I'm writing this more or less to help everyone out with the purchase of games for a cheaper price. In no way am I trying to show any of the sites listed in a bad light. It's more or less my opinion. I just don't want to see any one get screwed out of their hard earned cash. And I was bored. VERY bored.

I'm going to use X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Borderlands and Fallout 3 GOTY here for my examples since I just recently picked up these titles.

I recently came across a site (www.goozex.com) that allows you to "trade" games for $1. It sounded great from that stand point of getting games. I did some looking into it and found that the $1 price tag was wrong. Basically here's how it works. You purchase "trade" tokens for $1 a piece. Easy enough. Then you add games to your Queue (think Gamefly). But you need to have something called Goozex points (various costs but a quick look is 500 for $25 and 1050 for $50) in order to receive games as well. You can also get these points by offering your games for "trade". As with any "trade" in deal you get a certain number of points for your game.
If you offer up either Borderland or Fallout 3 GOTY) game you get 1000 Goozex points credited to your account and if I understood the Goozex website/forums correctly you never see your game again. Points are not credited until the "trade" is completed and the recipient leaves feedback. Ever use Ebay? Feedback isn't always left. Goozex provides all mailing labels from what I read. You provide the mailing envelope and the trip to the post office to mail it.
Now lets say you want to receive a game from Goozex. You open your account (which is free and you get 1 trade token free)and start creating your list of requests. if you start a trade with someone you need to have the Goozex points available, 1 trade token and shipping. Borderlands and Fallout 3 GOTY are both valued at 1000 Goozex points. So to get either game it will in affect cost you $51 plus shipping. X-Men Origins: Wolverine is listed at 450 points. So for roughly $25, $1 ("trade" token) and shipping you get the game. Keep in mind this doesn't take into account any games you have traded and earned points on. We are looking at this strictly from a monetary stand point.

Now lets look at another website. www.Glyde.com Similar to the site above you list your games and they kind of act as the store front or pawn shop if you will. Opening your account is free to both buy and sell. Say you decide to sell a game. You list your game and then it sells. Glyde takes 10% and the cost of the Glyde mailer which is pre-stamped and pre-addressed. Once the buyer receives the game the funds are deposited into your account which you can get your money out of in form of bank transfer or check.
If you want to buy it appears to be really easy. In some cases you can purchase games of varied condition. From disc only, good, excellent and brand new factory sealed. Both games were listed in excellent condition. Excellent condition is defined as: "Excellent
Disc plays perfectly. May have minor scratches. Case has no more than a few minor scratches. No damage to game instructions. No personal markings. Not a previous rental." I found both Borderlands and Fallout 3 GOTY games listed in excellent condition for $39.75 + $3.81 shipping. For a total of $43.56 each. In this case you get your game and the seller gets $35.78. X-Men Origins: Wolverine Uncaged edition was also list in Excelent condition for $15 + $3.81 shipping = $18.81. Here the seller gets $13.50.

Last November my brother-in-law got me a Gamefly subscription for my birthday. The account costs $15.95 + tax. I get 1 game out at a time for as long as I want and if I decide to keep it I can at the price listed. Titles vary in price and availablity. Every 3 months you get $5 gamefly dollars that go towards you buying a game. Fallout 3 GOTY wasn't available so we won't use that. Borderlands is $42.99 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine Uncaged edition is $12.99. Assuming I purchased 1 game a month the cost for each is Borderlands is $58.94 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine Uncaged edition is $28.94. I also got to try out several other titles (somewhere between 2 and 3) each month. I probably could have tried out more titles but my gaming time is limited to weekends in most cases. Just a side note I'm canceling the account soon for several reasons. A)I feel like I'm taking advantage of my brother-in-law With limited time to game this isn't cost effective C)You rely heavily on the post office (if you live in the north east you know that the weather has stopped mail in some areas for close to a week at a time.)

As I stated earlier I recently picked up both Borderlands ($37.35) and Fallout 3 GOTY ($41). The prices you see are shipping included. Both games were obtained off of Ebay. Using Gamefly I picked up Wolverine Uncaged edition is $8.47. Here's my cost break down: Subscription = Free Game = $12.99 - $5 gamefly dollars = $8.47 and I got to see them condition of the game before I bought it.
As you can tell I left out Gamestop in this review. Mostly because their used game prices are through the roof IMO. From my experience Ebay seems to be the best way to go about buying and selling your games. Goozex seems to be waste and unless you have ample time to game Gamefly is just too expensive. I haven't tried Glyde yet but plan to in the future after comparing the going rate on Ebay.

So that's my 2 cents. Hope it helps.

