I’m willing to bet that not many people have wanted to play a video game starting a character that resembles John Goodman more than Arnold Schwarzenegger. The blue-collar, colloquial everyman is a great character for film or television, but he seems a strange fit for an action star. Yet, hero John Rochard manages to be an affable, memorable character who transforms a thin premise into one of the best downloadable offerings so far this year. Read the full story

I spent the latter half of this past Saturday humming random bars from Jonathan Coulton’s brilliantly written ending credits song for the original Portal, Still Alive (We do what we must, because we can…)* After a handful of bars, my wife turned to me and asked, with more than a hint of exasperation, “Am I going to have to listen to you humming that all weekend?” I regretfully informed her that, in the words of the Magic 8-ball, all signs pointed to yes, and apologized before breaking into a particularly stunning rendition (if I do say so myself) of the song from the beginning. Why was I in such rare form this weekend? Portal 2 was in my 360, and my controller was in my hands. Read the full story

For today, and today only, players of Vindictus are in for a special treat as they’ll need to help two familiar Valve characters find their way home. Players level 10 and above will be able to take part in the special quest “Strange Travelers” that will be activated by speaking with Emmass at the Inn in Colhen.

Read the full story

First off, there’s nothing wrong with a little Kool and the Gang, and damn you, sir (or madam), for looking down on me.  That being said, I’m a fan of poker (I know, talk about a non-sequitur!).  My friends and I used to get together every weekend for massive games that would run into the wee hours of the morning, at which time we would go to the nearby 24-hour Denny’s and hang out until the sun came up.  THAT being said, I’m looking forward to Poker Night at The Inventory, coming this fall from Telltale Games. Read the full story

Recently we were given the opportunity to interview Rachel Quirico. Some of you might be wondering who she is and why we are doing an interview with her, but the answer is simple: watch the current season of WCG Ultimate Gamer, and you’ll see her gaming it up. Better known as her gamertag, Seltzer, Rachel is one of the few girls in the house who’s up against some hardcore guy gamers, in the quest of being the Ultimate Gamer.

Read the full story

Yesterday, we joined the ranks of Xbox 360 owners.  Even more exclusively, we are a proud owner of an Xbox 360 Elite console.  We received it as a joint birthday gift yesterday from my mother (Lindsey’s birthday is tomorrow, mine is in October).  As an added gift, Chris & Kelly purchased The Orange Box for Lindsey’s birthday.  To complete our day, we rounded up all of the games we no longer cared about and traded them in for a brand new second controller from GameStop!

We already had Halo 3, as I purchased the Legendary Edition last year, forseeing a time when I would have a 360.  We had Crackdown, but it was one of the games we traded in for the new controller.  We have Fable II, as it came with the Elite.

This puts our game list, so far, at:

Halo 3, Fable II, and The Orange Box (which includes Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, and Portal).

Once we had it set up, Lindsey started trying to find a new gamer tag.  After about half an hour of attempts, she finally found one she was happy with.  She went through her setup process, and relinquished the controls to me.  I spent about 5 minutes searching for a gamer tag before I found one that worked for me, then I finished my setup process.  Afterwards, we set up Netflix to stream movies to the 360, and got started!

It’s been a blast so far.  We’ve spent the whole day playing Halo 3, Portal, and various Live Arcade games and demos.  Our Xbox Live Gamertag pages are in our links section to the right of the page.  See you guys on Xbox Live!

-Because I said so