Sounds kind of like the annoying situation with White Knight Chronicles and White Knight Chronicles 2 retreading the same ground and feeling more like two parts of a half-assed whole instead of a game and a sequel.

Occasionally I've played video games that freeze/crash from time to time. But, that's usually once or twice during the entire time I play the game. This game routinely crashed every couple hours and what I was doing didn't seem to matter.

"I'm amazed a console game can crash."

LOL, your naivety is so cute! Clearly you haven't been paying close enough attention.

Anyway, it sounds like your experience with this dud was about the same as my experience with "Terraria." Some people love games that feel like work, procedural generation, and so-called 'buried' lore, but it's all pretty half-assed.

I was really looking forward to this, but as I saw more and more reviews and such come out, my excitement was tempered. As you said, I'll wait a year or two down the liine when this is bargain priced to try it out. The explorer in me still wants to experience it, but I am by no means ready to rush out any more.

Adding NNID to MJ is something I would like to do, and I'm sure Nick would be up for it as well. Can you point me in the direction of something resembling a public ID service provided by Nintendo? If not, Nick will have to provide a custom solution.

I haven't played this yet, but that's a good point that the game was probably balanced in a way that you aren't getting the most out of the game unless you're actively hunting for as many coins as possible. I bet if you just ignore the coin-hunting and play it like a standard Mario game it feels really familiar.

Instead of trolling blog posts when you don't see a game in the database, why not be helpful and submit a game request ticket?

Looking forward to this one soon - it's going to have to work hard to top BioShock Infinite, though.