Best Exclusive PS3 Game:  Uncharted 2: Among Thieves – I’m still working on the review for this game, but this has to be a standard by which all action games are judged in the future.  So far, it has been an excellent game.

Best Exclusive Xbox 360 Game:  Halo 3 ODST – Another game that I’m still working on the review for but it brings something desperately needed to the Halo universe.  Some resemblance of a storyline.

Best Exclusive Nintendo Wii Game:  Metroid Prime Triology – Three great games in one package plus adding Wii Motion to the first two games.  It doesn’t get any better than that.  Another game with a review incoming.

Best Exclusive PC Game:  World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King: Fall of the Lich King (Patch 3.3) – Expands the great game of World of Warcraft to finish out the story of Arthas, the Lich King and is a fitting hold over until Cataclysm.

Best Multiplatform Game:  Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – See review of this game, but this game has everything that made the first Modern Warfare great, then expands it to even greater heights.

Best Music Game:  The Beatles Rock Band – See review of this game, but it brings the music of the Beatles to the best music game on the market.  Also, you have to respect how the subject material was handled, which is something the Guitar Hero series is struggling with specific bands.  Guitar Hero 5, another game I’m working on a review for, came incredibly close to winning this.  The Beatles basically gave this game the upper hand.

Best Fighting Game:  Street Fighter 4 – A game that I need to go back and review, but it is everything you love about the Street Fighter series.  If you spent time around an arcade cabinet waiting for your turn for Street Fighter 2, you will love this game.

Best First Person Shooter: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – With an expanding multiplayer and a gripping story (something which is difficult in first person shooters), this game makes even non-first person shooter fans enjoy this genre.

Best Action/Plaformer Game:  Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - Sorry Mario, but this combination of story, shooting, puzzles, and platforming make this the best action/platformer of the year.

Best RPG:  World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King: Fall of the Lich King (Patch 3.3) – In a year where at least 4 major MMORPGs released and many other RPGs, this still stands head and shoulders above the competition.

Worst Game of the Year:  Family Feud 2010 Edition for the Nintendo Wii – The console for the worst game is not a suprise.  However, this game is so terrible there are not enough adjectives to describe its crappiness.

Game of the Year:  Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – This game deserves nothing less than the highest honor of the year.  It is the standard by which all first person shooters will be judged until the next Modern Warfare comes out.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village tells the story of Professor Layton, a Sherlock Holmesesqe character and his assistant Luke as they try to solve the mystery of the Golden Apple and the unusual town of St. Mystere.  The story is told through incredibly beautiful animated cutscenes, probably the best I have seen on the DS.  Even the gameplay graphics are incredibly stylized and look absolutely amazing.  The story is also a wonderful tale that takes multiple twist throughout the story.  The sound design is also incredible for this game and the voiceover work is suprisingly good for a DS title.

However, the reason everybody should pick up Professor Layton and the Curious Village is the puzzles.  This game has a huge collection of brain teasers.  None of the brain teasers are incredibly difficult, but all require some thought to be able to answer them.  For the most part, the DS is excellant in using the touch screen to be able to solve the puzzles although some of the puzzles are frustrating when exact movements are required. (e.g. moving matchsticks, putting a painting back together).  Also, some of the puzzles require you to input letters or numbers as answers by writing.  While this likely won’t be a problem for most gamers, I found myself erasing answers due to my sloppy handwriting.  Even with these few small criticisms of the game, this game is as an absolutely incredible puzzle solver.

You find these puzzles and play through the story in what is essentially a point and click adventure.  You usually either find the puzzle or hint coins.  However, this also means that you spend a good amount of game time clicking on screen trying to find that one thing you can interact with.  This is especially frustrating if you are trying to solve all the puzzles in the game, 120 in the story plus an additional 15 in the bonuses, since you will spend a good part of the time walking around and clicking trying to find the hidden puzzles unless you refer to a FAQ for the game.  I got to 116 in the story without a FAQ before I decided not to worry about the last 4 and just finish the game. 

Overall, I would highly recommend this game.  It is charming, fun, and challenging, a combination that you do not see a lot of in modern videogames.  I’m glad to see the sequel is already out and am looking forward to playing that one as well.

