Been a little while since I posted in this thread.
Here's some of my updated thoughts.
First of all, I really like the Live Marketplace and Live Arcade. Demos, and even being able to download movie/game trailers is nice.
I'm not that big into playing online though. I tried some of the online career mode in PGR3 and it was horrible. On some race, all the people just picked the fastest car they could, and basically over half of the racers couldn't even handle the car (I think 5 out of 8 wrecked right away). I had a significantly slower car and was able to keep relatively good pace with the two leaders, but it just wasn't fun at all.
Finished playing through co-op with my roomate in PDZ. I have to say I liked it quite a bit. Not really really great, but it had its moments, although there is way too much trial and error. Also, the story was just WTF who cares (meaning sometimes it was just WTF, and the rest of the time it was who cares, the ending boss being a big instance of WTF). Multiplayer is decent. Its probably the only game that I've enjoyed playing on Live, and thats only because I somehow ended up with decent (both in skill and manner) people in nearly every game. However, there's a lot missing that I really felt should have been in the game (and hopefully they'll add later). I can't believe there isn't any stages from the original game (oh how I wish to play in the Stack/Library again, although thats actually Goldeneye, not PD). Also, I wish they would have had a challenge thing like the first game did. There's some other customization that I wish it still had, but thats not a big deal. Overall its decent, and has been enjoyable all around (co-op, single player, online, with bots, etc.), but just doesn't compare to the original. Its certainly obvious they took some ideas (and thankfully mostly good ones) from Halo, which oddly works, and while it still feels like PD, there's something about it that it considerably different.
I've actually started to get into PGR3 quite a bit. I like it a lot more, however, there's still something about it thats not quite as addicting as before.
Oh, and I've gotten up to 284,000 in Geometry Wars, but I only have the trial game (not that thats an excuse for not being anywhere near where some people are).
The last bit is about Madden. I have to say, while its a subpar game for the most part (doesn't even come close to comparing to NFL2K5, nor does it probably compare very favorably to Madden 06 on the Xbox), I've actually enjoyed it some. Mostly because I'm whipping one of my friends in it. It plays like something in between Blitz and Madden. I still can't believe how rediculously pointless defense is in it. The last game I played against my friend, we had the difficulty to All Pro (second highest difficulty), he was the Bengals and I was the Steelers. I won 68-62, on a literally last second play (80+ yard touchdown pass). Thats just rediculous. The games however have been pretty close (except for one blowout I had, where my friend got royally screwed by the game). So far I'm up 4-1 in our games, and could've pretty easily been up 5-0 if I'd had paid more attention to the clock in the one loss.
Haven't even touched Kameo anymore and really have no interest to. I would like to try NFS: MW (didn't like the demo, but it was too limited to really tell if I'd like the game), RR6 (only because I have a sweet spot for Ridge Racer), King Kong, and Condemned. I still have yet to play CoD2, and to be honest, my interest in it is kinda waning. I still want it based on all the reviews and praise it gets, but, I'm not sure that I'll end up liking it that much.
Hopefully I'll get some 4 player games going on over break. That is what makes or breaks a game/console for me.