Hobby Angels Holiday Guide

Ah, the holidays. The time of year where you get together with your nearest and dearest and try not to strangle each other as you play Monopoly. Ever thought about forgoing Monopoly in lieu of something much more interesting? Of course you have! That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Good thing this year’s Hobby Angel’s Holiday Guide is chock-full of awesome board games for the family; gift ideas for the board game fanatic; and some excellent pen & paper RPGs to boot. Great Games to Play with Your Family During the Holiday Season Poo Here’s a game that is sure to please your family, even if on first glance it seems really gross. Poo is a card game that applies the mechanics of, you guessed it, flinging poo at other monkeys. The rules are simple: fling poo at the other monkeys and try not to accumulate 15 poo (if you

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Review: Hydrophobia

Rating: M (for Mature) Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios Developer: Dark Energy Digital & Blade Interactive Genre: Survival-Horror Release Date: September 29, 2010 BUY I had high hopes for this game after discovering Dark Energy Digital in Edge Magazine a while back. I was intrigued by the use of Blade Interactive’s middleware, InfiniteWorlds and HydroEngine. InfiniteWorlds allows designers to create large games while keeping the file size relatively small. Hydrophobia was made specifically for XBLA so hard-drive space is often an issue, especially when dealing with older systems (like mine). The fact that the developers managed to cram a beautifully rendered game into a 1.1GB file size still has me geeking out.  A lot of great things can be said about this game. A lot of not so great things can be said as well. I went back and forth a lot before determining that in spite of its various pain

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Irrational Games Teases with BioShock Gameplay Screenshots

Tiffany shed a tear while she watched the gameplay trailer that Irrational & 2K Games released at the end of September. Be prepared to weep a little more (out of sheer agony because this game isn’t slated to be released until 2012). This Angel is hopeful that it won’t give her an aneurysm, especially after BioShock 2 (the horror…). And so, without much more ado, the beautiful screenshots!   So who else is itching to get their hands on this game? Tell us in the comments!

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Review: DeathSpank – Thongs of Virtue

It’s no secret that Rachel and I love DeathSpank. Shortly after discovering that we were going to be hanging out with Hothead Games at PAX 2010, we were overcome with giddiness. It would be a shame to have one of us review the game and not the other, so we decided to deliver this as a joint review in two parts. It’s the Rachel and Amanda show! Rating: T (for Teen) Publisher: Electronic Arts (EA) Developer: Hothead Games Genre: Action RPG Release Date: September 22, 2010 BUY Amanda’s Heroic Journey of Heroicness As much as I loved the first installment of DeathSpank, I had many a bone to pick with the designers, including shoddy level design that was so confusing that it made me want to quit the game more than once. Thankfully, with Thongs of Virtue, Hothead Games took feedback to heart and improved the DeathSpank experience. DeathSpank’s charm

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The Notorious Social Network

I vividly remember an internet before Facebook; it was fairly disjointed and was mostly unwilling to interconnect dissimilar communities. Sure, there was Friendster and MySpace but neither of these social networks have the worldwide recognition that Facebook has created; they invariably come up short when compared. Coupled with its fame has also come a certain amount of infamy and notoriety. The most notorious (and worrisome) being Facebook’s blatant disregard for user privacy and data ownership. In The Social Network, Aaron Sorkin took  a relatively uninteresting origin story (outside of the lawsuits) and weaved a tapestry of greed, betrayal, sex, and the unpredictable nature of business, which was no doubt based on his own brand of Facebook-inspired truthiness. Zuckerberg is portrayed as a sometimes oblivious mostly anti-social computer genius. By the end of the movie, I knew that I couldn’t relate to the on-screen Zuckerberg but the jury was out on whether or not

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Review: Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

It started with a dude in Toronto. Said dude crafted a fantastical version of reality set in his backyard that appealed to gamers and geeks from Gen-Y to the Millenials. I tried to get my dad in on the awesomeness but failed to appeal to his fortysomething sensibilities. Rating: T (for Teen) Publisher: Ubisoft Developer: Ubisoft Montreal Genre: Beat-Em-Up RPG Release Date: August 25, 2010 BUY On August 25, my husband, best friend, and I sat down to play Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World on XBLA in hopes that the game (whose resemblance to River City Ransom made my husband pee his pants a little) wouldn’t suck as hard as most movie-game tie-ins. In some ways, the game was a joy to play (the music, the art, and the environment). In others, it was a nightmare (game-play and controls). Mostly, it was a raucously retro beat-em-up that ranks up there

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Review: The Dungeon Masters

The Dungeon Masters follows around three role-players — Richard, Scott, and Elizabeth — as they go about their day-to-day lives both inside and outside of their roleplaying universes. This film was supposed to have been heartwarming, enlightening, and community-building as we cheer on our fellow role-players as they represent our subculture of geekery. Instead, this film was a travesty. Allow me to explain. When I was handed a copy of The Dungeon Masters to review, I was really excited to watch it. A documentary about my peeps? Hell yes, let me at it! And then I started to read the brief synopsis on the back of the box; alarm bells began to sound soon after. “…their baroque fantasies are at odds with their mundane real lives, and they find it increasingly difficult to gain satisfaction from the imaginary triumphs provided by Dungeons and Dragons.” I can already sense that this

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Review: Catalyst DSi Cover from CM4

I’ve owned almost all the versions of the Nintendo DS, excluding the XL, and I’ve never found a protection solution (cases, skins, etc.) that I’ve liked. GelaSkins, gorgeous as they were, fell apart after a few months. DS cases that protected were rarely stylish and generally bulky. If they were stylish, they were terrible at protecting. For the most part, the “girly” DS cases were garish and completely ridiculous. I’d all but given up on finding a case that I liked. A few minutes after slipping on CM4′s Catalyst case for the DSi, I was in love. Nevermind the fact that it matched my DSi almost exactly; its luxe materials felt like I was holding a supple leatherette handbag rather than a piece of technology. It smooths the hard edges so that gripping my DSi for long periods of time (especially during my commute to the city) no longer feels

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Review: Worms Reloaded

Team17 gave their classic 2D turn-based shoot-em-up strategy whatchamacallit a much needed facelift without detracting from the game's original charm.

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An Evolution of Gaming Headsets for Gamers of All Kinds (and Consoles)

Plantronics has been around since the 1960s, starting off in the world of aviation communication. Since then, they’ve moved into things like wireless headsets for the office and gamers alike. At PAX Prime this year, Plantronics showed off their latest gaming gear from their GameCom line of products. Most notably was the 777 Headset, which was recently remodelled with Dolby Digital Surround Sound 7.1, a serious upgrade from the 5.1 version released around PAX 2008. The materials are durable; the design is simple and sophisticated; and the sound output was crystal clear. Sadly, this headset is not available for the console gamer but it will provide our Mac and PC gamers with high quality sound input and output. All of the headsets (aside from the lower-end GameCom Xbox 360 headsets) feature a mic boom actually hides underneath the headrest instead of just below or above it. I’ve often found that

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