1. I finished up Resident Evil 4 last week sometime. And it was terrific. I can't believe I held out on playing that one for so long because it's now right on par with Dead Space in my book for best survival horror game of all time. Playing through Resident Evil 4 has in turn got me extremely excited for Resident Evil 5 now. I know it doesn't come out until mid March, but I can't help but have that one on my mind. The demo comes out tomorrow (or tonight, I might stay up to play it) so that will most likely wet my appetite even more.

2. I got Prince of Persia yesterday. Played it for about an hour last night before nearly falling asleep at the controller (because of being tired not boredom). Then I started playing again today at about 11:00am and pretty much played through the entire game in one sitting finishing up about 8:00pm. So it took somewhere around 10 hours for me to finish. I personally love the game. I saw GameSpot's review for it and I think an 8.0 is a little low to be honest. It deserves something more in the 8.5 or 9.0 range in my opinion. You have probably all seen the art style and maybe thought it was nice looking, but damn, when you see it in action it's breathtaking. Everything about the game is just gorgeous. The gameplay is also great, but it has a few problems. The main problem is the lack of variety in gameplay. You'll find yourself getting a little bored with the platforming and combat from time to time but obviously not too bored because I stayed hooked enough to finish it all is basically one sitting. Also, it's pretty generous on the points side of things. I got something like 550 achievement points just playing through the story without going out of my way to get any extra achievements. So yeah, I definitely recommend playing Prince of Persia. It's a game that's going to stick with me for quite a while.

3. I've been playing more Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. I finished up both of the story modes and have moved on to playing online. And like pretty much every fighting game, that's where the fun is at. When you get matched up with someone of similar skill as you it's a blast. Personally, I'm not all that good at it yet, but I think my Scorpion skills are getting comprable to most people's that I play against. Oh, and I got to play against the dude at #1 on the leaderboards and got completely destroyed. It was awesome seeing someone that crazy good at Mortal Kombat.

4. Been playing more Horde mode of Gears 2 with some friends as well. It's still awesome.

And that's about it. Other than that, I'm just finishing up my classes and getting ready for a month of solid gaming come Christmas Break. I'm looking forward to finally playing through Fallout 3, Fable 2, Far Cry 2, and some other games.

Cya guys, and keep gaming!

As for the gaming side of things, I've been playing quite a bit of games lately. With a few games taking up most of my time.

1. I'm still playing tons of Left 4 Dead with a few select friends of mine. I played through all of the scenarios on advanced, and I want to try and get through them on the expert difficulty, but it gets pretty damn hard. This is a good thing, though. It makes every mistake crucial and keeps you on your toes because very little damage will kill you. And I mean VERY little damage. One shot from your buddy's shotgun will knock you to the ground. So you're forced to really watch that you don't accidentally shoot your teamates. As I discussed earlier, I am a bit disappointed in the amount of content the game shipped with. I know there's bound to be content later especially on the PC version, but the game really should have shipped with more maps. Or have not full retail price. Sure, the maps have a lot of replayability, but still. The versus mode does give the game quite a bit more replayability, though. Playing zombies is super fun. My favorite is the smoker. 

2. I GameFlew out Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe because all of these other releases have all but ate up my entire bank account. But i'm starting to regret only renting it because 

it's the type of game that I want to support by purchasing it. So I think down the line a little bit i'm going to give it the full purchase. It is a fantastic game and I want to play a ton more of it. I think this is the fighting game to finally come out that I feel I could spend enough time with to finally figure out how to be good at a Mortal Kombat game. With all of the previous titles, I would play them just enough to know that none of my friends could beat me if we ever decide to play and then put it on a shelf and moved on. But I really want to stick with this one and learn to play it much better. I can't emphasize how good this game is and how much of a step in the right direction it is. After playing quite a bit of it I started to wonder how some of the reviewers of it could be so harsh on some of the flaws of the game because in the end, all that matters is how the fighting feels. And it feels terrific. Oh, and the character i've been playing most is the Flash. He's a super fun character that's extremely rewarding when you pull off some of his pro moves/juggles.

3. I played through Dead Space recently. I know i'm a bit behind on this one, but whatever. Before Dead Space I was never really into the survival horror genre. But boy has this game changed my perspective here. After I started playing this one, I just couldn't put it down. I was watching JohnnyAvacado's video blogs where he was talking about how he would just wake up in the morning thinking about Dead Space and not being able to wait to play it after work, and I experienced the exact same thing. This game totally blew me away. Just the atmosphere alone is enough to warrant giving this one a try. The graphics and sound are terrific, the story is gripping, and the combat is top notch. The whole strategic dismemberment is absolutely brilliant. It it not only new and exciting to see, but it keeps the combat feeling fresh and hectic. Another thing that helps the combat feel fresh and exciting is the fact that there is a good selection of weapons to choose from all with their own strengths and weaknesses. It seems like nearly every enemy in the game is weak against certain weapons which is great because that makes you change between a variety of weapons instead of just maxing out one of them and only using that one. Though, I did find that the pulse rifle was the one to use for most of the game. It seemed to work on a good variety of enemies. So yeah, it's a great game and one I strongly recommend. I want to play through on Impossible sometime in the future, too.

