This time of year finds pretty much every gamer with multiple gaming-related items on their holiday list: the hot new game, the console they didn’t buy yet, that sweet accessory that will make playing all the more enjoyable. In turn, retailers at big box and gaming specialty stores turn the faucet on and offer a bunch of amazing deals so you can get someone that special gift or give yourself a little present. In many cases—especially on game purchases—offers are a few bucks better than last year’s deals! As usual, ads for Black Friday sales have been available via both official and unofficial…
It wasn't so long ago that all sounds and music in videogames were very 'tinny' and metallic sounding, as cartridges could only hold the barest essentials to make music. And without the ability to store music, there was little need for systems to have the ability to output quality sound. Today, that's all changed. DVD-based games can store dozens of full-length songs in addition to the game's code, with franchises like Grand Theft Auto taking full advantage of that capability. Over the years, there have been a number of awesome and/or interesting choices made when syncing action up to music …
It seems to meThat all you seeIs violence in moviesAnd sex on TV… If those lines are the intro to one of your favorite television shows, then you've a treat in store at the end of the month. Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse will be available for Xbox 360 and PS3 on September 25. Originally airing from 1999–2002 and then revived in 2005 and airing to this day on FOX, Family Guy has been a consistent source of outrageous, shocking, gleefully politically incorrect humor for ten seasons. With comedy that ranges from juvenile to surprisingly subtle, its range of characters and age of fan base …
When the PS3 and Xbox 360 came out, both came with a hard drive to store downloaded items: game enhancements, avatars, music, video, dashboard changes. But perhaps the best thing hard drives allow storage for is patches to remedy bugs in games. No longer was the game you bought at GameStop or Best Buy relegated to being exactly what you bought—and no more—in perpetuity. You didn't have to hold your breath that a bug you read about on a forum would crash your game, leaving you to restart a save, or perhaps even the entire game. You knew that games could be fixed so that a bug that once may …
As fall slowly comes into view, football fans can count on both the return of real football on Sunday afternoons and the release of Madden NFL 13 to pop into their consoles and handhelds. And as usual, the team at EA Sports has been busy the past year bringing their A-game to provide the best football experience possible. Whether making new advances, or improving upon ones made in Madden NFL 12, there's a plethora of tweaks to enjoy from your couch. Two changes are immediately apparent on the front of the game box. The minor change is the new cover player, Detroit Lions wide receiver Calvin …
If you're a student or teacher, you've got a month left of extended gaming time before summer ends and it's back to school. This month, the Super Mario and True Crime series roar back to life, Death rears his ugly head, and an eclectic music-based platformer waits to join your Vita collection. Sleeping Dogs — Originally to be the third True Crime game, what Activision shelved was picked up by Square Enix and renamed. This Hong Kong-set game will be a great tiding over until GTA V's release, with the main difference being playing on the side of justice. You'll play as officer Wei Shen, …
It's an odd quirk of human behavior. Most guys who are into videogames would give anything to have a girlfriend or wife who shares their passion for killing random online opponents in Call of Duty or blasting zombies with them in a co-op Resident Evil mode. Yet when a girl goes online to play, as soon as the rest of the lobby realizes a female is in the room, she's assailed upon from every corner. "Put down the controller and go vacuum!" "You're only playing CoD because you're ugly and fat and no guy wants you!" "How are you playing Xbox? Did your husband put a TV in the kitchen?" "Go away, …
Gamers were recently dealt a setback to their Christmas wish lists. The fall launch date for BioShock Infinite, announced in March, got pushed back by more than four months, to February 2013. Besides the fact that there are still new Halo, Call of Duty, Resident Evil, and Hitman titles coming in this year’s final four months, 2K Games is at least dropping plenty of information about this third BioShock game to keep gamers excited. Most notably, we’re getting a good look at some of the more powerful enemies we’ll face in the futuristic version of 1912 we’ll be visiting next year. They’re …
Nintendo’s 3DS had problems right out of the gate. Faced with sales that were below those hoped for, a one-third price drop was instituted merely a few months after its launch; to placate those who’d paid full price during the initial month of sales, they created an Ambassador’s Program that gave away free games. Now, roughly a year after the price drop, Nintendo has decided to do what they’ve tended to do with their handhelds several times over—re-release their inaugural 3D system in a larger package called the 3DS XL. The big selling point is the much larger screen sizes. Both the top and …
July’s the hottest month of the year, and some sizzling game titles will be released this month, as well. So, when filling time between Big Brother airings and the Olympics, pop in one of these new videogame titles for a little R&R. NCAA Football 13 – Training camps for the NFL may be a few weeks away, but you can get some updated collegiate gridiron action this month. Robert Griffin III graces the cover, along with Barry Sanders, but what’s in the game is what really counts. As always, EA has tweaked features and performance to give a better gameplay experience. New this year is the removal …
