Click to view intently.

That’s a total of 21 exclusive titles stretched across three consoles, the PS3 showing the most, partly due to the delays many of their games have seen.  Of all three consoles, there is just one game I feel I must have: Halo 4.  This is why, come next-gen, Microsoft will be the only company receiving my money, and who’d have thought I’d say that ten years ago?  Nintendo has been operating in absentia for the last five years or so while Sony just doesn’t have any franchises that I am crazy about.  The console wars’ battle lines are becoming blurred as everyone does everything relatively the sam:  motion controlled Wii begets Kinect/Move;  Xbox achievement points begets Sony trophies.  The next generation of console fighting will come down to seemingly one issue: the games.  And that is the way it should have been all along.  Why did I love the SNES so much more than the Genesis?  The games.  That is why the Nextbox will be my drug of choice, because of franchises like Halo and Gears of War–and those are just the franchises that are exclusive.  The Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect, Final Fantasy, etc. all exist on multiple consoles, which wasn’t the case with the N64/PSX days.

Buying video game consoles is going to be like buying beer.  You know you like all of it, but there is some you like way better, and that is the beer that you make your default.  If video game consoles weren’t $350 each this would be a moot issue, but as an adult gaining new responsibilities every day (ugh!), choices must be made, and thankfully for me video game publishers are making that choice for me.

PS. I can’t afford to update my PC every six months, either.  Otherwise the PC is definitely the way to go.

An elf of many pointed hats…

Like my experience with Oblivion, I have been bouncing through the various guilds and allegiances, completing the various missions in no real order.  If I find I am tired of playing through the Dark Brotherhood, I move on to the main quest.  Ready for something besides all this dragon hunting and I move to the Companions missions.  Thieves Guild has me down?  I tackle the College of Winterhold (Mages).

To be sure, at this point I have only completed the main quests for the Companions (Fighter’s Guild), Dark Brotherhood and College of Winterhold, and I am on the final main mission of the Thieves Guild.  Even after achieving leadership of an association, though, there are still quests I can undertake, so they aren’t necessarily over and done with.  The Dark Brotherhood, as was true in Oblivion, was wildly fun and rewarding; the Night Mother speaks only to me once more, giving me new contracts to kill random PCIs.  I became Arch Mage of Winterhold (a little faster than I expected to) but still have plenty of missions to accomplish within the college.

I took up arms with the Stormcloaks to fight the evil empire.  As an agent of imperial power in Oblivion I thought it only fair to see to their undoing in Skyrim.  After all, Patrick Stewart didn’t talk to me in this game, so what allegiance should I show the emperor?  I’ve completed a few Daedric missions, also.  I find these to be a great change-of-pace, often leading to skill improvements or rare items.  Beyond these groupings, other side quests have been undertaken, usually resulting in small amounts of gold with the occasional Word of Power found in the meantime.

The Word of Power, when absorbed, allows a Shout to be unlocked.  If you read my initial reactions article on Skyrim you may have noted that I wasn’t too worried about the Shouts, only using on rare occasions.  Since I wrote that I made a point to use them much more.  After all, they are a resounding power unique to this game and exploring new experiences is what Skyrim is all about.  I now Shout til my voice is rendered hoarse, often tossing approaching Falmer and Forsworn off the nearest ledge, seeing their ragdoll bodies flail uncontrollably towards their own pathetic demise.  I’ve found the Marked for Death Shout to be extremely useful when fighting dragons.  It makes an arrow to the side much more potent.  Speaking of fighting dragons…

Dragons!  Who knew?!  These guys (and gals, I guess) can be seen flying all over Skyrim’s parts.  If they spot you plan on a battle.  The dragon fights are excellent because they are a perfect blend of difficulty while not being overly difficult.  It is exactly as a boss battle should be.  You shouldn’t sweat seeing a dragon head towards you, but you also shouldn’t laugh it off.

It’s a vast, Vast, VAST world….vast.

An example of this game’s scope:  The week after Christmas I was sick, and therefore, received a temporary reprieve from any fatherly or husbandly responsibilities.  I feel I utilized that time well by simply wandering the Skyrim landscape, finding new locations with my trusty steed, Shadowmere.  I wouldn’t even enter these locations yet, I was too obsessed with finding more and more of them.  I got the Explorer achievement, for finding 100 locations, at least 30 locations ago.  There are at least 350 locations in the game.  Do you understand what I am saying?