How was this possible?  Well, let me start with Gamestop.  I love it when Gamestop runs the buy 2 used games and get 1 free.  Now a little economic hint with this.  Yes, you could get two $10 games and get a third $10 game for free.  But when you look at it,  you paid $20 for three games or $6.67 per game.  You only saved $3 per game or $9 total.  However, let me show you my example for an example on how to handle the buy 2 get 1 free deal.  At the Gamestop this weekend, they had Uncharted 2: Among Thieves for $55 and they had Assassin’s Creed 2 for $55 and they had Brütal Legend for $55.  This would normally be a total of $165 normally.  However, I had my handy Edge card which took  10% of each game, reducing the price to $50 a piece.  Now include the buy 2 get 1 free discount and I got three games for $100 total which comes to $33.33 per game.  Considering these games would normally be bought new for $60 per game, it is a savings of almost $80 over normal price and still a saving of $65 over the normal used price.  Per game, it comes up to a saving of approximately $22 per game.  That is how you handle a deal.  They have this deal all throughout the year so I would recommend catching it the next time you see it.

My second Black Friday/Cyber Monday deal was via Amazon.  They had their lightening deals on Black Friday/Cyber Monday.  They had a half price off of Guitar Hero 5 for Xbox 360.  Even with next day shipping, it was over half the price off for a brand new game, which is an incredible deal.

There were also deals all over Steam this weekend.  I was not able to land on any those since I’m mainly a WoW player on my computer but some of the deals looked absolutely incredible.

So I hope everybody had a very successful weekend shopping for Black Friday/Cyber Monday and you got everything you wanted.

I have to start off this review by saying that I love my sister.  Anytime I can get her interested in playing a video game, I love it.  She said that she wanted to try the new Family Feud 2010 Edition for the Wii when we passed by a Gamestop. I thought what could be the harm in picking it up.  Was I expecting alot from this game? No.  My expectations were kind of low.  I was expecting to be able to at least use my Miis in game.  I was expecting a lot of different answer combinations and questions that made sense.  What I didn’t expect was both of our responses from playing this horrific game.

As expected, the graphics are nothing great.  It looks like it could be done on a Nintendo 64.   The classic Family Feud theme songs and sounds were present, but none of the actual host were present.  It was just a voiceover guy who recorded 5 lines of dialogue besides the specific questions.  And it was buggy as hell.  I had picked the number 1 question and the host asked me, “Survey says would you like to play or pass.”  What does the survey have to do with me deciding whether to play or pass?  The only use of the Wii Remote was buzzing in for the Face Off and that was just for moving the Wii Remote down.  But all of these crappy features were almost expected.  However, it is completely unacceptable  to not be able to use Mii’s as contestants in this game.    It is the Wii.  Have they forgotten that?  Obviously they did because the very first thing you do in the game is create an avatar.

As bad as everything up to this point was, I was kind of expecting that.  However, what was absolutely horrific that had both me and my sister, who doesn’t even review games, screaming and cursing at the screen was the idiotic questions.  Almost all of the questions were insane and stupid.  And the answers were even worse.   For example, one of the questions was, “What is the least private room in your house?”  with the top 4 answers on the board.  Now of course the first two were easy, which were living room and kitchen.  But for the last two to be bathroom and bedroom.  Really.  Who in the world did they interview that said the bathroom was one of their least private places?  Another was what do you view through a telescope.  Again, some common answers were on there like stars and planets, but your neighbors.  Who did they interview, convicted rapist and murderers?  They also put in a very short time for responses and make you type out your answers.  And while the in game dictionary is pretty good at looking at the question and determining what you are spelling, there are times where it is just terrible.  For example with the telescope question, I tried typing in constellation, which was not even in there.  The only thing dumber than the questions is the computer competition in the single player.  They even answered one of the responses I gave earlier when they were trying to steal the points for the question.

The most telling thing about this game is my sister thought it was terrible and she is a casual video game player.  And I’m a hardcore gamer who was not satisfied with the game either.  So since it has no viable audience, I can only determine that this game is an utter failure with somebody trying to make money off of a classic game show.  The only way they could have saved this game was to include a Richard Dawson kissing and groping mini-game, but we know they couldn’t include that in this terrible game.