I live in a small community (under 3500 people) in BC, not to say that Canada is only populated by villagers, but it does constitute many of the communities in Northern/Western British Columbia. That being said, getting games or systems ordered and here costs more and takes a while to get here.

I recently went into my local Source, and put in an order for a DS Lite, mainly because they only carry two in stock, and obviously after Christmas, they have all been purchased. While ordering, I was asked, "Would you like us to order in some games?" To where I answered that, no I'll order them elsewhere, figuring that I could get them cheaper and in a more timely fashion somewhere else, than through them.

I received my DS around 9 business days later, and ended up paying $179 and change for it. Which was steep, but it was supporting local business and I didn't have to travel for 3 hours to get it. I get it home, unpack it, charge it, go to turn it on....and realize that I have no DS games to try it out with. I'm an idiot.

-RJ Out

Tech support is my hero. Plain and simple these guys are able to fix crap like you wouldn't believe. Too bad the crap that they are trying to fix is made by Microsoft and therefore will only be fixed for about another 5 minutes.

My 360 has been down for about 3 weeks now, and I finally got around to calling tech support to see if they could fix the problem and whether or not my warranty covers the issues that I blogged about earlier. It took a while to get to the actually trouble-shooting section of the phone call because I hadn't previously registered my 360 and that took quite a while. When we got down to it we had the problem fixed in about 10 minutes, or so I thought. With the freezing aparantly gone, I popped in Orange Box and started in on Episode 1. I played Episode 1 for about an hour and then turned off my system. The next day I tried turning on my system and I noticed that it was taking quite a long time to boot up to the dashboard. I noticed that the shadows were still moving so it hadn't frozen, but I decided to restart the system anyways. Afterwards....RROD!!!! Augh!!!!

Now I get to mail away my 360 and wait, most likely, around 2 months to get one back, which is all I really wanted for Christmas anyways. But at least I know that my problems are now covered by warranty. Oh Microsoft, why do you hate us so?

- RJ Out

Recently I have purchased COD 4 and Orange Box and have enjoyed playing them for the time being. But as irony is irony, crashing my car in an attempt to get these games isn't enough, OH NO, my Xbox also has to die on me as well. The thing that got me though is that I don't have the RROD, for which I have a 3 year warranty, no that would be too easy to replace. I instead have an 360 that freezes after the system has been on for 2 seconds, literaly, it simply randomly freezes and no RROD, no its just some magical disease that it has managed to recieve over the 3 months that I have owned it.

UGH, irony is a ****

-RJ Out

I just beat portal tonight, and it was HILARIOUS. The ending boss was really trying to put you down. And although the difficulty curve in the game rose very rapidly, it was still fun, and I found that I didn't get stuck in any area for more than a few minutes, keeping me from getting bored. The point in the game that really stood out to me though was the end credits and the song that was played during them. This game produced great quality humour right till the end, and I must say that it was one of the best ending credit songs that I have ever heard in a video game.

And just remember, keep on trying till you run out of cake.

-RJ Out

I picked up Orange Box and COD 4 this last weekend (and crashed my car in the process), and have really enjoyed both. I beat COD 4 in about 10 hours, which was longer that I had anticipated from the reviews that I read saying that it was a short campaign. Even if 10 seems short, the 10 hours were EXCELLENT! With a great variety in weapons and mission types and objectives, you rarely repeated the same gameplay during play. But I must say, as a 360 owner who doesn't have Live, I really appreciate that you can get all of the achievements in the single-player campaign. Since I'm sort of a completionist, it bothers me when there are things to a game that I can't get just because I'm not online.

I started portal and got to the last level in about 2 hours, but I've noticed that I try too hard at these sorts of games. I've caught myself sitting there thinking about how to solve this puzzle a really complicated way, when it shows you how to do it a simple way on a tile on the floor. The humour in the game is quite witty, but if your not paying attention or looking for it, it could just pass you by. I've yet to play the half-life games but intend to which leads me to the blog point.....

HOLY CRAP there's alot of FPS games! They make up about half of my collection. Its ridiculous. Even though the majority of the ones I've played are good, there are alot of bad ones out there, and it just makes you wonder, why?

-RJ Out

I don't know if anyone else has noticed buy my community has skipped out on Halloween. There's no Jak o'lanterns out, no decorations, no advertising or mass amounts of Halloween crap in stores. But it hasn't just been my town, oh no, tv and marketing have somehow forgotten about the holiday as well. I have yet to see a halloween related ad, and the only TV show that was even closely related to Halloween was the Simpsons, with their Treehouse of Horror (which wasn't even that related to halloween anyways).

