::ahem::

Right, videogames. So, whether you’re looking to show off your gaming accomplishments, keep track of your massive videogame collection, or find a little encouragement to play the games you’ve been ignoring, The Backloggery is the place for you.

The Backloggery is a website where you can create organized lists of every videogame you own (or have ever played, for that matter), keep track of the games you’re currently playing, record your total progress through your entire game library, rate the games you’ve played, and publicize any incredible accomplishments you’ve made. How many achievements have you gotten across all the games in The Orange Box? Do you actually own a Phillips CD-i? Did you ever bother to beat E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial? I mean, like, win the game, not smash the cartridge with a club.

The Backloggery has some neat bonus features, like a Fortune Cookie option that allows indecisive gamers to have the site randomly select a game from their backlog to play. Obey the cookie. You can customize things like the color scheme and banner of your Backloggery page, allowing you to create the shrine of videogame awesomeness that you’ve always wanted for yourself. Furthermore, you can make friends—well, I dunno about you, personally, but the option is available—and leave comments on people’s pages, which I think is an incredibly innovative idea that’s going to revolutionize the Internet.

G’head; check out www.backloggery.com and give it a try! I encourage you to check out my Backloggery as well, because getting more friends is the main reason I wrote this post. Erm…I mean, uh, I’m curious to know what kinds of games you pl—nah, I’m just a total sellout and want more friends.

Then Nintendo announced this. I’m not going into full detail on what happened that day, but the phrases “temporary belief in God again,” “blown mind” and “silent orgasm” applied.

Metroid Prime Trilogy is a compilation disc of all three titles in the Metroid Prime series: 2002’s Metroid Prime, 2004’s Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, both from the GameCube era, and 2008’s Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. It takes the GameCube titles, and adds onto them the motion control featured in Corruption, as well as some graphical upgrades and a few more minor details. To put this in perspective, this is like taking your beloved puppy from your childhood that died when you entered middle school, and finding that little Fido has come back to life, only now he can talk, do your ENG 210 homework, clean your dorm room, and convince any woman to give you a chance at love. It’s that good.

I'd go for the Falcon Punch joke, but there's enough love for other franchises already here.

The Metroid titles under the Prime subtitle form one large narrative taking place between the original NES title and the Game Boy sequel Metroid 2: Return of Samus, revolving around the mysterious material known as Phazon, and how it is beginning to warp and change the universe. Metroid Prime takes us to Tallon IV, a world once populated by the birdlike race that took in series protagonist Samus Aran when she was an orphaned child, now filled with deadly creatures, long-deserted ruins, and labs for Space Pirates. Metroid Prime 2 investigates the planet Aether, stuck in a war with a parallel-dimension “dark” version of itself, brought on after a Phazon asteroid collided with the planet. Metroid Prime 3 then looks to tie these story arcs together in one gigantic, galaxy-wide affair as Samus faces her inner demons manifested.

The story throughout the Prime series is actually a fairly optional experience early on. All three games make use of a Scan Visor in order for Samus to learn more about her surroundings, giving us more infomation about the plot as it’s told, creatures encountered, or the myths and lore of the precursor civilizations of the worlds. In the first game, there is not a single line of dialogue given, aside from some messages from the ship. Prime 2 has several cutscenes with some dialog from time to time, during Samus’s interactions with the fallen Luminoth race. Prime 3 stepped the production and storytelling up to a grander scale, however, sporting a quaint-sized supporting cast, and featuring plenty of spoken dialogue to go around.

The best reason to explain the shift in this has a lot to do with the feeling of truly being alone as you progress through the series. Upon landing on Tallon IV in Prime 1, Samus truly looks a tad frightened landing on a unknown world, with not a soul around to communicate with. Prime 2 has some members of the nearly extinct Luminoth tribe around for exposition, but Prime 3 has a bigger focus on the Galactic Federation we have heard so much about in the backstory of the series, but never actually seen in the series proper until that game’s release. It’s a nice touch, moving through the series and seeing the scope of the events play out as the trilogy draws closer and closer to its explosive finale.

On a side note, what the hell does "double pits to chesty" mean? I don't understand you, Axe Body Spray.

What’s really on display here is the absolutely perfect control scheme given. The GameCube versions of the first two games scoped out the GameCube controller very well, but the jump to the Wii is absolutely flawless. The aim-and-shoot nature goes off without a hitch, and the button placement for jumping, switching visors and beams, and swapping into the morph ball becomes second nature after a few hours into the game. All three games are mapped the same, so switching from one game to another is easy and fluent. If you can play one title, you can play them all. The biggest gripe I can give is that in order to turn, you have to point the Wii remote to the side of the screen, and there’s a few times where I’d point my controller too far and stop turning completely. Add in the pain of holding your arm up for extended periods of time, and you meet the same failings that every Wii shooter has. But none of them come close to the perfection that Metroid has made.

