On the afternoon of June 26, 2006, I sent my laptop in for repair. You may be wondering, "what does that have to do with anything?", to which I would matter-of-factly respond, "it has everything to do with everything". You see, I spend a great deal of time perusing the internet, much more so than I do playing games, and with my Mac out of the picture, I was lost. I went as far as to install Windows Vista on my PC, but the entertainment value in that was pretty minimal. I thought I'd use this chance to catch up on some games. Still impressed with my DS Lite, I picked up Metroid Prime Hunters. Yeah, Yeah, I know. I wrote the last column on a Metroid game, but I've wanted this one for a while.

I'm sad to say this game disappointed me. From the moment I started it up and the menu failed to wow me with visual aesthetic or awesome title screen music, I knew this game wasn't going to be as good as my high standards had hoped for. Since I don't have a router capable of playing on WiFi Connection (funny how Xbox Live works fine), I was only interested in the single player game. I'm not interested, however, in the lame bounty hunters and boring level design. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with this game, it just fails to keep my attention. I don't care about it enough to play it; it's not very exciting, and it really doesn't feel like Metroid to me at all. As I said, I couldn't try out the multiplayer modes with real people, but I did play a few rounds with bots. It's actually quite featured, and there's an impressive amount of options for a portable FPS. The controls work well and I could see the online mode being pretty fun, but then again I'd much, much rather play Halo 2 on Xbox Live. When was the last time I wanted to play an online first person shooter when I wasn't at home, and also in a WFC-compatible hotspot? The answer is, obviously, never.

After my short-lived stint with Hunters, my laptop returned and I was quite content not playing any of the expensive gaming machines I've spent (wasted?) my money on. A few days ago, however, I was coaxed into buying Table Tennis for Xbox 360. This, my friends, is one of those games that's simply fun to play. It's extremely polished, looks absolutely beautiful, and is so simple yet complex. Who would have thought a game made by Rockstar could be so finely-tuned? From the music to the precise controls to the ultra-realistic animation, this $40 gem is one of the best gaming experiences I've had in a while. It's a little limited on options -- tournament, exhibition, and training, plus online play -- but it's one of those games you'll play out of pure enjoyment, not just to get to the next level or unlock something. It's also a game that you can play online with a complete stranger and still have a great time. If you get sick of the maddeningly cheap AI, find a quick match online and play someone with their own style. I was truly enjoying this game until last night, when I booted up my 360 and the unthinkable happened: the three red rings of certain doom.

This means hardware failure. Death. I tried unplugging everything, including my hard drive, but my system was toast. Now, I treat my 360 well -- it has plenty of ventilation and the massive power brick is pretty much suspended in mid-air -- so there's no reason for my console to stop working. I go to sleep, dream of working 360 goodness, and wake up to find my console still very much broken. Of course, I'm out of the warranty period. The friendly woman on 1 800 4 MY XBOX cheeringly told me I could have it repaired for $130 (she also told me that if the date and time on the system was wrong, the hardware might fail, so I should check to see if it was correct. This is 100% unhelpful when I am unable to turn my system on. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this customer service rep doesn't know how to make grilled cheese, let alone help me with my 360 woes). I said no thanks. I understand that us early adaptors are subject to some sort of ridicule when it comes to things like this, but there's pretty much no excuse for what appears to be a very widespread problem. And they have the audacity to charge me $130 for a hardware defect that's not my fault? I don't think so. What I did instead is probably (definitely) illegal so I won't say it, but i'll give you a one-word hint: return. Now I have a newer, hopefully non-piece-of-crap, console. With no cost, no downtime. If this taught me anything, it's to avoid PS3 at launch. If it's anything like 360's, it won't even be worth it to hop on the train so early, anyway.