Those of you who have been following my blog for the past few weeks may remember that my power supply died out on me right around the beginning of February or so. I'm happy to say that after sending in my dead two-year-old power supply, Antec was able to send me a brand new replacement. Heck, it's not only brand new but they gave me a better model than my old one because they have discontinued it.

I'm really anxious to go on a PC gaming spree right now after all that time lost so I'm gonna keep the blog short. Don't worry though, I have pictures to fill up some space. Right Click > View Image for full size.

As you can see, I'm not the best at cable management. Oh well, it's a work in progress.

Lately I've been looking for a good RPG to get back into. A game where I can really get attached to the story and its characters, something that is desperately missing from most games today unfortunately. I then started to look back at what games I've played in the past that meet this criteria. And then it hit me. I have never truly been able to connect with a game until I played Final Fantasy VII, the first FF game I ever played, back when I was a mere 7-years-old.

The game sucked me in like no other. It was the first blockbuster game I ever played and though I can't remember the exact numbers, I believe it had one of the most successful releases ever in both Japan and in the United States. And so when I think back almost ten years ago, FFVII stands out as my favorite game of all time. Better than Starcraft, better than Metal Gear Solid, and better than Half-Life, all childhood favorites of mine.

I actually got started last night and played for a good hour or so. The character models are abysmal, the controls are awkward, and the audio is severely outdated but I looked past all that because deep inside, this is one amazing adventure that I honestly think everyone should be able to experience at least once. I hope to stop not only with FFVII when I'm done; I thoroughly enjoyed just about every Final Fantasy game from VII to X so I'm considering playing through all those games in order. Perhaps it's just a temporary sense of nostalgia but whatever it is, it's great to be back.

Tonight is that once in a year event that the world tunes in to watch. No, not the Super Bowl but the 80th Annual Academy Awards. I'll admit, I haven't gone to the movies many times in the past year. Heck, I've hardly even watched movies at all lately. I used to be quite the movie aficionado but it just seems like gaming has taken up all my movie watching time. Anyway, so I guess you could imagine why I'm not that excited about watching the Oscars today.

So why else am I not watching the Oscars? Simple, the Lakers are on at the same time. And even though this should be an easy win against the Seattle Sonics and there are many more Laker games to come, I just don't see the point in watching something that I don't have much of an interest in when something that does is on at the same time. Sure I'll be missing the buzz and the news that will be hitting the headlines tonight and tomorrow, but it's more of an afterthought for me.

My beloved Lakers, the best team in the NBA (that's right I said it), are on an absolute roll having won their past six games and an especially big one at Phoenix against Shaq and the Suns on Wednesday. The game just started so I'm gonna crash on the couch and watch the game. Oh and mark my words, Kobe will win his first MVP this year if the Lakers keep on rolling and end up on top in the West.

Been playing around with The Club since I got it and my review is up! I guess it's more of a first impression since I haven't played with it for long enough but I'll edit the review later on if need be. Please check out the review and recommend it if you like it; it's my first on Gamespot!

Hopped on the computer a little later than 4:00 PM today so I ended up missing a half hour or so of the live GDC coverage on Gamespot but all in all, it was a good show. What impressed me most was the gameplay footage of Bionic Commando, which has no set release date as of yet. Even though the demo that was shown was said to be "50% finished", it looked awesome. The grappling hook looked absolute kick--s and the rappling from branch to branch just looks like a ton of fun. Perhaps most eye-popping was the sheer eye candy of the game. The environments are flat out gorgeous and that's coming from an abysmal 100k video quality stream. I'll admit that I had hardly heard of this game before watching the GDC coverage but it is definitely a game I will be keeping my eye on now.

Tomorrow is that day that every hardworking man or woman, guy or girl, student or person with a job looks forward to, Friday. I know the whole idea that a week goes by faster is all in your head but this week felt particularly fast. Probably because I had Monday off but for the most part, aside from today, it's been pretty relaxing. For tonight I have calculated that I have around 4 hours total of studying and homework to do so I should be getting a head start on that as it is already past 7:00 here and I'll be watching the new episode of LOST later tonight but no, I'm here on Gamespot slacking off as usual.

No real plans for the weekend other than to relax and play some games and celebrate my big brother's birthday on Saturday when he turns the big 2-0. Not sure where we'll be going out to dinner yet but it'll probably end up being Todai, an all-you-can-eat Japanese seafood and sushi restaurant and my brother's all-time favorite eat out place. There's a reason why we only go there on special occasions or if we're all just really, really hungry, it's about $26 per person.

