First a couple updates.  Two level 60 World of Warcraft characters, and a PSP later, nothing is really different.  Except for the addiction.

Anyone who has not tried World of Warcrat, even those who hate MMOs (ie, me), owes this game a shot.  Yes, it's unstable. Yes, they ignore certain classes and buff ones that are powerful or unbalance them into over-poweredness.  But at the core, the heart of the game is so pure, and so different from many MMOs.  In WoW, you can experience your character's rise to prominence in less than one month worth of playtime.

I played a MMO (MUD, actually) for eight years and never got past level 30 where 100 was the cap.  In less than one year of owning WoW, I have two max level characters and a third nearly half there.

So the game's fun, and hard to shake when you get into it.  Okay next...

Got a PSP, nearly a year-to-the-day that I got my DS.  D-Pad's not ideal for Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max.  Square button's kinda really iffy.  Yet, it is quite a sexy machine, loaded with potential that will be tapped.  The DS seemed to hit its stride September of last year, and the PSP looks like it's ready to get many quality games coming for it.

It's unfortunate that the inputs on the system are total design flaws.

As for other news on the systems front, the GameCube is now officially a monument to dust collection, and the PS2 is starting to see a slowing of quality games since DQ8 came out.  The next generation is rushing in fast, and it's apparent.

I got RE4.
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And... I think I like it...

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON IN THE WORLD!

Well, it was only 30 dollars, so why not? Well, turns out that my decision wasn't half bad. Turns out my video card is a bit too old to effectively run the PC version. It runs but it looks severely beaten by the ugly stick. The players have no eyelids. NO EYELIDS!

That aside, the PC and the PS2 version act similarly, and there's no severe glaring bugs that need to be patched, so aside from the terrible graphics on the PC version, they're about the same. The PS2 version is easier to handle multiplayer with, as I can carry it with me to the club and people can lose to me, where the PC is good for my DynastyManager.com page (you can find it if you snoop around. My name's Zephyr).

The game's quite nice, and vastly improved from last years version. Like I said earlier, no major glitches (yet). The CPU actuall throws balls this year, and now walks from the CPU are more frequent. Also, user walks are more frequent as they made the pitch meter less forgiving. Your pitches will go off the mark a lot more in this than they would in last year's version. It's much harder to throw the perfect pitch. And the perfect pitch might not be as perfect with the Hitter's Eye. Now, you see a quick flash that tips you off to the type of pitch it is. Some pitchers are great at hiding the ball, and it makes it hard to pick the flash up. Some pitchers aren't good at it, and you can tell what's coming.

Owner's mode... I didn't like at first, but, it's gowing on me. Taking the Nationals out of RFK and putting them into a place that looks cool is nice. But it sucks that you're pretty much forced to abandon your original stadium. You can still play in it, but you only recieve money and attendance values that reflect the "created" stadium. See, that's why I wasn't into it. The create-a-stadium feature really sucks. But the mode is cool.

Anyway, I'm in class, so I'm going to start paying attention again.

Today, the Nintendo DS was purchaced, at the ripoff price of 180 + tax.

Having no GBA drives men to such madness.

I bought Zelda on 1/11/2005.

I beat it on 1/12/2005.

I put in about 9 hours of play, I'll be generous, and say 10. This amount of time is okay, if I bought, say Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, or Astro Boy: Omega Factor. This amount of time is 100% unacceptable for first time through a Zelda game. Never in playing any Zelda game for the first time have I spent less than 20 hours on it. This disgusts me. Lord knows when I was a kid, it took me months to beat Zelda 1, and Link to the Past, I remember being stuck in Dark World dungeon 5. In Ocarina of Time, I was older and wiser, and I was legitamately stuck on the (of course) Water Palace for a couple weeks. Wind Waker, I never got stuck in, but I managed to take no more than one dungeon in one day. In Link's Awakening, I still haven't beaten the Face Palace without the select trick. The Oracle Games... each one took me at least two weeks to get through.

So somebody tell me why, this new Zelda game, which is on a technologically superior system than the majority of the Zelda games are shorter than just about every one of them? By all accounds, Zelda 1, and LttP, etc., are not hard games. But the first time you go though them, you won't beat it in a day or two. This game was the least challenging Zelda title, and left much to be desired.

Let me dwell on some aspects of this game.

1) The overworld is tiny. The put in some things that force you to go the long way around, but when you realize that they're just there to pad travel time, you start to se this overworld for what it is. No Zelda game has had an overworld this small. They claim that if you start looking for secrets, you'll find a lot. Yes, you will, but there's no exploration. New things just get revealed in places that you have already been to. That's just jacked. The secrets are lame. A tree has brambles in front of it, blocking a doorway. Gee, I can't figure out that the only sidequest in the game will remove those brambles. What am I, an idiot?

2) There are six dungeons. This has been a disturbing trend in Zelda games since Majora's Mask. Look, I'll break it down.

