Gaming Setup: My First Living Room

The holiday period is over. For most people, that means that the time to relax and take stock of their home, friends, and family is over too. Not the case for me. I spent the 2010 holiday season moving to my first place.

Which means that now that the season is over, I finally get chance to relax and enjoy it. As you can imagine, for a geek like me the best part of getting my first place was s putting together my gaming setup. If the readers of this care about anything I write (and they probably don’t) they will like to see my gaming setup.

But it doesn't stop here.

Should I Buy an Xbox or a PS3:Tales of a 360 Owner

I am a self-confessed 360 fan boy. It has not always been this way, I was a Playstation man up until this generation. But with the delays to the Playstation 3, and the steep asking price, I ended up spending a respectable £300 on a shiny new Xbox 360. Since then, I’ve never looked back. But I always wondered, what would have happened if I had waited, saved, and gone the Sony route?

 

PS360

 Well, thinking along these lines inspired me to ask fellow Gamer, Geek, and TDard Mark “Breener96” Breen about his recent acquisition of a 360. Up until Christmas 2010, Mark has been a Playstation 3 gamer, and I was interested too hear about his journey across the gaming bridge.

TDard Saturday – Jump on board!

For quite a while now, listeners to the weekly gaming Podcast TalkRadar have had a weekly play-session, when gamers can jump onto a current or popular video game and play online together. It’s a great way for members of the community to interact, and if you are a new member of the TalkRadar or GamesRadar community then I highly recommend joining in.

Credit: Batman5273

Forza 3 Just Saved my Life

The time is 10pm, on a freezing December night, 2010. England is experiencing an extended period of icy cold weather. Probably not the best time to be making a long, night-time drive alone? Well it didn’t stop me last night.

Forza 3 on Xbox360

Now, let’s do a “Lost” style flash-back to four weeks ago - the height of my obsession with the Xbox 360 game “Forza Motorsport 3”.

During 2010, I have been going through an achievement-whore phase, spending unholy amounts of time chasing virtual achievement scores on some of the most embarrassing games ever released (yes, Avatar). At some point I decided that if I was going to beat this multitude of sub-par ‘gamer-whore’ games, I should at least set myself the goal of beating ‘triple-a’ games like Halo, Call of Duty, or Forza at least 50%. Otherwise I’d feel too cheap.

Think Gamestop is bad? You clearly haven’t been to GAME in England

Today I’m going to take a quick break from talking about space (don’t worry, the following article will be a tribute to the International Space Station) and instead I’ll talk about Gamestop.

I listen to several gaming podcasts, a number of which are American, and something I’ve heard mentioned a number of times is how irritating gamers find shopping at Gamestop. I went to a gamestop during my time in Chicago, and honestly, I didn't mind it. Why not? The UK equivalent is a store called “GAME” which you will find in any given town or City in England.

GAME - the horrible British version of Gamestop

Let me tell you, if you think that Gamestop is bad, you’ve clearly never been to GAME. It was reported that in the Fiscal Year 2009-2010, GAME had a rough time. I’m not surprised, given their frankly awful customer service.  Let me talk you through my usual customer journey every time I make the mistake of setting foot in a GAME store.

Now before I continue, let me add this disclaimer: I am what I would call a “proper gamer”. In other words, not a casual gamer. But, if anyone from GAME is reading this, don’t use that as an excuse; funnily enough, it is logical to assume that a good chunk of GAME’s customers  are “proper gamers”, so you’d damn sure better think about how you treat them.