So, I feel like it's been a while since I blogged. I'll try to make this short and sweet, but I won't make any promises.

New games I got a couple of weeks ago:

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Hmm. that's a lot of games bringing my total to 99. I've only started on FFIII and I haven't really played it that much. I've been trying to put some time into HL2. Now the only game that's out that I want (currently) is Unreal Tournament III.

I beat Portal, which to a few of you is old news, but it makes me feel accomplished :D. To date, I've played 3 online matches on TF2. Yeah, not too much, but I did enjoy playing as a Medic and doing a control point map.

I got tickets for my birthday to see Mamma Mia! at the end of the month,which is awesome since I enjoy going to the theater.

Also, I got my Wii back so I might actually play SMG now... or later :P

Well, I think I did a fairly good job of giving a summary.

Oh yeah... Many thanks to VonDouche for making my banner.

I got home yesterday and I got a package that contained my new Dual Shock3!So, of course I had to try it out immediately. The main thing that I'll have to get used to is how easy it is to press R3 now. Some fights on Resistance became aggravating due to the fact that I had accidentally zoomed in on an opponent without meaning to. (Maybe this is why my right stick wasbroken in the first place, lol)Other than that, I'm loving it so far. Only a few games support rumble right now, so I only tested it on Resistance, then went on to play The Orange Box, which doesn't support rumble.

I started playing Portal last night, and it's different than what I imagined. So far the game is fairly easy, but I'm only in the 3rd chapter, but I love the puzzle style. I also played a little Team Fortress 2. I've only played CTF on 2Fort so far because I'm trying to learn the map and classes at the same time.

I only got one game for Christmas, Super Mario Galaxy, but I still haven't been able to play it because my Wii is still on loan. I was supposed to get it back a couple of weeks ago, but my friend forgot it. I'll probably get it back this weekend and get a chance to play it.

I started playing Half-Life 2 and it's pretty fun. I haven't played the original Half-Life so I was fairly confused in the beginning of the game as they just drop you off in a train and you are pretty much left to yourself to figure out what to do. After running away from guards and meeting up with Alyx the game started to make a little more sense, but now I wish I had played the first one. I might stop playing 2 and get it so I can know what's going on without just reading about it.

I did notice slight dips in the framerate every once in a while, but it wasn't significant enough to affect my gameplay. I'm only in the third chapter, so there's not a whole lot of action yet (plus, I'm playing on easy :lol: ) so I can't say if there's issues later on in the game or not. HL2 was the only game I attempted to play in The Orange Box so far, so I have no say on the other games yet.

I also want to start Portal because I've been hearing a lot of good things about it and I love puzzles and I heard the comedy is pretty great so I think I would probably like it.

I also ended up getting Call of Duty 4 because it was on sale for $39.99 on Amazon.com, plus it was free shipping and no tax, so that's a deal I couldn't refuse.

I popped in Forza 2 last night to play with my nephew and... well, I suck at it, so after about 20 minutes of spinning out we switched to the Burnout Paradise demo which is still awesome, but doesn't have local multiplayer. I let him do his thing anyway since I had already played it for quite a few hours. Too bad we can't both be on XBL at the same time or we could race together. I have to figure out how to make that work, but I think it exceeds our bandwidth when we do that sort of thing.

Anyway, this turned out to be a much longer blog than I expected so I'm going to stop here. Have a great holiday! (I can't believe tomorrow is Christmas already :shock: )

So the resounding vote was for the The Orange Box. I picked it up yesterday, but I won't play it until tomorrow since I've been procrastinating and I have my State Boards tomorrow. :? I've never played a Half-Life game before, so we'll see how it goes.

The new Burnout Paradise demo is pretty awesome. I played for 3 1/2 hrs online last night instead of studying. :| It includes challenges, online, and voice chat. Good times.

That's actually all for now. Until next time...

The past couple of days have been slow gaming-wise. I've been very tired amongst other things, but before that I was playing games like there was no tomorrow. I got the 100% collection on Beautiful Katamari on Monday and now I'm just working on getting some better scores. It's still fun, but I'm not as driven to play as I was before. Maybe now I can finish Ratchet & Clank.

I'm thinking about a new game:

I'm leaning toward Uncharted: Drake's Fortune.

QUESTION: Has anyone played the Orange Box that's never played another Half-Life game? What was your opinion?

Friday night I tried out the new Resistance: Fall of Man maps. I think they'll grow on me, they were pretty fun, but I need to play them a couple more times to get my full impressions. Actually, I had Rock band on the mind. I wish they would release a Rock Band soundtrack.

I can't really play Rock Band at night, well the drums at least. I hate that because that's when I like to do most of my online gaming. I started the hard tour for drums last night and did poorly for the most part. I thought this might be partly due to the fact that I was trying to play softly so as not to disturb the rest of my family (which rendered unsuccessful). Unfortunately, when I tried some of the songs again today I found out that I just need a lot of practice. Also, my red drum seems to be slightly less responsive than the others; I'm thinking about getting it replaced while they'll still do it for free.

