I have a couple of non-spoilery tips for you that will make the game a lot less annoying, Drew. Let me know when you finally get a chance to play.

I carpooled to a meeting today with a friend...who had the music from Fallout 3 playing in his car. Brilliant, brilliant musical choices.

I certainly know plenty of people who own & are enjoying Fallout 3 but it's such a huge time-sink that I am keeping my OCD-self away from it.

Little Big Planet continues to amuse. Me & SA played it for HOURS last weekend and I'm probably introducing it to Cass today. Also, talking of game music, LBP's music is earwormingly good throughout.

Some Buffistas need to join me for a 4-player LBP fest. Hilarity will ensue.

Pete (et al), I'd be up for some LBP, if not this weekend then sometime soon. I'd have to figure out how the, umm, online playing with other people doohickeywhatis stuff works, but LBP seems like a fab way to sink into that particular timesink.

(I'm starting to realize that my cunning plan of spending my entire upcoming vacation catching up on all the games I haven't had time to play lately is going to have some very strange effects on my poor brane.)

I would like to join for LBP as well. I get back from Orlando tomorrow night, so maybe this weekend sometime.

ND, this weekend is doable.

Amych, I don't have your Psn ID. FYI, the weekend of 12-14 is completely out due to a fully booked social calender.

Anyone else here tried Race for the Galaxy? It's a card game, based on the same play principles as Puerto Rico. I find it more enjoyable than PR - it has more replay value, and it avoids entirely one problem for which PR is criticised, that seating order can affect the outcome (i.e. if there's a weak or inexperienced player, the person to their right gets an inordinate boost).

There's also an expansion set, The Gathering Storm, which is well worth it.

I didn't love RAce for the Galaxy.

I really wanted to, because there aren't so many sci-fi themed games, but it felt broken to me. And it had a pretty steep learning curve.

My main complaint was that it took the "multiplayer solitaire" aspect of PR and enhanced it about 30 times.

I've heard that learning curve thing before. It relies on a symbolic language to explain the cards, I get the impression some people take to that easily while it frustrates others. (I understand that it does, however, make it easy to translate into other languages.) I'm pretty sure it isn't broken - there are a number of different viable strategies, and it's received a metric buttload of playtesting.

No argument on multiplayer solitaire. Well, choosing phases has two important interactive elements - trying to guess what your opponents will pick, and adjusting your pick accordingly; and choosing a phase that won't benefit your opponent more than it benefits you - but aside from that, all you can really watch is how close they are to ending the game.

Still, they also enhanced the replay value of PR about 30 times, and for that I'm loving it.

The first expansion has an actual solitaire variant. It pits you against a dice-driven artificial opponent. If the learning curve was bad for the standard game, you don't want to know what it's like working out the solitaire one.

There's another card game, incidentally, that's also racing up the boardgamegeek charts, Dominion. It too is apparently wide open to charges of multiplayer solitaire. (It's also open to charges of having 500 cards, though that's another matter.)

Ok, it is that time of year and this time I really want to get a game console for the kids. Yes, I should do something with the stack of old broken stuff too, but that is another story.

We have the big fancy plasma tv in the LR and I would like Blue-ray for it, because it is the right thing to do. But I don't know if I want to do a Playstation there because I don't want it to be game central. We have the older big huge not HDTV in the game room, which makes more sense for a new console.

So there is Playstation with the great graphics and nifty features, the XBox with lots of games, and the Wii with lots of goofy family fun stuff.

I don't know anything about this stuff and the reviews are all over the place. The boys are playing WoW now, but we have no functional console. They all enjoy sports and racing type games. Of course, DH likes the plan of getting Sony in the LR and Wii in the playroom. But my cheap nature doesn't like the price of that option much. There seems to be no deals at all so price fixed apparently.

A bit of education would be very much appreciated.