Straight up, had I been able to play more Fortune Street prior to compiling my end of the year list, it would have had a decent shot at cracking it. It would have been near the bottom sure, but that’s still pretty high praise. Leading up to the game’s release I thought it was something akin to Mario Party and having not had a good MP fix in several years, I was intrigued and ended up kind of blind buying the game shortly after its release. I didn’t get a chance to play it until recently and what I found was a completely different beast all together.

I think I need to start this piece off with a little bit of a rant. Mario Kart 7 seems to be getting a lot of hostility for two reasons. The first is that it’s essentially just more Mario Kart, which I mean, I can kind of get behind that. If you are not in the mood for more Mario Kart, this one won’t do a thing for you. I can understand that. The one that is bothering me a little more is that, now that Nintendo has shown their hand and “revealed” that this is indeed the seventh installment in the Mario Kart franchise, people seem to be dismissing it. As though if it were just called Mario Kart 3D it would be ok, but because of the ‘7’, well fuck it who cares. I really don’t get it. The first game came out in 1992! Seven entries in just under 20 years is pretty god damn sparse. Some have even called it “the Call of Duty” of kart racers. How does that make any sense?! Call of Duty has had more entries in less than half the time! It’s weird; I really can’t wrap my head around where this is all coming from.

Anyway so yea Mario Kart 7 is pretty good.

Michael Phelps Push the Limit came out the very same day as Hulk Hogan’s Main Event. I’m not sure if this was the turning point for the Kinect but I wouldn’t be surprised if pretty soon you could look to this day as the point where things started to go very very wrong for the Kinect. Since that day I have seen all kinds of games I had no idea existed. There’s apparently a Spongebob themed surfing game, a Nickelodeon dancing game, the Black Eyed Peas have evidently justified their own  game, and even Twister now has its own Kinect game. In one of the most baffling decisions I’ve maybe ever seen, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire is a Kinect only title, something I can’t even begin to comprehend. The Kinect is in danger more than ever of replacing the Wii in terms of copious amounts of shovelware.

Michael Phelps Push the Limit is easily one of the stranger video game concepts I’ve seen in a while and I’m sure you have already formed a pretty accurate mental idea of both the content and the quality of the title. I’m hear to tell you that it may in fact, not be quite as bad as you might think.

I should put out there straight from the very beginning that I have not seen a single episode of NCIS from start to finish. Oh I’ve seen bits and pieces here and there that would maybe add up to a full show, but that is the extent of my NCIS experience. So why then did I spend money on the Xbox game based on the show? An even better question is why did I not just spend rental money on it, but full on retail money for it. The answer is simple – I needed my annual CSI fix.

I’ve never hid the fact that the CSI games, released almost annually, are a bizarre source of joy for me. I can never really explain why. They’re easy, short, and aside from different storylines each game is practically identical. Yet for some reason I find myself looking forward to each one, year after year. This year Ubisoft denied me my CSI. Instead they announced there would be an NCIS game. Not being familiar with the show I was disappointed but in a moment of weakness, I picked it up alongside another game when I was at the store (for the record that game was Uncharted 3, which in my opinion is the better game between these two). I figured this must be just as good.

No, no it is not just as good.