Picked up my mail the other day and discovered that I had received the Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Fortune Hunter Edition.

It's basically a cardboard box that's designed to resemble and old, dusty, leather-bound tome. Inside was a copy of the game, plus that weird dagger thing that Nathan Drake carries around over the course of the game. Also: There were a couple of pages of art work from the game.

I've received hundreds of junky things like this over the years. I figured it was yet another overproduced PR stunt designed to make me curious about a particular game.

Teti has gotten in the habit of re-purposing this stuff via Swag Tester, which is a terrific idea. If I was in New York this week, it might have occurred to me to donate the fake book to Swag Tester. But I am on the West Coast, and I had to carry the giant book home from the office, so by the time I got here, I was pretty sour about the whole thing. I took out my dagger, put it on the shelf next to my Ezio figurine. I thought there might be something else in the box-book, so I tore apart the cardboard, only to discover that the rest of the box-book was hollow.

I put it next to the front door, in the name of taking it down to the recycling room.

This morning I found out from a colleague that only 200 of these things were ever made. And of those 200, only five ever made it to Canada. And that the special edition of the game, which wasn't made available to consumers, is going for up to $4000 on eBay today.

I got out the masking tape and set to work trying to resuscitate the destroyed box, thinking I could post the whole thing on eBay, then donate whatever cash I got for it to charity in Crispy's name.

But no. The box was too far gone.

Man. I really did a number on this thing. See for yourself.

:(

What a self-destructive, old fool I am! 

Life on the battlefield we call Internet Game Journalism is a cold, harsh existence. But for one night I was able to crawl out of the trenches and shake hands with the enemy to help the kids.

In an annual traditional, Kotaku’s Brian Crecente threw a big game nerd party that has come to be known as: The Kotaku Child's PlayFundraiser. Or as we like to call it in Denver: The One Cool  Videogame Thing That Happens Here, Rather Than In Some Snooty Place Like San Francisco or Brooklyn.

The even went down in a perfectly dingy, grungy and epic Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom. This building used to be one of the crown jewels in Denver’s dance hall history. And now it’s a place plastered with concert posters and black paint apparently trying to hold back the grime. Oh, and it has the most excellent disco ball you have ever seen. I would say it is more like the Death Star of disco balls.

In addition to Brian’s magnetic personality and flowing pirate locks, and a full rock stage set up with Rock Band and DJ Hero, the Fund Raiser attracts game fans with the promise of winning schwag.

Ah schwag, that magical crap that game publishers send to journalists in an effort to tease out a little sympathy, buy a little extra attention and make you wonder things like—If they spent less on the schawg and more on the development if the game would suck less.

But schwag it is and schwag the Kotaku empire collects. Mounds of it. Heaps up it. Piles and piles of t-shirts, toys and bric-a-brac of every imaginable type.

And all you need to do to win is show up, donate $10 at the door and get a little ticket.

For me, it was a magical night of winning. I’ve been to all three Fund Raisers, and never won a thing. You’d think that I wouldn’t want to win schwag. But I do. I wanted to win bad. And this year….I won! In fact, I won one of the coolest things given away that night: A limited edition Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360! A 360 I tell you!

Problem is, I have a 360. And the other problem is, I just couldn’t see how I could justify keeping or selling some ridiculously expensive piece of schwag. So, I did the only thing I could think of at the moment:

I sold it to a guy in the crowd for $300. All the profit, like all the money raised that night, went directly into the Child’s Play charity bucket.

Combine that with probably 300 plus people donating at thedoor and a silent auction that brought in well over $1,000 (I mean it had to, a collector’s edition of Uncharted 2 sold for $1,000 on its own. I guess it’s worth even more on eBay—so says somebody’s iPhone), and you get a tidy pile of cash for a good cause.

