So, were do I begin?

Well, first, I'm pretty much finished with SoulCalibur: Broken Destiny, and I stand by my statement that it's one of the best games to come out this year. It's basically an expansion pack to SoulCalibur IV for the PSP, which isn't a bad thing at all. The slight changes to the battle system are great. The create-a-soul mode is a lot of fun and improved from SCIV. Quick Play is genuis and needs to be in more handheld games. I could argue that it's better than true online play thanks to lack of cheaters and lag. The extra modes round out the package. The core game is that same wepon-based complex fighting game that some of us have come to known to love.

Second, I finally picked up Resident Evil 5. I was originally going to wait for a price cut, but I just felt like purchasing it because it probably won't drop price until 2010, and a lot of games have been delayed until 2010, thus I won't have as much time to play it then. Sobecome more of athird-person-shooterwith a heavy focus onatmospherethen anything. Not that it's a bad thing; the games are probably the best third-person shooters on the market right now, and the old games were good horror games watered-down by complex controls. Most people have said that RE5 isn't really as good as RE4, but so far, I don't necessarily agree with that; the games are pretty much the same. And that's probably my biggest issue with the game. It just doesn't do much diffrent. RE4 was innovative for its time, but RE5 feels almost like a reskinning of RE4 some of the time. However, RE5 does quite a lot of things right. I haven't played co-op yet, but I can already tell the game was built around it. You constantly have to heal your partner, and your partner constantly has to heal you. You also have to share ammo throughout the game. I imagine the co-op mode being pretty intense. The gunplay is also really, really good. Everything about it just feels so right; the guns are really balanced, the aiming's perfect, the enemies are great; in terms of core gameplay, it just feels like RE5 does a lot of things right. The controls, however, take some time getting used to. I definitly wish Capcom made this game for the Wii. The Wii version of RE4 had great controls, and the graphics, while good, I would definitly get rid of for Wii controls, because they're nothing very special. There are also some minor flaws. Occasionally, you'll just be walking forward, with no enemies or anything, for a few seconds. It's not very common, but occasionally the odd moment will happen. There's also a big difficulty jump for the bosses; the game seems to get a lot harder than usually at the bosses. But overall, it's a very good game that I'm happy I bought.

I also got Halo 3: ODST on launch day. And, while I haven't had much time playing it due to school work, I definitly think it lives up to the Halo name already. For those who don't know, ODST is a Halo game without much hype (oddly) because of the fact that it's been marketed as an expansion pack since day one. Recently, the developers said that it's more of a full-fledged game than anything, which a lot of people didn't really think would happen, and now a lot of people aren't agreeing with. I'd say it's somewere in between an expansion pack and a full new game. The campiegn seems to be as long as Halo 3's so far. But the mutiplayer mode seems like it's mostly the same as Halo 3's. Of course, I haven't touched Fireflight yet, so I don't really know yet. However, from what I've seen from the campiegn, it's great. I actually perfer playing as an ODST over a Spartan; their new HUD system feels pretty innovative. They have some more traditional FPS-game aspects to them; their health doesn't completley respawn automatically. However, they're still very jumpy, much like the Spartans. Everything else seems to be exactly what you'd expect: more of Halo 3. If that's a good or a bad thing that's mainly your opinion. In my opinion, it's a good opinion.

I also picked up TMNT: Smash Up!. For those who don't know, this is a fighting game with the teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and it's by Game Arts (the same people who made Brawl), Team Ninja (the same people who made Dead or Alive), and Ubisoft (people who have made great games like Rayman and Prince of Persia, but also a lot of sholvewere games). I wasn't quite sure what to expect. It could be awesome, because it's by some extremely talanted devs, but it could have also been a bad game because Ubisoft is producing it (and they generally have a bad track record with Wii games sans Rayman), and the TMNT license could have ruined it. What I got was somewere in between those two. It's not a great game by any strech of the imagination, but it's fairly good. The battle system is somewhat good. It can be pretty fun because its built around the SSBB engine, but it's a bit of a button-masher and it's sort of clunky and slow, especially compared to Brawl. It doesn't have quite as many modes as Brawl either. Most of the diffrent modes more resemble DoA's mode selection than anything; just mainly arcade mode with a couple of extra side modes. However, the AI's great, and just the fact that it's another 2-D Brawler is awesome. It's hard to think of many great things about the game, but it still ends up being reletively fun. It controls great, the music's pretty decent, and it does have a certain level of charm and polish to it. Overall, it's good, but don't go in expecting anything amazing.

But most of all, on Thursday, my package came in. That package being Pokemon SoulSilver, straight in its Play-Asia package. I think I've already played my 2010 GOTY, and it's September 2009 . So far, it's pretty much what you'd expect. They took the classic G/S/C genneration, and they gave it a massive make-over. The result is AMAZING. It feels completely new in some ways, but in others, it feels just like I remembered. It's classic Pokemon. Probably the best battle system in an RPG ever. Lots of stratagy, never gets old. Well, actually, maybe it does, if just a little. One of my only complaints with the game is that it just feels like a megamix of the series, and I'd rather just have more of a new game. It's the same classic battle system being reused, again. And it just doesn't do much diffrent. While I didn't like FR/LG much compared to the other games in the series, there were some things that it did diffrently, like some cool new sidequests, and it gave us a glimpse at the DS's wireless abillities. HG/SS doesn't really do much like that so far, although I can imagine it doing it later. It's still an amazing game, though. It has that classic Pokemon charm, and even though it's in Japeneese, I'm not having much trouble figuring out were to go, although I can imagine it being a bit of a problem later. Overall, it's an amazing game, and everyone who owns a DS owes it to themselves to get it when it comes out in the US. Also, I think I might represent the fact that I own it on GS with Pokemon Green, since it probably won't let me put it under my collection (and I did the same thing to show that I own two copies of Fire Emblem 7 by putting Fire Emblem 6 on my game list)