I’m generally not much of a gambler, but around this time of year that changes for me, as my sport of choice (NHL Hockey — I am Canadian after all), gets down to the wire, and the playoffs soon begin. Also, one in awhile I allow myself to indulge in a little online poker just for fun (never more than I can afford, of course).

I had been looking for a good place online to place bets, and play a few hands of poker as well. However, as you may be aware, there are many online betting portals available, and it can be hard to know which ones offer the best bonuses, as well as high pay out rates.

Thankfully, I came across a good website which provides casino and betting data in an easy to read table format. You can read more about the website at bestusaonlinecasinos.org, and then find the best betting portal for your needs, if you’re game. All of the websites listed are trustworthy and will pay out your winnings. Also, they all accept US players, which is important as I know a few of my American friends have had trouble finding quality online casinos to enjoy. So, if you’re looking to place some sports bets, or play a few hands online, it’s a good website to check out.

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'Keeping good Company with a Bad crowd'



Hello endearing fans and welcome to Bad Company... Or is it really good
company if you are a criminal? I'll never know. Anyway; Rainbow Six, a
glorifyed SWAT team- uh sorry; Bad Company a company of only four soldiers
that have commited some crimes, and are instead of being sent to prison
transferred into outfit. And also welcome back to Bobfish and myself
after our very very very (well, my) very log hiatus. Log hiatus? I mean Long
hitus, uh a log hit us, uhm, no! A LONG HIATUS.... Problems with family, and
general low-ness of funds pertain to my lack of reviewing top-line and
new-released games, besides Killzone 2 which I hope to review as soon as I
get my PS3 joypad back to play the singleplayer, instead of slugging away on
online games.



Anyway lets get back to what you came here for; Rainbow Six Vegas. Gah not
again- Battlefield: Bad Company.



This is another excellent entrence, both stylisticly, and humourously, into
the Battlefield series. And the first, as I am aware, to contain an actual
character driven storyline. Anyway, I am going to keep this review short and
as sweet as possible until I get used to writing reviews again. So here is
all the important stuff.



Battlefield Bad Company puts you in the clean smelling (I wonder if he
uses air freshner) boots of Preston Marlow, or is that Marlow Preston,
I've never quite figured it out. Anyway you are embodied within this
character who has commited a crime, though none are mentioned
specifically, which has always left me wondering what Preston did to
get this piss-end of nowhere assignment to B company. Anyway, there
are three other members of Marlows' squad; Sarge, (one bad ass talkin'
mo-fo!) their leader; Sweetwater, the geeky glasses guy (you always
NEED one in squads to make fun of); and lastly Haggard, the demonic
creature that can turn into a dragon and burn everything in sight, and
is the whole idea behind the gold, wait... Demonic creature? Oops I
mean the explosives NUTT JOB who is the one who begins the whole mess
with the gold by finding some on the body of the Mercenaries they had
been fighting in the first mission.



The narrative through-out the extremely solid plot, yet hilariously
out proportioned by the characters themselved; is steady, humourous,
and above all else- straight out crazy; just what you would expect
from a platoon of Murdoch's from the A-team. Besides some of the
animation, especially during the beginning and the end of a mission
are very well animated, with Haggard, and Sweetwater playing Rock
Paper Scissors with ICBM's in the background in one scene. Top class! As
this is from Electronic Arts, I have in recent years lost a hell of a
lot of weight... uh... confidence in the company especially after four
god awful Bond Games, many rushed and underwhelming Soccer games, and
blatant boring titles, I had almost given up. Then this rears its
pretty head along with the excellent Burnout Paradise (expect review
soon) and 'wow!' the brilliance of EA is back, and apart from a half
arsed effort by Pandemic for Mercenaries, is better than ever.



The Graphics on BC are extremely good and does the job that the game
was designed for. The DICE engine that powers the game is
exceptionally good with creating realism to explosions, especially
their sounds when they are far away. The sound is delayed and arrives
like a thunder clap! Pretty ace. And the character detail is rather
good which leads me to believe that a lot of work went into designing
the protagonists. The fine detail on the soldiers uniforms is pretty
well rendered. And the gameplay, while at first is no Call of Zombies:
Nach der Untoten; it is certainly second nature and pretty easyto
grasp after a few missions.



My favorite weapon was this computer thingy that could call in
artillery strikes on ememy positions. Ha! Bombed by their own people.
The vehical combat, especially when tanks are involved, is totally
worth the game alone, which also boasts semi-destructable
environments.



Verdict: Pick up this game for a huge laugh at the stupid humor and
compelling story and with a very decent online mode too, if you
haven't played the demo yet; you've missed so much already. Only
deterrance is the crack shot enemy NPC's especially on the harder
difficulities. Definately worth getting for all those trophies. And
the one that made me laugh was a trophy for knocking down a load of
trees in a helicopter. I totally didn't know I'd get it, but those
trees.... those horribly evil; helicopter destroying trees. *yawn* All
in all; a damn good ride. And with lovable characters you can't go
wrong. Roll on Bad Company 2. Ho-rah!!



