With the news that the 3DS was being cut to a price of $169.99 early adapters, including myself, felt just a bit more than upset considering we purchased our Nintendo 3DS for anywhere between $200 or $250. However in a very classy taste, Nintendo decided to give 3DS early adopters 20 free (well technically not because we paid $80 more for our system...) games, 10 of these will be Nintendo Entertainment System classics like The Legend of Zelda, Ice Climbers, Donkey Kong JR, Balloon Fight, Super Mario Bros, and five yet to be announced games. The other 10 will be Game Boy Advance games that at this time Nintendo has no plans to release to the general public, these games include Yoshi's Island™: Super Mario Advance 3, Mario Kart™: Super Circuit, Metroid™ Fusion, WarioWare™, Inc.: Mega Microgame$ and Mario vs. Donkey Kong™. Now lets break this down, many people are saying that these 20 games are not worth $80 but lets think about this for a second, Excitebike retails for $5.99 plus tax on the e-Shop and the NES games will likely retail at the same price, especially if they are in 3D (which hopefully they will be) so that means just to buy all those NES games wold cost $59.99. Link's Awakening DX retailed at a similar price of $5.99 with Game Boy games retailing for around $3.99 So if they release at the Game Boy Color price of $5.99 then to purchase all the Game Boy Advance games and the NES games would cost $120 plus tax. If they released at $3.99 that means you would pay $100 plus tax for all those games, both of those costs are more than the extra $80 early adapters paid for their 3DS. In addition not only do we get these games for free, we get them early as well. Overall I think Nintendo is providing the goods and a great package for 3DS early adopters.

Price: The Coffin

Games: The First Couple of Nails

Image: The Final Nail

Conclusion

Move and Kinect will be unable to jump over the hurdles they face in order to be successful and do what Microsoft and Sony are trying to do, steal the Wii Market. At this point it is pointless for Sony and Microsoft to do what they are doing. They shouldn't be trying to imitate Nintendo because when they try to they just become a second rate Nintendo. Sony should be Sony and Microsoft should be Microsoft. The price alone should kill Move and Kinect but when you throw on the fact that the Wii already has so much of the market and name recognition that it will be impossible for Sony or Microsoft to even dent that, even if they may have better graphics, features, and value in their consoles. The best example I can think of is Apple and the iPod. Yeah the Zune might be a better overall product than the iPod but it was a laughable attempt on Microsoft's part to try and gain the iPod market. The fact that most people use the term iPod and MP3 player synonymously meant the Zune was doomed from the start. People are comfortable with the iPod and when they here the term MP3 player they think iPod or Apple and the same goes for the Wii. Motion Controls at this point is synonymous with Wii and people feel comfortable with the Wii, even people who have never played or care about video games have played or own a Wii and know how to use it and any attempt to try and steal the market from the Wii is bound to end in failure.

I'm so fed up with the glaring glitches and bugs that make you wonder how the game was even released with, and now how the patch was even released with. My game is still crashing to the Xbox 360 dashboard, this is the first console video game I've had that has done that, and I've been gaming sense the Nintendo 64 days. On top of all this the lag is rediculious. I haven't played a game this laggy sense Gears of War 2 and Bad Company 2 is using dedicated servers!  The game has been out for 3 1/2 months now, no excuses for the lag and no excuses for these bugs. I understand that every video game is going to have a few glitches and some lag but come on, when your game is continuing to crash to the dashboard in the middle of games that i just unexcusable.

I bought Battlefield: Bad Company 2 on its launch day and I am still playing it to this day. It's a fantastic game, but sadly it still has some glaring issues that are still present and even shipped with glaring issues that makes you wonder how the game shipped with them. Why is this? Granted what I'm about to say is nothing more than a hypothesis and speculation, but I think DICE hasn't been putting enough effort into patching Battlefield: Bad Company 2 because even at the time of the game's launch and more so now DICE is working to finish the multiplayer portion of Medal of Honor, working on the Vietnam and Onslaught expansions for Bad Company 2 and on top of that, they are working on the much awaited Battlefield 3.  
 
I was terribly disappointed after seeing the Medal of Honor multiplayer reveal, it looked too, and I mean too, much like Bad Company 2. Why did EA and DICE just not decide to make the multiplayer in Medal of Honor the multiplayer from Bad Company 2, like how Halo 3: ODST contained the multiplayer from Halo 3? The multiplayer would come with all the VIP Map Packs, Vietnam Expansion, Onslaught Mode, SPECAT kit upgrades, and any other downloadable content to release for Bad Company 2 besides the kit shortcuts.  This would put more people playing Bad Company 2 online instead of currently dividing the community between Medal of Honor and Bad Company 2, it would allow DICE to put more of its focus into fixing Bad Company 2 and releasing more content for the game, and it wouldn't make Medal of Honor's multiplayer feel like a waste. I will still purchase Medal of Honor for the single player experience if I see what I like but the multiplayer shown so far just seems like a waste, it gave me the strongest feeling of Deja Vu and asking myself  "Didn't DICE make this game already?....I think it was called Bad Company 2...."

Last night I downloaded the indie game GET TO THA CHOPPA!!1 from Xbox Live for 80 MSP or $1. This game is brilliantly fun, addictive, and stupid, but I'm giving you a Public Service Announcement about this title, don't download it. The game is riddled with bugs that make the game virtually unplayable, below is what I sent into Microsoft via their report abuse option for indie games on Xbox Live:
 
1) When launching the game, the option to play the game, check high scores, view credits, or quit does not appear making the game unplayable, and you will either have to quit to the dashboard which sometimes does not work, or restart your Xbox 360. The only way to fix this is to delete the game and the game cache' and re-download the game, then it maybe and I mean maybe will work then.