I’m already looking forward to hitting the Kotaku event next year. It’s a great chance to hang out with game fans and local developers (And,yes, there are a bunch of devs in Denver! Sony Online, ever hear of them? Oh, and the guys doing this seriously cool outer space MMO Jumpgate, and the Lego Universe guys? Lot’s going on in Colorado, let me tell you).

Most of all, Brian deserves a ton of applause for putting this party together each year, out of his own pocket and time. Even if he works for those other guys.

I sort of lost my mind yesterday and wound up spending $100 on the Collector's Edition of Assassin's Creed II.

I was in the game store, one thing led to another, and suddenly the cashier was asking me if I needed a bag for this surprisingly large, ornate tin.

"I do," I said. "I don't want anyone on the street seeing me with this thing. Ha, ha!"

"You know," he said quietly, "I'm a sucker for these things too. I don't know why. If there's a Collector's Edition, I have to have it."

Me and my newly acquired Collector's Edition made the walk home in the drizzly Vancouver rain together.

I opened the large, decorative tin and took out my detailed figurine Ezio. I set it on my desk. I looked at it for awhile. What have I done? I wondered.

I don't mind the figurine so much. I'm not sure yet whether I want it in my apartment. I'll keep it on my desk for a few days and see how I feel about it.

But what I do mind is the pointless, useless, over-produced art booklet. What am I supposed to do with this? Leave it on my coffee table for visitors to enjoy when I serve them coffee/danish? "Perhaps you might enjoy leisurely leafing through this 20-page booklet? I highly recommend the 'OBJECTS' section! Brilliant!"

I'm also confused about this large tin box with Ezio's face printed on it. Should I store my bagels in it? What the hell? Of course, I can't really blame Ubisoft. As long as people like me, and the game store cashier, get overly excited on release days and make terrible, reckless, regrettable decisions, publisher will keep making these things.

You have the unseasonable warmth in New York to thank for the availability of today's Swag Tester prize. We all thought that the Scribblenauts "rooster cap" would make for cozy winter headwear, but since the cold is taking its sweet time arriving here, we decided we ought to pass it along to someone in chillier climes. Plus, the last time I wore it out of the office, I was laughed at and pelted with eggs and sweetbreads. In any case, time to part with this thing.

Honest to goodness, I just realized while typing this that it's also sort of a chicken-related item, which is great because I'm sure you haven't had enough of the chicken stuff on this site. I'm sure that a bucket of KFC grilled chicken isn't the last thing you see when your close your eyes to go to sleep for the night, when you finally think you can have some relief, but then you have dreams about chickens, and they're eating you with coleslaw and a homestyle biscuit, and you say, "You can't get grilled John Teti on a value menu," and they all say "Yeah, you can!" YEAH YOU CAN, they shriek, YEAH YOU CAN!!!!!

But in truth, the hat has nothing to do with roosters. Whew. It's just the hat that Maxwell wore in the game Scribblenauts, you know, the game where you can write the names of things and then those things appear. Wotta concept! Evan Moore and I tested the hat out to see if it matched the brilliance of this incredibly groundbreaking game, which everybody is still playing and never ever got tired of, right?

If you want the cap—one of two caps, actually—leave a comment below telling us why it is absolutely essential for you to have a goofy red hat with a chinstrap. Be creative! Check the last Swag Tester post for all the rules and whatnot, and look for the winners to be posted next Monday.

You still have plenty of time to create several poignant drafts of your Christmas list and plan your New Year's Eve DJ Hero-centric blowout.

But the year in gaming, as we know it, is over.

It is.

With the last of the year's AAA behemoths in stores today--Assassin's Creed II, Left 4 Dead 2, and New Super Mario Bros. Wii, among others--that pretty much puts a bow on 2009. Aside from a few last-minute stragglers like The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks and EA's The Saboteur, this year in gaming is, as the French say, fin.

Seems a bit premature, no? I mean, weren't we just kind of getting warmed up here? Might December be in danger of becoming the new June in this industry?

