Wow. I can honestly say that I didn't expect the Denver Broncos to make the playoffs this year and early on it didn't look good at 1 win and 4 losses. I figured another top 5 pick would be on its way. Say what you will about Tebowmania but the defense is what kept the games close enough for Tebow to lead the Broncos to 6 straight wins. That's not a knock on Tebow, in fact he got the job done when it counted and today will add to his legacy and the other teams in the AFC West had their chance but coulda woulda shoulda and they didn't get the job done. Had Pittsburgh been 100% healthy, I have no doubt they would have won today but shit happens and all that matters is that at the end of the day the Broncos are headed to Gillette stadium next week to face the Patriots and not the Steelers.

Next Sunday will likely be the end of the road for the Broncos but after last season, this season has to be viewed as an overwhelming success. Despite the odds I'll be cheering for the Broncos and next season looks a little brighter.

I recently finished playing WWE Legends of Wrestlemania, and while I can't say that it has vast replayability for me, it was both a blast from the past and a blast to play.

In my opinion, the 1980's were the best years of wrestling, from the rise of Hulkamania and the decline of Andre the Giant, to the outrageous outfits and the characters that wore them and the great tagteams, it was a time of heroes and villains, and I think that's what's missing nowadays. It seems that now it's more the douchebags vs the guys who beat up the douchebags. It's not so much that you cheer on the guys that beat up the douchebags as much as you're glad to see the douchebags get beat up, and it's not even that you really hate the douchebags, instead they're just annoying. Ask anyone watched in the 80's what they felt about Hulk Hogan getting squashed by Earthquake on the Brother Love show, and chances are there were a few emotions stirred. I think part of the reason wrestling has changed is because it became too fake to believe that the good guy comes out on top most of the time.

Now before anyone goes on about how wrestling is fake, well no shit Sherlock. A lot of stuff in life is fake yet enjoyable, like porn, video games, and 90% of shows on TV - things from Jerry Springer to soap operas. Most people want an escape from reality in one form or another and if it's entertaining all the better.

So here's one Macho Man (even though he's oddly missing from this game) Oh Yeah, one Ric Flair Whoo!, and one If You Smell What the Rock is Cooking for WWE Legends of Wrestlemania.

Now imagine me throwing a microphone down and walking away pumping my arms like the Bushwackers - Brother!!!!!!!

I loved Fallout 3, in fact I would say it is probably one of the best games I've played in a long time. Some of my attachment to the game comes from the fact that I loved the first Fallout game on the PC from years ago and probably wasted 200 hours of my life playing it obsessively for six months. I mention this because I spent over 180 hours on Fallout 3 and still left a lot of content unexplored and know that I could have easily spent at least another 100 hours on Fallout 3. I think the massive undertaking of making a game of this scope was why the game suffered from so many small glitches and bugs. That's really all the negativity I can come up with this game and that seems to be the case with a lot of Bethesda Studio games similar to what Skyrim is currently going through.

Aside from the polish this game needs, the story and cast of characters more that made up for the hiccups, which is what I expected from a Fallout game, and I give credit to Bethesda for reviving the Fallout universe after Black Isle closed its doors. The feel of the game, especially in first person, is incredible. Fallout 3 is a shining example of what I look for in an RPG game - great story, lots of loot, lots to explore and the freedom to play in the fashion you want i.e. goody two shoes or bane of all existence and anywhere in between.

Highly recommended.

Rise of the Argonauts is kind of like a shallow dating experience, at first you like how it looks and it seems interesting at first and you have some fun but as the end nears, all you can think is, "Can we just get this over with already?" and when it is finally over, the idea of never seeing it again doesn't really bother you.

The game's story is interesting enough having Jason go after the Golden Fleece to bring his wife back to life, and the quests he must do along the way to gain allies/party members adds to the game's length within the game's overarching story even if it doesn't really follow the story of Jason in Greek mythology other than Jason setting off to get the Golden Fleece.

The gamplay mechanics are where the let down came in. The dialogue is slow by which I mean that it is spoken slowly and I got to the point where I just mashed the button to get past it and didn't really care if I was missing anything related to the story, and I figure I probably saved 1-2 hours doing this. The combat aspects are not overly complicated but the three weapons - sword, mace, and spear didn't really differentiate themselves enough to make me care enough as to what weapon I was using except where I had to get so many kills with each weapon. The one aspect that was different was the spear throwing for a ranged attack, but it was slow moving allowing enemies to dodge and took awhile before you could throw another spear. The really annoying part was how the game had a glitchy feel to it on occasion when wandering around the world getting from point A to point B. I don't know if it was the software or more likely the hardware not able to handle it but either way it got annoying.

