Happy Birthday America!

It's our Independence Day as American's. The birth of our nation is honored today. So go out, celebrate with family and friends, watch some fireworks...but remember what this day really means.

Free Agents Here, Get Your Free Agents Here

The NBA free agency period has opened, and teams with the big checkbooks are looking to cash in. Of course, 2010 is the big free agency summer, but a few teams (Detroit, Toronto, Portland) are looking to spend this year, knowing they don't have a shot at the '10 free agents like LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, and Chris Bosh.

Detroit was the first to strike, they had the most money this off-season so why not right? They signed Ben Gordon to a ridiculous contract of 5 years 55 million dollars. I like Gordon, he's a nice player and will give the Pistons 20 points a night. BUT, he's not a great player to me. He's short, he's listed at 6'3", but he's more like 6'1", and he's not a point guard. He'll be matched up with other shooting guards who are 4-5 inches taller. I get it, that's what he's done with Chicago, and yes, he's done it pretty well. Just now that he's making a monster contract, you have to wonder if he'll be more exposed.

The Pistons continued with Charlie Villanueva (a guy many claimed the Cavaliers coveted), by signing him to a 5 year 40 million dollar deal. I like Charlie V, he's a nice big man. He can step out and drop three's on you, and he's not scared to take it to the hole. He's a true power forward and has nice height at 6'11". Only problem I see here is I'm not sure he's worth 8 mil a year. He's had one breakout season, and that was last year with Milwaukee (16 ppg and 7 reb), but that team was awful and someone had to score. I may have averaged 10 points per on that team. So, was it his situation last year that landed him the deal? And no, I'm not bitter over the Cavs not getting him, if we did, I wanted a 1 year 6 million deal (our mid-level exception), that's it. I still want the Cavs to go over Chris Bosh in 2010, and don't want anything impeding that.

So now the Pistons have the first 2 guys, both locked in for 5 years at a total of 95 million dollars. If this fails, they are in salary cap hell for a long time. With the amount of guards on that team, and lack of big men (who's playing center?), not sure how this helps the Pistons out.

In other moves, it appears Hedo Turkoglu is near signing with Portland. He'll also end up overpaid, as I've heard he's asking for 10-12 million per. He is more worth it than Gordon though with all he brings to the table. The flip side is, on Portland, he immediately pushes them to one of the top teams in the West with the Lakers and Spurs. Portland already had a nice young growing team, so this will only help.

The "other" Los Angeles team, the Clippers, dealt away one of their 22 power forwards, in sending Zach Randolph to Memphis for Quentin Richardson. Randolph has a ton of talent, but is lazy and pretty much useless to most teams. Why Memphis wants him? God only knows.

The final bit of news is on my Cavaliers. Many think we lost out on our number one choice in Villanueva, but it appears that our number one was Ron Artest. Now Artest can always go a little nuts for the team he's on, but there's something he brings to the table that no one else does in this free agency class (except one player I'll get to), and that's toughness. Artest is a maniac on the defensive end of the court and good for almost 20 points a game as well. He won't back down from anyone, and would be a HUGE upgrade to the Cavs. LeBron reportedly met with Artest face to face to try to woo him to come here. Simply, I would be ecstatic to have him, a line up of Mo Williams, Ron Artest, LeBron James, Shaq, and... Well, then we come to the next and only other "tough guy" in this free agency class, Rasheed Wallace.

Wallace is old and slow many will say, but for this old/slow guy, a bunch of contenders are trying to get him. Boston went after him first, hopefully we get in the mix as well. I don't want a long term deal, a 1 year deal would be perfect, I think he has one good run left in him. But he gives us that forward we need like Villanueva, who can step out and bang a three. Unlike Villanueva though, he'll play defense. Also won't back down and pairing him with Shaq and Artest, gives us one hell of a lineup. Will it happen? I don't know, hard to say, in a perfect world, yes. Artest alone helps us out and LeBron can play power forward if need be. I'd much prefer a true power forward playing there though.

So, that's the NBA free agency in a nutshell after oh, 30 hours of it being open. Exciting stuff so far, still a bunch of guys out there looking for work, let's see how the next 30 hours shake out.

Shuffle Results 6/29/09

Another round...

