I've been a Gamefly subscriber for 18 months now. I started at the suggestion of Jeff and the boys on the ... ahem ... old podcast. I only do the 1 game at a time plan as I just don't have the free time to blast through 2 games at once.

Generally speaking, I love the service, but lately their availability ratings have gotten more and more fictional. For instance, after my last return, they had to drop all the way down to #17 on my queue to get a game they could deliver. In 1-16 were plenty of games marked "High" and "Medium", they weren't just all "Low" and "Very Low"s. I don't think I've ever ONCE had a game delivered to me that had been marked as "Medium" or lower. Supposedly Medium means I've got a 50-50 shot. In 18 mo., shouldn't I have won that coin flip at least once?

So I emailed Gamefly to complain, and in their response, I learned an interesting tidbit of info about their service that I thought is worth sharing:
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The availability status on the Web site reflects inventory across all shipping centers. Therefore, although your top ranked game may have reflected high availability on your GameQ, it may have only been available in the shipping center that is more distant from your residence.

We ship games to you from a facility that can best serve you. If we are unable to ship any games from your primary shipping center, we may ship from an alternate one. When this occurs, the shipped email will identify the center your game was shipped from. We pay close attention to the inventory levels across the shipping centers and re-order key titles regularly to minimize the number of unavailable games.

We do realize that it can be disappointing to not receive your top choice. We appreciate your feedback and apologize for any inconvenience. If we can be of further assistance, please let us know.
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Sigh. What's the real point of the availability ratings then? If my shipments always come from Pittsburgh, can't they just show me the Pittsburgh availability and stop getting my hopes up?

So I bought into the hype and bought Braid for 360. I really want to like this game. I'm not done with it yet, so the jury is still out, but I've only got a few puzzle pieces to go.

It's good ... but not great. Certainly not as earth-shattering as some of the critics make it out to be. Most of the puzzles are pretty straightforward as long as you don't over think them. The hardest thing to do is not get too used to your "special powers" since they only last for one world each. I get to the next world and for at least the first few screens I want to do the same thing I had been doing. Most of the powers are cool, but the ring one seemed like a reach.

After buying the game and playing it for one night, I went and read Blow's blog about the development. I hadn't read it at all before then. I was really put off by the pretentiousness of it all. And ever since, I look at the whole thing with a much more cynical eye. If it had just been a great puzzler with a cool story, I think I could have loved it. But because it wants to be the freaking Romeo and Juliet of Video Games, it just gets ingratiating after a while.