Hey, hey, had a good run writing these bullets, so here's the list for today. Not as long, I hope. We'll see in the end. Never plan these things out.

• Finished Okami on Thursday. Great game, lackluster final boss, sad to say. Everything in the game is beautifully rendered, but the last boss left a lot to be desired, both design and strategy wise. Something that made me cringe a bit too was how many times a particularly long - albeit easy - boss battle had to be repeated three times throughout the course of the game. Really unnecessary, in my opinion. Last gripe, promise: jumping. I was never a fan of jumping in 3D games, and Okami reminded me of that, especially when jumping onto banners lifted by the wind gust ability. There's simply not enough time to react in order to land the jump, and easy, close-by jumps are missed a little too often for my taste. Alas, those are minor quibs with the game, overall, it's incredible.
• Closed the book on Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny. On an entirely different side of the spectrum from Okami, Onimusha 2 is a very annoying game. No, it's not difficult. It's just annoying. It has not aged well at all. Pre-rendered backgrounds, tank controls, no analog movement and the overall structure are really a step in the past in 2009. My save was at about 2 hrs into it, and it took me about 5 more to complete it. Next.
• Start Onimusha 3: Demon Siege yesterday morning. Now that's how you revitalize a franchise. Great game so far, far better game play, voice acting, graphics, mostly everything's superior in this. Seeing Jean Reno's gigantic no... talent is another plus. He lends his likeness in this game quite well, too bad he's not the English voice actor that takes over for the majority of the game. I'm already pretty far in the game already - at the Eiffel Tower - so I expect it to have it done soon. Yes, the game does take place in France. Come on, it has only been four years since it came out...
• I plan to finally start ICO after Onimusha 3, since I do not own Dawn of Dreams, the fourth Onimusha. ICO has been crying to me from the shelf for quite some time, since I was able to track down a copy.
• Jumped back to The Pitt yesterday night. I was avoiding it since everyone kept complaining about bugs and patches, but I happened to read the game ran fine off the HDD, my basic setup for Fallout 3. Got quite a lot of progress in it, no bugs whatsoever. Great atmosphere, quests and combat. I love the auto axe. It's so bad. What bothers me in the game is how polar and unclear some of the choices are, and how quickly sides will turn on you. I don't sense it lasting for too much longer, so it'll probably be in the bag soon too.
• Tried playing Dishwasher again as well - what a perfect demo game, seriously. Plays awesomely for the first twenty minutes, then it quickly becomes routine and repetitive. I'll insist on it since I'm reviewing it, but hell, it's a quick burn, seems like.
• Worth mentioning - started watching the new Clone Wars animated show. I have to say, I liked it. The fifth episode, Rookies, was pretty darn good, and the one with R2D2's kidnapping was also entertaining. I kinda dig the character designs now, eight episodes into the series. It was slow adapting to it, but it catches on. Fourteen episodes to go!
• Plan to get Penny Arcade Episode One on discount sometime this week - 50% discount sure is nice. Tip that Episode Three is close to coming out? Maybe?
• Putting the finishing touches on that piece I've been teasing for a while now. Spent quite a bit of time working on it for the past five weeks or so. And it shows... should be done soon!

Well, not much else to comment on. See you next Monday.

Bullet points worked last time I wrote a blog, so here's another list of happenings from last week and the weekend.