Nothing really big going down lately as you can see. I'll probably end up renewing my subscription to Gamefly on Saturday when it runs out as I have been pleasantly surprised by its service, despite some minor problems and annoyances which include a lost game in the mail and an unreadable disc that I had to send back. If I had to give Gamefly a score on a scale of 10, I'd probably give it a strong 9. For some reason though, they refuse to send out Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga despite the fact that it is at the top of my queue and is at 'high availability.' Instead, they sent out The Club which released on Tuesday. It only got a 7.0 from Gamespot which is pretty disappointing but I'll make my own judgment of the game when I play it myself which will hopefully be tomorrow if the post office can get it to my door.

I know I promised you guys a full-length review on BioShock a few weeks ago and first impressions on Professor Layton but unfortunately time has not allowed me to do so but I promise to get around to it soon. In fact, I'll get to my impressions on Professor Layton right now, short and sweet: It's a great game with an interesting storyline, the puzzles are all fun and different, and the art style and cut scenes are awesome. If you own a DS and are a fan of puzzle games or just appreciate a game with excellent production values and artwork, then by all means give Professor Layton a shot. I doubt you'll be disappointed; it's just an excellent overall game.

Well it's creeping around 7:20 now and I started the blog at around 7:08 or so and I haven't gotten around to eating dinner yet so I'll wrap up things here. If any of you guys are LOST fans, let me know of what you thought about the episode after it airs here on the west coast.

Jeff

It's coming. And it's coming this year.

So we finally got an official announcement on the release date of Gears of War 2 and to my surprise, it is indeed coming out November of this year. And I'm stoked. It was announced by Epic Games lead designer Cliffy B today at the Game Developers Conference and those who have followed the game remember that a sequel was announced "in the works" at last years GDC.

I for one am looking forward to some more gut-bursting chainsaw action so here's hoping you guys'll join me when it is out. Cheers.

Just an update on what's been going on lately with a few of my thoughts thrown around here and there so please disregard the generic title.

OK, where to start. The three day weekend was pretty sweet and I got in a good rest. Got to play some Final Fantasy VII and a little bit of Halo 3 but the focus of my weekend plans was to get some more sleep as it seems like I'm not getting any these days. School was pretty dreadful like any first day of the week but as my Math Analysis teacher put it, "Good news and bad news. Bad news is that the three day weekend is over. Good news is that the school week is a day shorter." Meh, I guess that's a pretty optimistic way of looking at it. I had two tests today, one for APUSH which my teacher surprised us with a Document Based Question (DBQ) essay with and Math Analysis.

I went over to the UPS store after school today with my dead power supply to ship over to Antec and went to Trader Joe's to get some groceries and man, were there a lot of people. And I do mean a lot. I mean it was just flat out hectic and it took forever to find a parking space. The dark sky made it seem like an ominous storm was approaching where, just like in the movies, the entire town comes to this one grocery store to get whatever they can get their hands on. Good news came though when I saw that my next two games for Gamefly came, Madden NFL 08 and Burnout Paradise. I popped in Madden and it took a while for my Xbox to read the game disc so I open it up, clean it with a cloth towel, pop it back in and now it says it is an unreadable disc. I repeated the same process and it still says it doesn't work so unfortunately I had to hop on the computer and report a broken/unreadable disc on Gamefly. Good thing though is that I don't have to wait for them to recieve back the game to send me the next game on my queue.

I guess I've just been experiencing some bad luck with Gamefly as my last game, Lego Star Wars, was lost in the mail and now this. Anyway, I figure I still have Burnout Paradise to keep me busy so I pop it in and watched a cool opening movie introducing me to the city and its locales in that hot Burnout girl's voice. Unfortunately, the game was not what I expected at all. I know this is a game that had a lot of mixed reviews but I took a gamble since it was a rental. Let me say that I absolutely loved all the previous Burnout games, particularly the last installment, Burnout Revenge. The open world idea was ambitious, if not just a great idea, however, it simply wasn't to my liking. There are quite a few problems, the most annoying ones I've noticed so far is that once you fail a race, even if I'm already half way done, there is no option to retry the race. Nope. I have to go all the way back. I also hate how unless if it's a Takedown race, it doesn't show the cool little slow motion cutscene when I take someone down. The car damage is a little annoying, I must admit. After just a few crashes, the car gets totaled and I lose any race I was in and have to go all the way back to the repair shop which is all the way at the corner of the city. I would've liked the repair shops to at least be scattered around as it is a big city. I don't want this to entirely be a rant blog post so I'll leave my criticisms with the fact that I'm just really disappointed. I hope I can give the game another chance as a half hour to an hour of experimenting isn't giving the game a fair shot but what I played was neither fun nor impressive.

