Last weekend Christina and I finally went out and bought a Kinect. We’ve been meaning to for a while because the games looked like fun and we’ve been looking for a fun way to exercise at home without needing expensive equipment. She just got a new job (yay!) and will be making better money so we decided to go ahead and take the plunge.

Holy crap this thing is awesome.

First of all, the technology behind it is nothing short of wizardry. You can register your face with your gamertag so when the Kinect recognizes you it will sign you in to Xbox Live. When I activate the Kinect sensor, it scans me from across the room and says “Welcome SpaceKappa!” Christina will enter the room and sit next to me and, without ANY prompt from us, she’ll be greeted with “Welcome LadyStarstorm!”

Navigating menus with your hands isn’t as intuitive or quick as using a controller, but it’s way more fun. Moving my hands around to make selections makes me feel like I have telekinesis or something. It’s astounding how well it works, but your first instinct isn’t even to be impressed because it all feels so natural.

(Note: I originally published this article on Bits ‘n’ Bytes Gaming on April 28, 2011.)

I’ve been playing the Gears of War 3 beta for the past couple of days, having a blast chainsawing people and making my team lose. I was never into the multiplayer modes of the previous games (except for co-op), but seeing as how this is the last game in the series, I wanted to try to spend a little more time with it and see what it has to offer. As I’ve been playing the beta, I’ve actually started to understand myself a little bit better.

The first thing is no surprise: if you tell me something is limited, I want it. Part of why I wanted in on the beta in the first place was so I could unlock the special characters and weapons available only to those who completed certain tasks in the beta. I’m playing like a madman trying to get this stuff. Unfortunately, as I got beta access by pre-ordering Gears of War 3 and not by purchasing the Epic Edition of Bulletstorm, I missed out on week one of the beta and thus I can never obtain the flaming Hammerburst weapon. You have NO IDEA how much that is going to haunt me.

The other thing I learned about myself I actually figured out while showering this morning. I’ve never been good at multiplayer shooters, first- or third-person. I was never able to figure out why; my reflexes were fine (I’m pretty good at competitive Street Fighter), but whenever it came down to me and another person one-on-one, I’d lose damn near every time.

(Note: I originally published this article on Bits ‘n’ Bytes Gaming on May 17, 2011.)

Are you geeky enough to put your nerd cred on the line?

Social media and an increasingly competitive gaming atmosphere have swirled together to make talking smack and one-upping your friends an effortless endeavor. Thanks to Xbox Software Development Engineer in Test Laura Massey, you now have a chance to prove who among your friends is the biggest nerd with Nerd Trivia, her new Twitter game.

You might remember me talking about how great Braid was. You should also know that everything I say is right. Ergo, when I say “Limbo is the best game like Braid since Braid,” you can take that right to the bank.

I’m oversimplifying things a bit, because Braid and Limbo aren’t as similar as I make them seem. They’re both wonderfully engaging, artful puzzle-platformers, but while Braid lavishes you with color and whimsical music with intermittent cryptic narration, Limbo gives you a stark, horrific world populated only with isolation and a thin line between life and death.

I watched the live stream of Microsoft’s E3 press conference while I was at work today. I felt it was a productive use of my time. Here’s what I thought.

They opened up with a new Call of Duty game, Black Ops. This one is by Treyarch, who are the guys who DIDN’T make Modern Warfare. The first 10 minutes or so of Microsoft’s conference was one of the developers playing the game. He didn’t talk about it, he didn’t narrate, it wasn’t a cutscene… he just played. It was super boring. I was working on reports while that was going on, so all I got was the audio. It sounded just like the other ones.

Hey, we’re back! All right. Let’s jump right back into it, shall we?

Before I start, I don’t want to hear anyone whining that their favorite game didn’t make the list. If you’re so smart and have such good taste, where’s your blog, huh? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Go back to your Livejournal, junior. The grown-ups are talking.

Anyway, these are 25 games that I feel encapsulate everything that was great about the 2000s (what the hell ARE we calling those years, anyway?). It’s weird, because some of my favorite games are pretty low on the list, or not on the list at all. I tried to be somewhat objective and choose games that brought something new to the table and advanced the medium in some way, not just games that I thought were rad.

These games are pretty rad, though.

Anyway, on with the list. I’m detailing #25 through #11 tonight, with the top ten coming tomorrow. Let me know what you think!