How quaint. 
 

• Ta-da - reviews: Ion Assault, Military Madness: Nectaris, Zombie Apocalypse, Dead Space: Extraction, Lucidity
• Bought some games at GameCrazy's going out of business sale - Gears of War, Rock Band, and Guitar Hero II. Supposedly stuff goes 50% off today, so I might make another trip out there. Doubt there will be much of anything left, but I like shopping regardless (which is considerably more odd now that I have become an even cheaper penny-pincher than I ever thought possible).
• Sister asked me to make a Christmas list so she could start shopping for me, and I came up with about... five ideas. Normally I'd ramble off pages and pages of things I want, but I've become far more particular nowadays. All but one of the items that I did name were old 360 games that I need to catch up on - stuff like GTA IV and Bioshock. Figured I'd mention this to ask you all what you think I should ask for... what 360 games, past or present, are so good that I simply can't (or rather, shouldn't) live without them for any longer?

So, I got a review code for Zombie Apocalypse, and while the single player is rather lacking, the multiplayer is a lot of fun. Figured I'd make a note here that if anyone else downloads it and wants to play (up to four players can go at once), let me know and we can kill some zombies together! 
 
Also, if anyone's interested, I have reviewed Mini Ninjas.

Or as Cartman would say:  Fuck, fuckity, fuck fuck fuck
 
No lame excuses as to why I haven't posted - I'll just come right out and admit that I don't have the drive for blogging that I used to (started back in 2005, so I guess it's understandable for an interest to die away over that long of a stretch *shrug*). It's not that I don't care about all of YOU, but I talk to most of you on Skype, MSN, Live, or Facebook anyhow (and if not, I apologize - let me know and I'll add you), so I talk to a lot of you on a semi-daily basis anyhow. But, while the mood has struck me, here's some bullets to catch us up. 
 

• Went to Gen Con - got some hands on time with Dante's Inferno (awesome), and Dragon Age (disappointing). Also got a peak at Champions Online (the only interesting thing here, at least in my non-MMO mindset, was the insanely complex character creation), and some lesser known games (Odd Society, for one - which... well.. sucked).
• Got a 120GB Zune for $100, as opposed to the regular price tag of $250. Bargains like that are always awesome. :-) Was definitely time to retire the <1GB version I had been relying on in the past.
• Got back from Gen Con,  then turned around and went to Myrtle Beach on a regular vacation. Was alright.... I'm not a sun-worshiper, so I got bored pretty easily when all my travel party wanted to do was lay on the beach, and I was stuck with a lack of nearby technology.
• Am trying to catch up on old 360 games, so I spent some GS trade-in credit on GRAW and Condemned. Figure I'll pick up games like the first Gears, Bioshock and Oblivion, and maybe Bully or Dead Rising the next time they have their "buy 2 get 1 free" sale, but for right now, these little $7.99 games will do just fine.
• I'm in the middle of Mini Ninjas on the PS3, which I'll be reviewing in the coming days, but other than that, it's been a bunch of shovelware coming my way. Site traffic at Gamer's Intuition is downright atrocious (that's a long, LONG - and annoying - story), so some companies aren't supporting us with review copies like they used to, adding to my overall "meh" feeling at the moment.

 
Didn't mean to turn this into a bitching blog... I'm not depressed, REALLY, I'm not, so please don't think this is some outcry for help. Guess it's just one of those days...

Thought I had found a rhythm with more frequent blog posts, but we can see how long that lasted. *shrug*

• Had a yard sale yesterday, with my sister and mom's stuff thrown in (ie: thing was MASSIVE). Made $157 selling mostly DVD's and games, along with the expected junk items that I just didn't need anymore. Was amazing that people were actually willing to buy old Xbox and PS2 sports games from like 2001 (granted, I had them marked at bargain prices of under a dollar, but still). I also sold some newer titles that I knew GS would screw me over on. Prey, for example, I sold for $5, after having paid around $7 for it to begin with. Also sold Sega Superstars Tennis for the Wii (the game had some REAL issues) for a profit - you might remember me purchasing it just a few weeks ago for three bucks and some change on clearance at Target - sold it for $5. While this extra $157 might seem like perfect splurge money for new games, an MP3 player or something, I'm probably going to put most of it in the bank, or spend a small chunk of it at Gen Con in three weeks. Yeah, yeah, I know I have 360 games to catch up on... Blame my frugality.
  