The Score:

Graphics- 7.5 (pretty damn good!)
Gameplay- 8
Sound Design- 8.5 (blam! boooshk!)
Plot/Story- 8 (oh so funny, you capatalist Pigs!)
Replayability- 8 (getting all the gold is fun!)

Final Score- 8 (Bronze Award)

Turned out the review wasn't the 'bare necessities' hahaha!

-Your friendly neighbourhood Jedireaper.

--
Join www.killermovies.com/forums/ and discover a new world of online
socialising. From discussions about comics, books, games, Star Wars
and Trek, and films to Role
Playing in any manner of variety. There is something for everybody.

Hope to see you there..

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At first glance you would think that it is a child’s game but I personally enjoyed playing it. When you start off you choose your name, the town where you live a name and set the date and time and then it cuts to your journey to the town. Once you arrive you have a choice of 4 or 5 different houses to choose from.

Once established you have free roam of the town and you can interact with the town’s folk that already live there and they will help you and give you helpful hints and tips throughout the game. You start out with a clothes shop (where you can buy clothes and make your own designs), newsagents type shop (where you can buy and sell things you want and don’t want), museum (where you can donate things you find such as fossils, fish and insects, look at the stars and have a coffee down stairs.) and a town hall (where you can pay off your house, change certain things in the town and send and receive mail to the town folk or even your friends).

It is a great game to waste time with or even catch up with your friends from all over the world via the Wii Internet connection, all you do is go to the towns gate and add your friends ‘friend code’ and you will receive a code yourself which you give to your friend and get them to add you so you can both send mail to each other, talk to each other with the speaker and even visit each others towns where you can collect different fruit off the trees and plant them in your own town, go shopping together or just generally help out and have fun.

I really enjoy playing it as there is so much to do and they even celebrate days like we do i.e. Halloween you can go around trick or treating, they have a fireworks display on both bonfire night and New Years Eve. Also they have flea markets on set days (once a month I think) where you can go in the towns folk houses and see if there is anything which you would like to buy and in turn they come to you and you can sell anything which you don’t like for how much you like.

Overall a very enjoyable game for all ages.

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UNFORTUNATELY MY DVD-encoder is completely beyond the meager electronics skills of this wayward games reviewer, but I’ve never been one to let something that simple sway me from my life’s…uhm, something other or other. Whatever, the point is, it’s been a while since I last wrote anything even remotely like a review. The itch has struck again, so I apologise for the pictures being a mixture of Google supplied and digital camera snaps of my TV screen. But at least I’m back on form with my very first X-Box 360 review.

Alas, I picked a rather…colourful game for my first choice. Regular readers will remember that I dabbled with Alone in the Dark on the Nintendo Wii some months ago. I was…unimpressed for the most part but allowed a lot of slack with the flakey gameplay given the overall quality of the story and the experience as a whole.

Sadly, the “next gen” version of the game does not hold even such a complimentary standing as that. The story is, as with the Wii, outstanding, and extremely well scripted. For the most part t’s identical to the Wii, with only some minor differences apart from the ending which is both more and less open at the same time. Mostly in so far as there are two which are dependent on whether or not you pop some lead (no that isn’t a euphamism) in Sarah’s skull or not.

Unfortunately however, even the outstanding plot and scripting, and the addition of a mostly open environment (almost the entirety of New York’s Central Park) do little to make this game anything more than a passable few days. Though it does give you an easy 1000 points for your gamerscore. Not much more than twelve hours of gameplay once you knuckle down to it. Though be warned, the Handyman Carnby achievement can be a real bugger to get.

The control scheme is the real killer for this game. Especially with the driving sections. Though they do make the game flow better, allowing you to move from one location to another much faster than on foot, and without having to worry overly much about the monsters scattered around the area. Unfortunately, the cars are so gruellingly painful to control that it almost kills the game entirely. A number of occasions I came very close to losing all patience and just packing it in. But I persevered, and all I can say is that it was an overall pretty “meh” experience.

Worth looking through for the plot, but not much else. Something to pick up cheap, or rent as I did.

Graphics: 8/10
Gameplay: 4/10
Audio/Music: 8/10
Plot/Scripting: 9/10
Overall: 5/10

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I’ve been looking to cut down on costs over the last few months, and one thing I realized is that my phone bills are really through the roof — we’re talking almost a couple of hundred dollars a month (thanks in large part to long distance calling). Currently, I have both a land line and a cellphone, but have been considering making the switch over to a VOIP based phone system.

To be honest, up until a few days ago I didn’t really know much about the different VOIP options available to me, until I checked out an excellent page on VOIP Reviews. Now I realize how reliable the service can be, and how much money I will be saving once I make the switch. Anyhow, because so many folks are experiencing money troubles during this economic downturn, I thought that some of you may be interested in checking out the many cheaper VOIP phone alternatives available.

You can read VOIP reviews and get the best DSL service from Spectrotel. You can also find Spectrotel’s profile here.

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