Bethesda also expanded on the kinds of locations one can find from Oblivion to Skyrim.  Beyond finding the new Standing Stones which grant the worshipper a special power (one at a time), there are also Orc strongholds, canyons, groves, dragon nests (for lack of a better term), sunken ships, enshrinements, bridges…a shit-ton of newness, basically.

All that glitters is not gold…

Problems?  Sure there are.  My game has frozen up on numerous occasions, forcing me to turn off the auto-save, which in turn led to a few instances of being killed without a save for 30-minutes-plus.  And, yes goddammit, that is very frustrating.  I’ve also been “trapped” in graphical glitches on multiple occasions without escape; at one point in Blackreach I was teetering on the edge of a waterfall, unable to break free from this mystical force that kept me from succumbing to the intense force of the surging water as well as Tamriel’s gravity.  Occasionally the game’s immensity causing pretty significant slow-down–we’re talking the Mega Man 2 variety.

But guess what, I don’t care.  These are annoyances, at best.  The only thing these two problems forced me to do was save more frequently.  The load times on the 360 are a bit of a bear, but when you think of the scope this game has it is understandable.  And in the last week I have been able to load the game directly off my newly-purchased 120gb hard drive, expediting the load times to some extent.  All of these factors don’t necessarily give Bethesda a free pass, but then again Bethesda is a company that will go back and fix their mistakes, which is a quality that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Summation.

I write this love letter having played through 88+ hours in Bethesda’s newest gem.  Over 88 hours later, I still feel like there is so much left to do. I’m still surprised every time I turn this game on; I always find something new, like joining the Bard’s College and burning an ancient king in effigy.  I willingly contracted lycanthropy and became a fucking werewolf.  These are things that I was completely unaware of going into the game but was pleasantly surprised to find.  The eagerly-awaited DLC expansions for Skyrim are sure to add an additional 15-20 hours (if anything like Shivering Isles).  That’s, easily, 120 hours I can spend on a game that I purchased for $60 in November.

This is why Skyrim is my game of the year.  This is why, 8 years from now, Skyrim will be a serious contender for best of the decade.  Best all time?  What game in existence can claim that?  Link to the Past is up there, but is it too short to be considered numero uno?  Chrono Trigger was terrific, but is the pacing of a mid-90s JRPG something that could hold it back?  Mario 64 was amazing, but it has not aged well graphics-wise.  Skyrim falls in this same grey area.  It’s wonderful and I can promise I’ll love this game forever, but when will the biggest, prettiest, lengthiest game hereafter be released and make me think twice about whether or not Skyrim is better?  Elder Scrolls VI?

I’ve been so enamored with Skyrim that all other video gaming has been put on hold.  Gears of War 3 has been played a total of 30 minutes in my 360; I’ve yet to get Arkham City, a game I was very eagerly awaiting.  Mass Effect 3 comes out in a couple of months, but will I be ready for it or will I still be traipsing through the wilderness of Tamriel’s northern continent?  Halo 4 should be released later this year, but will I have started a new quest with a different character class?

To the fine folks at Bethesda, I say congratulations.  You’ve concocted an experience, mixed with equal parts action, role playing, wonderment and awe.  For 2011, the Gilded Cask shall be filled to its lustrous brim with the most vintage of Nord Meads due to your masterpiece, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

I have read on forums and experienced some issues myself in receiving the Skylanders’ achievement entitled: “Gotta Buy Them All”. There are several youtube clips showing some trickery for swapping your save files which I have not yet tried. I contacted Activision explaining the situation:

I have maxed out the abilities on several Skylanders that have only been owned by me and have not received the “Gotta Buy ‘em All” achievement.

To which Activision responded:

I am sorry to hear you are having this problem.

If you have leveled up multiple Skylanders all of the way and still have not received the achievement, then this may be an issue with your save.

Please note the following “fix” is not officially supported by Activision. This has been known to solve this issue for some people and may be able to resolve this issue for you.

1. You need to have 1 Skylander that is 1 upgrade from having everything unlocked. Please note that the upgrade cannot be the one that requires the Soul Gem.

