The Chronic Consumer

If you’re like most people, then you probably do a lot of comparison shopping before making major purchases such as televisions, computers, and cars. But do you do the same thing when it comes to a college degree? I’m surprised at the number of people who completely ignore tuition costs when choosing a college or university, and instead base their decision on location, athletic teams, name cachet, or reputation as a “party school”.

With tuition costs rising every single year, it’s important to make sure you’re getting a good educational buy for your money. That’s just one of the reasons you should check out the online degree programs offered by Western Governors University.

WGU is a fully-accredited online university that offers affordable, accelerated degree programs in a variety of in-demand fields. There are a multitude of benefits that go along with enrolling at WGU, including the fact that you can proceed through the program at your own pace — all while keeping up with your full- or part-time job as well as family or other commitments.

If you’re interested in getting a degree that represents an excellent value for your money and will open career doors, then check out Western Governors University for more information.

I usually don’t play video games aimed at adults, as anything featuring Mario is more my speed. But recently my husband convinced me to try Heavy Rain for PS3, since I love mysteries and police procedurals. I did try it, and though I wanted to like the game, I just couldn’t.

Heavy Rain is basically a Choose Your Own Adventure book (remember those) that plays out on the PS3. As with Choose Your Own Adventure, you occasionally come to proverbial forks in the road during this game, and the choices you make can have an impact on how the game ends. These real choices are few and far between, however. Most of the time, the game is so rigid that you go down the same road no matter which choice you make.

The main story is that there’s a serial killer, known as the Origami Killer, on the loose. The Origami Killer snatches kids and then holds them in a storm drain during the heaviest rainfalls of the year so that they’ll drown if someone doesn’t reach them in time.

As the player, your job is to track down clues and rescue Shaun Mars before he drowns. During gameplay, you can control one of four characters: Ethan, Shaun’s dad; Madison Paige, an insomniac who runs into Ethan at a motel; Scott Shelby, a private eye; and Norman Jayden, an FBI profiler sent to help local police with the case. Usually, controlling the characters simply means choosing a specific approach to take during questioning a suspect (aggressive, sympathetic, etc.) or pushing the controller buttons a certain way to do things like start a car, sit down in a chair, etc.

The storyline was frustrating at best. You don’t really have control over where the investigation goes, so you can’t direct your characters to go talk to a certain suspect or check out a certain scene if you think it’s important. In fact (minor spoiler ahead), I don’t think Norman Jayden generated a single usable lead, so what was the effing point of his character???

Also, just when the game gets interesting, there will inevitably be long, drawn out cut-scenes that slow the action down to a crawl. Plus, there are several places where you’re forced to do mundane things like brush your teeth or make a pan of scrambled eggs just because. These things don’t add to the “reality” of the game; they just slowed it way down!

I won’t get into the solution here because I don’t want to ruin the game for those who haven’t played it yet. But let’s just say that there were way too many plot holes that were never explained. For instance, you’ll wonder how the killer killed a certain person when the killer was never alone with the victim to begin with!!! Also, you’ll wonder when the killer had time to send Ethan on his 5 missions and monitor Ethan’s progress.

The bottom line is that Heavy Rain could have been a very good — or even great — game, but it falls well short. Some parts of it were fun and interesting, but on the whole, I wouldn’t recommend this title. There are too many slow spots, too many inconsistencies in the “plot”, and too many other minor annoyances that build up by the time you reach the end. Oh, and the voice acting is absolutely TERRIBLE!!! Save your money and don’t buy this one!

As someone who constantly battles with weight issues, I’m always on the lookout for that next great product that will help me shed some extra pounds. I know in the long run diet and exercise can do more than supplements, but most people could use a boost every now and then.

The problem is, there are so many different weight loss products out there that it’s virtually impossible to choose something without help. I mean, how would the average Jane or Joe differentiate between ephedra, Xyphedrine, LipoClen, and Hydroxycut? How can someone tell if Acai berries are worth buying or if they’re simply another fad? Review sites can definitely help in this area, so click here to learn more!

Obviously pills and supplements aren’t the only answer to weight loss problems, but maybe they can help. It’s worth a try!

If you were rich enough to buy any kind of car out there, what would you go for? It seems that lots of celebs end up in a Ferrari, despite there being far more expensive and exotic choices these days. This picture, for instance, shows singer John Mayer pumping gas in his own ride in L.A. At least we know he can afford to buy Ferrari parts too after the inevitable wreck…. Aren’t celebs always crashing their cars?

I don’t know what I would drive. At my income level, it seems silly to spend a quarter of a million dollars or whatever on a car, but maybe I’d be singing a different tune if I had $40 mil in the bank. As it is now, I’m perfectly content with my Toyota!

We’re big fans of Mario games in this household. We love Mario Kart, the various Mario sports games, Mario Galaxy, and of course, Super Mario Bros. So when we heard that they were coming out with New Super Mario Bros. Wii, we knew we’d be buying it right away. We did, and we weren’t disappointed!