This fog that has encompassed the holiday may only be temporary, but I know that as soon as November rolls around, there's gonna be Christmas coming out the wazoo.

-RJ Out

With the 08/09 NHL season started up and almost a month in, as a hockey fan, I'm as happy as could be. My Canucks could be doing better, but this is how they started last season and they ended up doing fairly good last year, so I'm not too worried. To get into the hockey mode though, I picked up NHL 08, and have been playing through Dynasty mode with the Canucks.

Now since the last NHL game that I played extensively was NHL 2004, there have been quite a few improvements over the years. The character models are amazing, the skill stick is wonderful, and the announcing is better. With all of these improvements though, its almost inevitable that a few things may be overlooked. One of these things are the instant replays, they don't properly depict the previous play. If you are getting lots of scoring chances, shooting lots, getting in big hits, then the other team ices the puck, when the replay starts up it will show them shooting on your net. The instant replay seems to correspond to whatever zone the puck is in when the play is stopped, which if you watch hockey, you know that is not how it goes. Also some cut scenes will show a player taking the face-off and then when the play starts, it is a different player. Although these aren't any game play problems, I still think for a game that is trying to achieve an "NHL" feel to it, they could try to have a better production value.

And in lesser news, I'm getting excited for cell shading. With Naruto (which looks fairly good) and the Simpsons game coming out on the same day, I'll be sure to have my fill of comedic game play.

-RJ Out

October 8th, the greatest day in the whole month (at least in Canada). Nothing is better than to have an excuse to eat a defenseless bird. I certainly enjoyed my meal, and I'm sure many other Canadians did as well.

Canada, enjoy your leftovers and to all you Americans, you'll just have to wait your turn.

-RJ Out

Picked up Halo 3 on thursday, and then finished it on friday. I was a little surprised that it only took me around 7 hours to complete the entire game, but it was a fun ride.

The new vehicles and weapons made it a more engrossing experience, while still keeping the core gameplay intact. The origonal weapons still felt the same, making head shots and smack downs feel very comforting, since I've done them many times before. The new weapons fit in fine, except for the gravity hammer. Although it was a fun addition to send grunts flying, it felt a little over powered. Being able to take down brutes with a single blow seemed a little out of place, even if the weapon did run out of juice fairly quickly. The choppers were a good addition to the game as it game another swift vehicle to the game, and the quads were good as well for fast movement, even if you are left to die when you don't have anyone in the back.

The enemies in the game were quite well balanced, except for a select few flood enemies. The crawling enemies and the big brute flood were a little over powered as it takes several shots with a shotgun or brute shot to take them down, which seems odd because the other flood go down within one or two shots. Other than that, the new brutes are quite good, providing both easy and challenging foes throughout, while giving the same formation of enemies as the previous games had.

The level designs were better than the last game, appearing less cookie cutter, and although the enemy patters were still just as predictable, the flow of the game was very good. The game levels weren't as pretty as some other games (Bioshock, Gears), but were definitely more vast, which was a nice change.

So far its been a fun experience, and I can't wait to get online.

-RJ Out

I picked up Overlord again since I got it, trying to get further into the game, and its incredibly difficult. For starters your main character, the "Overlord", the evilness inside him must have crippled him when he was a child. This guy has terrible mobility, his arms don't bend. When he swings his weapon he just twists his body, no arm movement, just really bad dance moves. And I understand that armour is heavy and it makes it harder to run, but this guy is spawned from hell!!! I mean come on, you'd think an overlord could at least move at a decent rate of speed.

Now I find the minions are fun, and funny. Some of the comical animations that they do are cool, and the dialogue from the lead minion can sometimes be a hoot, but what bothers me about the minions is how feeble they are. The reds and the blues in particular are like leprocy patients, if the minions get bumped into on the street they fall over dead. This is especially evident when you are retrieving the blue minion hive and the blues are being killed by DODOS! A bird that went extinct because it had no defense against crickets is killing hell spawned monsters. It boggles the mind. The browns at least are useful because of the brute strength and the equipment that they pick up. But the problem here is that you can have all your browns equipped with cool items, but then they all get slaughtered by some strong beast that comes out of nowhere, or they all fall into a pond or something, and then your back with a bunch of naked, weaponless, minions.

All in all the game is fun at times, but incredibly frustrating at others, I just want to have fun killing things in a comical way, rather than having to worry about if this minion is good against this enemy, and where then have to be positioned. I just want some good old fashioned sheep killing.

- RJ Out