Zelda: 18 dungeons
Zelda 2: 7 dungeons
Zelda: LttP 12 dungeons
Zelda: LA: 8 dungeons
Zelda: OoT: 9 dungeons
Zelda: MM: 4 dungeons (really, wtf.)
Zelda: OoA: 8 dungeons
Zelda: OoS: 8 dungeons
Zelda: WW: 6 dungeons
Zelda: MC: 6 dungeons

I'm tired of this. Why is it that the Gameboy games have 8 dungeons, and some of them are quite challenging, and this one has six, and none of them are worth half a brain synapse? Are they challenging because you have to backtrack to find a keyhole or something? Wait, this one doesn't even do that. It barely even gives you more than one key at a time. You have no choices, no options. This is the epitome of station to station Zelda. Even Zelda 2, a side scrolling game, had more options in how you tackled the dungeons than this game, and that's kinda sickening.

3) The new items, for the most part, are worthless. The Cane of Pacci could have been really cool, but it suffers from Mega Man 3 Top Spin Syndrome. Sure, it's used a lot to flip over transformation points, but that's gimmick use, and not practical use. They could have very easily made you use the Power Bracelets to flip things over. And speaking of the Power Bracelets, they have made them as useles as they have ever been. You need them ti push two bookcases in the entire game. Next: Yay, I have a lantern that doesn't use magic power. That's nice, but how about the Fire Rod that was axed from the game, huh? The only thing that even has a remote use is the Gust Jar, and it's ineffective against most enemies itself, making you have to suck up a pot to spit at them. You can't even get the Mirror Shield until AFTER you beat the game. HELLO?

4) One side quest. Kinstones. Just about everybody in the world has one or two right halves of a kinstone, and you have about 90 or so left halves, and you must combine the correct left to the correct right to unlock a secret, which can be a heart piece/upgrade (good), money (passable), secret seashells (meh), or, the ever brilliant ANOTHER KINSTONE (absolutely dumb). This wouldn't be so annoying if people always wanted to fuse with you. But sometimes, you'll see someone, and not have the matching piece, leave, come back with it, and they don't want to fuse anymore. It's just really annoying. And to make it more frustrating, there are some people who give you specific rewards, but most people will give you a random unlocked secret, making it very hard to track down who will give you what. Since who is asking for the kinstones is random, and their rewards random, it gets very, very difficult to make all 80+ kinstone fusions.

So with this rant, you might think I don't like this game. The funny thing is, I love it. I'm just really, really annoyed that there isn't more of it. It's a graphical and musical powerhouse, and the ideas... there could have been so much more.

Final score: 8.4/10

Not a review, but a rant. But that's why you're here, to read my rants. ^_^

Well, I indeed got Zelda: Minish Cap, and I picked up Kirby and the Amazing Mirror for good measure.

I bought Zelda on the 11th, and was done with it late on the 12th. Epic this game is not. Fun, yes, but it's just miserably short. Full blown rant coming up. Raul got a piece of it and I mentioned it on a thread in GFAQs, so, I'll let it brew tonight.

Final Count:
16 hearts, 3 bottles

Running Tally:
18 hearts, 3 bottles

It final boss game me some trouble until I realized that I didn't need to use arrows on the first form. Then he went down pretty easliy. Ah well. Somehow I get the feeling that Kirby will take me longer to beat. Let's not let Metroid Prime 2 gather any dust though, apparently, I'll be back to it sooner than I thought.

(by the way, the Oracle games on the inferior Game Boy Color were both had deeper puzzles and a longer adventure with larger land area than this game... hmm....)

Well, I guess it's about time since they don't seem to know how to win playoff games.

Anyway, I played my PS2 for the first time since December ... 21. That seems about right. Had to get a game of Madden in with all the football vibes flying around. Anyway, it's just a hiccup. I'll be back to GameCube tomorrow. And on Tuesday... it's ZELDA: THE MINNISH CAP!!! Finally, I've waited long enough.

Now it's time for the ratings. So far, I have 59 of 325 done. Don't think I can manage to do anymore tonight. It's kinda daunting. If I were doing it one-by-one, and entering as I played/beat games, no problem, but transferring this list from IGN (BAD WORD!) and then the scores is very... tiring... annoying... one of the two.

Anyway, watching the Packers vs. Vikings games, and I must say, I'm quite surprised that the Vikes are out in frount, but it'll probably change. Never doubt Favre in the 4th quarter.

Anyway, I'll finish this up later. Trying to finish up a faster 100% Metroid Prime 2 before hitting Paper Mario. Update as needed.

I'm busy fixing this thing up. I've put all my games in here, with the exception of the PC games... got another 48 to load in and I don't really feel like doing it right now.

Anyway, I just finished Metroid Prime 2, so it's time for my thoughts and feelings.

Firstly, this game isn't as good as Metroid Prime. The world of Tallon IV was much more... I don't know... had more personality than Aether. It feels like I'm just playing a 3D Link to the Past without the swords. And with a lot of fetch quests. Still, the game is quite nice. They upgraded the logbook so you actually know how much scan percentage you have, and they seperate everything into categories. The HUD even looks cleaned up, able to fit more information without looking huge. The music is no where near the league of the first one, though. MP2's music is just... kinda there. And visually, people say MP2 looks better than MP, but I personally don't see it. They look just about the same to me.

9.0/10

Anyway, hopefully a Paper Mario mini review next time and my PC games list finished,