1. The Verve Pipe - Never Let You Down
2. Collective Soul - Shine
3. Sugarland - Settlin'
4. Metallica - The Wait
5. Tim McGraw - Live Like You Were Dying
6. Metallica - Ride The Lightning
7. INXS - Devil Inside
8. Bon Jovi - Mister Big Time
9. Queen - Flash
10. Our Lady Peace - Under Zenith
11. blink 182 - All The Small Things
12. Jimmy Buffett - Margaritaville (live)
13. Billy Talent - Standing in the Rain
14. Kiss - I Love it Loud
15. Alter Bridge - Close Your Eyes
16. Puddle of Mudd - Thinking About You
17. Counting Crows - Einstein on the Beach for an Eggman
18. Collective Soul - Why Pt 2
19. Toby Keith - As Good As I Once Was
20. Rob Zombie - Brickhouse 2003
21. Poison - So Tell Me Why
22. Brooks & Dunn - God Must Be Busy
23. Pat Green - One Thing
24. Pearl Jam - Do the Evolution
25. Candlebox - Blossom

The Big Snowman

Shaquille O'Neal is a Cleveland Cavalier. The Diesal, Big Cactus, ShaqDaddy, and now, The Big Snowman.

The Cavs traded Ben Wallace, Sasha Pavlovic, a 2nd round pick, and $500,000 in cash to get the big man. We gave up nothing in reality. Wallace was useless for this team, Pavlovic never got it, the 2nd round pick wouldn't have made the team, and with Dan Gilbert, 500K is nothing. So we get Shaq and his expiring contract. If he doesn't help out or mesh well, then he's gone after this season anyway. But I can't see anyway he doesn't help. Gives us that big low presence we've needed badly to compete with Boston and especially Orlando.

LeBron has to be thrilled with this, having Shaq start and then Big Z coming off the bench gives us one of the better (and older) center rotations in the game. Not to mention the pre-game antics are going to be turned up to 11 with LeBron and Shaq behind them.

I truly feel Shaq is going to be very motivated to win a title in 09-10 with Cleveland. Give him one more ring which would give him 5. Also would allow him to say he's lead the 3 best players in the NBA today to World Champions (Kobe Bryant, Dwayne Wade, and LeBron). I expect a motivated, hungry Shaq to be joining this Cavalier team.

Now, what do the Cavs do next? Signing Varejao is a must, then hopefully move up in the draft tonight to get a swing player, a player like Gerald Henderson would be perfect. (Not holding my breath for that). Hopefully we can snag someone in free agency as well, would Charlie Villanueva be still interested? I'm not wanting to dump a ton of money into someone like that, but he'd definitely help.

I'm also quite excited to play NBA Live 10 next year to use my Cavs with Shaq.

The Cavs, with this move, just became the team to beat in the Eastern Conference.

What is Going on?!

- First the Donte' Stallworth debacle, now Chris Brown gets probation for beating up his girlfriend? I had no clue who this guy was prior to him rearranging Rhainna's face, but now, all I know of him is that he's obviously rich enough to buy his way out of jail-time. If I beat my wife, I'd be in prison where I would belong. Whatever, so sick of our court system and the "rich" getting off by buying their way out of trouble.

- Jon and Kate are divorcing. Who really didn't see this coming? And somehow the wife and I are both sucked into watching the show even though we both knew it was coming. I feel really bad for the kids, as it's not their fault. They didn't ask to have their lives taped every day. Even though Kate feels this would have happened show or no show, I don't buy it. If there's no show, then there's no mansion, then there's no book tour, there's no money to waste on boob jobs and whatever else she's done. Not letting Jon off the hook, then there's no $80,000 two-seater sports cars either. Jon's not out at night looking for love, Kate doesn't have a bodyguard to sleep with. All is well. But hearing them say over and over again, "We want what's best for our children", just made me sick. End the show then, get them off TV, try counseling, and get your lives back together. But no, they can't do that. For one, any sane marriage counselor would have told them step one... end the show. Kate would never allow that, so that option is already over.

Just such a mess, and probably only going to get worse for that family. The biggest irony of the whole thing is when both of those idiots complain that the paparazzi is always watching them..yet they are complaining to a reality TV camera that is taping their every move. Hmmm.

