It’s already been more than a month since my last entry? Wow, this one-blog entry a month promise that I made myself is really starting to get difficult to keep up. I honestly don’t have too much to say right now and no games or events stick out in my mind as particularly interesting, but I feel the need to say something, so I’ll give you guys a few random stories about what I’ve been doing lately. Wait, how is that any different from what I’ve been doing? Ahem… moving on.

As usual, I’ve been spending a lot of time on Halo 2. In the weeks following the end of the Halo 3 beta, I was playing a disgusting amount of the game (although I also played a disgusting amount of the beta, racking up nearly 900 games by the time it ended), eventually getting to the point when anytime between 9pm and 6am was time that could potentially be devoted to Halo. Since the beta ended last month, I’ve played approximately 850 games of Halo 2. Keep in mind that I’ve played 5136 games total (as of this writing) in the two and a half years since the game came out, and it becomes apparent that I’ve played a little too much these last few months. Regardless of whether or not playing that much is seen as a good or bad thing, I’ve been playing fewer games in the last week or so, instead spending much more time in pregame tondos (pre·game  ton·do n. the often-lengthy conversation that takes place in the pregame lobby of a game, usually Halo 2).

One cool thing that I did do though was play through Halo 2’s entire campaign in one sitting for the first time. I played through all of Halo 1’s campaign shortly before Halo 2 was released, and I figured I should continue the tradition as we get close to Halo 3’s release. I only played on easy because I wanted to get through it relatively quickly, though I still managed to die five times (three times from sword-wielding flood, once by an Elite, and once by an idiot Hunter who hit me with a nice burst of friendly fire). It took about four and a half hours from start to finish, only pausing the game briefly a few times to answer IMs. Most people seemed to think it was a dorky thing for me to do, but I thought it was a fun experience, and I’m thinking I should probably go through and play all of Halo 1 again too, just because I can.

Getting away from Xbox for a minute, I finally decided to take the plunge and buy a Nintendo DS. Well, more accurately, I bought one because my original Game Boy finally died and everyone was urging me to get a handheld that wasn’t nearly two decades old. I have to say, I’m quite impressed with it. The visuals are definitely a step up from Asteroids and Tetris, and it’s cool that the games are actually in color, rather than shades of green. I bought New Super Mario Bros and Mario Kart to start out, and I’ve had a pretty easy time with Mario Kart (which is surprising, considering it’s a driving game), but Mario Bros has been giving me some trouble. I suck at side-scrollers *cough*Sonic*cough*, always have, and this game is definitely no exception to the rule. I got through the basic game in a few days, but going back and finding all of the coins has proven to be difficult. On the bright side, my frustration has proven to several of my friends that I can get just as aggro as the next guy.  

Yeah, this was a mundane entry, but oh well. Hopefully I’ll have more interesting stuff to say as we gear up to Halo 3’s release.