Ok, this is going to sound a tad cynical but for the life of me I can’t figure out why some people do this. Before Christmas I didn’t notice this but since, I got both Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero: World Tour over the holidays,  I can now tell the difference between someone who is just checking the game out at one of the demo units in stores and someone who is apparently trying to show people their “mad video game guitar/drum skills!”

Now, for the younger generation I’ll cut them some slack. They’re young and excited about the game and I don’t see anything wrong with that. Now for the the older crowd, those 18 and older, you just seem like a huge tool sitting at these demo units and playing some Bon Jovi or eighties metal song like you own it. I watch these people and I feel like they really think they are the original bad ass because they can play a video game representation of a song using a toy guitar. Don’t get me wrong, the games are pretty fun but there is a difference between having a little fun at home with your friends and putting on a concert for the public at your local Best Buy. It’s even worse, like the goof ball in the picture above, when you set the difficulty level up a notch or two and then play the song like so badly you start looking around to see who is watching and then set the game difficulty back to easy so as not to blow your cool image.

Seriously folks, save it for your living rooms.

Of course, with the addition on the PS3 to the living room I also spent some time with a few games for that system as well.

All told I played a lot of games over the holidays. On the PS3 side; Metal Gear Solid 4. LittleBigPlanet, Resistance, Resistance 2, Ratchet and Clank. On the Xbox360; Gears 2, Bad Company, Fable 2, Banjo & Kazooie: N&B, The Orange Box, Kameo, Lost Odyessy, Civilization: Revolution, Call of Duty: World at War.

The gamefest had as much to do with having so much time off as it did the new wide screen HD TV. Yes, 1080p gaming is where it’s at.

My character in RB2

(This image was taken from the Rock Band web site after I linked my Xbox Live! account to my profile there. You can pose your character for pics there once you have your account linked.)

Well, I got a chance to play around with Spore this evening. Of course, I’m just talking about the creature creator. The actual game hasn’t been released yet. It’s was fun creating the various creatures and I have to say I am looking forward to playing the game once it’s released.

I think you could spend quite some time just seeing what you could come up with using the creature creator. Seems to be very intuitive and I was able to hit the ground running without having to read anything. It will be interesting to see what they come up with as far as game play goes but since I have liked all the previous Sim and Civilization games, I am sure this one will be worth the price of admission. Of course only time will tell if the game is any good or not but expectations are high.

(Click the related videos button on the player above to see the other dragons some “Sporians” have created.)

If you want to try out the Spore Creature Creator for yourself, you can download it by clicking the image below. It’s available for both Mac and PC users.