Category Archive:Video Games

Closed

Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses

July 26th, 2012 / / categories: Video Games /

Last night, my husband, my daughter, and I went to the symphony at The Mann Center in Philadelphia. The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra performed The Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses. The orchestra performed 4 movements featuring music from a variety of the Legend of Zelda video games.

My husband is the true gamer in the family. He has played most, if not all, of the Zelda games. Both my daughter and I watch him play but we’re not as familiar with the series as he is. However, we all enjoyed the concert. There is a large video screen above the orchestra that shows videos, both game play and cut scenes, from the games. The music was beautiful and even I recognized a few of the tunes. I also thought the video screen was a nice addition. I don’t always know which game is which just by the title. Having the video helped me identify each game.

The downside of the concert was the crowd. Since this is obviously aimed at gamers and not normal symphony-goers, the crowd didn’t know the appropriate behavior for a symphony. While I will forgive those that wore jeans (to the SYMPHONY!), it was extremely annoying that people would cheer and scream when fan-favorite characters showed up on the screen. Yes, I understand that Epona is awesome. But I paid a lot of money to listen to the music, not you screaming your head off for a video game horse.

If the concert is coming to your neck of the woods, I would recommend checking it out. Just keep in mind that the audience will be full of people with no knowledge of social etiquette.

Closed

Game review: L.A. Noire

May 31st, 2011 / / categories: Video Games /

My husband purchased L.A. Noire for the Xbox 360 a couple of days ago. Given the long weekend, we had plenty of time to give it a whirl.

The game is based on the stylistic movies of the 1940s and 50s. Sex, lies, and corruption are everywhere. You play a rookie police officer. It is your job to nab the bad guys. However, not all of the witnesses are honest people. You need to use everything at your disposal, including your intuition, to decide who is lying and who is telling the truth. When you solve enough cases, you get promoted to another area of the precinct, where more difficult cases await.

We are having tons of fun with this game. I didn’t think it would be nearly as difficult to figure out when suspects and witnesses are lying. But, like real life, liars aren’t always easy to notice. It gives the game something a little extra. You aren’t just blindly following a trail. Options change depending on what clues you find or what answers you get. I’m very happy that we decided to pick it up.

Closed

A video!

May 17th, 2011 / / categories: Video Games /

Wow. It’s been awhile since I last posted. I’m sorry. Life has kinda gotten away from me. For now, I’ll give you a trailer for a video game that I would love to watch my husband play. L.A. Noire. It comes out today!

Closed

Kinect

December 1st, 2010 / Tags: , , / categories: Video Games /

It has now been awhile since we purchased the Kinect. I have to say that the entire family enjoys it a lot. While there are some buggy games out there (I’m looking at you, Zumba), if you do your research ahead of time, many of the games are tons of fun. My daughter’s favorite is Kinect Adventures, which comes with the system. To be specific, she likes the Rallyball mini-game. It’s a lot like Racquetball but your hand is the racquet. The goal is to use the balls to break boxes. You hit the balls with various parts of your body. It is a pretty interesting game.

My favorite is Dance Central. Then again, I really like to dance. The moves are easy enough for anyone to pick up and you still get a decent workout from it. I haven’t tried the harder levels yet. I’m working my way up to it.

I’m sad that there are developers throwing out buggy games for the Kinect. I really wanted to play the Zumba game. However, everything that I have read about it says it is terrible. C’mon guys, this is an awesome system. Take the time to develop the game properly before throwing it out there. The users will love you much more for it!

Closed

Favorite Friday

November 5th, 2010 / Tags: , , , , / categories: Favorite Friday, Video Games /

I managed to sneak in one quick game of Dance Central with the Kinect. Unfortunately, my legs were already weak from Zumba class so I didn’t do very well. My legs have recovered and I will try again either tonight or this weekend. (All this exercise? It might be worse than the side effects of diet pills!) Both my daughter and my husband have been dancing to Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face.” Personally, I picked this song:

Closed

Rock Band 3

October 28th, 2010 / Tags: / categories: Video Games /

My husband picked up Rock Band 3 the other day. Unfortunately, I haven’t had time to play it much. Not to mention that I’ve had some throat wackiness for the past week, which makes it very difficult to sing. However, I did manage to croak through a few songs Tuesday night.

The character creation is OK, but a lot of the default faces are just plain ugly. You need to do a bit of tweaking on the cheeks and jawline to get any sort of prettiness out of them. (At least for the girls. I didn’t try to create a male character.) After you finish making your character, each player gets to make their own band. This gives each individual player goals to reach with their band. It also means that each player gets their own rewards. Instead of needing money to purchase upgrades, you win them by playing various gigs. You also get to pick the “stand in” computer players for your band, if you don’t have anyone to play with you. (My husband’s favorite is Moosejaw – the homeless man that needs to put down the guitar and find some construction employment or something.) I think this makes the whole band experience a lot better.

