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Last November, I released my first book. It was a ton of fun to write, so much so that I began work on its sequel immediately. I’m proud to say that six months after the original went on sale, Air Force Gator 2: Scales of Justice is now available for purchase. More
The next chapter in the Air Force Gator saga is now on sale, featuring a foreword from total idiot Jose Canseco.
Last year at E3, we heard quite a bit from Microsoft about their mobile and tablet app SmartGlass. Representatives from the company told us it would be utilized in numerous ways, from displaying Halo stats and Madden plays to interacting with our favorite television programming. While I was initially intrigued by the possibilities of the “second screen experience,” I hadn’t really given it a shot until recently. For the last couple of weeks, I’ve started to realize what it can offer. More
After utilizing the SmartGlass app while watching Game of Thrones, I came away impressed with what it has to offer.
Ever since I moved to Minneapolis, my father Paul has made an annual tradition of visiting me on Super Bowl weekend. I've started my own tradition to go along with his, and that's bringing him in to the Game Informer office to play games (watch the 2011 and 2012 games here). Dad hates games, and frequently describes the entire industry as "stupid and weird." Despite his aversion to my favorite hobby, he's been a good sport once again this year. Here are his predictably prickly observations on this year's selection of titles. More
The game-hating father is back, which means it's time for more of his predictably prickly observations on a new selection of games.
Viewers of Replay are familiar with my abysmal eating habits. For 28 years, I've survived on a steady stream of McDonald's, soda, Totino's Party Pizza, candy, Taco Bell, Hot Pockets, and other awful foods (I say awful in terms of nutritional value, as all of those are delicious). On our recent and lengthy Stress Test of me fighting Mike Tyson, I was coming off a few days of being sick and ingesting almost nothing but Airheads and soda. Apparently, the folks at TheFruitGuys.com are Replay viewers and wanted to help me not die. More
A mystery shipment at the office will hopefully extend my lifespan a bit.
Back in November of 2005, I spent an entire cold Kansas night in a lawn chair outside of an electronics store. I wasn’t alone, as dozens of other gamers waited in line to be among the first owners of the Xbox 360. As I sat there with my bottle of Jim Beam and gigantic bag of sunflower seeds, I eagerly anticipated driving my new console home once the sun came up, loading up Call of Duty 2, and playing long into the day. Like others, my thoughts were on the gaming experiences. Everyone wanted to play Oblivion, Gears, and the other huge titles on the horizon. What I never expected was to become obsessed with a new feature that numerically displayed my gaming accomplishments. More
After several years and countless hours performing menial tasks in games I don't like, I've finally had a change of heart.
Each year, Game Informer editors are tasked with coming up with our top ten lists for the best games of the year. Most of our lists are filled with the obvious blockbusters. This year, you'll see a lot of Mass Effect 3, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Borderlands 2, and others. While I included those as well, there was one anomaly I wouldn't have predicted. Robot Entertainment's Hero Academy is the best mobile game I've ever played, and landed at number 7 on my Top 10 of 2012 list. More
Robot Entertainment's turn-based tactical strategy game is the best mobile title I've ever played.
Over two years ago, I wrote a really dumb blog post. Long story short, I misheard Joe saying "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater" as "Air Force Gator" somehow, and it got me thinking of a really stupid story. I spent a couple of hours writing a fake description of a game called Air Force Gator and made some dumb photoshops. I hadn't really thought of it much until two months ago on a bus to Kansas City. It was about four in the morning, and I was sleep deprived and half drunk. Needing something to pass the time, I randomly decided to start laying out the outline of an actual book based on the idea of Air Force Gator. Two months later, and it's available for purchase right now on Amazon (both in print and on Kindle) More
Air Force Gator is now available in print and on Kindle. I assure you that it's the best book about a terrorist-killing flying alligator on Amazon.
Bashing a game in a review is never fun, but sometimes it's completely necessary. Whether it's the lowest score I've ever given, or a widely-liked game that I wasn't too hot on, no one here at Game Informer gets off on bashing a game just to bash it. This week, I posted a review for a very bad game. 007 Legends was riddled with bugs during my playthrough (on a final retail build, no less), but the comments on our recent Test Chamber episode demonstrated that some people didn't understand why it received the score it did. It seems that Reiner and Tim didn't run into many issues during their twenty minutes with the game, but I thought I'd make this blog to directly show what kinds of bugs I'm talking about. More
I saw a few comments asking about why I gave 007 Legends such a low score. Here are some examples.
Anyone familiar with the dumb things I say on Replay and Twitter knows that I’m a lifelong pro wrestling fan. Thankfully, it’s an industry that’s always had its toe in my other favorite industry, video games. Pro wrestling’s video game history has seen its fair share of highs and lows, various series from different promotions, and publisher/developer changes. In my history of playing wrestling games, I’ve been a young fan of sub-par grapplers, a high school fan of Nintendo 64 classics, and a cautiously optimistic adult that’s anticipating the release of WWE ‘13. With THQ’s big release hitting stores at the end of this month, I looked back at my personal history with the genre. More
As I anticipate this month's release of WWE '13, I look back on my long history with the genre.
I looked like an insane person last night at about three in the morning. Not being able to sleep, I decided to pull up my iPad and browse Hulu's selection for something mindless to watch. Instead of finding something to put me to sleep, I found something that had me cracking up in bed by myself in the middle of the night. Under the "classics" tab, I spotted the title Lancelot Link: Secret Chimp. According to the info tab, this show was created in 1970 and featured 17 episodes (all of which are free on Hulu). More importantly, the entire cast is nothing but hilarious chimpanzees in hilarious outfits. More
I'm slightly offended that no one has ever informed me of this 1970 series about a team of secret agent chimpanzees.
In 1988, the four year-old version of me received his first video game console. I cut my teeth on the Nintendo Entertainment System, which kicked off a lifelong obsession with the medium. I've owned 16 different gaming consoles throughout the years, with the only semi-well-known consoles that I never purchased being Saturn, 3DO, Virtual Boy, and Jaguar. Some of my consoles broke down because I played them so much, while others were lucky if they ever got powered on. I decided to go through my gaming history and single out my favorite game for each system, along with some runners-up. Read on to see the highlights of each console, along with some personal stories about my experience with them. More
By my count, I've owned 16 consoles (excluding current-gen systems). Here are my favorite games for each of them.
I've long been a fan of convincing my friends to do stupid things with me. Whether it's breaking into a scholarship hall in college to steal a bunch of nacho cheese or getting a bunch of people to get drunk and see Jack & Jill with me (to make fun of it, I assure you), no pursuit is too stupid or potentially ill-fated. I went solo skydiving several times in the early 2000s, and I decided recently that it was time for my first high-altitude tandem jump. Expecting to recruit maybe five or six adventurous friends, I was surprised to assemble a group of 17 terrified buddies to join me in my trip to Westside Skydivers in Winsted, Minnesota. Among the group were four Game Informer editors: Tim Turi, Ben Reeves, Ben Hanson, and myself. We grabbed footage of the entire ordeal, and you can watch it here. More
Watch me get scared out of my mind, Tim being angry at the sky, Hanson looking like he's either about to cry or crap his pants, and Ben Reeves making the dumbest faces I've ever seen on a human being.