I've been playing City of Villians, a little Planetside, Hitman: Blood Money, and Starfleet Command 3.

Not much else is going on but I still have my eye on Spore.

Some friends of mine are getting back into BF2 as well, which should be fun, we have a group BF2 night coming up this Sunday.

I've been feeling a little under the weather lately. I don't mean physically either. I mean I am getting over the flu and stuff, but that's actually good stuff. I got two days off work last week! I wish I could be sick more often :(

What I mean is, nothing in the gaming horizon is really piquing my interest. The things that are happen to be so far off in the future that I can't afford to get excited about them quite yet.

Supreme Commander, 2007
Star Trek Online, god knows when (no game shots even yet)
Spore, 2007? Hell I don't even know.

Having a bit of a creative mind, I come up with ideas for games all the time. Most of the time they are what I'd call improved rehashes. Taking an existing game and saying to myself "What would make this game better?"

That can be a frustrating road to go down though, as more than likely we are just going to see another candy coated clone come out. Quake 4. Quake 5. Quake 6. It's all gonna be the same crap. Prettier graphics, same boring gameplay. Some mod junky will come out with a add-on that makes the game halfway cool at about the time some other candy coated clone for some other game comes out and it will get buried like yesterday's trash.

Sometimes a game designer will try to come up with something innovative, but if you look underneath the skin, it's all the same crap. A perfect example is Auto Assault.

Auto Assault just came out on retail. Vehicle based MMORPG? Well that sounds pretty cool right? The problem with it is, aside from being able to tear around the country side on 4 wheels, it's really just a MMO clone. Talk to guy. Guy wants you to kill 10 scavengers. Come back to Guy, get a reward and a quest to kill 5 boss scavengers. Etc.

Seriously are they even trying to make this stuff? Where's my garage? Where's my toolbox? Where's my customization screen to supe up the performance of my car? Why can't I have 10 cars? Why can't I have a big bin o' parts for my friends to stop by and snag if they need something? Where's the fuel? Where's the ammo?

If you aren't going to help us believe we are in a post apocalyptic wasteland with cool vehicles and big guns, are we supposed to just pretend? When I open my cars inventory and it looks exactly like my EQ1 backpack, what the hell am I supposed to think? That in 1999 when EQ released they had the best inventory system EVER? That in 7 years you couldn't come up with something better?

I guess people slurp it up though. Maybe they are just as bored as I am they just don't realize it?

I'll try to make my next post positive... sorry :(

Okay, I typically am a pretty open minded guy. But this new naming scheme for Nintendo's next gen console is just silly. Wii. As in We.

First of all Nintendo, if you are going to change the name of your product, do it before you start hyping the crap out of it showing us what titles you plan to release, and your pimp new controller technology. You can't get the kiddies hooked on crack and then start calling it something else. Well maybe it would work for crack, but not for console gaming systems!

Lesson number two is more specific. Don't choose lame names like Wii! People don't want to play with their Wii! They don't want other people playing with their Wii! Even if it weren't repulsive and naughty sounding, it's still just plain stupid.

I know Nintendo is trying to be a champ on the block with that cool new thing, but seriously, don't get so full of yourselves that you can have a meeting and come up with a name like Wii and say "Hey, that'll really get their attention!". Well, mission accomplished!

So I've been playing alot of stuff on my DS. I've got Animal Crossing, Mario Kart, Advance Wars Dual Strike, Tetris, Metroid, and I got Nintendogs for the wife.

Zelda is apparently in the works, which will be awesome. In anticipation I thought I might bust out my Gamecube again and play some stuff. Namely Mario Kart Double Dash and Zelda Wind Waker.

But, I just went to Target the other day and demo'ed a game called Chibi Robo that seems really interesting. Gamespot's review describes it as rather simplistic and that some of the mechanics of the game are frustrating, so I may rent.

It got me to thinking what a cool lineup of games Nintendo has. Everyone has their franchises, but why are Nintendo's so appealing? I guess their games are somewhat outside the box. The games are typically very colorful, and usually pretty happy little places to waste a few hours on. That just doesn't sound like me.

I love violent video games. The bloodier and more atrocious, the better. How is it I can spend an hour harvesting fruit and chatting with animal people in Animal Crossing? I guess maybe it's not violence I crave. Ingeniously violent games are simply interesting to me because they are ingenious.

If you look at a game like Postal 2, where you can take a gas can, spill lines of gas on the floor, or concentrate it to make puddles, that's just so revolutionary. No one has ever done anything like it. It's also a very potentially horrific scene waiting to happen, but the key is that it's innovative.

If you look at Chibi Robo though, where you are a tiny robot that is designed to run around a house and clean things up, you have to navigate a big big world being a small small robot. How cool is that?

Innovation is really my most valued aspect in a game. I find that Nintendo has a big library of games, and yes they throw out the cookie cutter movie and comic book tie ins too... but they have a lot of innovative games that no one else seems to want to take part of. It keeps me coming back every time. I dropped about 300 bucks on my DS so far, and I will probably get the new Revolution when it comes out.

For the new Zelda game for the console (coming out for GC, but compatible with Rev, another bonus), they are supposed to have some unique control scheme addition for Revolution users that will utilize the features of the Rev controller. I can't wait to find out what it is. Some people are speculating there will be some kind of light gun technology for shooting weapons like the bow and wands and stuff, which would be awesome when mixed with a Zelda game.

It's not for everyone, but I think Nintendo is the bomb.

I just picked up a Nintendo DS last week. It's pretty awesome. It's all about the wi-fi Mario Kart. Before when you play Mario Kart your only opponents are the ones you can drag into your apartment to play with you, and then they are usually complete newbs.

Now you can own fools remotely!