Well... let's see here. It's about two weeks til' Summer break. which means it's about two weeks til' finals. And I'm playing video games, why? Oh, right, procrastination. It happens to the best of them I guess, and speaking of procrastination....

Suffice it to say I have not received my copy of Pokemon FireRed. Due to a shipping accident (torn envelopes for the lose) I didn't get it this past week, though I did end up getting a refund soon thereafter, which I appreciated. Of course I shortly thereafter purchased yet another copy of FireRed which I feel slightly better about actually getting to me intact. So hopefully sometime this week I'll be able to waste more ti--- I mean, be nostalgic.  :P

Speaking of...nostalgic... in my never ending quest to find way cheap games I stumbled across (and subsequently won) a auction for Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3 complete with box and instructions for $8.50+ shipping. Now, I'm certainly not one of those people that always has to have the box and whatnot for GBA games, but I can appreciate it when it's included, especially when it's older (7 years?). Course I guess I'll see what kind of condition it's in when it gets here, but still, props!

What else... I've been playing Plants Vs. Zombies a little bit here and there, but honestly I haven't really played it enough to form much of a opinion about it. About the only thing I can say is that it's kinda all over the place difficulty wise. Perhaps the nature of tower defense type game, but it's definitely in effect here. I like it though, it's a quality product with a lot of little bits of humor for good measure, which I can always appreciate.

And if you haven't seen that Mass Effect 2 Pre-E3 video, check it out, I gotta say it definitely leaves a good impression.

So yeah, have a good weekend. Peace!

You know what they say about sequels...yeah, anyway...

Let's see, what to talk about, well as you can see a la my Giant Bomb status/update thing I have beaten Phantom Hourglass. Which, ironically enough took my longer to beat in one go than Chinatown Wars. Of course you could argue that some amount of that time was taken doing stuff like sailing and going from the Temple of the Ocean King again (and again), but honestly that stuff didn't bother me. Of course I was also playing it through with a walkthrough close at hand, so there is that.

Probably my biggest issue with the game has nothing to do with the game itself, but the rap that it seems to get on the 'internets'. Sure, I'm not a huge Zelda, nor have a played many of the Zelda games 3D or otherwise, but I felt like this was a more than competent portable Zelda game on the DS. Sure, the touch controls got in the way more than I would of liked, but in some ways I was surprised how much easier it made certain things. Course, I'd like to not have to block the screen at all times with my huge hands, but I digress.

You know what they say

Speaking of...hands... :/

Ever since I got wind of the news that there will more than likely be a announcement of a remake of Pokemon Gold/Silver for the DS I had the Pokemon fever...or something. Also, I came to several conclusions after learning this promising news:

1. Pokemon Gold and Silver were awesome, arguably the best handheld Pokemon game ever produced....period. 
2. I'm honestly not sure why I still care about Pokemon.
   
3. While Diamond/Pearl brought back a lot of great gameplay from previous games, nothing touches Red/Blue & Gold/Silver.
4. I should really re-buy the Pokemon Red remake.

And....number 4 is where we find ourselves now. You see, this is what happens when I get on a train of thought. I start going on Ebay and Amazon and looking at used copies. Now unfortunately there really aren't many people with brand new copies of Fire Red/Leaf Green lying around (I mean, it's nearly 5 years old) so I was forced to go the game only route. Thankfully DS cases are awesome and have that great GBA slot wherein you can store your GBA games in a nice hard case instead of dealing with those paper boxes GBA and GBC games came in 'back in the day'. So yeah, I bought Fire Red, in retrospect it probably wasn't the greatest idea, but considering I haven't played that particular Pokemon game in about 10+ years (and it was actually the first game I ever owned...and subsequently lost thereafter) it's not entirely a impulse buy, just mostly.

So yeah, that's my video game related stuff recently, as said as that is. Over the summer I'll have a bit more time to mess around whatnot, it's just that whole school thing gets in the way of games sometimes. Crazy, I know.

