My brother came home from worker baring a gift. Mercs 2.
Jooooy.
Not so joyful is the apparent lack of local co-op.
I could've sworn I had heard/read early on that it'd have splitscreen and system link, but it doesn't appear to have either.

GODDAMN IT GAME DEVELOPERS.

My Internet connection isn't so great most of the time, making hooking the two of my 360's up to have internet access a pretty crappy alternative to Splitscreen.
I BOUGHT the extra 360 because it seemed like at the time most were getting rid of splitscreen in favor of online and system link.
And so long as there were system link I didn't really mind that I had to pay extra for an extra 360 and whatever game I wanted to play over system link.
As long as the end result was I could play said game over system link and enjoy some multiplayer goodness with my brother, I was happy.
Now a lot of games don't even seem to bother with freaking system link, opting instead to rely solely on Xbox Live or whatever.
This is unacceptable. If your games multiplayer there has to be SOME form of local play and I don't mean getting both of my 360's online.
Splitscreen is neat. If it's not plausible with your game then there HAS to be system link. Otherwise thats just.. Crap.

Cell Stage was fun in a Pac-manish sort of way.

Creature Stage I liked, though they could've added more activities to do.
As it currently plays out you roam the land - attack other creatures and eat said creatures or make friends with said creatures. Occasionally you'll be interuppted and told to migrate which has you moving from one nest to the next.
It can last a fairly long time if you want to roam the land and unlock extra parts to put on your creature before you advance to the tribal stage and become incapable of further morphing your creature.

I wasn't a big fan of the Tribal stage, though it wasn't BAD.
I'm just not all too terrific with RTS games.
You gather food from plants or nearby animals which is the currency for EVERYTHING you do in this stage.
Apparently you make buildings out of food. Yeah. A bit odd.
You can then choose to destroy the opposing tribes with tools such as stone axes or make friends with instruments like maraca's. Making friends has the advantage of having someone from their tribe occasionally drop some food off for you, so you could probably get away with taking a tribe member or two off food gathering, but they don't seem to help you if you're attacked which kind of sucks.
As you make friends or destroy dudes you get the weapons and instruments they used to further improve your ability to either kill dudes or make friends - you also gain an extra tribe member that you can recruit to make you kill dudes or make friends faster.

Civilization Stage I kind of rushed through.
I was disapointed with it, kind of.
I read in previews that the inspiration for this stage was the Civ games so I was all like HELLS YEAH, A TURNED BASED STRATEGY... It's not Turned Based. It's probably closer to Rise of Nations rather then Civilization.
It's just more RTS - replace your tribe members with vehicles you create, food gathering with spice gathering and crappy huts with buildings you create - I s'pose you could create more crappy huts if you really wanted too.
Theres three ways to go about taking over the globe.
Send over your hotdog shaped tanks or whatever and blow them to hell.
Send over some sort of religious propaganda vehicle and wait for them to like.. Convert,  I guess.
And Economic, which I haven't explored at all but I assume ends with you buying them out. 

Space Stage is where i kind of opens up and becomes incredibly awesome.
I don't know what game to compare it too.
Galactic Civ? One of those 4X games I've never played.
Theres quite a lot to do.
If you get to the center of the universe theres an ending here, but I've yet to do that.
You meet and befriend other races created by fellow players, or blow them to hell.
You can colonize planets which often requires you to terraform it and make it inhabitable as to maximize your Spice gathering, so you can sell said Spice and make some MAJOR SPORE BUCKS.
You can use said MAJOR SPORE BUCKS to buy various upgrades which make befriending, terraforming and blowing stuff up easier. The galaxy IS HUGE. I'm not sure how big, but Will Wrights claims that it'd take 70 years or something to fully explore seem pretty plausible, but so long as it continues to teem with new content it would not be a dull ride.

Your enjoyment of Spore will most likely come from how much you enjoy either creating things or seeing what comes out of other peoples warped minds. I for one am very much into this. I love exploring. I like creating.
And because of that I love Spore. I know I made it sound kind of medicore up until the Space Stage, I don't mean too. The other phases have their moments - they're just either not long enough, don't have enough to do in them, aren't based on a genre that appeals to me or sometimes a mixture of the three - but as a whole the game is marvelous and easy to recommend.

As you just KNOW t hey're going to milk it for all it's worth, I can't wait to see what will happen to Spore when expansions start to roll in.

I just wrote up my Guitar Hero: Aerosmith review, submitted it and scrolled down the page to see others reviews.
It was then I noticed that someone had pretty much the same review title as me. (Same Old Song and Dance, if you were wondering)
I facepalmed when I saw it and searched in vain for an edit button, not finding one.
It could be there - I could just be blind - but if it isn't get on that, Giant Bomb guys!

Not that it isn't an especially obvious joke to make in regards to Aerosmith and Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero Aerosmith, but just offering up my explanation for what might look like I'm swiping material.
Sorry, guy!
In the future I might scroll down a tad and see if anyone else went with the especially obvious joke title before making it myself.

