I have written a bunch about how point-and-click adventures have made a great resurgence in the past several years, and how wonderfully suited they are for the transition between computer and touch screen gaming. Today we get the teaser trailer for a game that looks and sounds really intriguing and unique called The Journey Down.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

You just have to love a game with the title Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack, don’t you? It is one of the first PSN-based Vita games, launching alongside the Vita for $7.99. There is also a bundle with the PS3 game About a Blob’ available, check the link below for more info on that. Here is some more info: Today the mad scientists at DrinkBox Studios are delighted to share with you a story of slime, sweat, and tears with the opening cinematic trailer to their latest PlayStation®Vita creation, Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack. SEE a Mutant Blob’s insatiable hunger for destruction! FEEL the pain and rage Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Mass Effect 3 is one of the most highly anticipated games of 2012 without question. For RPG fans the series started weak and has gotten weaker with each iteration until now it has fewer RPG elements than most shooters! Also, for PC gamers EA has decided to use it as leverage to force adoption of their mediocre Origin service, similar to Google forcing new Android and GMail users to use their mediocre service. But regardless of how I feel about the path the series has taken, there is one thing Bioware does well – story-based drama. To that end, Bioware has released a new trailer for ‘Take Back Earth’ .. which is worth… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Good Old Games was founded on the idea of providing classic games, retooled to run on modern operating systems, at a fair price. Many of the featured games are the classics of the RPG genre, and specifically Dungeons & Dragons games. Until next Monday they are offering those games at a Buy One, Get One FREE sale price!… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I have been thrilled with the stuff I have played from BulkyPix recently, so I was intrigued to hear about their upcoming game Lightopus coming in just a couple of weeks to the iTunes App Store. Here are a few details: “Help, Lightopus! You are the last of our kind. We were almost devastated by the dreadful Monsters from the Abyss. They captured our remaining young … Free them and bring us the light back! Go into the Abyss and save our friends, the Bulbies. They will help you in the fight with their supernatural powers by freezing or yet electrifying your enemies. Weave through the beautiful and mystical depths of the Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Last we heard on Twitter from none other than Billy Joe Armstrong himself that Green Day had entered the studio to start recording their new album: Happy Valentine’s day! Officially started recording the new record today. It’s F*CK TIME!!!! My wife has been a huge fan since the early days, but I have to confess that my older son became so obsessed with the group a few years ago that I still can’t listen to their stuff anymore. But they are still a popular group with my family … and we all hope they manage to do better than their last mediocre album.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I took the picture above on New Year’s Eve, and I was originally planning to use it as part of a post illustrating how an iPad-centric music system costing under $1000 is capable of producing better music than multi-million dollar studios from just 25-30 years ago. So let’s take a quick look: My son Christopher is working a DJ mixer which is interfaced to a netbook that is streaming music from MOG; an iPod Touch with some other pre-recorded music; and an iPad. The iPad is the workhorse of the music system, located just to the left of the iPod Touch and below the netbook. What you will see below the iPad are three USB devices from Korg – a pad controller, mini piano-style keyboard, and slider-based controller. The three controllers chain together through a $20 USB hub also from Korg. All four combined cost less than $200 and are well-built and simple to use. You just plug in and play. That night Chris was rocking tunes of his own creation using iMS-20, FL Studio, GarageBand, NanoStudio and others. He had only gotten the Korg modules a couple of days earlier, yet they were already integrated into his music studio, [...]

This week on Facebook there are loads of those ‘what I do, what friends think I do, what my parents think I do …’ picture collages going around. Some are funny, some simply try too hard. There are always a bunch of comments which I can summarize to save you time:  ”haha … so true”. (you’re welcome) I caught this one on a guitar-centric site this week, and what was amazing was not so much the image, which is just another mildly amusing stereotype at play, but the discussion. If you look at the core of the image, there are two potential separate messages as well as the combined one.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

With all the upheaval in bookselling, there seems to be a growing distrust and backlash towards Amazon. Borders imploded, B&N is struggling with their physical stores, independent bookstores are disappearing, and Amazon is waiting with open arms for any lost consumers. The anti-Amazon discussions boil down to two main arguments; the idea that as convenient as Amazon is, buying “local” is worth the higher costs, and the idea that Amazon is just plain evil. I understand the “buy local” argument, but the “Amazon as an evil entity sent to suck the life from the competition” argument is, to put it bluntly, completely insane. Sadly, it’s not one that comes from the outskirts, but straight from the Author’s Guild themselves!… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Welcome back to the GearGames weekly video game release feature here at Gear Diary! After a few weeks off as the holidays more or less killed releases, we are starting to see a few new games. The big games this week are Syndicate and … oh yeah, that Playstation Vita thing gets the general release. This week brings a bunch more games, with the releases from last week running the gamut from awful to solid, but without a truly excellent game yet. Syndicate is a classic franchise getting rebooted as a first person shooter. Yep, the classic 1993 strategy game is now pretty much just another mindless shooter. And like those Hollywood releases where they don’t want bad reviews to kill sales generated from hype … no early reviews. I would be surprised if the finished product is anything but ‘meh’. There are a few others worth checking this week – read on to find out!… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Since Angry Birds has been around long enough that even the dreadfully uncool Rick Santorum has moved on to Temple Run, you just KNEW they had to be getting something new ready. And here it is … Angry Birds in Space! Here are some details from Rovio: Angry Birds Space is a completely new game with innovative new gameplay, but with some of the familiar Angry Birds elements that fans already know and love — plus some surprises! We’re going to announce more information in early March, and on March 22nd we will launch simultaneously in mobile gaming, animation, retail, and publishing. Not only is this a first for us as an integrated entertainment company, but the first time this has ever been done for a mobile game! Check out angrybirds.com/space and the teaser trailer! We’ll be releasing more information soon, so make sure to check back regularly. You can also check Facebook, Twitter, or the Rovio blog for updates. So mark your calendar and stay tuned! Here is the teaser trailer:… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

While Skrillex didn’t win the ‘Best New Artist’ Grammy, I doubt many would debate that his impact on popular music both directly and indirectly in 2011 was as MASSIVE as his bass drops. Suddenly everyone is putting dubstep-inspired DJ-tracks along with their songs – it looks to be the next ‘new thing’ in pop after the already tired singer/rapper collaborations that have become omnipresent the last couple of years. Perhaps showing the influence of Daft Punk’s epic Prime Time of Your Life video, this week Skrillex uploaded the official video for the title song of his new EP Bangarang, which has been in the iTunes Top 10 Albums since release a… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I was checking out these JayBird Bluetooth stereo headphones on the company website and figured I would watch the promotional videos. One was so creative… and funny… that I just had to share.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

When I was a young’un, I was skinny.  I mean, genuinely skinny.  I ate what I wanted, and didn’t really have to worry about diet or exercise until I was well into my 40s.  Now, though, I’m shaped kinda like a pear, and need a bit of help.  But a middle-aged guy doesn’t particularly like getting up in front of a crowd–or even being part of a crowd–at an aerobics class.  So what to do?  Well, maybe use all that gear us nerds have in our house:… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

My father-in-law Mark is a contractor (yup, he is a Jewish carpenter) and he lives by the maxim “Measure Twice, Cut Once”. After all, once you cut a board there is no going back so it makes sense to double-check the before you saw. It is good advice when cutting wood, but it also applies if you have a subscription to Hulu+ or Netflix. Here’s why …… Continue reading on Gear Diary …