• Finished Bully on Thursday - I enjoyed the game quite a bit, but in the end, it felt rushed. A lot of the conclusion stuff was just hurried, in my opinion, hurting the presentation a lot. I managed to complete Chemistry, P.E and English. Bought the scooter from the fair grounds, and closed off all the side missions. Probably not gonna go back for the rest of the collectibles, though. Game time counter at around 12 hours.
• Worked a LOT on my nostalgic piece, and managed to post some WIP pics in my personal blog. It's coming along great, I'll post the final thing here once it's ready - might take a while, though, since a lot of the final stuff will depend on my craptastic computer. You might get a glimpse of this WIP if you know where to look...
• Went back to Okami for a little bit during the week, and played through a lot of it during the weekend. Still going strong, gorgeously. Might not take as long as I thought to complete it, though, which is a shame. Might go back to it after completing the story for the collectibles and extra Celestial Brush techniques. I think I'll be through with this one sometime this week.
• Thinking about going after the rest of the Onimusha PS2 series after Okami - beat the first a long time ago, and got stuck on the second. Might be a fight between that and Tenchu Wrath of Heaven. The problem with this Tenchu is that it's starts in an awesome tone, with assassinations and all, then moves to supernatural crap all of the sudden. Stealth kills on spirits and ghosts? Seriously?
• Finished playing Bit.Trip.Beat, and will be putting the final touches on the review soon. Fun game for very short bursts, not very good for your eyes, strains them like hell.
• Ended up getting the Pitt on Thursday, from a download code generously given to me by one of the GameRev editors. Haven't dug into that too much yet, did make my way to the Pitt already, though. Totally want one of those drillers!
• No World of WarCraft at all during the week or weekend - my guild fell apart due to lots of drama and the guild leader just up and quit the game. I don't feel like going back to my old one - long story - so I will stay 'guildless' for the time being. Studying how to freeze account for later play, if possible.
• Took advantage of Turbine's free play weekend promotion for Lord of the Rings Online. After taking two days to update the darn thing, played for a bit on Saturday and three or so hours (not consectively) on Sunday. Made a hobbit hunter, got her to level 8. Tried playing my old dwarf champion, but ended up getting lost inside the dwarf city. Having more fun with the hobbit though! I'm planning to play more of it today and tomorrow (when the promotion ends). I might just use this two month card I have lying around. LOTRO's a much more laid back game, less stressful that WoW. Runs a bit choppily on my machine, but nothing I can't stand waiting to load.
• Didn't draw much - which is a shame. I'll have to get back to it this week!
• Same with SFIV, too busy with other things to get to it. I have to rack up some more online matches and all of that. No plans on starting to play ranked matches as of it, though.
• No handheld gaming whatsoever - PSP served as a podcast machine for most of the week, lots of GDC stuff, lots of boring podcasts to be honest, only a few caught my attention. GiantBomb's was definitely among the better, while 1UP's at1UP thing was atrocious, putting too many smart assy indie developers in the same room - all of them trying to sound cool and snarky was just a pain to listen. I quit listening less than half way through.
• Worth mentioning - finished watching Firefly on Sunday - awesome, awesome series. The last episode is by far one of the best, the bounty hunter actor was great on it, hard to guess if the dude was just crazy or playing the characters along. Too bad the series died there. Oh well.

Not much else... have a good one, kids.

After seeing a fellow countryman going to work at Blizzard - Fausto DiMartini - now I see a very good friend and mentor following the same path. Alex Oliver, one of the most talented character creators, modelers and sculptors around, has finally made the leap to the other side! Irvine, CA will soon become crowded with so much talent going there, let me tell ya'. I'm extremely happy for Alex, he's been a great inspiration for me and one of the few responsible for pushing me ever so much towards personal and professional evolution. He's one of those guys that is always quiet, with their sketchbook under one arm... those are the most dangerous ones you can meet!

I'll make this quick with bullet points this time!

