My relationship with EB games has sort of been a love/ hate relationship, the love part being that they will always have what I want most of the time and the hate part being everything else. The last time I was at my local EB Games store was on the 5TH of March, it was my 21st birthday and so instead of an actual present my parents decided to give me money, which naturally would be spent on games.

That same day I went to my local EB Games store, I started to look around and being as though I can never just browse and find what I want for myself, a very happy sounding clerk comes up to me and says, “Do you need any help?” I then look at him and say “No I am fine I am just browsing” he replies with a “Okay” I then continue looking and I can’t find what I want so I go to the clerk and ask him “Have you got any copies of Saints Row 3?” he then starts tapping away on his computer and then while he is trying to find it on the computer he asks “Are you sure you don’t want Call of Duty instead?”

At this point I get really confused and two things come to mind, the first thing is that he can’t find a copy of it and is to scared to say no because he might loose a sale even though I have a copy of SSX in my hand. The second thing that comes to mind is that he is too lazy to find it and just asks me if I want Call of Duty instead.

I reply with a “no” and he keeps on looking, he then proceeds to ask me “what platform do you want it on?” I then say “Xbox 360” he then goes to the back of the store and then comes out and goes to the front of the store and then goes back and comes out again, and this happens for a few minutes and I start to think that I should just go somewhere else.

He eventually finds it but it’s for the wrong platform so I say to him “this is the Playstation 3 Version I need it for Xbox 360” he then says to me “Oh we have got no copies for Xbox 360”. I then just put back SSX and leave with a bad taste in my mouth.

Why is it that EB Games or Game Stop as it is known in America is the only place where I hear of these sorts of stories happening? I have never heard a bad story about someone trying to buy a game at a general electronics store, I am pretty sure there are stories like that but those stories are just weighed down by the amount of bad stories against EB Games.

I mean even on my way out he was trying to tell me to sing up to Game Informer and it just makes you think that you can’t go into a game store anymore and just buy a game you always have to have them try and shove something else down your throat and if they continue to do that more and more people with just not go to a EB Games or a Game Stop.

So here is my plea to all of those people who work in game stores, please just let us buy games, please just let us look for ourselves and not be hounded by you guys every 10 minutes and if we need your help we will ask and also please stop being stupid and trying to sell me a game that I don’t want.

So I know I am kind of late talking about this but I feel like I needed to do a post about it. I only just recently played Rayman Origins and I am staring to question myself about why I left it so late because this game is just pure fun and a joy to play, everything in this game is just amazing from the 2D artwork to the song that plays when you pick up a King Lum, everything in this game just works.

Each level there is a beat which you play to and as we know this isn’t a rhythm game but you can distinctly hear the beat play but as your actions unfold in the game you can see that it is in time, now to me this made the game flow really nicely and it added and extra bit of fun towards the whole game.



What I liked most about this game where the side-scrolling, shoot-em-up stages where you ride a mosquito, the main reason why I liked theses stages so much where because they became incentives, I ended saying to myself “Lets just do one more world and get the next mosquito stage” these stages ended up serving to purposes, one purpose was that these they ended up being a nice change of pace every so often from the rest of the game and the other purpose was that these stages alone made me finish the game in one sitting.

But in all honesty this game brought me hope that we might see more games like this in the future, after playing this I started to imagine games taking the same route, it made me fell kind of nostalgic because I remember playing the first Rayman game on my Ps1 when I a kid and loving it so much so that then playing this brought back the memories of me and my sister waking up early before school just so we could play Rayman before we left.



So all in all I had a blast playing this game and it would be a game that I would play again and I know everyone has their annoyances and angers with Ubisoft but you can’t fault them on this one, they did a really good job and I hope to the next Rayman game does the same thing.

So if you haven’t played this game I would just like to ask you two things, the first being why the hell not and the second is me asking you if you even have a soul?

Happy new year everyone and welcome to the year were we all die supposedly and if not we will then know that the Mayans were full of crap and we can all go back to our video game playing lives and stop our new years resolutions that in reality we were never going to finished.

So let’s talk about video games this year we see the release of the PSVita, which looks really good, and to be honest it does have a good line up of launch titles like Uncharted: Golden Abyss and a new wipeout game which I am really excited about and even though it has not done as well as predicted over in japan I feel like it could do even better over here in the west.

We then see the launch of Nintendo’s Wii U coming out this year and also Nintendo finally bringing out there on online network called Nintendo Network, which just makes me think, who is Nintendo trying to aim their products because they have always seemed hit and miss with their products and to honest I don’t think they even know what they are doing sometimes.

And this year we are giving a whole mess of new games from The Darkness 2 to Mass Effect 3 to Touch My Katamari for the Vita and then we have one of the games and I am personally looking forward to is Gotham City Imposters and that’s not all, as gamers we are very spoiled again this year and I feel like 2012 is going to be even better than 2011.

So if I have forgotten anything let me know and also here’s to another fantastic year of gaming, may your consoles never get cold and your thumbs never wear out. Yes I know it’s cheesy but hey it’s my first blog post for this year , give me a break.

2011 Has been a fantastic year for the video game industry with the releases of games like Portal 2, Skyrim and to a lesser extent the retail releases of the Bit. Trip games on 3DS and Wii, but with these successes there has also been some downfalls like Nintendo rushing out the 3DS and then telling us all that the Wii U that we saw at E3 this year has been scrapped and that they are re-designing it.

