Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, the third installment of the Castlevania series for the Nintendo DS, came out the other day. Being the rabid Castlevania fanboy that I am, I just had to get a copy the day it came out. I’m starting to seriously regret that decision, but not for the reason you’d normally think. No, it is not, in fact, a bad game. In fact, it’s actually really, really good. I regret getting the game for the sole reason that I haven’t been able to put it down since I got it. As a matter of fact, I’ve already managed to rack up a good three and a half hours of play time. Pretty crazy stuff.

Throughout those three hours of playtime, I have only noticed a couple of small things I moderately (put extra emphasis on moderately, in case the italicized text wasn’t enough of an indicator) dislike about it. For one, from what I’ve played so far it’s mostly been pretty linear, unlike Dawn of Sorrow; once you’ve gone through a certain area, there’s not really much need to go back again. But hey, I’m not sure how far into the game I am, but from what I’ve heard the game gets more open-ended during the latter-half of the game. My only other problem is that there’s a little bit of copy-pasta (rooms that have been copied and reused). Normally I wouldn’t complain about this in a Castlevania game, but there are some pretty large-scale rooms that appear to have been lazily copied and reused more than once with slight item and enemy placement changes. I’ve only noticed a couple of areas like that so far though, so it doesn’t really bother me too much. I honestly can’t think of anything else I don’t like about the game.

If you’re a fan of Castlevania, get it. Now. If you’re not a Castlevania fan, well… what the hell is wrong with you?

Rock Band 2 for the XBOX360 came out well over a month ago, and I’ve been hooked since day one. As if the addictiveness of the original Rock Band wasn’t bad enough, Harmonix just had to go and make the game oh so much bigger and better. Surely this game will be the end of me.

It seems like more of an update than a sequal, but the improvements they’ve made to the game will make you forget the first game even existed. There’s a ton of songs to play. Take into consideration the 80 some-odd songs included on the game’s disc, and then add on top of that all of the songs from the original Rock Band songs (minus 3 songs). I’ve also got quite a few downloadable tracks as well. I’d estimate that as of right now I have about, oh… 150 songs. I had always felt that the original game’s track list was a bit lacking. The world tour mode in the original Rock Band was a great idea, but it falls short because there’s simply not enough songs in the game to keep it interesting for long. That’s no longer a problem with Rock Band 2.

That’s not really what has me hooked, though. The addition of online world tour, challenges, and battle of the bands is what’s got me so addicted. There’s just something awesome about forming a band with 3 other people you don’t even know on the interwebs and kicking some musical ass that, to put it simply, kicks a hell of a lot of ass.

I’ve been primarily playing drums since I got the game. Yeah, so I can kick ass on guitar/bass on expert, but there’s just something about pounding on some cheap plastic drums and kicking the twice broken bass pedal that’s a lot of fun. Plus I’ve kinda grown tired of playing the plastic guitar from excessive amounts of Guitar Hero playing over the last couple of years.

So… why aren’t you running out and buying the game already? Do it. Then give me your gamertag so we can rock the world… or at least pretend to. My gamertag is AgentSpork, by the way. Pretty easy to remember I’d say.