Welcome to hell!!!

-Hey yo! For those wondering who are in the pic above with me, that is my sister Jane, and my brother-in-law Shawn on the left. This past Tuesday they started their move down to Georgia and I spent a ton of time hanging out with them their last few days in town. Going to miss them a lot, especially all those classic Madden and NCAA bouts I've had with Shawn that I detailed in many blogs going years upon years back. The most memorable being my loss to Shawn in NCAA 2004 of 100-6, yes 100-6 with default 5 minute quarters......and I was actually trying!

The family fun started over a week ago where we all met up at my brother, Bob's where nearly all my family met up there to feast up some Indian tacos! Besides meeting up with all the regular family folk, I basked in getting preyed upon by Bob's dogs the second I walked in his door. Also got a chance to chat it up with Bob's friends Chris & Ben that I don't see that often. Ben thanked me for recommending him Shadow of the Colossus after he asked me several months back what was a good game that had some boss battles. Even though I never had a chance to partake in the boss-battle mayhem that is Colossus, it instantly came to mind from what I read on it.

On Saturday it was my dad's 68th birthday, and the family got together and we watched Lakeview Terrace at the theater with him. I wish I was there when this movie was pitched "we want to make a film all about upper class neighbors arguing with each other and delivering as many witty racial insults as possible," now even though that is nearly 3/4ths of the film, I was still moderately entertained throughout because of the excellent cinematography and performances from the entire cast. If a film has that going for it, that alone can make the oddest of plots do wonders on screen. After the flick we checked out a new Chinese restaurant in town, The Phoenix, which is owned by old employees of a Chinese place that closed down last year called Shangrila. Our family was a huge Shang fan, and were delighted to find out that they were bringing back their excellent cuisine in a new locale. I had my usual combo of beef fried rice and sweet and sour chicken, and it tasted as amazing as I recalled.

On Sunday, the family festivities continued as it was my mom's turn to throw her early Thanksgiving dinner since Jane & Shawn won't be in town for the holidays. Mom put together an elegant feast with all the fixings, and as usual she was plenty gracious to leave me enough left overs for two days. Stuck around for a long time after dinner and had some brews with Shawn and played a lot of board and card games with Mom, Jane, Shawn & Joey like Fact or Crap, Apples to Apples, Texas Hold 'em, and my favorite.....Scattegories! Finally, this past Monday concluded the 4-days straight of nonstop family fun with my other sister Ann celebrating her birthday. Nothing super fancy, we just met up at her & Greg's apartment for pizza and cake, and visited for a couple hours.

-Speaking of out there films, I saw another one last night in the form of Max Payne. I briefly played both of the past games, and was still kind of surprised to see this coming out with no new game in the franchise in about 5 or 6 years. Wish I played both of the games some more though coming out of the film because I was clueless about most of the film's plot. The plot with the demons and the drugs totally went over my head with the super-fast paced storytelling. I guess I went in expecting a ton more action and crazy bullet time going on, and there was a couple doses of that, but not really as many crazy gun fights as I was hoping for. I think I'll need to see this flick again to gain a proper perspective on it. Hopefully I'll get around to giving this videogame flick the podcast treatment like so many other past silver screen pleasures like BloodRayne, Dead or Alive, Dungeon Siege, Advent Children & Postal.

-I've been monkeying around with Zune Social network lately and have started to take a liking to its My Space-esque nature of tracking how many total songs have been played on each of your friend's Zune. Nice little thing about it is that everyone off my 360 Friends list automatically carried over to my Zune Social friends list (seeing how MS wants to do everything these days and all). And just to show how popular the Zune is, of the near 90 peeps on my friends list, only three of them are showing their "Zunecards" showing plays. Anyways, here is my Zunecard so you guys can track and poke fun at all the crap I listen too. Haven't listened to a ton of music on my Zune yet as I mostly use it for podcasts, but here is my card, let me know if what I've been listening to shows up for you or not as I may still have some privacy settings on.

-Added two new BluRays to my collection, total is now up to around 7 or so. Ran across a couple deals. Picked up Superbad on sale for $18, I already owned the DVD but impulsed buy the non-special edition, and I'm a stickler for the extra features, and I heard the extras rocked on the Superbad special edition so I decided what the hell. Other BluRay I picked up was Punisher, and longtime readers of this blog should know I'm a huge Punisher fan so this comes as no surprise. I already told myself I'd buy as many versions of the Punisher as possible. I now own the 1989 Dolph Lungdren version on DVD, the original 2004 DVD, the 2007 director's cut DVD, and now the BluRay which appears to have none of the amazing the extras either DVDs already included. Anyways since it is a Lionsgate film, that means it was only a $15 investment (Lionsgate is the only company to reduce their BluRay catalog down to $15 at big box stores).

-Earlier this week I conquered game #15 of the year in Hotel Dusk: Room 215 for the DS! Awesome game all around, loved the experience it delivered from beginning to end. There's a ton of reading, but it only helped immerse me into the experience and feel for each character because of how brilliant the dialogue is, and how it aids each character flesh out their personality. I can gush on forever, but I'll conclude this saying Hotel Dusk is definitely one of my top 3 DS games I have played thus far.

-So I've been clocking a fair amount of time into Rock Band 2 thus far, not as much as I've been hoping, actually more at Chris's as we're doing the Band World Tour on his hard drive this time around. Really digging it, though the overall experience hasn't changed that drastically, which is a good thing. Band World Tour has more depth than ever, with separate challenges and an online Battle of the Bands mode to help flesh it out in ways I thought unimaginable. One of the little touches I like a lot is the ability to play Band World Tour solo when you have a little time to kill, and the ability to swap instruments and band members inbetween sets without having to create a separate rocker for each instrument. Definitely am gonna end up passing on Guitar Hero World Tour for now though since Rock Band 2 (and the 4 or 5 other holiday games I have on preorder) and its plethora of DLC I already invested in will be keeping me busy for awhile. Speaking of holiday games I already have on preorder, let's run down the list real quick - Saints Row 2 (just came in a few days ago), Gears of War 2, Resistance 2 & FallOut 3!

-Today's going to rule, I'm setting the day aside to rock out and catch up on some serious games. Current plan is to invest a ton of time into Saints Row 2, TNA Impact, Civilization Revolution, Rock Band 2, and throw in a few PS2 RPGs I have yet to play in order to prep for our next installment of the RPG podcast retrospective. Speaking of that, last week's installment was all about RPG's that were multiplatform for PS2/Xbox/GameCube like X-Men Legends, Dark Alliance, Future Tactics, The Third Age and also GameCube & Xbox exclusive RPGs like Paper Mario, KoTOR, Fable and so much more!!!! If you missed out, make sure to head over to ontappodcast.com to download the show.

-That wraps up another long blog, cya next time!