All ages and skills should take the leap for some practical music knowledge with this impressive guitar music game strengthened by a large song list, great sound, split screen multiplayer mode, and appealing “go-at-your-own-pace” format.
If you or anyone you know is a gamer to any extent, by now you have almost certainly heard the phrase “I used to be … like you, then I took an arrow to the knee”. If not … well, consider yourself lucky – it has quickly become a massively overplayed meme! The phrase comes from the recently released ‘Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim’, a single player RPG from Bethesda (Elder Scrolls series including Morrowind and Oblivion, Fallout 3) that is extremely popular on the PC, XBOX360 and PS3. As you travel the MASSIVE world – trust me, any game you…
I had planned on reviewing the shooter Rage from id software back in early October – I really did. I had it pre-ordered on Steam, loaded it up when it was released and went to play it that night and … nothing. It simply didn’t work … well, that isn’t completely true. It would seem to want to start, but fail miserably, in spite of rebooting, checking drivers, and so on. A quick check on the Steam forums – and gaming forums in general – revealed that I wasn’t alone. How long have PC gamers had to deal with messy…
Image courtesy of PS4 Talk How it started, basically, is because I can’t keep my mouth shut when something bugs the crap out of me. I complain. And sometimes, when the topic is gear, I complain to Your Humble Gear Diary Team. So what’s the problem? Maybe you’ve noticed that when you buy a new game console or device (or even game), the first thing the system does, before you even create your character or run through all the “Welcome!” windows, is . . . check for updates and then “suggest” that you update the system. This happened to me…
Sony’s Playstation Vita launched in Japan two weeks ago to what was described as success, selling ~325,000 units and over 300,000 games (yes, that is fewer games than game systems … I’ll let you figure THAT one out). By comparison, the Nintendo 3DS launch last March sold ~375,000 at the initial $249 pricing. So in theory that was a pretty decent start … perhaps it meant that earlier predictions of it being ‘DOA’ were unfounded? Turns out … no. First off think about timing – a March release compared to a mid-December release. One is at a low point in…
Earlier this week in my list of iTunes App Store deals, I mentioned that Hero of Sparta 2 was ‘free for a limited time’. Turns out I was wrong – the update switched the game to a ‘free to play’ model full-up with ads! Those who had actually paid for the game were angered by the sudden appearance of an egregious amount of intrusive ads (I had to check it out myself … it was awful)! Fortunately after a couple of days of uproar, GameLoft has retreated. According to GameLoft’s Facebook page: “Gameloft wishes to apologize to the fans of…
What is the first thing you do when someone tells you not to worry? That’s right – you start worrying! Earlier this year I posted about how IGN had sold Direct2Drive to GameFly. GameFly is a console game rental subscription service, and had wanted to branch into PC game distribution and potentially rentals and saw Direct2Drive as a possible way to do that. I had basically forgotten about the deal for a few reasons: first, we haven’t heard anything in 7 months; second, because Direct2Drive has been much quieter in general, leaving the big sales for Steam and GamersGate; and…
One of the most highly anticipated games of the year launched today – STAR WARS™: The Old Republic™ from LucasArts and Bioware. The game is in the MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) genre, and has been compared to the hugely popular World of Warcraft in terms of style, though obviously in a very different setting. Here is the press release: EA, BioWare and LucasArts usher in a Force in online games as STAR WARS™: The Old Republic™ goes live today From Midnight Store Openings to the Opening Bell of the NASDAQ, Gamers and Star Wars™ Fans Celebrate the…
James Bond’s successful Nintendo Wii installment of Goldeneye expands to the PlayStation 3 with PlayStation Move compatibility, a special “sharpshooter” bundle, and an exclusive character/weapon.
I am an admitted fanboy of the Gothic franchise, with Gothic 2 listing near the very top of my ‘all time favorites’ list of games. It had been a while since I replayed Gothic 3 to any extent, so when Good Old Games added it to their lineup a couple of weeks ago, I couldn’t help but buy it … for the fourth time! I have the DVD version sitting somewhere, and have bought it on both Steam and Direct2Drive to get the full Gothic Collection digitally (at the time each only had a subset). Gothic 3 is a game…
Link encounters great new adventures utilizing the MotionPlus controls for unique swordplay and puzzles while his relationship with Princess Zelda focuses more romantic elements.