Been playing Space Siege the past couple of days, though I've only played a few hours I guess.
I'm not really digging it but as I can't be bothered completing it I won't be writing a review.
I will say that the game would probably fair a lot better if it was made as a top down shooter with rpg elements rather then an rpg with elements of a shooter.
Basically I mean if it controlled like a top down shooter, say wasd for movement and mouse for aiming and shooting - I'd probably like it more then I do.
But theres too much clicking. Not enough loot or other RPG elements for that matter.

Not much in the way of games coming out at the moment.
Too Human I'd consider but from what I've heard theres no local multiplayer. Which sucks.
System Link would be nice.
Just doesn't seem like it'd hold my interest too long without being able to play it with someone.
With my internet connection being as crud as it is that wouldn't be a good way to get around it.

Probably a good thing in the end though.
Lets me save up a little moola for the last few months of the year which is just JAMMED PACK with games.

Mercs 2 in the not too distant future.
Spore in two weeks. Feels weird to say that following it as long and seeing all the delays before now. But it's coming.
October has Fable 2, Fallout 3, Saints Row, probably more I'm missing.
November has Gears of War 2, the new Banjo game.
Sometime in the next few months having Rock Band finally come out down under would be nice.
Though at this rate we can't tell whether Rock Band 1 will make it out before the sequel does.
Again probably more I'm missing.

I can't decide whether it's great or if it sucks that they throw all the good stuff out at once.

I'll explain something.
Where I live it's hard to get a decent Internet Connection.
From what I understand, Australia isn't exactly up there in terms of speed and all that jazz.
When you're stuck ina mostly rural, area - farm land and all that jazz - this problem magnifys quite a bit.
I've found a provider thats decent enough, the best I could find in the area anyway.

I get decent speeds, but a five gig download limit.
And I do quite a bit of downloading. So it doesn't normally take long for me to hit the limit.
Now when I hit the limit they give increase my limit in increments, but I pay extra - up to no more then $100.
If I hit THAT limit they cut my speed down to dial up speeds.
Not great for gaming, obviously.

That didn't stop me from attempting to play Age of Conan, however.
And there were several hours out of the day where it just wouldn't be viable.
However an hour here and there, I could play Conan and the lag was manageable. It wasn't a major hinderance.
I played fine.
I assumed all would be well once the month had past and my limit reset itself - ditching the dial up speeds and going back up to ADSL type speeds.
Well my internets up to speed again, however Conan isn't.

I've heard a few excuses as to why this might be.

Poor coding on Funcoms part being the big one, which given the lack of polish in some other areas of the game well it doesn't seem unlikely.
So theres the chance they can fix that and I can play with better connectivity.
Which I hope they do.

The other big one is that I'm playing on US servers. I'm in Australia.
Obviously that'll cause some problems.
Aussies typically get the shaft in this sort of thing, so it's not a total suprise. Just a disapointment.
I've signed up for six months of Conan.

I'm hoping a patch within this six months will fix things.
If it doesn't well...

I'm pondering going back to City of Heroes.

I used to play.
It was fun then.
It'll be better now that I'm more absorbed in.. I don't know, comic book culture.
I've been on a real Superhero high lately and I'm looking to keep that going.
City of Heroes would be a good way to live my underwear on the outside fantasys.
It'll atleast be passable til either Champions Online or DC Universe comes out, whichever one winds up looking more appealing.
Champions at this point, I mean... You can create your Archnemesis dude as well.
I can make the Joker to my Batman, the Lex Luther to my Supes - thats a pretty damn cool feature.

So lets see how this goes.

I love Giant Bomb. I love that the community gets a large say of what goes on the site.
I love that I can put in my own changes.
Problem is the stuff I can think of adding is done by the time I get there.
So I do things less likely to have been done.

Screenshot for NES game here, image for unliked Mortal Kombat character there.
And credits. Goodlord the credits..
Especially on the older games, where the roles aren't specified as they are on the site - forcing me to either pick the next closet thing..
Or just write their role as it appears in the booklet in the notes colemn, which I'm not too sure about.

Still - I'm glad I get to help out nonetheless, even if it's mostly on things folk aren't likely to touch. Like the credits for Blades of Vengeance, heh. Great game that, by the by.

You'll notice a lot of reviews are popping up courtesy of me.
No I'm not some crazy game playing, reviewing machine - perhaps some day, but not now.
No, currently I'm just cross posting some of my old Gamespot reviews and also some from my blog.

Some are requiring a little editing.
For example in the original Crackdown review I mention that I have yet to play it multiplayer because my connection sucks.

Well that was ages ago. That problems fixed.
I've played multiplayer so I've erased that part and added my oppinion of the multiplayer.

Other reviews also have some touch ups, but nothing major.
If you've read my reviews anywhere else, you'll have read them here.
Though how many really have? So.. Uhh.. Yeah. Forgive my rambling, just making a note.

So the bomb has exploded, eh?
I must say, the site is a giant nerdgasm. That's a good thing.
I'm really digging everything. The layout, the amount of stuff we in the community can do in it.
I looked at Comic Vine when it was mentioned as being how this site would basically operate and I was pretty impressed with it, it gave me an idea of what to expect.
But I still couldn't have anticipated how freaking good it'd actually be.

I guess this post is just a congrats to the Giant Bomb guys on launching and I'll definetely be active here.