Best of luck to you! I tried playing Demon's Souls earlier this year and had a rather rough time of it. Since then I've gotten some good advice about it from veteran players and hope to try it again soon. I do like the bleak world of those games.
I've never been a fan of open world games but my wife loves them, so I'm sure she'll pick this up at some point. I'll be sure to try it.
This has been quite the week for you! lol
Well they had it but it was in a generic case with no manual, so I passed on it 
But I did get Alpha Protocol (PS3) and Homefront (360) from a 50% off bin. Got both for $7, so I am happy with that purchase 
I'll have to find some time to listen to this since I actually played Mirror's Edge this month. And I have a copy of El Shaddai already, so I guess I'll be playing that sometime soon too
I'm surprised there is so much difference between the two versions of the game, though I'm pretty sure there is a code to unlock the boy and maybe the old man in the SNES version. Shaq Fu is a terrible game, no doubt, but I think it gets so much hate because it was a high profile game. It's got Shaq in it, after all. Personally, I think there are plenty of games that are far less fun to play (terrible movie tie-ins like Dennis the Menace for SNES, for instance). At the same time, I definitely won't be going back to play Shaq Fu any time soon.
Chrono Cross is probably my second favorite soundtrack after FFVI. As for the game itself, people hated it because it's different than Chrono Trigger and to a degree they have a point. As a sequel it's not very good. But as a game it's excellent. I just wish more people would judge it on its own merits rather than on what they wanted it to be.
People are idiots. That is all.
I'm not one to wax philosophical about this stuff but it occurred to me while I was reading your piece that the sexualization of women probably isn't the goal (usually). They're being idealized too...but by men. So yeah, sexism and whatever lol.
Ikaruga is fantastic. I got it as soon as it came out for the GameCube. Yeah, no ground bad guys. No power ups either, which actually works out really well. Just you a the polarity system. Well, and and friend, hopefully. That's the best way to play
