This is what happens when you are in fact not playing any games, no blog posts, not that it all that important, but still!
 
Right, so a video game that I actually have been playing recently is Bowsers Inside Story. Not that I have a particular love for the series, but I seem to recall enjoying Super Star Saga and to some extent Partners in Time though admittedly (and as pointed out in one of my Giant Bomb lists actually) I've never beaten PiT due to the final boss sequence. Not that I've touched it anytime recently, but still, worth noting I guess. Point being I'm ready for some more of that, and it is more of that, thankfully. 
 
Actually it's not more of that because it doesn't really take much from Partners in Time gameplay wise at all. If anything they really went back to what made Superstar Saga so enjoyable aka freeroaming Mario world (complete with backtracking) with colorful enemies and challenging combat featuring a bunch of well written characters. Of course this is before the inclusion of the Bowser element which is actually pretty significant because he is basically a third protagonist who has his own completely different move-set from the Bros. Furthermore their is a fairly even split in playtime between the two which might surprise some fans of the series. Also Bowser has his own (for lack of a better term) superbattles which are so super that they require the player to play the DS book style while super Bowser takes on the various giant enemies of the game (and I wouldn't call that a spoiler because footage of that was shown the first time the game was revealed at E3 09) Overall the inclusion of Bowser is a good one and  I didn't find anything particularly wrong with it since the back and forth between the two stories is well done and Bowser is a nice counter to the Bros. story.
 
What I did have a issue with though was that this game kind of doesn't know what it wants to be. On one hand it is very much a return to form for the series as already mentioned though the first maybe 30+minutes of the game is a pretty painfully slow tutorial section that is explaining EVERYTHING to you that you need to know. While I understand that Nintendo has exposed quite a few more people to its system since PiT was released it's still fairly annoying as a fan of the series to have to go through the intricacies of the game when, honestly, the game is pretty straightforward as it is. Also I just have to say on that note the game also has quite the odd difficulty curve. It starts off wtih the mind numbing tutorial section and then proceeds to plop you into some fairly challenging boss battles not long thereafter. At the same time though you find "Retry Clocks" scattered throughout the world which are glorified 'do-over' buttons which restart the current battle. That said the game is generally easier than past entries. The fact that I died only a handful of time and beat the final boss my first time through speaks volumes (about the game or my gaming prowess I'm not sure). 
 
I guess I had some other issues but those are fairly nitpicky in a otherwise incredibly solid game. It charms you to death even in its uneven difficulty, and has some really great combat sequences from top to bottom.  
 
Well, that was a lot of text, and it wasn't even really a review, but that's about the most your gonna get outta me these days.
 
Edit: I just have to mention this. One of the odder moments in the game (about 15+ hours in) is where Bowser hurts his back the Bros. help him by doing their 'drill move' into his lumbar or some equivalent which then for triggers a conversation from Toadsworth which suggests that you take a 'tea brake' and come back in a few minutes. Again, 15 hours in, and this is the first time this has happened, the game is giving you a Wii Fit like message about how you should take a break. I appreciate the gesture, but I'll never get those minutes back. :P

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