video games

2010 Year in Review: Time Magazine’s Top 10 Video Games of the Year

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Game of the Year lists are a dime a dozen. You can’t throw a rock without hitting five different game of the year lists from any gaming website, message board or blog. If you’re hardcore enough about video games to follow my blog, you’re probably already checking out the Game of the Year coverage from major sites like IGN and Gamespot. From a gamer’s perspective, I don’t expect we’ll see any major surprises cause we all sort of have the same view.

Time Magazine as a publication is pretty far from the gaming zeitgeist. They usually have more pressing world issues to cover. However, they’ve been producing top 10 lists for video games since 2007, which is a great step towards gaming acceptance among the masses. Does their top 10 have any interesting picks? Do they have their ear to the streets when it comes to hardcore gaming? Or is this a list another example of people who just don’t get it?

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Boxing Day is Here!

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Canadian shoppers rejoice! Boxing Day is here, which is the Canadian equivalent of Black Friday (even though we have Black Friday up here now too). If you’re not reading this from a Best Buy or Futureshop lineup at the time of this posting, you may already be too late to score a door-crasher deal at either of those stores. However, most retailers won’t have swarms of customers lining up around them and most won’t be busy until noon today, when people have recovered from a day of Christmas partying. On top of that, it’s still prime time to shop online.

If you’re looking for some quick resources to help you coordinate your plan of attack, click through to see the rest of this post!

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Merry Christmas from In Third Person

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Christmas is here! Considering the fact that most people (including myself) are busy celebrating the birth of Jesus (or at least enjoying the day off), I will not be have anything major to contribute today as far as video games go.

I just wanted to chime in and say Merry Christmas, happy holidays and all that other good stuff. Now go spend your time away from In Third Person by doing more important stuff, like spending time with your family or playing all the sweet new video games you received from Santa this year.

Donate to Child’s Play Charity This Christmas

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I know it’s Christmas Eve, and you’re likely to be extremely busy today, but if you can spare a few minutes and a few bucks, please donate to the Child’s Play Charity. There are a lot of great causes you can support this holiday season, but as gamers, this one is a great one to get behind. Child’s Play has helped raise over $7 million dollars in donations of toys, video games, books and cash for sick kids in children’s hospitals around the world.

I have been donating to my local children’s hospital through Child’s Play for the last few years now and I’ll continue to support the program for as long as it’s around. You don’t have to follow my lead if you don’t want to, but if you’re got some extra holiday spirit to share, here’s one more option.

Ubisoft to Fix Animus Glitch in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood With Latest Patch

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They may be two months late, but Ubisoft finally listened to me. Well, at least to a number of people like me who have been having a number of issues with Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. On their Facebook page, Ubisoft announced that they’ll be fixing a number of issues with the game, including the Animus glitch that I ran into. All of these fixes will appear in Title Update 3, which doesn’t have a release date yet, but Ubisoft claims will be out very soon.

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Early Impressions of Blur

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In a world where Gran Turismo 5 and Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit have just come out, picking up Blur seems like an odd choice. This PGR/Mario Kart hybrid didn’t exactly set the world on fire, but the demo left enough of a positive impact on me to keep it on my ‘buy it eventually’ list, which I finally did over the weekend.

It’s a shame that this game did not get a foothold among gamers, cause it’s kind of awesome.

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Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood Single-Player Review

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Experiencing a game-breaking glitch is not an easy thing to deal with. Depending on how late in the game it occurs and how long the game is, a game-breaking glitch can screw you out of hours of your life. If it weren’t for the fact that the glitch happened relatively early for me (and the fact that I really wanted to play this game), I would have dropped it like a hot potato. Instead, I gave it a second chance and played it through to completion without a hitch. Was the single-player worth the hours I lost and the frustration I felt early on?

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Girlfriend Gaming: We Play SingStar Vol. 2

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SingStar has been the definitive video game karaoke experience for quite some time. The series has sold millions of copies around the world, while leaving all of its imitators in the dust. Though Steff and I are no strangers to video game karaoke, we’ve never actually played SingStar until recently, when she picked up SingStar Vol. 2 for the PlayStation 3. Was the game the perfect center-stage for our duets, or were we a few years too late to the party?

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Pick Up Post: Early Impressions of Kinect

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As recently as yesterday morning, I had convinced myself that I wasn’t going to get a Kinect this holiday season. I had no plans to buy one, and had told everyone planning on getting me gifts to not buy this for me. Despite it being the hot new thing (that I got to play in advance), I’ve had my concerns with how its priced, the Kinect’s launch catalogue of games and some overall apathy towards motion-controlled gaming.

Even with all of those things going against it, I now have a Kinect and a bunch of games to go with it. Without going into detail, let’s just say that the stars aligned in Kinect’s favour. Having spent a few hours playing with the device now, has it turned this skeptic into a believer?

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2010 Year in Review: A Year of Girlfriend Gaming

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Back when I started this series, my girlfriend was in a different place as far as video games go. Steff has always liked video games, but never got into them on a serious level. Even though I’m a life-long hardcore gamer, it wasn’t (and will never be) a priority to me that she be a hardcore gamer too. I value her personal tastes and interests far too much to mess with the amazing person that she already is. My first Girlfriend Gaming post was about my perspective on this very subject.

Since I kicked off the series, my girlfriend has become much more invested in the medium. She now has about 20 games for her Wii. She also now has a PlayStation 3 with almost 10 games. On top of that, she’s playing or has shown interest in a number of hardcore games, such as Batman: Arkham Asylum, God of War, Bioshock and Assassin’s Creed. I’m sure that last point will make many a gamer guy jealous, but sorry, you can’t have her. It’s great that she’s enjoying games more and I’ll always support her with any interest she gets into. So why is it then, that I feel like I’ve partially failed as a gamer boyfriend?

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