The trend of bringing more and more PC and Mac adventure and casual strategy games to the iPad is a great one in my opinion – they work well with the touchscreen interface, present more than a trivial experience, and are still playable in small time increments. Games like Civilization Revolution, Jack of All Tribes and Tiny Token Empires are examples of this … and now we have Youda Survivor! Let’s take a look! The Hype: For all real fans of time management games – the most frenzied adventure yet! Can you survive on a mysterious island as well as…
This popular mystery/puzzler series continues as the latest installment, only available on the Nintendo DS, has engaging action and a high replay value along with a bonus role-playing game London Life.
This Nintendo 3DS exclusive Super Mario installment is the perfect fit for all age levels while offering detailed challenges and retrospective game elements.
Earlier we got a message from frequent commented DBMurray regarding a message he received about what is happening to customer data as part of the EA/Popcap merger I wrote about here. As we were conversing, I got the same message which is shown at top. Although the message says ‘good news’, neither DBMurray nor I find the news all that great. Why? Well, as my earlier article indicated, PopCap is a pretty cool company with great games. EA is a terrible company with a tendency to treat customers poorly, lock people out of their games for vague and inconsistent reasons,…
You might not think so from my posts, but I am really cheering for Sony with the Playstation Vita. I canceled my pre-order of the system, but that was more about the fact that there were no bonus offers … and Amazon tends to be great with those so I figured I would just wait until the new year to see. The system looks great hardware wise, seems to offer tons of gameplay possibilities, and ultimately I think that more gaming options means better competition means better games for all of us! But this weekend I have discovered yet another…
While my personal preference of games released this week is the port of 2004’s ‘The Bard’s Tale’, there is no doubt that the big release of the week is Infinity Blade 2. Doug has been beside himself waiting for the game to arrive, Dan started the ball rolling with his thoughts on the graphics, and me being me I grabbed it immediately upon release. So what do we think after a short time playing? Read on and see!
Doug wrote about the new ‘reimaginged’ Tetris app, which includes the following: · The fan-favorite Marathon Mode. · A brand new level-based Galaxy Mode, where players can use game-changing power ups to dig down and shatter their scores. · Innovative Marathon One Touch Mode, a simple and easy-to-use control scheme for Marathon mode that is specially designed for touch screen gameplay. · New gameplay challenges delivered via the never-before-seen Tetris Log system. · Tetris Rank functionality that tracks players’ lifetime “lines cleared” to assign an overall rank. · Ability to subscribe to the T-Club, the only Tetris fan club to…
Early this year I wrote about two separate incidents of gamers being banned from playing games based on comments made in separately housed gaming forums – the first was about someone banned for upsetting a forum moderator by asking “Have you (Bioware) sold your souls to the EA devil?”. At the time EA claimed it was an ‘error’: “Unfortunately, there was an error in the system that accidentally suspended a user’s entire account,” he told Ars. “Immediately upon learning of the glitch, EA took steps to restore the user’s macro account and apologized for the inconvenience.” My speculation that the…
> There are times when a simple description does little to convey the joy contained in a great game. For World of Goo, my one-line description ‘solve puzzles by building stuff by stringing together bunches of goo balls’ doesn’t begin to explain why you will be losing sleep playing ‘just one more level’. I am not sure that my description or conclusion will completely describe just how much fun this game is, but hopefully my full description will entire you enough to buy one of the best games available for the iPad. The Hype: Beautiful and surprising, the millions of…
Earlier this week I wrote about the great 50% off sale on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on the Mac App Store. The deal is still going on, by the way! Anyway, it put me in the mood to replay the game, so I checked Steam to see if they ever opened up Steam Play – they hadn’t. Fortunately I had reviewed the game back in the summer of 2008 for the Mac, with a game gotten through Aspyr’s GameAgent. This meant I had a full game at some point. UN-fortunately, the install file was >4GB, and the Iomega 250GB…