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.

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I was not originally expecting to ever get that much time with Guitar Hero III other than what I played with my friend who got it. He brought it over earlier in the week, we finished almost all of co-op in one go. Speaking of which, all the co-op Achievements are glitched, so you can only get them if you're player one, meaning you'll have to do everything over twice with your friend unless team Not Harmonix gets their act together. If you know what I've been saying about Guitar Hero III, you'll know that last statement isn't fair. I've decided that Rock Band will be better long ago. I have to say, the more time I'm putting into the latest installment of the Guitar Hero franchise, though, I'm finding new things I like and new thing I don't. Regardless, it is nice to get to play it. My sister had gotten so into Guitar Hero II that she basically decided she was going to get it as soon as I said I was taking the Harmonix path. At first I didn't really care, but I found myself getting excited as the weekend drew close. Sarah picked up the game Friday and we've both spent some time rocking out on career and co-op. More impressions follow.

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I suppose that if it had to happen, this was the best time. My Xbox 360 seems to be on the verge of eating dirt, so to speak. It started about a two month ago. I had to move my 360 to our basement because it was getting too hot upstairs. Nothing happened right away, but eventually I got a very infrequent game freeze. I didn't think anything of it, I had the 360 sitting right next to the TV with the power brick behind it, all in a tight space. I took the 360 out of the slot to let it cool down and moved it back upstairs. I missed the HD picture and it wasn't so warm then, anyways. The problems went away, basically. I've only ever had a few freezes with the console, but all of them seem justified. Since returning from holiday, though, my 360 can't play more than ten, twenty minutes, if that. I don't know why it's happened now, I unplugged both my Wii and 360 before we left, basically the only thing running was the DVR. The last time I could even load a game was getting two playthroughs of Jessica on Hard mode in Guitar Hero II. Luckily, I beat my old highscore and got five stars, which I promptly added to cherrypie. (More on that later in another post, maybe.) So, yesterday I was looking for fixes, even temporary ones. My cousins are coming over tomorrow and I'd like to have it running as they are fairly new Guitar Hero fans. I came across a number of things that basically all pointed to letting the console, and, more specifically, the power brick, breathe. Nothing worked, in fact, once I moved every thing, I got the Red Ring 'o Death as soon as I turned the console on this morning. I tried numerous combinations, hard drive in and out, no AV cables, even the towel trick. Nothing has worked. I was actually riding on the towel trick or something else working, I wrote the first half of this post earlier, hoping I could come back and say "And here's how I fixed it."

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