I picked up Halo 2 on Sunday, for $20 brand new from a bargain bin (hot deal!) and I have just finished it, so it is time to share my final thoughts on the 2nd game of the Halo series. I guess I am not one of those people who care about the order in which they play a series (though I'd rather start at the beginning), but I finally have completed every game in the Halo series. 3, 1, 2. A little odd, but the story is complete. So what did I think of Halo 2? I know I am going to get burnt a little for saying this, but I didn't like it that much. I had the same problem with it that I did of the first game, confusing repetitive level design, at least Halo 2 was more action packed... though because of the next problem I had with the game... balance... or lack thereof. I died so many times, even on Normal, because I was fighting hoards of Brutes that take three Brute Shot grenades just to kill. Don't even get me started with the ****ing Flood... I HATE THE FLOOD, in fact they basically taint every Halo game for me, I hated them when I first encountered them in Halo 3, I hated them in the Library level of Halo 1 and I hated them throughout Halo 2. You'd better hope you have a Shotgun or you are going to using a lot of ammo.

There are a few things that I did like about Halo 2 though. The graphics are pretty good for a 2004 game, leaps and bounds better than the first Halo, which makes it much easier to look at. The story was good and the even though I knew about the cliffhanger ending, speaking as objectively as possible playing the game after the fact, I think I could have lived with that until Halo 3. I also enjoyed the weapons in Halo 2 much more than the first game. The Battle Rifle is the **** though it usefulness becomes limited after a certain point because of the Flood. The vehicles also control much better, especially the Warthog, it doesn't drive like it is on ice all the time like in the first game (and another plus, no Warthog escape sequence in Halo 2).

That is really all I can think of to say about this game. This might sound odd, but if it wasn't for the fact that Halo 3 is awesome, I would have never even bothered ever playing the first two games in the series. Halo 3 is Bungie's best effort and best designed game... it is like I said back when I finished Halo 1 just after Christmas 2007, if I had played Halo 1 first I don't think I would have been up for ever playing Halo again. Ditto, here with 2, it would not have had me too excited for 3 let me tell you. Also if any of you love Halo, please don't question my opinion, I really liked Halo 3, I even felt bad when some of the Chief's commrades died in the end, but Halo 1 and 2 don't float my boat. I guess you had to be there day one... OH WELL.

Tomorrow I may have some more stuff to post, probably an impressions article blow out. So stay logged to either GameSpot or Giant Bomb for those. Chief may I ask what you are doing? I am finishing this fight! Loading Complete!

I have a small Now Loading update for you and this one is posted on both GameSpot and Giant Bomb. I'm pretty sure from now on these things will be posted on both sites so you can now check either one. First off my Giant Bomb profile is simply alpha99, so look me up there and send me a friend request if you have me tracked at GameSpot. With that out of the way, today I am going to talk about my 2 years of XBox 360.

2 Years of 360
Now don't get me wrong, this isn't some fanboy thing, I just feel privileged to have a 360 that has lasted for 2 years without signs of RRoDing on me. I wrote about this last year, but I do want to say that I am very pleased with my X360. It is like I said though I usually don't celebrate "anniversaries" of my systems, but with the 360, you never know when "she's" gonna give up the ghost. So far I have collected 44 games retail games for the system, only about 11 behind my PS2 collection. If you include all my XBLA titles then the total games comes to 76. In fact, I am only 12 games from the big 300 in my collection a feat which I hope to reach by the end of 2008.

Anyway enough numbers and more about what is coming up on Now Loading here on GameSpot and Giant Bomb. I have picked up quite a few games in July, I keep heading to my local Blockbuster and buying great 360 games for less than $20, so I have too many games going at once, I think I increased my backlog at least 10 games in the last couple of months, probably in less than a 6 week period. I have a lot of work to do to make sure that I am ready for when the big flood of 2008 titles start hitting come September. That means I am off to play some games and then fill you in on my thought with, hopefully, impressions articles throughout the week. Here's a hint about one of the games: Five GRAND! Loading Complete!

It is time to wrap the E3, this isn't going to be a huge article because E3 this year's just wasn't all that surprising. In that regard it was a tad disappointing, but I am still going to review a bunch of things anyway. First I am going to start off with the press conferences and then move on to my favorite games of E3. No awards this year, because there where no surprises, but I do want to talk about my favorite stuff.

