I was going to post this last weekend, but the weather was pretty traumatic up here in the Great White North (Minnesota). Power went out twice for 4 hours each time (early Saturday morning and Monday Night) and we've had quite a bit of rain. I ended up having to replace my router because the WAN port was sketchy at best (although I can't corroborate it, this could have been part of the Xbox Live problem weeks earlier). Everything is working at the regular speed now, so everything's great.
First the good news. I was lucky enough to get an offer from Bill Abner (the sport's reviewer and part owner of the Sports Gamer Blog) to review for GameShark. It is sounding like EA's skate (check out the website) will be the first game I'll be reviewing. Bad news is that I'm getting the 360 version and may not have mine back in time, so I may have to venture 40 miles to where my brother-in-law lives and play there. There are other games I might review, but I don't want to give any information away in case I'm not chosen to do them. I'm excited about skate, although I think you have to get into the mindset that this is like real-life skateboarding and not Tony Hawk moon physics where you can pull off impossible moves. It will be interesting to see if it is a good first effort, because then there is a possible challenger to the crown the Hawk games have worn for many a year.
Being a reviewer again is awesome, but the writing style is a bit different. It's more free form and is more about how you feel about the game instead of talking about features and all that like I used to do. I am no longer bound by sections as I was before. The best news is that the GameShark position allows me to fulfill a dream I've had since I began writing...getting paid for it. With that fact and the fact that GameShark doesn't have a lot of PS3 reviewers, I picked one up for the $500 price point and my first reviews will go to pay that off. So, I'm now a (proud?) owner of a PS3. I still don't own a game for it yet, but if Heavenly Sword isn't the first one, Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction will definitely be.
Onto the bad news. I am not very excited that Irrational Games was turned into 2K Boston and 2K Austrailia. I figured for sure if BioShock hit it big that Irrational would be bought up by a more "cash happy" publisher than 2K Games. 2K Games is in a world of hurt currently in my mind. Grand Theft Auto IV was pushed back and BioShock becomes its only big game this year I believe. I am still thinking BioShock is not going to sell as much as everyone thinks it will. Remember, System Shock 2 sold pretty badly (well under 100k sold) and that was a critically lauded game like BioShock currently is. It could sell well and I hope it does, but this game may not be for everyone.
That's it for the bad news except for the post below this one.