Short Version: A faithful recreation of the arcade classic, Jakks Pacific’s Big Buck Hunter Pro TV Video Game is a nice alternative when you’re too lazy, broke, or inebriated to make it out to your local watering hole to play the real thing. → Read More
[tab:Intro][flagallery gid=2 name="CrunchGear Gift Guide 2009"] Ah, gaming consoles. They pick up where TV left off. Back when TV was still entertaining, it served as the perfect babysitter. “You kids watch Full House and Urkel until your mom and I get home from our key-swapping party, okay?” “What’s a key-swapping party?” “Okay, gotta go!” Now consoles are here to fill that void. Well, and Facebook. Whatever the case, if you’re looking to buy your kids (or yourself!) a console this holiday season, here’s some info on a bunch of the available options in no particular order… → Read More
Short version: A comfortable mouse whose main gimmick will take hours upon hours of dedication on your part to fully exploit. → Read More
Rumored for God knows how long, and teased for months, the Sony PSP Go is finally available at your friendly neighborhood retailer. We have one—well, I have one—and have been playing with it for a couple of days now. As such, consider this a review. Spoiler: It’s not bad, but not great either. → Read More
PSP what? Nobody cares about that old thing. Honestly, do you want to carry around yet another heavy, fragile, state-of-the-art toy? No. What you need (what this country needs) is a cheap little handheld Genesis sporting 20 of the system’s greatest semi-hits. No need to worry about managed copies, DRM, firmware updates, or UMD transfer — just hit the power button and you’ll be playing Altered Beast or Sonic & Knuckles before you can say “Segaaaa!”
Video of the sweetness inside. → Read More
After finally adding some drummy goodness with Guitar Hero World Tour and then issuing the video game equivalent of a greatest hits album, the newest installment of Activision’s wildly popular Guitar Hero series has hit the market.
Many may look at Guitar Hero 5 the same way people look at popular sports games like EA’s Madden series: the core game hasn’t changed that much at all but there are some new features here and there, plus 85 new songs to play and a slightly redesigned guitar controller.
Diehard fans of the series will likely go out and buy Guitar Hero 5 without much convincing, while people who are slowly (or quickly) growing weary of the near-endless crop of music games aren’t likely to find much here to change their minds. So let’s focus on those of us (myself included) in the middle – people who like music games enough to keep playing them but need some good reasons to keep shelling out $60 to $100 every other month (or so it seems). → Read More
With the NFL season now in full swing, you may be looking for ways to pass the time between Tuesday morning and Sunday afternoon (or Thursdays – stupid Thursday night games screwing up Fantasy and Pick’em leagues the world over). Sure, you could converse with loved ones, do some much needed yardwork, or – gasp!!! – read a book, but maybe you’d find plenty of happiness in the newest console installment of the Madden football franchise from EA Sports. → Read More
Behold! A portable convergence device from faraway lands! It plays music, it plays videos, it takes photos, it’s an e-book reader, a dictionary, a notepad, it slices, it dices, it does it all! But none of that matters. None of it. Why? Because this little $30 gem plays NES games. And so we dance… → Read More
Quick Version: A fool and his money are soon parted, or so the saying goes. I just dropped five bucks on River City Ransom for the Wii Virtual Console. Foolish? Or near-endless retro fun? Spoiler: Totally worth it. → Read More
With a name like the T.16000M, you kind of expect this joystick to sync with your cerebellum and control eight games at once. But no, it’s just Thrustmaster’s latest, which uses a magnetic sensor to provide extra precision in your controls — 16,000 analog states per axis, to be precise (many analog sticks use 256 or even 16). I’ve always thought of joysticks as being precise, even if I was never good with them, and this one appears to be the most precise non-military joystick out there right now.