2. You need to have a USB/external memory unit for your XBox 360

To resolve this issue;
(in the XBox 360 Home Screen)
Select Settings > System > Memory > Storage > Games and Apps > Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure. You will need to take your save file, and move it to your external memory unit. Once this is done, there should be no saved data in the Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure folder.

Once this is done, launch the game and it will be as though you have started from scratch. You will need to play to the point where you save Persephone, and can once again purchase Upgrades. Once you purchase the final upgrade (that does not include the required Soul Gem), you should unlock the “Gotta Buy Em All” achievement.

Once you have the achievement, you can once again move your Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure save data from your memory unit, back to your hard drive. This will allow you to continue from your original save point.

If you have any further questions, comments, or concerns, please reply to this incident or contact us by phone so that we can continue to assist you.

I am going to try and level up one more Skylander, ensuring that I buy his unlockable power before the other upgrades and if that doesn’t work, I will go the route suggested by Activision.

Good luck, Skylanders!

Enjoy an hour and a half of Wes and Dave discussing bullshit and their year in video games.

You may remember that I included Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure in my article about gaming trends I despise. I absolutely despise the multi-pronged marketing tactic used to sell this game because it is so goddamned brilliant.

The only thing those marketing bastards could have done to be even more devious would have been to include particular figurines exclusively with different console releases. I know they thought about it, they had to have. The 3DS version does include an exclusive “Dark Spyro” figurine and two additional that differ from the home console versions. However, the Xbox 360, Wii and PS3 all include the same 3 figures. Perhaps it is too evil even for Activision to try and force me to buy a copy of the game for each of the 3 major consoles and a handheld. Obviously it would be possible to resort to eBay and Craig’s list to obtain these exclusive figures for exorbitantly high prices, but luckily it hasn’t come to that… yet.

All of these figures are theoretically available in individual packages as well as 3 packs. There are a couple of “adventure packs” that include a Skylander figure, a couple of bonus items that can heal your Skylanders or otherwise affect gameplay with different types of modifiers such as slowing enemies or providing you with ghost swords that automatically attack enemies. These adventure packs must unlock content already in the game because there is no installation required for the levels they provide you access to, nor are you prompted to download anything.

There are 32 base figurines. I say “base” because there are alternate colors of some of the base characters which increases the number of actual different figurines significantly. There is a “Dark” version of Spyro, Toys R Us also exclusively carries a “Legendary” set of figurines – 3 alternate colored figurines which may or may not have different abilities than their original color-palette brethren. Many major retailers carry some kind of exclusive item or figurine for the Skylander world, so expect to be traipsing all over town or to many different online retailers to complete your collection. It’s a trap.

I knew it. I knew it and I still fell into the trap. I knew I would absolutely get hooked on collecting these stupid little action figures for this game and I was proven correct. Since receiving the Xbox 360 version of the game recently I have been hunting all over the state to find more figures. Apparently Skylanders was the video game boon of the holidays and the individual figurines are sold out at just about any online and brick and mortar store you can think of.

Through meticulous planning and coordination with third parties, friends and relatives, I have leveraged buying multiple copies of the game and combining and distributing as needed the figurines included in “Mega Packs” and the 3DS versus console releases to boost my own collection. Recently I have been to well over a dozen stores in 3 different nearby cities and returned mostly empty-handed.

I have a problem...

This recent exercise in futility would have been much more disheartening if it weren’t for the fact that my 4-year old son is absolutely in love with this game. This game is very kid-friendly, especially the early levels. The first half-dozen or so levels could be completed by him on his own which thrilled him to no end. As the levels get trickier and the enemies get tougher, I have been more involved in the co-op aspect of the game. Teaching him the ways of the gamer. It has been a great bonding experience for both of us, if a bit trying for the completionist in me. At times I can’t understand why he wants to run around the main hub-world, swimming and shooting walls for minutes at a time while I am pulling my hair out wanting to beat the next level. I have to remind myself that he is so very young in his gaming life and needs time to explore the space, enjoy the freedom of unlimited trial and error in worlds we can never experience except through gaming. Then I become a little misty-eyed and sort of jealous of his new experience.