Press Conferences
I'm going to keep this pretty short because I didn't see all of each press conference. Microsoft was the sweet announcement of that Final Fantasy XIII is coming to the X360, so my best reason to buy a PS3 just went to the console that I already own. Nintendo showed me that they are no longer for me. Wii Music is dumb. I didn't really see much of the Sony conference, because I was a bit busy, but it seemed like Sony showed a couple of cool things, though nothing really caught my attention because I don't really get the idea of Little Big Planet. And that basically covers the press conferences for me, so let's move on to my favorite games of E3.

Favorite Games of E3
All these impressions are based on GameSpot stage demos.

Rock Band 2
I love the first Rock Band and this one has 84 songs on the disc, plus all the DLC songs that have been released and most of the RB songs will be downloadable to RB2. Music Mania!

Gears of War 2
It's totally Gears of War. I loved the first game and the new additions to the single player and multiplayer make this pretty exciting.

Fallout 3
I liked Oblivion, never played a Fallout game, but a combination of both sounded pretty sweet. After seeing the game in action for the first time, I am excited for Fallout 3.

FarCry 2
This game looks pretty interesting, I wasn't too interested in the game until I saw the demo. The strategy you have to use looks like it could be fun and did you see the fire?! Holy ****!

Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway
This game surprised me last E3, that's right it's been a whole year since I got interested in this title. It looks like a more realistic take on the WWII game and I am interested to try it.

Resident Evil 5
I loved Resident Evil 4, it was a very difficult game and it gave you a different kind of survival horror feeling. You had to work your ass off to not die and RE5 looks to continue that type of gameplay, which is fine by me.

Mega Man 9
I don't care what any one thinks, but this throwback looks totally rad. I can't wait to play it this September. I'm not saying they should do old NES graphics for everything, but I think that it is a creative and artistic idea. It also looks pretty tough, but that is just the way I like it.

Dead Space
This game looks cool, like a sci-fi version of Resident Evil. One of the coolest things was to carefully pick how you dismembered the alien mutations. Shooting off a head sometimes isn't what kills and the graphics have really cool atmosphere. I saw this on GTTV a few weeks ago and instantly got pretty interested, now that I saw more at E3 I am pretty excited to play.

So there you have it all my favorites from E3. It was a pretty good show, there wasn't anything new surprises out of no where, but there still where plenty of awesome games that I will be looking forward to in the next 3 - 6 months. In the next few days I will have quite a few impressions article for the new games I picked up over Retro Revival Week (which I had to wait nearly 5 days before I played some of them) and I just picked up another game a couple of days ago and I think you'll be interested in hearing my impressions on it after I gave it a hard time when the demo came out back in August 2007. So stay logged for that. Loading Complete!

It's time for another Gamer's Rant, this is the 12th edition. I save this article type for when something really gets to me and I just have to write about it for many paragraphs just so I can get it out of my system. It could be about specific games, specific aspects of games or even just about games industry in general, this time though... one specific game has trigger that rage, that rage you only get after you have been gaming for 23 years and you can't believe **** like this still happens.

I'll tell you what happens ****ty ass games happen and this game is one of the worst that I have ever played. That game is Sonic The Hedgehog (Next Gen) on the 360. I am a Sonic fan, I do enjoy most of his games, his second game is one of my favorites of all time, on the other hand, I mean, I even like Sonic R which is a really mediocre racing title, heck even Sonic 3D Blast is pure gold compared to this pile of poop. I have never once played a game as broken as Sonic Next-Gen, I have played bad games, yeah, but not a broken game.

You know what let's start with this game's roots, the Sonic Adventure series on the Dreamcast (and later GameCube). I like the Sonic Adventure titles even though they have few problems, mostly to do with the camera, the glitchy homing attack and the fact that you hardly ever play as Sonic (especially in the 2nd game), but overall they are playable titles that Sonic fans can enjoy. But in Sonic Next-Gen these problems haven't been fixed (except the playing as Sonic part) they have been exemplified, the camera is even more unwieldy and broken and the homing attack is still as random as ever. To top this off with spazzy controls, if Sonic is doing anything other than walking along flat ground don't even bother touching the control stick or you are just asking to die. Not to mention that a lot of the special moves aren't programmed for ****.

