After a month off from games to concentrate on studying for an exam (results pending), I have been playing copious amounts over the last 2 weeks. So many things to play, so little time.

On my way home from the exam I picked up NBA2k9. I really enjoyed 2k8 last year until my 360 scratched my disc and made it unplayable after a few months. 2k9 is a marked improvement over what was already a solid basketball sim. The presentation is as close to true broadcast quality as I've seen in a sports game. The little touches are all there. Players celebrate with their teammates or complain to the officials, highlight montages are played during dead ball situations, the crowds chant appropriately, if you are on the road and hit a big shot it will quiet the crowd, and the player animations are the best I've seen in a basketball game. Players move fluidly, defenders fight over and around picks, players change their shot in mid-air to avoid getting blocked, heads realistically track the ball instead of staring blankly off into space. It looks good, and plays great. The controls are so deep they are almost intimidating, but at the same time you can get by on Pro difficultly with just the basics. That's just the core of the game, not to mention the deep franchise mode, the streetball stuff, the dunk contest and all the online offerings including up to 10 players in the same game. I think I'll be playing this on and off for a long time.

NBA2k9 also finally forced me to replace my ailing 360. After not playing it for a month, it had gone back to locking up regularly. I decided not to wait the 3 or 4 weeks it would take to send it in for a repair and I picked up an Arcade unit. Hopefully this one will be stable with the added benefit of an HDMI port. The DRM transfer was surprisingly simple to use as well.

This week I picked up LittleBigPlanet & the SOCOM bundle mostly for the headset. I watched all the coverage of the LBP beta, all the YouTube videos of the crazy levels that people were publishing and I couldn't wait to play it. I've run through the first 3 groups of story levels and I am finding it every bit as fun and charming as I was hoping it would be. I've always been a platformer fan and LBP gives the right amount of variety and challenge along with a pretty addictive group of collectibles. The fact that you can potentially use everything you find to build your own levels only makes the anticipation of what is going to be in that next prize bubble higher. It also gives you a reward and incentive to replay levels to access areas you couldn't before. The other sense of exploration you get is from playing all the user levels. You never know what you are going to get when you load one up. So far there have been a few gems already. I imagine there are going to be some amazing things coming down the road once people get familiar with the toolset and unlock everything. Just look at this: