15 days of 2008. We've made some progress.

People are always talking about New Year's Resolutions. For those of you who have been living in a cave for the past century, a New Year's Resolution is a goal set by people that they hope to accomplish at the end of the year. I actually have a couple of them and I thought I'd share some with you.

First with the 360, I want to get 10,000 achievement points. Oh yeah, I'm getting there.
Reach about 100 user reviews. I'm currently at 68.
And that's it. I call them my New Year's Gaming Resolution because I don't set goals most people do. A couple people, including a few people in my family, made a resolution halfway through 2007 to quit smoking and they've been doing it well. And other's are other problems. But I can't relate because I don't smoke or etc.

But the main point is I want to know what is your New Year's Resolution or Gaming Resolution. I know it's a bit late but I've rarely spent some time on the web.

Moving away from that topic, Super Smash Bros. Brawl was just delayed until March 9. I know somebody who won't be too happy with two delays. I just hope that won't happen for GTA 4. I have $68 bucks left and I'm saving it until March. I think that's when it comes out. If it gets delayed again I'll set my hair on fire. I can't deal with another delay.

I just went to Jackson Hole, Wyoming this past week. We went on this beautiful Ski Resort called the Targhee Ski Resort. We pretty much visisted both Wyoming and Idaho. We were staying at the Teton Creek Resorts and it was amazing. We went snowboarding at Targhee and for some odd reason bad things happened to me every day.

We went for one week, and this is the chronological order of the bad happenings.

Day 1: I freak out on the plane ride. I hate plane rides.
Day 2: Thankfully nothing happened
Day 3: While taking a snowboarding lesson, I fell backwards and heard a crack in my neck. I nearly broke it, but I got lucky.
Day 4: While snowboarding, I fell and nearly broke my arm. Later that day, I went to the hot tub, came back to the hotel, and passed out.
Day 5: This time we went up on the chairlift, as we did all the other days, and I fell. The chairlift hit me in the back of the head.
Day 6: I fell under the chairlift.
Day 7: I thought I lost my wallet, which was in my sweater pocket.

So yeah, most were just me being plain dumb. And the tickets for snowboard rentals and lift tickets was expensive. 40 bucks for rental on top of 30 bucks for the lift. $70! When I came back, I used 12 dollars to get a subscription to EGM (Electronic Gaming Magazine)with my snazzy Visa giftcard which had $50. Now I have money for GTA4, and if it gets delayed, I'm buying something else and waiting until December 2008 to buy it. Hopefully earlier.

So that's it. Quite a big blog post with a few topics on it. I hope you enjoyed my first blog of 2008, and I guess wait for more.

I just want to start by wishing everyone a Happy New Year. 2007 had lots of great games, Bioshock, Heavenly Sword, Assassin's Creed, Halo 3, God of War 2, and the list goes on. 2008 can only look better. Grand Theft Auto 4, Devil May Cry 4, and there's supposed to be a Metal Slug game on the XBLA coming out this Wednesday I think.

Last night, I turned 14, and I didn't really get a lot of games. My friend did get me Saints Row, and my Uncle's friend got me Madden 08, but besides that I got 3 GameStop giftcards, worth 30, 50, and 65 dollars. And some Visa mastercard giftcard worth $50 which I hope GameStop will accept. Other than that I got around 270 dollars or somewhere around that amount. When I totalled up all of my money, I got around 470.

With my money, I went out and bought my last game of 2007. Ironically, I boughtit on the last day of 2007. I was looking for Skate but couldn't find it anywhere, so I went with Call of Duty 4. I also bought a 3 month Xbox Live Gold card so I have XBL until April.

I might go to the mall again tomorrow and I'll shop around for Skate. I'm also planning on getting Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas and whatever else looks good to me. I was able to find a $40 copy of Rainbow Six Vegas but went with Call of Duty which cost $60. And the three month card cost $20.

If I don't go tomorrow, then I'll go on Wednesday. I just hope the mall is open tomorrow. So what games would you guys recommend? I'll take all system recommendations except for Wii and PS3 because I don't have those. But I'll just be shopping around the 360 section. But these are the games I've either wanted or have been thinking about.