But in all fairness the good things have out weighed the bad this year and we have been giving some awesome stuff, so let’s look back at this year and see just how awesome it was.

We were giving a bevy of really awesome games this year from Portal 2 with it’s awesome characters and writing to Skyrim with it’s Dragon slaying and fishing and then Kirby’s Return to Dream Land which reminded me how awesome that guy really is, not to mention that we also got Super Mario 3D Land, Battlefield 3, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and then we were shown how over the top games can be with Saints Row: The Third.

But then we are reminded about EA and how they brought out their Origin service and how they tried to shove it down our throats and how their Browser System left some of us pulling out our hair over how atrocious it actually was.

But least we forget about the good things game companies have done for us this year, Valve put on their annual sales which left us with a low bank account but a bigger games library and even Nintendo apologized for the 3DS not being fully ready at launch.

So all in all I feel like 2011 was a great year for us gamers we were giving some good stuff and even though there was the bad things that happened this year I fell like good beat out the bad. So in the end I would just like to thank the games industry for giving us one of the best years in gaming.

On a more personal note I would like to thank the people who read my blog and welcomed me into the c-blog community, the people who come back every time I posted and left their opinion, it’s nice to see that I am not the only one with these views, and also to the people who did not have the same views but still shared their opinion, I would like to thank you as well for giving me a different perspective an for helping me change and grow my own opinions. So thank you to all who read this and especially to the ones who have read my previous posts thank you and have an awesome holiday season.

So today I was told that I was not a “Real Gamer” I then asked the customer why and then he said “Because you don’t play Call of Duty” I mean he is right I don’t play Call of Duty but that is due to the fact that Call of Duty does nothing for me I don’t see the appeal of it but then it does beg the question of what makes you a “Real Gamer”?

I have always come to the assumption that if you have a true love for Video Games and care about the game industry you yourself are a “Real Gamer”, and it kind of bugs me that we have these PC elitists who think that their “Real Gamers” because they do all their gaming on a PC, and it’s the same for the people who play Call of Duty and they think that they are “Real Gamers”, but in fact we are all “Real Gamers” it just that those people who play all their games on a PC and those who play Call of Duty don’t realize one thing and that’s that we all have our own opinions and likes.

But the PC elitists don’t see that all they see is people who play games like Metal Slug and start thinking “what is that piece of shit he’s not a Real Gamer” and that sickens me to think that those people actually exists and then I read somewhere someone saying that Jim Sterling was not a “Real Gamer” because he liked MW3, it boggles my mind that everyone has this opinion of what a gamer is but never really looked up the definition.

It just makes you think that if we want to be called a “Real Gamer” we are going to have to sell our consoles spend thousands of dollars to build a PC and then only use it for Call of Duty and nothing else and that just does not sit well with me, I mean I like having a mass variety of games to pick from, if I had to sell my consoles and buy a PC just so people would say that I am a “Real Gamer” I wouldn’t want it because I would miss playing Super Mario to much.

So to the guy who said that I was not a “Real Gamer” because I was playing Metal Slug 2 and not Call of Duty, you sir are wrong because I am still playing video games and I am having fun with it and that is what makes you a “Real Gamer” as long as you have a huge passion for Video Games you are at least in my mind considered a “Real Gamer”.

So I was amazed to hear today that PETA are attacking video games once again, this time it’s Super Mario 3D Land for the Nintendo 3DS. The reason that they are attacking Mario is because of his Tanooki suit, they are saying that Mario must have had to skin a Tanooki to be able to get that suit.

Okay PETA I get what you’re about you know, I mean I am all for the Ethical Treatment of animals but you guys need to remember that your thinking about this is fucking insane and not to mention that you forget that it is a video game, it’s not real I mean for god sake the man throws fireballs from his hands and grows when he eats mushrooms, it’s not real.

So they did what they always do when they attack a video game, they make a crap flash game and slap it up on their website and then try and tell you to go vegan. So in the game you play as a skinned Tanooki trying to get you fur back from Mario and that’s all you do, I mean it would have been nice to have some facts about the matter but sadly no, it’s just another attempt for PETA to be PETA.

So I am thinking why now? I mean the Tanooki suit as been around since Super Mario Bros. 3, why is PETA only being outraged by this now and not when it first came up? And also if there going to complain Mario skinning something they also need to complain about John Marsden as well for skinning horses in Red Dead Redemption they can’t complain about one thing and not the other.

But this has not been the first time PETA as done this sort of thing, remember Super Tofu Boy and how they tried to make us all go vegan by trying to make Tofu Boy the hero that saves the day and making Meat Boy out to be a complete schmuck? And how they tried to make Cooking Mama a sadistic animal killer who has no feelings.

They way I see PETA is that they are terrorists, which after some quick searching I found out that they are classed as a terrorist group by the USDA. Which then got me thinking that since they will most certainly know that the USDA has classed them as this, wouldn’t that make them want to change their strategy for what they do so they aren’t put in that box? It seems to me that PETA just like to hate on things and that they don’t think before they act.

So in assumption PETA really need to get the act straight and remember what than stand for and to get away from what people think they are, they also need to stop taking aspects of video games and turning them in to animal rights protests and making a whole bunch of us just scream at the top of our lungs in anger and also on a final note, PETA need to leave my childhood hero the hell alone.