It's 10/10/10. If you go to Popcap before 10 p.m. (I'm not sure which of the world's time zones that's going by, though) you can get Bejeweled 2, normally $20 USD, for free. By my time zone, that leaves 59 minutes...

Free is awesome.

I read that recently OnLive ditched its monthly service fee and now only charges when you actually purchase a game. So, I signed up for the site to see what it was about. It's pretty wild, playing games off of remote servers. I tried a few minutes of Batman: Arkham Asylum to compare it to my PS3 version. It looks just as nice. It was a touch laggy, but to be fair, I was playing via my mediocre wifi connection, which OnLive warned me was not quite fast enough.

Here's the thing that I find pretty awesome about this whole OnLive setup: You get to try 30-minute demos of all the games they have, for free, without even having to download them first! You're up and running demos almost right away, which speeds up the process of helping you decide which games are actually worth buying.

Has anyone else tried OnLive? Any thoughts? Even if you're not even dreaming of paying for OnLive games, you might want to try out a few free, ready-to-play, 30-minute demos.

Since my last post, I've got my Alienware M11x up and running. So far, I'm loving it.

The first test I put it up to was just a warm-up. I downloaded the Street Fighter IV benchmark to see how well it would handle. The Alienware didn't even flinch.

My previous computer just buckled under the SFIV benchmark. The demo would play out in ultraslow motion, even on reduced settings. My new system maintains a perfect 60fps with ease, running as smooth as, if not smoother than, my PS3, and seeming to draw on no more resources than if you were loading up Windows Notepad.

Its next test? Hopefully some StarCraft II in the not too distant future. Or Bioshock 2.

My Alienware also has some cool extra features. You can customize the LED lighting so that it changes colour depending on which program you're running. So, for instance, when I run a game off Steam, the LED keybord switches from cool blue to ready-for-action red. Awesome. As well, it can use biometrics to recognize my face as an alternative to a password login. Nice.

So, yes, I am enjoying my new computer so far.

It has arrived: My new Alienware M11x! Here is the unboxing video I alluded to in an earlier entry. It is my first Gamespot video. Note well the amateurish quality in filming and presentation.

And can you believe that I got videobombed, in an unboxing video, by my wife! :lol: Look closely and you'll see it.

(video has been removed)

Anyway. I hope you find the unboxing video interesting and please feel free to ask questions, leave comments, or correct any of the mistakes I probably made.

I'm sure I'll report on my impressions of the M11x's performance in a later blog entry.

I just ordered something awesome. Something big, but small. Probably my single biggest gaming investment to date, surpassing my PS3 and my Street Fighter Tournament Edition Fightstick combined.

It should arrive in a few days.

All I will say for now is that I will try to make my first unboxing video when I get it.

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And, no, it is not the Playstation Move.

I've grown tired of waiting for Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes HD, so yesterday, I got two Beat-Em-Ups off PSN to tide me over: Castle Crashers and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Time for some side-scrollin' brawling action. Fight!

Kotaku has confirmed that Famitsu has confirmed that Team Ico has confirmed that Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are being remastered for the PS3. Confirmed.

AWESOME! This is what PS3 remastering of PS2 games was made for!

Level up! Nice. I wasn't crazy about being a goombella. Being a paramecium is much better.

For the next two weeks, I'm leaving home (i.e. Canada) and heading back to Newcastle in the UK so that my wife can finish the last bit of her schooling. I'm looking forward to popping into Gamestation and Game and Grainger Games after all this time to see what's new. (You know you're a gamer when the places you're most looking forward to visiting in a city where you once lived are video game stores... I'm also looking forward to going back the The Baltic art gallery and Wagamama, my favourite restaurant ever!)

It has been two years since I moved back to Canada from Newcastle. It's only recently that I stopped saying 'a'reet' instead of 'all right'.

Oh, and tonight, I'm going to see Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Awesome.

I started reading a book by Ryan Van Cleave about his personal battle with video game addiction, Unplugged: My Journey into the Dark World of Video Game Addiction. I'm currently on the chapters where he describes his school years, but the story apparently culminates with his addiction to World of WarCraft, which nearly costs him his marriage and his life.

The book's foreword, written by Mark Griffiths, lists six criteria for identifying addictive activites:

1. Salience: The activity becomes the most important activity in your life and dominates your thinking, feeling, behavior.
2. Mood modification: The activity gives you a high or mellows you out.
3. Tolerance: You need increasing amounts of the activity over time.
4. Withdrawal symptoms: You experience unpleasant effects when the activity drops.
5. Conflict: The activity creates conflict with other people, other activities, work, life generally.
6. Relapse: You invariably revert to old, problematic patterns after periods of control.

Do any of you appear to fit all six criteria? Is there a possibility that you are addicted to video games?

It's nice to know that, according to these criteria, I am NOT addicted to video games, because there are times (like when I'm strategizing exactly how to get all the achievements in Plants vs. Zombies) when I do wonder… :) Although I do spend inordinate amounts of time thinking about games, and games affect my mood, and I kinda go into withdrawal when I don't play for a while, my tolerance for gaming hasn't increased over time, and games don't cause much conflict in my life. Also, I've never relapsed, but only because I've never tried to stop playing games in the first place.

The book's a good read so far. It's clear that the author has had many issues aside from overgaming (e.g. with drinking, sex, self-esteem). I'm looking forward to reading about how he ultimately manages to overcome his addiction.

Until then, to everyone out there on GameSpot: Happy gaming! I hope that we all continue to play video games because we want to, and never because we need to. Much love to you all.

I've tried a few demoes recently: DeathSpank, Mushroom Wars, Earthworm Jim HD, and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World for PS3, and R-Type Command, Patchwork Heroes, PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe, Jak and Daxter: The Final Frontier for PSP. The only one that really made any impression on me was Scott Pilgrim. Totally reminiscent of the awesome, AWESOME!, NES classic, River City Ransom, with some Double Dragon/Final Fight elements too. I definitely have to check out the Scott Pilgrim books. (Canadian Manga FTW!)

Two nights ago, after 30+ hours of play, I was about to get my final achievement on Plants vs. Zombies. But, when I started the game, Steam automatically updated to the Game of the Year edition, adding another handful of achievements to go with it! Awesome. Even more replay value to an already awesomely-replayable game.

I checked out the ultra-secret room in Batman: Arkham Asylum, hidden away in Quincy Sharpe's office. That was pretty sneaky of Rocksteady, and interesting to know that they had plans for the sequel all along. I wonder: if Arkham Asylum had sold poorly and no sequel was planned, would Rocksteady have continued to keep the ultra-secret room secret?

A few years after release, the one-of-the-best-games-of-all-time-ever-ever-EVER, Shadow of the Colossus, gets reviewed on Zero Punctuation.