I had somewhat high hopes for this game. Grandia 2 and Grandia 3 were both superb, Xtreme was released half-way between the two. The Grandia series has one of the best combat systems ever in an RPG game. It’s very tactical and usually gives you a sense that the tide could turn on you at any moment if you really screw up. I was expecting the same from Grandia Xtreme, but was somewhat disappointed.

For all those who stated that the Bluray feature would be useless in the lower cost PS3 due to the lack of an hdmi port…Moreover, he said, the less expensive models will now include HDMI output ports. HDMI’s “time has come earlier than expected,” Kutaragi said, conceding that the high-definition output port was considered extravagant when first announced, but necessary now as the adoption rate of HDTVs continues to grow.Wired news also says that a price cut on the low end model is expected in japan, which will make that model the same cost as the Xbox360…This makes it even more likely for me to buy one.

I’m keeping a mental running tally of the relative values of game consoles I could purchase. That shifted one way a tiny bit yesterday while talking to Pi, then shifted slightly back the other way today.He pointed out another traditional RPG for the Xbox360 that wasn’t on my list. It, Enchanted Arms (Link dead), was good enough to go on my “might-want” / “possible rental” list. I also found another Xbox game to add to the list bringing the “must have” total to 4 games for the 360.

I saw a reply to a gamefly article awhile back of a person who was disappointed in their service. He pasted his games queue with nearly every game at long wait or short wait. I just went though and hit Rent on every game that looked marginally interesting to me and came up with the following.Children of Mana Releases 11/1/06 Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin Release 11/23/06 Rogue Galaxy Releases 10/5/06 Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria Releases 9/28/06 Suikoden 3 Now Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction Long Wait Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana Now The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass Releases TBDNew Super Mario Bros.

I finally bit the bullet and decided to sign up for Gamefly. I wandered through their PS2/DS/Gamecube list for a couple hours and picked out a full 50 games I wanted to try out. The nice thing is that most of the games are listed as available now. Only a small handful of the ones I wanted were listed as having any wait time at all. Grandia Xtreme and Advance Wars DS are on their way now.

Dark Cloud 2… I’ve had the game for nearly 3 years. Almost a year ago I first tried to beat the final boss of the game. Because of the 5 minute time limit and the difficulties in actually attacking the boss, I had a really hard time on the last boss. That, and it took almost 20 minutes of fighting sub-bosses between the time you can save and the final boss.

Google’s Bid for Bookworms (Dead Link)Er, other than the fact that the news story used one of my friend’s names, I don’t really have much to say about this story… oh yeah, and that Project Gutenberg beat them to it by about 15 years.

Finished the Human side of Radiata Stories. The ending wasn’t quite as bad as I was expecting it to be, really. I think I’ll finish up the bonus dungeon then play a different game for awhile. Playing this one for 60 hours so far has gotten me a bit bored with it.I did get every possible character on the human side though (except the bonus dungeon character you get for finishing that…)I probably shouldn’t have used all the berries though towards the end to defeat Elwen, now that I know you can carry them over to the next game.

COSTELLO CALLS TO BUY A COMPUTER FROM ABBOTT ABBOTT:Super Duper computer store. Can I help you? COSTELLO:Thanks. I'm setting up an office in my den and I'm thinking about buying a computer. ABBOTT:Mac? COSTELLO:No, the name's Lou. ABBOTT:Your computer? COSTELLO:I don't own a computer. I want to buy one. ABBOTT:Mac? COSTELLO:I told you, my name's Lou. ABBOTT:What about Windows? COSTELLO:Why? Will it get stuffy in here? ABBOTT:Do you want a computer with Windows?

Some people complained that they would have to make a PS3 every 4 seconds to reach their target amount by the end of the year.What they failed to think of is the fact that they sold about 120 million PS2’s in 6 years. That comes out one in a bit less than 2 seconds each. They pulled the same thing off with the PSone as well. If you think they’re only on an 8 hour workday, which they’re not, that drops to under a second.