On a typical friday morning with no school and no worries, I usually sleep in, wake up at 10, play some Soul Calibur, skip breakfast, then each lunch.

This Black Friday, however, I woke up at 7AM and the first thing I did was go to Gamestop.  Buy 2 used games, get one for free. But in the end, I walked out with 5 games:

Gears of War two-disc edition
Gears of War 2
Fallout 3 (Used)
Far Cry 2 (Used)
Kung Fu Panda (used...  and free)

I probably saved $60 at most, but still.  I walked out with more than I usually do.  I got Kung Fu Panda for my little brother for christmas (and because pandas kick ass).

So yeah.  I got the original Gears, the second Gears, then Fallout 3, then Far Cry 2.  That's pretty much all that was going for me this holiday season.

I'm holding off on Gears 2 until I can finish the first one.  So far, it's a great game.  It's the most fun I've had with a third person shooter since Resident Evil 4.  I just don't get why enemies take so damn long to kill.  I'm going through my first playthrough on Hardcore which is surprisingly the second-hardest (and second-easiest) difficulty. But I don't get it.  Why are all the guys so huge?  Are they packing steroids or something?  What's with Epic's obsession with big and unrealistically bulky people who shoot equally big guns?

Far Cry 2 is pretty decent so far.  I'm really liking the huge weapon selection, but there's so much driving.  It reminds me of GTAIV without all the cops.  There's also a ton of guard posts which interrupts your driving.  Then the firefight destroys your car and you have to walk a million miles to get to your destination.  When it comes to shooting people, though, it's fun stuff.  I even downloaded the Fortunes DLC Pack which lets you carry a silenced shotgun.  It's like No Country For Old Men.  Silenced shotguns are badass.

 
Feeling lucky?

Fallout 3 is like an eerie deformed mix of Oblivion and STALKER, and it's actually better than both of these games put together.  The similarities to Oblivion, however, just blow my mind.  The melee system is exactly the same as Oblivion (minus the shields).  Even the animations are the same.  I'm not sure if they did this to save time or if they did this because they were lazy.  Even the gunplay feels Oblivion-ish.  It's like shooting the bow without pulling back strings and retrieving arrows.  At least they upped the gore and the VATS system is surprisingly fun and useful despite how it would feel totally out of place in a real FPS game.  It's a good game so far, but I really wished that Jeremy Soule composed the soundtrack this time around.

Killer lolis demand moar deals

I guess my holiday's set.  I'm super broke and all I have to look forward to this Christmas (and my birthday) would be some nice sweaters, which is what I look forward to because Minnesota weather isn't pretty.

Other News
-Fate/Stay Night full patch out now!

-The Thanksgiving turkey this year was awful.  We forgot the gravy.

-I have to read a book by Monday.  I had the whole summer to do it, too.

I got the NXE update like everyone else and despite how I really didn't like the whole avatar thing, the NXE is okay.  My avatar apparently looks like Jackie Chan once you think about it.

"So there's this car that runs on water, man!"

The avatar editor is pretty bare.  There's plenty of actual clothing, but there are very few other options.  I don't know why there's a feature to change the colors of your clothing (and if there is, I must have really missed it).  I don't know why MS had to put in so much focus on the avatars, especially since they look like Miis.  I'm sticking to Gamerpics, anyways.

The rest of NXE is pretty neat.  The new interface is very lively and beats the crap out of the old one.  But there is one thing that MS hasn't fixed that's still very annoying today:  they haven't added the option to rewind or fast-forward music.  It's anarchy.

Another new thing would be the intallations.   I only have a 20GB hard drive, so the only thing I could afford to put on there would be Soul Calibur IV which takes up about 5.9GB.  In the case of SC IV, the load times have actually been reduced pretty well, and even without installations the game loaded pretty quick to begin with.  It makes the Tower of Lost Souls mode a lot less annoying since it loads between matches.

In other news, I got a 120GB Ipod cl@ssic!

Cover of D'espairsRay's first album Coll:Set is shown on the right

It's not very different from the iPod video I had before it.  There's just a couple new features like the very sexy Cover Flow feature and some other interface quirks.  It's a shame to see that the Music Quiz game isn't included.  So far, it's even better than my old iPod.  $100 less and holds more space.

 
I'm telling you.  Dir En Grey is godlike.

One thing that kind of grinds my gears would be that the On-The-Go playlists don't work very well, but I manually make playlists in iTunes so it's not a problem.  and apparently when you download the AVGN's videos in MP4 format from GameTrailers, the quality sucks.  Just a heads-up there.  Otherwise, video quality remains virtually unchanged.

I can finally start watching some anime outside of my computer now.  Maybe I can finally finish Code Geass R2 .

And I have an announcement to make.

I eat and $*** Soul Calibur IV

Yep...  getting to the 250 hour mark.  It's addicting as ****.

Chuck Norris's winning percentage is over infinity.  And he plays as Rock.

When it comes to level rank, i'm in the top 250...

and when it comes to total amount of wins, I'm in the top 200.

But when it comes to Namco's piss-poor excuse for a tag-team survival mode, I can't even break level 33 (presumably out of unlimited).

 
No one plays as Yoshi but me

And now for something epic...

LONGCAT CALENDAAAAAAAAR!!!!

 YOU JUST LOST THE GAME

Other News

-Here's a good question:  Why the hell does Dir En Grey kick so much ass?

-I might be getting my new iPod tomorrow.  By the time you're reading this, it'll probably be tomorrow from now... so you can figure it out.

-Got the NXE update.  Impressions and pictures will come later.

-Saw Quantum of Solace.  Disappointing, but still pretty good.

-Got a chance to play Little Big Planet over at sacred's place.  Surprisingly fun for a simple platformer.  The custom maps are also genius.  I probably laughed so hard so much, I walked out of there with much, much, much fewer brain cells.

Answer the question. I just received a pretty nice paycheck and I could sure use a new game that 80% of my friends list is currently playing right now.

By the way, I haven't played the first.