4. I finally decided to start playing some Resident Evil 4. I know i'm like one of the 5 people in the world that haven't played it to completion, and I can't wait to play more because it's extremely fun so far. I've had the Wii version for almost a year now and it has been sitting in my backlog the whole time. And with myself being at my parent's house for a good portion of the week where only my Wii is at, I think i'll be able to play through it all pretty quick here.

5. I bought WoW: Wrath of the Lich King. And don't get me wrong, it's a great expansion pack. But i'm getting a bit tired of playing WoW. I started up again about a month or two ago and finally worked a couple characters of mine up to 70 for the expansion. But after playing a bit of Northrend, i'm not so sure that I want to grind another 10 levels on my characters. It's getting a bit repetitive. I did play the Death Knight quests, though. And those quests are really fun and interesting. If only all of the quests held my attention that much. So yeah, I think i'm pretty much done with WoW. At least for now. Maybe during summer when no games are coming out i'll give it another try but until then, i'm just going to be focusing on the swarm of AAA titles that are piling up next to me and will continue to pile up for quite a while with all of the early 2009 releases coming up.

6. The New Xbox Experience came out as you're surely all aware of. I had been looking quite forward to this for a while and the main reason was because with it came support for 1680x1050 resolution via VGA cables. This was nice and all, but it surely isn't the biggest feature to me anymore. The hard drive installation is the star of the show here in my opinion. Installing games to your hard drive is simply awesome. It takes no more than 10 minutes to install a game to the drive, which then makes the games load faster as well as makes them not have to spin in the disc tray thus reducing noise. There's really no reason not to install games to your hard drive, or at least the one you're currently playing. I could probably understand it if you're stuck with only the 20GB hard drive because until recently I fell into this category. But as some of you already know, my 360 RROD'd and I was forced to purchase a whole new console because the warranty had expired on mine. So I went ahead and purchased the 60GB model, giving myself plenty of room to install games with the NXE. And looking back at it, i'm actually pretty happy that my 360 RROD'd because otherwise I would only be able to install one game at a time. But installing games to your hard drive isn't the only feature that I like with the NXE. I'm actually starting to appreciate avatars. Sure, they're basically just Mii's, but i've got to admit, it's pretty awesome seeing all of my friend's avatars they make. This along with party chat has really made the 360 seem like much more of community system to me. 

7. I got accepted into the Playstation Home Beta along with 99,999 other people a couple days ago. And to be honest, it came off as pretty dumb to me. I know it's only the beta, but damn. Everything about it seems sketchy to me. It reminded me a lot of Second Life. And Second Life is like, the worst thing ever in my opinion. There's not nearly enough ways to customize your avatar, everything seems to load extremely slow, it controls weird, the menus are clunky, and it doesn't really make much sense to me. It seems like they're trying to make some kind of hub to meet up with people and play games, but in order for this to happen I feel like it needs to be much more streamlined. I just can't imagine anyone wanting to log into Home when they turn on their PS3's because it takes forever, and it's really not fun at all. I actually thought the idea sounded kind of neat before seeing the beta, but now it just seems like a waste of time and effort on Sony's part. It kind of makes me feel like they keep delaying it because they're embarassed to put it out. But maybe i'm just being too harsh on it. It is a beta. And some of these problems might be fixed by then. I guess we'll have to wait and see. But I have my doubts.

8. I've been playing a little more Gears of War 2 helping out some friends of mine with the story mode every now and then. And guess what? It's still awesome.

9. Sonic Unleashed is being gameflown to me right now as well. I'm really, really hoping it is a step in the right direction with the Sonic games. As we can all probably agree, the Sonic name is no longer special to most of us. I know there's still a few people holding on for dear life hoping that he can get back up off his knees and have some good games (including myself), but at this point it's just starting to become a nostalgia play that's breaking our hearts more often than not. I feel like Sonic Unleashed is the make it or break it game for Sonic. If this one doesn't work, I think Sonic is going to be losing a whole lot of his fanbase.

10. Lastly, something that suprised me happened recently. I was looking for some Wii games to purchase that I missed out on playing because I'm going to be spending a good portion of my Thanksgiving break at my parents house where I only have a Wii to play, and I thought back to No More Heroes. This was a game that I really wanted to play when it came out but never got around to purchasing it/playing it. And to top it all off, the retail price is only $20 now. But after searching around, I quickly realized that nobody has this game on shelves. Which is sad, really. This is widely accepted among the video game crowd as one of the Wii's best games, and due to the fact that there aren't too many people willing to give the game a chance, it's no longer profitable to keep it on retail shelves. I mean, even GameStop doesn't have any new copies! This got me thinking a lot about this subject lately, and it made me realize that with these types of niche games, you have to make the purchase pretty close to their release date because otherwise, they seem to fall off the face of the planet. Amazon does still have them on their website, though. So I think i'm going to have to buy it off there.

Well that pretty much sums things up on this end. This blog ended up being quite a lot longer than I had intended, but hey. I kind of had to get some things off my chest. It's been great seeing everyone's blogs lately. It has been good seeing everyone's opinions on all of the new releases this season. Keep them coming, guys! And feel free to ask questions or leave comments on any of the subjects I discussed. I feel like I talked about a couple issues that people might have been thinking about to themselves lately.

Keep gaming and have a great Thanksgiving!