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Digital Dads Holiday Gift Guide: Gaming

Wednesday, December 15th, 2010

Don't lie. You want one.

These days, you don’t have to be a hardcore gamer to enjoy video games. The casual gamer has taken over the industry, changing the demographics to include people of all ages, races & social economic groups. However, this is a dad blog so we don’t really give a shit what the chicks want. You want to know what you want. You want the latest FPS. You want a laptop powerful enough to handle WoW and your checkbook. You want headphones that deliver every minute detail of gaming surround sound, you want a controller that makes you feel like a gaming god.

The holiday shopping season has just gotten started and although Chanukah came early this year, the gentiles still have plenty of shopping days left until Christmas. So check out some of these great gaming gifts, and start begging the wife. Or, do what I do and just agree that I’ll buy my own present – if she buys hers. Trust me, clears up a lot of guesswork.

Lenovo Ideapad Y560d

We’re going to start big here with the Lenovo Ideapad Y560d. This laptop is near the top of the heap when it comes to entertainment. I don’t personally have one, but my friends at Microsoft suggested that I mention it. Really, if you’ve got the scratch (and it’s really not that expensive for a laptop) and love gaming and entertainment – this is the laptop for you.

First off, it’s rollin’ with an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730 graphics card with 1 GB DDR3 graphics memory. That’s wicked fast HD rendering. Tack on a 500 GB 7200RPM HDD, Windows 7 (which makes start-up and shut down take about as long as it takes you to flick a booger) and freaking Dolby Home Theater surround sound with JBL designed speakers – this makes for a seriously awesome gaming machine. You can get it from Lenovo, or a seriously pimped out one at Amazon.

Logitech F540 Wireless Headset

You know those nights where you want to rock the Xbox or Playstation but you don’t have a game room, and everyone is in bed except for you, so you have to keep the sound way down? Well, that’s when you need a pair of these bad boys. Logitech was nice enough to send me a pair for review, and they did not disappoint. I slapped these babies on, turned them up and enjoyed the surround sound. I was hearing things in games for the very first time.

Open world games like Just Cause 2 literally opened up in the aural sense. I could hear plants rustling, the deep bass of explosions and gunfire and bullets whizzing by my characters head. Aside from gaming, the headphones made movie watching at night another great auditory experience. Not having to worry about how loud you are watching an action movie while your family is sleeping is a good thing. Mostly though, these headphones are perfect for late night gaming. Give you wife an ultimatum, “get me the Logitech headphones or I’ll turn the speakers on at night.” Good luck with that.

Call of Duty: Black Ops

What? You haven’t gotten the latest Call of Duty game yet? What the hell man? This amazing series of FPS games has taken us from WWII on multiple fronts, to modern warfare and now to the Cold War. Sure, why not? I bought this game two days after it came out and I was already way outranked in the massive online community. Which is where it’s at for these games. There is nothing like getting online with a bunch of friends and having a knives only match. The chaos, the smash-talking, the displaced aggression… what are you waiting for? Get it!

Microsoft Kinect

This one is a gimmie. I had to mention it. Not because I’m a shill for Microsoft, but because it’s a freaking awesome piece of technology. The Kinect uses full-body tracking to make you the controller. It’ll get your ass off the couch for sure, and is an easy sell to the family because it’s intended for multi-player use so you can get the whole family involved.

Of course, you could also use the Kinect as an excuse to get a brand new Xbox as well, since they are selling it as a bundle. If you’ve experience the red ring of death, you know that you could always use a new Xbox. The Kinect, in my opinion, put the Wii and the Playstation Move to shame for one major reason – there are no controllers. This is the future of gaming technology, don’t you want to be part of it?

Nintendo DSi XL Special Edition Bundle

Every gaming dad, even as our eyesight fails us, needs a portable gaming system. While our smart phones offer a semblance of gaming more reminiscent of cheap flash gaming, the Nintendo DSi (or as we like to still call it – the Gameboy) offers a full set of games that we still love. This special 25th Anniversary Super Mario Bros. edition bundle is the one to get for that long train ride into work in the morning.