- Had a great Father's Day over the weekend, my first as a Dad. Makes me really appreciate how time is flying by. Watching my son grow on a daily basis is truly the biggest joy and best gift I could ever have.

- In closing, I did play the NCAA Football 10 demo and I actually liked it. It is more of the same, which isn't always a bad thing. Since my main complaints are being fixed, it's a first day (I find it!) buy. No question from me. There was one bug that drove me nuts though, it's that the AI would rush to the line of scrimmage in a hurry up offense and my guys would always be called for offsides. Happened 8 times in 3 games, which is really high. Hoping it's just a demo thing. Either way, I'll deal with it. If it is in retail and not fixed, I'll play till Madden is released. If not, it'll be played side by side with Madden till well into 2010. I'll be happy either way.

Should NCAA Football 10 Get Your Business?

It's almost time, you can hear the bands warming up, NCAA Football is getting close to being released to the masses. The thrill of the hunt to find the game early will start around Independence Day, and then the game will slowly arrive in everyone's hands. The question is, is the game worth your $60 this year?

The demo has been released today on XBox 360 and later tonight on the PS3. Considering the demo is only 2 minute quarters, I'm not so sure that it's going to make anyone feel that this game is not just NCAA 09.5. I look at what's been changed and added for the '10 iteration, and shake my head when I look at Madden 10's feature set. It's like night and day. You would almost think these teams should probably work together..right?

Other issues that are now plaguing NCAA 10 is the fact the rosters that are on the disc are flat out terrible. EA released the NCAA TeamBuilder site a few weeks ago and with it the rosters were available for every team. Once people started going through them, seeing the lack of incoming freshmen, the fact that many teams had graduated players on them, and some even had players who never played for the team, panic struck on the forums over the game. Then finding out that the rosters were final, people flipped.

EA does seem to be hard at work to find a fix and work around for the rosters. The issue is that 10's of thousands of teams have already been made on TeamBuilder, so you have to make sure you don't break those either. Slippery slope as well for EA considering they can't exactly release roster updates when these are supposed to be "fake" players. EA knows how big a deal correct rosters in their NCAA game means though, so I'm confident this will be fixed around release and we'll get to see Terrelle Pryor, Tim Tebow and others having their likeness in NCAA 10.

Then comes the 2nd blow for the game, micro-transactions. Since the 360 and PS3 came out, with their online services, we've seen the true advent of micro-transactions. Want new horse armor for your horse in Oblivion? Sure, that'll be $2.50. Want to unlock a course in Tiger Woods? That'll be $7.50 please. So to see them come to NCAA 10 isn't a surprise, the "accelerators" as the NCAA team is calling them will help you in recruiting. You can buy a pipeline state to help your team grab kids from another school, you can bump up prestige, even bump up where your team lies on the toughest stadiums to play in list. Sure, these are all fine and dandy, they don't affect me since I don't have to use them....right?

Wrong, the issue is that many of us fell in love with the greatest feature EA has ever put into a videogame last year, NCAA 09's Online Dynasty. It was great, it still was basically single player, but you had up to 11 of your friends also competing with you for the National Championship, Heisman Trophy, as well as recruiting. Well, these accelerators can also be used for NCAA 10's Online Dynasty. So while you may trust your buddy who's running with Michigan State over there, then you notice all of a sudden he has California as a pipeline state..you start to wonder, "did he cheat?"

Or is it even cheating? Who knows, I've asked the developers on Twitter and OperationSports.com if the NCAA was fine with them allowing a player to pay real cash to get a pipeline state in helping their recruiting, since it basically goes against everything the NCAA stands for, buying recruits. I'm yet to get a response. I do get it, it's just a videogame, but the NFL doesn't allow Madden to have late hits or suspensions for drugs, so why should the NCAA allow NCAA Football to have a feature where you can essentially buy recruits? NCAA has frowned on this from the beginning of time, look at all the teams who have been punished over giving money to recruits over the years.

Again, in reading Twitter and other sources, they may have a fix where this can be turned off for Online Dynasty, disabling the use of the downloads. If that goes in, I go back to the "don't care" camp as I'll never use it. So here's to hoping.

