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School’s out, the bell’s silent, the school furniture‘s all put up, the halls are empty and there’s a noticeable absence of books in your kids’ lives. What are you to do with them?

Put ‘em to work grinding up video games, that’s what. I made err.. let Nick play Guitar Hero 5 today on career mode. Because GH5 is the first guitar hero game that doesn’t require you to go through and play the entire game before you get to play all the songs, we never really bothered with career mode, but I wanted some of the trophies.

Now, about 6 hours later of us taking turns, I’ve gotten to the end of the career mode and plucked most of the low hanging fruit from GH5′s trophy bush.

Oh and mini-review, GH5 isn’t actually terrible. Rock Band 2 has the upper hand with regards importing music (and DLC too, I think) but you can end up with a good 60-70 extra songs if you own World Tour and Smash Hits. You may hear that the soundtrack isn’t much to sneeze at, but honestly it’s not bad – it’s just not obvious, like GH3‘s soundtrack was.

Plus the guitar that comes with it is quite possibly the best rhythm game peripheral available right now.

The PS3 is finally starting to get some great under-$10 software now (and it’s no longer just relegated to the odd deal and 800 of last-years’ sports titles), so I thought I’d update my wish-list:

• Guitar Hero III (~$4.50) – I already have this, but can’t play it because I only have Rock Band peripherals. It quite possibly has the best sound track of any rhythm game so far, and you can pick it up for under a tenner after shipping.
• MotorStorm (~$5) – I’m hesitant to buy this, because for some reason I have trouble playing games without trophies these days.
• Rock Band (~$5) – I plan on picking this up after I get the second one, for the express purpose of importing all the songs into 2.
• Unreal Tournament III ($5) – I’m hesitant to buy this because I never thought Unreal itself was such a great shooter. There’s been a ton of awesome games built off the various Unreal engines, but I never got into UT at all. It does have trophies though.
• Guitar Hero: World Tour (~$5.50) – I just picked this up for a song, it totalled about $6 after shipping. Not recommended if you don’t have any peripherals for either GH or Rock Band, but if you have GH5, you can import about 30 songs for the cost of the game + $3.50 (assuming the person you buy it from never used the code). Also, no trophies.
• SOCOM: Confrontation (~$5.75) – SOCOM4 is coming out soon, so expect the player base on this game to tank even further. If you’re a die-hard SOCOM fan (or were), I really do recommend this game despite the fact it’s mostly a ghost town. You can still get a game easy, and they’ve fixed all the flaws – it’s almost vintage SOCOM.
• Mirror’s Edge (~$7.50) – The first of our list of games that’ll burn you over ten bucks once you count shipping, Mirrors Edge is beautiful, fun (once you get the hang of the controls), a little frustrating, and way too goddamn short to have paid $60 for. It’s worth the $11 or so though.
• Terminator: Salvation (~$9) – A competent 3rd person shooter that accurately captures the feeling of desperation of the story, and will be the easiest platinum trophy you’ll ever get.
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (~$9.98) – My brother in law paid $40 for this not too long ago, and it honestly wasn’t worth it – I’d have been mad if it was my $40. If you really like Star Wars, then it’s worth it. If you don’t mind a reasonable 3rd-person platformer/beat-em-up or want the trophies, it’s probably worth the ten bucks.
• Soul Calibur IV (~$9.98) – I used to love Soul Calibur on the DreamCast, I’ve never played 4 but I’m guessing it’s more of the same, and there’s a cameo by a star wars character too if that’s enough to float your boat.
• Skate 2 (~$9.98) – I almost linked to the original Skate, which is in sub-$5 territory now, but I decided against it… Skate 2 is better in most every way, is trophy enabled, and has more multiplayers on it (for now, until Skate3 wrecks that). If you can get over the weird… I mean “innovative” control system, it’s stupid fun.
• Burnout: Paradise (~$10.50) – an “Honorable Mention” on this list because I haven’t seen it creep under ten bucks yet, but this game gave me plenty of hours of fun and it’s a great multi-player driving experience.