And so my playing of Chinatown Wars starts to come to a close. And while that might sound strange, what I mean is I'm done with the story missions and now it shifts to 100% the damn thing, or at least as close as I can get to 100% of course. I know I say this every time I play a game, but I'm going to say it again: I really want to write a review for Chinatown Wars. Again, I'm here to say that the probability of that is pretty much nil, but I can dream. Without going too much into it all I will say I did enjoy the game for the most part but I think this game is a bit overrated. It's a good game, don't get me wrong, but it has some issues, issues that in my mind make it far from being the best reviewed game on the DS. I'm not here to hate on the game of course, it gets a lot of stuff right and it's fairly long for a portable game, so you can't complain too much (10 hours for the story mode, about 20+ total). So yeah, I'll probably be playing that for awhile...and I guess I'll get back to Phantom Hourglass at some point (I like the game, but the Temple of Courage is kinda annoying).

So I bought GTA: Chinatown Wars. Yeah, I know...kind of weird since last time I wrote I had picked up Phantom Hourglass instead of GTA, but the constant onslaught of glowing reviews 'forced' me to pick it up (the 5 out of 5 from Giant Bomb didn't hurt either). So yeah, I've been playing that this weekend and I must say it's actually surprisingly fun. I think a lot of reviewers are probably giving the game a bit too much credit, but it's hard to ignore that it's essentially one the few good free-roaming action games on any handheld (and it doesn't hurt that it's a GTA game of course). Most of my complaints are somewhat minor I will say. Some of it may be my DS actually as it feels like when I have my finger on the accelerator sometimes the vehicle will slowdown if I don't firmly hold down the button. Other stuff like how easy it is to get busted and some of the slowdown that occurs is kind of offputting, but it's not a game breaking. That said, its actually been pretty fun so far. It takes all the 'gamey-ness' that the series has developed recently and completely throws some of it to the wayside and embraces the rest of it. It's a very simple and boiled down experience, but I really don't think that's a bad thing.

I guess I'll have some Phantom Hourglass impressions once I get it/stop playing Chinatown Wars. :P

So more gaming pickups you say? It's almost like I have disposable income or something (almost)...

So for some reason this past week I've had a strange craving for a new DS game. I know I bought Chrono Trigger just a few months ago, but Chrono Trigger is kind of a commitment both time wise and ...thought wise...so I was kind of wanting something a bit lighter to get me through this upcoming quarter. It came down (not sure how) to Henry Hatsworth and GTA: Chinatown Wars. Just as a quick aside though, GTA:CW has been getting crazy good reviews (of course after GTA IV I kind of am starting to talk that kind of stuff with a grain of salt), but anyway. So after making myself crazy I came to my senses somewhat and and made a compromise... by buying  a used copy of Phantom Hourglass off Ebay. Ok, so not really a compromise per se, but it certainly wasn't $30+ and it's considered one of the better DS games period, so, yeah! I'll be getting that sometime next week so guess we'll see if that was a 'compromise' worth making, huh?

Now a really weird pick-up that I had no intention on getting was this weekends Steam sale...thing...on the Oddworld series. You would think that it'd be a kind of a strange buy considering the only Oddworld I've played is Strangers Wrath and the first two Oddworld games are about as far away gameplay wise from that as you can ask for. The method to my madness being...both games were selling for a grand total of $3.75. Yeah, I mean even if I absolutely hated it it's still less than I would pay for a bad movie or a bad hamburger, so I said screw it and got em' both. While the game is a bit more frustrating than I would of liked it's actually hasn't aged that badly. I mean this is a modern game (Abe's Odyssee was released in '97), but it's just still surprising to me how modern some of these 'older' games feel in 2009 (10+ years later). Regardless, I'm still trudging through it virtual strategy guide in hand, but I dunno its still a bit hard to convince myself it was a waste of money when not only is the game far from bad, but it was way way cheap. Hear hoping that Abe's Exodus is a little more forgiving in the save points.

What else, what else...hmm, I'm still going back through Warcraft 3 and World of Goo slowly but surely. I'm not sure why this year seems to be, "lets play 2+ year old games year" but that's what's it has been so far. Obviously school is coming up, so gaming will have to take a break for a couple of months, but obviously this summer is going to be a return to gamingness since that'll pretty much be the thing besides working/causing general mischief...

Edit: Oh check out my little Tumblr blog if you just need your random Internet images/videos quota filled. I've actually been keeping it pretty updated, so check back early and often. ;)