I know it doesn't rhyme, but I never said I was good at ryhming, or spelling for that matter, so what can you do...

But I know I have become truly addicted to music games. Guitar Hero 2, 3, Aerosmith, and now world tour on its way from handy dandy ebay. As well as Rock Band, track pack vol 2, AC/DC track pack, and now RB2 on its way also from ebay. I beat a couple expert level songs for the first time last night, got through drums and vocals on medium, and I am even a few songs away from passing the hard difficulty on GH 3, but 2 of the last few songs have stopped me dead in my quest for a few more achievements.Luckily my buddy Shaun is better than me and should be able to pass them for me. On top of that I should have some more co-op points soon as the venerable N8 is finally on xbox live after 4 years of me asking him to join, as well as my brother in law joining the same weekend. Me thinks some gaming in is my future. Plus I am going to get Halo Wars of course, so if you need me, I will be in my man room rocking out...

wow, I haven't posted in almost a year. crazy how time flies when you are dying slowly at work...

I still play regularly on my 360 and reading back through these ds posts makes re remember that I have one so will probably dig that out for some fun times. But if you want to find me you have to catch me the few minutes a week I spend on the forums looking for achievements, and the few hours a week I spend rocking out or killing fools or searching for stuff on the 360. Friend requests are welcome, especially if we are playing the same games and you need a co-op friend.

My wife and I coach volleyball and the team we coach together got us a blue DS so now we both have one. They also got us Are you smarter than a 5th grader and brain challenge so maybe my wife will play something besides Brain Age 2. After selling Zelda and Hotel Dusk and getting 100% through Professor Layton, I realized I had nothing but time wasters and Mario to play on vacation next week, so I stopped for some travel ds game cases and Mario Kart DS. I have loved this game since we used to skip classes in college for all day/night Mario Kart 64 marathons, and it sounds like the ds version is just as good. I am now prepared for the eventual sunburn that will keep me inside at least some portion of time while in mexico. Wish me luck.

Now that the weather is getting nicer, it's time to stay inside and play some video games. So I finished Zelda on the DS, then used gamespot and their wonderful walk throughs to pound through Hotel Dusk. Both on ebay and sold for $20+, which is not as much as I should get, but more than trade in, so that's nice. Dusk was fun, and I liked the story, but I got so tired of saying the wrong thing, I plowed through the walk through just to see the ending before my ebay auction ended. I have since ordered Professor Layton and the Curious Village and since I have to be gone all next week for work, I plan to steal the wife's DS again. Maybe I'll have a chance to finish Mario as well.

As for the 360, I am about 30 min away from being 85% done in Lego Star Wars, and I think that is far as I am going to go because the last 2 achievements just aren't worth the hours it will take to get the rest of the gold bricks and get to 100%. Then its time to finish the Simpsons as I am still only about 10% through that, and hop back into Conan just in time to lose my current challenge on xbox360 voice. A challenge that didn't have someone gain 4000+ points would be a nice change of pace, considering I am still not at 10k yet and will never stoop to 2k6 games to get points and couldn't muster enough time to finish that many games even if I was sick for a week. But I digress, and realize I don't know what that means, so back to work.

As you can see from the new banner above, I can't wait for lego indiana jones. This series is such a great idea that I hope they go past star wars, indiana jones, and batma. It would be fun to play as spider man, james bond, or a number of other characters.

I finally had a chance to fire Zelda Phantom Hourglass back up when I was gone over the weekend and stole the DS from my wife. I didn't realize it but was just about at the end of the game already, so I was able to beat it the same day with a little FAQ help. You end up not really needing to find everything in the game to beat the last level, which is nice. I hope they make another Zelda DS title. Games that use all stylus are fun and I would play another one. Speaking of that, Hotel Dusk is frickin hard to not say the wrong thing and have to restart. FAQ here I come...

As for trying to finish Conan's achievements, some of these are proving pretty hard. I can beat the game, but it will take multiple game completions to master all the various weapons, get the 1000s of different kills you need, and find all the treasure chests, power-ups, and topless maidens. Good for replay value, bad if you are in an achievement challenge.

360voice.com allows you to register for free and then it tracks your achievements and gameplay to write a little blog about your gaming automatically. It also has 360 specific forums as well as a new challenge sponsored by Old Spice that you can sign up for and win daily drawings for Msoft points, tshirts, Zune players, and more. Plus in the challenges you compete with 9 people (or more) for stuff like best buy gift cards, msoft points, etc. but the beauty is that someone in that group of 10 wins.

So this is not just a chance against a million people for a tshirt, but an actual contest against 9 others to see who can gain the most achievement points in 2 weeks. The last challenge I was in, a friend won a $50 best buy card. And now I joined a challenge that needs 8 more people, and the winner gets 4000 Msoft points. You must be under 9000 points and agree not to cheat or just pop in 10 2ksports games or any other games you can simulate for a free 1000 points. I know some registrations are dumb, and there are a million sites out there, but this one is legit and I plan to keep using it and signing up for new challenges every couple weeks even if I don't win. The urge to go back and finish old games, try arcade games, and actually play the games I have just bought increases a lot when I know I might win something for playing.