2008's December releases included Ubisoft's reboot of The Prince of Persia, Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories, Banjo Kazooie, Sonic Unleashed, Rise of the Argonauts, and the Wii version of Rock Band 2.

OK, so maybe last December wasn't exactly gangbusters, either. Still, it was better than 2009's totally anemic display.

But you know what? I'm actually kind of glad it's over. Seriously. Whenever I visit my colleague Victor Lucas, I notice the stack of games next to his television. That stack, he explained, is all the games that Vic intends to get around to finally finishing. It's his to-play pile. Each time I visit lately, the to-play stack has practically become a kind of miniature fortress around him.

Games have been flooding into game stores--and cash has been flooding out of my wallet--at a record pace this year. In the near-constant avalanche of new games, it's easier than ever for smaller, unheralded titles to get buried, never to be heard from again. Which makes me wonder: Is there such a thing as too much to play?

When  I was living in Chicago in the early '90s, I'd take the bus downtown to Michigan Avenue and go to the city's only game store. I'd ask: "Do you have Super Metroid in yet?" The clerk, as usual, would answer: "No."

I would go home again and play more Super R-Type, Super Mario World, or Super Street Fighter II: Turbo (those were super times), until I could practically beat M. Bison while wearing several blindfolds. I squeezed every bit of juice from those cartridges that they had in them. And then I squeezed them some more.

These days? I'm lucky if I get the chance to graze less than a third of all the titles that come across my desk.

Good games are getting lost because of this. Look at our recent Games That Time Forgot feature. There's a long, rich history in this medium of good games falling through the cracks. And it's getting longer and more rich all the time.

So tell me: What great game of 2009 do you think didn't get the credit it deserved? What game do you think will wind up on a future installment of GTTF? Beyond that, what can we do, as an editorial staff, to combat the disposable nature of videogames? 

If it sounds like I've forgotten all about my quest to make good on my promise to complete Final Fantasy XII, GUESS AGAIN, HATERZ.

I actually miss my old friends, Vaan and Penelo and I even miss Kytes a little (but only a little).

My intention was to haul my slimline PS2 back to Vancouver with me, but in my haste, as I did yet another photo-finish airport run (why do I continue to insist on doing this to myself? WHY?), I left the PS2 and my Memory Cards sitting in my office in NYC. Of course, genius that I am, I managed to packed the cords for the PS2, but the PS2 itself got left behind. Tech Tip: PS2 cords are useless without a PS2.

A neighbor has retrieved the Memory Cards for me; I had to explain to her what a "PS2" looked like, in addition to what a "memory card" is. She has put the cards in the mail and addressed them to me. Even as I type this, my saved games--which are, if you think about it, actual memories of actual experiences--are flying through the air towards me. w1ndstorm: They should be passing over your house NOW. Be sure to wave at them as they go by.

I consulted my RPG Sponsor, John Teti, about potentially re-starting FF XII from scratch, playing it on my PS3 (which is backwards compatible).

"Absolutely not," he advised. "You can't start over at this point."

So I wait. I sit at the window, and watch the rain fall in Vancouver.

I eat my soup, and I hope that the whole "neither wind, nor rain, nor sleet" thing applies to Canadian postal workers as well.

Ironically I speak no Russian, so perhaps it is appropriate that I discuss this important topic - though those that have met me will tell you that I barely speak English.

Thinking about it all fills me with conflicting emotions - passion, reason and a sense of self loathing.. much like the characters in a Harlequin Presents romance novel. And oddly enough, the back cover of the novel, Harlequin Presents: By Royal Command, sums up my feelings on No Russian precisely:

Prince of Passion!

The only way Lauren can escape from the war-torn island of Sant'Rosa is to marry Guy, a sexy stranger in a fake ceremony.

But reunited with Guy under safe conditions, Lauren is overwhelmed by the mutual feelings of explosive desire!! And he has news for her: he's really a prince and Lauren is obligated to marry him again -- BY ROYAL COMMAND!