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas
Mass Effect
Skate
Assassin's Creed
Beautiful Katamari
Orange Box
Bioshock (I rented it and haven't played since yesterday. But I might or might not buy it.)
Possibly some Microsoft Points. I haven't really found any good XBLA games and I suck at SWOS.

That's all I can think of. Those are some I might want to get, but I won't get all. I'll definitely pick up Rainbow Six Vegas and/or Skate if I can find them. Do you have any other recommendations? I beat Halo 3 so I won't get that. I'm not a big fan of getting games that I already beat, but I might rent it for the multiplayer. I could've gotten Rock Band but I didn't really feel like it, and I didn't feel like getting Guitar Hero 3 either.

Sweet. I can't wait. I'm supposed to be getting some awesome presents..And if not, I'll cry like those super sweet sixteen girls. And I'm also told I'm getting a Ferrari cake, but it'll end up like an Acura from that South Park episode. No I'm kidding, no Ferrari cake for me. But I'm hoping to get either Saints Row or Call of Duty 4 for my birthday. That's what I'm hoping to get.

My friend told me about this video, and I happened to come across it on xbox360fanboy.com and all I have to say is wow. I've seen Alex Navarro's video of him playing DragonForce's Through the Fire and Flames, but he missed several notes. This kid, gets 95% of the notes hit. And he's only 9! Watch in amazement as this young boy pwns you in Through the Fire and Flames.

My friend who told me about this also has Guitar Hero and showed me the tutorial. He showed me the Hammer Ons where you strum one note and just press the colored buttons without strumming the others. And that's what this kid did in the video. If you go into practice with this song, the intro says "They're Hammer Ons" giving a clue as to what you need to do to the song. So click Red and strum at the same time, and press all the other buttons. And all this time I thought that "They're Hammer Ons" was part of the lyrics..or is it, I don't know, I didn't pay much attention. But yeah, this kid, he's good.

Sorry why I have to give you the link. I tried putting it on the blog but it wouldn't work.

I just got done downloading and spending some time with the new 3.80 firmware for the PSP. You may or may not have heard about it already but at that time, not much was known about the new features.

The new update allows you to listen to live radio, only if you have a wireless connection, which I hope most of you do. There are currently two available stations for you to download to your Memory Stick and listen to from the Network section on your PSP's XMB bar. Both are powered by two different sites, and I just forgot the names. They won't be stations you've heard of, maybe they will be, but for me, I wasn't familiar with any. The stations have lots of music ranging from J-Pop to J-Rock to Hard Rock to Urban, and even to Religious music, and Reggae, and so on. Each of these categories allows you to choose between stations already put on there.

I noticed quite a bit of lagging going around while listening. Every now and then, the volume would decrease and it would start searching for the station because it apparently lost connection. The first few times I tried to change the stations, it would lag, but after 5 minutes it started working, until I switched to the other Radio Player that was available.

I'm not really sure about the importing OPML channels, and I didn't really spend time with the pictures in the RSS channel, but I did quickly play a song to test out the new visualizer that was available. Sadly, there is only one, and PSP Fanboy described it as a slow Etch-a-Sketch, however when I took a look, it was slow, but nothing like an Etch-a-Sketch. There is just a tan background and eventually black lines show up in a circular motion. If you adjust your eyes, you can see a few things.

Overall I wasn't impressed. The laggy radio and the other useless features were not such a great thing. However I do enjoy some of the songs they play on the stations, I can barely hear because it'll keep reconnecting 15 times until I can listen to a song without any interference.

I just registered on Xbox Live using my real name, however, you cannot see my achievements because I don't have Xbox Live connected. I was thinking I could add on my achievements and I wouldn't lie. Well, I have like 98 achievements with a total of 3330 gamerscore. And my birthday is coming up on December the 30th. Can't wait for that day.

*Update* December 12, 2007

I was able to get my 360 connected. I have one month free of Xbox Live Gold so I'll be playing some Gears of War online. Find me and invite me to a game. I returned Halo 3 and the reason why my gamertag is different is because I was supposed to create an account from my Xbox 360, not xbox.com. So my achievements didn't carry over on the other one. Well now that they did, expect to see me a lot on XBL.

