Tag Archives: Video Games

MDIAG! PSA: Get Ghostbusters: The Video Game for $14.99

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From time to time, we try to alert our readers to interesting goings-on in the world which might normally pass by their radars. With this blip in particular, you might just miss it if you blink.

Amazon.com offers a Video Games Deal of the Day each and every day, and usually there’s some great bargains to be had. Today’s deal is for Ghostbusters: The Video Game. The PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii versions are all being offered for the low, low price of $14.99.

We know this game received a lot of hype leading up to it’s release, and was reviewed well enough, but we all know the allure is our undying love of the franchise above all. All versions have voice acting from the original cast, including Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, and William Atherton.

Which version should you get? It all comes down to your console of choice, and the way you want to relive the classic. Want great graphics? Go for the Xbox 360 version – the PS3 version is famous for having sub-par visuals, although a post-release patch was able to remedy this, partially. If you want to share the experience with your kids, the Wii version has Wiimote controls as well as a totally different, cartoony graphic style akin to The Real Ghostbusters TV show. Whichever version you choose, Amazon is ready to believe your credit card, until midnight PT tonight.

“The More You Know…The More You Spend.” That’s what our spouses like to tell us, anyway.

Link: Amazon.com Video Games Deal of the Day: Ghostbusters: The Video Game

I SPY Game Haunts The Wii This Fall

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Ah, the fall. After sweating through a harsh summer in the kiddie pool, nothing feels better than spending some time outdoors when the weather is in the realm of “tolerable”. There’s so much to love about the season: buffalo wings during a stacked Sunday football schedule, TV premiers, and new toys hitting the shelves before the holiday buying season. But nothing gets us stoked for fall more than sharing a good scare with our kids. Halloween has become a holiday so big it takes 31 days to celebrate – maybe more if you’re really good at it.

If we ever got off our butts to write that stellar review of Cartoon Network’s Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated series (yes, it really is that great, just so you know), we’d say something like, “the world needs more age-appropriate scares to share with our kids.” Well, thankfully, we may have one more, thanks to Scholastic Media and their popular I SPY media franchise.

I SPY Spooky Mansion will be released for the Nintendo Wii in October. Here is a description of the game from the official press release:

After being trapped by a clever skeleton, players of I SPY Spooky Mansion are challenged to find a secret way out of the mysterious old mansion.  First-person exploration of each room of the house reveals 33 I SPY riddles – each featuring interactive mini-games.  Additionally, players will play brain-teasing games and embark on scavenger hunts throughout the mansion as they search for an escape out of the house.

What we know, aside from a release date in time for Halloween, is that the game will retail for $29.99. We also know it was also released for the iPhone last September for 99 cents and for the iPad earlier this year for $3.99, so this had better be the freakin’ bees knees version or we’re crying foul. Being able to play with a Wiimote on a big TV is undoubtedly a great experience, but all things being equal we think kids would have an easier time using their finger to intuitively swipe their way through the brain teasers and hidden object puzzles. We’d say that’s just us, but we really are looking out for our kids.

And then we can put that $25 savings toward more candy. Trick or treat!

A Three Year-Old PC Gamer?!?

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Now this is our kind of kid! Check out this YouTube video of a three year-old playing (well, we might add) Mirror’s Edge on the PC. Yes, we said the PC. Not some dumbed-down controller setup on a kiddie game. We’re impressed with his ability to handle a mouse and keyboard setup as well as any grown-up!

Good job, dad!

Column: Why We Like 3-D Gaming

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As expected, the news coming out of this year’s E3 is dominated by 3-D gaming – the glasses-wearing, TV-replacing kind of 3-D, that is. Which makes the cost of being an early adopter a mightily expensive one. Fortunately, video game companies are helping us ease the burden of buying all this new hardware with some forward planning and creative design.

But is it all worth it? Do we need 3-D that bad?

The answer, in our opinion, is “yes”.

As parents, let’s think back to the first time we took our kids to a 3-D movie. It could have been one of the recent theatrical blockbusters, it could have been Mickey’s Philharmagic or Muppet*Vision 3-D  at Walt Disney World. Think about that experience. It probably went something like, the kids kept removing their glasses to a comparison between what was real and what their eyes were tricking them into believing what was happening, and the subsequent and ongoing struggle as a parent to have them keep their glasses on.

