Yeah, really!  Offshore Oil Strike was a board game released and endorsed by BP back in the 1970’s that promised excitement “for all the family.”

Here are the rules, according to BoardGameGeek:

“Two to four players compete at exploring for oil, building platforms, and laying pipelines to bring the offshore oil back to the player’s home company. Players take on the roles of either BP (Hull), Amoco (Bergen), Chevron (Rotterdam) or Mobil (Dieppe) in their quest for oil. As with other games focusing on offshore oil exploitation (e.g., Omnia’s North Sea Oil), there is also the risk that storms will reduce production on, or eliminate, one’s oil platforms. The first player to make $120,000,000 in cash is the winner.

Players must also avoid “hazard cards,” which read, “Blow-out! Rig damaged. Oil slick clean-up costs. Pay $1million.”

As exciting (and appropriate) as that all sounds, it’s mostly just funny that BP continues to be punched in the face (virtually, of course) repeatedly by everyone—even bell-bottom wearing 1970’s BP.  So, hurray for irony once again!

Sometimes you don’t know about stuff until someone that does know stuff about stuff tells you about it.  I guess it's the nature of getting older and more intelligentier.

Yesterday, I found quite possibly the best 2D Super Mario Brothers game that has ever existed—and it’s free to download!  Super Mario Bros. X v.1.2 is a homebrew Mario game that takes all the best things about the 2D Mario games and packages them together for an experience that’s so good it has to have Nintendo pissed-off.

This newest version of Super Mario Bros. X features an exceptional co-op mode that seamlessly splits the screen.  So when the person you’re playing with decides to go all rogue-like and leave your ass behind, it won’t matter a bit.

The new version also features a level editor that works in real-time, so if you don’t like the obstacles ahead, you can just change them to better suit your mood.  All of your favorite power-ups, characters and music are here, too, so everything feels like it actually came from 1990 Nintendo.  This is not a cheap rip-off.  The people who created this game obviously love Mario and gave him the royal treatment here.

If you want to play it for yourself and see what I’m talking about, just click here!

You may have heard by now of the rumors surrounding Microsoft’s new motion device codenamed Natal.  Rumors afoot claim that the device’s final retail name will be unveiled at E3 this June, but reputable sources are already saying that the name will likely be Microsoft Wave (snore).  For some reason Microsoft feels compelled to follow the Wii and Move’s formula and name their new peripheral something incredibly lame.  This is no coincidence.

You see, MCML (motion control marketing law) states that “all motion devices and games that make use of motion control must be single syllable non-creative basic sight words that could easily appear on a second-grade spelling test.”

Naturally, this inspired me to think of some other names for Natal that I think would work equally as well—but I’ll let you use your imagination there.

Why even change the name that we have all grown familiar with over the past few years at all?  Natal sounds fine to me… Oh, it’s to get suckers like me talking about it, isn’t it?

Damn you Microsoft!

The last two weeks have been a serious drain to my savings account.  This got me thinking.  You see, I have to buy lots of games—my livelihood depends on it.  But for people who don’t make a living from playing games like me (don’t hate); I understand that certain gaming sacrifices must be made.  Games that, maybe you would like to play, sometimes have to get put on the back burner for awhile.  In the past 2-weeks alone, Lost Planet 2, Skate 3, 3-d Dot Game Heroes, Split Second, Alan Wake, Red Dead Redemption and Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands have all hit store shelves.  And unless you had $400 extra dollars sitting around you are probably not playing all of these games right now.  Unfortunately, the ones you could not afford this week will most likely end up getting lost in the sea of new releases coming next week.  Super Mario Galaxy 2 for Wii drops in a few days.  And in the next week, Blur, UFC 2010, and ModNation Racers land on shelves.  The wallet punishment never ends!  What’s wrong with developers?  Why are they doing this to us, and themselves?

Besides our own personal gaming sacrifices, what about the developers?  How do you think “Attack of the Movies 3-D,” which also released yesterday, is going to fare?  At least Majesco was smart enough to release at a lower price point, but still, their share of the market for their choice of release dates can’t possibly be very much next to Rockstar’s and Remedy’s hype-machines.  Why would anyone choose to release next to Alan Wake—a game that has been puffed-up for 5-years?  C’mon!  They flood us with all of these titles at $60 apiece and then complain when games are being rented, purchased second-hand and pirated.  Developer reality check:  At $60 a pop in a bad economy, something’s not getting purchased—you have created these alternative markets that are undesirable to you because of your own shortsightedness.

So, what can everybody do?

For developers and publishers, a proactive solution would be to lower the prices of games sooner and with more frequency.  That way, you could compete and take a piece of the very large used game market.  Why is “Alien vs. Predator” still $59.99 in stores?  It was never worth $60!  Instead of it just sitting on shelves preying on uninformed consumers, why wouldn’t you drop the price to $30 and sell twice as many copies to twice as many people willing to take a chance at the lower price-point?  You guys need to react before the video game industry suffers all the way to the levels of the movie and music businesses.

For consumers, I would recommend doing exactly what you’re doing.  Keep renting and trading games.  You should do it while you can—just wait until the publisher’s war on the used game market really ramps-up—but that’s an issue for another time.  Be a smart consumer.  Buy used.  Save even more money by buying from Ebay and Craigslist.  Also, stop buying so much DLC (DLC is a gateway, it only encourages them).  Eventually the publishers will get the message that we don’t have unlimited resources like they do and lower prices.