So with this all being said, the two big pieces of negative press that hit...will it affect NCAA Football 10's sales? Are you still going to get it? Or if the fixes for both aren't in place, do you then pass on the game.

As much as I would love to say I'm going to pass on the game if it's not fixed, I know I won't. I love the game, and EA has my money already. Even if I was further from the fence (as I was a few days ago before fixes seemed to be coming), I know once I read on OS about people finding the game early, my mouth would water and I'd start a manhunt for it. I'm just a sucker for NCAA Football, and EA knows it.

EDIT - We have an update from EA. On the OperationSports forums, Russ Kiniry (NCAA Football 10 Designer) posted the following:

"It's unfortunate that a we've allowed a few things to get by onto the disc in NCAA 10, this kind of thing bother us just as much as you guys... We do have time to work on some solutions, and here is the update as promised:

• Rosters - A new file will be posted on EA locker to start and then we are planning on patching the online rosters.
• Downloadable Content - The plan is to add the off/on toggle in a patch.
• Game-play Sliders - Also planned on being in a patch to increase/fix the effectiveness depending on the slider.

It is extremely important to me (and everyone else on the team) to ensure that we get everything right as soon as possible. I wish I could say mistakes don't happen, but they did and we are going to do everything possible to get things right.

-Russ"

Reason #18 Why I Hate Our Justice System

Let me describe a scenario. You are driving drunk at 7:00 AM, you hit and kill a pedestrian. You then admit and plead guilty to the case. How much time are you getting? If you said 30 days in jail, you win the prize.

Thirty days!? That's it, that is all that Cleveland Browns WR Donte' Stallworth is going to serve for the DUI Manslaughter.

If it was me, I would have got 15 years and been sued by his family. Just another case proving that if you have money, you can buy your way out of any trouble you may ever be in. I'm completely disgusted by this, and hope the NFL at least suspends him for the season, if not life. The man killed another human for crying out loud. Nice message to send to the youth that look up to these guys, "If you have money, you can buy your way out of anything".

What a joke, be proud of your court system Florida, be real proud. You've let down and embarrassed us all.

Have You Missed Me?

Been busy lately and just haven't had much to babble on about. Sports haven't interested me much lately, neither has much else that is a "bloggable" discussion. Just working, hanging out with the family and doing my usual gaming.

No XBox Live today as it's down for maintenance, no biggie, you can still play offline games.

The Cleveland Browns season is getting closer and closer to starting. They are the one Cleveland sports team that I follow no matter what. I'm pretty sure it's because of the schedule. Much easier to follow 16 games, where there's one a week, than 162 baseball games.

Going to pick up Ghostbusters today, can't play co-op on XBox Live obviously, but still want to check it out. Lens of Truth gave the 360 version very favorable reviews over the PS3 version. The videos are almost shocking at how much better the 360 version looks over it's PS3 cousin.

Is there a better summer song than Dire Straits "Walk of Life"?

Other than that, not much else exciting going on. I have some reviews in the backlog that I should get out soon. So keep gaming!

Shuffle Results 6/4/09

Back to the shuffle results for the last 25 songs played on my iPod.

1. Lifehouse - First Time
2. Seether - Needles
3. Fleetwood Mac - Bleed to Love Her
4. Led Zeppelin - Rock and Roll
5. Poison - Life Goes On
6. Tesla - Modern Day Cowboy
7. Keith Urban - You Look Good in My Shirt
8. Our Lady Peace - All You Did was Save My Life
9. Damn Yankees - Coming of Age
10. Kenny Chesney - Sherry's Living in Paradise
11. Pearl Jam - Animal
12. Eve 6 - Tongue Tied
13. INXS - Need You Tonight
14. 30 Seconds to Mars - Attack
15. System of a Down - Lost in Hollywood
16. Pat Green - Tempory Angel
17. Korn - Coming Undone
18. Nirvana - Come As You Are
19. Led Zeppelin - All My Love
20. Tim McGraw - My Best Friend
21. Aerosmith - Dream On
22. Airbourne - Stand Up For Rock N Roll
23. The Offspring - What Happened To You?
24. Collective Soul - Why Pt 2
25. Kings of Leon - I Want You

E3 2009

E3 2009 has begun, and the big three companies have had their opening press conferences to start the show.

