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About Me: I knew at an early age that I wanted to make a career out of writing about games, and now I have. You'll find most of my stuff right here on HonestGamers, of course, but don't be surprised if my name pops up elsewhere. Living out my dream keeps me very busy, and I wouldn't have it any other way! |
I've been superstitiously refusing to talk about my luck with my Xbox 360 because I don't like saying "My Xbox 360 has treated me well, knock on wood."
"Knock on wood" is such a stupid, superstitious expression that makes no sense at all when you consider its roots in the occult. Anyway, I haven't been wanting to say that and so I haven't talked about how lucky I'd been with the Xbox 360.
Today, that luck ended. I was playing through the opening tutorial in Operation Darkness and the game froze. My first thought was "Wow, this isn't a very polished game if it freezes in a tutorial." My second thought upon booting it back up was "Oh, crap. Four red rings!" My second thought was wrong, though. It's actually three red rings, which apparently is even worse.
Well, I'd been planning to churn out a bunch of reviews over the last few days, since I certainly have a lot of games sitting around that I need to cover. However, my job has been robbing most of my time and it looks like I'm lucky to manage one game a week!
This week, that game is Trauma Center: Under the Knife 2 for the Nintendo DS. I realize that I'm a few days late to the party with this (we already have a user review posted), but of course I wanted to play through the whole thing before reviewing it.
At work, our schedules come out on Thursday. I always look so that I can then plan out my game/site time for the next week. Yesterday, we were so busy that I didn't even have time to slip back and check a second time, since they were late posting it and didn't have it up when I checked the first time.
So today I checked it, thinking on the way back that "Boy, I hope they don't schedule me on Sunday or something stupid because that would mean 6 consecutive days of work for me!"
I'm a suspicious person, I guess. Last night at work, they hadn't scheduled nearly enough people to handle the predictable holiday rush. There were only two or three cashiers scheduled in our huge department (which for most practical purposes is about half the store, and I'm talking about a store along the lines of a Super Wal-Mart). There were also only three clerks scheduled for most of the evening--myself being one--and one supervisor.
Then disaster struck: one of my co-workers called in sick.
Recently, a moderator on Eurogamer ignored his non-disclosure agreement and posted on the forums to say that Too Human--a title he was only able to play because he signed a legally-binding NDA indicating that he would not discuss the game until a date sometime in the future--is the worst game he has played in the past five years.
There are a lot of regulars on that site who are praising him for doing the right thing and breaking the agreement. It got me wondering how some of you feel about the matter. Should non-disclosure agreements be honored? Do you think more of someone who breaks them to report exclusive news ahead of his competition? Less? Do non-disclosure agreements interfere with the free market system so many of us value?
When this year began, I was fresh off a busy holiday season of reviewing games like crazy. In November, I believe I reviewed somewhere around 13 games in just the one month and I was dangerously close to burnout.
"I won't do that in 2008," I vowed to myself. "I won't review as many games in 2008 as I did in 2007. I won't do that at all."
For the first week or two, I was as good as my word. My first review in 2008 wasn't posted until January 9, when I reviewed MX vs. ATV Untamed for PlayStation 3.
Then things fell apart. Today, at the year's halfway point, I decided to see where I sit. Last year, I reviewed my usual number of games... around 60. So this year?
Well, I've posted my most recent review and it happens to be for a DS title...
Summon Night: Twin Age (DS) review
Sometimes, I think the reception to DS reviews is quite lukewarm. That probably has a lot to do with the perception that the DS isn't a 'real' gaming machine, that it simply plays host to a bunch of gimmicky games that won't appeal to any serious gamers.
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