As soon as the nice people over at Punbb release 1.3 we'll be upgrading to that too . . after I spend a few days bashing my head against a wall to force our lovely cross-posting plugin to work again.

A few weeks ago Andy picked up the Nintendo Wii Zapper and was - as we assume many people were - completely dismayed by the fact that it wasn't compatible with Resident Evil 4. The problem stems from the fact that the zapper and all other third-party gun-type attachments for the Wii Remote all depend on either a mechanical switch that presses the B button, or on opening a hole for you to be able to press the B button on your own. That's all fine and well for games like Link's Crossbow Training, but RE4 uses the A button as "shoot" and the B button as "draw weapon".

So, of course, Andy took things into his own hands, got himself a toy electronic gun, and started soldering.

The result was the RE4 Gun, a wonderful ugly mash-up of a toy gun and Wii Remote, which can work just as well for A-Trigger and B-Trigger games.

Interested? Check out the detailed post-mortem he wrote up over here: Hardware Hacking for a Better Wii Zapper.

Sorry?

Well, it's fixed now. So if you haven't been able to register for the past month or so (and aren't a robot) you can register right over here.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
BioShock - PC / 360 - The best single-player game I've played since System Shock 2.
Portal - PC / 360 (and eventually PS3) - The second-best single-player game I've played since System Shock 2
Team Fortress 2 - PC / 360 (and eventually PS3) - For a game this outstanding, the 8 year wait was worth it.
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption - Wii - Arguably the best console FPS ever. Please ignore the Halo fans.
Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Trials & Tribulations - DS - Get your future-lawyering on in the last GBA->DS port in the Phoenix Wright series.

RECOMMENDED
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass - DS - Somehow both Phantom Hourglass and its predecessor Wind Waker left me feeling like there was like a whole third of the game that Nintendo forgot to develop. Still good, though.

NOT RECOMMENDED
Raw Danger! - PS2 - Horrible controls, disjointed plot, insane localization, clothes made from plastic bags duct-taped together . . but hey, at least it's a budget-priced title, right?

Expect the next batch of reviews in about a month, once all our wallets have a chance to recover, and we get a chance to spend some quality time with Guitar Hero 3, Rock Band, Beautiful Katamari, Mass Effect, Mario Galaxy, Unreal Tournament 3, and probably several others.

• Picross DS - Highly Recommended - This is easily one of the best values out there right now for the DS. There are potentially hundreds of hours of gameplay in this, and none of it has to be repetitive. Puzzle games aren't for everyone, but at $20 you can't go too far wrong.
• Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s - Not Recommended - A potentially decent game ruined by a lack of content, ridiculosuly and unfairly difficult tracks, and a price point that was just way too high for what you get.
• Transformers: The Game - Not Recommended - It's better than your average blockbuster summer movie tie-in game, but will probably only really appeal to hardcore Transformers fanboys.

And, of course, as soon as I can pry myself away from it, you'll be getting my review of Bioshock. I just have to get it first.

I don't really have a big well-thought-out post to celebrate the occasion, or even have promises of a ton of upcoming content, since we don't have any reviews in the pipeline at the moment.

Unfortunately it doesn't look like we'll be going to E3 this year, as we weren't invited, but we are still planning on shirking whatever responsibilities we have in October to head out to the probably-lame "E for All" show. So that's coming up. And despite the fact that we won't be there, that's not to say that we won't be covering E3 news. So check back next week for our analysis of what gets announced.

We'll be back soon enough.

If you see anything obviously broken, please e-mail me, or post about what you found on the forums.

I've just got a quick little review update here on this New Year's Eve / Day / Whatever:

Neverwinter Nights 2 - PC - Reviewed by ping - Highly Recommended.

Okami - PS2 - Reviewed by Metallian - Also Highly Recommended.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - Wii - Reviewed by me - Also Also Highly Recommended.

I swear we didn't coordinate this. We each just really loved the games we reviewed.

We've still got a couple more reviews in the pipe, then hopefully we'll have some, you know, actual news. It's tough to report on news when nothing's happening because everyone's too busy on vacation.

Also, now that we're back up, we've got a couple more reviews in the pipe. They'll be posted as soon as I can pry myself away from Twilight Princess for more than 15 minutes or so. Also once I finish Twilight Princess, and get over the ensuing post-Zelda-depression, article volume should will pick back up around here since I won't exactly have anything else to do.