Yeah, whatever, I spent money.

Xbox 360 Pro 20GB ~ $299.99
Dead or Alive Extreme 2 ~ Free
Mass Effect ~ $19.99 with $40 credit from Free Gears of War
Three-year product service plan ~ $59.99
Dead Rising ~ $34.99

Total: $464.64 after 12% tax

Yeah, so I got taken with the service plan... but at Futureshop, all things are covered for three years. Everything. Cables, controllers, all hardware issues... everything. I won't have to wait to send it off to MS to get it fixed or replaced with a refurbished one, either they fix it or replace it. I've always liked Futureshop.

I really didn't want Gears of War so when I found out that I could use it's value to credit another game I jumped on Mass Effect like nobody's business. $20? Excellent deal. They didn't have Dead Rising and being the reason I bought the console I needed to go find it. $34.99 at EB. Win... now to get this gamertag working...

I really didn't want to push the last blog post down but I felt I needed to blog this. Here it is for those who missed it.

Now of course, I've been pondering this ever since Gears of War first came out and have always been a good big step away from the side of the cliff and turned back every time.

Now with the 20GB Pro being priced at $299.99 CAD and there being a large number of games that are out and coming out that interest me I think it might be time. Now of course, in the past I've said the PS3 will have more exlusives that interest me but that's just not the case now. Looking at the 360's list of games I can see some gems that I was able to sample but never get the full course.

Games like Crackdown for instance. I played the demo and loved it. Or Forza 2, the game that brought me closest to jumping over the 360 cliff (I'm a big GT fan so it's obvious how this would interest me). Mass Effect, sure, better on the PC but I don't have a PC right now to run it and I really am not interested in getting a new PC right now... and I'll never find one for $300. Then of course there is Dead Rising. I may just buy two copies of the game just to make sure that if one goes south I can still play it.

Here is a list of games that I have complied that currently interest me enough to want to buy them:

Dead Rising
Lost Planet
Crackdown
The Darkness
Mass Effect
Forza 2
Condemened: Criminal Origins
Ikaruga (XBLA)
Rez (XBLA)

Here is a list of "maybe's" that I will look into getting once I complete the first list:

Virtua Fighter 5
Perfect Dark Zero
Kameo
Overlord
Call of Juarez

There are a few games that my friend has that I can borrow (Lost Planet and DMC4 come to mind) as well and I want to rent Assassin's Creed. I guess I will most likely be "jumping in" soon. Even though it still feels wierd I am tired of waiting for Sony to deliver the goods. When they do finally deliver them I will be ready with credit card in hand but that's not now and won't be until at least mid-2009. Right now it is mid-2008.

Obviously the hardware problems concern me but with the three year warranty I don't have to worry for at least that much time. Sure, waiting for it to get fixed sucks but I've got other stuff I can play while I wait, plus I'm starting back to school in September so I might as well get one now instead of later.

Anymore than five and my list would probably end up being 20-30 games long and too complex for it's own good. I cannot quantify the "quality" of these experiences in a numeric order, they were all outstanding experiences that have made gaming memorable for me. The list obviously changes with time but the first three that I mention (not the "top-3" but just the first three) will probably never leave the list, since they are the penultimate experiences of my gaming career so far and have enough nostalgia to keep them that way for a long time.

THE LIST

The first of the five ~ Super Metroid (SNES) 1994



No matter what games I play, whether they be Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island or whatever, I cannot find a single 2D side-scrolling game that has been a more enjoyable experience in my life. I even found Symphony of the Night to be the superior game, I just didn't enjoy it as much as I have Super Metroid.

The second of the five ~ Shadow of the Colossus (PS2) 2005



There are only three words that are needed to describe this game. "Epic, art and beautiful." Since I first started playing the game up until the last time I sat down and rode around the Forbidden Lands I have always been in complete awe of the environment, setting, story and art design. If there is any game that has ever been made that comes close to approaching the "perfect" level of quality, this is it.

