Last weekend I decided I should re-sign up with Gamefly. I had an account a couple years ago but I cancelled it cause I couldn't really afford it at the time and I was sick of waiting a week for games to arrive, since their only DC is in California (and its still the only one unfortunately). I went into a computer store that Sunday just to look around and I checked out their games section. There were a whole bunch of games I wanted to play, or at least try out, and I knew I would never be able to unless I went ahead and purchased the game or rented the game somehow. I decided to go the more affordable route and sign up with Gamefly again instead of risking the loss of money over a game that turns out to be garbage.

Now that I have a 360 I can rent a whole bunch of crappy games and play them just for points :), if I really wanted to that is. My first two games were Need for Speed Carbon and TMNT, both for the 360. I played NFS for 15 minutes or so and I decided I should just buy the game instead of using a Gamefly rental on it. I didn't really want to get into another racing game when I'm already knee deep in Forza 2. I have no idea why I even put NFS on my queue. I guess I needed validation that the game was good enough to purchase, and it is.

So then I put in TMNT, and man that game is a lot better then I thought it would be. The platforming sequences in the game are absolutely fantastic. The turtles feel like actual ninjas when they're running, swinging, climbing, and jumping all over the rooftops. The coolest thing about it is that the turtles are really fast. They are as fast as you'd think a ninja would be, yet they are graceful as well. I do not like platformers at all, and I don't play them but I enjoyed the platforming in TMNT quite a bit. The combat, on the other hand, is really bad. Basically you do the same 5 hit combo with just one button, over and over and over and over. The combat is very boring, the enemies are cheap and I found myself loathing the beginning of every fight and hoping to get back to the platforming right away. Sure there are some interesting co-op attacks you can do with the turtles but those take too long to pull off. You have to hold the x button down for a few seconds and then release it for the attack to work but by the time it's powered up you most likely will get hit by an enemy. The one cool thing about combat is the "rage" mode. Once you've defeated enough enemies and filled up a meter you unleash very powerful attacks that kill enemies in one hit and the game slows down to "bullet time." It's kinda neat and makes quick work of your enemies.

Even with the crappy combat system the game might be worth a purchase if it were longer. I finished the game, and got all 1,000 achievement points in about 5 hours tops. The game is extremely easy and way too short to warrant paying money for it. I had no desire to continue playing the game to unlock the bonus content after I got the achievements. That said, be sure to rent this game for easy points and an afternoon's worth of fun.

I got some more points in Forza 2 over the weekend as well. I got to level 50, finished a couple of race series, and got some achievements for purchasing all the cars in the UK, Spain and Sweden. I'm very close to the end of career mode now. I have about 5 endurance races to complete and 1 race in the professional series to complete. That is about 5 hours of gameply. With any luck I should be done with it by this weekend! I could go into arcade mode and get some points there but I have no desire to at this time.

In other news, I got my Japanese PS2 with SRWa3 and Simple 2000 series #101 on Saturday! Look for some pictures and video footage soon.

Here's the Top 5 of my Gamefly Queue:

Transformers - 360
Darkness - 360
Earth Defense Force - 360
Bullet Witch - 360
Spider-Man 3 - 360