Still at the top of my game queue are Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga and Devil May Cry 4. Hopefully they send out either of the two as the replacement for the unreadable Madden game. MLB 2K8 and The Club are two games that I've really been keeping my eye on so I'll be renting those for sure when they are out. Recently I've had an urge to get back to playing an MMORPG. No, not World of Warcraft. My brother and I used to play EverQuest extensively from 2000-2005 and it is by far one of the best experiences I've had in a game ever. I also played WoW for about a year and a half and trust me, I deeply regret it. I mean the game is pretty fun the first time through but once you hit the level cap, be prepared for a repetitive and monotonous grind for gear. Above all, I think the community annoyed me the most with the constant Chuck Norris references and whatnot. I have, however, been keeping my eye on EverQuest 2. I never got into the game even after being such a dedicated EQ1 player because it had such a bad launch with the biggest problem I heard being that it simply wasn't very fun. Honestly, I don't even know if I have that much free time to devote to an MMO with AP Exams coming in May but I've always wanted to play a game again that can keep me interested for a long time as lately I haven't been able to really get attached to a game for more than two weeks.

Geez, did I really type that much? I should start to warn myself not to let my mind roam free like that but if you read all that, I applaud you. You should feel good about yourself for surviving that monstrosity.

Jeff

[EDIT] I recieved a message on Xbox Live from my good friend here at Gamespot, Hexogen, stating that my profile was set to private and so I got that fixed.

After spending a lazy Saturday afternoon yesterday thinking about what I should do other than just laying around doing nothing, I decided to look through my game shelf. Starting from left to right on the top shelf, I skimmed through my Xbox 360 games, PS2 games, then working my way to the second shelf I laid out my fingers and looked through my DVD collection perhaps in search of a movie... anything really to keep me busy for a few hours until the barbeque. I finally made my way through the shelves to the part that I rarily look at all these days, the one part of my shelf that has really collected dust above all the other stuff. It was my ancient PlayStation collection complete with pre-2000 classics like Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Metal Gear Solid, and what's this? Final Fantasy VII, VIII, and IX, all black labeled and saturated with dust.

I then began to have a sudden nostalgia rush. I mean playing through each of those three games were all an amazing experience in their own right. They all featured distinct and engaging stories, interesting characters that you actually cared about, and a lengthy adventure with a classic and perhaps cliche Final Fantasy style ending to top it off. And what better way to feed off one's nostalgia craving than to relive an old experience. So I'm gonna give it a go and I'm not sure how long my interest will last but I'm gonna pop in my FFVII disc and see what happens. It's great to be back.

Spanish 1: A
AP English: B
Design: A
AP U.S. History: B
Trigonometry: B
Chemistry: B

Semester GPA: 3.667 (weighted)

All in all, pretty good I think considering how lazy I've been this year. There was only a total of two A's in APUSH anyway.

In other news, I have pretty much confirmed that Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga has been lost in the mail and sent in a lost game query to Gamefly. Haven't gotten around to playing Professor Layton yet so hopefully I can get around to that either tonight or in the next few days.

This is kinda off-topic but am I the only one who actually likes the taste of Post Shredded Oats cereal?

I just picked up Professor Layton at Wal-Mart earlier today. I had never heard of this game until maybe a week ago when all the ads started pouring in around Gamespot. So I looked into the game and it actually seemed really interesting. The whole mystery and puzzle aspect of the game seems pretty fun and this genre has had its success on the DS so I'll see how the game is starting tomorrow as I haven't even opened it yet. Expect a blog with my first impressions within the next couple of days if I have enough time to get around to play it. Damn two tests to study for this week.

In other gaming related news, for whatever reason, I haven't recieved Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga yet and all my games from Gamefly have arrived in usually two days tops. I'm guessing if it hasn't gotten here by now then it is probably lost in the mail but I'll wait it out a few days before I jump to that conclusion. Sending back Avatar: The Burning Earth tomorrow, hopefully they'll send me either Turok or Devil May Cry 4 next.