It’s been nearly a decade since Kingdom Hearts released for the PS2 in the United States. It was an instant hit, pairing original protagonist Sora with Donald Duck and Goofy in a wild adventure to aid King Mickey and rescue his friend, Riku. With several levels, each representing a Disney film and populated by characters from the films, critics loved it, and gamers made it the ninth best-selling PS2 title. Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance and heroes Sora and Riku will be available for purchase on July 31, the latest of the series’ several sequels and the first on the new generation of …
You might say this month's new videogame releases are filled with gravitas. Two games have super heroes who have to save us from deadly super villains’ evil machinations, while two other titles focus on changes in gravity as a major component of their gameplay. Toss in a new RPG, and there’s a lot variety in gaming as summer kicks off. Inversion – A wild third-person shooter, Inversion’s gimmick comes from the wild ways gravity and orientations are used in the game space. When an alien race called the Ludatore attack with gravity-manipulating weaponry, mankind is literally knocked upside down…
Zombie-killing games tend to follow a morose formula of close-up terror mixed with the long-term potential of the extinction of the human race, a la Resident Evil or Dead Island. But if you’re looking for a bit more humor in a Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Bring It On sort of way, with a twist of punk rock and pulchritude and a dash of Quentin Tarantino, summer has a treat in store for you. Lollipop Chainsaw and its undead-slaying cheerleader heroine hit store shelves on June 12. You’ll get to play as Juliet Starling, a former cheerleader for the San Romero High School Knights, who has to …
Few games have been as hyped as Diablo III. A dozen years had passed since Blizzard Entertainment released Diablo II, and fans lined up on May 15 for midnight game sales, or to download the title online from home; Amazon.com saw the highest ever pre-order sales of a videogame, as well. And what happened? Did Diablo 3 offer tons of amazing gaming? Not so much. Instead, fans spewed vitriolic anger across gaming forums, Twitter, and Facebook over not being able to play the long-awaited game. Blizzard’s servers were overwhelmed, and that hampered all play. Even people who just wanted the single-…
After almost a decade between releases, Max Payne returns to our consoles, and he’s joined by Mario and a brief cameo by Balki Bartokomous. Sniper Elite V2 – If you’re looking for a game that places emphasis on both close-in stealth and long range sniping, this is for you. Set around Berlin, Germany during the height of WWII, you’ll be faced with missions requiring you to take out targets from far, far away. Unlike sniping in most other games, you’ll need to account for gravity, wind, your stability and more if you want your shot to actually hit your target rather than miss and scare him …
Anders Behring Breivik’s horrific July 2011 attack, which left over 75 people dead, brought the world’s attention to Norway. And immediately everyone sought answers to why and how this could ever happen. In a court proceeding earlier this month, Breivik revealed part of his training regimen was utilizing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. He claims he used it to hone his aiming skills. Even in a printed manifesto he made mention that “I see MW2 more as a part of my training-simulation than anything else.” Well, that was just great. It had been quite a while since a horrific news story and …
It was just over a year ago that Nintendo released their 3DS unit to much hoopla and fanfare. It was an impressive piece of hardware offering three-dimensional gameplay, augmented reality that could make your kitchen table the setting of a game, the ability to gain goodies just by walking past another person who was carrying a 3DS, and much more. And it took just four months for the price to drop by nearly a third, from $250 to $170. This both angered people who paid full price during the initial launch window—though Nintendo tried to placate them with its Ambassador Program—and was pretty …
Recent days have seen information come out on all three next generation consoles. The Wii U finally seems to have a launch date (November 18), and the ‘Nextbox’ is rumored to require a constant Internet connection to play even single player games. But the big news is the first round of rumors of what we may expect from Sony’s fourth console, codenamed Orbis. As usual, Kotaku helped lead the charge in providing the rumored information to the successor to the PS3 console. And unfortunately, it seems that once again a console manufacturer is almost going out of its way to anger its customer …
Pop culture invades the game shelves this month, with tie-ins to two of the world's oldest sci-fi franchises and one to a fairly new one. Kinect Star Wars – If you’re ready to start breaking a sweat and have fun, too, nothing beats swinging a virtual lightsaber! Set in the time after Episode I and running through Episode III, you’ll control a Jedi through five game modes. The crown jewels are the Duels of Fate lightsaber battles, as you work your way up towards battling with Darth Vader himself, and Jedi Destiny, where you master both lightsaber and the ways of the Force to tackle the minions…
MW3 players who subscribed to the ELITE service have been living large, getting to sample new maps and game modes before everyone else. That has started to end, as on Tuesday all content drops were made available to everyone playing on Xbox 360, and they’ll be on their way shortly for PS3. So if you got it right away and want to compare notes, or were waiting until the weekend and want to know what to expect, we’ve got you covered! Liberation – Billed as a sniper’s map, it takes place mostly outdoors in a New York City waterside park. Now I’ll take issue with calling it a sniping map when the…
