i'm sure you can figure out what I mean.

I'm going to hold off on final E3 impressions because one: I don't know what to say and two: there are better things to get to and that can just wait.

Recently, I finally finished downloading Ninja Gaiden Black off Xbox Live and holy crap, it's hard. HARD! I thought Ikaruga was madness and Stepmania on drugs (or more like Blue Army on Stepmania. crazy stuff) was chaotic. Ninja Gaiden Black is, above all, the hardest game in existance. A fat kid playing DDR has a better chance of pulling through. An Uwe Boll movie has a better chance of success-no... that's cutting it.

Seriously. The default difficulty is about as hard as most games with an "extra hard" mode that is usually unlocked after beating the game. Regular enemies are pretty hard. Blocking is essential, but it's so essential, it's not even an option to play the game without blocking once. Boss battles are over the top in the sense that they're so brutal and unforgiving that it makes Resident Evil 4's boss fights look like Super Mario World's boss fights where all you do is jump on top of them until they're dead or something.

Thankfully, in Black, there's a Ninja Dog option, Ninja Gaiden's version of Easy mode, roughly equivalent to an average game on Normal/Medium. The first two levels are actually fair enough to play through and beat without dying once. Even then, the game is still challenging, even for the first few levels. I'm only on chapter 6, which is a little less than halfway through.

When you're winning (or... living), the action is intense and exciting. It quickly becomes easy to understand that tons of people loved the game despite the hard difficulty and the fact that some people even decided to buy NGB when they already had the original. The Lunar staff kicks ass, but the nunchaku feels unfortunately underwhelming.

I also managed to play another game today. My little brother's babysitter/support person let me borrow Guitar Hero 3. It's a good game, but I'm still trying to get the hang of it.

In other news, I actually missed the live broadcast of Soul Calibur IV foatage yesterday at E3. I got caught up with other things and I kind of got sunk into Last Comic Standing (lol Carrot Top). I wanted to actually use my real name on the comment box and have them read it out loud or something, but I guess I missed this oppurtunity, kind of like how I missed the oppurtunity to witness a chick fight in school a few months ago.

I'm still waiting for GS to put up the pre-recorded live footage on their live page so I can see what I missed, but nothing for Thursday is up there right now. SC IV has gone gold, so it's pretty much done anyways. I plan to pick up the limited edition ASAP.

By the way, Yoshimitsu kicks ass.

Soul Calibur on XBLA Survival results

New Soul Calibur IV gameplay at Gametrailers!

Holy crap. Nightmare and Hilde kick ass

I can't believe Nintendo's missing out on this. I really can't. It's official. Nintendo can't even give a good press conference and they can't even have another legit SC game.

But Nightmare and Hilde look awesome. So awesome, I need a change of pants.

And there's more on Gamespot E3 Live, tomorrow on Thursday at 5PM PDT. If I have to go somewhere during that time, I'm going to be pissed. I know that I can watch it later since GS saves the videos, but I want to ask questions. And I want to see how they pronounce my name. That'll make this the best E3 ever.

So I went to the dentist today just to get my teeth cleaned and get that flouride stuff done and they told me some pretty bad news.

I have two cavities.

Oh, crap.

I've actually had experience with cavities before. Back in elementary, I had 3 CROWNS (oh god that was horrible. I looked like a pimp and I didn't like it one bit), which I eventually pulled and got fresh adult teeth. Now that I have small cavities in my adult teeth, I'm screwed. This time they're just getting filled (thankfully). Apparently both my parents have some in their own back teeth, so along with that I guess I'm probably getting glasses sometime in the future, too. At least they're not getting extracted and thankfully they're far back where a typical sexy smile wouldn't show them off.

But really. Two cavities at the same time. I'll have to have two different appointments or else I'll be numb all around for a day. Brushing my teeth like normal gets me this? Well, there has to be balance in the universe. Maybe I should have never bought Assassin's Creed, GTAIV, and have the luxury of having a debit card. All those good things mean bad things will come to get you... and I bet Chuck Norris is at my doorstep right now. Why he's in Minnesota and not in Texas is beyond me, but I bet he has a list of people who need a lesson in karma

Dunno if girls like guys with small cavities in the back teeth, but I think all the Asian goodness on the outside of me can make up for it. You bet *que Duffman theme*

But here's something else: I might have to get braces. Would red braces look too girly or what?

