Well, it seems that it has been a while since I've been on this site. I've noted this by my last post being a review of the Heroic Map Pack for Halo 3. Does that clear things up? As I said, it has been a while.

Anyways... gaming has been as good as ever, with lots and lots of things on the table. The Wii has the big dog on the table right now with Super Smash Bros Brawl available. Needless to say, it's one of the most fun games I've had the ability to play in a long time. Simply, it's just a game you can pick up after months without playing and have a blast with your friends. There's something about the game that does that (Melee did the same thing).

The Nintendo DS hasn't done a whole lot lately for me. I've just been playing my edutainment and puzzle games more than anything. THAT will soon change with Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword coming out tomorrow.

The PSP has had TWO major winners! God of War: Chains of Olympus and Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII are both phenomenal games, especially for the platform they are on. The PSP hasn't really satisfied me much (at all), but God of War won my heart over and Crisis Core is currently sucking a lot of my time away. Surprisingly as well, Patapon is a fun game. I haven't had a chance to fully get into it (Reasons already listed), but the initial gameplay I invested was entertaining to say the least. Sony, keep working at it. You might actually give the DS some hefty competition.

Lastly, the 360 (I don't have a PS3. Sorry.). I haven't been too impressed with much lately. Halo 3 is taking forever to come out with there new maps, despite needing to really step it up a notch (Since Call of Duty 4 is competing with there online stats). Games like Army of Two, although not bad, were just slightly disappointing. I guess "missing the mark" is a good way to summarize it. Call of Duty 4 was fun for about a week, and I got bored of it. First-person shooters have just been too repetitive lately. I'm playing Rainbow Six Vegas 2 now, and it's good. I don't have too much else to say, since it's pretty much identical to it's first, except that the online is buggy. Honestly, the only thing I've REALLY enjoyed on my 360 over the past couple months is Rock Band. Normally, I despise music-simulations, but something about Rock Band hooked me. Even my friend who is a professional guitarist got suckered in and couldn't stop playing. I guess it's just one of those "Lets pretend to be a rock band and tour the world"-fantasy games, and everyone that ever thought it to be cool to be a rock star just had their fantasy somewhat dreamt for them. hahaha. I guess that's a good way to put it.

Anyways... that's about all I got. Games are good.

It took me a while to think of exactly the right set of words to descibe how I felt about the Heroic Map Pack for Halo 3. After giving it a solid week of gameplay, I feel that I've come to descibe each of the three news maps with their appropriate review;

Standoff: this beautiful map is exactly what we needed for Halo 3. A medium-sized map with access to vehicles. And not just that, the placing of rocks, bases, high points and low points makes this such a symmetrical map. I feel that whatever game variant we play, they all seem to work out just right on the Standoff map. And not just that, with all the additional Forge supplies, you can really make a great map with bridges and extra forts (Or whatever else you would like). In all honesty, this is the best of the three new maps. Not by far, but it is the best - especially in terms of what Halo 3 needed.

Rat's Nest: When I first played this map, I was thoroughly disappointed. From the previews and pictures, I was expecting this to be a BIG map. Bungie said is was "meant for Big Team Battle, like Valhalla and Sandtrap." When I first played the map, the size of it was no bigger than Standoff. Actually, I still think that Standoff is a bigger map due to its wide-openness. But after playing it a few more times and getting warmed up to it, I finally came to figure that Rat's Nest is actually a really fun map. Although I was expecting much more, the map is actually very well designed. It works particularly well with 4 v. 4, and we had a phenominal 3 v. 3 v. 3 match on that map. I guess when I got past the Not-as-big-as-Valhalla-and-Sandtrap mindset, I finally let the map be great. And like with Standoff, Forging Rat's Nest is a blast, as I honestly feel that my Forged map is better than the original.

Foundry: Last but definitely not least, Foundry was hailed the most "Forgable map in Halo history." And boy is THAT true. I've played soccer and dodgeball. I've ran through mazes and climbed obnoxous towers. I enjoyed a hilarious reenactment of Monty Python and the Holy Grail with someone's "Castle" map. Seriously, the amount of material you have at your disposal is obnoxious. I've had a blast in pretty much every Forged map for Foundry. Even the ones that suck, you still have some sort of fun just by giving someone's creativity a chance. As a map itself, it's not the best thing in the world, but Bungie's already-set Foundry is a great map. The fact that you can change it to almost whatever you want, however, is what makes the map amazing.

There. That's my review of the new maps.

So I got my 1000 points on Halo 3 after finally playing through the Campaign on Legendary. After I FINALLY got that Two For One achievement online, I was like, "Hey! I can actually get that katana now! Lets go for it!" So a friend and I spent a decent amount of time knocking that out, and now I can finally justify wearing my sweeeet Hayabusa armor (Shut up to anyone who thinks that armor is not cool.). Growing up during the NES era, the original Ninja Gaiden was one of my favorite games... ever. So for a modern game like Halo 3 to show some sort of respect to a game that was so close to me years ago, I really love sporting the Hayabusa armor. Seriously, c'mon. Who here hates Ryu Hayabusa? He's one of the coolest video game heroes ever.

Anyways... the Security armor is all right. I honestly don't think it's that great as compared to the full-out Hayabusa (with katana). Now that I have completed it all, I feel that I am REALLY ready for these new maps to come out on Tuesday. Rock, rock on!