Ok so Bad Company 2 comes out this Tuesday. Are you joining the company?

Launch Trailer

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Nice Review

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 Day one DLC looks pretty good even includes a night map. From this Vid the maps look awesome.

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If you plan on getting BC2 hope to see you on the Battlefield soon. I know there are a few of us getting it. You can only do 4 man squads but with the 8 party chat i am sure we can get a good group going for sure.

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Good day Buds, I thought I would just post my little take on Bioshock 2. (I'm sure I posted this in the wrong spot, but i want to help get our posts up again or make the forums busier)

So I picked up Bioshock 2 when it was released and my initial reaction to it was that it was basically the same game as the first one but I was a character who is a little stronger, and would be able to blaze through no problem. Boy, was I ever wrong.

The first one definitely had its moments of awe, and this one does as well. I don't want to spoil much, but one aspect involves water..It was pretty cool. All I want to really say about the story is that its almost if not better than the story in the first one(I don't want to spoil it for people who haven't played the first one)

This game can be difficult, I am not going to lie. I was also playing it on the hardest difficulty as I wanted to "extend" the experience, but there were more times than I can count where my controller was about to fly through my TV(then a little voice in my head reminded me how much I spent on my TV) Its difficult yes, but its not "unfair" difficult. You get to a few points where you die, respawn, and die again. Frustrating or a case of insanity(Doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result) But if you are smart you just need to use your environment, and that's where I believe this one excels.

In the first one you had the option to rescue or kill the little sisters. This one is similar, as you still have that moral decision but now you can "adopt" them. Which is a nice little way to increase your Adam. When you adopt them you can help them gather Adam, but when that happens you need to get ready. For the most part your environment is setup for the battle but in the odd case that its not you can set up numerous traps, etc.

Hacking was one of the things that was very tedious and got repetitive fast in the first one, they have changed it to be more of a QTE now, where the game doesn't pause so you need to be pretty sure you are safe to hack. There are 2 things that I LOVE about the new hacking system. One: If you press the buttons in the correct way, you in fact get a bonus item or health. Two: you can remote hack(ie: if you see a turret within range, using a certain weapon you can hack from the comfort of your hiding place)

You can still research in this one, but unfortunately the researching has its ups and downs. The positive is that there are 4 levels per research and once you max them out you get a tonic. The worst part about it is that its like using a camcorder and what I mean is that you basically record the movements until you reach a point or you die(The one huge con) I would get to a point where I am fighting one of the more difficult enemies, and being weaker with less health or ammo or both and would start recording to die right away. Therefore not allowing me to record once I stock up on health and ammo and begin the fight again.

Overall, if you enjoyed the first and want to experience rapture all over again. Then this one is for you, playing through this one I have decided that I will probably have to fire up the first one again to experience the story all over again. Definitely a 9/10(there a number for Smalls)

As for the multiplayer aspect, I haven't played a lot, but it does borrow ideas from MW 2. "Plasmids, and Tonics" are unlocked at various levels, but does make it a little frustrating if you are in the lower classes. Overall, its great but if you want a really polished experience(as polished as you can get) then play MW2. Oh but there are no exploits or glitches in this one...yet

In summary here are my bullet points.

Pros:
+ Great story
+ Ability to dual wield plasmids, and weapon is great
+ Better Hacking
+ Great new characters, enemies
+ Not easy(yes thats a PRO because it takes time then)

Cons:
- researching can be unfortunate
- can be controlling throwing difficult(at times)

*edit*
This was my first review and I'm writing it with like 7 hours of sleep all weekend...be gentle No I'm kidding...be critical.I can take it...even though it may end up with some people being team killed *grins*

Well as most of you can see the Shout Box is back.  The developer updated it with a newer version which should keep us from being shut down by using to many resources on the shared server. 

For our newer Buds that have joined recently the Shout Box has been around the site for awhile for instant communications on the site for all to see.  We have had many fun times with this box. 

We will still have the Bud Chat Room which will be used for bigger conversations as needed.

So lets test out this Shout Box and see what happens.

Here is a brief description of the new Shout Box from the Dev.

After quite a while, the long awaited new release of the Shoutbox Pro is ready. This version has a great new feature: a high performance option. Some users noted that on a shared webhosting the shoutbox can be a bit too heavy and with this new option we fixed it! Instead of loading the complete Joomla! framework for each AJAX request, we just load the relevant query without the Joomla! framework, resulting in much less CPU usage. However, there is one downside: you'll lose the ability to use smilies and bbcode (because the framework is not loaded). We're thinking about a fix for this in the next version. You can find the high performance option in the advanced module parameters