For certain definitions of ‘productive’…

I finished Halo 2 this morning, and it turns out I was wrong, the last level was indeed an Arbiter level. Given that, and the relatively abrupt, incomplete ending, I can see how people might have been pissed off when it was first released. I should have my 360 back and be able to play 3 soon though, so I won’t have to wait like they had to.

The final two levels turned out to be a lot shorter and easier than I expected. Only the Tartarus fight was really any difficult, mostly because it was hard to jump around to avoid his insta-kill melee attack with all the pillars and debris around. I didn’t get the achievement for completing the game, though, and I suspect it’s because I missed the achievement for one of the previous levels and I’d have to redo it. Oh well, I can always come back and get it later if I need an easy 130 gamerscore points.

After that I figured I’d finish off another shooter, SiN Episodes: Emergence. I got it over a year ago, but it wasn’t all that great, so it was set aside and forgotten for a while. I turned on godmode and blew through the unfinished bits in an hour or so just to see if there were any interesting surprises to come, but no. Its main fault was that there just wasn’t enough variety to it; not enough different weapons, not enough different areas, not enough different enemies (in the last level it was pretty much the same two soldier types over and over again), and not enough set piece battles. The audio outtakes after the credits were a bit amusing, though.

After that I completed a few more courses in Excite Truck, finally finishing the Bronze series. I put this one aside because I was originally frustrated at getting stuck on only the second course, coming just barely under the number of stars needed three times in a row, but it was no problem this time for some reason. Still, I doubt I’ll ever get the complete set of wins and S-ranks needed to unlock everything, though. It’s not really my type of racing game (on the realistic vs. arcadey scale, it’s off in fantasyland), but it’s good in occasional short bursts.

And finally, I played a bit more of Super Metroid via the Wii’s VC and managed to get quite a few items (high jump boots, spazer, Varia suit, speed booster, ice beam, grappling beam) and defeat Kraid and the Crocomire. I’ll probably be able to finish this one tomorrow.