Up late talking games & writing? You're...

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Note to Google Chrome users: I'm aware that when navigating to this blog, Chrome users are greeted with a “malware” warning due to a trailer that I had linked to on my good friend Mike Bracken’s Horrorgeek site. Mike has never had any malware on his site, and there's never been any here. I apologize for the false alarm. I've contacted Google about removing the warning, and hopefully they will get on top of that soon.

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Ahem.

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Anyway, feeling a bit rough at the moment.

The wife and son have been battling a cold over the last week, but my white blood cells have kept me healthy... until last night. A couple of hours before bedtime, I could feel the creeping tendrils of not-doing-so-good setting in. Never fun.

Complicating things, my little boy chose last night to inexplicably wake up at around 2AM, and was WIDE awake until somewhere in the neighborhood of 7AM. Since my wife was feeling sicker than I was, I got up with him and we watched an array of cartoons on Netflix instant… under ordinary circumstances it would have been a neat bonding opportunity, but since I was already feeling rotten, the only thing that really came out of it was that I ended up dragging my ass through work and will be turning in early tonight.

I really, really, really hope he's not interested in another round of late-night viewing… we have to hurry up and shake this illness in time to go to PAX next week and get sick all over again.

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Games: Not much to report. I burned through a number of games that were sent to me from GameFly, and was again reminded of how much I enjoy the service. 

I hear a lot of people grousing about not getting their top picks or that it takes a little longer than preferable to get a game sent to them, and those things are valid. On the other hand, since it's basically impossible to return a game "you don't like" (even if it's buggy as hell and doesn't run properly without a patch) I appreciate the ability to try something without buying. 

In a good month, I can run through eight or ten games that I might have considered buying, and if I find out that they're not worth the cash, then GameFly ends up more than paying for itself. For me? Worth it. 

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Games: Play-wise, I will be turning in my full review of Toy Soldiers: Cold War (XBLA) either tonight or tomorrow. It's a great game, and every time I tell myself I'm only going to play a level or two, it ends up being another marathon session. Buy the thing.

I'm also really close to the end of Knights Contract on 360. The game has gotten trashed in the reviews and even the two reviewers at my own site didn't have much good to say about it. However, I think it has a lot of good qualities to appreciate despite the fact that it suffers from a few incredibly poor design decisions. 

That said, I do think it has been unfairly targeted for an inordinate amount of ridicule -- even with all of its problems, I've played dozens and dozens of games that have been far worse. As a result, Knights Contract really got me thinking about games that end up being the butt of everyone's jokes without really deserving the honor. I’ll do a longer writeup on that subject soon, but before I do, I'm curious to see what games you think have received negative criticism that's way out of proportion.

If you've got any nominees, post them here and let me know!

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