ArugulaZ

So the deal of the week is a Cleveland Steamer. That's a big pass! I'm plenty happy with my free copy of Sleeping Dogs, which is a billion times better than Grand Theft Auto anyway.

How's this for a deal? I walked into a pawn shop about a week ago and found a couple of Wii Us (both 32GB systems) behind the glass. The original price for the systems was $210... that didn't work for me, so I asked them for the absolute least amount of money they'd take. They told me I could have one for $150, and even threw in a few extra controllers to sweeten the deal. No way I could resist that!

I realize the machine is not very popular and probably won't be supported by Nintendo for more than a couple of years. Hell, there are already rumors of a new Nintendo system in development now. However, I wanted a cheap way into the next generation and I got it. Besides, the Wii U's got some pretty cool features that I doubt we'll ever see on the Xbox One or PS4. It's got some great social features, like being able to leave notes and even simple drawings for other players. (Except those drawings can be shockingly detailed considering the drawing tool's limitations... I swear, some of these artists are cyborgs!) Also, I appreciate that the system's got Mass Effect 3, the sequel to one of my all-time favorites from the previous generation. It probably isn't quite as good as the Xbox 360 version, but it's still pretty awesome, being Mass Effect and all.

Oh yeah, I also picked up loose copies of Sonic 2 and, uh, while I was at the pawn shop. Each cost me about a buck. Normally I wouldn't buy such common Genesis games without the boxes, but Genesis games have gotten really hard to find lately. I bought because I have a sick sense of humor. (The recent dialog hack of the Super NES game called "Schmuck Fu" was my doing.)

plus they still need work on creating good control schemes that work.

Grand Theft Auto is dreck. I just wish people would realize that when the games are first released, rather than coming to that conclusion a year later, after they've sold millions of copies. Stop buying them, and the nightmare ends.

Honestly, people. The actual missions are lame, the humor has gotten progressively mean-spirited and pan-to-the-face obvious, the controls are clumsy, and the latest games are full of pointless distractions when the developers should be fixing the very real problems at the core of the franchise. I'm ambivalent about sandbox games in general, but there are so many better ones than this.

Damn. I just bought a Wii U, and although I'm pretty cash-strapped at the moment, I can't resist the price on this one. I love this series and was hoping to pick up a copy of the third one at some point. Now's as good a time as any, I suppose!

I'm sure this has already been pointed out, but I find it amusing that the acronym for Duke Nukem Forever is DNF, which means "Did not finish" in racing circles. That could either apply to the developers or the hapless gamers who bought it.

Okay, I broke down and bought Far Cry: Blood Dragon. It was the price of a Whopper, man! How could I resist? First-person shooters aren't my favorite games, but I can squeeze some entertainment out of them if they're well designed and I'm persistent. Halo 3 was fun enough in the normal difficulty setting (but I could have done without that Warthog segment at the end! Geez!).

I'm hoping like crazy that the next sale, or at least an upcoming one, will offer DLC for Street Fighter X Tekken at a reduced price. I'm one of those suckers who would pay for on-disc content, albeit grudgingly, but I will NOT pay as much for that content as I did the game. Come on, twenty dollars? That's just rubbish.

I finally was able to get a free copy of Sleeping Dogs after some initial worry that I'd be charged for it, so I'm happy. I just need to download all the games I purchased over the past month and I'll be set.

Far Cry: Blood Dragon is really tempting, as I've heard great things about it, and I'm a sucker for 1980s throwbacks. I'll have to look at the sales for next week and see if the price is right.

They waited this long to give us a basketball game? Major, I'm demoting you to Private. Now clean up the latrines.

To the person who asked: El Shaddai wasn't worth three dollars last year, and it's certainly not worth five dollars now. It's one of those artsy games that puts more emphasis on its storyline and an unusual visual style than the decidedly lackluster gameplay. Your hero has a small selection of attacks, and some of them can only be accessed when you're holding a weapon, an odd hybrid of a bow and a bat'leth. The game looks like an abstract watercolor painting and the Lucifer character (okay, Lucifel) sounds just like George Clooney (which is a perfect fit in my opinion), but actually playing El Shaddai is a drag. It's only worthwhile if you're a theologian interested in the fresh spin on ancient Biblical mythology.