I think I rolled about 50 levels of Beautiful Katamari this weekend and I need to roll about 50 more to complete the 200 request achievement. I'm actually doing better on the DLC levels than the original ones. I've gotten 100 points on all of them except Fancy & Schmancy's. I always roll up expensive stuff I don't mean to. :| I think I could get a better score with some very careful planning, though. Also, when I get the 1.5 million km achievement I'm going to work on getting 100% of the collection, which I only reached 97% yesterday. I think completing some of the levels a few more times will bring up my collection at least 1% more, then I'll go on an item hunt.

I downloaded PAIN on Thursday, but really didn't do much beside the tutorial. I'll probably have a better impression of it later.

Since I've spent... well let's just say, a lot of money on myself lately, I'm going to focus on Christmas presents and such for other people. I can't spend anymore money on new games. Yeah, we'll see how long that lasts :P Right now I'm pretty satisfied with Rock Band, plus there are supposed to be new maps for Resistance out this week and PAIN! I hope Sony sticks to their word on this one, I've been wanting to play that game for a while.

I'm almost finished with Ratchet & Clank, but I haven't touched it since I got Rock Band, I'll have to play it soon, I don't think it should take me more than 3 hours to complete from where I am now. I downloaded the extra content for Beautiful Katamari and it's pretty fun. Either it's easier than the original content or I've just gotten slightly better. I still am working for those 50 hr and 100 hr achievements, but I figure I'll get them somewhere along the way as well as the 200 request one.

Going back to Rock Band... Green Grass & High Tides is a freakin hard song to play on the drums, it's evil (I'm playing on medium for now). The song is 10 minutes long, by that time my leg is tired from all the pedal stomping. I will not be defeated!

The Orange Box was looking like a nice addition for the PS3, but apparently it still has a bunch of glitches, I think I'll have to wait for the review on that one now. Oh, and they are finally releasing the Shivering Isles expansion pack for Oblivion in December, not that I've gotten very far in the game anyway, but it's nice that they considered giving it to us. :D

Ok, I'm sure half of you know what this blog is going to be about, but for those of you who are oblivious to the gaming world around you, it's about Rock Band. I'll keep it brief because I know there will probably be non-stop blogs about Rock Band for a little while. I pre-ordered it at my GameStop, but decided to pick it up at Wal-Mart in case it wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Mind you, I had high expectations for this game.

At Wal-Mart there were only a few people in front of me in line and there were only 6 PS3 special edition sets. No X360 versions were being sold at all.

Anyway, the point is, it is that good. Rock Band, well... ROCKS! I had an opportunity to play all of the peripherals in the 6 or so hours I spent dedicated to the game today, and they are all good. Minus the time it took me to calibrate the game to my tv, everything went as planned.

Amazingly, I didn't get that far in career mode because I was playing a lot of multiplayer, local with my family and online with VixDiesel. But, when you do play career mode you start a different career for guitar and bass (together), one for drummer, and one for vocals. Each career mode you can create players for each person playing along, and your guitarist won't be available for the drums or vocals, so you have to make a separate character for each. I'm working through guitar on medium and it's no problem.

Sorry to everyone who didn't get the game, and stop sending all the hate mail. :P You'll get it soon enough.

P.S. I'm almost done with Ratchet & Clank, but now I probably won't finish it for a while. Full impressions to come.

Until then... ROCK ON!

Ok, so I know it's not the best, but it's pretty awesome to me. Um, the only thing missing is my Wii and all of the Wii and Gamecube games (sorry katamari, it's still at my friend's house)... and yes, I still have a VCR :P

So, there you have it folks. I should be satisfied with all of my hardware for a little while anyway, and no more complaints about not being able to read the fine print on my old tv. Off to play more Ratchet & Clank!

My poor graduation bear got trapped behind my games, oops!

Also, I am off until next Monday, so I can be as lazy as I wanna be... and yet, I was awake at 6:30 this morning, go figure!

Oh yeah, [inserts awesome comments about Rock Band here] can't wait! I was going to play the demo at Best Buy, but I'm just going to wait now, no reason to travel that far to play a game I'm going to have in 3 days anyway... that is if I can get my hands on it. I've had it reserved since July.

I've played about halfway through Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, and it's awesome. With the few games I've played so far, I'm going to say it's my favorite single player game on the PS3. The witty jokes and vibrant colors add to the overall experience. I'm not going to say that it's the single reason you should run out and buy a PS3, but this game definitely makes me glad I have one.

I just thought I'd post the difference in the American and European box art:

Hmm, funny in Europe it's not even called "Future". So what is the great Lombax secret? I guess I'll be finding out soon...

While playing the game I tend to favor certain weapons, but I've started to using other ones to keep leveling them up. I haven't tried the Tornado Launcher yet, which is apparently supposed to utilize the motion controls, but I'm not really looking forward to that because so far, that's the part I have been least impressed with. The motion controls are less than entertaining. Trying to aim a laser or glide through hoops with a SIXAXIS is not my idea of fun, but then again, that's my personal opinion.

I also have been holding off on buying armor because I've been using all of my bolts for weapons,but I guess I haven't really needed it up until now. Looks like it's the perfect time to purchase some as the second sector seems a little more challenging.

Overall, R&CF: ToD is a fun experience and I would give the game at least an 8.5 for the first half. Hopefully, my second half of the game opinions will be up by next week, but it's going to be kinda hectic around my house for the next couple of weeks. 8 people in a 3 bedroom house, fun! :P