But then once they did, something magical happened. They started to interact with what was going on in the movie. They would reach out and grab something that seemed to appear dangling in the space before them. Or duck out of the way when something was thrown at them. But they started to give in to the illusion and embrace the experience of being immersed into another world.

And then two things happened. One, their experience was stunted by a lack of reciprocation with the movie. Two, the experience ended all too quickly, and you couldn’t resist your children’s begging and pleading enough to avoid getting back in line for the umpteenth time. Hey, we’re parents – it’s hard for us to say “no”!

So what if there was a way to better that experience, by prolonging the journey and improving the interaction component? Well, that is exactly what 3-D gaming will do.

It is truly a revolution, in the same way 3-D graphics were in the ’90s. It will further bring us into the experience, to truly surround us with a world that is fantastical and wonderful, with challenges we never even dreamed were possible. Critics think 3-D gaming isn’t necessary, that it won’t bring any benefit. But we disagree, if only for the explanation we just gave.

But what will this do for our children? This is where we see the biggest benefit.

3-D will be improved exponentially when partnered with the right tools, and we see those as the Playstation Move and Nintendo 3DS. With the Playstation Move, children won’t just reach out into an empty mirage, but rather an interactive environment that feels as real as any they’ve ever experienced. They can take books off of a shelf and learn a new magic spell, or peek around a bush to spy on an unsuspecting subject. When that item floats in front of their eyes, they’ll be able to grab it and manipulate it. They won’t be fumbling to take their glasses off, because those are the portal to the world in which they are immersed.

It is also important for developers to think of 3-D as more than just an added range of perspective. They need to start designing worlds which live and breathe, and place us in situations where intuition, not repetition, get us out of the tightest jam. And it will be this intuitive gameplay which will remove all barriers to video gaming. Kids won’t have to memorize the latest button combination to execute a certain move; they’ll be able to perform that move just as they would in real life, and have it reproduced exactly as intended.

The 3DS is just as important. It might not have the same level of immersion as the Playstation Move, or the sans-3-D motion capture of the Microsoft Kinect, but it will provide the same opportunity to reinvent video game playing as intuitive rather than repetitive. By manipulating assets within an environment possessing real depth, rather than on a flat plane with a perception of depth which requires suspension of disbelief, players can partake in activities as they would in real life. The stylus, as it had revolutionized gaming back in 2004, will continue to capture realistic and fluid player movements and controls in a way that button presses cannot.

Giving in to such immersion, the argument of whether violent actions in video games beget violent tendencies in real life is invigorated. As we saw with “Avatar depression” in individuals who lost themselves in James Cameron’s fictional world of Pandora, there could be the potential where reality takes on an entirely new meaning for some. However, there are many factors which all need to be addressed as 3-D gaming is propagated to the masses – and, interestingly, all exist for today’s video games. Stability of the individual’s mental state needs to be weighed first and foremost. Parents need to take responsibility for what games their children play. And video game publishers need to take responsibility for the content they peddle to children. Admittedly, we anticipate these three factors to exist going forward in a somewhat amplified state until the shock of introducing 3-D into such interactive entertainment settles into society.

We like the idea of 3-D gaming for our children, and we feel the benefits far outweigh the negatives. It will break down typical barriers and introduce kids to gaming earlier, and hopefully spawn new types of gameplay which teach logical solutions to realistic challenges.

So yes, we do need 3-D.

MDIAG!’s E3 Coverage – Reach For The Tweets

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The annual Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, begins this week in Los Angeles. It’s an annual tradition for those who are not priviledged members of the press to huddle around their laptops, monitors and iPods in a quest to scarf up the latest announcements and megaton deals from the video game industry. It’s also a time where office productivity in IT departments and technology companies drops big time, we imagine.

We here at MDIAG! are neither priviledged members of the press – not yet, anyway – nor can we afford to have our bosses catch us huddled around our laptops syphoning our employers’ internet bandwidth to watch the big press releases when we have to catch up with those TPS reports. So we just wanted to alert our readers we’ll be covering the show a little differently.

While the Daily Dadgest is on hiatus, and as we try to keep up with the unstoppable landslide of E3 news, your best bet would be to follow MDIAG! on Twitter or subscribe to our bookmark feed on Delicious, as we’ll be tweeting and linking on show happenings throughout the week.

Now, let the show begin!