I’ll be honest here: I don’t have a lot of experience with joysticks. I do have lots of experience with joypads, and I used to drive stick, so if you add them together it’s almost like I could have reviewed this thing years ago. So I’m not a specialist, but I do know what to expect from a controller. → Read More
Back at CES, I got to check out the Mamba in its near-final form. I was impressed, and couldn’t wait to get my hands on it to review. Now, after living with it for a good while, and after some serious initial problems, I can say it’s everything they wanted it to be, though I still think Razer’s true megamouse will be the Mamba’s successor. Watch and read for optimum review experience. → Read More
Short Version: Friends, this is the nerdiest and coolest Nintendo DS Lite case that a Transformers fan could ask for. What kid (12-year-old or 35-year-old) wouldn’t want their DS too look like Bumblebee or Megatron? Do you see the stylus that each set comes with? Pick one up for your kid or yourself. They’re only $20. → Read More
I now have a reason to ignore my PS3 and Xbox 360. The Wii finally has a decent “next-gen” shooter thanks to High Voltage and Sega. I hate to backtrack, but let’s take a step back for a second before I dive into this review.
Developers have typically taken a different route with the Wii since it launched many moons ago and for good reason. First party titles weren’t that great and the WiiWare catalog pretty much stunk on ice for a long time. And then there’s the fact that the console sold like hotcakes because it was “accessible” to the masses or the “casual gamer” as it were. If you had a decent game it was probably going to sell well. Development for the console in the early days could have been funded with a neighborhood bake sale. You see where I’m going with this, right? → Read More
Movie licensed games have generally sucked something fierce. Very rarely are any of them ever any good, and the same goes for movies based on videogames. Something gets lost in translation. Development is typically rushed to coincide with simultaneous launches, and gamers are the ones who suffer the most. There are a few diamonds in the rough (X-Men Origins: Wolverine was pretty good), but they’re few and far between. Activision and Luxoflux’s adaption of the second Transformers cinematic masterpiece falls somewhere in between. → Read More
Short Version: Nintendo DSi owners searching for a case that not only protects their handheld but also extends the play time will find Tekno Creations TekCase for the DSi well worth the $30 investment. → Read More
The Game: The Bigs 2 from 2K Sports
The Platform: Xbox 360 (also available for the PS3, PS2, Wii and PSP)
The Review:
Overall
2K’s The Bigs 2 is a relatively easy game to pick up and play compared to more serious titles, like MLB 2K9 or MLB 09: The Show, but experienced Bigs “vets” will find a handful of new features to keep the experience of the Big Show challenging making the game worth picking up. If that’s not enough to sway you then check out the rest of the review. I triple dog dare you. → Read More
“So, I’m supposed to put my Wiimote on a box and bang on that to play Let’s Tap?”
Yeah, that’s pretty much what I kept asking myself while I unwrapped Sega’s Let’s Tap for the Wii. By placing the Wii Remote on a box and tapping the surface, the Wiimote’s accelerometer miraculously picks up on the vibrations and translates them on-screen. It’s a novel idea, sure, and I’m astonished that it actually works. I’ve finally replaced Wii Sports as my party game when friends are over and the girls are sick of the boys shooting aliens all night drunk on Pabst. → Read More
I’m no marketing wizard, but Guitar Hero Smash Hits could have been called Guitar Hero: Songs From The First Guitar Hero Games Before The Drums and Microphone Existed But Now You Can Play the Good Songs from Those Games on the Drums and Sing Too. Again, I’m no marketing wizard. And Guitar Hero Smash Hits isn’t a bad game at all. It is what it is, though: a greatest hits game. If you’ve played all the Guitar Hero games before World Tour and you’re only interested in playing guitar, then you’ll find little of value here. But if you liked all of the early songs and have always wished you could play the drumming and singing parts, then Smash Hits is worth a closer look. → Read More
I don’t get a bonerd for LEGOs like some people I know whose names start with a J and end with an S and work for a site that rhymes with shmimono, but I have fond memories of spending countless hours as a youth erecting LEGO fortresses and castles and whatever else my imagination could conjure up. It was always about smashing the other fortress and kicking some tiny LEGO ass, but that was at least 20 years ago. Now fast forward to 2009 and while I still like to kick ass, I enjoy doing it on a much smaller scale. Enter LEGO Battles for the Nintendo DS. → Read More
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