Before I ramble on-and-on while up here on my soapbox—the point is that something needs to be done.  Games are still too expensive.  And besides your Call Of Duty’s and Halo’s, even developers have to be missing out on sales because of the weekly saturation.  What do you think?

Last night was a long one.  With energy drinks and the Halo: Reach Beta fueling my frenzy, I went long in to the night and awoke this morning to swollen eyes and a strong urge to remove them from my face.  But, having the opportunity to play in the biggest public beta ever is totally worth the pain, right?  I mean, this is something we’ll probably tell our grandchildren about (immediately before they laugh at us for the primitive games we used to play).  Ah, kids… I really don’t care for them.

My early impressions of the beta are pretty good.  That old, familiar gameplay is back and probably tighter than ever.  The new weapons seem fairly balanced and are mostly fun to use.  And playing with the new Armor Abilities has proven entertaining, too; although it’s pretty annoying when the guy you were about to kill drops to his knees and encases himself in glow-y-ness.  It just seems a bit cheap to me.  But I’ll still use it from time-to-time—especially when I see someone else do it—so that we can both be crouched there glowing and not shooting at each other.

My only major complaint during my marathon Reach session was the lack of gametypes and maps.  I seemed to always be doing the same thing over-and-over again.  So I did some research for about 10-seconds and found a statement from Bungie over at the official Halo: Reach Beta site that I will now share with you:

“… [We] will be releasing the maps and gametypes on different dates throughout the duration of the beta test, with only a subset of them being available immediately on May 3rd.

The good news is that once a map or gametype is released, it will remain available through the end of the beta even as other gametypes become available. Below is the schedule of release:

• Grab Bag – May 3
• FFA – May 3
• Arena – May 3
• Invasion – May 7
• Network Test 1/Generator Defense – May 14”

Yay!  So, be patient and enjoy the short time that you and the Reach Beta have together.  See you all later tonight—I’ll be the one stabbing you in the back.

If you’ve been playing Battlefield Bad Company 2 non-stop for the past month-or-so like I have, you’re probably addicted to the action but getting a little tired of being spawn-killed at Atacama Desert and generally playing the same handful of maps over and over again.  I mean, how many times do you need to see the opposing team come to your spawn and steal your chopper before you realize that it needs to either be heavily guarded or in the @$#% air at all times!?  But I digress; the action of Battlefield is hard to beat, so we deal with its little annoyances.

But with a new batch of maps for BF: BC2 way too far in the distance, there may come a time when you just need a break— either when frustration ensues or when you just thirst for a more casual experience.  When that time comes, I have suggestion for you that you might want to remember.

Battlefield Heroes is a third-person shooter that looks a lot like Team Fortress 2 but plays very similarly to Bad Company’s Conquest mode.  Much of BF: BC2’s signature gameplay is incorporated into this pick-up-and-play member of the Battlefield family—including land and air combat and specialized character classes.

Heroes won’t blow you away or anything, but it’s a familiar bit of casual fun that you can play for free on your PC.  And if you already own Bad Company 2, EA’s giving you 700 Valor Points (and 1350 more for every friend you refer  via Facebook) in the game to purchase items for your character—and you should take anything EA gives you for free.

So, if you haven’t signed up yet—and according to EA over 3,000,000 people have—you might as well give it a try next time you get frustrated with Bad Company 2 or are just looking for a fun game to play that costs no money.

Knife zoomed-in jerks that pay no attention to their surroundings now!:  http://www.battlefieldheroes.com/

I had big plans for today.  I was going to create a really great post about the top-ten games to play while celebrating 4/20.  It was going to be epic!  I had big plans for today—and had every intention of doing this—but then I got… well, you know.

Anyway, as to not leave you totally disappointed, I thought I would at-least share with you my top- FIVE games to be enjoyed on this joyous day.  So, sit back. Relax.  And enjoy 420.

 5.  Brutal Legend – I’m pretty certain that the man behind the game, Tim Schafer, assumes that you're high.  You’d have to be to buy it—because it pretty much sucks otherwise. But, Jack Black is funny and the semi-open world style suits stoners just fine.  And although the visuals feel dated, the rock ‘n’ roll art style and music will keep you playing.

 4.  Halo – It doesn’t really matter which one, it only matters that it’s Halo.  The easy to pick-up-and-play shooter fares well for kiddies puffing the magic dragon after school and the millions of “big kids” who still live in their parents’ “finished” garage that puff all day.  I mean, how many of you don’t have some form of “420” in your Gamertag?

 3. Burnout – ‘Nuf said.

  2.  Guitar Hero – Whichever of the half-dozen iterations you choose is up to you, the idea is the same.  Jam to your favorite songs.  Hold fake, plastic instrument.  Follow along while colors flow down the screen—you can almost taste them!  It’s like Blink 182 without the “blink” (whatever that means).

 1.  Grand Theft Auto – The obvious and quintessential time-waster.  It doesn’t get any better.  What time is it, you say?  You mean I’ve been killing pedestrians and driving around aimlessly for 22-hours?  GTA’s open world and great radio stations act as digital Yoo-Hoo for your parched mouth.  Just remember, after you “use” a hooker, kill her and take your money back.  It’s just poor business otherwise.

 Stoner-able Mention: Saints Row – It’s like Volition really knows you.  You see, Saints Row is a lot like GTA but you can actually smoke marijuana in the game, which creates a strange, stoner paradox (just who’s controlling who?)*.

*Smoking Marijuana is illegal and you should never smoke it… near a cop.