I managed to finish this game in about 15-18 hours, which isn't bad if you're looking to get a quick 1000 gamerscore points, although I did have to follow an online guide to avoid having to replay from a save file from earlier in the game if you missed something or do a second playthrough which would likely add another 10-15 hours. So unless you like inaccurate Greek mythology, or find it dirt cheap somewhere, or really want the extra 1000 gamerscore points, I wouldn't recommend Rise of the Argonauts.

- If a video game has DLC content available within 3 weeks of a game release, why wasn't it released with the game? Can you say money grab? 
 
- It's a sign you're getting older when you swear that the person that just cut you off in traffic looks 13. 
 
- If you haven't already read Patrick Rothfuss' first two books of his Kingkiller Chronicles trilogy, I highly recommend them if you enjoy fantasy books. 
 
- Looking forward to Gears of War 3, Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3 and Skyrim but I'm going to try to hold off till the December holiday sales. 
 
- NFL is back and NHL in October but my favorite teams, the Broncos and Oilers are in tough to win more games than they lose. 

   I recently saw an article from CNN talking about 10-20% of gamers play to the end of games and I can't say I'm surprised.  The question I have is, does it matter?  Once you buy the game, they have your money even if you never play the game and that's what counts to publishers - sales.  Obviously they want to make a good game in the sense that it can lead to add-on's and sequels, which line the pockets further while allowing the companies to use existing resources to milk a franchise for all it's worth and sure they want feedback and suggestions from gamers on how to improve, that's just good marketing, and relatively cheap to obtain in this day and age.   
   As for the consumers, whether you prefer multiplayer, or get stuck in a part of a game and can't get past it and move to another game, or just get tired of the game, the big question is did you get a fair amount of enjoyment out of the time spent playing the game.  I didn't complete any of the Rock Band games  or Half Life 2 but have enjoyed those games for dozens of hours. At the same time I recently  finished Star Wars Force Unleashed 2 and Bioshock and would say that I got as much enjoyment out of  the games I have yet to complete, whereas the games I have completed often involved frustration trying to get that one last achievement, although that leads to its own form of satisfaction when you do get it.    

   Having just played The Saboteur and being pleasantly surprised with the game I realized I few things about myself and gaming, and also retouched on other realizations that I've had before.  
   The first things is that I've come to believe that my expectations alter my perception of a game.  By that I mean there have been several titles in the past few years that I've rushed out to buy only to play a few hours and then put it aside.  It may be that in some situations I get a feeling of having to commit over 50 hours to a game and become disinterested in doing so. In some cases the expectations on a game I've only spent $10-$20 dollars the expectations are less because I'll be out less money if I don't enjoy the game.  In other cases my expectations get built to a point that I think subconsciously I think that I'm going to be let down and don't follow through despite any number of people telling me what a great game it is like Fallout 3, Red Dead Redemption and Bioshock 1&2, which might also do with my tendency to want to collect things in a game to the point of excess, the " I Want It All" syndrome as I now call it.
   Having to collect everything has negatively impacted my experience with a number of games. I have started games over to get items i have missed, and I routinely rely on online guides to make sure I don't miss collectibles, and further so in games where achievements are tied to collectibles.  I don't honestly enjoy my compulsion, but it is just that, a compulsion. It bothers me when I don't get all the collectibles, at least the ones that tie into achievements.  Which brings me to how achievements and trophies have changed how I play. 
   I have been playing video/computer games since my father brought home a Commodore 128 (with a whopping 128KB of memory) and since that time have played countless hours of games and it has only been since the introduction of achievements that I now play games with a goal of getting achievements more so than enjoying the game solely for itself.  The only time I used to go to the internet for a game was when I got stuck and needed help on how to advance in a game, now I go to game websites for almost all games I play to see how hard it is to get achievements. 
   I do admit that achievements have prolonged gameplay in a positive way to see different outcomes of situations or use different types of characters and in doing so varies the gameplay to get more out of a game.  I mentioned The Saboteur at the start and part of what I didn't appreciate was achievements at the end that I spent time solely to get those achievements specifically the Casanova and Chain Smoker achievements. These involved kissing women to escape alarms, and stopping long enough to have the character smoking a cigarette respectively.  The women to kiss did not appear all that often in the game and appeared to be in specific locations which did not always happen to be where you needed to make your escape, and as for stopping, too often I was constantly moving to my next objective, thus making it feel less a part of the game and more of a separate entity.
   Finally, I was reading on Giantbomb the other day and someone mentioned that he or she was concerned with becoming more of a collector than a gamer.  I have long come to the conclusion that I am a collector more so than a gamer.  Too often I will go to bargain bins and look for value games fully knowing that I will likely never play at least a quarter to half of the games I buy.  Why I do this, I'm not entirely sure but it has made me realize that for a number of titles like Force Unleashed II , Fable III and Fallout New Vegas amongst other titles, there really is no point in buying these games until either a game of the year edition is released or until the game drops close to $20.  If I'm going to waste my money, I should at least waste less of it, especially when those games are sitting on a shelf as a constant reminder.

