So, as usual, it’s been a while. I wrote half a blog in my computer class a few weeks ago but it was thankfully the last class (It was terrible, I won’t go into the details.) so I didn’t have another day to finish it up and basically just forgot about it. Might as well throw that in now and get to the recent stuff after.

I’ve been testing out my Xbox Live Gold subscription for the past week and a bit and I have to say I’m happy with my purchase. Gears has been the disc spinning mostly, but I also rented Viva Piñata for a few days. It wasn’t as good as I was expecting. For not selling as much as Rare wanted, it has been getting a lot of hype and a lot of comparisons to Animal Crossing. To be honest, I see few similarities. The game is actually a lot closer to Harvest Moon, but not as involving. In Harvest Moon, I always felt like it was my farm, my animals. Same with Animal Crossing, there is a certain attachment to your villagers where you have favorites and feel disappointed if they leave. In Viva, there wasn’t the same sort of experience for me. With the piñatas having little use save for being eaten or sold, I started not to care if they were around and started selling them off before they got eaten. After a few hours with the game piñatas are in fights and getting broken open all over the place and it is a little too crazy. I see the appeal of this game to some people, for example, loading up on pretty easy Achievements, and I do think the younger audiences that the game was originally aimed at would enjoy it. Personally, though, I didn’t like it enough to buy it and I highly recommend that anyone who is playing the game currently get Animal Crossing for the DS.

Okay, on to newer and probably similar thing. I’m almost done first semester. As previously mentioned, I finished my waste-of-time computer class so the computers could be used for grade 12 exams, so I had a spare for about a week and a half. I managed to finish my Twilight Princess art piece I’d been working on for art class and that is done, too. Hopefully I’ll get it back soonish and I’ll be able to put it up on my currently empty deviantArt along with the original sketches. I’m completely done Science, as well. I had my exam on Thursday and it was a breeze. Well, I think it was, I haven’t received my mark yet. The L.A. final is on Wednesday and then I’m done. While exams are going on for everyone we get a two week study break. Since I have a bit of a break now I’ve been doing quite a bit of gaming — what did you expect?

I’ve made it my goal to make this long weekend I have a sort of Xbox Live Arcade round up thing. I’ve got quite a few that I haven’t accomplished much on, all from XLA Unplugged Vol. 1. I’ve also been putting in some quality time with Small Arms, which I bought along with Lumines Live! last week and UNO with my remaining points the other day. So far I’ve completed most of the Achievements, one’s glitched that I should have received but didn’t. Gastronaught Studio is releasing a free map pack at some point in the future so a patch should come with it but it would be nice if it came sooner. Lumines Live! is a pretty cool game but it’s expensive, especially considering that you don’t get half the game and have to buy more packs in other downloads. There is one major add-on for 600pts. available and two more coming that are going to be “on sale” for a at 100pts. each before they jack up the price to 300pts. each. So, I’m feeling kind of ripped off about that because there was kind of a big deal made about how the Live version had more content and was half the price of the PSP version but that isn’t really the case since you need all the expansions to have all the features the PSP version does. It’s still a fun game, though, and the multiplayer is be better on Live since the chances of finding someone with a PSP and a copy of Lumines at the same time you have yours are slim to none if not planned. UNO is pretty cool and worth the 400pts. for sure, but if you were considering buying a Vision Camera I think there is a bundle you can get that comes with UNO. My only complaint about UNO is that the Achievements are far too easy. Sure, practically free Gamerscore is awesome, but I want the game to hold my attention. Luckily UNO’s multiplayer is good so I’m not too worried, but it would be a lot better if some of my friends has UNO. I’ve also been blazing through the Backgammon game that is on XBLA Unplugged Vol. 1 (Hooray for acronyms) and I just have to get 25 consecutive wins (I’m at 17,) play 10 online games and play 100 games total. I might not bother with the last one, I don’t actually like the game that much, it’s just for the Achievements and since I own it I might as well use it. Geometry Wars is awesome but hard and Outpost Kaloki X is also pretty hard but is a decent game. I’m ignoring the other games on the disc at this point.

By now you may be saying, “Wow. That was way too long.” Well, I have a solution! I set up an account with the site 360Voice.com when I hooked up Live, it is supposed to be what would happen if your Xbox 360 could blog. (Re: The to-the-point version of the paragraph above.) Thanks for reading and if you have Live please let me know, I’d be happy to add you as a friend.

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