Well I got to see the 4th quarter of the UT-TX Tech game and man it was awesome but a stomach punch at the same time. We lost and should have won the game because one of our freshman safeties dropped an interception that would have sealed the game for us. At least we are top five in the AP and 4th in BCS so I can't complain too much. There is still lots of football to be played.

Other than that I am playing Far Cry 2 and loving it. There are some part sof the game that frustrate me, like stealth mechanics are not so good and there is no way to get past checkpoints on the roads other than avoiding them completely or killing everyone or trying to outrun the trucks they send out to you. I have seen other people post the same complaints and the general consensus is that it would be nice to be able to use your conflict diamonds to bribe the checkpoint guards to let you pass. And in the stealth department what I mean is if you kill a guy with your knife in the dark somehow everyone knows where you are at and will come after you. I wish they had tweaked that more to let you "ninja" guys instead of either running and gunning or sniping. But other than those minor quibbles the A.I. is pretty competent and how the game presents itself is very solid. Oh, one more complaint is the story mode needs more filler and backstory of your charachter to fully apreciate the plot. That's just my two cents. Ok guys, that is all for me now, I'll check you guys later!

Well guys, I have finally bought The Orange Box, Sid Meier's Civ. Revolution and Final Fantasy: Crisis Core for the PSP and PS3. I have been playing Madden online for a couple weeks now and am having a blast with that, but overall I still have my occasional rants about that game's shortcomings. Been busy with School as well and cannot wait for the holidays!

I still have not played much with MGS III: Snake Eater, so I need to do that once I get caught up on my homework. Then I can sit and enjoy MGS IV. I will update as soon as I get some good playtime with the game. I just have to be in the mood to play the MGS games, you can't just sit and play for an hour. You have to have a couple to devote to the game because it sucks you in.

On a side note, tonight Texas hosts Missouri which I think is going to be a great game. I am a huge fan of UT and hope they really put it to Chase Daniel. Go Horns! For those that are interested the game starts at 8pm eastern time on ABC, check it out!

Well that is about all dudes, I'll hopefully get some time in with The Orange Box and the other games I have bought. Ok guys peace out, see ya on the flip side.

I am now in my senior year as a quarterback at The University of Miami (FL). To tell you the truth this is one of the coolest game modes I have played in a sports game. There are of course some flaws that could be ironed out but the overall fun of the mode is what makes it so appealing. You start off as a high school senior that has taken your team to the state playoffs and how you play affects the scholarships offered to you. I won my state championship and got a scholarship to each of the top 25 schools in the country. I chose to go to Miami because they offered me the starting job right off the bat and I like a challenge.

My freshman year I ended up with only two losses and missed out on the ACC championship game but won my bowl game (Gator I think). My sophmore year I lost once, won the ACC and played in the Orange Bowl and won. I also won the Heisman leading my team in rushing and passing. Junior year I was poised to go to the national championship but lost to Duke because I was knocked out of the game with a sprained ankle. I still won the conference and got another bid to play in the Orange Bowl and won it. Now in my senior year I lead the nation in Heisman polls and my team is ranked 2nd. It is time to bring it home!

What I love so much about the game is you only play yourself, meaning I only have control at quarterback and don't even get to pick the plays. It is a great twist to making the campus legend experience fresh while giving you a true sense that football is a team sport and you have to trust your team to help you to victory. I can't wait to port my player over to Madden!

But there are some flaws. Practice is not helpful at all, there is no change to your stats and attributes; there really is no benefit to actually attending practice. I just simulate all practice sessions. Also there are limited things you can do outside of practice, like: hitting the gym, going to the library, visiting the trainer and studying your playbook. At least these augment your attributes. Really outside of playing the games the mode is pretty boring, at least the gameplay is pretty realistic and challenging when you play upper echelon teams.

Things I would do to improve on the mode is make practice enhance your abilities, like for a skill offensive player your big play vision increases. For example at QB when a reciever is open he flashes a color to tip you off to pass to him. Or a RB can slow time down to spin and juke off people easier. This can be called in the zone, if you acomplish some goals in practice over the week you unlock this. And also give more options to what you can do with your free time, like partying or going to meetings for your fraternity and such to help increase your popularity and thus your fanbase at home and away games. There are other things I can think of but EA wants to keep this E-rated I think.

Overall grade: B+, almost but not quite. A few more improvements and I would definitely think about buying the game.

Well I sat down this weekend with the latest copy of NCAA Football 09 and I have to say that I am a little disappointed with the game overall. As far as animations go, the players look much better and move more fluidly, but the developers hamstrung this by eliminating the highlight stick and slowed the players down. I feel they should have kept the highlight stick because finesse runners don't truck, so that makes that function useless for WRs and smaller RBs. The feel of the game is alot more authentic with CPU defense being much more intelligent, I now feel a sense of accomplishment when I score on the AI. But it is not punishing either, it forces you to take what the defense gives you. Stopping the AI on offense is much more difficult this time around but sometimes it is cheap, like RBs tossing defensive linemen, and WRs tossing LBs. Also it is impossible to stop the pass inside the five, not because the AI beat my coverage, but the AI of my defense just not trying to swat the pass, no jumping, it is very frustrating. Also it is impossible to get a good pass rush with less than six defenders blitzing, I understand that you don't get more than two to three sacks a game on average, but getting in the QBs face to pressure errant throws for INTs is nonexistant. Hopefully EA will address these issues and make the game more of a chess match, like the real life game is.