Well it's Monday, and I got it Friday. I wasn't able to get onto the computer but I managed and I finally got my Xbox. It came with Forza MotorSport 2 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance. We also bought Fifa 2007 and Sonic The Hedgehog. I don't have Xbox LIVE so you really can't see my gamerscore but I have 380. Most were from Marvel Ultimate Alliance, which is a good game. I also got another controller, and a play and charge kit. I also got a couple of game demos, videos that I deleted, I put some music, and I got trial versions of XBLA games. I got the full version of Hexic HD though.

A few months ago, I signed up for a demo. April 25, 2007 to be exact. A demo for the new God of War on the PSP. I was sent several emails confirming that I would be receiving this demo sometime in September. September happened, school started, then it ended, and to my horror, no demo. October flew by. Trick or Treating was lovely, and I finally received my demo on the day of Halloween. Along with it came a keychain that you can attach to your PSP (I did that first) and $15 dollars off of the new PSP "slim" which I really did not need. And I have to say, I am very impressed.

The graphics were just like the PS2 GoW games, and the controls were extremely similar. (With the exception of the rolling because there is no second analog stick on the PSP.) Simply tapping R and L at the same time made Kratos dive away from certain danger. The demo puts you in the battle of Attica and explains the controls to you. The game froze on me several times, and I learned that it is from the excessive combo moves I have unleashed upon the persians. Hopefully that will not happen in the game because a little birdy told me that the game would use up all 333 MHz of the PSP.

Overall I as impressed, and I cannot wait for the game. My birthday is coming up in December, and rest assured, I will be saving money up to buy this game. Unless Crisis Core gets a release date, then I'm buying that. A downloadable version should be coming soon, so look out for that. There was a little mini video walkthrough and several other locked items, but the demo was fantastic. God of War hits stores sometime around 2008, I'm guessing March is the month. Hopefully they will use the full MHz and hopefully the actual retail copy won't freeze up everytime I unleash my fury upon those wretched sinners. To those of you who have received the demo, I hope you had fun. And to those who are selling it on eBay, from what I've heard, I hope you die.

...who had a Wii! Yes, I finally got to play the Wii! But only Wii Sports. Overall, it's a pretty fun game! I'm still sticking with my decision by still choosing the 360. I love the Wii, and the games, but there are several games that shouldn't be on the Wii. For example, Pokemon Battle Revolution. My friend rented it and said it was good, and told me everything about it. Basically you just pick the attacks and watch them fight. Shouldn't have been on the Wii, it would be better on GameCube or something else. I wish there weren't games on the Wii that don't use the Wiimote for what I believe it is for. Swinging it around like a crazy maniac.

So I left his house and borrowed Star Ocean. Again. Sucks that my data was deleted so now I have to start all over again. In other news, I just signed up for a Jeanne d'Arc Demo that should get in my mail soon. I've been waiting nearly a month for the Hot Shots Demo and I hope the same does not happen with this one.

I almost got my 360 today, but almost wasn't enough. I'm still waiting for it. I'm planning on buying the $350 Pro or Premium one, Saints Row, UEFA Champions League and another controller. I really can't wait for Skate to come out! I'm pumped about that game. Well, leave a comment, and wait for the next blog.

For those of you who don't know, originally on GameSpot, you were able to rate games. From 1.0-10.0 pretty much like you can now. But now you can only do 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5 and so on. When before you were able to do 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and so forth. Now they are implementing this on the player reviews as well. I hate it. Leave the player ones alone! It forces me to give an overall, inaccurate score. Some games, I'll feel like giving the sound a 6, and the graphics a 9. But I can't do that. I have to slide and choose a score. I don't like that.

What they would do is, allow you to write a review. When you finish, choose the difficulty, time spent playing, and so forth. Then they would have you rate each category from 1-10. The categories (If I can remember all) were:

Graphics
Gameplay
Sound
Reviewer Tilt
Value

When you rated each of them, it would generate a score for you. But now it doesn't. It just has a box and you have to slide from 1.0 - 10.0. Oh well. I'll just have to get used to it I guess.

I will be writing more reviews. I really had no problem when they did it with the review slider. But now on player reviews? It sucks that I'm forced to give a game a 10 when I feel it deserved a 9.7 or 9.8 because it's so inaccurate. Hopefully they'll change this but as for now, I hate it so much. It really bugs me how inaccurate it is. It's also not fair that GS gets to still use the 1.1, 1.2 stuff but we don't. Come on GameSpot. Please change it back.