First thing I noticed was the excellent musical score.  The symphonic touch to the game’s tunes was a wonderful addition to a series that has always featured innovative, memorable music.  Accompanying the wonderful score is the game’s terrific art style.  Graphics are irrelevant for the Wii because it will never out-do the worst-looking game on the PS3 or 360 at only 480i/p.  What Nintendo has had to do, and has done so fairly well, is reinvent the shitty-graphics-wheel by making innovative changes to the way things look within a game:  Kirby’s Epic Yarn a prime example.  Skyward Sword features a very watercolor-esque effect, with soft, hazy colors fading together, hiding the jagged polygons from the days of yore.

Gameplay thus far is kind of hard (for me) to get used to.  I gave up on motion gaming years ago because it sucks.  Zelda is the one game (thanks Other M) that can pull me back in for a taste.  The 1:1 movement is pretty good, but I still don’t think it is entirely accurate.  That may just be the way my remote is oriented, but I still didn’t feel like my movements were Link’s movements, per se.  Precise slices with the sword were not so precise, and flying my bird with remote tilts was more difficult than I thought.  But like I said, I’m in 2.5 hours and haven’t touched my Wii in a year-plus.  I was also trying to play this game in the most comfortable, lazy position possible.  Once I sat up and improved my posture things did get easier.  I also noticed as I was getting more accustomed to the controls I was performing sword strikes that I wasn’t even trying to.  Vertical hack followed up immediately by a diagonal slash!  Take that bats (I know, keese)!

The game, as always, features goofy characters that toe the line of gender neutrality.  And, as always, the game starts off…fucking…sl..o..ww.  I realize there are those (grandparents, middle-aged parents, girls) that probably never played video games before the Wii and almost certainly never played a Zelda game.  The game’s first 2.0 hours is their boring, spoon-fed tutorial.  Just like every other modern Zelda game.  It’s unbearable to me at this point in my life.  It is the exact same reason I haven’t progressed beyond an hour in Majora’s Mask since I purchased it on the VC.  I lowered my head and powered through, though.  I knew once I got through this fart-haze I would be in lilac land, taking in the wondrous, innovative puzzles and incredibly-well-thought-out labyrinths.

I’m eager to jump back in to this game.  The potential is beginning to really rear its glorious head.

Halodir the Sneak Thief

Halodir (whose name came to me at random when trying to think of a Middle-Earthy, medieval-type name for an elf of the forest) is interesting in that, while he has no friends, he has many friends.  This is so because Halodir is a member of just about every club/team/organization/grouping in Skyrim.  He engages in thievery for the Thieves Guild while also acting as a cold-blooded assassin for the Dark Brotherhood.  He dabbles in magic at the College of Winterhold (Mages Guild) while also serving the public good via the Companions (Fighter’s Guild).  And, to boot, he is the newest member of the Stormcloaks, the rebel alliance in Skyrim opposing the Imperials (who are assholes, by the way).  I could’ve been an Imperial sympathizer, actually, but when helping them take down a dragon I accidentally (seriously) shot one of their soldiers in the fucking back with an arrow.  “Why are you in my fucking way?  Stop standing in the dragon’s ass and let me shoot him!”  Once the dragon was vanquished, these armor-studded pricks came back for me.  Seven versus one–real mature, guys.  I stuck around the area long enough to absorb my dragon soul (because I’m also the last of the Dragonborn) and then hauled ass on one of the Imperial’s horses.  So what if I stole it–when in Rome…

As was true with Oblivion, I am enjoying the Dark Brotherhood missions the best thus far with the Thieves Guild missions in a close second.  These two guilds suit my skills: lots of sneaking, excellent marksmanship, stealing cool shit to use or sell later, and now, wicked backstabs.  The College of Winterhold has been pretty fun thus far and so too working with the Companions.  I have really only scratched the surface of each faction, trying to acquire more enchanted items and money to build my evil, but helpful, operation further and further.

A greybeard mid-shout.

