My son, an avid Harry Potter fan, hasn’t seen the latest movie yet (maybe tonight!) but he is still caught up in the excitement and had to do something about it so he went and bought a Harry Potter game. Now I know he has specific tastes. Even though he could have gotten the same game on the PS2 for less, he picked the XBox360 version.
He likes all the things you can do like flying a broom and casting spells. The story line follows the movie pretty closely so it probably helps that he’s seen that movie already. This one is rated E+10 but apparently the one for HP7 is rated T. I’ve got to find out more about that one, I guess.
Just finished the one player version of Portal 2 and I loved it. It’s been a long time since a game was inviting enough for me to get hooked on it and an even longer time for me to be able to finish one I’m hooked on. (I don’t like to think about the 700 hours I put into FFVII only to get stuck in the middle and have a meltdown that caused me to go cold turkey on video games for 5 years.)
Although the huge screen I was playing on and the weird way I tend to shoot portals left me feeling a bit woozy from time to time, in general I just had a ton of fun figuring out how to get from one place to the next. My children had to repeatedly remind me that the game is called Portal and that I should use my portals because I kept forgetting that. Everyone in the family has gotten into the game and I’m headed through it for the second time to try to get all the achievements. I never do that.
As my 5 year old daughter said as we were out on a walk last night and passed a white house, “We could shoot a portal there.”
Now may be a good time to invest in a Playstation 3. The Xbox people have decided they have to raise their rates for Xbox 360 Live but the Playstation people still don’t have a fee for that kind of thing. You might even think of it as getting $60 off the cost of the Playstation which has been coming down in price anyway.
Now that you’ve had your Nintendo Wii for a few months since Christmas, you can get some of the extra stuff that will make your console the best and most entertaining little box in your house. All of the wii accessories that are out there make the games more fun and give you more options on how to play. Now invite all your friends over, give them all a controller and have some fun.
I found a fun little game on the internet the other day that is a fun waste of time. http://us.akinator.com/ asks series of questions to find out who you’re thinking about. Just pick someone famous, real or fictional, and in a few questions, it will give you a guess as to who it is. The database must be pretty intensive because it has picked out every character that I’ve tried on it so far.
The world makes its money with expansions. Buy a car, fine. You can get out the door without it hurting too much if you know how much you should really be paying. But they get you with the expansions. All the little features that add on to the bill. Video game systems have come down in price recently, but you don’t get the full set that you used to. Used to be that the Nintendo came with 2 controllers, a gun, 2 games, and everything else that you needed. Now the systems only come with 1 of the 4 controllers that you need, no gun, and usually, no game. Even board games are released with only a portion of the game before the expansion gives you full access to the entire board game. And what are movie sequels, prequels, reboots, etc., but expansions.
Expansions, they’ll get ya. That’s right Blondie. Get ya, get ya, get ya. One way or another.
I’ve found that I generally enjoy those simple physics-based games that are free out there on the web. The newest version of the “Crush the Castle” is a great game that’s lots of fun. The last game kept having you reset back to the beginning if you could’t crush the castle in a certain number of tosses. This latest game is cool in that the levels are all designed by different people on the web, and there aren’t necessarily limits on how many shots that you take. You do get rewards for only using a limited number of shots, but you can retry a level easily without having to go back through and redo every other level that you already made it through.
My favorite levels were the Trojan Horse level and the Castle Fights Back level.
Have fun!
Oh, and you can get it on the iPhone too. Is there no limit to the infiltration of the blasted fruit!
It’s hard to believe how far computer technology has come in just the past ten years. Back in the 19′s no one could dream of the speed that today’s video cards would have. If they did dream, then the cost was just amazing. So go ahead, experience the culmination of decades of research and technology at a fair price and buy a video card online, then get blasted away in the newest video games.
I love it when a very simple (and free) web-based game can just capture my attention for the better part of an hour. Good thing that I’m not at work right now with this thing. The concept is very simple. Time your release of stones thrown with a trebuchet to knock down walls, decapitate soldiers, and bring down the king. The big trick in the harder levels is to take down the flag. That’s how the Europeans conquered the world and that’s how you get big points in this game.
And yet I finished it. What does that say about me?
This fun little gem of a game is a little spoof off of the XBOX achievements that get unlocked almost constantly while playing any game. A little message shows up saying the name of the achievement that you’ve just completed. Most of the time no one even knows what they did to unlock it, and eventually no one even pays attention.