Other depressing news

-Soul Calibur IV might have some serious balance issues. Bigger boobs mean bigger hitboxes

-Nintendo failed me last year at E3 and it failed me this year, too. Remember when Red Steel looked cool?

[UPDATE]

GREAT news

LOOK AT GS E3 LIVE'S SCHEDULE! SOUL CALIBUR IV GAMEPLAY TOMORROW 7/17 AT 5PM PDT!!! DONT MISS THE LIVE FOOTAGE! CAPS LOOOOCCCCKKKK!

Anybody catch Microsoft's E3 conference today? I did. Most of it, anyways. Gamespot wasn't loading, so I barely caught the Fallout 3 gameplay.

Fallout 3 is looking pretty good. Looks gory, atmospheric, and awesome. The shooting felt kind of... well, not as captivating as I thought, but the footage here was good.

And then there's Resident Evil 5. Resident-freaking-Evil 5. And you know what? This game is going to have online co-op. Wicked, huh? That was the one thing I asked Capcom for after beating RE4 and now it's coming.

I didn't really care much for Fable 2 and Gears 2. Both look like good games, but I'm probably not checking them out.

Banjo Kazooie: Nuts And Bolts looks pretty good. I loved the first one, so I might actually check this one out. And I actually heard them say that the first Banjo Kazooie game is coming to the 360. Wait, what? Wasn't it available on a Nintendo console? Because if Rare and Nintendo are working something out here, then they should hurry up and bring Goldeneye and Perfect Dark to XBLA as well.

Some of the new XBLA games look pretty good. That new Portal game is surprisingly 360 exclusive (for now, probably). I actually got out of my seat as soon as I heard GLaDOS. I hope there's more cake and I hope the Companion Cube returns to deliver some judgement.

The new 360 Dashboard actually looks pretty neat. My only complaint is that they're bringing in what they call "Avatars". Great. That really neat gamerpic of Hilde I have right now probably won't even be here in a few months. I kind of feel gypped for spending a buck on it. Honestly, MS. The dashboard changes look great, but the whole avatar thing? No deal. If they're going to give us customizable avatars, why not just make it so that we can upload our own gamerpic?

For one, the 360 Dashboard looks a little more "lively". I just hope that we can store music and photos better as well as having a custom background (not that we dont already have that feature, but I'm hoping they don't take that out). Better friends/party management is a plus and I think I heard that you can finally chat with more people simultaneously, not that it affects me much. This is starting to look like the 2.41 to XBL, except they don't introduce gimmicky avatars.

Right when that's done, there's this game called "You're In The Movies" which looks pretty cheesy, but that looks like the point. It reminds me of EyeToy, not that I've actually tried that. This actually looks pretty decent only because it looks... weird. I don't know. I'll just skip this one.

After that, there was some Rock Band 2 info on the tracklisting and such, as well as the new game Lips. I don't get why we couldn't see footage of Duffy singing her song and instead redirected to Master Chief dancing to some horrible music, but oh well.

The only thing left that I think is worth mentioning is that Infinite Undiscovery, Star Ocean 4, and The Last Remnant have release dates. I'm surprised that The Last Remnant is going to appear on PCs as PC gamers typically aren't JRPG fans.

But wait, there's more. Final Fantasy XIII is coming to the 360 . No joke. It's not even a timed release. Yoichi Wada actually forgot to announce this and came back later on stage. I thought he was done after talking about Last Remnant, but I bet he planned that all along. I've never played a "legit" Final Fantasy (as in a FF game with a number on the end unlike Chrystal Chronicles) so I look forward to playing this someday. My only complaint about this part in the conference was that the camera didn't zoom in on the trailer, so I could barely see what was going on, but still. It looks great.

This is actually a really great start to E3 in my opinion. Online co-op in RE5, a new Portal game, FFXIII for the 360, Fallout 3 footage, and mostly positive Dashboard changes.

