Well, after making some money doing freelance graphic design jobs, I accumulated $65 in my PayPal account. Originally I was going to just have the money transferred to my bank for cash, but I decided to go fishing on eBay for some cheap games. Anyways, I went specifically for MLB 2K7. I played the MLB 2K8 demo and was horrified to see that it was crap. Well, not too horrified after reading some reviews, but I was hoping it wasn't that bad. It was.

So I ended up winning an MLB 2K7 auction for $15.61 after shipping costs. I was happy, buying it at GameStop would have been $19.99 and then a few more dollars for the sales tax. I haven't gotten it yet, but it should be coming this week.

Next I went for Need For Speed: Most Wanted. I wanted to get a more of a casual racing game (I have Forza 2 and PGR3) and I never got a chance to buy Most Wanted for the GameCube. I had NFSU2 and NFS Carbon, but never Most Wanted. I actually asked for this game for Christmas but my sister could not find it, I wasn't too surprised, it seems to be kind of rare (at least in the original cases, Platinum Hits cases... *pukes*). I won an auction for Most Wanted, it cost me $19.18. I'm cool with that. I should be getting this one in the mail tomorrow.

The next two games were kind of on a whim. I went to the "Ending Soonest" sorting option for the Xbox 360 section and found GRAW for a cheap $5 or something. I put in my maximum bid of $7.01 and ended up winning for $6.01. After shipping it was a mere $11. I was really glad I went to check out the "Ending Soonest" auctions because I really feel like I snagged a deal. Like Most Wanted, I should be getting this game tomorrow.

Now for the last game, I wanted something different than what I already have. My current collection contains mostly shooters, sports games, and racing games. I decided to go back to the early days of the Xbox 360 and find a game that would suit my collection, and that happened to be Kameo. I had been interested in Kameo in the past and I even downloaded the demo a while back. I actually didn't like the demo too much, but I didn't really give it the light of day to understand what I was supposed to be doing in the demo. Anyways, I found Kameo for $10.50 brand new and I won that auction ($15.50 after shipping). This was the last game I bought on eBay and it was the first one I received. Take in mind though, I bought one game Friday night and the rest over the weekend, so I wasn't expecting any games until today, and that's what I got.

I've played Kameo for about an hour and fifteen minutes and I'm liking it so far. I can see a lot of parallels with Donkey Kong 64 (as I was hoping) and I think I'll end up enjoying the game a lot.

I decided that whenever I get a freelancing job, I spend my money on games. eBay has been great so far and I think I'll be able to find some even better deals down the road!

I just made a new song and it's up for listening!

Bands that influenced this song:

Aerial
Pelican
The Mercury Program

Tried some new stuff in this one.

http://www.myspace.com/airshowonthehorizon

Listen to Aftermath, hope you like it.

If you really don't like MySpace, you can listen to it here too.

http://www.myspace.com/airshowonthehorizon

http://totalgamerzone.com/2008/02/26/jason-ocampo-leaves-gamespot/

Best of luck in the future, Jason! You'll be missed!

http://www.totalgamerzone.com/articlenav-316-page-1.html

I wrote that today after playing the demo a few times... think twice about downloading it, it's not really anythink great.

I bought an Xbox 360.

I handpicked the precious box at BestBuy and bought it $376 worth of cash. The guy didn't even give me a bag, I thought I was going to get mugged on my way to my car.

He said I could buy the $50 2-year warranty plan within 30 days... I might do that. Doesn't MS have a free 3 year return policy through the mail in thingy though? Tell me what I should do with this warranty business. The bundle came with two games, Forza 2 and Marvel... totally awesome. I also realized that a bunch of demos and trial versions of arcade games were pre-loaded onto my 360, I was really surprised and extremely happy that I don't feel like I need to go out buy a new game soon, I have so many things to play.

I hooked up to XBL through my laptop's wireless connection... I could do this without paying the $100 for the 360 wireless adapter, but then I would have to have the family laptop connected to my 360 anytime I wanted to play online... I dunno, I might keep it like this for a while, it hasn't been too bad so far.

One thing that I became kind of worried about was with this 1 month free XBL Gold trial. I didn't redeem any code or anything but I'vee been able to play games online. I didn't really want to start my 1 month trial for a few weeks so it would line up with Christmas break and everything...

