GameShark GOTY Awards

The Game of the Year awards are up at GameShark and I wrote the write-ups for several of the games. It was a fun exercise entailing the boiling down of what made a game so good into one or two paragraphs. It certainly requires a different way of thinking and, on the plus side, you don't have to talk about the negative parts of the games. Whee. James (our Editor in Chief) did a great job of pulling everything together so if you get a chance, go check it out. Each game's write-up has the author listed, however if you just want to read my stuff, and I don't know why you would as mine is the weakest of the bunch, I wrote stuff for the Rock Band listing in the GOTY category as well as Puzzle Quest and Phantom Hourglass in the DS category and Zack and Wiki in the Wii category.

In other news, Wal-mart canceled my game orders. Of course, they cancel it and then send the letter out explaining the cancellation, which was, in my mind, bad form. I would have liked an explanation first, but oh well. Now, I'm not one to suggest that a company should lose a ton of money simply because their employees are too stupid to check the pricing on their website, but at the same time, if I were to walk into a store and see an item listed for a certain price, I would expect to be able to purchase the item at that price, regardless of whether or not the price was in error. This is, essentially, what went down on the Wal-mart site. I entered, for lack of a better word, saw the item at a certain price and purchased it. This is not a situation where their ad was in error. I didn't see the item advertised for the wrong price and then entered the store to find that the ad was in error, although in lieu of a posted ad correction, I wouldn't be entirely wrong to expect them to honor the incorrect price. This was a simple transaction. They told me how much the item cost and I paid them the agreed upon amount. The fact that the sale was conducted online, shouldn't mean that they can go back on our agreement regardless of whether or not they have the database script to do so.

In the end, it's not that big of a deal. I'll get Smash Brothers for no cash outlay, and I have even more reasons to hate Wal-mart, and myself for continuing to give them my toy buying dollars. In short, nothing has changed.