New Free-To-Play Clone Wars MMO Coming This Fall

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For parents who grew up with the original Star Wars trilogy, it must be strange to think their children are more excited about Ahsoka and an animated Anakin than appreciating just how cool Darth Vader was back in the day. But it’s true, and until Uncle George blesses a new Star Wars movie proper and hands over the reins to someone a little more capable of recapturing the franchise’s magic, we’ll all have to live with images of Star Wars: The Clone Wars characters on pretty much every bedsheet, t-shirt, backpack and lunch box we buy for our kids.

Today, LucasArts will continue to feed this Rancor-sized beast by announcing a new free-to-play MMO for the PC, Clone Wars Adventures, which will be developed and published by Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), the makers of Free Realms (and Star Wars Galaxies, but we won’t hold that against them…yet). The announcement promises lots of family-friendly gameplay with a social aspect, so expect kids to go up against their friends in a virtual galaxy far, far away by battling on the ground with their customized lightsabers or in space with their own starfighters. Here’s the description from StarWars.com:

With Clone Wars Adventures a new generation of Star Wars fans can become the next great hero of the Republic and take their rightful place alongside the Jedi, Padawan and Clone Troopers. Players can speed through space in a starfighter, take out waves of battle droids in Tower Defense or test their brains with challenging Droid Programming puzzles. Players can also purchase legendary Star Wars outfits, items and accessories through micro-transactions using Station Cash, SOE’s virtual currency.

Minigames aim to further the virtual experience, and an embedded card game will also be available. Being a family-centric MMO, SOE is thankfully using the same tried-and-true parental settings from Free Realms, such as pre-canned chat and playtime settings.

As with any free-to-play MMO, it’s free until your kid wants the same cool outfits and perks as their friends, at which point we say “welcome to micro-transaction hell”. Still, it sounds like there’s plenty to do for free, and with SOE at the helm it has great pedigree in the online space.

Clone Wars Adventures will be released this Fall for the PC. For more information, check out the announcement on StarWars.com or on the Clone Wars Adventures official site.

Unhappy Meals in Today’s Daily Dad-gest

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A toy in the box has been a staple of American foods since we can remember. How many of us ruthlessly hunted in the battleground of a cereal box until we scored our prey? The Happy Meal is the logical progression of this, except it has burgers and fries instead of Lucky Charms. But the toy remains the same.

Until now. Apparently some angry Santa Clara County supervisors must have had terrible childhood memories because they approved an ordinance to ban toys in fast-food meals.

“Hoping again to be a pioneer in promoting healthier eating, Santa Clara County supervisors on Tuesday approved the nation’s first ordinance that would prevent restaurants from using toys to lure kids to meals high in fat, sugar and calories.

“Under the ordinance, restaurants would not be able to offer toys for kids’ meals that exceed certain nutritional standards — more than 485 total calories, for instance, or more than 600 milligrams of sodium. That means, at Wendy’s, four chicken nuggets, mandarin oranges and low-fat milk would get a toy. But the crispy chicken sandwich, fries and chocolate milk would not.”

Um, we’re sorry to break it to you, but the toys only bring in the adults – it’s the fries that keep the kids coming. Just saying.

The ordinance only applies to a handful of restaurants in certain areas and small pockets of the county; restaurants within city limits are unaffected, and has to go to a final vote on May 11 before it is final.

We feel this is only a publicity stunt. Certainly Santa Clara county is doing this with our children’s best interests in mind, but there are other things they can do instead of taking the toy away, like create a promote a healthy lifestyle, increase after-school activities for kids, and improve the meals in the school lunchroom. All this stunt does is give sites like us something to write about and empowers other ill-informed politicians across the country to waste more taxpayer dollars on similar initiatives.

I think a bigger problem is the possibility we are contaminating an entire alien planet. It’s not enough we ruin the Earth, now we’re starting on Mars in the worst possible way. Researchers from NASA say bacteria from earth could be hitching a ride on our spacecraft, and inadvertently contaminating the Red Planet we all have dreams of visiting once in our lifetimes.

“Even though NASA and other space agencies do sterilize spacecraft in an effort to reduce the chance of contamination to other bodies in our solar system, recent studies have shown that microbial species are likely still hitching a ride. And in what might be a more-harm-than-good scenario, the sterile nature of spacecraft assembly facilities ensures that only the most resilient species survive, including acinetobacter, bacillus, escherichia, staphylococcus and streptococcus. So we’re likely sending the worst of the worst kinds of bacteria, at least by human standards.”

