I have cancelled my subscription to Gamespot of 4 years to protest the firing of Jeff Gerstmann over his panning of Kane and Lynch, due to advertiser pressure. I urge anyone who cherishes advertiser/content separation and journalistic integrity to do the same.

Portal. Bundled with the outrageously reasonably priced Orange Box from Valve, this game has gone wildly viral on all of the Internets, for good reason. Think of all the games that have been released this year, and then know that Portal is the most original of them all. It is fairly short, but it is a stunning game. Brilliant in execution, with a really great sense of humour that sees you through right to the spectacular ending.

In a word, this game has character. So go get it.

Best Buy is the worst. Super Mario Galaxy is the second game I've pre-ordered from them, where when the release date rolled around, suddenly the pre-ordered is back ordered.

How is this possible? I pre-ordered the game in July, and now it's out of stock? I'm just going out on a limb here, but isn't the purpose of a pre-order to order the game ahead of time so the company knows how many to purchase? How the hell can a pre-order be back ordered?

Twice bitten, once now never, ever ordering anything from Best Buy online again.

I'm having a lot of fun with Mario Party 8 for the Wii. There's a metric buttload of mini-games, the majority of which are very clever and a lot of fun to play. The boards are well-designed, with quite a lot of strategery involved and plenty of room for back-stabbing opponents. There are a lot of cool tradeable extras involved too, although the extra mini-games like bowling and moped racing have been a bit of snore so far.

It's best with human players, but I find the game plays surprisingly well in single-player, with the A.I. doing fairly well for itself.

A great addition to the Wii library!

Having got a taste of how golfing would work on the Wii with the woefully limited golf game that is included with Wii Sports, I was thirsting for more.

Well, Super Swing Golf certainly ups the ante, with a full-featured golf game that comes wrapped in a hilariously Japanesey komono. It had plenty of courses, use of a full range of clubs, lots of different shot types and a literal metric tonne of options, upgrades, equipment, ect ect ect.

The golf game mechanics are great, and I myself love the over-the-top anime style, although YMMV. But, prior to the upcoming release of the Tiger Woods PGA golf game for the Wii, this is the only game in town.

Trauma Center: Second Opinion was a wonderful pick-up when I got the Wii. There was Zelda and Rayman and all that available, but, like the console, I wanted something different.

TC is certainly that. It is a series of limited animation, anime style cut scenes with operations scattered throughout. The plotline is your typical anime ridiculousness, but still fun to watch as your protagonist, young Dr. Stiles, progresses through his career. And the operation sequences have a nice difficulty progression, allowing you to get command of the controls and the arsenal of surgical tools at your disposal.

It's a fun, different game that will have you slicing and diceing like a pro in no time.

It was a literal stroke of genius for Nintendo to include this game with the Wii. It's a total system-seller, and perfectly shows off just what's so different and new and great about the console.

It's truly amazing how well-defined the motion sensing is: for instance, in Tennis if you stand right and aim at the part of the court you want to hit the ball (large wide-screen TV helps here) and follow through, you'll be much more sucessful at putting the ball where you want it than if you just sit on the couch, making desultory flicks of your wrist. Longer strokes result in soft lobs, while strong down-cutting strokes put the ball down sharply on the court.

So far, everything has gone just right with the Wii. It's a sight for sore eyes.

Picked up my Wii early Sunday morning.  I was 230th out of 300 units available at the Best Buy near me.  In contrast to the chaotic madness of the PS3 launch, things went pretty smoothly until some BB blockhead herded us to the wrong entrance.  Then, at 8am when they opened, they told us we'd be going in the front entrance so of course we charged the doors and all semblence of numerical order went south.

Got it though, and I gotta say the Wii is a blast.  The controls are nicely responsive, and everything about the console seems cleverly designed, elegant, and a lot of fun.  It's worth the price for the bundled Wii Sports along, it's a hoot alone or, even better, four friends.

This is the first console I've been interested in purchasing for 25 years, and I'm Wiily loving it!

It's true that I was a computer gamer long before, but Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon, released in 1990, certainly helped cement my love for everything gaming can provide on that platform. This kind of description is bandied about a lot these days, but it was truly one of those games there you sit down at the computer after dinner, and litterally the next thing you know dawn is breaking through the window and you're practicing your sick voice to call in to work to beg off.

I've only had a couple of hours on Sid's remake of his classic, but I'm loving everything I see. Streamlined is a word PC gamers these days equate to "dumbing down", but Sid Meier has a great knack for weeding out the chaff of his previous classics, and keeping the fun up front. Railroads! is no exception, where the annoyances of track laying have been done away with, keeping focus more on the strategy of railroad building instead of tiresome minutae. There's been some negative feedback that the maps you play in have been reduced in size, but honestly:  back in 1990 I had lots of free time to build a railway empire across 2/3 of the US.  These days such marathon game sessions invite a rolling pin across the base of the skull.

The end result is a great update, much in the mold of his remake of Pirates!. Alll aboooooaa... no, I won't say it!

Microsoft's Flight Simulator X continues the series' long, august tradition of pushing the envolope of PC hardware. Even though I recently upgraded my rig to take on this bad boy, there still needs to be a lot of tweaking done to get things to a reasonable frame rate, expecially when flying low over heavily populated areas.

The good new is, as per usual the massive fan community for FS is busy riding to the rescue with a large number of undocumented lines in the .ini that make a huge difference. My advice is to fly over to the two big fan websites and peruse their forums, your FPS will love you.

http://www.avsim.com
http://www.flightsim.com

And fly the vidcard friendly skies.