I was looking at getting a new gamer PC or general purpose laptop, anyone have suggestions? I would probably look to spend less than $2,000, so nothing over the top. I also am looking into building my own PC for gaming too, so if you guys have any experience with this, I would be happy to hear from you, thanks!

Anyone else seen the video of heavy rain? I just watched it from Leipzig and it looks amazing. I looks as though you won't be able to control your character in the way we think control but rather control by different means. I personally would love to hear more about the control scheme because you can interact with everything in the enviroment but you don't use the analog stick to move the player over to a object. Strange right? But another awesome feature was that there is never a game over, meaning if your character dies the game keeps going. I recommned everyone to search heavy rain and watch the latest video from Leipzig and read the latest report on it as well. I hope this game will be a big step forward in terms of interactivity and just total involvement with a game and its characters emotions.

Well I went ahead, bit the bullet and finally picked up the new slim PSP, in GOW red! It is pretty sweet, it feels half as heavy as the original PSP, similar to the difference between a DualShock and Sixaxis controller. Watching Superbad on it is awesome, I find myself watching certain clips when I'm at work to get a laugh. As far as games go, GOW: Chains of Olympus is awesome, and as far as I can tell, load times are better on the newer model. I have to admit, since the new one is lighter, it almost feels cheaper, like it is not as good in quality, but that is just sound engineering from Sony. I am thoroughly enjoying it, it comes in handy when at work, or just when the parents occupy the LCD. Anyone else used the new PSP yet?

Well I finished up MGS II yesterday afternoon, man can I say that it seemed alot easier this time around. I beat this one in about 11 hours time on the normal difficulty setting watching every cutscene. The metal gears and final boss battle were much easier than the original, mainly I think because the graphics were better and being able to shoot in first person helped out alot as well. I loved being able to use the weapon you end up getting at the end, don't want to give out a spoiler cause toolz is playing through as well. (it is a bad ass weapon though) So now I'm onto the next in the series, and I have to say I can't remember much from when I played it previously; this possibly could be from the fact that me and my sister cooperatively beat the game, so some parts I can't recall cause I never played them. So probably 40% of the game is going to be new for me, so this is going to be a treat! Its funny to go forward and actually lose abilities because it is set in the 60's. Things like the soliton radar have not been invented yet so you can't grace by guards as easily as you could in the first two. And almost every gadget you have has a battery meter on it so that is another variable you have to consider, you can't just leave the device turned on the entire time, rats! So I have only gone through the initial beginning cutscene and first 5 minutes or so of actual gameplay. Not much to report as far as likes or dislikes, except that the camera is no longer fixed, YAY! It almost feels awkward not having a fixed camera because of me getting used to not having one. But this will be a big help in looking around, so thank you Kojima! There are lots of new elements in this game like stamina, food, camoflauge, and CQC that will surely add to the enjoyment of the game. I will be updating on how I feel these mechanics help or hinder the gameplay as I progress. Wish me luck, talk at you guys later.

Well I'm about 60% through MGS II. I just passed the first Solidus Snake encounter and so far so good. I hjave played through this game before but there is some stuff I was fuzzy on, now that I have played the original everything is making alot more sense. I can't wait till I finish and can move on to the third and then number four. I can definetely see why I liked this game so much when I first got it. Superb storytelling and good action sequences; plus there aren't those cheap game sequences that plagued the original. Partly this is from the new system hardware, which improves the artificial inteligence of enemies and so the difficulty of the game does not just ratchet up game cheapness. This I like alot, In other news, I went and saw the Dark Knight on Saturday, it was awesome! I can see why it is breaking records, I could have stayed seated and watched it all over again right then and there. And there are only a few things that I can do over again, playing games and, well I think we all know what the other is...:). Hopefully I can finish up #2 by this weekend and then move on to #3. Other than that I have been playing GT5 Prologue, which is awesome as well. That is about it, I will talk at you later, Cheers!

Well guys I finally managed to sit down long enough to play me some MGS and beat it. I finished the game on normal difficulty, getting through it in about 14 hours. The last boss battles were pretty intense, I have to admit that they were even a little cheap. But after a few go arounds, there are tricks to beating them, and anyone that is stuck on them I might be able to lend a helping hand. I don't know if my strategy is the best, but it worked for me. The ending is a little cheesy, but again, this was when Kojima just started out, so his directing ability has definitely gotten better over the sequels. I have beaten MGS2 when it first came out, but I want to play through it again to refresh the story in my mind. Other than that things are going pretty good in my life. I just registered for classes on Thursday, so I'm finally getting back to school! I cannot wait. Another reason it took me so long to beat MGS is because I am still hooked on COD4, I just can't get enough of that game! Well fellow gamespotters, I will post another blog here in a little while, cheers!