This could result in three possible ways. One: We might contaminate and destroy all existing alien life forms on Mars. Two: As the bacteria interact and evolve on Mars, we might create a life form more deadly than anything we’ve ever seen – something like the face huggers, perhaps. Or three: We might just tick off the aliens which already live there to come to Earth and get some payback. Gee, let’s give aliens one more reason to conquer and colonize our planet. Just have the 3D cameras ready, Hollywood.

Lastly, a study from the NPD group found portable gaming habits in children aged 4 – 14 are up 8% from when the study began in 2005. Now before the Santa Clara superiors try to ban gaming in public too, let’s think about this. The rise in portable gaming could actually be a good thing for kids. Many kids share daily commutes with their parents to and from day care and school due to the increase in dual-income families. With so many entertainment options being made available in the car to kids these days – DVD players, iPods, iPhones – a Nintendo DS or Sony PSP is a logical extension of these devices. What this also means is that kids aren’t wasting time in front of the TV when they should be studying or exercising, they are simply filling the downtime.

The other positive is all games are not destructive; they can be educational or provide other developmental benefits. There are several titles age-appropriate for younger children on the DS, and both Leapfrog and Vtech have portable products filling the “games-as-educational” need. And generally, the simplicity of the technology on the DS is more akin to the games we parents played as kids, where innovation and creativity trumped graphic and gratuitous violence. One can argue the Pokémon games don’t necessarily provide any educational value, but it would be hard to justify why they are bad for you.

Here are the other top stories of the day:

No Jokey: Paul Reubens Joins ‘Smurf’ Film [Deadline.com]

Imax, Warner Bros. pact on 20-film deal [The Hollywood Reporter]

How to Plan the Ultimate Star Wars Girl’s Birthday Party [Parenting Pink]

How To Cook For Forty Humans in Today’s Dad-gest

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The last few days we’ve showcased the fast food of geek parenting, but the news of today was the equivalent of a healthy snack. So let’s take a bite out of the stories of the day which taste great and are good for us, too!

Think ID4 was science fiction? Think again. Famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking warns humans that when it comes to contacting alien life forms, we should all be careful what we wish for:

“He speculates most extraterrestrial life will be similar to microbes, or small animals — but adds advanced lifeforms may be ‘nomads, looking to conquer and colonize.’”

That quote is both scary as heck and super awesome at the same time. Might want to think twice about encouraging your kids to build a spaceship by showing them Explorers – we could think of better ways to die than to be serenaded by an alien with Little Richard right before it sinks its teeth into you.

Showing that we like to pull up a good book as much as the next blog, we wanted to make special mention of Omnivoracious‘ “End-o’-the Week Kid Lit Roundup” – mainly because it mentions Yo Gabba Gabba, comics and Iron Man! Specifically, what does the School Library Journal think are the best Iron Man books for school-aged children? Or how about what are the 2010 Eisner nominees for “Best Publication for Kids”? And we can’t believe we missed this one on the wires – a new comic from Oni Press based on Yo Gabba Gabba?!? Here’s the skinny from Publishers Weekly:

“The Yo Gabba Gabba books will be 128-page color anthologies featuring art by artists associated with the show as well as published children’s artists such as Matt Loux (Salt Water Taffy) and Vinny Navarette (Dear Dracula).  Oni Press sales and marketing director Cory Casoni said that the anthologies are just the beginning, and that Oni will be working with Yo Gabba Gabba‘s producer, Wildbrain, to develop more comics for young readers.”

Lastly, Variety reports gamers’ rights could be at risk as the Supreme Court will review California’s violent video game band which prohibits the sale or rental of games not just rated ‘M’ for mature, but many ‘T’ for teen-rated games as well. California bill AB1179 was signed by Governor Schwarzenegger in October 2005 and was to come into effect January 2006 but has been held up in the lower courts as unconstitutional. The bill stated retailers would be fined $1,000 if caught selling violent games to minors, and all violent games would have to carry new stickers branding their violent status.

When the Supreme Court reviews the bill in October, it could overrule lower court rulings and enforce the California bill. The risk is this would enable other states to pass and enforce similar bills, and could hurt the video game industry as a whole.

As parents, we believe we bear the responsibility of raising our children in environments conducive to positive emotional and physical development. How many of us had parents who wouldn’t let us spend the night at a friend’s house without first meeting their parents? Or how about not letting us see a movie until they were able to watch it first? Video games should be no different.

