A Gaming Weekend

Yes, technically it's Tuesday, but I have Sundays and Tuesdays off, so that's my weekend.

After watching most of the NFC championship game on a whim on Sunday (my Tivo changed channels, so I still don't know who won... guess I should check ESPN after I finish writing this), I got the bug to play some Madden. So I fired up the XBox and played a home game, Broncos against Raiders, and beat them 20-0. Given that I've been getting my ass handed to me in Madden vs. the computer (and it was even worse the one time I tried playing another person online), and I'm a Broncos fan, this was quite satisfying.

Not, however, as satisfying as tooling around Paradise City in the new Burnout: Paradise. I'm a huge fan of the Burnout games, and when I played the demo, I liked it, but the combination of wide open spaces and limited, locked demo made me wary of what the full game might look like. Nevertheless, I bought an extra (third) controller for Christmas that I never even opened, and I decided it was probably better to trade that in and pick up Burnout instead. $10 later, I'm playing Burnout.

It's a blast. I'm starting to get a hang of the open-ended city driving, and I'm loving how fast cars unlock and how easy it is to find stunts and do cool jumps. Can't wait until some friends get it so we can do some multiplayer, apparently there are co-op achievements.

And as I was going offline for the night, I checked XBox Live on a whim to see if there were any new songs for Rock Band. I didn't really expect there would be, but there was a new pack of Oasis: Wonderwall, Don't Look Back in Anger and one more I can't remember. I dug the hell out of that Oasis album, so I downloaded that one too... now I just need to play it.

But first I need to find out who's playing in the Superbowl. And maybe finish watching Scrubs Season Five on DVD, and catch an episode of Cupid.