One of my best buddies recently picked up a Wii, which mens I've basically permanently "borrowed" his gamecube and some of his games. This is new in gaming for me, because I've basically been a PC-exclusive gamer for a long time...mostly because I had trouble justifying spending 3 digits of scratch on something I could use only for games (maybe silly, but oh well), but also because I wasn't very comfortable with controllers. I mean, whenever I get talked into playing Halo or whatever, the whole concept of one stick for look and one for move...it makes me want my mouse and keyboard. But, admitting to myself that the Gamecube was definitely not the hot console of its generation, I've still been pleasantly surprised by my experiences with it.

The two games I've spent significant time with so far have been Rouge Squadron 2 and REsident Evil 4, and both of them have kept me highly entertained. Maybe because neither of them have control schemes requiring crazy multi button combos (something I suck at no matter the paltform), but maye also because they both have set-ups which really use the gamecube controller well, whether it's Rouge Squadrons system for commmanding squadmates or RE4's highly intuitive combat system. It still took me a while to adapt to the controller to the point where I started to feel close to as comfortable as I do on the PC (I died a LOT when I first started out in RE4), but I think I'm getting there. And while I haven;t finished either game yet (I'm on the last mission of Rouge Squadron II and about 2/3 (?) of the way through RE4), this whole experience has made me much more open to buying one of the next gen consoles...though I admit I wa already leaning towards an XBox 360 because of Mass Effect...

And in a different vein of exploring gaming history, I recently learned that GameTap is now offering Free "green" memberships that le you join up and play about 40 games for free, if you're willing to have to watch an ad before you launch them. Just for fun I went and checked out the sections of the library reserved for "gold" members, and I was genuinely surprised by what I saw: there were probably 50- games I'd always wanted to play but never goten around to. The Icewind Dales, Deus Ex, X-com, The Tomb Raiders (even legend and anniversay i think), Beyond Good and Evil, Psychonauts...the list just goes on. I'm thinking of upgrading to the gold eventually, especially since it comes with access to the new Sam and Max games...

And on a different note: the Bulls picked Jaokim Noah, and I swore that if they did I wouldn't go to one of their games...so it looks like I'm out. In the words of one Chicago sports writer "Shoot! The Bulls picked the guy who can't." Oh well. At least a certain baseball team who i will not name for fear of jinxing them is on a big time winning streak..including an awesome walk-off home run today.

And if you haven't heard of it, and you are even a mild fan of risk, check out conquerclub.com, which is an amazingly fun site that lets you play multiple games of risk online for free. The games stretch out longer b/c you have to wait for everyone to play, but it only takes about 5 or 10 minutes a day (if your as casual as I am, I guess), and the wide variety of maps and, from what I've experienced, wealth of good and friendly competition makes it worth checking out, since basic membership is free (basic just makes it slightly more inconvenient to play with your friends I think...it's not like you're disadvantaged in the games because you didn't pay).