Halodir has killed six dragons thus far.  I’ve obtained four shouts, but honestly I’ve just started to really utilize them;  they weren’t extremely useful to my style of play but I’m finding they can be very beneficial.  I’m sure after more utilization of these weirding words I’ll see their fruits, but at this point I am content to zip an arrow into the bean of an unsuspecting bandit from the shadows.  I really enjoy the magic system in this sequel, namely the ability to hold down on the trigger and keep the flames/frost/sparks flying.  As someone who never uses a shield, Halodir feels the best defense is a good offense.  If some asshole gets up in his grill, the elf starts laying down the flame and striking with his soul-stealing mace.  It seems to settle down most of the rabble.  My magic skills are not strong enough yet to use some seemingly-fun/strong spells as I have focused more on enchanting my items.  Enchantment works similarly to Oblivion, except in this realm of Tamriel, you can break down an already-enchanted item and learn its mystical properties, destroying the item in the process.  Halodir has found it very useful to destroy an Axe of Embers (since he is not much of an axe man) to learn how to add fire to an item.

Bouncing through all the guilds’ missions as well as the main storyline has given this game incredible balance for me.  And, as I found with Fallout 3, I love just wandering through the wilderness and finding new locations, as well as the occasional rare ingredient, like Nirnroot!  The enemies appear to level up with Halodir, as they did in Oblivion.  I’m seeing a lot more bears and sabre cats now (at Level 23) who prove very challenging, especially to someone with a fairly-low light armor rating.  These insidious creatures take a ton of damage and give as good as they get.  Giant frostbite spiders are quite pervasive in this quest, and, despite the fact that I am not arachnophobic, these big fucks still give me the heebies.  Something about a giant spider that makes no sound when it attacks is quite eerie.  However, after dispatching these spawn of Ungoliant, your adventurer is free to extract frostbite venom, a useful poison that attacks stamina and makes it just a bit easier to drop someone with an orcish arrow.

As I alluded to before, Halodir is best suited for the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild.  His sneaking and archery skills, along with lockpicking and pickpocket abilities, provide for a very enjoyable method of game progression.  Halodir will kill anyone when it suits a necessary purpose, but rather than just a indiscriminate killer, I think of him more as following Skyrim’s Code of Harry, ridding the land of its poisons and plagues.  Bandits are often shot on sight, as they would be just as merciful if they saw me first.  Necromancers are not spared, nor are vampires.  These vile persons will all taste the tip of Halodir’s vigilante justice as it pierces their heart and bleeds their soul.

The Dark Brotherhood awaits...

Thirty-plus hours so far and a character level in the lower 20s, but there is still so much more to go.  If you don’t have this game yet, if you’ve never played Oblivion and are uncertain about jumping in to the franchise at this late hour, forget all that worries you and buy the title post haste.  Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is more than worth $60; it’s a game that gives you 100-plus hours of adventure and exploration.  The world becomes your own as your character becomes a loose extension of yourself.  Halodir, the wood elf who has glowing eyes, crouches through the shadows, and kills the dishonored, is an overly-extreme version of me, only I lack the pointed ears, stealth abilities, or the capability to commit murder.  Other than that, yeah, I guess we’re alike, especially in regards to our Destruction spell skills.

Saints Row 2 is one of my all time favorite co-op games for the Xbox 360. It even ranks up there as one of my favorite co-op games of all time, so needless to say I have eagerly been anticipating the next installment in the series. Saints Row 3 (or the third) has not disappointed. It continues in the fine tradition of excellent co-op gameplay and over-the-top weapons, characters and scenarios that we have come to expect from the series.

It’s been a while since I have spent this amount of time with a game. 20+ hours in the first few days allowed me to play through the main storyline once and handle a good amount of side-quests and collect all 80 collectible items scattered throughout the city.

The gameplay is solid. A step up from Saints Row 2. The melee combat is much more fluid and the weapons combat feels more comfortable to me. Online co-op is much improved over the second iteration. Over the 20+ hours that I have logged in online co-op, I have only been disconnected from my partner once and only briefly before we were reconnected. The game froze once, but I will forgive it since it happened 6 hours into an 8 hour marathon gaming session.

There are lots of things improved in “The Third”. Helicopters seem much easier to fly and the selection of vehicles has improved in my opinion. The jet bike and hover-plane are pure fun to fly around. The combat is more varied with each rival gang having their own “specialist” type members with abilities beyond those of the typical foot soldier. There are also Brute type enemies which are giant muscle-bound monsters that require some finesse to deal with until you have leveled up enough to fight them head-on.