• My mom bought me the Guitar Hero World Tour band kit a couple of weeks ago. Long story short, she felt sorry for me for having to watch my sister's kids all summer, which I believe I've told you before. Found the band kit for $74.99 at Meijer, down from $189. Hell of a bargain, if you ask me. I suck at the drums, but I've heard that's not uncommon at the beginning. The guitar on Medium is a lot easier than in GHIII or Aerosmith, but the bass is SO easy that I've had to jump straight to Hard to find anything even resembling a challenge (and that's only present in certain songs). Not complaining though, as I really like the set list... except for Tool. Ugh.
• Got some new games - the trio of new Overlord titles (links are my reviews): Overlord II for the PS3, plus the Wii spin-off and Overlord: Minions on the DS. Also got Flower, Sun, and Rain for the DS, which was oddly intriguing, even if fairly long-winded, and downright ugly in appearance. Lastly, I received Little King's Story for the Wii a couple of days ago, and a code for Madballs in... Babo Invasion on the 360 a few days before that. Haven't tried the former yet, but the latter is pretty fun, and challenging.

Thanks for reading.

First, Happy 4th of July to all of my American buddies out there! Hope you all enjoy your cookouts, fireworks displays, and (more likely than not) booze! :-P Now, on to the bullets!

• Remember how I mentioned buying a 360 Guitar Hero bundle from Gamestop.com? Well, turns out their business practices are even more shady than I already thought/knew, as not only was the product I received not new (I specifically ordered a "new" product - was marked that way online, and described as being such), but the guitar was banged all to hell, covered in stickers, and the game case didn't even include the disc! So... a long battle with customer service on the phone led to them giving me a 10% off next purchase coupon and a refund slip to send the thing back, but I just took it down to my local brick-and-mortar and had them give me a disc, and exchange guitars. I still wasn't able to get a new guitar, but the manager gave me the best looking used guitar that I've ever seen, plus called someone apparently fairly high up the GS food chain and proceeded to tell them how idiotic the mistake was, to which he was told that corporate was aware of the mistake and are offering refunds to everyone who was affected - that being a lot of people. If you read the thread on CAG (that's Cheap Ass Gamer), you'll see a ton of people who were in my same situation, or who bought Rock Band 2 and received Rock Band 1 instruments and so on. So yeah, lesson learned - I'm never ordering from their website again, regardless of the price.
• Last blog I also expressed my love for Prototype, which I actually completed just a couple of days ago. I need just a handful of achievements to have them all (namely finding the collectibles scattered throughout NYC and getting a gold rating - and subsequently a platinum rating - on all side events). While the game still is fun, it's not as mind-blowing as I first made it out to be, as the novelty of slicing twenty people in half at a time wore off after the first few hours with the game. Like I said though, it's still a good game, that is, one that is definitely worth playing, but there's no need to punish yourself if you haven't picked it up yet.
• I'm still slowly making my way through Prince of Persia and WWE SvR 2009, but have been more than a bit sidetracked with 1vs100, since I bought a hard drive in the time since we last spoke. I picked up the 60gb Live bundle that also included three months of Live, a headset, and an Ethernet cable. Don't need the cable, but the price was right (regardless of how I may bash GS, I have no other option when it comes to trade-in credit, so... there ya go). I debated between that and the 120 GB option, but I don't plan on installing any disc-based games, so I think I'll be alright.
• Not much else to report on, really. If you all are interested, I have reviewed games like the Conduit (I wasn't that impressed), Prototype, and Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena (plus many more) in the past couple of weeks.

Thanks for reading!