man, that american idol christmas was one big stinker. either they didn't have enough practice, or were too nervous. or maybe i'm too critical. but i've seen eric cartman sing "oh holy night" better than tamyra grey. not that she's a bad singer. she has an amazing voice. she was just not hitting it that night. and no one else was either. i think the program was actually one giant ad for the an american idol christmas CD, the american idol video game (i've heard its actually quite an entertaining game), and american idol 3. i was very surprised to see clay host it though, and not ryan seacrest. he did a great job, and i was very impressed. i wonder if there is any bad blood or hostility between clay and ruben. i kinda sense it, but it is probably just a my imagination.



i got mario kart double dash and mario party 5. 5 of us got together yesterday and played some double dash yesterday, and it was an absolute blast. the racing, the battles, the cooperative play, all very fun. i haven't got the opportunity to fully check out mario party 5 yet. at first, i was really disappointed with the game. the game boards wasn't designed for strategy in mind like mario party 4. and all the games seemed too easy, and the winner was just decided on chance way too often. then i found out that i did the story mode in Easy, and it only chooses the Easy games in that mode. I played party mode with the computer, and there were a lot of good games in there. as for the game board, there are definitely a lot of missing elements. first off, what is up with the "do you want this item or not" thing? of course you want it. it never hurts to pick up an item, so they were just not thinking this through. you should pay to at least get an item, or buy it like mario party 4. another thing is, if you wanted to use the item, you gotta enable it on a spot on the game piece so if you wanted to use it, you gotta use the item, then land on it. a 1 in 10 chance you get to use the item. and if you miss it, someone behind you might land on it. that's pretty lame. another thing is when you get the item, they appear as pearls and you have no idea what the other players are holding. i guess it doesn't matter if they can't use it directly on you. one thing i did realized that they improved from the last version was the difficulty in getting the stars. for example, you can play for an hour, and still wind up getting no stars, or a very few. then at the end, they hand out many stars making it appear that people have a random chance at winning. so at least they got something right. at least the mini-games (now that i know they aren't all simple and random) are cool. i'll have to play more of it to see if you can incorporate some strategies into the game.



i realized i'm spending too much money buying dvd's and now video games. the increase in the video game purchases are due to the fact that i have a subscription to EGM now. and since i've been reading it, i'm constantly updated on the new cool games that are coming out. i think i'll be just as happy not knowing what i'm missing and spending less money. like last week, i bought True Crime: streets of LA. man, that game was a big let down. i just couldn't get into it. just wasn't my cup of tea. too many elements of the game bothered me. the too frequently and long load times, the inability to control brightness and contrast within the game (impossible to see in dark missions even controlling it on my TV), and the driving was all analog. if ps2 analog controls were less stiff like gamecube or dreamcast, then it would be no problem. but its way too stiff. even in gran turismo, i could never drive with analog even though i would prefer to.