Microsoft went first, and brought out the big guns. We saw the debut of many games, including Left 4 Dead 2, Crackdown 2, Forza 3, Alan Wake, and many others. Gameplay was shown of Halo 3 ODST, preview of next year's Halo Reach, and even some gameplay was shown of Final Fantasy XIII. We got the announcement that the 360 will be the first place to play the first 2 sets of downloadable maps for Modern Warfare 2 in what will be a timed exclusive.

In the big shocker, we also got to find out that the 360 is getting the next Metal Gear game in Metal Gear Rising. It may also release day and date with the PS3, but 360 fan's of the game don't care, as they will now have it on their platform. Just like stealing away exclusivity away from Sony with Final Fantasy, they did it again with Metal Gear. Evening the playing field for 3rd party exclusive companies even more.

The announcements of improvements to XBox Live were pretty cool as well. We found out that Facebook, Twitter, and Last.FM are all coming to the 360 this fall. Also you will be able to watch Netflix movies or any TV show/movie from the marketplace with friends now. Had a Mystery Science 3000 vibe to it, pretty cool. With all of the movie talk, movies will be on demand for real starting this fall, without wait. Click and begin watching, in full 1080P High Definition picture. Very cool!

The big closer though was something that can't even be put into words. Project Natal is coming, and it looks just awesome. It's a camera that tracks every movement unlike anything we've ever seen. This isn't the Wii, but it's going to steal their audience. I don't know if it's something I'm into, but the coolness of it can't be argued. Especially with Lionhead Studios (Fable 1/2) came out and showed "Milo". It's a "game" about a kid that you communicate with. You can even hand him things through the camera. It was basically a living organism in the game. Very cool stuff.

Now onto Nintendo, where I was hoping to see something new or exciting. For me personally, I didn't get much of that at all. The New Super Mario Brothers game looks cool, but looks like the DS version. It will support 4 player co-op though. They announced a new Metroid and a new Super Mario Galaxy game, but neither really got me excited unfortunately.

Nintendo is jumping on the Facebook bandwagon with their DSi, as you can take a picture with the DSi's camera and upload it via Wi-Fi to Facebook. Considering the DSi has a 0.2 mega pixel camera, I'm not so sure how that's going to look on a computer screen, but I guess we'll see.

We got to see Wii Fit Plus and the Wii Motion Plus...The Wii Motion Plus just annoys me. They way it was shown on screen was the same way the Wii was previewed over 2 years ago, that the controller mimics your movement. Now they are saying you need to pay $20 per WiiMote to actually get this piece of hardware!? Come on Nintendo. Granted, it will be packed in with 4 games this summer/fall, Tiger Woods 10, EA Tennis, Red Steel 2, and Wii Sports Resort. But still, it's $10 more per game. Just a big bummer Nintendo.

Nintendo's big "surprise", a vitality monitor. You stick your finger in it, and it gives you a read out. Seriously, this was a big "What the hell?" moment for me, as I'm now 100% convinced Nintendo has lost it and is reaching at anything. Sure their systems are selling, but that's it. Software for the company is hurting badly. This is a total reach of a device, and the New Super Mario Brothers is a straight rip off of Sony's Little Big Planet. Not sure where Nintendo goes from here.

On to Sony, Sony knew they had to do something. They had hyped a "Megaton" announcement all week. Did we see it? I didn't think so.

They started off showing Uncharted 2, which looks INCREDIBLE. Best looking game on the system bar none, and should move systems. It's the only PS3 game I have any interest in, and no I'm not buying another one for it. They also showed MAG, it's an online first person shooter supporting 256 people at a time. Eh, it looked okay, nothing ground breaking, just a big shooter. My issue is, I mainly play shooters with friends because people act like idiots in them. I don't have 255 friends that I can get online at one time, so.... yeah, I don't see this one being a big hit.

Sony showed PS2 stuff, no one cared.

Sony then debuted the PSP Go!, which looks ugly to me. It's all screen with slide out controls. Has no UMD drive and supports 16GB of memory. All games will be downloadable to it, and the price is an insane $249. Good luck with that one as well Sony. At least they will still support the current PSP that I have.