In the opening level I got the Light Chip which allowed me to do what is called the light speed dash which lets you fly along a line of rings. First off it looked horrible, it just took Sonic's standing animation, froze it and sent him gliding through the air. Second the first time I tried it, Sonic slid along the ground, hopped the low nearby wall and fell to his death, because I had the gall to tell him to do something.

So I laughed it off, it was a pretty funny glitch, plus I knew what to expect from the game and I only paid $10 for it, no skin off my neck. Then I tried it again, this time it worked (with that horrible animation I mentioned a bit a go) and when I got near where I was supposed to end up Sonic went flying off to the right at a near 90 degree angle for no reason, I didn't touch anything. Third time, this time I'll get it right? Wrong... exact same thing happened Sonic flies off to the right. Fourth time, he just stops doing the dash even though I was holding the button and stops short. Getting a little annoyed now, but is still funny as hell to watch Sonic fall to his doom.

The only way I was able to do it was by jumping to the little outcropping when I got close enough. Just sad. Want to know what is worse? I ran out of lives in the first stage of the game and had to deal with this dumb ring dash again. In that level, there got to be a point where I was controlling Tails and was supposed to hit a gate switch to save Sonic from this Whale. I couldn't find it, I just couldn't find it. They gave me no indication as to where it was. Know where it was? It was hiding on top of a rocky pillar underneath some crates guarded by robots. They assumed that I would figure that out all by myself with no clues. I only found it by accident.

But let's talk about what is by far the most dumbass thing about this crappy game. The loading times are the most expletive atrocious loading times that I have experienced... EVAR! Here is a common scenario, let's say you start the game for the first time and being to play as Sonic. First you watch a lame cutscene (which thankfully you can skip; you can skip all scenes just by pressing start) and then there is a loading time (15s) then you see a in-engine cut scene where the Princess get's caught by "Realistic" Dr. Eggman after this 30 second long scene... loading time (15 seconds)... Okay now I am playing, I find Tails this one manages to just transition to it's cut scene, then after the scene, loading time (10s)... But this is where it just gets stupid...

I find and old man, he asks me if I want to help him test his new running shoes, I say, yes... YES to a damn loading time, it was a trick! (10s) We then see the old man closer up from a different angle where he tells us that we need to go through a bunch of rings. This takes about 10 seconds... after you clear the last text box, you won't believe this... loading time (15s)... A minute later I clear the mission, loading time (10s) then Old Man tells me that I am awesome, results screen... loading time (20 seconds)... WTF! You can't be serious! I walk around the town map and it doesn't have to load, the whole map gets loaded in. So why does the game have to load anything? It makes no sense to load up something that takes less time to watch then it does to load back and forth. This game is bull****.

You know what is also sad? I have only cleared about three levels as Sonic... crap, that reminds me! The fight against Silver The Hedgehog. Which also has one of those stupid loading times where it starts in a cut-scene... loads a small snippet where Silver does a pose and says on line (this is about 5 or 6 seconds), then loads the fight next. But that is not the biggest pile of bullcrap. The fight itself is a big ****ing pain, Silver has telekinesis and if you get too close he will grab you (if isn't grabbing a table or something else)... so the trick is to homing attack him when he does this, then get away before he grabs you with his powers. First because of the camera you can't ever get a good look at him, second the homing attack doesn't always want to cooperate and help you get away by air-dashing, it will home back in on him. When this happens he grabs you throws you to the ceiling which is actually just an invisible wall in the sky (lazy ass programming) and then as you fall back down he catches you before you can even recover and smashes you against the sky again for the win. It's so cheap and there is no escape that I could discover. In fact, this was when I actually started to get mad at the game, just because the fight was so cheap, all the dumb glitches and stuff don't bother me that much.

Like I was trying to say, all this crap happened after only three or so stages as Sonic, which is pretty bad. It also means that I can't talk to much more about this barf-tastic game. Though there is one final amusing anecdote that I can share with you. So I got to the desert level where Sonic is carrying the Princess (this looks completely silly BTW) and you are supposed to press the RT (that's right trigger) and create this force field so you can walk on the sandy areas. If you don't you sink into the sand and die. So the first time I encountered one of these areas I ran through the help icon, but before it could tell me that I had to use the shield to survive that area I sunk and just to add insult to injury it kept reading the help message to me... Thanks, a lot of good that will do me now, just a little too late there game. All I could do was laugh and smack my forehead, it was pretty silly.

