Races are pretty challenging unless I don't screw up. They are pretty fun, but they aren't that fun when you're running away from second place by "20 seconds." I love how Criterion focuses mainly on takedowns: I feel great when I ram my opponent into a wall, sending them into flight. I feel great when I crash, and I take an adversary with me. I feel even greater when I'm behind in a race, and I take down my opponents, one by one, to eventually take the lead. I can't wait to play this online (split-screen is slowly becoming obsolete, but that's a story for another time). Road Rage, which is where you pull off as many Takedowns as you can within a certain period of time, is a bigger bundle of fun! And what makes it even better is that the pressure of winning a race while doing it isn't there: I can just take down my opponents until I either wreck my ride to the point where it dies on me or when the time runs out. Again, takedowns make me feel good. Crash has never made me think as hard as I am when playing it in Burnout 3. In Burnout 2, there never seemed to be a really advanced tactic that you had to pull off just right to get the best score. Well, Burnout 3 does just that, and I'm having fun while doing it. It's fun to figure out how to get the bonuses and the multipliers, all while triggering explosions, and making the most mayhem you can. Fun, fun, fun. Man...all this talk about Burnout 3 is making me hungry...for Burnout 3!

This week, I've been feeling light signs of certain symptoms: my stomach's been acting up, my head's occasionally been burning up, I've been getting headaches periodically, etc. Seeing as how it is creeping up on anybody, my initial conclusion is that I'm getting some form of influenza. Maybe even Norwalk. I wouldn't be surprised, either: throughout the summer, maybe people in Vancouver have gone to Alaska and back via cruise ship, and they've come back with the virus. Of course, this is the only evidence that solidifies my assumption, if you would like to call it that. Maybe I'll go to a clinic tonight and see if I'm right about this...

In no particular order...

Burnout 3 (XBOX)

Def Jam: Fight For NY (GCN)

Street Fighter Anniversary Collection (XBOX)

Midway Arcade Treasures 2 (GCN)

ESPN NHL 2K5 (XBOX)

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (GCN)

Mortal Kombat: Deception (XBOX)

Star Fox (GCN)

Unreal Tournament 2006 (PC)

L.A. Rush (XBOX)

Star Wars: Battlefront (XBOX or PC)

Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict (XBOX)

Half-Life 2 (PC)

Metroid Prime: Hunters (DS)

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (XBOX or PC) To me, that's a lot of wanted games for someone who hasn't wanted a console game since the Gamecube first came out. Now excuse me while I fill up my Wish List. @_@

I've been checking out on some UCB's for a couple of my favorite VG franchises. Mortal Kombat and Metroid UCB's, to be specific. And, man...some of the people at the Everything Metroid Board are hardcore fans. I even read one thread where the author of it was asking for help with a < 15% run on Metroid: Zero Mission they were having trouble with. I must look deeper into these UCB's. As for me, if I ever subscribe to Gamespot Complete, my UCB won't be especially for video games, let alone for a certain VG series/console/whatever. I've got a bit of the idea in my head for it, but it isn't crystal clear to me at the moment. I'm still waiting for verification on the order I placed yesterday (see the entry below this one), and I plan to hit the hay in ten minutes. Tune in during the wee hours (4:30ish), when I'll be posting Latenight Rantin' 6...well, maybe. I've got lots of homework to catch up on, not to mention that I have to find some more resources for this project I'm working on in Planning class in the morning. By the way, if you're a metal head like me, check out "Musical Chairs" by Unearth. I'm listening to it for the first time, and it's awesome. Why have I only listened to, like, 5/8 of my 400+ song playlist? WHY!?

I just ordered an Xbox from Air Miles, a program where you redeem reward points to use on travel packages, merchandise, and other stuff by, say, spending $20 or more in one session of grocery shopping at Safeway. We, my family, have been saving some for a rainy day--4,052, in fact--and spent 2,750 on an Xbox and another controller. All this...for absolutely zero dollars. That's just plain sweet. Not that I'm absolutely hyped, though--I'll save my excitement for when the Xbox and the controller are on my doorstep and I'm playing Burnout 3, Halo 2, and a whole bunch of other stuff on my Xbox. I also hope to get an Xbox Live starter kit and a wireless network adapter so that I can play online. However, it said after confirmation of the order that "it will be delivered within three to four weeks," when my Xbox has been put on back order until the day before Halloween. Whether that means I'll get my Xbox by the beginning of November or by the end of November is something that I'm not sure about. One thing is for sure, though: I'm getting an Xbox!