• Finished playing and writing a review for Wallace and Gromit's Grand Adventure: Fright of the Bumble Bees - review should be going up soon, after the embargo lifts on the game. My Peggle Deluxe review should also be coming this week on GameRevolution.com, keep an eye or two peeled for that.
• Giving Persona 3 FES a break since it started to feel like a chore, and restarted playing Okami on the PS2 - I had a save file from when I played the game at the time I bought it, it read 2:00:00, I decided to scrap it and start over. Gorgeous game so far, has a strong Zelda feel, I'm loving it - already crying for Clover's closure yet again. Feels like the game will stretch for quite a while, which is good!
• Also restarted playing Bully, on the PS2 as well. I want to follow ex-1UPer's Rebel FM's Game Club segment on the game that should be starting this week - for those who don't know, when these guys were at 1UP they had a podcast named 1UP FM in which there was a segment called backlog where they played an old game along with the users, commenting along the way, and they carried the idea over to the new site. I admit I did not like Bully a whole lot back when I got it, but now it's clicking with me - it's a lot simpler than GTA, less violent, and it's a bit more interesting now for me. I also had an old saved game from way back when, at the Halloween portion. Figured it wasn't that far off from the start, so I kept playing, now I'm at Chapter III, winter, a bit further than what the Rebel FM podcast guys are playing for this week. I'll probably play more during the week and get even further.
• Started playing Lock's Quest on the DS. Feels like this game will get way too hectic rather soon, so it might not last 'til the end with me, since getting hectic with a fragile piece of electronics and a stylus isn't exactly my idea of an enjoyable time. I'll wait 'til it gets to that point. It's a fun little game, good art, interesting premise so far.
• Finished reading Bernard Cornwell's 'Stonehenge' novel last weekend. I think it's worth mentioning that even though I really enjoy playing games, reading is a bigger passion for me, and that I tend to finish far more books than games during the year. Also, Cornwell's stories are structured in a way that would make great games, with lots of twists and turns, and relatable heroes and villains. 'Stonehenge' is a story limited to just one book, great one to start off reading his other works.
• In World of WarCraft, that 25 player Naxxramas raid never happened. Not even half of the people signed up showed, so I gathered some stragglers in the guild and ran the Halls of Lightning instance on heroic difficulty. I never ran that particular instance in that difficulty setting, and it showed - we died a couple of times at the final bosses. Remember that polar bear mount I mentioned? Got it on Tuesday, after nearly three months of trying daily. To hell with random drops... cool mount, though.
• Will probably skip Fallout 3's DLC 'The Pitt' tomorrow, as much as it pains me to do so - my XBLA points are almost dry, and I almost rather play the Broken Steel campaign with the new level cap before going to the Pitt. I'll play The Pitt if I get it for review - which I doubt it'll happen.
• Last, but not least, I am working on a piece of VERY nostalgic art that will make a lot of people happy. It's not close to being ready yet and will take another couple of weeks of work. I'll be sure to post about it as soon as it is out the door. I'm very, very happy with its progress so far!

There you go for now! Have a fun week, everyone!

Hey!

Just got two more reviews published on GameRevolution.com, one for EXIT 2 and the other for GTA IV: Lost and Damned. Both are still at the front page, but if you cannot find them, check them out at:

http://www.gamerevolution.com/review/xbox360/grand-theft-auto-iv-lost-and-damned

http://www.gamerevolution.com/review/xbox360/exit-2

I'm currently reviewing Peggle for XBLA. It's Peggle and it's simple. Not much to it, really!

As for games, currently playing lots of Street Fighter IV. I managed to reach fifty victories yesterday, and my current win ration is at 2/3, which is not bad, considering my skill at games in general. Having lots of fun, the game doesn't seem to be getting any older. I'm playing a lot online with Cammy and Zangief, trying to get the timing right for the ultra and super combos, albeit the sometimes annoying lag. Overall my crappy wireless network is holding up well, but the match search in the game is what makes it a bit enerving trying to play online. It's hard to find a match I can join, it's so bad, I can only manage to join about one out of every six matches in the list. Just reads 'Unable to play'. Other than that, I've ran into some people just plain quitting mid match, which is a bit pitiful - come on, I'm not that good, but stay til the end. When I'm getting beaten, I stay til the end and even try a rematch or two, and if I have to leave after the first fight, I tend to send a message explaining why.Overall, awesome game!

