Binge

Well, despite having "finished" Halo 3, and still having both Psychonauts and Bioshock looming large on the stack, I've been mostly engrossed in Burnout Paradise and Super Smash Brothers Brawl. I suppose I would feel worse about it if I wasn't having so much fun. McGuire assigned himself unlock duty, apparently, since he pretty much scored almost all of the unlockable characters in Brawl by going through the Subspace Emissary mode. I've been jumping in to co-op mode with him when I get the chance, but between his greater stock of free time and my gaming ADD, he's a lot farther in the game than I am. It's quite fun either way, so I don't mind.

I got even more Halo 3 time in this past week, first when getting some Skulls with Lars' friend Steve, then again later with Jen and Lars along. Jen is still missing a couple of chapters on the Legendary difficulty, but she soloed the missing missions on Heroic, so she is well on her way. It's pretty funny, the first night all four of us played she was by far the weakest link, but after just one night on Legendary, she is back to the ass-kicking gamer that I am more familiar with. The less WoW the better.

Burnout Paradise: what can I say? I get so much enjoyment out of this game it is just sick. I've been gaining cars as fast as I can manage, and right now I am on a quest to finish EVERY burning route for each of my cars. I started this self-made quest before I had my B License, and it's been going great. A few of these routes are really, really hard, but I've had a few that I finished with 30 seconds to spare, too. I still can't get anything going on-line, the system freezes too fast to accomplish much. Such is life. On the "good" news front, I got Microsoft to agree that my system is defective, and I already have a coffin on the way. I will miss the 360, it's become quite the fixture in my gaming life already, but it will be so nice to have a working one, and be able to really play Burnout with other humans.