a snuggy, naturally

Count me among the the indifferent. If this is how you choose to do things, fine by me, but personally I would not see an appearance of impropriety if you or any other sites accepted free airfare or hotel. Ultimately, the quality of the work product is what earns my trust. If you don't go take this trip and say that Dead Rising 2 is great, or that it contains features X Y and Z, and I subsequently discover that your reporting was incorrect (or at least did not seem supportable from my impressions), then I will rely on your site less for information, just as I would with any of the sites that are taking this trip. Why exactly the information was unhelpful to me (e.g. because the writer was in the company's pocket, because the writer has vastly different tastes than me, because the writer was sloppy) is frankly irrelevant.

Old 97's FTW! This will have me putting the RB2 disc back in the drive for the first time in 2 or 3 months. Woot!

I think you mean it's "rife" with potential space puns. Unless you're making a pun related to starfruit?

Why would you want to use a joystick to play Madden? It only has one analog stick, as opposed to the two on a 360 or PS3 controller, and the second stick is essential for hits and running moves.

Good thing they developed a true next-generation system instead of crafting a mere Gamecube addon.

On Rebel FM, the crew said they were possibly going to be able to get together the cash to print 100 issues of the final mag and would then auction them off for charity. I know I'll be bidding.

I need them because I am blind and rely on my heightened sense of hearing to kill zombies.

Gee, I guess I'd better run out and buy like 4 copies as soon as possible, right?

Should be *fewer* licensed titles.
/grammar-police