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Well it finally happened. My xbox has a critical error. Much to the rejoice of pee ess fanboys everywhere. I bet they can't wait to tell me all about the wrongness of my decision to purchase a 360 instead of their haloed a symmetrical monolith. Although the loudest one my best friend derek already fried his PS3s laser so at least I don't have to worry about him trying to claim that his hardware is superior.

I called customer support and aparently my xbox's warranty ran out last year. Which is a giant douche. But really I purchased my beauty from a pawn shop over a year and a half ago so i kinda saw something like this coming. That said I am still depressed and i feel very emotional right now. The only thing that could possibly console me right now is the fact that there are still XBOX in my household because each of my roomates also own one. I guess I could drop $400 bonez on a PS3 but that seems like a lot of money to blow on a console when I could just buy a new arcade for $200.

This couldn't have happened at a worse time because my gamer score is just shy of 10000 and with a good push a couple of games I could have been there. Well at least I can just recover my gamer tag and play on my roomates machine.

VIDEO GAME AWARDS

Well I wanted to break out this new thing I was going to write about in a giant comprehensive list of Awards for games that truly covered a lot of ground. But I decided instead of hold onto these untill I thought of other good ones why not give them to you when I thought of them. Sort of a mini surprise slash present whenever I thought of one. So here are the first few.

The basic Idea is that I will award games not for best visuals or graphics or any broad sweeping category of that ilk. But for little victories. Just a way to show that I as a gamer appreciate the little things as well. Or adversely when the companies miss I like to point and laugh at there failings.

The I didn't know how much I missed it till it was gone award: Head shot ping noise in COD World at War
- Really it doesn't matter which game was better or worse or which developer you side with, just hearing that noise. Knowing you just owned someone makes all lines drawn in the sand fade.

The Why the hell is there only 2 multiplayer character skins award: Quantum of Solace.
- You took out the absolute best part of the old James Bond multiplayer games. Do you know how big of a dream you crushed by not letting me be baron samedy with a COD engine? It was very large.

The why isn't this game more fun to play: Spore
- That annoying morality argument aside this game seemingly had all the pieces for greatness and endless fun. Leveling up customization unlocking new body parts and building your creature however you want. Yet for some reason when I got to the tribal stage and realized it was more of an RTS style gameplay I lost all interest. Can we get another version of this game where everything before that was longer.

I could just drive forever: Burnout Paradise City.
- I love this series alot. I was a more than a little anxious when I found out they had changed the style of gameplay from the previous titles to a more sandbox open world style. That is till I played it. The funny thing was I enjoyed exactly what i thought I would hate. The pointless driving around with no real goal... Just driving. Ripping up and down the far west road through the mountians I was fully content.

F-ZERO TO F-HERO: 10 Favorite achievements of 2008

(Mike's list)

• Game: Portal
  Achievement: Vanilla Crazy Cake
  Beat all six Portal advanced maps.
  
  Nothing funny or spectacular about this achievement. Just one I proudly possess, for one of my favorite games ever.
  
  
• Game: World of Warcraft
  Achievement: Hallowed Be Thy Name
  Complete all of the Hallow's End achievements.
  
  You get this achievement by completing all of the annual Halloween events in WoW, which only happened for a week or two. Most of them were easy and just took some time and a bit of effort, but one was just devilish. You had to get 2 special loot drops, both of which could only be gotten from the unique Hallow's End boss the Headless Horseman. And you could only kill him 5 times a day, which seems like a lot, but since you needed a group of 5 people to summon him, even if one of the 2 rare items dropped, you had to win the roll against the other 4 people who also wanted the item. I lucked out and got the first drop with about a week to go, and then killed the boss 5 times every day for the rent of the event, slowly driving myself crazy. Finally on the last night - in fact, about 4 hours before the event officially ended - the 2nd item dropped, and I won the roll against the other 4 people with me. And I freaked out. What did it get me? Now I have a title "the Hallowed" that appears after my character's name.
  
  
• Game: Fallout 3
  Achievement: Dream Crusher
  Talk Moira Brown out of writing the Wasteland Survival Guide.
  
  You get this secret achievement by telling Moira Brown that instead of finishing her "Wasteland Survival Guide", she should stop because people might use it and get hurt. She reluctantly agrees, her ambitions shattered by cold reality...or more likely, your laziness and unwillingness to do the quests. After getting radiation sickness, blown up by land mines and ravaged by ferocious man-crabs in toxic sewers, all for "research" for her idiotic book, my delight at telling her that her book is stupid - and the ensuing achievement - was probably my favorite moment in the entire game.
  
  
• Game: Call of Duty 5
  Achievement: Gunslinger
  Assassinate General Amsel with a sidearm
  
  I saw this achievement before I had even played COD5, and immediately vowed to get it. What a terrible decision. In retrospect I should have figured that it would be freaking impossible. I probably also should have been tipped off when the first time I heard Amsel's name was a sniping level where you were climbing through top floors in buildings and shooting people on the ground. It took me probably about 15 tries - there is no hope of assassinating the general through skill. The best you can hope for is looking for movement far, far FAR off and start firing off your entire clip. Keep in mind that you're being shot at by nazis with rifles and turrets and OH YEAH A TANK OR TWO. When I finally offed the bastard, I was proud to get the achievement and yet ashamed that I would force myself to endure such frustration for a stupid achievement.
  
  
• Game: Left 4 Dead
  Achievement: Akimbo Assassin
  Survive an entire campaign using only pistols.
  
  I loved using the pistols in Left 4 Dead before I even found out that this was an achievement, as they have infinite ammo and you can just freely unload constantly. I figured this wouldn't be that hard to get, but then after a seemingly-successful campaign I discovered that using the turret negated the achievement. Then I tried it again, but this time I got knocked down and when my teammate helped me out, the game automatically equipped my hunting rifle - something I didn't realize before I had already fired off a shot. Then on my 3rd attempt I didn't pick up any other guns or even the molotovs or pipebombs, and made it to the last stage with 3 computer teammates...who were all crushed SIMULTANEOUSLY by the Tank, who smacked a forklift into all 3. Of course, having only pistols, I didn't have the firepower to kill the Tank and so I died. Finally, my computer teammates managed to stay alive and I finally got the achievement.
  
  
• Game: Battlefield: Bad Company
  Achievement: Never Used a Door
  Destroyed 1000 walls
  
  One of my favorite "tactics" in BF:BC was lurking behind the enemy lines, looking for snipers holed up in a house. Then I'd rush the house, slash the door down (one hit with a knife destroys a door) and murder the snipers inside with said knife. One game my entire team was bunkered down in an old castle and I was prowling around the far corner of the map and spotted 4 enemy players inside a house conferring. The smart idea would have been to throw a grenade in the window and kill all 4, but for effect and awesomeness I instead chopped down the door, ran right up to them and murdered one right before their eyes. They shot and killed me a second later but I maintain that it was totally worth it.