With the improved selection of vehicles also comes an improved selection of weapons. We’ve all likely seen the huge, purple dildo-baseball-bat-type weapon which is extremely satisfying to club random strangers on the street with. But new to the arsenal are some truly awesome weapons like air strikes, reaper drone (allow you to launch and even guide missiles towards your target), Apoca-fist, Mollusk launcher (mind-controlling octopi turn your enemies into friendlies), and many more. Good times.

However, not everything on the row has been improved upon. You must purchase a new copy or pay for the ability to play online co-op which truly sucks. Volition has gone the route of the “season pass” for DLC which if you recall, I cannot stand. I was burned by the DLC for Saints Row 2, it was too short and too expensive for me to fall for it again. I’ll enjoy what comes with my disc and call it a day this time. I was expecting more variety in the side-missions as well. Most of them are just taken directly from the previous games, not much in the way of new side quests at all. Satchel charges aren’t provided until way too late in the game.

Ugh... No thanks.

Comically big.

Weirdly, my favorite thing about the Xbox was the hard drive built in, undoubtedly the reason for the immense heft this console was packing.  The first thing I did when I unboxed the, er, Xbox was rip several of my CDs (Hah!  People used CDs in those days!  Uncanny!) to the hard drive so I could utilize the custom soundtrack feature that so few Microsoft games employed.  Even better, though, was the fact that I did not have to save my games to a memory card any more.  I don’t know why that mattered to me, but it did; I loved it.  Games also moved much faster through load screens with the storage device and the built-in processor.

Needless to say, since I purchased my Xbox in 2004 the needle on my barometer has slowly but surely been shifting to the Microsoft console empire.  Nintendo put out some excellent first-party titles for the Gamecube which still gives me happy memories of the console but they went on to slap me and other Big N fanatics in the face with a motion-controlled turd, the Wii.  Sony built the PS3 to a price point that no one could afford or wanted to pay for, plus many of their games weren’t worth the time and effort (Lair, I’m looking at you).  The Xbox 360 kept rolling with its big brother’s momentum and pushed way ahead of its other two rivals in the console wars.  Pound-for-pound, it is hard to defy Microsoft’s quality of excellence since late 2004 when I hopped on-board.

"At least we got the Xbox right."

So, in the spirit of this tenth anniversary of Microsoft consoles sitting in our homes, I will now list the ten best games/franchises/miscellaneous that the Big X has introduced to my attention span:

1. Halo franchise
2. Elder Scrolls III, IV, V (Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim)
3. Gears of War franchise
4. XBLA
5. Mass Effect franchise
6. Fallout 3
7. The Orange Box (Portal, HL2+, TF2)
8. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic franchise
9. Splinter Cell franchise
10. Dead Rising franchise

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

Still, things are afoot at GameDrunk HQ.  I finally got Skyrim in, no thanks to Amazon or UPS.  Pre-ordered through the world’s largest online retailer with the assurance that I would get release-date delivery, which was last Friday.  UPS had other plans, holding this meager-in-size package hostage in, of all places, Nashville.  And since UPS doesn’t deliver to common folk on the weekends, I went EVEN LONGER without my Elder Scrolls fix.  But alas, the game came in yesterday whereby my 360 promptly absorbed its disc.

First impressions:  terrific, of course.  I am incredibly impressed with the graphics and sound, all fully-utilizing the promise the 360 has always had.  The lighting effects really cause moments where you think, “wow, that looks real.”  It’s one thing to say something looks real but in a cartoony sense.  This game offers photo-realism, a quality I did not think possible with this current generation of consoles.

I didn’t get to play it as long as I wanted, but I did slay my first dragon (in the main storyline).  I also veered off and took a side-quest for a merchant who had one of his valuables stolen.  I must say the game seems easier than Oblivion did (I am on medium difficulty); leveling up is moving faster than expected and arrows are giving off a surprisingly-large amount of damage for so early in the game.  It seems more real, though.  Somebody gets shot with a fucking arrow, they feel it.  They don’t sit there and take 12 more in the throat before falling from the mortal coil.

It feels very much like Oblivion + Fallout 3 = Skyrim; and I can’t tell you how great this is.  Bethesda took my two favorite games of this generation and essentially combined them, CharDee MacDennis style.  I’ll certainly be more into the game tonight and hope to have enough hours logged to where I can give an appropriate review by the weekend.

