I'm still in my old school craziness phase. I'm near the end of FF VI, trying to level my characters up to 99 right now. For the first time ever I'm deliberately holding off getting all the espers until I can utilize the speed boost in Odin. It's nice seeing Locke's speed at 81. It would have been higher had I had the speed +2 option. I wanted to give him at least some magic power and some strength.

I also imported a DS Lite from Japan. It's light blue and beautiful. My phat DS had two stuck pixels and this one only has one. They don't really bother me so I can live with it. I must say I baby it more than my old DS. I have a case for it and I keep a microfiber cloth in the case...the case I also imported from Japan (it was $9 after shipping) and it has three slots for games. I think this is very useful to have "pick up and play" games like Brain Age ready. I had to bring my car in this week to the dealer and to kill time I played Brain Age and Tetris. Never thought I would get into the Touch Generation games so much.

Last week I also went to Comic Con and got to try a bunch of games that haven't been released:

1. Castlevania Portrait of Ruin- a very cool game and a lot better looking than the screenshots say. It plays like the other portable Castlevanias but you can switch characters, which has some neat potential.

2. Final Fantasy 3- I've had the luxury to have beaten the original on the NES so I know it's a good game. I'm floored by the remake so far in a way that most people won't be able to appreciate. Let me just say that for its time the story was pretty in depth and they made it even better now.

3. Slime Mori Mori 2 or "Rocket Slime" in the US- This game is #1 on my birthday list (it comes out the week before my bday). I had so much fun playing as this cute little slime firing misc. stuff out of a tank. I even shot myself out of the tank so I could wreck the engine of my opponent. The people at Squenix have been complete jerks leaving nothing but a teaser site and I wish they would share more. I've seen pictures of the characters and a few screen shots, but the game I played wasn't a demo. I was just running around and happened to get into a battle. They better have more to show come August....

4. Dirge of Cerberus- I had issues with this game. It looks fun, but I couldn't get the controls down and the camera angles were really weird. I'm used to the "down is up and up is down" aiming and got tripped up so many times (I know that sounds stupid but I'm a creature of habit). It also seemed weird that R1 was the fire button for my gun. I guess I would have liked a little bit better explanation. They had a panel for the controls, but it was on the little stand where the controller was. I had to keep looking down and was getting beat up. They needed the controls up on the TV, and it was a weird control scheme! I think I was hoping that I could pick up the game and it would play like Devil May Cry. I'll still give this a chance and blame me for it, but I don't know about this one.

5. Phoenix Wright: Justice for All- I wish I had more to say about this one. I only got to play it briefly because I started to sick and clausterphobic. From what I played of it it was a lot like the original which means it will probably be awesome.

6. Mega Man ZX- I lie, I didn't actually play this one, my fiancee did. However I'm interested in it and he really liked it. He said it played a lot like the Mega Man Zero games, so if you're a fan of those, you should like this.

Man the DS has to be one of the greatest things ever. I'm so sorry for ever calling it a gimmick. I'm eating crow like it's nobody's business.