This should be a familiar logo to you by now.

Apparently, some of you are still wondering if my Gamefly experience has improved, or become even worse since October. Well, I have good news and bad news to share in this revisit. The good news is that I haven't felt hosed enough by the service to discontinue the subscription. The bad news is that I still have some gripes - some new, some old.

Evidently, quite a few other people have signed up for Gamefly in the last few months as well. Unfortunately, this means that more and more people are renting games and more and more 'Short Wait' labels are showing up in my 'Q'(ueue). What does that mean? Well, it means it's possible that you will have to wait longer to get the games you actually want to play. For example, last week about half of the games in my 'Q' had a status of 'Short Wait'. Unlike Netflix though, apparently short wait does mean just that as each day the status actually seems to change, and so far it has yet to actually interrupt any shipping of my top games yet. Additionally, these are probably just growing pains anyways and should level out shortly (if it hasn't already - currently only two of my 15 games are on a 'Short Wait' at the moment.)

As I last reported, turnover times are still quite a problem - well at least for me it is. I have heard stories from people on the East Coast and well, pretty much anywhere not in Chicago that receive their games in less than a week. I still end up waiting on average about five to six business days and I'm starting to think the blame is to be shouldered squarely on the wonderful Chicago Postal Office which has previously received accolades such as 'comparable or worse than a post office in a third world country'. Either way, it's trying and brings me to the biggest problem I have with Gamefly...

...I suck at choosing good Gamefly games. Games that you have more than a passing interest are a necessity here - and also games that you preferably won't be able to lose interest in within an hour. So here are my tips - if you're renting two games at once, make sure that one of them is quality, and at least something you might want to purchase - maybe an older game that you never got around to playing, as most of Gamefly's not-too-recent game prices are dirt cheap (certainly cheaper than your local Gamestop or even eBay). I maintain that a three-game subscription model would be perfect, and I'm still peeved that they have yet to implement such a scheme but whaddya gonna do.

So yes, overall my outlook hasn't changed. If you have an extra $21.95 laying around each month, you could certainly do worse than get a Gamefly subscription, like buying a gigantic cheap & waxy candy bar just to say you ate 20 pounds of chocolate in less than a hour. Just make sure that you use it wisely - you are only going to be able to rent around four to six games a month (right now I'm averaging around four) and if it's a game that you only get around thirty minutes of mediocrity from well, you might as well have spent that $5 on say a bottle of canned air instead of wasting it on P.N. 03. On the other hand, in that case you might just end up spending some time with games you have previously neglected. For example, my recent Gamefly rental of Contra: Shattered Soldier motivated me to finally finished Jet Grind Radio and as a result, I believe I'm a better person for it.

Lastly, if anyone has any questions about the experience, or if you have had any experience with Gamefly and would like to chime in either contact me or comment away and I will try to accommodate you to the best of my meager abilities!