Pokemon Ranger DS is about your quest to become a great pokemon ranger.  You travel from village to village and are given missions from the senior rangers to help citizens and get to a higher level.  These bad guys called the Go-Rock Squad end up stealing special equipment from the good guy pokemon rangers team, and they use this to capture pokemon for their evil deeds.

The world you play PR in is pretty small.  You get to choose between a male or female character and name them as you want.  My characters name was Snubs (go figure).  Capturing pokemon is fun.  Now, you don’t throw them in a Pokeball and battle other characters.  You capture wild pokemon, they follow you around as you travel, then you use them once and they are freed.  Of course, you can capture them again if you want.  You can talk to all the characters in the game, and their conversations give me the idea this game is made for children and teens.

Leveling up is probably the main reason I’m still playing this.  I was able to get through the game in about 3-4 days, and every time I leveled up, I wanted to get to the next level.    You also can get up to a Rank 10 in the game as a pokemone ranger.

My least favorite part about the game is the cut scenes.  The chat bubbles are slow (even on the fastest speed), and if something is happening that requires a part of the plot, you dont have the choice to skip.  This is annoying if you fail a mission and have to restart.  You have to sit through all the information again…

I’d give this game a 7 / 10.  All around a fun, cute game.  It’s easy to pass the time with Pokemon Ranger DS, and it’s a bit different from other pokemon games.  I wish I could skip cut scenes and I wish the game was longer. 

Mario Kart Wii

It’s a really fun game.  I definetly spent a good afternoon playing Mario Kart Wii with DK while he was visiting.  It’s the perfect game to just play circuit after circuit with a friend and pass the controller back and forth.  I think the races are a little easy.  We were able to unlock all the circuits in no time, getting first place in all but… I think 3 races.  Of course, the feeling of acheivement was great!  Everytime we unlocked a new car/character/racetrack, I got so excited!!  I wanted to keep playing all night!

Mario Kart Wii comes with a new nifty little wheel that you can set your Wiimote in, to ‘drive’ during the game.  We found the wheel to be incredibly stupid, and I tried various ways of playing.  Because the game is on Wii, you have the choice of playing with the wheel, wiimote, classic controller, etc.  I chose the classic controller and found it to be the easiest by far.  It’s just like playing the old school games from the old consoles.

The graphics are well done.  The edges around some characters and tracks are rough, but the coloring and scenery of racetracks from old games is pure awesomeness.  Nintendo kept some of the older racetracks!!  There are also quite a few new racetracks too, and I have to say, I love the new Rainbow Road.  It’s so colorful and pretty and ghey! lol

The music kicks ass.  Whenever you change menues, the music follows you.  It doesnt change songs, but changes the mood of the same track by just a bit.  It’s really cool! Hey! Listen!

The only issue I had with gameplay was that anytime you get hit by something, it seems like things pile up on you.  For example, if I got hit with a red shell, as soon as I get hit, I also get hit with a blue shell, a squid, a green shell, and I get run over by Bowser.  It happened to computer characters as well.  I’d hit them, and they’d get hit a few more times by other people.  It’s annoying!

All in all, great video game.  It’s perfect for families, parties, etc.  There isn’t any violence at all. It’s so fun!!  Even Molly Wood likes it. 

First off, the phone itself: My phone costed $200 with a $100 mail in rebate thru AT&T. Does anyone else hate mail in rebates? They’re somewhat retarded in my opinion. Obviously, I’m giving AT&T tons of money as it is already, seeing that I just renewed my contract with them. Hopefully my world will still be delivered when I move to Williamsburg Virginia, and I won’t have dropped calls that they insist do not happen often. The Centro is a pretty cheap phone for all of the amazing gadgets that come along with it. This is my first smart phone, so I was a little lost at first… I decided to do the geeky thing and actually go through the tutorial and read the handbook. Everything seemed pretty easy to do.

Although, I did have a rough time at first. I started out with a different palm centro. With my first one, I had downloaded hotsync and synced my phone with my computer. Luckily, all my contacts were saved onto my computer after I moved them to my phone from my sim card. A day later, my Centro continuously tried to HotSync even though my comp wasn’t hooked up to it. Weird, eh? After Darren did some very helpful research, I discovered this was very rare, but it’s happened before. I simply went in the next day and traded it in for one that works. This time, I didn’t set up HotSync. In fact, I didn’t even unwrap the USB cable for the phone. Evilness. So now all my contacts are gone, but still saved on my computer. I’m adding them in as I need them.

Buttons: I love the buttons on this phone. Once I started to do some SMS on the new Qwerty keyboard, I got used to it pretty fast. The buttons on the keyboard are a little small, but perfect for a girl with nails, like me. You can personalize the keys as much as you want! I took Darren’s advice and stuck the camera to the side button, and changed my main buttons to whatever I use the most. The camera looks great.. It takes about 3-4 seconds to run the camera.

One of my favorite parts of this phone is the ringer/vibrate switch. Since I have classes, I love the fact I can just switch a button to turn off the ringer. It’s easy.

Centro’s also can take micro-SD cards. Luckily, I had one from my handy dandy mod chip for DS, so I simply stuck some songs/pix on there, stuck it in the phone… oh yea, this was the aggrivating part. It took FOREVER to figure out how to copy those songs/pix onto my phone to use as ringtones/wallpapers, respectively. You have to go into the Web app, and link to the file, then save it as a ringtone, image, etc… It takes way too long to add pictures and songs to the phone…

I love the firmware. Palm is so user friendly. Everything you need is at your fingertips. Each menu item has a cute lil picture to help you figure out what it is. Each application has information available, and each menu page has helpful tools to guide you through your first time with the system.

I love the schedule/calendar. It’s so helpful. I found an easy way to set alarms by setting a calendar event and telling the phone how soon I want an customizable alarm to go off. All in all, great operating system, and great hardware. It’s so cute. Everyone I’ve shown my new phone to loves it. It just looks techy and geeky, and perfect

But one of the downfalls is the battery life. I read some reviews online before buying my phone and everyone said battery life isn’t that great. I can usually have mine last about 3 days, then I have to charge it. My old phone could run 5-6 days without a charge, so this is a little annoying for me…

All in all, I’d give the Palm an 8/10. I LOVE IT! It’s not perfect, it has flaws, and it takes some getting used to, specially if it’s your first smart phone. But the device is very user friendly and incredibly customizable. And I love it

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