 

Oh no they didn't just describe the controversy of Modern Warfare 2!?! Yes they did.

I was never a fan of the original Assassin's Creed. I stuck with it for awhile. But eventually the game just felt too hinky and too ambitious for its own good. I was lost all the time. I had no sense of direction, or that I was getting anywhere. I shelved it and moved on with my life.

The original sold enough copies to merit a sequel, much to my chagrin. When Ubisoft announced that the sequel was imminent, it was like being told that you have to re-marry your ex.

My response: "I tried to love you once. Now you want me to try to love you again?"

Give me a break.

Last week I loaded up Assassin's II with the lowest of expectations. I didn't know what the hell was going on for the first 40 minutes or so. Kristen Bell is back, playing a character who looks and sounds like Kristen Bell, only now with a weird mouth. And Nolan North--NOT AGAIN!!!!!!!!!--voices the guy who has to go into the Animus. Or whatever it is called. The two of them run around for awhile in some sterile science place, but eventually the game shifts mileus to Florence, Italy during the Renaissance.

And once it does, things get remarkably more bellissimo, not because the gameplay is remarkarbly improved--it's not--but because I found myself for the second time this year totally suckered in by a story (the first time: Uncharted 2 and Nolan North did it to me a few weeks ago). I started to really care about the game's lead, Ezio, and his family. Early petty errands had me tracking down a lothario who'd cheated on my sister, but the game quickly ramps up the drama, and soon I was assassinating a fat dude who'd screwed over my entire family.

Plus there's an air of maturity about the whole operation. There's sex. My own mom tells me to stop chasing "vaginas" all the time! I love it.

The overall experience still feels like it could be tightened and tweaked. And I wish Ubi would ditch the meta-narrative (it's boring and largely pointless). From a PR stand point, Ubi also didn't try to cram the game down our throats with coy teases about THE AMAZING REAL STORY behind the game (the dumb meta narrative), as they did with the first game. They showed me a few trailers, then left me alone, and let me discover the game on my own terms.

Which I did.

Of all the games I've consumed in the past week--Left 4 Dead 2, Modern Warfare 2, New Super Mario Bros., etc.--the one game that I found myself craving more of was Assassin's II.

Weird.

Who knows. After this, maybe I should give my ex a call, see if she wants to give our old, totally crappy relationship another go. 

Let others have their Madden, NBA or Bigs franchises. Tekken games are my sport.

Ever since Tekken 3 in college, I’ve spent hours in the various games’ Practice Modes, working out my own ways to link moves together. That hasn’t changed much over the years. It’s happened that Lei Wu-Long’s become my main guy. My Tiger Woods, my Michael Jordan, if you will.
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Hello there. You might know me as "Chris Buecheler" - Game Trust author. Or you might know me as "CaptainHomeless" - guy who comments on a lot of articles. More likely, you just don't know me. Regardless, I'm here to tell you about a fun new feature on the site: User Ratings.

At Crispy, we have a pretty small development team. I handle the front-end stuff (design, html, css, etc). CG-Gabe is our lead engineer, and we have another engineer, stanblak also working on things. That's it! Yet somehow, we continue to keep the site humming along, and occasionally we even find time to debut great new features. This is one of those times.

You can now go to any game and give it your own Buy/Try/Fry rating -- try one: Arkham Asylum, Fallout 3, Modern Warfare 2 ... not only is your vote recorded, but you get to see it instantly effect the user ratings directly above the voting buttons. I believe that makes us "Web 2.0" ... or maybe you have to have a powder-blue color scheme to qualify for that. I forget.

Anyway, go find some games and rate them. You can also see the ratings on your user profile page, and even in the brand-spanking-new ratings tab in the Crispy HUD (aka: control panel). You can see what your favorite authors have rated on their pages, too. We'll be doing more stuff in the future to highlight the ratings, like showing off the top-rated games, so get started now, and we'll keep you informed as new stuff rolls in!