Aww Buddies, Fez is Showing Signs of Life!

Let’s talk about Fez: the perpetually delayed indie game darling for XBLA. Guess what? Straight from the game’s designer, Phil Fish, we now know that Fez has finally been rated by the ESRB. He’s been posting about it on his Twitter:

“FEZ RECEIVES ESRB RATING: E for everyone, mild fantasy violence!”
“E FOR EVERYTHING IS REALLY HAPPENING!”

Granted, it’s now a day later and this rating still has not been posted on the official ESRB website, but this is still a great sign. The game was already rated in December by Europe’s PEGI board, so this is the next logical step. After years of delays and scattered screenshots, this is the most substantial “this might actually happen” news we’ve seen yet.

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CES 2012: Microsoft Announces Kinect for Windows

At CES 2012, Microsoft finally announced that it was bringing the Kinect to Windows. The Xbox 360 version of the Kinect has reportedly shipped over 18 million units to date. That’s not surprising. The silent-but-massive casual player fanbase is absolutely in love with the device.

What makes the creation of a Windows-centric device interesting is how much attention Microsoft is paying to the ever-growing Kinect modding community.  These dedicated fans have been hard at work, tweaking the existing Kinect hardware to function far beyond its official capabilities. Modders have found ways to use it to play non-supported titles, such as Skyrim. Fashion designers have used it as part of their shows. Microsoft even has a campaign that shows the Kinect helping stroke and brain injury patients in rehabilitation centers. Basically, modders have made the Xbox 360’s Kinect a far more functional device.

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Review – Halo Anniversary Edition

It has been ten years since Microsoft launched the mighty Xbox and set us down on a distant planet with one of the most iconic characters in gaming today, Master Chief. Halo set the bar for shooters on consoles, seeing as it was the launch title for a console that was designed for FPS gaming. The controls were solid, the story was interesting and the multiplayer brought us all together. If you’re thinking Halo Anniversary is just a nice way to commemorate the original game with an HD remake, be ready for much much more.
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Modern Warfare 3 vs Battlefield 3: This War is Dumb

Can we all just come to terms on this? This is a war on the level of dumb only matched by dumb wars like Donald Trump vs Rosie O’ Donnell, Pokemon vs Digimon, Axel Rose vs his fans, Call of Duty vs the “cool kids,” and 360 vs PS3. In all cases, each had something to bring to the table and really the war was simply a tie up of preferences and poor choices with no real winner, but a bunch of losers. Donald Trump and Rosie are insane, Pokemon was kid friendly while Digimon tended to go in a darker direction, Axel Rose is… well, insane and the fans wanted him to not be, Xbox and PS3 are both gaming systems with their equal claims to success, and Call of Duty was being shoved down the general populaces throats by Activision and we were loving it like the whores we are. There may be a few detractors from the ranks who spam Meta Critic and every forum they can, clambering to speak out against the biggest giant in all of videogamedom. Yet with the release of MW3 and its record setting $775 million in sales during the first five days, the point of the few vocal has been beaten down by the wallets of the general market.

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Gear Review – Eagle Eye Converter 3.0 for Xbox 360

I used to love PC gaming.  Unreal Tournament ’99? Counter-Strike?  Those were my jams, son. For years, I’d raged about how console controllers could never replicate the precision needed for PC shooters.  Then I traded my PC for a Mac and joined all my “regular people” friends on Xbox Live.

Nowadays, I’m much happier in my gated community. Still, part of me yearns for the lightning-quick madness of mouse-and-keyboard controls. I just want to spin on a dime and put a single sniper round through some fool’s eyeball one last time.

That’s where Penguin United’s Eagle Eye Converter 3.0 comes in. Basically, this device claims to let console players hook up their mouse and keyboards to their Xbox 360.

Sounds great in theory, but does it actually work?

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PSA: NEW New NXE Available Now!

Happy Dashboard Day! The newest revision to the Xbox 360 UI is available now after a brief delay this morning. Sticking with Microsoft’s new Metro obsession, get ready for page after page of flattened tiles, complete with nestled ads and a wide array of various sized boxes. If you’ve got a Windows Phone or the Windows 8 beta, you should feel right at home in box country.

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Review – Sonic Generations

I have avoided Sonic games for a good long time now. The last one I laid my hands on was Sonic Heroes, which was an overall broken experience. Since then I neglected to care about the blue hedgehog with attitude; the series had gone off the rails into being unimaginative and frustratingly flawed. I didn’t want my childhood memories to take any more hits, as I was one of the kids who held Sonic in high esteem and adopted the Genesis over the Super Nintendo. I still believe the four Sonics on the Genesis are some of the strongest platformers of that early generation. The years have not been kind to him however, and the third dimension has nearly destroyed the credibility of Sega’s mascot. The continued redevelopment of the franchise has only succeeded in hurting the franchise, and the new additions only proved to be a departure from what made it so damn fun in the first place. The Sonic franchise isn’t about riding around on skates and using guns, it isn’t about running around with a sword, it isn’t about turning into a werewolf, and it for damn sure isn’t about Sonic experiencing a blossoming social life with other random animals with attitude.

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