Zelda:Phantom Hourglass is my favorite game of the year. Better than Halo 3 and even better than Lego Star Wars (man I'm a geek) and the other games I have sitting on my shelf. Everyday I mean to play my xbox360, and since I got it back from Msoft at Christmas, I have played the 360 on 3 or 4 days, and Zelda the other 16-20 days when I have had time to play a video game. It helps that I can take it on the road of course, but even at home, I turn on the DS instead of the 360 unless my wife gets to it first. I hope more DS games come out that are all stylus.

Conan and MMOs are making me jealous that I am not still in college. We had Diablo and C&C and Goldeneye and we played those for more hours than we attended classes I think. I would have loved for a social RPG for the hours when I didn't feel like hashing it out with roommates for goldeneye and mario kart. I was just about to order Conan, have been thinking about trying the trial of WOW, and was pining for online Star Wars from the day I heard about it, but I end up not buying these because I don't have the time to be an active clan member. Same as Halo 3, where it is hard to suit up knowing that everyone else is level 40 and I haven't played since November (stupid broken xbox...). If anyone has a part time job available to play MMOs all night so I can justify it to my wife, let me know. :)

Not really spoilers, so feel free to read away without ruining your expereince.

I'm not sure how far I am through this game, but I have played it a bunch over the past few weeks, unlocked a handful of stuff on the collection screen, and am currently exploring the ghost ship, and I haven't even unlocked the other 1/2 of the map yet. I am thinking this game is my favorite of 2007 even though I loved Halo 3 and Lego Star Wars and a bunch of other games. I have also never been a big handeheld console fan going off the thought that bigger is better, but I think I stand corrected. And I am going to get a ton more hours out of this game, which puts the value way up there. Plus, using the stylus for all the moves has been very addictive and fun, as well as talking and blowing into the mic for actions like putting out candles or haggling with merchants. I will probably write a review which I haven't done in months because I like this game so much.

I was sad most of the month as my Xbox360 caught the freezing/red ring of death virus and after being very frustrating most of November, it died in Early December. I thought it would be January before I got it back after a week delay waiting for the freezing to turn to the red lights, then a week to ship me the shipping box, and an estimated repair time of 3-4 weeks plus shipping time back to me.

But the last part of that was not to be and I am a believer in Santa Claus again. Microsoft sent me a NEW XBO360 to replace the broken one and I got it at Christmas. How cool is that? I just spent a long lunch downloading stuff that I missed and should be all set to ignore the DS games I just bought this weekend for Christmas. They even gave me a free month of xbox live.

Thanks Xbox.

I have been lucky enough in the past few months to suffer from the following:

loss ofa hard drive: I am currently using my old PC that is already running off it's second hard drive since this happened a year or two ago to me as well (THANK YOU VERY MUCH DELL)

need to upgrade memory and video card: This of course was onmy new computer which is in the shop. I didn't have the juice to run the new C&C, and upon entry into my computer I found I didn't even have a seperate video card. (AGAIN, THANK YOU DELL)

inability to access my memory stick: Not only can I not access pictures, documents, or any other saved files because anything done in the last year or two is on the computer in the shop, but now the only place I had some of that stuff saved was on my memory stick as I alternated between work and my home backup computer. If I can't access it I have to re-create all kinds of stuff from memory. And not only does my memory suck, but some of the stuff like pictures would be impossible to get back.

red lights of death: My xbox360 is less than 2 years old and since I work so much, I rarely play and so it has got the equivilant of 6 months of good quality use. And right after I bought 4 new games (see now playing list for games I am now NOT playing) and now that I finally have some time to put in on Halo 3 multiplayer, my 360 started freezing last month. Xbox support recommends continuing with the problem til you actually get the red lights of death, and then they fix it for free. AND IT TAKES OVER A MONTH TO GET IT FIXED INCLUDING SHIPPING TIMES. That paragraph and the fact that my blood pressure just went up typing this leads me to seriously consider a PS3 for Christmas and definitely means I will be hitting the store for a copy of Zelda for the new DS I just bought for my wife to play Brain Age with.

inability to use new printer with old computer: Are you starting to read a trend here? Combine all this with the fact that I just had a TV repaired this summer and bought a new TV while I waited the month for the necessary part to come in, and you will realize I will be quickly looking for a book review site pretty soon instead of a video game review site. Plus with all the rumors about Jeff leaving Gamespot because of a bad review (I think there has to be a little BS to that rumor), I am hating the world of technology right now and think it all leads to a theory I have that Bill Gates is in fact decendant from Emperor Palpatine.