2) If what I said above does work, if you try to quit the game from the main menu, the game will freeze and you will have to restart your Xbox 360.

3) Sometimes the game will ask you to sign into Xbox Live, which always fails and then proceeds to freeze the game, which will require you to restart your Xbox 360 console.

4) Friend high scores and Global high scores does not display properly. 
 
The game is a blast when it is playable but as of now, it is not playable. So you have been warned, purchase this game at your own risk, it may or may not work for you.

Sunday night I'm playing my Xbox 360 which has been going strong for two and a half years after breaking on me twice, (I've owned the system sense 12/29/06) and all the suden my screen flickers and freezes and my Xbox makes a strange noise. I turn it off and turn it back on only to have the nice three red lights flashing at me. So now I can't play the Halo: Reach Beta or any of my other games. On top of that, I lost my Steam account password and could not retrieve it because I don't know my secret answer to my question. Now this wasn't too big a deal as I only had one game I purchased on there and that was Team Fortress 2 and the original Half-Life, Day of Defeat, and Counter-Strike. Now Team Fortress 2 I did not  enjoy too much and occasionally played Counter-Strike or Day of Defeat. But what I did enjoy was Insurgency, and now I was left without a Source game to play it or download the Black Mesa Mod when it releases, if it releases. So I had to make a new account, thankfully Portal is now free, and I purchased Day of Defeat: Source, which I am liking very much. So now I can play Portal, Day of Defeat: Source and most importantly Insurgency while I wait for my Xbox 360 to be repaired and shipped back to me.

What up, Giant Bomb!
 
I went to GameStop yesturday night with the twenty dollars I recieved for easter, and bought 1600 Microsoft Points to buy Perfect Dark from the Xbox Live Marketplace, and the two Resident Evil 5 Episodes (Lost in Nightmares and Desperate Escape). I haven't play Resident Evil 5 in a while,  I believe the last time I played it was over the summer. Now unlike most people, I thourghly loved Resident Evil 5, in fact, I enjoyed it much more than Resident Evil 4. Although that may be due to the fact that I played the PC version of Resident Evil 4 which was terrible. 
 
Now Resident Evil 5 was by no means a scary game, neither in my mind was Resident Evil 4 (quick note, I have not played an previous Resident Evil games) and I do not scare easily. Doom 3, F.E.A.R., Resident Evil 4, and Resident Evil 5 all failed to legitimately scare me, that is atleast until I played Lost in Nightmares. Now I have not finished Lost in Nightmares, I plan on doing that tonight, but from what I did play, it scared the shit out of me. The whole atmosphere was perfect, the mansion was old, run down, poorly lit, and was quiet. The haunting music, lightning, claustrophobic hallways, and the journals created a very tense and dark mood. You knew something was going to happen, but you don't know when, which creates tension.  I also much enjoyed the slow pace of the game, the fact that the entire first part of it is just a giant puzzle was brilliant and a nice change of pace from the main game's play style of just shooting everything that moved. I can say that this five dollar Episode managed to legitimately scare me, so please Capcom make future Resident Evil games play more like this Episode did, and add the ability to move and shoot (ala Dead Space) and I will be a happy man.
 
I also managed to finally finish Battlefield: Bad Company 2's Campaign yesturday as well. Technically there was nothing wrong with the campaign, the story was interesting and well told, the characters were there, the levels were well designed and the game was a blast to play. Like the first Bad Company, the campaign felt as cinematic as a movie. I did have some issues as a fan of Bad Company though, I felt DICE went a little too far on try to make the campaign serious, I wanted more "You smell very clean" and a pyromaniac redneck invading a neutral country screaming "THERES GOLD IN THEM THAR HILLS" moments. There were a few funny moments in the campaign but most of them you had to sit around to listen to, and they weren't a main part of the plot like they were for Bad Company. It is really odd however that the last part of the campaign feels truly Bad Company and you can really see the characters and laughs come to life, which makes it more of a shame that the rest of the game wasn't like that. I also think the swearing felt forced and overused in spots, I like the fact that DICE included swearing (well more of it) in the game, and swear when used right can make something absolutley halarious. A prime example of this would be in the first episode of Red vs Blue, where (I can't remember the people who were talking) were asking each other why they were in there, and one responds "If we pulled out today they would have two bases in a box desert caynon, whoopy-fucking-do." Adding in that "fucking" made the statement more hilarious than if he would have just said "whoopy-do". But every other word out of Bad Company's mouth was a swear and it just felt overused, forced, and out of character, especially for Sweetwater, who is a momma's boy, so he really wouldn't swear. I also noticed that towards the end of the campaign the characters swore less, and the game felt more funny.  The other part of the campaign that felt off was the linear levels. I enjoyed the first Bad Company so much because it played out like Halo: Combat Evovled and Halo 3 did, you fought in open pusedo-sandbox environments on foot, then jumped into a vechicle and traversed to the next checkpoint or level. It felt solid and fun, but DICE chose to make the game linear like Call of Duty, which I feel is a step in the wrong direction, but like I said, other than my nitpicks and comments as a fan of the Bad Company series, there was nothing technically wrong with Bad Company 2's campaign and while it may not sound like it from this post, I thought it was great, and a well made campaign. I think if DICE makes a Battlefield: Bad Company 3, they need to bring back the humour and silliness of the first Bad Company. 
 
"You're in Bad Company now bitches!"
 
-DarkGamerOO7