So how has my Christmas been this year? At the start, it was horrible for me. On 19th December after coming home from an evening meal at the local pub, I received an email from my friend Pokelord-EX saying he's having an operation (won't go into detail what happened exactly) and when he mentioned about the possible but very rare outcome, I was worried about what could happen to him. I mean, he's been one of my best friends for 6 years now and to hear him having to be in hospital for Christmas wasn't very pleasant.

Since I heard that, the only thing I wanted for Christmas is for him to make it through the operation and my wish came true. Everything has gone well for the operation. Pokelord is recovering from his illness much quicker than expected and should be out of the hospital for the new year. It's just a shame how this happened around Christmas time and it's his favourite holiday of the year. However, his family were able to see him on Christmas Day, so he didn't feel too bad this Christmas, but I can understand how hard it is to have been waiting in the hospital most of the time since he was there.

Me and my friends shall be visiting him tomorrow to see how he is. We were hoping to see him sooner, but time arrangements were difficult to make over the last week.

Besides the problem with Pokelord, Christmas has actually been good this year. One of the reasons for that being my dad behaving much better this time round. I didn't have to sleep downstairs on Christmas Day since my dad fell asleep in the conservatory that night.

The day itself was pretty much just another Christmas Day, but we all got together (besides my aunt, who was unfortunately unable to get here until last night), enjoyed ourselves and that's what really matters about Christmas. I know over the last two months I haven't been too happy about this holiday, but that's nothing to worry about now since my Christmas spirit has been restored. :)

For the evening, we watched WALL-E, which my dad got for Christmas and my thoughts on the movie? Although I'm not too keen on CGI movies these days and felt they lost their charm since Shrek, a movie like WALL-E is too hard to miss. The idea of a WALL-E being all alone in the abandoned Earth was a very interesting concept and the film was even better later on. I'd say this is the best Pixar movie since Toy Story.

Also, if you're wondering what I got for Christmas, here you go:

Games:

Spore
Tomb Raider: Underworld (Wii)
Wii Fit

CDs:

AC/DC - Black Ice
Guns N' Roses - Chinese Democracy

DVDs:

Batman Legacy (1989 Batman - Batman & Robin) - lol at this boxset having Batman & Robin.
Cloverfield
The Dark Knight

Other:

£15
£15 Zavvi voucher (which is no longer accepted)
£10 HMV voucher
AC/DC T-Shirt
Mobile Phone

I haven't watched/played everything, but here are my thoughts on the stuff I've listened/played so far:

Spore - I really love this game. Not only I'm impressed at the full version of Creature Creator, but the Main game is great with its five different phases (Cell/Creature/Tribe/Civilization/Spac e). I haven't seen the Space phase yet, but I'll get there soon enough.

I have two complaints about this game, however. The first one being the lack of ability to see the whole map on Creature Phase. One night, I was trying to find a dragon species named Dragon (lol) to ally with, which I only saw once. Since then, I was just searching and searching and searching for them and didn't see them in the end. If they allowed you to view the whole map in Creature Phase and tell you which species are where, it would have been much easier for me to find what I was after. Maybe I just overlooked something, but I don't think I have.

My other complaint? Expansion packs! Shortly after Spore was released, they released an expansion pack called Creepy & Cute containing 60 new body parts, which really annoyed me since that's an extra £5 or so to get more parts for the game. And on top of that, there's going to be another expansion pack sometime next year. So that's two already! This kind of stuff should be Downloadable Content FOR FREE!! But no, this is EA, the biggest money-grabbing BASTARDS in video game history! They find so many ways to get money off people, it's disgusting!

This is what made me reluctant to get the game in the first place. I wasn't too happy with what EA were going to do with Spore by making tons of expansion packs. *sigh* I'll probably get eventually if they're worth getting, but besides the expansion pack bullshit, I'm still enjoying Spore. It's a great game and what the closeminded morons say about this game should be disregarded (besides the DRM issue).

One last thing, if you want to see the Spore Creature I've made for the main game, have a look below.

AC/DC - Black Ice - I'm finding it hard to remember all the tracks on this album, but for an AC/DC album, it's pretty good and should please the bigger fans. However, I'll stick to the classic Highway to Hell and Back in Black albums.

Guns N' Roses - Chinese Democracy - Maybe I need to listen to this album a few more times, but honestly, this is one of the most boring albums I've ever heard. Axl Rose's singing is so inconsistent throughout the album and half of the tracks on the album were uninteresting ballads. I'm usually OK with a handful of ballads in one album, but this was overkill for me. Besides the first two tracks, the album was very poor. Apologies to the GnR fans out there, but 14 years for this album to be released wasn't worth the wait at all. I'm glad that:

1. I'm not a big fan of Guns N' Roses.
2. I haven't been waiting for this album since 1994.

I'll give this album something, however. It's much better than listening to trash cans and shitty ass Disney songs.

And that's everything I've done with my stuff so far. I'm hoping to start watching through the Batman films very soon and Cloverfield along with it. For Tomb Raider: Underworld, I plan to wait until all the Christmas decorations are put away, so it'll be easier for me to use the Wii. If I complete Spore well before then, I have a few PC games to play including Left 4 Dead, Portal and Psychonauts, which I bought today (besides L4D, which was obtained on Tuesday) from Steam for a low price. :)

I hope you all have had a great Christmas!