Man, there's some cool stuff out on consoles right now.  I'm dying to go try the demo for Siren: Blood Curse, or go nab Geometry Wars 2.  Unfortunately, I'm house sitting right now and am nowhere near my consoles to go buy and play any of that.  Thank God for the DS.  You know, there's a lot of talk right now about how Nintendo has abandoned its fanbase to go fish the bountiful waters of the mainstream market.  And yeah, they have in a way.  I'm not going to argue against an obvious fact.  The latest talk is about there aren't any good "hardcore" games on the radar for the Wii right now.  But just turn your head towards the DS, and you'll find plenty on offer to satisfy your tastes.  Unless your tastes involve high-def graphics, in which case, you probably stopping giving a damn about Nintendo a long time ago. 

So I've had my attention occupied lately by three games.  The first is Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2: Grimoire of the Rift.  I haven't gotten too deep into it yet, but yeah, it's an FF Tactics game.  Cool look, deep gameplay, and I'll probably want to claw out the designers eyes at some point when I get wiped out by some fluffy bunny.  I paused playing that to get into Final Fantasy IV.  This has been one of my most anticipated games of the year, even in the midst of a year with GTA IV, MGS4 (man, a lot of fours this year!), and Fallout 3.  Not that I was wanting it more than those games, it was just up there with them.  It hasn't disappointed.  Beautiful graphics (for the DS) and voice acting compliment the storyline, and there's still the challenging difficulty that forces you to go grind in order to survive.  I might finally beat this game!

It might take a while, though, because I put THAT game on hold to replay Hotel Dusk: Room 215.  Holy cow, do I still love this game.  It was one of my favorite games last year, and it still stands strong a second time through.  I really wish there were more games like this for the DS, and way, way less of that Bratz crap that clutters up the Target display case.  I think Hotel Dusk was poorly marketed, because I could see a concept like this going huge.  Look at the popularity of mystery novels.  And remember how big a deal Myst was back in the day?  So why not market this game (or a line of game) as interactive mystery stories for the DS?  Am I the only one who thinks this could be a big deal?  I mean, even my mom owns a DS!  She frikken' loves mystery stories!  Anyways, Hotel Dusk still rules, and so do the two Final Fantasy games so far released this year.  I may be away from the 360 and PS3 for a couple weeks, but I sure haven't suffered any withdrawals.