When Santa brought a Wii to our house, he brought with it two games: Trauma Center for my daughter (read review here), and Red Steel for my girlfriend. Well, apparently Santa had not been keeping up on his game industry reading, which is understandable for the old chap during his very busy holiday season. If he had, he would have read the abhorrent reviews Red Steel had been receiving, and would have opted for another game: Rayman: Raving Rabbids. Ultimately, this is just what my girlfriend did: returned Red Steel in exchange for Rayman.

I’m no Dr. Kildare, and I’m certainly not Gregory House, M.D., but I have become an expert surgeon. Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but I certainly have developed a knack for Trauma Center: Second Opinion for the Nintendo Wii. Second Opinion is essentially a remake of Trauma Center: Under the Knife for the Nintendo DS, but stands as a decent game on its own.

Even though this game was released six months ago I thought it was worth a re-visit for those of you that might not have bothered to pick it up and have Christmas money or gift certificates to spend.

New Super Mario Bros.
I thought that since the original is not available here in Europe for the Wii yet that I would hold myself over with this. But after only a few minutes of playing I found that I am no longer waiting for the old one because this one is far SUPERior! The first 2D scroller in ten years featuring Mario is a hit! When it was released it sold faster than hot chocolate on a cold winter's day.

This time out, I decided to review a game I had not seen reviewed anywhere - Cabela’s Alaskan Adventures for the Xbox 360. Since I’m not a hunter, I felt I was not entirely qualified to review the game on my own, so I went searching for a qualified collaborator. I found the perfect match: a hybrid real-world hunter and video game enthusiast – my brother-in-law.

We sat down and played this game together for hours, and really tried to give it our full attention…something difficult for this caliber of game.

I rented Gears of War fully with the intention of reviewing the game for the site, but after reading a number of reviews about the game, I decided I would not. It seemed I would have the one dissenting opinion among so many, and feared ridicule.

It's not usually in my blood to shy away from controversy, in fact, I usually revel in it. But I felt, I was too inexperienced to write such a review, feeling I must be missing something that the veteran writers had seen and embraced.

But the review I read this morning, in January's Electronic Gaming Monthly, put me over the edge. Reading Shoe, the editor-in-chief, and two other writers gush over Cliffy B's creation was enough to make me physically ill. Don't read anything into this: I love Cliffy B.'s stuff. Hell, I still play Unreal Tournament (the original)! But this literal masturbation guised as a review coupled with the realization that I was not the only person who felt this way, and I knew I had to write this review.

This is a long over due Retro Review. I hadn't really even thought about the retro review, until the other day a friend of mine loaned me his copy of Taito Legends for the Xbox (it will not run on the Xbox 360).

The collection of games includes a number of arcade classics I remember from my childhood. There are twenty-nine games in all including one of my all time favorites, Space Invaders.