Games as Dark Stories

Do games offer a valuable resource to engage with dark taboo topics? I suggest that video games can provide a safe play-space in which we can explore our responses to potentially frightful and scary topics - abandonment, loss, death, abuse and war.

Fitness on PS3 Move and 360 Kinect

Kinect and Move join the Wii in motion gaming. As with Nintendo, it will be the games that make all the difference to both the success and popularity of this new technology.

3DS Does More than Expected

3DS impresses with a fleet of 3D features, more power and wide range of first the third party games.

Little Big Planet 2 Preview

Little Big Planet was a monumental achievement. Technically, artistically, socially unlike anything that had gone before. But with great power comes great complexity and not as many people spent the time they should with the game. Little Big Planet 2 promises to put this right with its simpler design tools and more varied style of play.

Marching Samba DS's

I dreamt of a marching samba band drumming their way through the streets - not with real drums, but with customised drumming DS's. I need your help to make this happen. And here's why.

People Like Me

If we are honest, we want to play games with people like ourselves and with people we know - our unspoken tribe. Parents aren't keen at playing with anonymous teenagers. Kids don't want to play with students. And students don't want to play with seniors. Communities like GamerDads is a great example of how we can play more games with people we want to play with.

British Board Games

With so much gaming culture imported from overseas these days, it's nice to find some experiences that are quintessentially British. Long the bed of invention, there are still a few good men and women creating interesting board games that tackle historic themes from our little island.

Ex-Rental vs Used Games

In Box DLC is all about the publishers of videogames trying to encourage you, the customer, to buy new games rather than renting or buying second-hand copies. Games such as Mass Effect 2 and Battlefield Bad Company 2 have both released with codes inside the box to redeem and download additional content.

Modern Company or Bad Warfare?

Battlefield Bad Company 2 is multiplayer fantastic, but for totally different reasons than Modern Warfare 2. There is definitely room for both games in my co-operative collection.

Motion Controls

There's no greater cynic when it comes to motion controls than me. Though I admire the way the Wii has brought gaming to a completely new demographic of gamers thanks to its accessible Wii remote and Nunchuk, I still find the practical usage of such a system flawed for the enthusiast gamer more interested in the Xbox 360 and PS3. Both of these popular systems will have their own brand of motion controls come the autumn so lets take a look at both of them and what it means for the future of gaming.

What Day One DLC is For

Recently some games have included codes to download or unlock additional content within the game. This day-one DLC isn't an accident, it's an attempt to encourage us to buy new rather than rent or buy pre-owned. But with this content usually offering only cursory additions it's so far unlikely to make a big difference in our purchasing decisions.

The best Xbox 360 titles of 2009

Even though the number of platform-specific exclusives was on the low side in 2009 for the Xbox 360, it certainly didn't disappoint in terms of quality. Check out the three listed below for some modern classics that are still worth renting or buying today. Not least because they are now great quality cheap 360 games.

Get Start Gaming with a Free Laptop

Getting into gaming can be an expensive business. Whether you are looking at a console, handheld or PC you need a good few hundred pounds before you can even get started.

Broadband Key for Gaming

Even after upgrading, my PC still struggled to deliver the gaming experience I had expected. I should have guessed it was my connection rather than my hardware. Changing my mobile broadband package solved the lag.

Greg Edmonson Firefly and Uncharted

Greg Edmonson loves what he does, maybe a little too much. Talking over a crackly long distant line, he quickly put me at ease as we both enthused over his recent Firefly and Uncharted projects.

Interview with EA's Music Man

Music has always played an important part of our videogame experience. From the earliest 8-bit days when chip-tune composers eked out distinct melodies and sounds to convey atmosphere in a game, soundtracks have always added that layer of immersion if done correctly. In recent years as the bleeps and bloops of yesteryear faded out to more orchestral and modern soundtracks the rise of EA Artwerk label has played an important part in adding to the experience of modern videogames.

Accessible Gameplay

Sometimes it takes our kids to remind us what we enjoy. Watching my son play New Super Mario Brothers inspired me to pick it up again and have a go. I'd played it when it first came out but had got distracted by the next new game on my PS3, Uncharted 2 I think.

Choosing Multiplayer

Choosing the right game is an important decision, they are not cheap after all. Once you have identified the games you set-up supports, you then need to choose what style of game best suites the people you play with.

Bayonetta Revisited

A few months ago I wrote a review of the Japanese release of Bayonetta. But reading back recently I'm now having second thoughts. The game had left me uninspired so I wrote the review out of a desire to produce some early reactions. But along the way my discussion took me away from what was really important - that Bayonetta left me cold. It was a situation where I could see what the game was doing, but only more recently started to appreciate it.

A Choice to Compute

Programming doesn't happen by mistake, it take people. People that know it exists, people that know they can do it, ultimately people who have managed to catch the bug. In a world where computing is ever more commodified, I take great joy in introducing schools and young students to the simple accessible wonders of programming outside the box.