3DS

How will this week's releases fare? Kingdoms of Amalur headlines this week's slate of new releases, which is solid for a second consecutive week after a mostly dormant month of January. Early reviews have been quite positive for the game, which would be a boon to Electronic Arts. The Darkness II hits this week as well, although it seems to be flying under the radar a bit.

So, used versus new... It's a huge topic to begin with, and it's only gotten more complicated due to the various tricks made possible by online connections. Thanks to these "innovations", something that has never been black-and-white to start with is now more grey than it's ever been. That said, let me try to pick apart the various strands of the problem as I see them, one by one.

Combining the Best of the Past and the Present

HIGH Finishing a particularly nasty bit of platforming in the last level.

LOW Not being able to see Rayman when the screen zooms out.

WTF Disco dancing with the main villain for absolutely no reason.

January has flown by and it's time for the first NPD predictions column of the year.

GameStop stock values are in the midst of a four-day losing streak, as shares have fallen from $25.00 on January 25th to $23.36 at the closing bell today. It's likely that any number of factors could be attributed to the slump. Maybe there's a fear that sales are weak after the holidays. Maybe there's some basic profit-taking going on. It's hard to really pinpoint anything.

I'm still trying to complete Yakuza 3 before anything big comes in for review, and I'm almost done. If my guess is correct, there are only one or two chapters left, so I'm hoping to wrap it up tomorrow. I've got to say, out of the three Yakuza titles I've played so far, this one has definitely been the weakest.

Surely we can't find anything negative to say about Rayman Origins, right? Errrrr.... Plus the truly uncanny X-Men Destiny (why hast though forsaken me, Denis Dyack?) and our take on whether games journalists should ever write for free. Featuring Chi Kong Lui, Brad Gallaway, Mike Bracken, Richard Naik, and Tim "Quack" Spaeth.

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Have you always wanted to take Ninja Gaiden's Ryu through the worlds of Super Mario Bros.? Wait, really? You have? Or how about playing as Link from The Legend of Zelda? You've wanted to do that too? Okay, well, now you can... online.

Software sales were the highlight of November's NPD report. Strong Year Over Year (YOY) comparisons were the result of one of the strongest months of software releases in recent memory.

So for the last couple of months (and especially over the last few days) there's been a resurgence of "no one should ever write for free, ever, never never" among freelance games writers and paid career professionals. As someone who takes games writing very seriously and who's also worked as a mostly-unpaid-but-not-always reviewer for the last twelve years, I wanted to take a few minutes and share my thoughts on the subject.