“It’s funny, as even though I had only met her a few months before, I felt like I had known her all my life. I was surprised it took me as long as it did to introduce her to Mamma. I rarely bring women to my parent’s place because I always felt like there was more scrutiny than hospitality going on. But Claire, she was special. I knew, I mean, I KNEW that mom & dad would love her the moment they shook her hand. The instant I met her I knew I would travel to the ends of the Earth for her, so I guess I just assumed that they would feel the same way. We sat down after the formal...

I need a doctor. Is there a doctor out there? I have so many broken bones that typing this is killing me. Okay, so I’m exaggerating a bit. I may not have any broken bones, bruises, or abrasions, but I sure feel like I do. You see, Trials HD just launched on Xbox LIVE Arcade. The folks at RedLynx has not only created a fun & addicting racing title, but the difficulty ranges from the rather roller coaster-esq Beginner to the bone braking, blood spewing Extreme. After having a great ride through the beginning, the difficulty ramped up so much that I actually need to make this disclaimer:...

Expectations can be a terrible thing if you let it be. If you’re expecting a $50 check & you get a $500 check, you feel exuberant! But, if you’re expecting a $500 check & only get a $50 one, you’ll be pissed off. One can take this scenario & apply it to everything. If you’re expecting a fantastic movie, but walk out of the theater realizing it sucked, you’ll be ticked off & probably give some bad word-of-mouth. Games fall into this category as well. Some games don’t get a fair shake because the expectation was too high. I tried to keep this in...

Yahtzee absolutely rapes Sega’s The Conduit. As always, this is NSFW! Bookmark It Hide Sites

For many years (as long as I can remember in fact), non-gamers have touted video games as an addictive entertainment medium that made players overweight. I don’t know if it was because I was a gamer, or because I’m not a lemming & actually use my intelligence, but I never agreed with that statement. As far as I’m concerned, the behavior practices of some gamers have nothing to do with their entertainment of choice. I suspect those same individuals would have gained weight regardless if it was games, Internet surfing, watching TV, laying around reading all day, etc… It...

“Heroes in a half shell, TURTLE POWER!” Who doesn’t remember the definitive Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song for the 1980’s cartoon? The source material was a bit dark & had a rabid comic book cult following, but the 1987 cartoon series was tweaked quite a bit & turned into a family friendly kids show. “KA-POW!” That’s the sound of the license as it became an instant hit with kids across the planet. Not long afterward, you couldn’t go anywhere without seeing a TMNT lunchbox, t-shirt, or shoes. The license even spawned several movies...

Have you ever wondered what doesn’t make it into your favorite games? What features did the developer not have time to add or what locations/levels were started, but never finished because they ran out of time or the content just didn’t jive with the rest of the game? I’m sure we all do at some point or another, but very rarely do we ever get to find out. Now happens to be one of those rare times as Epic Games just released their latest map pack for Gears of War 2. In addition to the 7 multiplayer maps, they included a “deleted scene” from the single player campaign for us to play through....

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I’ll say it now: the PC version of this game wasn’t very good. It was released 2 years ago & had enough flaws to make just about anyone wince. But, I really dug the premise, so for me it was a missed opportunity. Good idea with a bad execution. So, when I found out that Playlogic was porting it over to the Xbox 360, I had high hopes. I mean, they have had a couple of years to rectify the mistakes of the PC version. The least of which they could add multiplayer support (which they didn’t do BTW). After playing through it though, I’m not convinced they fixed anything....

It’s funny, because I truly believed that Splosion Man was an April Fool’s joke. The first shots I saw of this fiery creature was just too off the wall for me to honestly think it was a real game. Given the timing of the announcement (they announced it on April 1st), I sure many others felt the same way I did. Once I realized it was indeed a real game, & I found out Twisted Pixel was the team behind it, I became in instant fan. Twisted Pixel’s work on The Maw brought the team to my radar (my whole family loves it), so as soon as I realized they had a new title coming, I had...

I guess my first question for you is: do you have, or have you ever had a Madball? I did. I had a bunch of them. There was just something about those squishy little heads & all their lovely grotesqueness. I can’t say how popular they were, but I know my friends  & I loved them. They must have done pretty good at least, as they are still being sold on their website & from what I gather, Walmart even carries them. Of course, no self respecting childeren’s toy line can say they have truly hit the big time until they’ve broke into the gaming industry. Franchises like...

Here we sit, 12 years after the release of the first Harry Potter novel, (Harry Potter & The Philosopher’s Stone) & the popularity of the franchise seems to be just as strong as ever. In addition to the books, various (& sometimes dubious) merchandise still flies off the shelves ensuring J.K.Rowling’s great-great-great grandchildren will have no trouble affording a college education. Even though the final book in the series released 2 years ago, the films are still being released, with the 6th one hitting theaters last night at midnight. It brought in over 20 million dollars...

As gamers, where would we be without the stories & settings to come out of World War II? It’s a time period that’s been beat to death & resurrected only to be beat to death once again so many times that many gamers refuse to play anything that has the Axis or Allied powers in it. We’ve had some bad ones (Hour of Victory) & some great ones (Call of Duty). But, the one that most people agree will go down in the gaming history books is Battlefield 1942. It was originally a multiplayer-only WWII FPS title for the PC & was an instant success. Over the years, the Battlefield...

When I initially saw the first screenshots of Droplitz, my first though was of the old puzzlers that came out during the Tetris craze like Pipe Dream. After playing the plumbing puzzler, I found that assessment wasn’t too far off. This is a puzzle game in it’s purest sense. There is no storyline. No flashy visuals or obscene base thumping sound track. Just an endurance marathon of pipe fitting & drop saving that will give all the would be plumbers a run for their money. Bookmark It Hide Sites

As a PC gamer, the RTS genre as a whole is my primary play preference for the platform. Everything from the Command & Conquer series to the Age of Empires franchise to the likes of Warcraft, Starcraft, HoM&M & Company of Heroes, I have played & loved them all. So when I got wind of a new side-scrolling, 2D RTS title heading to Nintendo’s WiiWare service, I was intrigued. Sure, the idea has been dabbled in before (see the Worms franchise), but never has it been done in a way that I actually enjoyed. The controls just never felt right to me. So, has Ronimo Games (developers of...

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Out of all the games offered in the Hasbro Family Game Night line of games from EA, Sorry Sliders! is the only one I had never played. So when I first downloaded the FGN hub & showed my kids what games we had to play & what games were coming, my excitement was for Yahtzee, but theirs was all about Sorry Sliders!. As each new addition launch, I would watch as they would shift from jumping with excitement to sadly shuffling away as I told then that the new game was Boggle or Sorry (&not Sorry Sliders!). Needless to say, I was curious to see what all the joy was about. There was no way...

Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters! Well, maybe. Depends on whether you’re a fan of the film franchise or not. As a lover of all things Ghostbusters, I was almost giddy when I first saw the test footage from Zootfly. So were many other people as the internet was all abuzz about it. Unfortunately for Zootfly, they hadn’t secured the rights to the game. During all the excitement, Terminal Reality approached Sony about making the game. They managed to get the rights secured, while Zootfly kept development on their project, renaming it to TimeO. Over the last few months I had heard that this game...