In: Reviews by Nick "Alsop Live" Dinicola
29 Jul 2010
Hydro Thunder titles have been released on a couple of consoles before, but if I ever picked up the Nintendo 64 or Dreamcast versions those memories have long since been forgotten. What I do remember is playing it in arcades whenever I could find it. The memories are vague but fond: Big jumps, big waves, big smiles, but that’s all. Before I could even finish one race in Hydro Thunder Hurricane all the old details came rushing back faster than the boats themselves.
In: Reviews by Nick "Alsop Live" Dinicola
28 Jul 2010In: Articles by Dave "Holy Goalie" Gardner
28 Jul 2010It started off slowly, almost silenty. One page at a time, one URL link at a time. But eventually our video game manuals started to get thinner and thinner, with the end goal for many companies to not have a manual at all and instead to have it all online.
In: Podcasts by Edie Sellers
27 Jul 2010
If you ever had any doubt what game Holy Goalie wants to be playing right now, just think: Tetris 21112.
What the hell does that mean? You’ll just have to listen to this week’s show to find out.
Holy Goalie and Edie Sellers hit the top stories of the week in gaming, with topics like:
Hey, and have you stopped by the forums lately? That’s where we’re all hanging out. You should too.
In: Reviews by Dave "Holy Goalie" Gardner
27 Jul 2010This free app of the day from developer No Monkeys came out last week for the iPad and iPhone. It was heralded as a puzzle game, so for free I gave it a try.
The object is to connect the floating numbered gems by dragging a line with your finger to make a total of seven. Sometimes you may need to connect more than two gems to make your seven total, if say there are gems with a value of 1, 1 and 5, and so on.
In: Articles by Nicholas "Heartbreak Ridge" Sylvain
27 Jul 2010
Rules of the Game is an ongoing series analyzing legal issues surrounding the video game industry. In this first installment, our legal expert, Nicholas Sylvain, examines the upcoming Supreme Court case challenging the constitutionality of California’s recent video-game legislation.
Let me confess a shameful secret that I left out of my introductory post.
I’m a lawyer.
Though my professional expertise has been in the areas of criminal law and domestic relations, I still have the reading and writing skills that got me through law school. However, since my legal writing these days is meant both for lawyers and “parties” (that’s people in lawyer-speak), I try and serve both audiences with equal facility. I intend to bring my legal background and my passion as a gamer to the 800-pound gorilla on the legal and gaming scene, Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association — otherwise known as the case about the California game law.
In: Articles by Edie Sellers
26 Jul 2010
Sometimes the good guys win. And today, that kind of win happened.
Today, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that owners of video games and other disk- and software-based media have the legal right to circumvent security features on their material — as long as they don’t pirate.
It beggers logic that we’d need a U.S. court tell us that when we buy something its ours, but in recent years the line between what you own and what you don’t own has become blurred indeed. Do you really own that copy of Spore? Well, you bought it at the store, and brought it home. And you loaded it onto your computer. But now you have a new computer, or you have a laptop you also want to use it on. You can’t install it on your new system because Electronic Arts wanted to stop pirates, so it included “digital rights management” software (or DRM) onto the disk that prevents you from installing the game more than a couple times.
In: Reviews by Chris "FighterAce100" Salazar
26 Jul 2010
Battlefield Bad Company 2 got hyped up early, and why not? EA Digital Illusions CE (aka: EA DICE) has always made sure that its Battlefield collection of games had the classic warfare feel in each one of the titles. But when I heard Battlefield I instantly thought of World War 2–based settings, sequences, and squad combat. And of course, I knew there would be huge battles on large detailed maps.
Battlefield Bad Company turned it all around. Since playing this first iteration and completing the campaign within some well-spent hours, I felt I’d beaten a well-rounded game. When I heard that Battlefield Bad Company 2 was to be released, being a rabid Battlefield fan myself (I have a 2 for my veteran status for those of you hardcore fans), I was ecstatic. Continuation of the story, same characters, new places to destroy, and of course, new guns! It’s now been nearly five full months since I first dropped it into my painfully empty Xbox 360 disk tray: Did BFBC2 live up to my hopes and dreams?
Bringing you the latest in news, GameHounds delivers an adult perspective on the video game business and culture.
This podcast is explicit and is intended for adults ages 18 and older.