   I recently finished playing The Saboteur and a few things sprung to mind. The first was that the game felt like a combination of  Grand Theft Auto for the sandbox and stealing cars aspect, Assassin's Creed for the climbing buildings and scenic views that start a panoramic view of the surroundings and all of this set in WWII France, call it Grand Theft War Creed.  The second is that for a sandbox game the collection aspect of the freeplay missions wasn't as tedious as I thought it would be.  For all the markers on the map which saves the game from the "Where the hell is the last collectible?" feeling and the number of buildings to climb, which was made easier for the wires you could slide to the next set of buildings, the game felt to me as more of a progression and less repetitive although I'm sure that a good number of players would feel that way.  
   The story of the game was an interesting way of progressing the game with a revenge vibe and questions of loyalties and like a typical sandbox game was broken into missions so as to allow the player to choose as to when to progress the main storyline or simply to explore and build up contraband, the game's currency.  The gameplay itself had enough aspects to it to give the game its own vibe, ways to get disguises, ways to escape enemy attention, and the perks system to make things easier. 
   Had I payed full price when it first came out I may not have felt the same way as I don't see myself going back and replaying this game, but for the $20 I did buy it, I definitely got my money's worth.

   I'm not a History major and normally I wouldn't bother looking for the real story that the game is based upon, but in this instance Visceral Games and by extent EA Games took a real life part of history and mocked it up into an action game with lots of nudity lots of violence and a good distortion of the facts.  I realize that the following the story to the letter would make a boring video game, but was it necessary to make a 13th century Italian poet a 12th century crusader who was under the command of Richard the Lionheart (the English King at the time) when to my knowledge it was the French, Germans, and English who sent armies to the Holy Land on the Second Crusade.  Not to mention that in the poem Dante was not a warrior and had to be rescued at times. As for the visual depiction of characters and especially the church's bishop turning into demonic forms, I'm inclined to believe that that particular decision had more to do with stirring up controversy for attention than anything else, but that's just my opinion. 
  The gameplay which many have alluded to has a very strong God of War knockoff vibe to it which I have no particular problem with but it sounds like a lack of originality and creativity was the parent of this game and its overlying story, and the fact that the ending implies that there is a possibility of a sequel just leaves me with a feeling of trying to make money and not provide gamers with a feeling of value. As for the DLC which would extend the gameplay, I can't see myself buying it unless it gets severely discounted. considering I would have to spend almost the same amount on the DLC as I did on the game itself.

   After recently completing Lara Croft Guardian of Light, a friend of mine (Hey Mike - you'll likely be the only one to read this outside a possible moderator to ensure propriety) commented on the value of the game to which I readily agreed, although since Microsoft generally does a deal of the week for the popular titles, I generally will wait for the deal which just indicates I like a deal not that the value is affected by my not purchasing it right away .   
   My problem and hence the topic is that such games as this provide almost as much entertainment if not more in some cases than a great deal of retail titles, yet are limited in achievement points associated with these titles. My proposal is that arcade games should be given a sliding scale of achievement points (I know that such a non-conformist idea would probably never fly with Microsoft) based on the price of the game.  I am aware that Microsoft allows game developers to assign the cost of the game to buyers within a Microsoft Points framework, yet with a great deal of websites that rate games any game that is overpriced will be exposed and the price would have to be dropped to get an appropriate number of buyers.  
   Games such as Shadow Complex, Lara Croft Guardian of Light, the Deathspank games and others surely deserve more than 200 gamerscore points.