Monday update...since I was out on Friday

Actually got through a few games this week.

FFXI and DSII continue. We got the Tele-Yoaht and Tele-Dem scrolls this week as well as a bit of leveling. While fairly easy, DSII is proving to be a very enjoyable game. There's more strategy involved during battles than DS - you can't all just bunch up and whack stuff till it dies. If you don't retreat when necessary, your party members lie in a pile and are killed again as soon as they stand up. Only downside is that our levels are under what all the special rooms require. Shows us what our levels would be if we were playing single player (but it wouldn't be much fun).

Hamster madness continues.

Played 3 Xbox racing games over the weekend. Two of them are going up on eBay this week - Forza Motorsports and Toca Race Driving 2. They should just put "Steering Wheel Required" on the boxes. I wasn't able to stay on the track for half a lap with these using the standard controller. I've played HOURS of Burnout games on this same controller on the Xbox and haven't had anywhere near the kind of problems I had with these. However, I was very pleasantly suprized to see how good NFS:HP2 is. Either they copied Burnout or vice-versa. Only difference is NFS isn't about crashing, it's about getting away from the cops. One thing I don't understand is why they didn't use the Xbox controller's triggers. Must have been a direct PS2 port.

Got to play a couple of hours of Stubbs the Zombie. I really enjoyed eating the brains of hapless civilians and police, turning them into my army of the dead, but I couldn't help feeling like the game wasn't quite finished. There were a few points where scenes changed a little too abruptly, making me think they were planning some kind of boss battle or something and didn't have the time or money to do it. But I'm not complaining - it was alot of fun!

Tried Polarium on DS and it's joining the racing games in looking for a new home. Why would someone make a game for a system with 2 color screens that only uses black and white tiles? And this is the first game that I've played that I couldn't understand what the tutorial was trying to teach me! (Update: After talking to a friend at work who has played it, I'm going to give it another try. Might as well - isn't work spit on eBay. :P )

Lastly, I just made (barely), my goal of getting F.E.A.R. installed and tried out this week. Great game - and it looks really good on my new flat screen. ;) Only drawback of games like this is that since I played the demo, I'll have to replay those same areas during the first part of the game. Oh, well.

Next weeks goal: Finish Ham-Ham Heartbreak!