I had a lot of fun writing this. I hope you enjoy it. Let me know what you think!

Professor Layton and the Curious Village - 9.5

Hey everyone! I hope all of you are doing well! For those of you who have recently started school again, I hope the transition has been alright! Summer 2009, you were a good one! I just started back, and I have a feeling this is going to be a busy, busy semester. If you see me around less, that's why. It's going to be good, though... I'm really excited to be back at my uni in the states... it's been nine months because of my time in England, so it's good to see all these people again!

I know I teased this awhile ago, but I just finished my Beautiful Katamari review. I gave it a 7.0. I liked the game a lot, but it was undoubtedly missing some of the greatness of its predecessors. We Love Katamari is easily the better game, which is disappointing... no one likes it when a sequel is worse than the games that went before it! It's still fun, though, and worth the $20 it goes for now. You can read the review here. Next up will be my review of Professor Layton and the Curious Village. Should go up soon, maybe even this weekend! My BK review was very traditional, but I want to do something fun for the Layton review. We'll see how it goes.

Something else fun happened this month - I was Gamespot's moderator of the month for August! You can check out my cool little red badge in my profile, but not for much longer! I was selected due to a writing contest we had... the objective was to write an article that we thought would benefit the Gamespot community. I wrote about tips for acting respectfully on the forums. You can check out the article the Moderator Collective! I'd love to link it to you properly, but Gamespot's HTML error hates me and never lets me do what I want. Here's the link: http://www.gamespot.com/pages/unions/forums/show_msgs.php?topic_id=26997413&union_id=15969 (Note to the power's that be: PLEASE FIX THIS IT MAKES ME SAD!). While you're there, consider becoming a member of the Moderator Collective! It's a way for users of the site to get to know us mods better. Also, here's the mention of me being MotM in Gamespot's Community Report. For being MotM, GS sends us a game. My choice was... Bioshock? I know, I know... it's old as dirt! Still, I've never gotten around to playing it and have really wanted to. Since I chose an old, cheap game, Jody let me pick two old, cheap games! Fun times! I also got Mass Effect. Looking forward to playing both of them now that my Xbox is finally back from getting its RROD repaired!

That's all for today loves. I hope you all have amazing weekends!

Hey kids. We've all played Shadow of the Colossus. If not, get out of my blog. No seriously. Bye. Go play it. Then come back and we'll talk.

All done?

Alright so Wander from the game is currently duking it out with several other characters to be one of the ten reader-selected heroes picked for the final bracket in the All Time Greatest Hero challenge. I'm not so sure about this one. While I like Wander and all, you have to admit there is something a little dubious about him and his situation. You can't help but feel sorry for the colossi he wakes and kills... they seem innocent, and that makes Wander a little less than heroic.

There is one character in the game that never wavers from heroism: Agro! Agro, Wander's horse, is self-sacrificing until the end and a much better hero than Wander will ever be. Get Agro the recognition he deserves - join the movement!

Grassroots people, grassroots.

I'd absolutely love to hear all your thoughts on why or why not Wander is actually a hero. Let's talk about it! Feel free to comment in my blog or in the ATG forum thread.

Well, my 360 finally RROD last night while I was playing Rock Band 2 with some friends. Instead of being sad, though, I kind of got excited! Before I left for England, my system didn't work at all. When I got back 5 months later, it mysteriously worked again. However, my XBL connection didn't work properly, and I sometimes had freezing errors. I knew I would have to replace it eventually. Since it RROD'd, that replacement just became free! YAY!
So I promised more travel tales. I'm going to break them up into chunks because I figure people would get tired of reading them just straight through... there's so much to share! Last time we began my backpacking journey and covered London and Liverpool with my best friend Chrystle. Today, we move on to Scotland! I'll include a link to my first travel blog at the end of this post in case you are interested in reading it.

We flew to Edinburgh from London's Luton airport, which is a tiny and annoyingly chairless little place. I'm extremely anal about getting to airports/coach stations/train stations early in order to not miss departure times, so unfortunately we spent a lot of time waiting around. It was dark by the time we finally got to Edinburgh. When our bus dropped us off in the city center, I was stunned by Edinburgh's beauty. Even at night, it shows itself to be the most stunningly beautiful city I have ever visited. Edinburgh is, for all practical purposes, divided into two halfs: old town and new town. The names are pretty self explanitory. Old town starts with Edinburgh castle, mounted high on a hill, and slopes downward from there. A valley-turned-park divides old town from new. Our hostel was located in old town right under the mount of the castle, but it was so foggy we couldn't see it! All the entrances into old town are through narrow alleyways known as "closes," and without being familiar with the city they can seem very unsafe. We wandered around both new and old town, luggage in tow, for about two hours until we finally made it to the hostel! We saw lots of the city, including an underground bar called the Hogshead that we think might have been inspiration for a bar in Harry Potter, and the district where most of Edinburgh's strip clubs were located. Edinburgh was built up by old volcanic eruptions, so it's a very uneven city. Though I only had a bookbag, Chrystle had a suitcase. We tramped up and down hills and towering staircases the whole time, so we were quite tired by the time we made it to the hostel!