Both of the GameCube titles got a nice graphical touch-up from their original versions, but really, it’s barely noticeable. The games are all simply beautiful. The planets are all so vibrant and detailed. Water flows through the world, lighting from Samus’s beam affects the world around it, and the creatures in every world are so exotic and terrifying. Every nook and cranny of Samus’s universe is full of eerie atmosphere that truly puts it in a league of its own. I’ve never been more impressed with the vistas of a game until BioShock, five years after Prime 1.

Another important add-on to Prime 1 and 2 is the addition of the rewards system featured in the third game. Artwork, movies and plenty of bonuses are available for all three games. There’s one interesting bonus to note, and that’s the inclusion of unlocking the Fusion Suit from Metroid Fusion in Prime 1. In the original game, this could only be unlocked by connecting a Game Boy Advance with a cleared Metroid Fusion game to a GameCube running Metroid Prime. It’s a nice callback to the struggles Nintendo had with its very expensive system of GCN/GBA connectivity. Something I might consider revisiting myself sometime soon…

One more feature thrown in is the inclusion of Metroid Prime 2’s multiplayer mode. It’s just as fun as it was in the original game…but it’s also as forgettable. Don’t look to this game for party play. The Wii has plenty of other titles for that.

It’s really a wonder to me if anyone who owned a GameCube passed up on either of the two original masterpieces. All three games are single-player gaming at its best. There’s so much in each game to explore. Power-ups to obtain, creatures and lore to scan—so much to love about it. This re-release is that one chance to truly enjoy the fruits of this industry’s labor, and you better get it fast. It’s going out of print. It’s three nearly perfect games, packed in a sleek metal case, with a very awesome art book, and so much joy to be found.

Buy this game, or I’ll come to your house and burn your Modern Warfare 2 disc. And then your X-Men comics collection. I’ll do it. Don’t tempt me.

The Xbox 360 has been alive and kicking for over two years now since November 2005. Yes, it’s really been that long. That’s a lot of titles, and there have been more than a couple of misfires. It happens, but the key to life is knowing when not to step on a landmine, or, in this case, when not to drop your hard-earned cash on a developer’s sorry ass attempt at entertaining you (or a console that has a replacement rate higher than 16+%). So this article is for you. Here are the top ten Xbox 360 games since the console was released. This is your guide to cutting the crap and sticking to the pure essentials before you know full well what a “red ring of death” truly means. This is the measure of your game-itude, as all 10 of these titles should be on your shelf with no exceptions. Unless you have no thumbs—I guess that’s an exception.

How to play: Grab a piece of paper and a pencil. No, a pen will not work, because you’ll make mistakes. Below the title of the game will be point totals. If you own the game listed above, you’ll gain plus points. If you don’t own the game, you’re missing out, lunchbox, and you lose points.

You start with +50 points of integrity because you’re reading this article.

Halo 3

Own: +50

Don’t Own: -45

Why You Should Own It: Because it’s a flagship of the system, the best Halo game available, and the best FPS available. Seriously, if you don’t own this, why do you even own a 360?

Own: +45

Don’t Own: -40

Why You Should Own It: For crying out loud! It’s Gears of War!

The Orange Box

Own: +45

Don’t Own: -40

Why You Should Own It: Portal. If not Portal, then Team Fortress 2. If not either of those, then there is Half-Life 2. There is enough to do in The Orange Box that you can’t justify NOT spending the money to own it.

Own: +40

Don’t Own: -35 (See Below)

Why You Should Own It: Who doesn’t want to be a rock star? This is as close as it gets and it takes Guitar Hero to the next level. This title also gives us one of the greatest party games on the 360 to date, and it will probably make you a better drummer. Only -15 if you have no friends or are too poor to drop $170 on the hardware.

Assassin’s Creed

Own: +35

Don’t Own: -30

Why You Should Own It: Fantastic graphics, excellent controls, and perfect sound design supporting one of the most immersive worlds in a videogame to date. You could just walk around town or rooftops and this game would still be awesome, but you kill people, too! Plus, Altair is the ultimate assassin. Even the player can’t trust him.

How’re you doing over there? Are you nothing but a walking, talking bag of guts and stuff, or are you a player? You have a lowest possible score of -140 points up to a maximum value of 109 in hexadecimal (that’s 265 to you), but we’re not done, sucka! We’ve got five more titles to go, but they’re all of lower point values, so if you have -140 points right now, maybe you should go read Versus Mode. You gain+5 points if you already read that article. If not, do it now and you’ll still get the five points. You would vote for me if you could, right? Keep that in mind for the future….

