I've ordered myself a box of Planar Chaos, and we decided to draft it this weekend, and now i have a ton of new Planar Chaos cards and so now its time to share with you the rares that were pulled from the box.

Turned out to be a very good box of cards, the Damnation I opted to give away for the first place prize in our draft, i'm excited about a lot of the cards in this list, you should be seeing some of them in deck lists soon.

Okay, so I've been busy playing Rock Band 2 lately.

What do I think of RB2 in one word? Awesome

Now for some details...

Characters
RB2 does not import your RB1 characters that you have created, which I think is kind of lame, if you can import the music why can't you import the characters? Especially since there isn't a whole lot of difference in the customization of them. Not that I want all my money and items that I’ve unlocked but the name/hometown and all that start up stuff, it’s all the same why not import them? Aside from that I love the new feature that a character isn't tied to a specific instrument now I can play the drums sing or strum it up without having to re-create myself! Big plus!

Tour Mode
I love that the tour is no longer locked down to multiplayer. You can create a band of one person and still play a tour, and have your friends jump in whenever they are around. Big bonus again! The downside to this is: they removed the single player straight thru the track list mode, which made it easy to unlock every song and know when you've unlocked it all. I still keep randomly unlocking songs in RB2 and I have no idea if I’m even close to the end!

Import RB1 Music
I haven’t done this yet, but it’s a great idea, and I plan to soon. I'm just sad that Enter Sandman won't make it across the journey.

Downloaded Music
All of my previously downloaded music shows up immediately, no work needed - that’s a great feature, good job on this one Harmonix!

New Songs
New songs are always a good thing, there's a ton in here, and I’d argue that on the whole the track list is much better in RB2 than it was in RB1.

I love the new things in RB2 although I wouldn't say it’s quite enough to justify the '2' they could have put a little more into it I think, it’s more of an expansion. The price is great if you think in terms of tracks to dollars. You are getting way more music that $60 would buy you in the music store.

of the most pirated games list.

Way to go Maxis..

My PSP was not forgotten this year for my birthday, I received two different games for it: Hot Shots Golf Open Tee and Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core. I'm going to take this time to talk about FFVIICC.

This game is a lot of fun and has lots to do. I’m about 15% complete with the game, but I’d say I’m about 50% of the way thru the main story (I haven't played too many of the missions yet, which count up for a lot of the total percentage of the game.) The combat is refreshing, and engaging, a little bit like the other FF games, but also nothing like them. I really enjoy the combat.

The story is pretty good so far as well, I really like the character of Zak and see a lot of cloud in him. It’s cool doing things that set stuff up for FFVII. Very enjoyable!

The one thing I’m not too keen on is, the DMW. It’s basically a little slot machine that spins over and over in the corner, it gives you little bonuses in combat, and also controls when you level, as well as when your materia levels. It’s pretty silly - they only way to level is to go into combat enough for the random chance for you to get a level.

Other than that, I think this game is quite nice and I plan to play all the way thru it to 100% and then some. Way to go SquareEnix!

So I've been reading reviews, watching videos and staring as screenshots of the newest in the long line of the Soul Calibur/Edge saga. All that I've managed to do in this research is make me want to play the game even MORE. I've always been a fan of the series it’s a quality fighting game, and my favorite of them, with Tekkin being second.

So here I am trying to figure out a way to pick this game up without disturbing the carefully crafted budget of the summer.. when low and behold my father-in-law surprises me with it as an early birthday present! (apparently my obsession had picked up enough attention for my wife to pass the word along.)

Now that I have the SCIV in my possession, and have had a chance to play it for a few hours.. it's time I reveal my true feelings on the game...

AH-MAY-ZING!

This game is EVERYTHING I expected and MORE. It has the standard things you would expect from a Soul Calibur game:

• Fun combat
• Unique Characters
• Cool Weapons
• Horrible Story
• Ring Outs
• Random Guest Characters

 
Then there are a few new things that give the game that little bit more umph:

• Destroyable Armor
• Ultimate Finishing Strikes
• Online Play
• "Tag Team" Style Fighting

I'm sure I’m missing some of it, but seriously - if you have ever enjoyed a Soul Calibur/Edge game you will enjoy this one many times over, if you like a good fighting game - this one will suffice just fine! If you aren't really into the fighting game scene, it can still be fun with some friends around just smashing buttons and trash talking each other.

I highly recommend this game to anybody able to play it.