Today, December 25th, is a special day for America. You and your family will probably celebrate this day every year, gathering for warm fireside chats, delicious homemade dinners, and introspective spiritual moments.
For today, Boris has provided THREE new video game reviews to fourhman.com.
Noting that I was not getting that promised Kingdom Hearts review finished, Boris took fingers to keyboard and crafted three great reviews: Blast Corps (N64), Rocket: Robot on Wheels (N64), and the patchwork GameCube sci-fi opus Starfox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet.
Let's all thank Boris in the only way we know how: with lots of clicking and staring. Maybe we'll earn some more reviews from the lad in the future; watch for the Sputnik! 
In other news... finished Metroid Prime last night. I have actually been avoiding the final boss fight for about two weeks now, because my initial forays into Giant Freaking Metroid Monster Stomping were met with terrible failure. It's always a mistake when I put a serial game down for a bit like that, because the timespan between plays always wrecks the linear narrative for me. I feel like all the cool bits of Metroid Prime - the searching, the collecting, the wandering - took place in another game.
The final level was frustrating. I feel it relied on a lot more luck than I usually like. After several trips through the jumping puzzle of the Fission Metroid room (where you have to scale a bunch of tiny floating platforms), I became very good at the whole jumping portion. But, it was all luck as to whether the goddamn Fission Metroids attacked me and knocked me back down. Frustration.
Then once you confront El Bosso Grande, Metroid Prime his bad self, it's all random as to what colors his rotates through... deciding what weapon weakness you need to exploit. I found his Ice mode wildly annoying, because your own Ice weapon is very slow... so if ol' MP selects Ice more often than not, you're going to have a harder time battling him. Frustration again.
And in his final form, he randomly chooses his visbility, and you have to quickly cycle through your combat, x-ray and thermal visors to locate him. So, again, if you're lucky, you'll find him right away. If not, he will bathe you in fire and push your corpse out to the road for Monday morning trash pickup. Frustration x3.
That's probably why I value Animal Crossing so much, since it operates completely on a non-frustration scheme. I'm not saying I dislike games that are difficult - quite the opposite - it's just exceptionally theraputic once in a while to play a game that isn't actively seeking to pull your pants down.
