Category: Xbox 360

  • Review of Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise (indeed)

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    We are big fans of the Viva Piñata franchise in our house. When we went to pick up the game on Thursday afternoon, the kids (4 & 2 years old) immediately saw it displayed at our local GameStop and yelled, “Eva Pin-yadas!! New Pinatas!!” I think there may have been some sort of dancing and jumping as well.

    Three days worth of gameplay hasn’t curbed their enthusiasm. At breakfast, our 4-year old boy declared, “I was thinking about playing Piñatas today.” With the local co-operative mode allowing him to water plants, dig holes, and whack weeds in my garden, he really can play this time too.

    The game starts out quite fast-paced with a three-challenge tutorial to cover the basics in about 15 minutes. This is definitely a sequel made for fans of the original. While the original was a nice leisurely stroll (with a few yawns) through a well-paved zoo, Trouble in Paradise is more like a backpacking trip in the wilderness of Montana where you pray you won’t get eaten by a wolverine or fall into a patch of poison oak.

    Hit the jump for a full review of my gameplay experience with Viva Piñata: TIP.

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  • Reduced Priced DLC on the Marketplace

    From now until the end of October, Microsoft is having a sale on select DownLoadable Content on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace. Xbox LIVE’s Major Nelson announced today that content for Oblivion, Mass Effect, Lost Odyssey, Forza 2, Guitar Hero 3 and Beautiful Katamari have been discounted 25-60%.

    While I already have the Shivering Isles, 1600 is well worth picking it up if you have not already.
    Hit the jump for the full details from Major Nelson

    DLC Pricing on MajorNelson.com

  • How to Get Your Girl To Game

    There was an interesting article on Kotaku over the weekend about Girls and Games. At the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle over the weekend, a group of girl gamers gave a Q&A Forum about getting more women to play video games.

    Some of the ideas are informative, and some of them just reinforce particular stereotypes about women (they don’t know what to do with a lot of buttons… they like Barbie’s Horse Adventures…).  But for those of you guys out there who feel that games are important enough to you that you want to share the hobby with your girlfriend/wife, I’d like to offer some tips of my own.

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