This is the sight I was just greeted to in my living room, and I’m not even slightly annoyed.  Why bother?  I think at some point I’ve just learned to accept this as an inevitability.  If you’ve read my rant from July 07 on the subject, you’ll know I’m now entering my sixth console.  SIXTH.  So fuck it.  I’m just glad it happened before the 3-year RROD warranty ran out, and I’m amazed this one served me well for two full years.  That has to be some kind of a record.

I’m with Dan about choosing PS3 over 360 nowadays. Hell, I blazed that trail nearly a year ago.  My PS3 is the primary in our household now, which probably explains why this 360 lasted 2 years.  Don’t get me wrong — when great 360 exclusives or great Live Arcade titles hit, or if I want to stream video from my Mac, I’m happy to fire up the big white box.  But since the damned thing seems to go on the Carousel every 6-18 months, it just seems like it’s forcing me to baby it.

And on a sidenote, tech support was as sharp as ever.  I still don’t have my repair order in because “we’re currently upgrading systems to better serve you,” so they couldn’t push through a repair.  Because I know that’s when I’d schedule my system upgrades — on a Monday morning at 10AM EST.  I spoke with two reps who both told me to call back this afternoon.  Though one of them had the audacity to ask me what games I play.  I should’ve told him that I play PS3 games so that I don’t have to keep calling his sorry ass.

Le sigh.

No word of this online yet, so I’m wondering if there’s just a bad box of Jedi floating around in my neck of the woods.  I’ve made no secret of my work in a retail/rental games outlet (keen listeners to the bitcast should know the franchise I pimp for).  Over the past few days we’ve had three returns of Force Unleashed PS3.  Three.  To put that into perspective, it’s almost October and these are the first game returns that we’ve had due to brand new defective product all year.  That sounds like a lot more than coincidence to me.

All three returns had the same complaints — the game would freeze, be buggy when it worked, or wouldn’t load all together.  Not knowning their set ups, I can’t help but wonder if maybe the game isn’t running right on older firmware or if there was a patch at launch to fix these issues.  If these customers keep their consoles offline, maybe that’s what’s going on.

On a side note I’m playing the 360 version as we speak.  My only problem?  I need a towel the size of Texas to clean up after my nerdgasm.

Anyone else out there having issues?

I love Metacritic. Like, love love. Most people will tell you that reviews don’t matter, but as you’ve probably figured out in your short time on this planet, most people are full of shit. Obviously you can disagree with a review, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. You can say anything you want to about how only sheep follow the status quo, but it sure doesn’t hurt to see another persons opinion before you drop $70 on a game that might be crap.

That’s why I love Metacritic. One person’s opinion may not reflect the majority, but a composite score (and a list of the reviews that caused it) can give you a good idea of what a game is about. I’ll read reviews at the high end of the scale. I’ll read reviews at the low end of the scale. It helps me to have an informed opinion before dropping coin on a new product. Metacritic lets me do that all in one place.

Unfortunately Metacritic also lets people share their own opinions on a game. The flaw? People are dishonest scumbags. Too Human has a 7.1 user rating on Metacritic based on 75 reviews. The game doesn’t ship until tomorrow. These people are liars. Hating on Too Human has become something of an internet past time as of late, and I’m beyond sick of it. If Metacritic expects me to value everything it has to offer, it should at least forbid user reviews until after the game has shipped. Is that really asking so much?

Over the weekend Owen Good of Kotaku fame posted up their weekly list of upcoming releases. In the notes preceding this list he sums up the weeks releases as he always does;

Looks like we’ve cycled over to a DLC week, headlined by Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty on PlayStation Network, with Galaga Legions coming out a day earlier (but far, far overshadowed) on XBLA. After R&C, it’s a very thin week. Interesting that a downloadable title is the heavy here.

Really? A DLC title being the heavy this week? And here I thought that Microsoft’s most anticipated exclusive since Halo 3 was dropping.

He then went on and discussed one other title — the shovelware Anubis for the Wii. As one of (what I assume is still) many looking forward to the release of Too Human, I couldn’t help but feel this was a real slap in the face. Kotaku reader okenny summed up my feelings better than I could myself;

Un-fucking_believable! “Interesting that a downloadable title is the heavy here” …beginning to think Dyack really did kill someones child in the game’s journalist scene or committed some unforgivable act of murder. To seriously have a game get dissed this bad and this much when it’s not even bad makes me think something else is going on here.

So what say you? Glaring oversight on the part of Weekend Editor Owen Good, or intentional diss?

UPDATE: Reader Mookie has let us know that Owen has updated his original post and offers a full mea culpa. Score one for Owen (and two for our attentive readership!)

Microsoft spit in our faces today and proved their words earlier this week to be complete and utter bullshit, announcing Braid would be hitting this Wednesday for 1200 points despite a press statement released earlier this week stating the complete opposite. I’m starting to ramble — let’s get everyone caught up.

Five days ago, word broke that the official Japanese Xbox site was listing upcoming Live arcade releases Braid and Castle Crashers at 1200 and 1800 points respectively. This created one hell of a backlash in the 360 community (our site included). In an effort to do some damage control, Microsoft spoke with ShackNews that same afternoon to inform them that the price on the Japanese site “are incorrect for both domestic and international markets.”

Now five days later Braid’s price is officially announced as…. you guessed it, 1200 points.

I’m ashamed of Microsoft for trying to bullshit their way through the bad press and stick us with their originally intended high price regardless, but I’m even more ashamed of their inability to justify it. At least tell us WHY your earlier statement was wrong.

We’re all ears Microsoft, balls in your court — but we’re not buying shit until you get your story straight.

We’ve been looking forward to Castle Crashers for a long time. Like - a long time. And now that it’s finally been priced? It can go fuck up a tree.

1800 points. The most expensive Live Arcade game ever.

‘Nuff said.

[via Xbox 360 Fanboy]

You’ll have to forgive me, but I always get a chuckle out of advertising misdirection. Civilization Revolution won’t be hitting store shelves until July 8th, but that’s not going to stop EB from offering you an amazingly misleading deal! Order now and receive free overnight shipping — the catch of course, is that the “overnight” in question will be the evening of July 8th rather than tonight.

For the most part people like you and I know that Civ R doesn’t come out for a month — but this ad isn’t meant for us. It’s meant for casual shoppers that are going to see the ad, grab the game, and wonder where in the hell their game is tomorrow morning. Deceptive advertising or over-reactive blogger? You decide.