I’ve only played the vocals so far. In my opinion, the vocals have gotten a lot better since RB2. I believe they have keyed some of the songs up a bit so they aren’t really low anymore. This is awesome for me because I always have problems hitting the very very low notes. (Yes, you can sing an octave up but that sounds wrong.) They’ve also changed the way spoken words are handled. Well, it’s not a huge change. Mostly a visual one. Instead of “notes” to speak, it just shadows that whole section to give you more time to hit the beat.

My husband picked up the keytar yesterday. I plan on finding some time to play around with that so you’ll definitely hear more about the new Rock Band in the future!

1

BlizzCon

October 25th, 2010 / Tags: , , , , / categories: Video Games /

BlizzCon ran on Friday and Saturday. First, let me say how weird it is to see a two-day convention that takes place on Friday and Saturday instead of Saturday and Sunday. My husband signed up for the DirecTV pay per view to partake in the geekiness. And, oh, was it geeky.

To be honest, we only watched the interesting parts of the show. The opening ceremonies with Chris Metzen’s speech, the costume contest, the dance competition, and the Tenacious D concert. Amazingly, Chris Metzen was extraordinarily entertaining. Most of the time, these speeches are done by boring suits or developers with no social skills. You end up wondering when the pain will end. I was very surprised to see Metzen and, even more surprising, I didn’t want his speech to end. I was ready to listen to him all day.

Then we saw some boring panel with PowerPoint slides on the new changes that were added to…..I forget what game….Starcraft 2 maybe. I actually turned to my husband and said “You paid to watch some geeks do a PowerPoint presentation on a game? This is lame.”

There was some cool things in the costume and dance contests. (I wonder if there were trophies handed out….) There were a lot of people that stupidly wore stilts. They needed help walking down the ramp to the stage. Overall, I was impressed and I was happy with the winners. As for the dance contest, it was silly and fun but one guy did end up getting injured. (It has been debated whether he broke his leg or just dislocated his knee. Either way it sucks.)

Finally, the Tenacious D concert at the closing ceremonies. Of course, they rocked the house. Dave Grohl (from Foo Fighters and Nirvana) played drums for them. If anything, this was the only thing worth the price of pay per view. I would do it again just for the D. Everything else was dull in comparison.

1

Game review: Dark Tales: Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat

October 13th, 2010 / Tags: , , / categories: Video Games /

I played the demo for Dark Tales: Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat last night. Before I start talking about the gameplay, I’d like to point out that Big Fish Games no longer offers the hour trial of the game. While you still have 60 minutes to play, you only get a short demo. I was able to finish the demo in about 45 minutes. This annoys me because I used to really get into to game then have it turn off at the 60 minute mark. That forced me into a situation where I had to purchase the game if I wanted to know the rest of the story. With this demo, it stopped at the end of a “scene.” Instead of leaving me with a feeling of “OMG. I didn’t finish it!”, it gave me the feeling of “Well, at least I finished this section.” The demo should leave me wanting to buy the game. This change was a terrible idea.

Onto the game itself! Despite billing itself as a hidden object game, it is more of a click-and-play action game. There is a lot of instances where you use an object in your possession to find another object to move you forward. For example, you need to find a razor, a tree branch, and a rope to make an item that will help you cut a dog’s leash. However, none of these objects are located in a hidden object puzzle. They are all there in plain sight, waiting for you to grab them. I didn’t reach any hidden object puzzles until I was about 15 minutes into the game. This might intrigue other people, but it bored me. I hope this is not the new trend in hidden object games.

Closed

Game review: Reincarnations: Uncover the Past

September 20th, 2010 / Tags: , , , / categories: Video Games /

Sadly, I did not realize that Reincarnations: Uncover the Past is the second in a series of hidden object games before I started playing it. I think I would have liked to have played the original game first.

Anyway, in the game, you play Jane, a woman who has been traveling through time via her past lives. I imagine the first game explains this a bit more. In this game, Jane has been committed to a mental institution. She plans on using her past lives to help her escape.

I found the game to be tons of fun. My favorite parts were where you have to combine objects in order to find something on your list. For example, you need to combine a brush and a boot to make a shiny boot. I also find the different storylines interesting. Each past life has it’s own story and problem to solve. This keeps the game fresh so, even though they are the same puzzles, each one has it’s own flair.

I actually haven’t finished the game yet. I went ahead and got the full version. Hopefully you’ll find it as fun as I did!

Closed

Xbox 360 slim

July 1st, 2010 / Tags: / categories: Video Games /

My husband picked up the new Xbox 360 yesterday. I haven’t had the chance to play any games on it yet, but we did watch a few comedy specials via Netflix. With any luck, we’ll be able to play Rock Band 2 on it tonight. I believe all of our files have been converted over. I also bought the 90s version of Lips and a movie trivia game. We’re planning on playing those this weekend during my family’s Fourth of July picnic. I’ll try to post some sort of review on it at some point.

<< Older Entries