In the lack of showing any further real PS3 titles, they moved on to their "Megaton" announcement. A motion controller with true 1:1 movement. The controller itself looks like an ice cream cone sort of thing. The demo was terrible, and I kept waiting for Sony to stop the presentation and say it was a big joke, "gotcha!". But it never happened, they kept demoing this stupid thing. I felt bad for the guys on stage, as they looked very uncomfortable with it. After Microsoft showing Natal the day earlier, this just had no power behind it, and the crowd felt it.

Sony closed showing Gran Turismo 5 (which has been in production for like 5 years now) and how it now has the NASCAR license. Great, a NASCAR game with no damage, that'll be fun. Then Sony closed with God of War 3. I'm not a fan of the game, never even played God of War 2, it's just a button masher to me. People did flip out over the video, it did look awesome I will admit. Just not my cup of tea. Pushed back to March of 2010, leaving Uncharted 2 as the big Holiday release for Sony. I will say this, God of War 3 will sell PS3's when it does hit shelves though.

That's it, the big 3 conferences. I would give Microsoft a solid 10/10 on their presentation. They did nothing wrong, showed a ton of games with little talk in-between, and got to the point. Great job. Nintendo, they get a 2/10. Showed nothing to get me excited. It was probably even a little worse than last year's, which is hard to do. Sony gets a 7/10. Not a terrible conference, on it's own, it's probably a tad higher, but with them following Microsoft, they just didn't have the same "oomph" that Microsoft had.

Now to wait till the fall for most of these games to come out, and trying to figure out how to pay for them. Wonder how much I can get for a kidney?

There's Always Next Year

- That's the Cleveland motto right? Maybe next year is our year? From looking at things, that's the deal with the Indians for sure, and now appears to be the deal with the Cavs as well. Best record in the league, best player on the planet, two straight sweeps...and we run into the Orlando Magic buzzsaw. Down 3-1 with game 5 tonight, if we win, it's still a go, but a loss and the "dream" season is down the tubes. Even a win doesn't mean much other than we get to play game 6. In the history of a seven game series in the NBA, a team up 3 games to 1 has won the series 96% of the time. If I'm Orlando, I'll take those odds.

So where does this collapse land? The Shot? The Drive? The Fumble? The Collapse? Jose Mesa? Red Right 88? Does it belong in the Cleveland curse lore?

- Speaking of the Indians. Someone find a way that Andy Sonnanstine of Tampa Bay can pitch to Ben Franciso every at-bat. Francisco is 8 for 9 with 5 homeruns and 12 RBI's in his career against Sonnanstine. Um, that's little league softball numbers there. Talk about being in a groove.

- Picked up the UFC game for the XBox 360, and simply, it's awesome. Nothing more satisfying than playing your buddy over XBox Live and getting a flash knockout out of nowhere. The game fully captures the sport in every way possible except cage play. Other than that, it's a great fighting game. Pick it up!

- Getting excited for E3 next week, looking forward to see what surprises Microsoft has in play and what EA may be announcing for Madden 10 and NCAA 10. I'll be Twittering my thoughts on both press conferences on Monday, as well as Sony's and Nintendo's on Tuesday, if you want to follow me.

Happy Memorial Day

A simple "Thank You" to everyone who currently is, has, or will be serving our country. You are all our heroes. For those who gave all, there's no words that I can even say to express my gratitude.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine Review (XBox 360)

Movie videogames are a gaming standard. We see them for every big release now, since it's a great money making tie-in. With the games though is always a sense of disappointment. They never seem to live up to the emotion that was on the big screen. Most just don't have the same "oomph" that the movie had. Wolverine was the first big blockbuster of the summer of 2009, is the game the same or just another lame attempt to make money? Let's see.

First off, this game has been in development for 3 years, it was actually set to release a year ago until the movie studio wanted it to tie-in with the movie release, so it got an extra year of polish. Now the storylines are similar, it's Wolverine's origins, but for me, the game actually played them out better than the movie. The game also added a few characters who were not in the movie, and expanded on a couple others.

I won't go into too much backstory here to save spoilers, but this is Wolverine's tale. It's how he became to have adamantium on his skeleton, explaining his claws, and his existence until he joins the X-Men.