The hostel was a charming little place right under the cliff of the castle. Our room looked out onto George Heriot's school. Heriot's school has four towers and its students are sorted into four houses, so it is commonly thought to be one of the inspirations for Hogwarts. As JK Rowling lives in Edinburgh and wrote most of the Harry Potter series there, it was amazing to explore. Chrystle and I jokingly referred our trip to Edinburgh as our "pilgrimage to Harry Potter Mecca." It's easy to see how the magical city could come out of a place like Edinburgh. With the winding cobbled streets, narrow closes, and dominating castle, Edinburgh is a city of mystery and enchantment.

Once we dropped off our stuff that night, we headed out for a quick dinner in the Grassmarket district (right below our hostel--yes, below--though they were technically "next door" we had to walk down about 3 storeys or so of stairs to get there!) and then listened to music in a pub. In the pub we met a few locals, one of which who told me about Arthur's Seat, the dormant volcano about a five minute's walk from the lower end of Edinburgh's Royal Mile. He told me it was a great hike and that I "hadn't seen the real Edinburgh" until I'd climbed it. I promised him I would, and I planned to make good on my promise!

On our first day in the city, we took a walking tour. We learned lots of interesting facts, but my favorite was the story of Mary King's Close. The close led to an underground tenement where poor families lived, and during the plague it was bricked over! Later that day Chrystle wanted to go to the zoo, but I opted to fulfill my promise and climb Arthur's Seat. Climbing the seat gives a beautiful view of the city, and I enjoyed the hike. When Chrystle and I met up again, we headed to a movie theatre. We planned to go see Watchmen because we read the book together and wanted to experience the movie together, but unfortunately when we got to the theatre it was sold out. Instead we saw "The Boat that Rocked," which I had seen lots of previews for but Chrystle had never heard of! I found out then that it wasn't out in the US yet so it had not been advertised. We LOVED it! It comes out in the US in August, and I highly recommend it.
On our last full day in the city, we visited the Edinburgh Castle. Unfortunately, my water bottle spilled inside my purse, ruining my camera and cell phone. Luckily I didn't have my iPod with me that day! After the castle, I ran across to new town to buy a phone. I had to pass through the park in between, and again marveled at how beautiful Edinburgh was. We met up that afternoon at the Elephant House Cafe, one of the places where Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book. It is a nice cafe and I loved visiting it! We spent the afternoon souvenier shopping, and we had haggis at dinner. I couldn't get over the fact that it was guts, but Chrystle liked it.

I'll end these travel tales with pictures here! I'll have more on Scotland later--after Chrystle left, I did a four day tour of Highland Scotland that ended up being four of the best days of my life. Chrystle got a disposable camera, so I have some pictures of Dublin and Cork (my next two destinations) but I have to get them developed. Once I've developed them I'll make another blog. I was able to get another camera before my highland tour, so luckily I've got pictures of that! Hope you like these!

Edinburgh Castle stands high over the city.

Edinburgh Castle from the park that divides new town from old town.

A view of Scott Monument (dedicated to Sir Walter Scott, and Edinburgh native) from one of the many tiny streets--closes--running off Edinburgh's Royal Mile.

Climbing Arthur's Seat - you can see on the right of the image some of the buildings below.

The seat again, with the city and castle off in the distance.

The highest point of the seat. I was amazed that something so beautiful and so wild existed so close to the city itself! But Edinburgh is great like that.

Sorry I can't link the other blog post here. HTML error. Blame Gamespot, not me.

Hey everyone! I just put up a Super Mario Galaxy review! You can find it here. I gave it a perfect 10. I loved the game so much! It's the first of the modern Marios where I've gotten all 120 stars, or even wanted to. My sister and I had a great time with it, as you'll find in the review!

I hope you enjoy reading it. Feedback would be greatly appreciated. As I've said before, I write the reviews for myself primarily just to get some good writing practice in a format that I rarely use. I like to experiment with style. Galaxy was, for me, a way for me to spend time with my little sister, so I approached the review in a personal, experience driven manner. It's not going to read as a product review so much as a "this is what the game means to me."

In other news, I got Left 4 Dead this week! Unfortunately I'm having trouble with my Xbox and live doesn't exactly work. At least I can play it local multiplayer, which I've done quite a bit since I picked it up.

Next blog will be a continuation of travel tales. Hope everyone had a happy 4th and enjoyed celebrating Palin's resignation! Haha!