Well, you’ve got to pay attention in this game. There is no other point then unlocking the 100 achievements. Thankfully there is a help page. You even unlock an achievement for clicking on the hint button.
For at least a year now I have been looking forward to the release of the newest entry into the huge library of Star Wars related video games, Star Wars Unleashed. Now that it’s out… meh.
I was hoping for something unbelievable and outstanding. I got something pedestrian and clunky.
Granted, I have only played the PS2 version of the game and am still willing to give the other consoles’ versions a chance, but… meh.
The controls a pain, and most disappointingly, the use of the force powers is the most difficult to control. The game feels more like a fighting game with big levels than the first person shooter with force powers game that I was hoping for. And there’s no multiplayer either, even for the PS3 and 360 versions.
Hopefully, the destructible environment and improved AI that were featured so prominently in the previews will be used in the future to make better games than this.
In this new world where everything is Chuck Norris, you may now have the privilege of controlling Chuck Norris in a new cell phone video game.
Don’t let the idea go to your head. You will never control the real Chuck Norris. Even your control of the video game Chuck Norris is only illusionary.
I like it when Chuck picks up the truck and even better when he destroys the helicopter by saying, “Bang!”
The strangest things seem to occupy my time on the internet. Some games I give a shot and let pass by, but sometimes there is a really strange one that I play and play and play. It’s not usually the greatest animation or graphics and definitely not the greatest music, but I play.
Purchase upgrades for your hedgehog launcher and then steer your hog through the floating coins and bars. Don’t worry, everything that you can hit is good. Your eventual goal is to launch the large smiling rodent into space. That said, I was kind of disappointed when I finally did. I was having too much fun collecting the coins.
In only a couple of hours now the newest release by the Guitar Hero franchise will be released for all. The Aerosmith edition features mostly songs from the legendary band with a few other bands thrown in. I was somewhat disappointed with the effort put into the 80′s edition, but I’m somewhat optimistic about this newest version. The songlist looks great, and I’ll let you know what I think as soon as I can give it a test drive.
While Guitar Hero broke new ground in what a video game could be, Rock Band takes things a bit further. Guitar Hero remains one of my favorite games because of the fun and the challenge of playing cool songs on the guitar. However, no matter how much fun it is, it’s still only a toy guitar and is a poor substitute for actually playing a guitar.
Rock Band’s introduction of the microphone and drum kit gives a measure of reality into this genre of video game. Even though the drum kit is a very much toned down version of a typical set of drums, the player is still playing the drums. The singer is given some latitude in pitch depending on the difficulty level but is still singing the song.
The only drawback of the game is the wireless guitar. The strum bar is loose and difficult to play, the neck is too thin and painful to hold. The buttons are at the same level as the rest of the fret board, making them difficult to distinguish from each other just by touch. The gravity switch is difficult to activate when you lift the neck of the guitar and yet sometimes activates at the slightest movement at an unwanted time.
Thankfully, I can just keep using my Guitar Hero guitar on this game.
If you were in grade school in the mid to late 80′s and especially if you had a Nintendo Entertainment System during that time period than you definitely know about two things. First, if your Nintendo is on the fritz, try blowing into the cartridge or the console. Second, The Legend of Zelda rocks because you can save your game.
Talk about your innovation.
The cartoon series soon followed and featured our hero, Link, trying to save the kingdom of Hyrule and win the heart (or hearts) of the princess, Zelda. (Come to think of it, Zelda isn’t the sexiest sounding name. Sounds too much like Helga.)
Looks like they’re finally making a movie out of this one too. (Be sure to check the release date at the end of the trailer)
In honor of the holiday season and that classic of American cinema, “A Christmas Story”, comes the ultimate in air rifle online games. (Or maybe the only air rifle online game).
Don’t Shoot Your Eye Out features Ralphie and his Red Rider BB Gun. You try to get as many ricochets as possible without shooting your eye out.
Merry Christmas and “Fa Ra Ra Ra Ra, Ra Ra Ra Ra.”
One of the drawbacks to shoot ‘em up games in the past has always been the opponents ability to shoot you. In older games the baddies either shot at you in a predictable pattern, or with extremely slow moving and easily avoidable ammunition. The side scroller, Ownage Burst, is slightly different. It’s a flash game that looks like an older side-scroller from the Super Nintendo days, but the villains are much better shots. They will occasionally miss, but it’s almost impossible to avoid their shots. The only ways to avoid being riddled with lead is to shoot them before they aim and shoot at you or to duck behind the cars on the side of the street.
I had fun with it. Hopefully more levels are available soon.