The root of this entire problem is that games like Grand Theft Auto were making their way into the hands of minors without parental consent. We’re not saying the parents are completely at fault, and we’re not saying the industry is necessarily at fault either. It’s the retailers, the middlemen peddling the questionable content upon kids who don’t know any better. Now if Little Johnny came home with a copy of Modern Warfare 2, we as responsible parents would explain to him why he shouldn’t be playing it and promptly return it to the store from which he bought it.

Sure, there are bad examples of parents who let their kids watch and play anything. Ultimately those are the ones who should be held accountable. But there are many more responsible parents who do everything they are supposed to do, and yet these things still fall through the cracks.

This bill prevents these situations from happening, and we accept it for what it is trying to accomplish.

The pundits say this is a violation of the First Amendment, effectively restricting free speech. We don’t buy it. This does not mean that the video game industry will stop making Mature or Teen-rated games, it simply means they cannot be sold to a minor. And if this means that video game developers are forced to think creatively about how to make a game which does not focus on killing, in order to continue to allow minors to purchase their games, we think this can only be a good thing for everyone.

We’ll step off of our soapbox to highlight some of the day’s other top stories:

Make Your Own DVR, Movie, and Music Server – HTPC Basics [GeekTonic]

Playing Games on the iPad…With 11 Fingers [Mashable]

VOTD: Vintage 1983 Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear Commercial… Toy Story 3 Viral? [/Film]

Hasbro Studios Developing 25 Productions for ‘The Hub’ [Toonzone]

The Clone Wars HD Comes To PlayStation [TheForce.Net]

Marvel-ous Headlines for Today’s Daily Dad-gest

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The inaugural Daily Dad-gest kicks off in fine form today, as Marvel properties dominate the day’s top news stories.

After a ten year wait, Capcom finally announced the follow-up to its popular line of Versus titles, Marvel Vs. Capcom 3. In the same style as last year’s successful Street Fighter IV, MVC3 will apply 3D characters on a 2D fighting plane, mixing next-gen graphics with the genre’s tried-and-true gameplay formula. More than 30 characters will be selectable from popular Marvel and Capcom franchises, of which Kotaku has already identified 16.

Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 is expected to be released in Spring 2011. We can’t wait.

In other Marvel news, CHUD peeled the onion that is the upcoming Spider-Man reboot to determine a possible villain for our favorite web-slinger. True believers, follow your spider sense to this choice hypothesis:

“The big mystery, though, is the question of how faithful will this new movie be? Early Spidey stories featured characters like The Molten Man, step-brother of Peter Parker’s friend Liz Allan – could Molten Man be replaced with, say, Electro and Liz Allan suddenly become Gwen Stacy?”

We loved reboot director Marc Webb’s (500) Days of Summer, but sending Peter back to high school against some no-names doesn’t leave us feeling very confident. Electro could be cool, but we can’t help but feel disappointed with Sony throwing away the infrastructure that the franchise’s previous director Sam Raimi built up.

Think about it – Lizard and Man-Wolf both had cameos in previous Spider-Man films. Combine that with the rumor Bruce Campbell was to play a major role in Rami’s Spidey 4, confirmation John Malkovich had signed on as the Vulture, and the overall creative control Raimi was promising to make amends for the dreadful third installment, we’d be lying if we said that isn’t a hard act to follow.

Good luck, Marc. We hope you prove us wrong.

Today’s other noteworthy news stories:

Popbox prepares for launch with preorders, SDK [Engadget]

Now on iTunes: The Clone Wars Season Two in HD [StarWars.com]

Sam Mendes to Direct ‘Oz the Great and Powerful’ with Star Robert Downey, Jr? [/Film]

G.I. Joe DVD news: Update About G.I. Joe: The Movie on Blu-ray and DVD [TV Shows on DVD.com]

TRU Offers New Pokemon Download

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Quick – charge up the DS, grab the kiddies, and run down to your local Toys R Us to grab an exclusive download of a rare Pokemon. This time it’s the Shaymin, “the legendary Grass-type pocket-sized monster”.

Shaymin comes in two distinct (yet equally delicious) flavors — “land form”, which is how he’ll appear once you’ve plucked him out of the Wi-Fi ethers, and “sky form”, which he’ll change into should you trade him to Pokémon Platinum.

The Shaymin is available from now until Saturday. Oh, and you know you’re supposed to tell the store clerk it’s for your kids, not for you, right?

Source: Boost your Dex with the Toys R Us Shaymin download event