I’ve been messing around with USB flash drives, and after seeing the idea on Engadget.com, I thought that I could do it better. Or at least do it the same. Or at least not totally screw it up:

This little guy even glows in the dark:

Oh, the humanity!

I thought about telling a story involving a parrot with a knife, a USB drive, and an old Pound Puppy, but it just wasn’t funny:

Anyway, the little guy is up for sale on eBay. Heh.

Say what? How many players? That sounds like an unsubstantiated rumor?

http://kotaku.com/gaming/x06/rumor-x06-announcement-roundup-203314.php

Games are fun, yes. We play to have fun. Xbox 360 Achievements are brilliantly fun to acquire - and they have actually affected the games I play. I can’t tell if that’s good or bad.

You see, the newest Xbox 360 compatability list just came out, and with it Burnout 3: Takedown was finally added. Non-seredipitiously, the day before I sold my copy for $6 to my local Game Crazy, figuring that this game would never see the light of day.* What unluck! But, as I continued to think about it, no matter how much I enjoyed the game, playing it would not affect my Gamerscore, pictured to the right. It wouldn’t be tracked online - my friends would never know that I played! It seems like a cheap reason, and I’m the first one to say how surprised I am at the fact that I have the same agonizing problem with Halo 2. The Halo series is my favorite series, bar none. You have only to read this site to figure that out. However, playing Halo 2 online is like kissing with one lip: you can’t see your friends list, there’s no high score (other than online levels, some of which are hidden), you can’t chat with someone else who’s playing something else, you can’t adjust your music - it’s just plain limiting. And, again, there’s no record it ever took place.

That’s a hard realization to come to - especially since my best friends like the game so much. I feel like I also want to get some distance, so that the Halo 3 hype machine can sweep me up. I’m going to cut down on my Halo 2 time - if GRAW’s new multiplayer content comes down in price over the course of this TGS2006 (see my gamer pic!) and X06 season, I’ll snag it in a heartbeat.

This same issue keeps me from wanting to snag other Xbox games that I’ve heard were good. Games like Ninja Gaiden, Lego Star Wars, or Black. Does anyone else find it hard, now that there is a definite, tangible reward to playing, to play simply for playing’s sake?

*What did I do with that $6? Why, I pre-ordered my copy of Halo 3, of course. The real question is, why haven’t you pre-ordered yet?