Picked up “Mario Golf” and “Phantasy Star Online Episode III” for the Gamecube on Saturday. Haven’t played much (PSO III is way too expensive online compared to XBox-Live — so I doubt you’ll see me there), but both of the are a nice change of pace from all the racing and FPS games I’ve been / am playing. Mario Golf (Eurogamer review) looks surprisingly nice and is easy enough to pick up.
PSO III in contrast seems rather complicated (not having read the manual) and I’m not entirely confident I have completely understood how it works…

After having finished the “career” mode of Project Gotham Racing 2 (on bronze admittedly), I picked up Rallisport Challenge 2 this Friday. I was a bit afraid that changing from a city-racer to a rally game would cause problems, but these fears were unfounded — after about 10 minutes the new racing model took hold and always feels right. The graphics are amazing to say the least: I don’t know how DICE have managed, but it runs at a rock-solid 50 (or 60) fps and is at least as pretty as PGR 2 (which runs at half that). I have never spent this much time in a game just watching the replays of my driving. The particle effects in particular are awesome.
The sound is very nice (but at home I don’t have my 5.1 setup but I expect it to be fine there as well — no Xbox game has yet disappointed me in that regard). I wonder why my Ford Focus is squeaking when I release the throttle, though… 😉 The music is very fitting as well (heavy-ish) but there could be a few more tracks for aural variety.
The damage model looks nice but doesn’t seem to have much of an influence on the actual driving, and the driving itself is focused on fun and not gobs of realism (though I can’t say for sure as I’ve never played any of the supposedly more realistic Colin McRae-games). You still need plenty of skill in any case (so I’m glad PGR 2 taught me the value of proper braking).
In the past two days, I’ve finished the Amateur- and Pro-Championships and enjoyed that immensely. The races in Nordic countries are rather difficult because it’s hard to see the course, night-time races are similarly difficult (but the headlights look amazing), but both never cease to be fun so far.
Haven’t touched live or multiplayer, but there’s not much that can go wrong there. Highly recommended.

Picked up “The Twin Snakes” and “Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow” on Friday. Been mostly playing SC:PT as that had me dying slightly less often (or more accurately it took longer to get from the last checkpoint to the place where I usually died so that subconsciously it felt like I was dying less), but TTS also looks nice and still retains most of its slickness.
I haven’t gotten around to trying SC:PT online, which supposedly is very good (in spite of the glaring quickmatch bug).

I have been playing quite a bit of “Fire Emblem” over the weekend, and have finished chapter 9. It is a very nice game (if you enjoy this sort of strategy/RPG cross-over), and somehow seems much more interesting to play than “Final Fantasy Tactics Advance”.

Ninja Gaiden rocks. It’s not too easy, but as I’m making steady progress it seems fine so far. Now it just needs to come out in Europe soon and preferably uncensored. Did I mention I modded my XBox? :p