I'm not very interested in Nintendo and Sony's press conferences, but I'm still watching them. I hope Nintendo announces some new things about Fire Emblem DS and Sony... I don't know about them, but they impressed me the most last year.

Other News

-Ninja Gaiden Black is still downloading...

-Got higher in SoulCalibur leaderboards, with a score of 49 with Yoshimitsu on Survival. I'm probably somewhere in the top 20 or so on the Yoshimitsu leaderboards. If only he had his SC2 moveset

-I have a lot of MS points to blow, so I'm probably getting the Soul Calibur IV Dashboard theme... or maybe not now that in a few months, MS's new dashboard setup will probably make it useless. Gotta find a preview of it somewhere first...

-According to something I read in Major Nelson's blog, the 360 is getting something similar to installations. Great. 20gb hard drive owners like me kind of got gypped, but at least this is optional.

Um... wow... I don't get it. Maybe I kind of do, but wow. I understand that this is probably something similar to a chart showing who's friend and foe, but otherwise any deeper into that and I have no idea how this works. Anyways, it looks pretty neat. There appears to be a few empty boxes and the game obviously isn't done yet so hopefully there's going to be some changes. Maybe the final roster is pretty much revealed now.

And according to this chart, everyone's pissed at Nightmare. There's only two or so people that seem remotely allied with him (Tira and Voldo? damn... if I had a PS2 and SCIII then maybe I'd know ). Scheherazade is just chilling over at the top right there and seems to be affiliated with no one. But this just looks pretty cool. I'm guessing that this is part of the story mode or Tower of Lost Souls or something.

I'm guessing that Namco is pretty much done with announcing new characters. A recent select screen I found looks pretty complete.

1st row: Vader/Yoda, Secret Apprentice (most likely in this slot), unknown, bonus character icon (allowing you to select Ashlotte, Shura, Scheherazade, Angol Fear, and Kamikirimusi)

2nd row: Lizardman, Sophitia, Amy, Setsuka

3rd row: Mitsurugi, Cassandra, Raphael, Taki

4th row: Siegfried, create-a-soul slot, random select, Nightmare

5th row: Hilde (I want!), Maxi, Voldo, Tira

6th row: Xianghua, Kilik, Astaroth, Ivy

7th row: Yunsung, Seong Mina, Rock, Cervantes

8th row: Talim, Yoshimitsu, Zasalamel, Algol (supposedly the boss character, also playable?)

I don't get why the bonus characters have to be stuffed in one icon. It just looks and feels out of place. There's also one open slot left (next to Secret Apprentice's spot and Bonus Character icon). I'd like the idea of having the bonus characters having their own selectable spaces instead. There would be enough. A total of 34 characters (one being unknown), with two spaces being the random select button and custom character button. That would require 36 spaces which is fine since each row holds 4 and 36 is a multiple of 4. I doubt that this will happen, though. I think that would be a better idea, but I have to see how it works out.

There's probably going to be just one new character, probably a guest character since the official site lists all of the main characters and SW characters.

Wait... the SW character on the opposite console could possibly be DLC . I mean, the top row is just made of guest/bonus characters. Maybe they just want a little extra space in case they want to do something like that.

Then again, the game is a little over two weeks from release. E3's coming up in a few days once that's over, it's pretty much done.

There's not much else to say now except that you should all tune into E3 next week . Here's the schedule, so do some time-converting and don't miss it. Resident Evil 5 and SCIV are on the list to appear on E3, so I'm sold. I have nothing to do, so I'm definitely not missing out.

Other News

-I downloaded the Ninja Gaiden 2 demo and I think it's pretty good. If Ninja Gaiden Black is supposed to be the best in the series, then I can't wait to play it.

-Speaking of NGB, it's taking forever to download. It's only 22% done and I've been sitting here for several hours now.

-Esther Ku, that cute asian girl on Last Comic Standing, got voted off . Seriously, she's funny as hell. Being an Asian, I find her Asian jokes some of the best . Seriously, check her out. But now that I think about it, she deserved to go. She repeats jokes too much.