I think that finally covers my initial playtime with this just horrible game. It is almost unplayable, it's that broken. There are no total game killing glitches, but there are so many annoying little ones, along with poor design choices that it makes the game way to much of a chore to play. Short answer this game is like taking Sonic behind the barn and capping him in the head. Way to go Sonic Team... Could you stop killing Sonic please, just stop. Don't play this game, unless it is unbelievably cheap or you want to experience a busted ass game so that you can even more appreciate the quality of the great games out there.

Tomorrow I will have my final thoughts on the E3 Press Briefings so look forward to that tomorrow after I check them all out. Early preview of Microsoft's, Final Fantasy XIII is coming to X360, guess I don't have a reason to get a PS3 anymore, too bad Sony (not sarcasm). Anyway I will talk to you tomorrow with that stuff. DON'T PLAY THIS GAME! Loading Complete!

One last Retro Revival Week post and then it is back to the more modern stuff, oh, and I have a treat for you. Monday I will have the first Gamer's Rant in awhile, #12, but I am going to save the topic as a surprise. Anyway, back to closing out RRW with a bunch of final thoughts on each day of the week, so let's get to it.

Day 1: The Last Metroid...
This was among my favorite days of the week, I hadn't played Super Metroid in probably a couple of years, so it almost felt as if I was playing the game for the first time. Though I did pick my skills back up pretty quickly. I did get lost one time because I used advanced wall jumping technique to get a few items out of order, that confused me a bit. I want to give one tip to a few new players, as this my trip them up a bit: the underwater boss of Maridia, Draygon, he can be easily beaten if you let him grab you, then use you grappling beam on one of the sparking turrets on the sidewalls (both left and right) and electrocute him. You might have to use missiles to break some of the turrets. He's a tough boss if you don't know the trick. Also fight the temptation to use Super Missiles on the phantom boss.

Day 2: Fight Mega Man!
I also had a lot of fun on this day as I was able to complete 6 out of 8 Mega Man games in one day. This sounds impressive, but most of these games are less than an hour, maybe 45 minutes if you know what you are doing. In one session that I would spend with a modern game I can beat 6 old ones, pretty good deal. Next RWW I am going to complete all 8, I've tried twice, but third time's the charm.

Day 3: Mega Man X Games
I had planned to start with Mega Man X and go all the way through the series, at least until 4, but after I realized that that wasn't going to happen I stopped my progress through the first game and moved on to playing Mega Man X4 as Zero. At first I didn't like it, in fact I didn't even think I like Mega Man X4. I had played through as X4 and "Mega Man X" himself, but because of their short energy meters the initiation is very steep, once you get a few hidden heart tanks it gets much more playable. In fact, the Zero started growing on me, because as he earns powers he becomes more versatile with more moves that made it much more fun to play. In fact playing as Zero could be even better than playing as X. Mega Man X4 is a good game once you get over that initial difficulty curve.

Day 4: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 and Other Random PS1 Stuff
As most of you guys now, the more recent Tony Hawk games suck. But I love THPS2, it is still the best in the series, though I do miss a few of the added improvements, like getting off the board (mostly for stairs) and the revert. I had a lot of fun, though I forgot how challenging THPS2 can be, did you know that you don't even have a rail balance meter? Manuals, yes. Rails, no. New players will be shocked wondering how the hell they are going to be able to get that floating cash icon, but with a few good wall rides and boneless(es) you will prevail. I finished my created skater 100% pretty quickly, I'd say in a couple of hours, so I decided to play a couple of old PS1 NHL titles. I played NHL Powerplay 98, which is a pretty good sim, but it is quite boring for a hockey game. The other was NHL Faceoff 2001, which I actually really like, but, the way the CPU AI plays (and because of the power of the hitting) it really makes for a one dimentional game. You skate down the wing and hope not get checked ever single rush, pretty much.

Day 5: Racing of the Extreme Variety in the USA
I played one of my favorite games for the Nintendo64: Rush 2 Extreme Racing USA which is a pretty cool title that may have gone unnoticed by a lot of people because of its arcade hit prequel San Francisco Rush. But Rush 2 is an example of how to take an arcade experience like Rush and tune it to play more lenient for the home systems. In SF Rush if you hit a wall going any faster than 50 miles per hour you probably where going to blow up, but in Rush 2 you don't even need to use the brakes if you set your cars durability to max, you can then slam into a wall going over 130 MPH and only lose 30 MPH. It takes pretty memorization of the tracks as the AI in the Championship gets ramped up as you win, personally this is the only arcade racing game that I don't mind to play on the hardest AI setting.