The third of the five ~ Doom II: Hell on Earth (PC) 1994



I've been playing it since I was a kid. Not the best thing for an eight year old who is very susceptible to nightmares to be playing but still incredibly fun nonetheless. No game that I know of in my repitoire have I played pretty much every year for more than a decade. Not even StarCraft or Super Mario World come close to matching how often I've played Doom II over the years. No game as of yet has been able to match the Doom games in terms of gameplay and I doubt they ever will. Doom is just utterly fantastic. Period.

The fourth of the five ~ Dead Rising (360) 2006



Best zombie game ever. Period. Or until Dead Rising 2 comes out. This one hasn't been around long but it just goes to show how much I have enjoyed it to be shot straight on to here in such a short amount of time. There really isn't much that needs to be said about the game besides that it is what I've been looking for in a zombie game since I started having an interest in zombies in the first place. There are tons of zombies, tons of gruesome ways to kill said zombies and a great story with great characters to back it all up.

The fifth of the five ~ Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines (PC) 2004



There is a lot of things that I could criticize about this game's mechanics and it would all be justified... that is, except it's role-playing. No game I have played (I have yet to play Fallout, Baldur's Gate II or Planescape: Torment) has offered as many choices for both character creation and character development. I can choose to be whatever type of vampire I want to be and how much "humanity" I have by making various, real, moral choices that take some serious thought before going through with them. The combat is buggy and pretty much sucks but the atmosphere and immersion factors are completely through the roof making Vampire the best role-playing experience I've had in my life very worthy of a top-spot of all my gaming experiences. There have been other great RPG's but none as good as Vampire.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

ICO (PS2) 2001 ~ Comes close to the experience that Shadow of Colossus offered but not close enough. Still a fantastic game.

System Shock 2 (PC) 1999 ~ I've played about half of it and need to go back and finish it before I can make full judgement. I've been putting it off for far too long.

Max Payne (PC) 2001 ~ Another game that I really liked (along with it's sequel) but it just doesn't do enough to make my top-5 list.

Metal Gear Solid (PS) 1998 ~ I love the whole MGS series and to name one iteration without the others would just be unfair.

StarCraft (PC) 1998 ~ I am not a huge RTS fan. The only two RTS games that I have really enjoyed over the years have been StarCraft and Age of Empires II. I do enjoy them very much and did for many years but I just don't feel like they deserve as much recognition as the other games on the list.

Super Mario World (SNES) 1991 ~ My first real full game experience on a console in my life. I have great memories and spent so much time playing every level over and over and over again. There just isn't enough nostalgia to put it up there with the others.

A Spaghetti Western parody by Takashi Miike.

An exceptionally enjoyable film. It had great "Western" action combined with a Japanese-themed story along with Miike's personal styIe. It definitely wasn't meant to be a Western per se but I enjoyed it more than any Western that I have seen.

It was fully voiced in English which made some of the dialogue nonsensical since a lot of the Japanese actors didn't speak very good English but it did add a certain styIe to the movie that made it even more unique.

Up until now I had thought that Stand Alone Complex was just another great anime but after these six episodes I am willing to blow much more sunshine up it's ass. I've not been around the block much when it comes to anime, most of what I've seen consists mostly of Hayao Miyazaki films, Akira, Neon Genesis Evangelion and a bunch of craptacular stuff on YTV (Dragonball Z and Inuyasha).

Now I am still obviously not in a position to claim as to whether or not S.A.C. is superior to N.G.E. since I am only half finished the series but what I am sure of is that I like S.A.C. much more than N.G.E. The way the story has played out in combination with the action and the characters is far more appealing to my tastes than N.G.E. was. Eva to me was very enjoyable but it's story relied too heavily on religious imagery and severely over-the-top methods of telling the story (the whole complete "mind-****" of it all). On the other hand with S.A.C., it relies more on a precise deliverance of the events (the aforementioned "game of chess" analogy) along with much more "mature" story elements.