The bundle comes with Mario Kart and several DSiWire titles, but the fact remains that the game library for the DSi is pretty robust. Yes, there is a lot in there that is clearly aimed at children, but for the discernible gaming dad there are still a slate of titles that will not disappoint in their playability. Personally, I like the DSi XL because well – it’s XL. This makes it much, much easier to see.

Jinx.com

That’s right. The whole website. If you are a gaming dad and are still young enough to consider gaming wear stylish and fitting, then you need to head over to Jinx.com and put some of these awesome shirts on your wishlist. The premier website for gaming & geek related clothing, from World of Warcraft shirts to Call of Duty shirts, to just plain ‘ol inside gamer joke shirts. I personally like the Portal Potty one. There are a-lot of t-shirt sites on the internet, every Tom, Dick & Harry makes their own sites with custom made shirts but Jinx.com has always had the edge as far as I’m concerned, focusing on the hardcore & casual gamers with a pointed vengeance. Shirts from Jinx.com will also make great gifts for the younger gamers in your house as well.

Gunnar Optiks Digital Gaming Glasses

I was going to get a pair of these courtesy of Jennifer Michelson, co-founder of Gunnar Optiks. However, even though they offer many styles of these groundbreaking frames in prescription form – my script is so terrible that it would actually ruin the effect and experience of the glasses. The deal with Gunnar glasses is that they are specially designed for those of us who sit in front of a monitor or television screen all day long. Whether working or gaming, the i-Amp technology reduces eye strain by messing with the color spectrum and kills glare from the screens.

If you are really hardcore, you can go for the Call of Duty: Black Ops frames. Frankly, I like the MLG Phantom series because they are pretty damn stylish. I may just get them anyway, regardless of how thick my left eye lens is going to be. And oh yeah, if that brand new 3D TV is on your holiday wish list, you might want to check out Gunnar Optiks 3D frames.

Tags: call of duty, Holiday gift guide, intel, laptops, madden, microsoft, Playstation 3, xbox
Posted in Entertainment, Gifts & Holidays | 1 Comment »

Two Great Playstation 3 Family Games

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

Sony sent me a PlayStation 3 and a couple of family friendly games to try out with my family. This is going to be an ongoing relationship with them that I’m looking forward to. I am a total casual gamer so I’m hoping to be able to find some new favorites from this.

Buzz! Quiz World

buzz

The first game was the Buzz! Quiz World Bundle which in addition to the game comes with 4 wireless controllers. These allowed me and the family to spread out in my office and get comfortable while we played. Definitely a plus when you don’t have to be tethered to the gaming station with wires!

Anyone that is a fan of trivia will love this game and don’t worry about knowing all the answers. With a database of over 5,000 questions you are not going to be hitting repeats anytime soon.

One problem we did run into is that this is geared more towards adults than it is kids. I would love to be able to adjust the settings so that I could make the questions more kid friendly. More often then not, both kids would announce they were just hitting buttons because they had no idea what the answer were.

That being said, we did have an absolute blast playing. The ability to pick unique avatars for your character as well as fun names from a pre-determined list gave us all good laughs. The silliness of some of the game types adds to the fun. Laura and I commented more then once that we hope to get to play this with some other adults.

Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time

Dylan loves adventure games and we had both played previous releases in in this series before so when Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time showed up he instantly popped it in and started playing.

While there is plenty of destruction in this game it is done in a very G rated way. Everything that is destroyed falls apart and gives you nuts and bolts to collect. There is no blood or other things found in many games and because of that I feel it is one of the most family friendly game series out there that is also engaging enough to keep kids into it.

The visuals and story line are something straight off the big screen. During the cut scenes, you might forget that you are actually watching a video game rather then a movie. In fact they should think about making this into a movie. I know I’d go see it.

I liked how instead of playing a single character, the plot actually switches back and forth between the two main characters and the shift in game play between the two of them may be a bit startling at first, but you quickly fall into the groove. I am not much of a puzzle fan, so some of the unique game play was not appealing to me, but Dylan loved it. The ability to customize weapons and the addition of game play in space brought some great new features that fans of the previous games will welcome.

