In case you missed it, you can see the clues and the games to which they actually referred after the jump. 

1. Romp through the garden with your pets. – Littlest Pet Shop, DS

2. A PS3 game that dreams are made of. – Eternal Sonata, PS3

3. This should hold you over on Xbox 360 until Final Fantasy XIII releases. – The Last Remnant, 360

4. A kid named Ben + Aliens + Wii = Bensational! – Ben 10 Alien Force, Wii

5. Slimy and award-winning – what else would a PC owner want? – World of Goo, PC

6. An alternative to No Child Left Behind. – Left 4 Dead Imagine Teacher, DS

7. Get bonus goodies with this radiant crescent. – Luminous Arc 2, DS

  

If that’s not enough incentive for you to rush to your nearest Burger King, there is actually one other good reason for you to buy a Wii toy.  It comes with a five dollar coupon code you can use at www.eastore.com towards the Wii games “Boom Blox” or “Boogie Super Star”.  The code is: EABK47381.  There’s a different five dollar coupon code you can use towards the Wii game “Littlest Pet Shop”  That code is: HASBRO.  You know your kid sister will love it.

Foolishly, the free Gears 2 launch gift I chose was the Remote Control Centaur Tank that Best Buy was handing out.  The tank looks pretty good, but its performance is awful.  With brand new batteries, the thing can barely roll on a completely flat, hard surface.  It’s junk as a toy, but decent as something that sits on a shelf.  Here’s hoping that when Microsoft brainstorms on the free Gears of War 3 launch gift, they focus on form and abandon any kind of function.

So how much less money do you get when you sell your used game at GameStop than when you sell it somewhere else?  That’s what my investigation sought to discover.  I took four used games, at least one from each console, and started making calls and surfing the web.  Find out what I found out after the break.

The four used games I priced for the investigation were Grand Theft Auto IV for the Xbox 360, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for the Wii, Dead Space for the PS3, and Little Big Planet for the PS3.  I called my local GameStop, and consulted Gamestop.com for current prices.  For price comparison, I consulted Amazon.com and Ebay.com within minutes of getting the GameStop price quote.  Here are the results:  

Grand Theft Auto IV Xbox 360 – GameStop pays $8.40 for this game.  Amazon pays at least $20.66 for this game.  Ebay pays more than $20.00 for this game.  

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Wii – GameStop pays $18.00 for this game.  Amazon pays at least $37.74 for this game.  Ebay pays between $35.00 and $40.00 for this game. 

Little Big Planet PS3 – GameStop pays $20.00 for this game.  Amazon pays at least $52.00 for this game.  Ebay pays at least $50.00 for this game (excluding the “rare” recalled version scam). 

Dead Space PS3 – GameStop pays $20.20 for this game.  Amazon pays at least $44.99 for this game.  Ebay pays more than $40.00 for this game. 

So there it is. It would seem you never get a fair deal selling your used games at GameStop.  Keep in mind that the GameStop prices mentioned are for selling your used games, not trading your used games.  When you trade there for store credit, you get 20% more than the mentioned price for your used games.  Even with that 20% though, you’re still not getting as much as you would for selling elsewhere.  20% extra on the Dead Space example would amount to just $25.25 in trade in credit, still far below Amazon and Ebay prices.  And remember, trade in credit isn’t as good as cash because you’re limited in where and how you can spend it.

To be fair, it should also be mentioned that selling used games at GameStop is faster, and less of a hassle than selling them on Amazon or Ebay.  Sometimes the instant gratification might be worth getting a lot less money.  Just don’t go in thinking you’re going to get market value.

It might have gone on like this indefinitely, but fortunately something intervened to break me out of my Halo hypnosis.  It wasn’t the hand of God that awakened me from my stupor, but rather, a new message that appeared in my 360 mailbox.  ”You’ve got some Halo skills,” the message said.  ”Come join our competitive Halo 3 league,” the message said.  I actually considered joining up.  Instead, I woke up.  I went out and bought a copy of Dead Space.  And I’m proud to say that I am well into the second chapter.

Wake up fellow Haloholics!  The best games of the year are upon us!  It’s time to hang up our battle rifles and move on.  See the twelve steps to beating your Halo addiction after the break.

Haloholics Anonymous 12 Step Plan

1.  We admit we are powerless over Halo – that our lives have become unmanageable.

2.  We come to believe that a Power greater than Master Chief can restore our sanity.

3.  We make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft, among other gaming gods, as we understand them.

4.  We make a searching and fearless inventory of the gaming industry.

5.  We admit to our chosen gaming god, to ourselves, and to another gamer the exact nature of our wrongs.

6.  We are entirely ready to have the gaming industry remove all of these defects of character.

7.  We humbly ask Gamestop, Gamefly, or another video game outlet to remove our shortcomings.

8.  We make a list of the games we have not played, and become willing to play them all.

9.  We make direct amends to other gamers wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or other gamers.

10.   We continue to take a regular inventory of the weekly release schedule, and when there is a game that deserves to be played, we promptly admit it. 

11.  We seek through playing a variety of games to improve our gamer score. 

12.  With our gamer awakening as the result of these steps, we try to carry this message to other Haloholics, and practice these principles in all our gaming affairs.

From a historic perspective, most of the hundreds of video games released every year will be largely forgotten by the masses.  There has to be something special about a game for it to become etched in the forefront of gaming history.  Lair is one such “special” game.  

Whether it deserves it or not, Lair has gone down in gaming history as one of biggest eggs laid during the early days of the PS3.  It’s the crown jewel turned crown goat.  So when I saw Lair on the Target clearance rack for under fifteen dollars, it was a no-brainer.

When I find the time, I’m going to sit down with my copy of Lair and play it from the perspective of a gaming historian.  I’ll play it for the same reasons I’d like to play E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600 and Superman 64 for the Nintendo 64, just to see if it as bad as it is reputed to be.  And who knows, with Lair’s recent analog stick control patch, maybe it’ll be every bit as good as Sony hoped.  To be historically accurate though, I’ll of course be playing through it for the first time using only the original Sixaxis waggle control method.    

Based on the positive buzz it has been getting, and the fact that I have an abundance of Wii points at the moment, I decided to give the new Wii Ware title Lost Winds a try.  I was expecting it to be good, and it is, but there is something more.  For me, Lost Winds seems to have that rare, magical element that very few games have.  I can’t put my finger on exactly what it is.  It’s a kind of trance the game puts me in.  It’s a union of excellent control, visual style, and excellent music that gel together harmonically to become more than the sum of the parts. If Lost Winds represents the kind of game Wii Ware will be bringing to the table in the future, it looks like we’re all going on a fantastic ride.  Now if Nintendo would just give us a hard drive…