To start off this week, I want you to take a look at my new title. With the start of the REAL sports season (which occurs after the first college football game and the start of the NFL season), I am now adding the title of Sports Correspondent to my resume. As a result I will now be in charge of all the annual sports reports. My NFL report will be coming out soon (I am still waiting for one last review title to come in), with the first ever NHL report to arrive before the Caps' home opener on … Continue reading Sports Talk With The Fan →

I just don't get it. Why is it that when there is a big launch week coming up, something has to happen to my systems? Remember how I went through "The Big One" last year right before the launch of key titles such as GTA: Vice City and Metroid Prime? And now it has happened once again. This week, namely August 26th, is a key day on my gaming schedule. Not only will I have an extended weekend due to the Labor Day holiday, but we are in the midst of several critical launches: Aside from the obvious Soul Calibur … Continue reading It’s Always Something →

It all started two weeks ago. After an intense DDR Extreme workout earlier that day I went out to lunch with a few of my friends back home. One of which works for a software store, and he told me how a crappy title like Big Mutha Truckers is selling like hotcakes. I couldn't understand why, except possibly for the fact it was only $20. As far as I'm concerned if you want to spend $20 on a game, get something impressive such as Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution, not some stupid redneck trucker game. Anyway, it got me thinking, and … Continue reading Bad Games Selling Fast? →

(We won’t say Dancing Queen – he would kill us) My name is Todd "GIN Hardcore" Hargosh, and I am a DDR junkie. At first, my opinion of all the music/rhythm genre titles (DDR included) were that they were all a joke to me: part of another niche Japanese gaming fad that would die in time. After all this is the same company who releases cheap dating simulators or games where you literally spank a plastic butt and are then given a fortune that predicts your sexual future. Given that to get the fortune you have to assault a computer … Continue reading DDR Out Of The Closet →

This is the part of the year I hate the most. Once E3 is over the flow of new releases slow down to a crawl. From what I've seen so far there has only been one post E3 title that I have been interested in (Star Wars Galaxies) but aside from that it has been nothing but ports of titles played on other systems and a certain box office to DVD-ROM flop called Enter the Matrix. Outside of the gaming world, as a sports fan it is twice as slow for me. Every summer I go through this, and with … Continue reading The Dead Time →

When I returned from E3 last month, the first title I picked up to test out was the heavily hyped Enter the Matrix. After all, I just finished seeing the movie (which I thought was just average, compared to the original, yet paled in comparison to other summer films so far such as X2), and wanted to give the game a shot. The fact that is was one of the few XBox titles to run in 1080i HDTV also caught my eye. It is a shame though that the movie tie in and the 1080i would only be a front … Continue reading I know Atari. You Sir, Are No Atari. →

Over the past few years I have never been shy of my preference to playing games on a console in comparison to a PC. Originally my beef about PC gaming was the extensive cost of maintaining equipment. After all, look at both nVidia and ATI forcing gamers to pay upwards of $400 for their top-of-the-line video cards designed mostly for games that won’t be released until two years from now. And that is not to mention the fact that these upgrades result in many gamers thinking that budget cards are total crap. But still this notion does not compare to … Continue reading Consoles Beat PCs →

Usually I write my E3 wrap up on the last day. However I decided it would be better for me to take some time off, collect all my thoughts (as well as all my press kits and movie downloads) and decide on what I felt were the strengths and weaknesses of this year's E3. I should probably start with all the meetings I had at the start of Day 3. My key meeting that day was with Sony. I was only interested in half of the lineup they had (because I swore I would not touch Final Fantasy XI based … Continue reading E3 Wrapup →

The first full day for this year's E3 was quite a momentous one for me. Right off the bat I had the opportunity to check out the exclusive footage of Half Life 2. As the sequel to one of the greatest first person titles of all time, it had a lot to follow up to, and I was not disappointed. Based on Valve's new SOURCE engine, I witnessed an amazing display of HL2's vivid character expressions and wide open environments that could only be dreamt of back when HL1 was released. Team AI, both involving human and even alien allies … Continue reading E3 Rolling Along →