Also on the horizon, Wes receives Saints Row: The Third today.  He’ll be briefing us all on its splendor.

Ugh…

This dubious strategy is being adopted by many and is showing no signs of slowing down.

All the most popular gaming brands are hopping on this bullshit gravy train.

What. The. Actual. Fuck? This is probably the worst trend going right now. I am sure there are those out there singing its praises since it saves them money on all the extra bullshit content they must buy to be the coolest kid on the block or kill their friends in awesome new ways, but I can’t stand this. Since when did video games have seasons? I don’t understand this at all. It would make sense if this business practice actually drove down the retail price of the original game that you purchased, but it doesn’t. I have no more words…

Meat Space Items Incorporated Into Games

Skylanders is goddamn ingenious and I hate them for it. The game comes with three action figures you (or your kids) can display on your nerd shelf (play with in the real world) and a nifty little device that you connect to your console of choice that allows you to warp/import/transport/whatever your action figure guy into the game and play as that character. Why this hasn’t been going on for years with many other gaming franchises I will never know. It’s an extremely clever way to get parents / suckers like me to shell out extra cash for DLC, except to get this DLC I have to drive to a store / order from amazon and wait for my toys to ship to me, but at least I have a physical item to show for it. I hope Nintendo does not adopt this model for Pokemon anytime soon or I will be screwed.

Slapped on “Movement” Functionality

My experience with movement-based games is pretty limited so far. I have pretty much given up on the Wii completely and only have a handful of Kinect games and haven’t built up the stupidity yet to drop hundreds of dollars on the PS3 Move system. One thing I think I am pretty sure of though is that you should either make a game that is dedicated to using “movement technology” or don’t. I can’t imagine the scenario in which I would want to be using my controller to play certain parts of a game, and then have to get up or flail my arms around to play other parts. I don’t want to talk to Master Chief, I don’t want to have movement-based levels dropped in-between regular controller-based levels. It will take a lot to make me believe these dichotomous control schemes should coexist. I’m not saying it is impossible, but it would have to be pretty damned awesome. Someone prove me wrong.

I played Child Pleeze this week, who was storming into town with Aaron Rodgers at QB and Calvin Johnson at WR.  These two gents did their job, combining for 30 of the team’s 54 points.  The problem, as you can imagine for Kerry’s team, is that he only scored 54 points, which wasn’t enough to take down my 63.

Because of the lackluster effort by Atlanta’s DEF thus far, I dropped them in favor of a San Francisco team that was showing promise.  San Fran took that promise and ran with it, hooking me up with 22 points.  For those keeping count, my defense score only 8 less than Kerry’s dynamic duo.  Adding to this marvel was Old Reliable, Drew Brees, who scored 18.  And though I gloat, my lineup was not terribly smart.  I kept Dwayne Bowe on the bench, knowing I should have started him, and he accumulated 17 points that I couldn’t use.  Also scoring on the bench (finally!) was Shonn Greene.  Fortunately Willis McGahee and Greg Olson both reached the end zone and cemented my win and escalation back into 1st.

Final Score: 63-54

Current YEF Ranking: 1st

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League: GameDrunk.com’s BSFFL v6.0

Seriously I have to believe that at least three of my starters physically died on Sunday.  All three started, but not so you’d really notice.  Joe Addai (who I had a real good feeling about) pulled a fucking hammy 5 minutes into the game; 3.5 points total.  And, learning from my mistake the week before leaving the Kyle Orton/Eric Decker combo on the bench, I started them looking for similar results, only to see a COMBINED total of 1.86 points.  Repeat: 1.86 points.  Orton went out in favor of Tim Tebow at the half–he only scored me 0.26 to that point.

Meanwhile, Derrick’s team had the fucking game of their lives.  Five players scored at least 19 points with Pierre Garcon exploding for 29.5 (20 more than projected) and Benjarvis Green-Ellis throttle-cocking me for 27.9 (17 more than projected).  The fact that I managed to score 120 overall is a fucking miracle, thanks to the Detroit Lions trio of Calvin Johnson, Javhid Best, and Brandon Pettigrew (who combined for 65 points; more than half my score overall).

Final Score: 120.38-178.50

Current BSFFL Ranking: 6th