Own: +35

Don’t Own: -30

Why You Should Own It: Incredible atmosphere, visuals, and story—it’s as much fun to watch as it is to play. Plus, you start off the game by shooting lightning from your hand. Next to breathing fire, this is probably the most coveted supernatural ability. If you aren’t spooked by the Big Daddys and the Little Sisters, you have a spine made of steel.

Perfect Dark Zero

Own: +30

Don’t Own: -25 (See Below)

Why You Should Own It: A high-profile launch title for the 360, PDZ still holds up to the current games of the same genre. This title includes an excellent soundtrack, high-quality graphics, a wide variety of multiplayer options and the return of sexy redheaded bounty hunter Joanna Dark. Mmmmm. Only -10 points if you didn’t play Perfect Dark on the N64 and didn’t realize this was going to be awesome.

Own: +20

Don’t Own: -10

Why You Should Own It: Mexico City or Las Vegas—at their core, they’re the same game. It just depends on whether you run around in a casino or in a shanty town. Intense tactical action in a realistic and very well-rendered setting. Both games are high-quality titles, even though everyone is probably sick of Tom Clancy whoring his name out to an aging franchise. Still, there is reason enough to have one of these on your shelf.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Own: +15

Don’t Own: -10

Why You Should Own It: Call of Duty is a series that keeps getting better with age, as each sequel takes the best from the previous title and improves upon it. Culminating in COD4, you have one of the best and most balanced first-person shooters on the 360 with excellent multiplayer options. This series doesn’t quite have the hook of other FPS games, but it’s still highly enjoyable and worth owning.

Own: +15

Don’t Own: -15 (See Below)

Why You Should Own It: A giant world full of immersive characters that’s beautiful and well designed. Oblivion is probably one of the best RPGs available with a perfect 10 in the replay category, and it contains a level of intrigue and intuitiveness that makes the game accessible to those who would not normally pick up an RPG. You could literally play this game for hundreds of hours. Only -5 if you’re playing something like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XI and don’t have the time to devote to an RPG of this scale.

Are you ready to receive your measure as a human being? Well, not so fast, Spunky. There are some final calculations to make. If you own any of the games below, no points are lost or added. These games are good filler to round out your collection, but none of them are must-haves.

Fillers: Burnout Paradise, Call of Duty 2 or 3, Dead or Alive 4, Dead Rising, Eternal Sonata, F.E.A.R., Guitar Hero 2, Guitar Hero 3, Kameo: Elements of Power, Mass Effect, The Darkness, Viva Piñata.

Any other game you own, -4 points.

Tally up all your points and read an arbitrary description of yourself based on even more arbitrary criteria!

-230 or less: Athletic Alpha Male/Female. You are probably the type of person who goes outside and remembers what sun light looks like. In fact, you probably see the sun on a daily basis and have a skin color other than white if you’re Caucasian. Have fun with your real life, because my videogame life is far more interesting than yours because I blow up stuff.

-230 to -100: Closet Gamer. You are still an athletic alpha male or female as described above, but family pressure and most likely peer pressure has prevented you from really diving deep into the gamer life style. You secretly long for nights spent eating cold pizza and drinking Monster energy drinks whilst you play Halo 3 online. You need this article to point out the titles you should have picked up in the first place, because you have no gamer friends to tell you which ones you should own.

-99 to 100: Beta Male/Female. Alphas run the world, but it’s built on the backs of the beta. That’s your lot in life. Sorry. You’re neither a gamer nor an alpha, hopelessly mediocre in both realms.

100 to 200: Respectable 360 Owner. So you know which titles to pick up, and you’ve followed the classics. You may have gotten a 360 on or around the launch date, and really, I say, good for you. You’ve probably had to replace or repair the damn thing at least once and I feel for you on that. Not since Microsoft entered the console world has baloney like that happened, but here you are and you’re still with it.

201 to 380: Microsoft Fan Boy/Girl. You’re a gamer. You probably split your time between 360 titles and PC games with a lean toward the 360. You may have even done something like connect your computer to your 360 to run media through it. That’s pretty hardcore. You definitely own an Xbox Live headset, and probably date infrequently.

380: BIG FRICKIN’ JERK. The only way you could have gotten this score is to have all of these top ten games, no point loss for crappy titles, but neglected to read Versus Mode even though I specifically asked you to do it. You know what? I don’t even care if you didn’t read Versus Mode, so long as you promise to vote for me if ever such a thing became available, but you won’t do that, will you? You make me sick. You’re dead to me.

390 or more: Mathematical Powerhouse. You have found some way to add numbers in such a way that their sum is greater than their actual possible sum. Try again, moron.