That's all I need to say.

www.giantbomb.com - If you're stupid and don't know what it is, it's basically Gamespot mixed with Wikipedia and deepfried in pure liquid awesome. It's headed up by Jeff Gerstmann, Ryan Davis, Brad Shoemaker, and Vinny Carravela.

friend me on there - my screen name's Kyle (i made my account within minutes of the site going up : P )

Could it be that Square finally made an FF7 spin-off that didn't make me wanna line up every one of those responsible and systematically knee each one in the face?

So far, Crisis Core says "yes". I went in with no expectations at all and found it actually enjoyable. I was amazed when I found myself away from my PSP, really wishing I was playing it. That really hasn't happened for me with a PSP game yet. 'Cept maybe Jeanne D'arc.

It's not perfect, but I'm still liking it a lot. The visuals and sound are equally amazing. There are sometimes FMVs in the middle of battle! (See: Bahamut's Mega Flare - 1:30). The battle system isn't flawless, but I think I find it much less repetative and uninspired than I was expecting, or at least not as easy.

The real shocker is the fact that not every single moment in the story makes me want to kill myself, unlike in Advent Children. Where I'm at right now, the story doesnt really have much to do yet with the first game, in fact it appears to be blatantly repeating it with different characters, but maybe once Cloud and Aerith become involved (yes, that's right, I said Aerith. I figured I might as well get used to it.) the story might start to go down hill. EDIT:now that I've seen mor, I'd say Aerith is my favorite character, so that's good. Cloud hasn't really done anything yet. It's weird, the story seems to have no predictable direction. I can't really see where it's going at all. Which is crazy, because it's a prequel, I should know exactly wear it's going.

However, there have been, so far, two moments in which something in the story that you think is real turns about to be something happening on a Star Trek-like holodeck. TWO!! It's happened TWICE!! ALREADY!! How does that happen? Who thought that was a good idea?! I encountered the first incident of this while I was trying out the Japanese version and it almost convinced me that Crisis Core would be terrible. AND THEN THEY DID IT AGAIN?! I'm still confused about the whole thing.

But at least I know how the game will end now. The words "500 years later" will appear on the screen, we'll see RedXIII running up a canyon, then midgar will come into view, miles away, he'll look out at it, and then it's all on a holodeck.

Crisis Core - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - A holodeck

So . . . I haven't posted here lately. In fact, I haven't even played a video game lately. Like . . . I don't think I played any in the past week. For me, that is straight up INSANE. That usually only happens when I get grounded, which doesn't happen anymore.

For the past couple of months one of my friends kept occasionally talking about how he lost his damn mind and bought four Magic the Gathering cards called 'Goblin Kings' off of eBay and how excited he was about getting them. To this I would respond with various things about how we're not twelve anymore and Magic was stupid.

Then the cards finally came in and he made some cheap-ass deck of Goblins cause he's a prick (I'm not bitter) and sort of made me play even though Magic is like Pokemon without Pokemon and therefore worthless. But actually it was awesome so basically I've been spending all my time looking at cards, changing my (black/blue faerie/rogue deck!!), playing Magic, and trying not have my ipod stolen as I walk through sketchy neighborhoods to go to card stores. Yeah . . . . I'm not really sure how I filled up two weeks with that, either.

I recently came full circle by going on eBay and buying four cards called "Scion of Oona" which is basically the same as a Goblin King, except it's a faerie instead of a goblin, and therefore not ****ing stupid.

Just thought I'd say why I'm never here anymore.

Faeries!!

PS: In case you're stupid, and don't know yet, go to giantbomb.com! You can say you've been there since day zero!!

I rolled out of bed this morning and found, to my surprise, and by surprise I mean not surprise at all, the XFX GeForce 8800GT graphics card I ordered was waiting for me!

So long, crappy Radeon X1300!!

It's 1,000,000,000 decibel fan sounds like a choir of angels!

The installation was not without its trials. As you can see, this card is ****ing huge and required some rearranging of some things inside my computer. I emerged from the struggle bloodied but unshaken.