...was pretty nerve-wracking. As you can tell by my name, I was the second caller on the webcast. Although, in the conversation, I sounded pretty calm, I was actually really, really nervous. Roger--the new guy in the Gamespot Live department--helped me out by responding to some questions I had about going live on the air, etc. Although I was thinking all morning that I might just be the first one on the air, Roger said that I would be the second. When he connected me to the feed on Skype before I was going to be live, the sound isn't really as clear as what everyone else hears: I received some very loud and fuzzy commentary from Rich, Ryan, and Jeff, as well as the vids that they showed off. If I had to guess, it would probably have been because the mics that transmit into the live feed that everyone sees are state-of-the-art, while the mic that transmitted into what I heard on Skype was coming from the kind of microphone that you could find at your local store. Who knows? The actual conversation was pretty awkward, mainly because of the fuzzy sound. I tried my best to hear Jeff and Rich and Ryan, but near the end of the conversation, it just got to the point where I couldn't hear a thing they were saying. Fortunately, they were talking the whole time I couldn't hear. The first time Ryan said thanks, I was going to say "Thank you very much," but he kept talking. That's okay with me--I got to say thanks the second time. Several minutes afterwards, I was still nervous. I think the main reason I was so nervous was because I was speaking when thousands were listening. But, overall, I'm glad I got to talk to the guys. Roger did say to have fun, but I guess I was too nervous to really enjoy it. So, Roger, if you're reading this, thanks for the help!

Lately, I've been starting to get back into Unreal Tournament 2004, a game that I had not played as frequently as I have been playing it this week since around early June. To blow off the dust and finally get back into playing UT2004 is really much easier than I thought: immediately, I was re-acquainted with the way the game works. And before I knew it, I was fragging "masterful" bots by the handfuls. It was when I first relived this experience that I realized that, when I get bored with a game--even one that I've played for around 18 months--that I'll never stay bored of that one game forever, and that I will, one day, discover that the game is once again a ton of fun. This especially applies to games I had not played in years. For a long time now, I've wanted to play games such as Super Street Fighter II Turbo and Mortal Kombat II, as I have not played either of those games in roughly a decade. And when I mean a long time, I mean a few years. And when you've been waiting that long simply to relive the good, 'ol nineties and play some truly great games that some people would even go so far as to consider ancient by now, you know that I wanna play those games badly. Where I live, finding an arcade joint with either one of those arcade cabinets, let alone both, is like trying to find a needle (or, if you think about, two needles) in a haystack. The Playdium in Burnaby seemingly has Street Fighter III: Third Strike and Mortal Kombat 4, but no signs of any of their predecessors. Yet they have all kinds of games that are even older than SSF2T and MK2: Bust-A-Move, Pac-Man, and even Centipede. It feels like a slap in the face knowing that they've got all sorts of games from the 80's and games from the late 90's and beyond, but not from the early 90's, which is the time period when a huge amount of the greatest games of all-time were released, which include two fighting games that I seemingly can't find in arcades. And I doubt that I can even find their SNES renditions. Oh, well. Maybe I should just buy Street Fighter Anniversary Edition and Midway Arcade Treasures 2 when they come out. Thank god for compilations. It's not the amount of replay value that matters: it's how you use it.

http://www.sfsu.edu I know I wanna go to San Francisco for post-secondary education, and I'm definitely going to a university to major in journalism. I was gonna go to UCSF until I realized that UCSF only teaches sciences. What do you think?

I beat Metroid Prime with 100% of the items yesterday. And when I got that last missile expansion under a mushroom in the Phazon Mines, I felt like I had made a major accomplishment in my life--an achievement that, as a gamer, I should be proud of. It's not that easy to figure out where to look for these expansions and energy tanks and artifacts. It reminds me of how ingenious the level design in the Metroid series has always been, and it also makes me believe that Gunpei Yokoi, if he were alive, would be proud of how this kind of creativity still exists, even without his direct contribution to a game such as Metroid Prime. This is the first time I've really pursued something in a game other than the end of its story: although GTA3 and Vice City consumed a lot of my time, I could have easily spent more time finding all the hidden packages and playing all of those optional missions that I missed out on. And, unlike my time with the first three entries in the Grand Theft Auto series, I had never spent any time in GTA3 and Vice City just causing mayhem by blowing up cars and going on killing sprees, which is what I had spent countless hours in the pre-3D GTA games doing. When I played Halo, yes, I had beaten the game, but I never bothered to replay it on Legendary, which is a large accomplishment for anyone when one beats the game on such an overwhelming difficulty. And, lastly, in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, I beat the game with the light-side ending, but I never even bothered to replay it. I had missed out on two things: one was the dark-side ending, and the other was Juhani, a potential ally that I ended up killing due to some bad decision-making and a lack of persuasion. Now that I think about that one accomplishment I achieved with that one game and then the things I never bothered to look into in several other games, I regret taking the time to go beyond just beating those several other games and milking as much fun as I can get out of those games. But, of course, I have every chance to redeem myself, now, don't I? If I ever get an Xbox, I swear to God that I will do everything that I said I hadn't done: I will cause absolute chaos in GTA3 and GTA:VC! I will beat Halo on the Legendary difficulty! I will beat KOTOR on the dark-side ending and with Juhani by my side! I will play the s*** out of these games until there is nothing else to be done that I haven't already done in these games. And I will continue to do the same with every other game that I come across and end up liking a lot. I now realize why I get bored of games so fast, and I will now overcome this. If you're a gamer with a problem like mine, take my advice: look a little harder for some fun things to do on the side when you're playing a game--like, say, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City--away from what you're required to do to beat your games. Take a panarama picture instead of a normal one, for, in that picture, there will be more than just a thousand words.