Anyways, I finally have a "next-gen" gaming system and I'm totally stoked to play some awesome games.

My GamerTag is orangeillini14 so add me and tell me who you are on XBL.

If you're interested in the game or feel like reading something I wrote, give me preview/demo impressions a gander!

http://www.totalgamerzone.com/articlenav-313-page-1.html

http://media.putfile.com/Into-The-Darkness-54

I decided to dab around in Garage Band on my sister's new MacBook from her new job... anyways, I got this after an hour or two of playing around. Inspired from Metroid Prime and Halo music.

Enjoy!

It's runtime is 1:40, so it's not too long. I named it Into The Darkness... because it sounds like going into space.

Sorry for the somewhat sound quality, I don't know why it exported with low quality (it sounds fuzzy at times...), it sounds much better in Garage Band...

ZOMG, new song. A little bit Caspian-esque more than EITS.

www.myspace.com/airshowonthehorizon

From my MySpace blog:

Well, I put this all together this morning! It was fun. This is just a demo of the song and just the beginning of it. I don't think I will show you guys the full version of the song because I don't want to give away any surprises, that's why I cut it off at about the two minute mark.

Anyways, hope you enjoy the new song. It has a much different feeling to it than my other songs I think.

Enjoy!

Feel free to use any of them. I'll try to make a lot more so that I can have a whole gallery of them.

Super Mario Galaxy:



Forza 2:



Resistance:



Other:

So, this is it, my 10,000th post here on the GameSpot forums. I wasn’t really sure that I would make it this far, but I guess I did. Over the time of these past (almost) three years, I’ve met a lot of people and even found some new great hobbies including graphics design (at SCAC/PODA), talking about completely random things (at The Chatroom) , and of course, writing about games (at TotalGamerZone).

I was a forum newbie when I first made my account on May 15, 2004. I really had no idea what to do at all. I eventually figured out that posting more and revealing what I was into (gaming-wise) would only help me stay interested in the forums. I pretty much started off in the PC board, because I didn’t have any consoles at the time. I honestly didn’t have many games either, just a few for the PC and some other old ones for N64, GBC, and Sega Genesis. Overtime I started posting at the GameCube board because I was interested in purchasing one and because I was somewhat familiar with the games. I stayed there for a while until I found out about UCBs, that’s when I joined the (now dead) GameCube Union. I can honestly say that I had a lot of fun there. It was active and helped me meet new gamers.

From that point, I made my way over to a newly created UCB, The Chatroom, where anything could be talked about. That’s where I spent a lot of my time for a few months. I actually became a moderator, one of my goals for a UCB! At the time, it was a pretty serious role and I felt like I had the board in my hands (well, I pretty much did). I got to know a lot of members and had an interesting time trying to recruit more members with the other moderators. That’s always a blast…

Anyways, early in my GameSpot forums career I discovered the signature. Yes, the beloved signature that would catch everyone’s eye. I quickly asked around to find out how to make these boxes that went underneath my post. I was directed to SCAC, Signature Constructing and Critiquing. It wasn’t very easy to fit in there, everyone seemed so superior to me, especially since I was just starting out. I’ve stuck with the same art community the whole time here at GameSpot and it’s been a blast. Not only did we make signatures, but we slowly expanded our community knowledge and started to make larger pieces. The activity died down after the GameSpot remodel, but most of the more dedicated members stuck with it. Along with learning how to make art, I was introduced to most of my favorite bands (thanks, neveryan!) about a year ago. I don’t even want to know what I would do without these bands! They really keep me going throughout the day and help me study or work.

Well, enough with this wall of text. I might as well end this with a few shout-outs to some of my better friends that I’ve made here in my 10,000 posts on GameSpot.

chAzN93
G$1
-Aeon-
Mu5uk0
mikeg0788
Fallacy
neveryan
SemperFi
Hybrination
Rocker500
ianbone01
Kenta_613
DaveGamer_05
RocketmasterH2F
Real-Veracity
-Asterisk
robert992002 Einhanderkiller
Brutal_Elitegs
-Gijutsu-
Demonic_Jin
TheBlueCasket
Decko5
bradenzzz
hittin
Calpalg …and many more!