Let's get to the gameplay, which is the meat and potatoes of this title. Simply put, it's a hack and slash type game. Running through the levels destroying everything in your path. One instance where the game is different from the movie is the sheer violence the game has. The blood, hacked off limbs, etc, all make this a bloody good time. It was fun to see how you can dismember the next guy coming running at you. You felt as if this is what Wolverine would really do. Not play it safe, but use those claws and tear people apart. The game really never gets old here as you develop new and stronger ways to kill people. Trust me when I say this is one violent videogame.

Also cool that the main actors from the movie gave their voices to the game, gives it more of an authentic feel. Now if only I could look like Hugh Jackman instead of just playing and sounding as him.

The game story is pretty decent, adds some stuff here and there which would have probably made the movie better, and gets you wanting to see the next cut scene (which are excellent by the way). It didn't feel too short, definitely not as short was Wanted, but not too long where it felt tedious. Because it is a movie game, some may pass on it, but this one is worth at least a rental for the fun, mindless gameplay if nothing else.

Liked
- Over the top violence made you feel as you were Wolverine.
- The storyline is better than the movie's.

Disliked
- The final boss is very, very cheap. Took me 3 tries to beat him because of the way it's set up. You'll see what I mean, or I just am not good at the game, who knows.
- There's not much to do once it's over, and only unlocks hard mode, which then resets all your stats. Boo!

Score - 8 out of 10

Waiting is the Hardest Part

- Please NBA, tell me why the Cavs will be off 9 days before they play again? Game six of the Boston/Orlando series was Thursday, why was game 7 on Sunday? Should have been Saturday, with game 1 of the Finals tonight. The waiting is absolutely ridiculous and truly makes me lose interest in the NBA Playoffs. There is absolutely no reason game 1 should be on Wednesday, none what so ever. I bet some people forgot the playoffs are even going on. Get with it NBA.

- The new Tony Hawk game will come with a plastic skateboard, which is apparently how you'll play the game. First we had the Rock Band instruments, all the Wii stuff, now this. It's getting out of hand to me. If I wanted to really skateboard, I would. I play games to get away from doing all the physical activities. I mean, it's good to get people involved, but at this point, just go outside.

- I see John Gruden has replaced Tony Kornheiser on Monday Night Football. I like Gruden, he's a straight shooter, also it gives Monday Night Football 3 actual football guys in the booth. I like it!

- I found the baseball app for my Blackberry off of MLB.com. I'm now hooked, it's awesome to listen to any baseball game wherever I may be. I have the same app for my iPod, but it can only be used where there is Wi-Fi, with my Blackberry, it works everywhere. Great app!

- Finally, figured a way to make a ton of money. Porn on IMax screens. Think about it...

Ok, maybe not.

XBox 360 Rumors for E3

E3 is upon us, it's only a few weeks away and I'm always excited to see what new things will be announced and prepared for the remaining year in gaming. Since I'm primarily a XBox 360 gamer, I'm especially interested in Microsoft's press conference. Some of the floating around rumors of what will be announced are as follows:

- Metal Gear Solid 4 for the 360. Can't say I'm surprised, but can't say I care much either. I did try this one out when I owned a PS3, and didn't come away as impressed as others. But with achievements, I'd probably give it a shot on the 360. I'm guessing it will be 2 discs when/if it's released.

- Motion sensor controller. Saw this one coming a mile away. The Wall Street Journal has even rumored it. The technology sounds cool, but it's more of a wait and see if it delivers.

- Blood and a Four Leaf Clover. What is that you ask? That is the next downloadable content for Grand Theft Auto 4 that is exclusive to the 360. I loved Lost and the Damned, but haven't got back into it to beat it, may have to try that now since this is rumored to hit around December.

- Forza Motorsport 3. This has lofty expectations. It's supposed to be on 2 discs, contain hundreds of cars and tracks. Will it? Who knows, but Forza 2 was a great ride, hoping this one is even better.

- New games in APB, Alan Wake, Peter Molyneux's Lionhead Studios secret title, and a Konami exclusive game are all rumored to be appearing. APB is by the former Grand Theft Auto guys and is supposed to be more of a Crackdown type title. Alan Wake is something I've heard about but know little about. I know nothing of the last 2 titles.

So, what else does Microsoft have up their sleeve and are these all real? I guess we'll find out on June 1st at Noon EST what the deal is.