New Super Mario Bros. Wii is a fantastic family game! It is similar enough to the older version to allow you to pick it up right away and start playing, but it has enough new features to make it feel, well, new. Among the best new features is the multiplayer capability. It’s a lot of fun to be able to go through each level with up to three other players in tow. During multiplayer mode, you can either help or hurt each other, which is a blast! It’s hard enough to be on the watch for Goombas and other natural enemies, but when you have to look over your shoulder at Luigi too??? Forget it!

I love the new power-ups as well. Of course you can still turn into Fire Mario with the fire flower, and giant Mario if you get a giant mushroom. But now you can also get an Ice Flower, Propeller Hat, or a Penguin Suit, and you can even ride Yoshi and have him gobble up enemies for you. Oh, and they brought back the classic POW blocks, which is definitely a good thing!

The levels have that different-yet-familiar feeling as well, and this time around, if you get stuck in a particular place and die more than 8 times in a row, Luigi will come in to show you how you’re supposed to navigate that section. Some people call this “cheating”, but I call it convenient. After all, if that feature wasn’t available, you’d just go online and look for help anyway, right??? At least now all the help you need is right there in the game.

Overall, New Super Mario Bros. Wii is an awesome game that everyone in the family will enjoy. I highly recommend it!

I recently bought my son a copy of Lego Batman DS for getting good grades on his report card. He’s in first grade now, and we had a lot of trouble at the beginning of the school year because he didn’t adjust very easily to being gone the whole day after two years of half-day kindergarten and half-day preschool. But he eventually made some friends and got used to the schedule, and did very well on his report card.

Anyway, I’d heard of the Lego series of video games before, but never quite understood what the attraction was. They seemed kinda dumb to me — which was really an unfair assessment since I’d never actually played one. But my teenage cousin recommended this title, so I decided to get it for my son.

That turned out to be a terrific choice, as Lego Batman DS quickly became one of his favorite games! Gameplay is rather simple. There are three different storylines with 5 chapters each, for a total of 15 game scenarios. But you double that because each one can be played in Story Mode or Free Play, and you double that number because you can play from either the Hero or Villain perspective. So 60 choices… quite a lot!

You just go through each level collecting Lego studs, fighting villains (or heroes, as the case may be), and building up stacks of Lego pieces to form helpful tools, such as Grapple Spots, levers, and ladders. There are a bunch of unlockable characters to choose from, and each character has different abilities that helps you move through the levels. Moreover, you have to collect certain hidden objects, such as Red Bricks, Joker Cards, Minikit Canisters, and Riddler Clues to unlock other special items, such as power-ups and MiniGames.

To be honest, I started playing the game a little bit because my son needed help with one part — and then I totally got hooked and played until I unlocked everything! This game is seriously addictive! It’s so simple, and yet amazingly fun. It actually prevented me from getting a lot of work done, including cooking dinner and cleaning the house. This prompted my husband to jokingly threaten sending me to some kind of drug rehab or intervention program! Ok, so video game addiction is not really in the same ballpark as drug addiction, but you know what I mean.

Anyway, as a parent, I was truly pleased by Lego Batman DS. It’s fun, easy enough for young kids to play unsupervised, rated E for Everyone, and is a total bargain at less than $20. I liked this game so much that I’m planning on buying other Lego series titles for my son for Christmas. That means Indiana Jones and/or Star Wars!

Sigh. I think I need a new laptop soon. Mine is nearly four years old at this point, and isn’t able to keep up with some of the video service subscriptions that I’m paying for. Now everything is available in HD, but my machine is so old that it can’t accommodate the better technology. Maybe if I knew anything about swapping out video cards, I’d be able to salvage my current laptop and save some money, but I don’t. So getting a brand-new laptop is just the easiest solution for me at this point.

Any recommendations?

Our 10-year anniversary is about a year away. We usually don’t do anything too special for our anniversaries, but we’ll try to celebrate this one in style since it’s sort of a milestone (particularly in this day and age). I’m not the kind of woman who needs jewelry or flowers or big, romantic gestures for these occasions, so instead of something like that, we’re thinking of taking a trip. The list of destinations is pretty short because we can’t really afford anything completely exotic. The finalists at this point are Hawaii, where we got married, and Las Vegas, a place that neither of us has been to yet.

We’re leaning towards Vegas because we’re not the kind of people who like to go to the same place over and over again. Sure, Hawaii is awesome, but we sort of feel that it would be a waste of money to go there again. As a result, we’ll probably end up in Vegas, which is fine by me.

I’m already checking into different las vegas deals to see how much a vacation might cost us. We wouldn’t necessarily have to gamble the whole time, but would like to take in the Hoover Dam, a few shows, and of course a buffet every day. I’m sure this sort of anniversary trip would have some people rolling their eyes because of how commonplace it seems, but whatever. It sounds like a blast to us!

I’m going to keep looking for some good deals. Who knows, maybe I’ll even end up booking a trip well before our anniversary. That would be cool too!