That all you got?!? >.O

I could not be more happy with this thing. It's awesome. I wanted to test it on a game I had a lot of experience with, so I tried Half-life 2 Episode 2. Normally in HL2, I have to use about medium settings with a very low resolution. It would run okay on those settings, not even close to 60fps. Now I get a better frame rate than before when I max out all the settings and play at 1680x1050, my monitor's max resolution.

I probably won't be able to play Crysis at anything above single digit frame rates until i upgrade the rest of my pc, which I hope to do before the summer. Who knows, I might even go bat**** crazy and buy a second 8800GT and SLI them. Then again, that might be rather noisy.

And the card came with a free copy of Company of Heroes! Score!

I took the time to run through all the Company of Heroes tutorials today. It seems like a really cool game. I just played Starcraft last night, so comparing the way my marines just run around with their heads up their asses, going right past an enemy that's attacking them with the way my riflemen will not only stop to attack, but intelligently spread out and take cover when enemies come into sight was pretty incredible. That's cause I don't play RTSs. The last one I played before Company of Heroes was Warcraft III. Company of Heroes seems like a game, as with all other RTSs, that I will enjoy for like 5 seconds until the strategy needed for the campaign goes over my head and then I won't be able to continue. Oh wells!

One other game I just went through a tutorial for was Stardock's new "real time 4x" game Sins of a Solar Empire. As a big GalCiv II fan, I can't help but sqeal like a little girl when I look at this game. As you could probably guess, I'm not a huge fan of the "real time" in "real time 4x", but I'm hoping I can deal. It's just soooo huge. The scale is really amazing and the whole thing looks great. But from what I hear this game pretty crazy-complicated. The real-time thing and the super complexity make me think I ought to just stick to GalCiv II, which I barely understand as it is, but this game is just too damn gorgeous and epic to stay away from.

Finally, I must be on some sort of insane RTS kick, because the last game I think I want to try for a little bit is World in Conflict. Partly because it's been getting such great reviews, and partly because system requirements lab said I can so totally play it now.

w00t!

Peace.

PS: I looked into it, and, turns out, Star Wars Episode One Racer is still way awesome! Especially when playing at 1680x1050 using an emulator! I never knew I would get to see such sharp looking N64 games!

EDIT: I tried Crysis. I spent about an hour installing it. I had to run it on the lowest settings, which means it looks worse than even Half-life 2, and yet it still ran ****ty and the audio was studdering like crazy. What a stupid way to make a game. And they're surprised no one bought it. Only ten people can run it well! Even the intro cutscene (showed before the main menu) slowed down in spots to LESS THAN ONE FRAME PER SECOND! Like significantly less! It was probably like 0.05 fps in some spots. How is that possible?! HOW?! It was a cinematic!

On the bright side, Sins of a Solar empire is still fantastic. If anyone has it, let me know and we can play! And by play I mean you horribly murder me and/or i constantly give you cash payouts while begging for mercy/alliance.

So I'm reading up on the latest ways to mod my PSP, as I had been doing for most of my day when i literally stumble across a blog, of which the latest entry was titled "Ryan Davis Leaves Gamespot". What the ****. Seriously. But I knew this would happen. After Jeff leaving and all the other people that had been dropping off as a result, I knew it was just a matter of time until the last person keeping Gamespot Live alive (to me) stepped out. Sure there's Brad, but . . . he don't talk much. That is . . . Brad hasn't left yet, has he?? I better go check on that.

I was basically just waiting for this day. Oh well. I had actually been enjoying the latest Hotspots more than usual, but with Ryan gone, I really doubt I'll have much interest. What made the Hotspot so magical was the dynamic between most of the people on it because they had all been friends for years. It's sad that we won't see that again.

These days, I cruise around the ex-Gamespotters' personal blogs more than I do Gamespot itself.

jeffgerstmann.net

arrowpointingdown.com (Ryan)

doofycrap.com (Rich)

theheadofalfredogarcia.com (Alex)

EDIT: actually, maybe we WILL see that sort of podcast chemistry once again! I speak of the Arrow Pointing Down Podcast! Hopefully They'll make this an ongoing thing.