For other games; I'm still drudging through Persona 3 FES, and it's really starting to go thin on me. I'm not really going out of my way to grind, but my level is not low, still dying to some annoying enemies. Whoever invented the concept of the main character dying resulting in a game over screen or the insta death attacks needs to get a kick to the shin and to the head, probably at the same time. From watching the GiantBomb endurance runs for Persona 4, seems it fixed those issues, but you never know...I'm still gonna insist a bit on FES, even though it's almost to the point of going back to the box. Haven't gone back to Dragon Quest IV in over a week now, I plan to jump back to it sometime today or tomorrow. It's not because the game's bad, it's really because of my lazyness to play it.World of WarCraft is almost, almost out of steam for me, I skipped a Naxxramas raid run on Saturday. I'm going to give another, and probably last real raid run next weekend for Naxxramas in heroic mode (25 people instead of 10 to be coordinated, yay, yawn). Naxxramas is cool and all, but it gets old quick. Same goes to the other raids in the new expansion - haven't tried Eye of Eternity yet, since people only want to group with players that are experienced in it. Why the hell is that? I mean, everyone started at the bottom, not knowing the damn fights, so why enforce it on those starting out? It's really a serious issue, I've been trying to play that level for months now, with no success. Message to raid leaders wanting others to link their EoE completion 'achievements': go bury yourselves in a very deep hole!

Out of raiding, I managed to get into a very good group that killed all of the Horde capital city leaders, earning myself a black war bear mount, which is pretty awesome. The group was very well put together and organized, and we flew through those kills in about an hour - Orgrimmar was the first stop, then Thunder Bluff, Silvermoon City and Undercity. Undercity, ironicly enough, was the hardest fight, since Sylvannas keeps teleporting all over the room, making the whole group chase after her. Orgrimmar was supposed to be the hardest, but even though we went there at a prime server time, not much resistance was found. Oh well, they must have been doing the same to Alliance cities...

Another issue worth mentioning is how bloody annoying daily quests are in World of WarCraft, especially the ones that deal with random item drops. For quite a while now I've been doing daily quests in the Storm Peaks region in order to get the special mount, that depends on a random drop generator once you turn in whatever quest you've done that day. No sucess on that, on about one hundred turn ins. This random drop issue is also relived in some of the seasonal events that are taking place every now and then. Some of the quests depend on that type of item drop, and it takes days to get just an item, sometimes managing to be even worse, since some drops depend on two random instances. I.E. Valentine's Day. It had a random bag of candies drop, and out of that bag, eight types of unique candies could be looted, which were necessary for a particular feat. Now, I'm not one to get crazy after 'achievements', but the seasonal ones are special since a rare flying mount will be awarded to those who complete them all. Since I completed the events since Christmas, I thought I had a chance, but... no, random drops try to drive me mad. With Easter coming close, there will be another event, and for that, eggs will be hunted. Out of the random chance of finding an egg comes the other random chance of getting the items needed for the particular achievement. Not worth the hair tearing in my opinion. Turns the game into a chore.

My WoW gametime will expire in July. I'll probably give a couple of months' rest, then come back with a two month deal just to experiment with the almost-end-of-the-year content, and probably stop for good. I still have a two month game card for Lord of the Rings Online, and I want to get back to that, at least to finish that card up - before they come up with the brilliant idea of closing the servers or some crap like that.

I hope my PC can handle it one more time, since I had to take out a lot of upgrades I made over the years due to some lock-ups. It still locks up occasionally, but there's nothing else to revert back to. I'm now using my computer as it was back in 2002, which sucks.

Anyway, that's enough rambling for now. Have fun, everyone!

Don't worry, this will be quick. I am beat today, both physically and mentally.

Thanks to my friend - that if isn't a saint yet, should get his paperwork to the Vatican as soon as possible - Lee aka Dracula68, I was able to get Street Fighter IV relatively close to its release, that is, Wednesday last week. At first, I have to admit that I didn't get into it. Now, however, a whole week of playing later, I have to say I really like it. SFIV keeps the Street Fighter feel we all love, but modernizes how you play it. It's not as complicated to learn as before, moves are incredibly easy to pull off, and as a result, it's really enjoyable.

