Genres and games for you -
Lots from Nintendo at the moment
Plenty of free down-loadable games
Scrabulous on Facebook

Basically, there are games now for everyone. If possible, play before you buy, on line, ... ]]> What kind of gamer are you? Decide this first, then choosing games is easy!

1) The Chew Them Up and Spit Them Out Gamer

All you want to do is complete the game. You don’t care if you have to use cheats and will hunt them down from magazines or websites. You play all your games on the easiest setting, even if it bores you to tears that way, just so that you can finish the games.

Genres and games for you –

Platform classics (especially ones with ‘bosses’ at the end of each stage)

Street fighter equivalents (more ‘bosses’)

Free trials from the Internet (usually easy to finish)

2) The Emotional Gamer

You really connect with your characters, and therefore they should be as cute and fluffy as possible. You care little for age-appropriate content and will happily play your niece’s games.

Genres and games for you –

Pokemon (not too much death)

Kirby (terminally cute!)

Any of the many pet games based on the concept of caring for your critter, though try not to cry if he goes to doggy heaven!

3) The Sportsman/woman

You don’t really want to be on the computer, but either it’s raining or your league hasn’t started its season yet. There is plenty around to interest you.

Genres and games for you –

Team sport games – Fifa series for soccer, etc.

Manager games – probably best played on-line so you can compete – eg. Fantasy Football

Active sport games – tennis games on the Wii, surfing games where you wobble around to control them, and lots of options if you make it to an arcade

4) The Obsessive Gamer

You want to be the best and you will be! You can spend hours on the most boring of games, simply because no one else will ever spend as long on it as you or get as good!

Genres and games for you –

Obscure games – try some of the free Internet downloads to see what you like

New, imported games – if no one else has it, you WILL be the best – you can move on if it becomes popular

5) The Intellectual Gamer

You want games that prove your superiority! Word games, maths games, logic games, you will excel at them all. Just don’t let the ten-year-old next door get hold of your Brain Training game…

Genres and games for you –

Lots from Nintendo at the moment

Plenty of free down-loadable games

Scrabulous on Facebook

Basically, there are games now for everyone. If possible, play before you buy, on line, at friends or in the stores. Know yourself, know your preferences and don’t be swayed by flash advertising into buying games you will never play.

To help spark the rise of computer games, magazines such as "Computer Gaming World" would ... ]]>

Tell me if this is not true. You are at your local best buy checking out the new Plasma screen televisions, when you’re 12 year old son confronts you with the oh so familiar boxed computer game. You give in to the pressure because your son has done his chores in the past week, so you pay the 30$ fee for the game. Later on in the month you hear the sound of gunshots and explosions coming from your son’s room. You go into the room only to see your son playing an extremely realistic first person shooter game, and marvel at the fact that video games have changed so much since you played them when you were a kid.

Let’s face it, computer games and the “gaming industry” is rapidly evolving. If you were to ever play the first created computer game, “Spacewar!”, created by MIT students Alan Kotok and Martin Graetz, in 1961, you would almost stop playing so you could try and stop yourself from laughing. Games in the following decade were just as “visually impressive”, generally being text games and “interactive fiction”.

To help spark the rise of computer games, magazines such as “Computer Gaming World” would post computer codes in their articles so that readers could type these codes into their own personal computers and play the games at home. Soon, the gaming community would be creating their own game programs and slowly but surely advancing the industry.

In 1983 there was a crash in the video game industry, mainly because there was an abundance of poorly made games. This crash mainly effected the console side of the video game industry, but did have significant effects on the computer game industry as well. A light to this video crash tunnel would be the release of the Nintendo Entertainment Console.

Soon there would be the introduction of the new mouse control, a device that would be the spark to a gasoline of “first person shooter” games. Advances in graphics would produce games like “Wolfenstein 3d” (1992) and “Doom” (1993), a game that stretched the visual limits of computer games at the time.

“Doom” caused computer graphics to become much better and soon came a game that in my personal opinion, revolutionized gaming to what it is today. That game was “Half-Life” ,created by Valve. “Half-Life” (1998) set the standard for games, with new functions such as the manipulation of the environment, and a non-consequential action system (i.e. you can kill a fellow scientist with no punishment in further game action). The Half-Life graphics and physics engine was encouraged to be modified, this encouragement led to the Half-Life mod “Counter-Strike”. With Counter-Strike, the gaming industry went from a recreational activity to becoming a sport. These games changed the way games would be played forever.

Soon improved graphics engines would be created and games like “Doom 3″ and “Half-Life 2″ would be pushing the envelope on visual performance. These games would have advanced artificial intelligence and more freedom of the player in the environment. These games ran on Microsoft’s directx9 graphics engines.

Now in the gaming world, the directx10 graphics engine is about to be released in games. The most anticipated game being “Crysis”. “Crysis” and directx10 boast better water visuals, a huge increase in environment manipulation, and a multiplier of simultaneous actions. This new technology will further improve the rapidly evolving gaming industry in the future.

