Howdy.

Austin Starr here, signing in.

I'm glad that Giant Bomb is up and jogging around after following the development process.  I'm glad to see everything is coming together pretty nicely and I can get my hands on some of the neat stuff that's going on.  I don't see myself adding very much aside from this blog, reviews and maybe a game/franchise/character page here and there. 

Aside from reviews, I'm more of a person who will play with all the stuff that people create for me.  Much like Boom Blox or Blast Works on the Wii, I don't see myself creating new levels so much as playing with the levels that my friends make for me to play with.  I don't think this will be too much the case here, but I look forward to how everything compiles together after the beta.  Anyway, enough about hellos.  Let's talk games or something.

How happy am I that there weren't any games developed based on The Dark Knight?  So happy.  I reviewed Batman Begins for the Nintendo GameCube which had way too many faults but was still one of the best Batman games available.  I'm amazed that whomever owns the rights to the Batman movie license at the moment (probably EA?) didn't take advantage to saturate us with tie-ins that would never do such an amazing film justice.  The last good Batman I reviewed was Batman Vengeance or perhaps Batman Rise of Sin Tzu.  Those really don't count.  Anyone remember Batman: Dark Tomorrow?  *sigh* Surprise.  The Dark Knight is the first Batman film to NOT have a video game tie-in.

Also in development, my DS has been misplaced.  I purchased a copy of Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift, came home, and spent two hours looking for my DS.  Final Fantasy IV is released this week and I'm losing my damn mind.  I'll either cave and buy a Cobalt/Black DS so I can play FFIV or I'll find my Crimson/Black DS before Tuesday.  Not sure which will come first at this moment.  I'll finally NEED a PSP with the upcoming release of Star Ocean.

Also remaining this month is Soul Calibur IV and Spectral Force 3, Atlus' next crazy Strategy RPG.  I can't say very much about SoulCalibur IV (or is it Soulcalibur?) aside from the fact that they've sex'd up the ladies to a ridiculous degree.  Thankfully, July and August are the calm before the storm.  I'll need every penny to shuffle through all of the offerings this year.  More on that later.

E3 was good.  Not great, but good.  Plenty of information on titles that I've seen before and solidified my purchase decision on several games.  I was not incredibly impressed by anything during the show, as I think anything that could blow my mind won't be released this year.  There's nothing left to say about how disappointing Nintendo's press conference was.  Frankly, I enjoyed Sony's conference more than Nintendo's.  Even when they were talking about the PS2.  You know, last generation.