Three days until GTA: San Andreas!  Local Gamestop confirmed my reservation and that they are selling them at 7 PM on Monday.  Of course, I may have to play it at the office (since it's not quite appropriate fare for the 3 yr old)...

I play a lot of games but the modern GTA games have really sucked me in like no other.  I've played both of them to completion several times (no, I haven't quite gotten a 100% rating... close though).  The sense of a world that they create is just absolutely amazing.  My brain has a complete map of Liberty City and Vice City and those spaces are easily some of the most real video game spaces in my mind... maybe even more so than things I helped create like Citadel Station or the Von Braun (partly because there are no secrets or sense of exploration for me in those).

GTA:SA looks like yet another ridiculously good GTA game.  They have so upped the ante on volume and quality of content compared to the rest of the world. 

Sadly there's already a ripped version floating around the "internets".  Not too surprising really, but sad regardless.  Once you release a disc to the duplicators it is SO much easier for it to leak out one way or another.  That said, piracy doesn't hurt a good console game nearly as much as it will hurt a PC game -- the barrier to entry on pirating a console game is just so much higher.  It happens, of course (and overseas, on a professional scale) but most people don't have mod chips or DVD burners.

Then again, rentals pick the pockets of console developers much more than they do for PC devs, so maybe it all balances out on the karmic wheel of justice.

All I know is that I have 3 days left until my trip to San Andreas can begin.  The few lucky bastards I know in the industry who have already played it (legitimate copies, of course) say it lives up to the hype...

Of course, I'm still in the middle of a thousand other games... Xavier and I are playing Paper Mario (though the story is a bit too complex for him to follow still), and I'm 80% of the way through Sly Cooper 2 and still loving it.  I finally gave Rome: Total War a shot and while I have a few complaints it is a very nice package overall -- well worth a look.