Metroid Prime Corruption

3 things I love about this game:
1. The puzzles and pacing (at least so far). It's a first person shooter but there's also a lot of scanning for information, figuring out puzzles and exploring the world. The combat is not overwhelmingly difficult but it is challenging enough to be fun.

2. The controls are quite fun. When I first played this demo at E3 2006, I really liked the grapple control (hold down a button on the nunchuk and flip your wrist forward to throw an electrical beam at a door, or a shield on an enemy, and then just pull back to rip it off). I still like it. I also love jumping in this game much more than in Metroid Prime Hunters (where it was often frustrating to jump up on platforms)

3. The graphics and audio are very immersive and well done. For example, when you're wearing one of Samus's visors, you can see her eyes reflected in the visor, just barely. I didn't notice that at first and was like "what is that"? It really makes you feel like you're playing as Samus to see that (and makes it more obvious that she is a woman).

Pokemon Diamond Hall of Fame!

Last week (Sept. 17) I finally beat the "Elite Four" and the Champion, Cynthia, in Pokemon Diamond. Thanks to much BART travel back and forth to work.

This coincides with us setting our wedding date, and with the wrapping up of my part of DD:HH.

My Pokemon were:
1. Pea, a Roserade, level 56 (received from Evade originally)
2. Gyrados, level 56 (trained up from a Magicarp I had caught)
3. ayudamon, a Blissey, also level 56. The savior of the team as she can heal other pokemon in between battles and heals herself by attacking enemies.
4. Electrik, a Luxray, level 61, trade from Evade. Has the Thief move and lots of good electrical moves
5. Mismagius, level 63, received as a trade from Star on Nintendo's WiFi Global Trading System
6. Blue Steel, my Dialga, around level 50-something.

I was very surprised that when walking around in the area around the Battle Tower after seeing the credits and getting through the final four, there were _STILL_ more pokemon than the original 150 I had seen to complete the Sinnoh Pokedex.

Amazing amount of replay value and if I was going to continue playing more of the Pokemon GBA games to really catch them all, this would be a spur to do that.
Some of the new Pokemon you find are only seen with other trainers (not in the wild) so they can't be caught yet.

I found the Battle Tower pretty boring because you get so few Battle points for going through a 7-battle series, that it would be tedious to keep going. And I don't care about buying the items really.

Note that Nintendo just came out with a new website for the Global Trading System...

My PlayFirst avatar!

Here is my new PlayFirst avatar (will be on the site on Monday night)...