This is going to be a long one...it was a busy weekend. Where to begin?

I completed Grand Theft Auto IV 100% Sunday afternoon. It is an epic game that totally lived up to its hype. After I got done with that, I jumped online for some multiplayer, trying to gauge how hard it would be to get the "20 pistol kills" achievement. I played one ten-minute deathmatch and got 13 kills, finishing in third place. If I find myself in a longer match, it shouldn't be too hard to pick up. Incidentally, the first person I killed gave me the "Let Sleeping Rockstars Lie" achievement, confirming what I had already suspected: that the achievement is indeed viral. At any rate, I'm burning through the single player game one more time to get the "30 hours" achievement and will be spending more and more time on the multiplayer aspect of it. A review will be up soon.

Once I finished with that, I decided to play some Madden NFL '06. I used to be a Madden fanatic back in the day, but got out of the habit once I started getting into different game genres. At any rate, since I decided I must obtain and play all the launch titles for the 360, I've gotten back into Madden on a small scale. I've found that it's kind of like riding a bike...you never forget how to play. I'm playing through a season for the hell of it and have yet to give up a point in six games.

I soon got bored with that and popped in NBA 2K6 (another one of those launch games). Here's where things got a bit odd. I had never played a 2K Sports game period, so I gimped the settings until I could get used to the controls. I played about a quarter and a half and then got interrupted and had to stop. When I quit the game, four of the five achievements unlocked...needless to say, I was a bit surprised. Not only had I not actually finished the game, but I hadn't even qualified for them. The only thing I can gather is that maybe they're prorated...or just glitchy. I did go back and pick up a legit triple-double to get the last achievement. The final verdict? Half an hour of playtime, five achievements, 1,000 gamerscore points. What a waste of five bucks.

After that disappointment, I popped in Viva Pinata, which had been what I was playing before GTA IV's release and subsequent hostile takeover of my gaming time. When I stopped, I had 49 of 50 achievements for 980 points. Ten minutes after starting again, I had the last achievement. I'm going to continue until I've maxed out all the pinatas in the game (I just got the chippopotamus, the last one I hadn't seen yet, to appear), but I'm more or less finished with it.

On to the other part of my weekend. A new GameStop recently opened up in my town. I was pretty excited about that because, although GameStop has a hit-or-miss reputation, it gives me a choice within fifty miles besides Wal-Mart. After three trips, it would unfortunately appear that this store is going to be one of the bad ones...for several reasons.

The first trip I made out there was relatively uneventful, although I did happen to overhear one of the worker bees do everything she could think of to get someone to subscribe to Game Informer and get an Edge Card. It was mildly annoying, but her utter lack of success amused me. One of the things that annoys me about any GameStop is their pushiness when it comes to things like the Edge Card and preorders. I understand that word comes from the corporate office to do so, but it honestly turns some people off. But that's not the big problem here.

I'm not too sure about the hiring policies of GameStop or whether they differ from region to region, but my two most recent forays to the new store have given me the impression that neither gaming knowledge nor customer service ability are part of the criteria. For example...

The second time I stopped in, a guy that I could only assume was a manager made me and several others stand in line while one guy tried to ring us all up. Now, there are at least two registers there, so he was just being lazy. I honestly wouldn't have noticed had he not actually announced that he did not feel like dealing with it.

I walked in there the other day to poke around and overheard the trendily-mopped sales associates expound some of the following nuggets of wisdom:

-Whenever a big name sequel nears release (such as the upcoming Metal Gear Solid 4), the previous editions of the series go up in price. Whether this is true or not, I don't know. But if it is, it's a dumb policy and probably not something an employee should be announcing to the general public. I've worked in retail before and there are certain things you don't tell the unsuspecting customer...this seems to be one of them.

-Another guy was trying so hard to sell Rock Band to someone that he said, and I quote, "It has bass now, so it comes with two guitars." and "Rock Band and Guitar Hero III are made by the same company." It was all I could do not to jump in. Luckily, the customer read the box, noticed that there was only one guitar included, and called the doofus on it. After hemming and hawing a bit and eventually conceding that he was wrong, he then tried to claim that he'd played it (which would seem to be another lie because I would think that if you had in fact played Rock Band, you would know that it only had one guitar and a second one would have to be purchased separately).

At this point, I'd had all the stupidity I could reasonably stand and walked out without purchasing anything. I would love to see this store succeed. My town literally has nothing other than a Wal-Mart and a couple pawn shops for game shopping. But unfortunately, it would appear that you don't have to know a damn thing about video games in order to work there, but you DO have to look like a lost member of The Strokes. I know a ton of kids who are eminently more qualified to work there and would do a great job. But of the ones I know that applied, ONE got an interview and he said they seemed pretty bored by the whole thing.

I understand that they're trying to make sales (and in some cases, their jobs may depend upon it), but they're going to sell more by knowing about what they're trying to get you to buy instead of feeding you any line they think you want to hear. I'm afraid that this store is going to be run into the ground by mass stupidity before it really has a chance to take off.