I started playing with lots of characters, but managed to settle with an old favorite, Cammy. I liked Cammy before not because of game play, but more for her design. She's really interesting, especially in the awesome Street Fighter II V anime. Her moves in this game are insane, and her combos are among the most powerful. I had fun playing with her at first. However, a sudden interest for Zangief started to form up. Yes, he's one of the easily exploitable characters in the game along with Seth. His lariat move destroys the computer controlled fighters no matter the difficulty setting, and his grapple based combos are insanely strong. I am working towards setlling a certain skill level with both Zangief and Cammy for playing online.

Hell, SF IV is actually a game I can start enjoying online, even though I tend to hate online competition games.

Ah yes, it's worth mentioningthe controller. I am using the regular ol' 360 pad, and it's not as bad as people make it out to be - the repeated circles for Zangief's moves can be pulled off with the analog stick, as with Cammy's quarter circles. I can see how it'd get a bit complicated to do the expert combos, but I am not even close to getting to that level at the moment. I might invest in a more specialized form of control in the future, but deep inside I wish I could just hook in my Dreamcast arcade stick - love that thing!

Now excuse me while I go finish up the hellish time trials!

It's no secret anymore that Rockstar added a few more anatomical parts to a certain character for a certain scene in GTA IV's DLC pack, Lost and Damned. Some outlets had a field day reporting on the scene, which begs the question - if game players didn't want the past Rockstar fiasco "Hot Coffee" to come to so much scrutiny, why make such a fuss over this new thing if nobody else did? "Hot Coffee" was a big deal because a lot of the non gaming got into the bandwagon talking about it, like a certain Florida ex-lawyer, TV news programs and newspapers... it even landed in a lawsuit. So is this new thing something to be bothered with? In a rational way, considering the situation in which the character's in in that particular scene, no. Considering the person's getting a massage in a sauna, anyone could assume this guy's naked. Heck, if you go to a strip club in Liberty City, you're bound to encounter topless girls.

Now, looking at another perspective, do we need to have full frontal nudity in order to convey the message of the scene? Probably not. Even if there's a strip club with partly naked women in the game, it's not an mandatory place to visit, save one time in the original GTA IV's story mode. This is a scene that cannot be skipped without missing mission detail exposure. When we imagine a sauna with men attending it, it's easy to imagine that they are naked, we don't particularly need to imagine details, only know that there's something under the towel. The scene would be fine insinuating he was naked, but not showing his nakedness directly, since insinuating something is mostly something much more artistic. And considering Rockstar is one of the masters of insinuation to a borderline - just look at Vice City's cutscene showing (but not "showing") Candy Suxx in the middle of a porno shooting - one must imagine why they would include such detail in an otherwise common mission briefing movie. Was it necessary? In my opinion, no. Why did they do it then, to bother people? I don't think so, not directly to bother people, but to garner attention, kind of like the little kid stripping himself in the middle of a crowded department store on sale, while his mother is busy fighting other women for a discount blouse. "HEY! I'm here, please look at me!!"

Since I'm reviewing the game for GameRevolution.com, some might ask if this particular scene is something worth mentioning. Almost sure it's not. The game has many other factors that merit it being one of the more popular downloads of last month, and while I'm still fairly early in its story mode, it's easy to see how one cutscene is just a piece of a huge pie, that some things leave a sour thought in our minds, but nevertheless is an overall experience worth remembering.

Even though I don't keep a nearly as organized backlog list like my friends Al and Austin do, the_antipode and MrCHUP0N respectively, I do enjoy knocking a few games off my 'to play' pile. I've been deligently working on a few RPGs over the past few days. The reason, most obviously, is that World of WarCraft kind of died down a bit for me due to some personal issues, mainly due to some guild problems when it comes to raiding. Raiding in WoW is becoming more and more a chore for me, and with unsupportive guild members being a bit beligerant and a lot like "back parts", raiding is one thing that will be less and less frequent for me pretty soon. I am kind of done with that, for now, anyway.