Day 6: Retro Indecision on the Donut Plains
This was a crappy day, I got really busy, then when I tried to play the Sonic games that I planed to, I just didn't feel like doing so. I then tried to make up for that by playing a couple of other games. First I played Donkey Kong Country, after racking up hella lives, I just lost all interest in that too. So then I played some Super Mario World, I finished a the area and most of the Donut Plains but that was extent of my play on Day 6. To be honest I was just starting to get tired of Retro games at this point, I was pretty excited but I drained my energy with overbearing goals.

Day 7: Just Ran Out of Steam
As the title states I just couldn't do any more Retro games, not because I don't like them, its mostly because my new games where "calling". I probably was fighting off urges to play Call of Duty 4 or Rock Band nearly every day. I managed to stay "pure" as it is being called, so I am pretty proud of that. The other reason I lost steam was because of a lack of a variety of Retro games so I plan to pick up a whole bunch more NES, SNES and whatever else I can find before the next RRW.

So I had a good time this Retro Week, I did pretty good, I lost it in Day 6 and 7 but I love the idea of the week, it got me excited to play retro games again. When you play Call of Duty 4 all the time, you just forget about and neglect the games that shaped your childhood. Last year, I kept playing Gran Turismo 1 for quite a few days after RRW was over and this year I want to do another run of Super Metroid and I want to finish the Zero game in Mega Man X4. So the Retro continues on even after the week is on and I am glad for that. It's nice to relive this games that you neglect because of your fancy new games, there are some games that I played this week that are still more fun to play then a lot of these modern games. The best thing about them is that you can come back to them and basically they never let you down. New games, even if I enjoy them, I never find myself coming back and enjoying them the same way as I did the first time.

Hopefully RRW will happen more frequently and I will probably try messing around with scoreboard at the Enlightened Gamer Union too. Anyway, I will talk to you tomorrow with Gamer's Rant #12. NEVER FORGET YOUR ROOTS! Loading Complete!

It's over now, well, for me in the Pacific Time zone it's over in a half hour, but it is for all intents and purposes over. I am sad to say that I didn't have much luck with the retro games the last couple of days. I didn't play any modern games, but I just couldn't get into my scheduled games. I think for the next RRW I am not going to schedule games, though I do plan to see if I can't get a few more retro games, so that I have more of a selection, there is only so many times you can write the same thing about Mega Man. You see I was one of those kids that had to give up his NES to get a SNES, so that killed my NES collection (something I never have forgotten and which is why I keep every single game I buy, even if I end up not liking it). And during the SNES era I was 10 -14 and N64 era I was only in my mid to late teens so I didn't have the money to build my collection of games like I do now.

For example, I have had my XBox 360 for coming on two years now (yes, the same one I bought July 21, 2006) and I have nearly 40 retail games (71 if you include my XBLA games). I have only collected 10 SNES games in the 15 years that I have had the system. So the point is, my goal for next RRW is to pick up a lot more retro games. I love old games, NES, SNES, Genesis, I grew up with those systems, but that was the problem, I was only a kid when they came out and now that I am old enough to buy my own games I have been focusing too much on my new systems. It's time to visit the local thrift shops and start checking out some things online. This is what RRW has done to me and I think it is a good thing.

As for my goal to complete Castlevania: SotN, that wasn't going to happen, at least not if I was going to beat my time record, I just could remember the path I wanted to take, rust will do that to you. Though I do plan to take on a few games after the week is over, which include a faster more complete run of Super Metroid and I want to finish the Zero game in Mega Man X4. Those should keep me occupied for awhile.

Tomorrow I will post a summary of all my RRW posts and look back in retrospect at what I played during the week. That should be fun, but I think I might go play some Call of Duty 4 or something, I bet my skills are going to be off. Next Retro Revival Week, I am truly going to revive the retro with as many NES and SNES games that I can find around. It's going to be great. I hope you guys had fun and enjoyed the posts when I actually got to play some games; I also really enjoyed reading your guys' stuff too, even though I didn't always post a comment I read basically everything that said Retro Revival Week in the title. Talk to you later. The RETRO lives on, even after this week is done! Loading Complete!