My Best Games

Why so black? …

We’ve PAXed our bags, called a PAXidriver, and we’re ready to down several six-PAX of boozey drinks! So… what we’re trying to say is… WE’RE GOING TO PAX THIS WEEKEND. And know what we want to do the most? Meet YOU, of course, both at our panel, and during a live, boozey recording of our stupid podcast, TalkRadar. So if you plan to be at gaming’s foremost celebratory celebration, then cure our crippling loneliness and come hang out with us…

Details inside! …

At a media event in Berlin, Sony has announced a new music service which will allow users to download and play songs directly from their PS3 and PSPs. This comes a couple years after Sony completely crashed and burned with its previous service, Connect, which also encouraged PSP connectivity. Did it learn from its mistakes? …

At an Apple event earlier today in San Francisco, Gears of War developer Epic Games dropped in to show the real purpose of the iPhone: to competitively shiv your friends wirelessly. We hear you scream from your computer, “By what method will I shiv them?! Please tell me!” Well, get a load of Project Sword, powered by the Unreal Engine itself and due out this holiday season… …

There’s nothing funny about being trapped in the cold dark for months. While supply lines have reached the headline-dominating miners, who have been isolated since the collapse of a Chilean mine on August 5th, it will be months before they’ll see daylight again. So the rescuers, in a bit of misguided compassion, have provided them with PSPs to pass the time… …

You’ve probably thought about designing your own game. You may have already dreamed up exactly what your bigger-than-Tetris game would look like and how it would work. You may have told your friends that it would be ”like ICO and Gears of War combined,” and then told their stupid, skeptical faces, ”Whatever, you’d probably just have to play it to get it.”

We have. And then we tinkered around for just long enough to find out that the whole thing is really, really hard. But, of course, not everyone gives up so easily - we wouldn’t have any games if it weren’t for that super-motivated 1% always making us look bad… …

Best Buy has begun testing a new in-store program for customers to trade in their old games for store gift cards. So congratulations, you all have another entry to the list of places that will buy your games for less than the amount of change in your pockets… …

Sure, there are plenty of gaming awards kicking around, but the Golden Joysticks are the ones to be voted by you, the guys and girls who actually buy and play the games. There are no committees of journos and games industry execs deciding who wins, just a giant online ballot box where gamers cast their votes and a piece of software spits out the final counts. So in a nutshell, that’s why you should care about the Joysticks and head to www.goldenjoystick.com to vote. Now! …

It might lack the satin sexiness of Ada Wong or the strike-a-pose foppishness of Leon Kennedy, but this inspirational Licker costume has a special charm all of its own. It is quite simply the best Resident Evil cosplay I have ever seen. …

Platforms like Facebook and the iPhone have made video games more accessible than ever before, while the PS3 and Xbox 360 promise to keep offering the biggest and best ‘AAA’ games money can buy. But what happens when these two clashing sides of the industry continue to pull at the same tug-of-war? Well, there were two headlines in the news this week that might seem unrelated, but they’re the perfect comparative example to what’s happening in the world of games… …