Even though some more jaded gamers out there might think that this Christmas was a bit weak for new games, I am going to disagree and say that this is the first Christmas in a few years that I thought was really amazing for games. Over the next two weeks I get to sit down with Gears of War, Zelda: Twilight Princess, Wii Sports with the family, New Super Mario Bros.(picked that up a few weeks ago), Viva Pinata, and even some old Gamecube games. Truly, this is going to be a holiday break overflowing with gaming awesomeness. That doesn’t even include the addiction to World of Warcraft and the backlog of games that I still need to play through. However, the biggest surprise of my Christmas season has to be the backwards compatibility update that brings Soul Calibur 2 and Shenmue 2 to the 360. I didn’t expect those, so that’s even more bonus. Even though I haven’t seen any snow yet this year, it will definitely be a pre-Winter-een-mas to remember.

So, what games are all of you playing this Christmas? Anything good?

[tags]Wintereenmas,Winter-een-mas,Gears of War, Zelda, Twilight Princess, Wii Sports, Viva Pinata, Soul Calibur 2, Shenmue 2, Christmas[/tags]

Fishing games are a lot like fishing itself. Either they are a ton of fun and very gratifying or they are beyond terrible. There doesn’t seem to be much of a middle ground. My favorite fishing games ever are the Sega Bass Fishing and ocean fishing games. On the Dreamcast I had so many hours of fun playing Sega Bass Fishing that when I heard that there was going to be a fishing game launching with the Wii I was quite excited. Unfortunately, this was not a Sega fishing game, it was something quite less.

I grew up fishing and have spent many afternoons on the water, so I can say that I know fishing quite well. Using the Wiimote to control the fishing rod and reel should be quite natural, but Rapala Trophies just didn’t feel as natural as fishing in Zelda: Twilight Princess did. Everything feels delayed. It’s like the system has to think about whether or not I cast or not or if I jerked on the controller. It gets pretty frustrating. Also, the actual mechanic of winding in the fish doesn’t work well. You just hold down the A button to wind in, but if the fish fights a lot you have to jerk back on the pole to drag it in. When fishing in real life, that would probably snap the line or lose the fish, so that threw me off quite a bit.

Overall, there are a lot of little problems with Rapala Trophies that make it feel very rough around the edges. It seems like it was a bit rushed and a few months of testing and tweaking would have helped. Then again, with the netting system making no sense, there are some areas that don’t work at all and would never have been fixed. Sometimes games are like that, but I can’t recommend this game to anyone really.

This post might be a week late, but for people checking out the eBay auctions listed in each post, it’s pretty obvious that the PS3 just isn’t the hot commodity that it was a couple weeks ago. The party is over. No longer is the PS3 selling for $4,000 or even $2,000. The average auction seems to be going for around $800. That’s not much of a premium over the $600+tax price tag. Figuring in eBay’s take of the sale price, I’d estimate the profit per unit to be only $100. Sure, that’s better than a lot of eBay items, it’s not fantastic by any means and it really isn’t worth the extra effort people spend to get them. Sorry eBay sellers, but the PS3 is a bit of a dud.

A new law being drafted in Germany states that if you play, distribute or create a violent video game you can get jail time. This is according to GamePolitics.com (you can read the story here).

According to a report in Spiegel, a bloody school shooting in Germany last month has led to renewed calls for action against violent games.

As reported by GamePolitics,  an 18-year-old Counter-strike player assaulted his former middle school in November, wounding a reported 37 people before taking his own life.

The rampage led Minister of the Interior Gunther Beckstein to propose amendments to German law which would authorize prison sentences for those who create or distribute game content which features “cruel or otherwise inhumane acts of violence against humans or humanlike creatures.”

Penalties proposed by Beckstein include up to one year in jail and/or fines.

This is absolutely outrageous, although he is at least a little more logical than Jack Thompson. We are living in the 21st century and the average gamer age is pushing 30 years old, we aren’t kids anymore. Leave it to the Naz… err Germans to  restrict peoples freedoms. I can’t wait to see all of the gamer “camps” popping up hidden in the country side.

I’ve been spending the weekend digging deeper into Zelda Twilight Princess and the game continues to be stunningly good. Even in playing the game for hours at a time it doesn’t get boring. The story is enthralling and interesting. Thus far I’m enjoying it more than any Zelda game I’ve ever played.

The one area where I am still adjusting is the controls. They work beautifully and I feel that they are quite intuative, but there are some quirks worth mentioning. First, Link puts his sword away from time to time, which isn’t a big deal except that when you are going in and out of a fight and Link doesn’t have his sword out, I want to do his jump slash with the A button, but I need to use a gesture to get the sword out. When I hit the A button, I end up doing a roll instead. Not a big deal, but it’s a small gameplay quirk. The other gameplay quirk that doesn’t always work like I’d like it to is the circular slash. The numchuck isn’t quite as sensitive to the slash as I’d like, so sometimes it just doesn’t attack when it should. Not a huge deal overall, but a slight annoyance nonetheless.

Even with the slight control annoyances, I’m absolutely loving this game. I can’t really explain how awesome it is. While some people might think that Ocarina of Time is the greatest game ever, this game makes me really rethink that. Ocarana was a spectacular game, but Twilight Princess has some very strong storytelling and gameplay elements. It’s a lot of fun, so I’d have to say that so far Twilight Princess is at least on par with Ocarina and might be better. No matter what if you have a Wii I highly reccomend Zelda: Twilight Princess and if you don’t have a Wii, GO BUY ONE AND BUY THIS GAME!

[tags]Zelda, Wii, Twilight Princess, Zelda: Twilight Princess, Extended Play[/tags]

Last night I managed to nab a copy of Zelda for the Wii and I’m enjoying it so far. I’m like an hour into the game and I can see that it’s going to be a very long game. It feels like a Final Fantasy game mixed with a Zelda game really. The storytelling is slow and methodical and like most Zelda games, there isn’t a lot of direction, which is a good thing for the most part. Fishing is fun and the overall vibe is fun. I’m defiantly digging it so far.

[tags]Zelda, Legend of Zelda, Link, Legend of Zelda, Twilight Princess[/tags]

Yes you read that right. Anshe Chung, a second life player, has become the first virtual millionaire. Apparently by following real world rules and strategies for real estate she was able to amass not only a virtual fortune but also a real fortune as well. This completely blows the doors off the online world and in my opinion is ushering a new era of business and life, but ultimately is going to make digital life a mainstream concept.

In case you don’t know or have been living in a cave for some reason, the PS3 is the hot item this holiday season. I have an opinion on this and here it is: Let’s Get Ready To Rumble. it seems there are many, many, many reports of fights breaking out in lines across the country (ok, mainly New York and San Francisco because they have Sony Stores, who each have about 800 PS3’s I might add) The fighting seems to be stemming from the fact that when the lines grow to a certain size the security guards move the line and people try to cut in line. So then fights break out, as soon as I find a YouTube video of a PS3 fight I will post it here, until then good luck to all the PS3 warriors out there and Godspeed!

Oh, one more thing, the entire country of Taiwan is getting only 500 PS3’s, can you really call that a launch? Good Luck to them as well.

It has come to the attention of Linden Labs that someone has created a program for Second Life called Copy Bot which allows the user to copy any item in Second Life without paying for it. While this is great news for cheapskates (including yours truly) it is horrible news for the “economy” of second life. The Second Life economy is one of the greatest social experiments taking place online right now, it will be interesting to see how this turns out, if it will crash, thrive or if the person who invented this bot will acquire mass wealth. This all remains to be seen but nonetheless will be cool to watch.