Thanks everyone for making these first 10,000 post a lot of fun!

When It Never Happened

It's a little bit different than my other song. I'm pretty pleased with it, much more than I was with my other song as a whole.

BTW, the song is roughly 4 minutes long.

Here's my upated version of the song I made in December (I think that's
when it was). I'm not too happy with some of it though, at least some
of the middle parts of the song. I had a hard time thinking of how to
add more depth, but that's okay because I'm going to re-do the song
again. I really enjoy the beginning and end of the song though, I'm
happy with them, I don't plan on changing them too much.



This is my Myspace page for my music, the song will be in the playlist.



http://myspace.com/airshowonthehorizon



BTW, I had to cut some parts in the beginning and end of the song to make the song fit under a 10MB upload.

Feel free to add me on Myspace.

I haven't updated in a while, but over the past month I've purchased four new games to add to my collection.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - I haven't played it for like two weeks, I stopped at 15 hours when I reached the Lakebed Temple, I got to the Occuuco (sp?) and
then I stopped in the dungeon because I ran out of water bombs...

Battalion Wars - I felt the need to buy this, I saw it for $15 new at EB Games and
I just bought it on a whim I guess. I haven't played much of it, some
of the missions I got stuck on and I stopped playing once I reached the
first mission of the second campaign I think, when the second
race/government got involved. So yeah, probably played that like 7
hours tops, probably more like 5 hours.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door -  I've spent about 4 hours on this game. I've played it before, but I had just borrowed it from a friend. I decided to buy it becuase I know it's one of those games that I just think I should have in my collection.

 Star Wars: Rogue
Squadron II: Rogue Leader - I also borrowed this game from a friend about two years ago, I liked it but I couldn't really find it anywhere. I check out my EB Games a few weeks ago and I noticed that this was being sold for $7 used, a good deal in my opinion. I asked the store clerk if I could see the disc before I bought it. It was in good condition, so I made my purchase.

http://media.putfile.com/Lost-Memories-85

Temporary title... it's a pretty rough version of the song, some wrong notes and some of the audio was messed up. I'll have to record it again sometime. There's 3 different tracks, low guitar, high guitar, and drums. I don't have a bass, so I just put my guitar amp low.

Thoughts?

I know I didn't make a blog about it, but just two weeks ago I purchased Need for Speed Carbon at my local EB Games.

I was happy to start playing a Need for Speed game again, I hadn't played since Need for Speed: Underground 2. I never felt an urge to buy Need for Speed: Most Wanted (as I played it enough at my friend's house). Enough ranting, onto my impressions.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Gameplay - 8
Graphics - 8
Sound - 7
Value - 8
Tilt - 9

Overall - 8.1
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The career mode is what you'll probably find yourself playing most of the time in NFSC, but you probably won't find yourself playing it very long. I didn't exactly time myself, but I would guess that the career mode is probably about 15 hours or less. Other modes in the game include Quick Race and Challenge Series (complete different races or goals to unlock items in the game), I didn't spend too much time in either of them.

Canyon races (also known as boss races) are challenging and annoying. If I had extra cash and the space to do so, I would've broken a few controllers, especially in the last boss race which consisted of four back-to-back races. A loss in one of them allowed you to restart from that race, but once you gave up or had to turn off your console, you would have to start over again from the beginning.

The graphics are pretty much the same as Need for Speed: Most Wanted, except it takes place during the evening, not during the day. Vinyls on the car are low-res and ugly, so I tended to stay away from them. It's not entirely shocking, but you'll notice that your car will have the most details, while other cars won't be, especially in free-roam.

You won't hear much of the real soundtrack unless you like to cruise around in the free-roam mode, but who would want to do that when you get chased by the cops for speeding? I didn't...
The soundtrack is made of your typical EA Games/Sports sountrack, recent/un-heard of rap and rock songs.

The game was fun, but short. It could easily be just a rental, and I guess I would probably reccomend that. It was $40, not even close the the 360 version's $60 price tag, but still, it's not worth the cash if you don't exactly have a steady flow of cash.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Sorry for the poorly written and short impressions, I just don't feel like spending the time on this one...