Ludicrum

Give a game tacked-on multi-player and people say the devs were lazy and trying to make a quick buck. Leave multi-player out in favor of polishing and perfecting the single-player game and people say the same thing. You just can't win, can you?

Me personally? I'm glad multi-player is out. Too many devs waste time and money tacking on multi-player to pander to the potty-mouthed kids on Xbox Live, time and money better spent making sure that the core gameplay is actually good.

The industry could do with less devs diverting their attention to vanilla multi-player modes their games don't need.

If behavior on internet gaming sites/forums is any indication than three more accurate words would be:

Complain, Bicker, Cuss.

Give a person nothing and he will complain. Give a person something and he will complain even louder.

I just installed TVersity and, after about an hour of fiddling, got it working. Before now I had used Orb and an earlier version of TVersity to stream vids to my 360, but uninstalled those programs because it didn't have the functionality I wanted (no fast forward or rewind, for example). The fall update was all the coaxing I needed to give these programs another shot.

Oh how far TVersity has come! Orb has not yet updated for the fall update (at least since last I checked) and is still slow. TVersity, on the other hand, has changed the way I view videos. Even when transcoding a video not compatible with the 360 it is fast and efficient, and my 360 can now play most of the TV shows and movies in on my hard drive without transcoding. I'm using this from now on to watch my vids on my HDTV instead of my (relatively) small monitor.

It's a little sad that tomorrow I'll be returning my 360 to Microsoft for repair (disc drive is not reading my game discs much of the time, even the brand new ones), but at least I have this to look forward to. Here's hoping that they send me a newer 360 with an HDMI port. :)

I got my Wii in January, after an extremely disappointing Christmas.

The one thing I wanted for Christmas was a Wii, and, low and behold, there was a Wii under the Christmas tree ... for my Nintendo hating brother. He didn't want it, didn't like it, never used it. He kept it in a closet, took awful care of it (parts were missing, it was stained and dirty, and a bit banged up), and would eventually trade it away for a PS2.

I, on the other hand, called around, scoured the internet for any news, and eventually learned that my local EB Games would have the Wii in stock that Monday. I waited in the freezing cold several hours before opening time. People in line were sitting in their cars for warmth, one of them brought a lawn chair. I stood there, dressed in 3 layers and still shivering.

But when the doors opened I was the first to step through, the first to claim a Wii. I even took advantage of a $50 discount deal by trading in my old gamecube. I also bought Twilight Princess, Trauma Center, a Wii Classic Controller, and a new Gamecube controller to replace the one I traded in.

Afterwards I'd read the stories of others, the trials and tribulations of those seeking a Wii, their victories and failures, and smile to myself knowingly.

You're welcome. :)

If you enter the code BW002 at checkout you will receive a $30 discount off the statue. It was originally posted on the Mass Effect forum by a highdome rep as a way of rewarding those fans who closely follow the game.

http://www.highdome.com/exchange/masscard.jpg