I don't hold that against N.G.E. but I have to admit, being empathetic with a group of fourteen year-old children is very difficult, even when they are suffering with severe issues. S.A.C. on the other hand involves adults who I can connect with more easily and understand their line of thinking (since of course, I am one as well). I used to be a teenager myself and can reminisce about the past but I have grown well out of that mind state and into what I am now, something much different and incapable of knowing what it is like to live with those thoughts.

I cannot wait to get started on the 2nd GIG but a friend of mine is also wanting to watch the series and see Solid State Society with me. He was the one who put me onto N.G.E. and I owe it to him to not finish it without him so I will probably not start watching the 2nd GIG for a while until he is able to finish the first and catch up. It is a great place to leave it at as well considering how the story is going in a completely new direction now. Hopefully now I can get back into Persona 3 and get it finished before I move onto something else and can't get myself back into it again.

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WARNING: Slight S.A.C. Spoilers ahead (nothing relating to the story, only Motoko's character, which is critical to the following line of speculation)

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A certain point was brought up in the episode when Motoko and Batou are in the maintenance tunnels underneath Section 9, Motoko and Batou were discussing the idea about individuality and how mnemonic devices are used to keep themselves "unique" even though they can switch their cyber-brains into new bodies with ease, even ones that do not resemble their former self.

Batou mentioned something about Motoko's past and her "wanting a body that had slender wrists" in order for her to wear the ladies wrist-watch that she kept to remind her of her final stage of cyberization. This spawned the thought that, could Motoko had been male before becoming fully cyberized? It was only in passing that this came up in my mind but none-the-less it is a viable theory.

Motoko's female friends whom she hangs out with are obviously (from what I have read so far in the manga and from some scenes and dialogue in S.A.C.) involved with her sexually. Now of course, homosexuality is a perfectly viable conclusion but this little discussion between Batou and Motoko got me thinking. Of course, from what I understand, no one really knows the truth and it will always be a mystery... which is one thing I liked a lot about some things in N.G.E., they were kept vague and obscured, so that the viewer had to choose which theory seemed most plausible... but hey, no harm in me thinking about it, right?

Another thought that occurred to me while going over this in my mind was if minds are interchangeable between bodies with different physical genders than wouldn't that mean that some people could literally fall in love with someone, who appears and acts female, could actually be male in reality? Further, what is it psychologically, not physically or biologically, that defines gender? Is it things like the "motherhood instinct" that appears in most women who get pregnant and drive them to do the "motherly" things that they may have never even been taught? Is that the case or is that just the body influencing the mind with the rush of new hormones?

Is gender purely biological? Is there something in the mind and consciousness that influences the way we think and act that can be defined as either male or female? As of right now I don't have the answer and cannot conclude anything beyond that. From what I can conclude though from my understanding of biology and psychology is that there is nothing purely mental in nature, that is uninfluenced by the body itself and hormones, that can define a person's "gender." We are but the same "programs" being guided by our bodies biological functions.

Neon Genesis Evangelion may have made me think but it never made me think this hard. Existentialism is one thing, that's simple philosophy... the definition of gender, AI being considered "life" and the complexity of the human mind are something in a totally different league.

The pieces begin to fall into place and the story becomes more clear. From what I have seen so far, I am beginning to understand the Laughing Man's motives behind his (?) actions.

There really isn't anymore that I can say. I am still very much enjoying the series and it only keeps getting better as I go through the episodes. I only have six left for the 1st GIG and I will most likely be watching those tomorrow night.

Batou is still my favourite character but I feel myself connecting more with Togusa than anyone else. It might be because he is a family man, or it might be because he is the most "down-to-earth" of them all, I don't know just yet. Batou is a cool guy who gets the job done but I just cannot connect with him on an emotional level since for the most part, he is closed off.