Dylan completed the game and loved how it ended, but I’m still working my way slowly through it and hope to actually finish it because I want to know what happens.

I’m glad that Sony gave me a chance to try out the games and I look forward to reviewing other games in the future. I hope that if you are looking for some last minute gifts for the holidays, you’ll consider either of these as great options.

Disclosure: cmp.ly/1/qzpqrt

Tags: Buzz Quiz World, family gaming, Playstation 3, rachet clank, sony, Video game
Posted in Technology | 18 Comments »

Sony Dads: Bravia & Blu Ray Reactions

Monday, August 31st, 2009

So, I’ve had my first round of gadgets from the Sony Dads project for a few weeks now and figured it was time to share some first impressions around the television and the DVD player they sent. As I talked about last time, they’ve sent me these to play with for a few weeks in return for sharing my thoughts on them.

The exact equipment they have sent me so far includes:

46″ BRAVIA Z Series LCD HDTV
BDP-S560 Hi-Def Bluray DVD player
VAIO VGN-FW465J laptop
A330 Digital SLR Camera

A little less then a year ago I was in the market for my first big screen television. I did a lot of shopping, asking friends and doing research before making a purchase like this. What I got asked by every sales person was, “what are you going to be watching mostly on it?” My answer was regular television, sports and movies. Whenever I gave this answer I was pointed away from Sony because “they are too dark.” I took this advice and went with another brand.

Since I’ve got a full surround sound system set up in my living room this means that the Sony got set up in my office. While it may not be Max’s man cave, it is pretty close with a great big leather chair and the world famous bean. I already had a television in here, but it was smaller so it was a welcomed addition to the room.

My schedule didn’t allow to have friends over for the night to play with it as we had hoped for, but I did plenty of playing with all the features. I had to go out and buy an extra long Ethernet chord to test out the Internet features and my television didn’t come with any form of manual so I was flying solo from the beginning. But, then again what guy is going to read the menu right?

My thoughts:

I love that the TV has the same interface as the Playstation 3 which I have always thought was extremely intuitive. (still don’t get why they didn’t send us one of these, but not my call)
The pre-selected options for Internet content are great and I was psyched to see my buddies Blip.TV front and center when I first launched the options. I wasn’t so impressed to see that there was only a few podcasts available and that I couldn’t add more like I can on my Apple TV.
The DVD player has built in WiFi which is SO smart and I wish my personal player had this option, but as Sass pointed out in his post the fact that you have to plug in a USB thumb drive to give enough memory to use BD-Live content doesn’t make any sense to me.
Having a widgets button on the remote makes passing the time during commercials fun, but they take quite a while to load.
It was cool to quickly check my @ messages on Twitter which I found very useful, but when I tried typing one to send it took me too long as I’m use to a full keyboard, but it was fun just the same. I’m curious to see what other widgets people are going to develop.
While Sony may not want to hear this, I will say when using my Xbox 360 with the television the games look amazing. Madden 10 arrived the same day as the television and WOW is all I can say. This TV has certainly raised the amount of time I spend gaming.
And what about being too dark? It is darker then any other TV in my house, but I watched Football on it the other night without any concerns. It did look different, but not in a bad way at all.

Overall I’m really digging the television. The Internet options are nice and we all know they are going to get better. I really wish that the TV had wireless access as well since I wonder how many people have an Ethernet drop in their living room. I had to run a 25′ cable just to hook this up across the office to my router.

The DVD player worked as advertised and my personal copy of The Dark Night looked awesome on it, but then again I don’t believe any Blu Ray player actually plays a movie different then another one. But, I could be wrong.

I’m very impressed with the equipment the kids are loving having a bigger television in the office (when I let them watch it). I might have to end up buying a new one when I have to return this one. Still not sure what brand though. More playing left to do.

This post is part of series called the “Sony DigiDads Project” by Sony Electronics where a group of dads, including C.C. Chapman, Jeffrey Sass, Max Kalehoff, Michael Sheehan, and Brad Powell, have been given the opportunity to test and review Sony gear. If you want to know more about this project, head on over to the Sony Electronics Community.