I've had a lot of problems with Nintendo since the Wii came out. Both the 360 and the PS3 play HD games; they both have media capabilities; they both have easy to use online friend systems; the Wii does not. But, the thing that bothers me most about the Wii is Nintendo's incessant recycling of games and characters.

I know there are a lot of people out there who hate it when somebody says that it's time for a franchise or character to die, but Mario and Luigi have been around longer than most gamers. My problem with this is that, so far, the Wii's good games have been dominated by Mario, Zelda, and Metroid. This is cheating!

The games may be good, but think about the amount of concept time that is put into these games. I can't imagine that it's nearly as much as a new IP. Every time a new Mario game is released we know who the character's are and what they look like, not that they've been given any depth over the last twenty years. We know who the enemies are, not that they've been given any motive for two decades. We know what the levels will look like, not how they will be designed, but the color pallet, the backdrops of desert, hills, haunted castles, etc.

Nintendo games are repackaged with a new story (and I use that word loosely) and new levels and sold over and over again. Every time you play a Mario game, we know taht mushrooms and stars are good. Every time we play a Zelda game we know that we'll have a sword, boomerang, bow, and they'll be used to solve puzzles.

You can't suggest that Mario leave the mushroom kingdom behind and be thrust into an action game because that wouldn't be a "Mario" game, and that is exactly my point. The games have become one dimensional and predicatable. We couldn't take Zelda and make it a Mario style platformer.

What irks me the most is taht game critics continue to give these games good review scores. I can understand your average joe liking Mario because it's entertaining, but that doesn't make it good. I thought Transformers 2, with it's fighting robots and big explosions, was entertaining but that doesn't make it a good movie. It was filled with plot holes and bad jokes but had enough testosterone to keep my attention from wandering. As an average, run-of-the-mill idiot, I am enitled to being entertained by mindless robot violence and scantily clad robot women. MOVIE CRITICS CAN'T!!! And almost all of them slammed Transformers 2 for being ridiculous. WHY AREN'T GAME CRITICS SLAMMING NINENDO??? They must have figured out by now that Nintendo is reselling games.

When you become a professional critic of something you need to look out for the good of the thing that you are critiquing. You should be held to a higher standard than us normal entertainment junkies. Sure we'll think your stuck-up and that you've forgotten what video games are all about, but in the end, we'll respect you for safeguarding our video games; for being able to look at something that appears shiny and new and recognize that it's the same crap we've been feasting on for years, it's just been repackaged in gold pained tin foil!

I've been a proud Playstation 3 owner since December 06. It's a great system and does damn near anything I ask it to, including cutting my grass and doing my homework; but I am gettting damn tired of the so-called "console wars," if they can so be-called. Who the hell came up with the term "console war?" I have yet to see or hear of someone dying in this console war. You don't even have a choice about whether or not you want to participate, I bought a PS3 and got freakin drafted! What happened to the good old days when we could just talk about video games? Nowadays I can't converse with anyone about the great games that I've played on my PS3 without a crazed X-Box 360 fan telling me how much my system sucks. On the flip-side I've noticed that many of my fellow PS3 owners can be really smug when they talk about how forward and idiotic 360 owners can be. They like to act like they're above all the squabbling going on when all they're really doing is being pretentuous about their own smugness.

I $**t you not, I was talking to a fellow PS3 owner in the parking lot the other day about different games we were playing and somewhere in the parking lot, out of the corner of my eye, I see someone start running my way. I thought nothing of it, I figured he'd forgotten a book he needed for class, or he had diahrreah and really needed to take a crap. Anyways, he's running way too fast, not looking where he was going and he gets hit by blonde chic on her cell phone going 60 mph in a freakin parking lot. I ran over to him because the blonde chic assumed she hit a speed bumb and just went right on with her conversation, plowing through a fence and over the baseball fields on her way to the Oso Bay where she would finally realize that she'd taken a wrong turn somewhere and head back the way she'd come, probably hitting someone else in the process. Anyway, back to the guy who's losing blood because he bashed his head on the edge of the exhaust pipe of a nearby car (coincidentally, right next to one of those "no more deaths, end the war" bumper stickers). I held him in my arms while I called 911 and with his dying words he said, "The...PS3...sucks...." So I take back what I said about nobody dying in the console war. Which brings me to my main point. Why isn't the administration concerned about this? Why are we so focused on a war overseas when we've got a war right here on the homefront. Kids are dying and our elected officials are talking about the war in IRAQ!!! Focus people! The console war is upon us! The days of enjoying video games are over! When a friend of mine bought his PS3 he said the guy at Gamestop told him the only way out now, "was in a box." So, some of us didn't join the military because we disagreed with the reason we were at war in the first place; maybe you just aren't physically capable, or maybe you're a conscientious objector (coward), but you have no choice with the console wars. You pick a side and you pick it now! You're either 360 or PS3. Not the Wii though...the Wii sucks!

AgeOfJace