Believe it or not, this title actually serves as a dual-meaning. Firstly, I've been playing a lot of Pokemon the last two nights, once again eager to sink my teeth into some pokeymanz catching goodness, and secondly, I've been trying to 'catch 'em all' and buy all of the games that still sound interesting to me on the 360.
In Pokemon, or more specifically LeafGreen Version for GBA, I've been in competition/co-op with my one friend to catch all the monsters and battle it out. The original deal was, we would defeat Brock and challenge eachother sometime after Mt. Moon, keeping the pokemon level capacity under 21, but this has since changed. Things started off slow for me at first because I hadn't named my character and rival in all caps, making all conversations sound kinda like this: "MOM: Be careful, Ovi!" So I got a few minutes into the game and promptly restarted, while my friend made a ton of progress. Then I got hung up in Viridian Forest, all because I accidently killed the first male Pikachu that showed up with my Pidgey, and I ran into three female ones and no other male ones over the course of a couple hours. Finally I got him, but by this time my friend had already beaten Brock, passed through Mt. Moon and cleared the Rocket Gang on Nugget Bridge in Cerulean City.
So far today has gone better, with me just about through Mt. Moon. I was close to the exit and faced the last Team Rocket member there, and all of my pokemon had died except for my tough little Squirtle. By the time I barely passed that match, he had 3 HP left and I had no potions or revives left. Luckily, I used my escape rope to get back to safety and restore my brave team to full health - I would have never gotten out of the cave alive because a scientist nerd guards the rare fossils and there might be another trainer on down...not to mention all of those wildpokemon encounters. Before I went into the cave I had an even harder time finding a male Nidoran than I did finding a male Pikachu. I looked it up on and Internet and discovered the encounter rate for a male Nidoran on Route 3 in LeafGreen Version is 1%. Yes, you heard that correctly - 1%. But with enough patience I caught one, which makes me feel pretty good since my buddy missed out on getting the female one in FireRed.
We talked a bit about the types of pokemon we had caught so far, and what kinds of strategies we wanted to employ while we played. I discovered that he started with a Charmander and used his Mankey, Beedrill and Pikachu a lot, and got the Dome Fossil. I started with Squirtle, and I usually got the Dome Fossil but have been thinking Omyanite is pretty cool, so I'll have no qualm with getting the Helix Fossil. It sounds like he might be thinking about not evolving his Charmander, which would be pretty awesome since I'm not planning on evolving my Squirtle - I sense a battle of small epic proportions. It's also interesting because now his friend is thinking about getting in on the fight, and he prefers to start with Bulbasaur. So, hopefully we can gather round for some trading and battling goodness.
On the 360 front, I ended up seeing Crackdown available on Amazon again and bought it, and also saw Phantasy Star Universe and decided to buy it. The prices seemed reasonable enough, so why not eh? I'm not even really thinking about new games now - they will be around for a long time after they come out, and will probably be cheaper. There's really too many good sequels coming out now to be thinking about them, nobody has that kinda money to throw around. Really, after next year, I think most of the big games of this console gen will be out. I predict that about two years from now we will be talking about the next console gen. Maybe I am partly anxious for the next gen because I want to finish buying up games for my 360, but I just feel like most of the big games will be out by then. Maybe I am way off base.
I also ordered the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia Christmas DVD. Looks funny, sounds funny, it's gonna be funny. It is on pre-order, like my FFXI disc.
I also tried playing Command & Conquer 3 a little bit the other day, to see what it was like. It was okay, but I didn't really feel impressed enough to want to buy it. I mean, I already have Halo Wars, and you can only have so many RTS games unless you are a die-hard RTS-er. Thought about getting Gears of War a little bit, but then I dunno if I would like the games or not. They probably aren't bad...but I dunno. Might as well save the money for games I know I want.