Starter Deck- Most games put together a deck that introduces the game to players in a simple fashion. These are usually called starter decks. ... ]]>

Trading card games (TCG) or collectable card games (CCG) are hugely popular. There seems to be a game out there for almost every commercial property from Harry Potter to World of Warcraft. Each of these games have their own unique form of play and terminology. To the uninitiated this can be like a whole other language. To list the terminology for every game would be overwhelming, but most games have some very similar terminology.

Deck- This is the collection of cards that is legally formatted for the given game. Each player starts the game with his or her own deck that can be a standard deck sold in one piece (starter deck)or customized with booster packs.

Starter Deck- Most games put together a deck that introduces the game to players in a simple fashion. These are usually called starter decks. Starter decks are usually used to learn the game and are not usually competitive in play.

Theme Deck- A theme deck is a pre-built deck sold by a company that operates using a specific theme. These are usually stronger and more complicated than starter decks.

Booster Packs- Booster packs are randomized cards sold in packs. They are used to build your library of playable cards and to make your deck more competitive. They usually come in packs of eight to fourteen cards and will contain at least one rare card. Depending on the game, packs will also contain one foil card.

Discard Pile- this is where a player puts cards that are to be discarded for various effects in the game. This is also known as a K.O. pile and a Graveyard.

Keyword- Keywords are words on a card, usually in bold, that give that card a certain understood ability. This will, at times, be spelled out on the card but often will not. Games will have respective lists of keywords in their rulebooks.

Mulligan- To redraw ones initial hand. Because of the strategy based strategy of collectible card games, getting the cards you need is very important. Most games incorporate a way to mulligan to give players the best opportunity to get cards they need to be competitive and have fun. Some games allow this to be done with no cost.

Game Mechanic- This is the way that a game operates. You may have to turn a card a certain direction to indicate something about the card or to use the cards ability. The game mechanic will incorporate terminology that is unique to that game.

Most games have their own terminology that is explained in their rules. In fact, learning the terminology is paramount to understanding the rules of most games. A lot of games will have the same game mechanic with different terminology. Games will usually try and incorporate aspects of the game itself into the terminology, thereby enhancing the immersive feeling of the game.

Although the terminology of games is ever expanding and unique for most games, it is very easy to pick up. Knowing the basic terminology above and having a good teacher or rule book will put you on the road to enjoyment that is associated with collectible card games.

One of my favorite things to do in the game was to collect as many "Feather" potions as possible so that I could use a glitch in the game to shoot ... ]]> The Best Xbox 360 game would have to be The Elders Scrolls: Oblivion! This game has one of the best looking graphic systems that I have seen so far. I am an avid RPG (Role-Playing Game) fan and player and I have many on the Xbox 360.

Oblivion is a single-player game only, but it does have some online capabilities such online downloadable content from Xbox Live and there have been several patches and updates for the game some of which have really expanded the game play and added many more achievement points to the game, so it not only made me want to play the game more because of the new and exciting mods that Bethesda was making for the game, but for the fact that they also were generous enough to add more achievement points to the game furthering my gamer score, which everyone with Xbox Live know, if you have a low gamer score you are a pitiful gamer lol.

When the game starts off you are in jail and you have to find your way out, but once you do you can tell the game is going to be amazing to look at and the sound tracks are awesome as well. The dialogue is a little lacking as is in most RPG games, but for the most part you get used all the characters repeating the same lines in only one of maybe six different accents.

When the game starts you are given the task of finding the hidden heir to a throne that now sits bear, the previous king was killed by some unknown assassin. Your task is to go through the world of Tamriel and search out the heir and solve many side quests during your struggle.

The game play is like most RPG games, you hack and slash your way through enemies or you can sit at a distance and pick them off with your bow. Some of my favorite moments are using spells from a great distance and watching the people scatter. The game has an alchemy system that allows you to create your own concoctions some with good effects, some with ill effects and you can even create enchantments for your weapons to make them stronger or give them a special attribute.

One of my favorite things to do in the game was to collect as many “Feather” potions as possible so that I could use a glitch in the game to shoot off into the sky like a rocket and I could look down on the entire map and see the edges where normally you cannot see or get to from the map, it was like I was Superman jumping over tall buildings and over steep mountains.

The games leveling system is a little too easy though as I was able to level up so quickly that I wasn’t even done with the first part of the main story mode mission and I was already mostly unable to be harmed and had more specialty items and weapons than I was supposed to at that point in the game. Oblivion allows you to do that though, I was eighty hours into the game before I basically started the main mission there was even more side quests to do, but I got to a point in the game where I had to do at least part of the main story mode mission or else I wasn’t really going to be able to progress further in the game.

There are several mods for the game that Bethesda released which included more armor, items, etc, but they also released new locations that came in the mods such as The Elder Scrolls IV: Knights of the Nine, The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles, Oblivion Vile Lair, Oblivion Thieves Den and Oblivion Wizards Tower. All of these mods added new areas to explore enhancing an already spectacular game.

There are so many reasons to play this game, as I have over three hundred and eighty hours in the game and I’m still only about ninety-three percent complete with the game. I hope there will be a sequel to this game, Bethesda really knows how to make an awesome RPG game!