The Fly and I spent a magical Sunday joining our views of Black together in holy matrimony. We can finally share our special moment with you, enjoy the Conference Call.

Katerin: Pyroman, The Fly, and I decided to resurrect the old format of the Conference Call in order to discuss our impressions of Sucker Punch's new game, Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves. Picking up shortly after the second game's end, Sly 3 finds master thief Sly Cooper and his pals, Bentley and Murray, disbanded and disheartened. Recently, Sly has learned of his family's hidden vault, where the treasures and secrets of countless generations of the Cooper family have been concealed. Unfortunately, the mysterious Dr. M has found it first. To get at his family's legacy, Sly must re-assemble the old gang, plus some new friends, to sneak onto the island where it is located and take out Dr. M.

For the most part, the game mechanics and level format are identical to Sly 2, save a few notable additions: a new set of multiplayer minigames, and the rather risky incorporation of 3D graphics into the main gameplay. We'll discuss whether these new options work and to what extent, as well other topics such as aerial dog-fighting, unintelligible koalas, the nature of friendship, and one very greasy sweet suit.

Age of Empires 3 is, as any astute gamer could tell from the title alone, of course the 4th 'Age of' game made available by Ensemble Studios and Micros . . . Wait, fourth? Is this right? Is this like how Americans keep getting their Final Fantasy games released in the wrong order? No? Well let's talk about it later. Just roll with it.

A lot of you are certainly curious how Ensemble is managing their senior franchise now that it's come to this thir ... I mean fourth iteration, and it's perfectly healthy to be curious; don't be ashamed. Join Certis and I for the latest in our comprehensive, professional, and eminently unbiased series of reviews - I'm making finger quotes in the air - as we put Age of Empires 3 under the microscope in today's Conference Call.

"Indescribable... Indestructible! Nothing Can Stop It!"

When I saw the first screenshots and the trailer of Gish I
knew I had to obtain some more information on the title. When I tested
the demo I knew I had to get the full game. A platform game developed
by the makers of my beloved Bridge Builder series? I guess the
purpose of the intro part often is to create some artificial tension by
bringing up a question or placing fake hints that some title might have
turned out to be a turd in order to get the reader interested. Sorry to
spoil it already, but to me Gish fully delivered what the trial
promised. I had no clue though that by the time I was ready to pin down
a review no less than 50% of the GWJ staff will own the game. So, read
on as Pyro and ColdForged join me on my indie venture for once and drop
their thoughts on the game as well.

ColdForged: What can I say? I'm a sucker for quality games
regardless their origination, and I've always had a soft spot for
shareware developers. In my Mac days, I had no fewer than 5 licenses
for games from noted shareware developer Ambrosia Software. So, like
Spunior, after watching the fascinating videos and trying out the demo,
I figured that perhaps Chronic Logic had created something interesting
that was worthy of my monetary support.

After some long hours spent throwing ourselves into Midtown Madness 3 Elysium and I have seen fit to finally review it. Is it worth adding to your Xbox collection?

Certis: Let me make one thing clear, itÂ's way too damn early in the morning to be writing this. The only reason weÂ're doing this review so early in the day is that Elysium was about to log into Star Wars Galaxies and I had to thwart him.

If you're anything like Elysium and I, then you've gotten pretty bored with reading standard review format #7. It seems like reviews these days are little more than Mad Libs in which writers merely plug adjectives in front of predetermined nouns. This may be the reason that, ultimately, all anyone's really interested in is a series of arbitrary numbers. The fact of the matter is that many reviews just aren't that entertaining, and what's the point of reading amateur internet ramblings if they aren't at least entertaining. Well, we're here to tell you that reviews aren't always just boring to read.