I've been wanting to write something here for a while, but I've been down with a massive case of the flu.. I guess I had good timing to buy a PVR receiver box last month -- having stuff to watch is really handy when most of what you can do consists of lying on the couch hoping the dull, aching pain, fever and dizziness goes away. So far it doesn't look like I'll feel good enough to get back to work tomorrow, marking my 10th day with that darn Flu. Remind me to get a shot next year.

But it was still an excellent harvest season for goodies!

1. Video Games

Since the DS is still new it was an obvious choice.. I got three titles:

Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime. You play a slime.. You know, the weakest enemies from DQ? That blue dots you obliterate without giving them a second thought? Yup, those. You have an 'amazing' array of 4 abilities: you can jump, you can bump, you can stack and you can throw. Jump isn't even that useful, it just happens from time to time you have steps to go over.. nothing special. Bump is the most used function: you streeeetch your slime then let it go to create a slingshot effect and throw yourself at enemies and objects. Rinse and repeat, you can kill baddies this way. But it brings the next thing: stacking! When you bump into stuff, it flies into the air.. If you happen to be under an object when it's falling, it'll just stack on your head! You can carry around 3 items or monsters this way (forgot to mention: you have no usable inventory while exploring the outside world.. so you have to grab the surrounding items to help you out). You can switch their order around if you feel like it. It then brings the last move: throwing the stuff you have stacked. All of this together is how you interact with the world.

Storywise, the slime kingdom is attacked by a platypus mobster and his crew (I swear). Everyone but you is kidnapped, so of course you have no choice but to Save The World (tm). The slime kingdom was built by lazy but intelligent people (my kind of guys!) -- they knew they couldn't carry stuff very far without a lot of back and forth traveling, so they installed rails and carts _everywhere_. Whatever you throw on them (including yourself) gets carried back to the city. Neat! So when you save another slime, no need to escort them back home: just ship them! You also collect monsters (collecting 30 copies of a monster opens up something in the museum) and items used in tank battles this way.

Tank battles? Yeah most of the game is pretty much straightforward platforming and collecting, but at one point you uncover the lost weapon of the slime people -- a giant TANK. While it's pretty much the only tank the slimes have, tanks are common in the bad guys camp and you'll need to battle pretty often to free up your friends and finish the game. Tank battles work by having you inside the tank, feeding ammo to the cannons.. Ammo appears at several pipes in the different areas of the tank, which you or your team need to carry back to the main room to throw into the cannons.. You can shoot ammo in a straight line or an arc. Different items will have different effects and capabilities, so preparing your list of ammo is important before heading to the battlefield. You can also infiltrate the enemy tank and sabotage their installations. The baddies have the same capabilities and choices on their side. When you destroy the opposing tank's armor, you have to head over to the other side, get in the ending room, and destroy the core. You can also upgrade your tank to have more armor points... via an alchemy system you can fuse items into stronger one to use in battle..

I finished this in a bit over 12 hours I think, like it very much. Really the only bad things I could mention is the fact that you can only have 1 game going on at a time (no multiple save slots) so if I want to have a friend play this I would have to delete my own game, and that the nun slime speaks ever sooo sloooowly each time you want to save your game.. Rocket Slime is just plain fun. Get it if you own a DS.

Mario vs Donkey Kong 2: March Of The Minis. Haven't played a lot with it yet - I nicknamed it 'Nintendo Lemmings'. DK captured his old flame Paula (she was the girl at the top of the screen in the original DK game!) and you go after him.. To help you out you collect minis to build an army to fight the big ape.. I guess Mario is getting a bit lazy in his old age :) So you have 9 floors with 10 levels each: 9 to save/collect minis, and a boss level. Everything is done via touch commands to tell the minis to stop, walk, jump, to activate switches, etc. You have to get them to the exits while dodging traps and hopefully not die. When you have gone thru the 9 sections you take your army to the boss stage to battle DK.. If you didn't get enough minis you might run out of ammo... You can also build your own puzzle levels, and share them (or get new ones) via Nintendo Wifi.. fun title, more about it when I spend more time with it.

Clubhouse Games. This one is everything but the kitchen sink. Card games. Board games. Bowling. Darts. Billiards. It's a big bunch of nicely done, fun, great games collection. You can play vs the CPU, with friends locally via download or via Nintendo Wifi. Even got pictochat integrated in it.. nice.

2. DVDs

An Evening With Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder. The man can talk. And talk. And taaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalk. But I never get bored with him :-) Disc 1 is a Q&A in Toronto, Canada while the other one is in London, England. Haven't checked all the Easter Eggs yet.

Clerks II. Of course it can't be as fresh at the first Clerks showing at Sundance.. but as far as sequels go, this is nice and makes sense. Maybe not the best title to introduce someone to Kevin Smith's movies, but good nonetheless.

V For Vendetta: Special Edition. With movie ticket prices these days, I usually prefer to wait for a DVD rental. Just more bang for the buck. I saw this movie TWICE on the big screen. It's awesome. On the special ed you get Natalie Portman's SNL rap as an Easter Egg ;)

My bro also gave me a gift certificate for a DVD shop.. I'll probably go grab CSI Season 6 next week when I feel better...

3. Etc

There was also socks, boxer short, a shirt... and a 1000+ pieces Simpsons Photomosaic puzzle! We already completed two of them last year.. this time it's the one with Homer bowling... Ouch, that's a loooooooot of blue tones! Should be fun to do, but I'll wait until I feel less sick - just thinking about making a jigsaw puzzle right now gives me a headache :)

Right before Xmas I managed to get a Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii ! I'm 10 hours in playing Zelda, and I also got Rayman and Madden 07, plus a couple of Virtual Console games.. very cool. I'll have to talk about it in a separate entry :) In the meanwhile, drop me a line if you see any extra nunchuck controllers on sale anywhere..!

I also managed to miss getting the holiday hat in Guild Wars for a second year in a row! *grumble*