This list is much longer than I intended, but I do play a lot of games. I was supposed to have one list for everything that happened this year, music movies, games, websites, and so on. I have to do the other things later, though, so here’s the long games list. Let me know what you think of my picks, the full list is after the jump.

Downloadable Game of the Year

Band of Bugs (XBLA)
Band of Bugs is still my top-played Xbox Live Arcade game. I have really enjoyed Fire Emblem in the past, but it is a pretty heavy game. Band of Bugs is the perfect casual turn-based tactical game. It’s colourful and has wonderful variety, a great selection of multiplayer modes and a stellar level designer. Band of Bugs was also the first game to fully utilize the Gamescore policy and add an extra three Achievements with downloadable campaigns, which were also great.

Honourable Mention
Carcassone (XBLA), Super Metroid (VC)
Carcassone is the perfect port of a board game to a video game. Super Metroid finally getting re-released was also a great gaming experience for me, as now my Metroid collection is complete.

More…

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It’s coming up on a year since I got a domain for the site and actually started using a real version of WordPress. My theme has gone through many small edits, but everything remained more or less the same. I don’t really like the theme, I’m caught somewhere between wanting to use someone else’s theme but I don’t like having things on my site not done by me. I’m going to try doing a complete overhaul on the header and bottom bar and try out some new stuff with my Lifestream. I’ve kept the same sort of styling for the posts and meta since what I had on my Blogsome blog, and I like that, so I don’t think I’ll change it. The rest of the theme needs some real flare (and I don’t mean just some Web 2.0 gloss or something) as the design never really became what I wanted it to be. I’ve been especially lazy recently, in terms of updates and in terms of tweaking the styling. Hopefully actually posting this will remind me to work on this.

I don’t really have anything exciting to write about (or, rather, I don’t have the desire to sit here and type for that long right now) so I’ll say happy New Year’s, though hopefully I’ll come back and write about some of the cool new games I got before then.

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Back to the regular programming. I’ve met my goal of getting 10,000 Gamerscore within a year of acquiring my Xbox 360 console. I was actually hoping for a bit more of a challenge to hit it, but borrowing BioShock and then getting The Orange Box, Assassin’s Creed and now Mass Effect made it easy. I’ve still got a ton to do on Assassin’s Creed, but Mass Effect is so captivating. I’ve swayed at times since some of Mass Effect’s side quests get a little repetitive, but the story really gets involving and the conversation is great. I actually love the combat, too, but I know some people don’t like it as much as I do. If you are looking for a 3rd person shooter, it’s not Mass Effect. It’s an RPG despite how it was hyped. Enough of that, though, I’ll finish writing about in a different post, I’m going to need a whole one.

I’m checking out the features of the new 360 Dash update, I’m really excited about some of the coming elements. Getting Windows Live Messenger is nice, it was annoying to have it blocked all this time. And, it’s good to see that child accounts can be associated to a new Live ID or upgraded if the user is over 18 now. That won’t apply to me for a year, not that I’m too bothered. I’d rather keep my account associated with my current email address than create a new ID with false information just for the sake of it.

In other Dashboard related news, Canada and Europe will not be getting the Video Marketplace for quite a while, rather than on Tuesday, as many people, including myself, thought. This is annoying. I know there are issues to get around, but if they’ve announced both, they must have at least a bit of content to launch with. Seeing as the US Video Store (or whatever they’re changing the name to…) is getting skinned differently, it seems like the perfect time to add it to the other districts, too. Speaking of things not coming to Canada, what the heck? About a month ago, I was sure Zune 2 would come here. Get your act together, Zune team, I really, really want a Zune. Seriously.

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