As for the RPGs I mentioned, they are Persona 3 FES and Dragon Quest IV. On the latter, I finally got unstuck from an annoying part that was driving me nuts and I'm about to start the main quest in chapter five. As for Persona 3, Tartarus, the game's main dungeon, proved to be tedious at first, but the game's story keeps bringing me back. In terms of progress, I just saved Fuuka from the midnight hour school portion with relative ease. Just waiting to see if she'll join... oh the tension. Will she? *tum tum tuuuuum*

Well that's it for now, will update as it goes!

Did The Maw gobble up much of my attention? Maybe. You'll have to read my thoughts on it to find out.

http://www.gamerevolution.com/review/xbox360/the-maw

If you want a completely zero story knowledge of Operation Anchorage before playing it, do not read this. This might include spoiling information.

The first official downloadable content for Fallout 3 - Operation Anchorage was finally released yesterday. After installation, a simple load with a savegame that is placed after the player left the Vault, a strange distress signal is picked up in the Dweller's journey about the Wasteland. A group of Brotherhood outcasts apparently found a secret stash of technology locked deep within a training complex. This training complex is special, though, since it recreates the events that took place in the communist Chinese invasion of Anchorage Alaska, one of the bigger and untold events in the Fallout universe. The big catch is that this secret stash can only be accessed by a complex computer, and look there, the Vault Dweller's Pip Boy 3000 wrist-mounted computer is perfect for this task. After stepping into a simulator, the war against China begins in the icy steppes of Alaska.

Operation Anchorage's main draw from the get go is to provide a sense of a holodeck like simulation - everything that occurs in it seems like it was thoroughly planned and is controlled up into the amount of health and ammo that can be picked up at a time, let alone the weapons. What cannot be looted will simply fade away instantaneously, including dead enemies. Objects that can be interacted with glow red - since nothing can be brought from outside the simulation, things like food, weapons, armor and ammo are provided in location. Health and ammo stations are scattered in convenient locations, normally after fire fights occur. And fire fights do occur. A lot. The focus in this downloadable content pack is fighting. It is a war, after all. The Chinese bring in their best infantry to stop the U.S's efforts - new units like the Dragoons can cloak themselves becoming invisible, while Inferno units cary flamethrowers. Sadly, in some spots, even the toughest of these fail disastrously due to some annoying intelligence problems. Sometimes they just stand around soaking bullets, just like your non playable allies. As part of the Army, you'll be able to choose from a cast of types of units to compose a strike team. Unfortunately, most of your choices will end up being nothing more than cosmetic, due to the fact that these soldiers seem to be more interested in taking in the scenery than fighting.

All looks great, as the original Fallout 3 content. Eventually you will notice a lot in common between the two, though, as the snowy ruins tend to look a lot alike, not only between themselves, but with the Washington D.C Wastelands', only in a different color palette. There is however a new selection of weapons to be used, including a very interesting pulse scoped rifle, and a non so interesting silenced pistol. The ninja armor shown in screen shots acts as a infiltration suit that is automatically given as you join the Alaskan fight. It does look out of place compared to Fallout's selection, but take into account the historical period - the apocalypse hadn't occurred yet! Power armors do make a presence, although they cannot be picked up. In terms of collectibles, sadly there are no bobbleheads to be found. Intel suitcases are hidden around, but add little to the story. Some odd holotapes can be picked up, which provide a little back-story from the soldiers' perspective in the fight, going from confident to very depressed journals.
Content-wise, a cliche has to be used - if you really enjoyed Fallout 3, you'll enjoy this DLC pack - if not, you might want to wait for the other two to come out. The three or so hours that this extension provides play a lot into Fallout 3's strengths and weaknesses. Whether that makes it worth the 800 Microsoft Points or not, it's up to your discretion.

Operation Anchorage is available for the Games For Windows and Xbox 360 versions of Fallout 3.