Hi there and welcome to GAMEparents, the website that helps you make the right decisions about computers and computer games. If this is your first visit, we recommend you read through the "What We're About" section by clicking here.
After that if you want to get a head start on finding out about computer and video games we would suggest the following:
Learning is the Game - an article that exposes the positive aspects of video games and there are more than you might think! Click here
Everything Bad is Good For You - A review of the book by Steven Johnson that reveals how popular culture (including video games) may actually be benefiting our education not demeaning it. Click here
Computer Game Genres - Ever wondered what the different types of video games are? Wonder no longer. Click here
Finally, here are several other sites we highly recommend depending on where you are.
GamerDad is a great resource for American parents who are gamers too. You’ll find GamerDad at www.gamerdad.com.
GameParents.de - this new site was launched recently in Germany. www.gameparents.de has the same mission as us – to educate its visitors and members about video gaming and is well worth the visit for German speakers.
Game Review - Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
New Review Alert: Atari bring two fantastic games to market, back to back, with a promise of more with Alone in the Dark and Overload for PS3 due out soon. Metal Gear Solid 4 is the must have title to show off the capabilities of the PlayStation 3. Check it out.
New Review Alert: Wow - just wow. Codemasters have sure done it again, this time with street racing. Check out our review of the Xbox 360 version of GRID: Race Driver to see what we mean.
Guitar Hero mania is alive and well. Guitar Hero On Tour for DS was released this week, Guitar Hero Aerosmith is due out soon, and now some juicy screenshots of the forthcoming Guitar Hero World Tour (previously rumoured as Guitar Hero 4).
Click on the link below to take a look at some images of the controllers as well as a great shot of the "create your own song" functionality. Yes, that's right. It's confirmed that you'll be able to compose your own tracks within Guitar hero World Tour - saving up to a hundred of your own and downloading a couple hundred from other people as well. The only thing lacking is being able to record vocals, but being able to do your own drum and guitar lines is simply an awesome ability and one we're looking forward to big time.
New Review Alert: Woohoo! We're rockin' on again with another Guitar Hero game - this time on the Nintendo DS. Read about how cool this game is in our review.
We're doing great - hope you're doing well too. While we haven't posted a lot of big news, there's been plenty of smaller stuff going on, so make sure you remember to check our twitter feed - GAMEparents Twitter.
As you may have seen, we posted up our review of Super Smash Bros Brawl last week, in time for you to make a decision about whether to get it at launch or not. Hopefully that was helpful. We were aiming at doing the same for the new Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness games, but while we have been playing them for over a week, we had a sudden influx of other high quality titles on various platforms hit our front door which have already hit store shelves, so we're on the case with those as I type this.
This includes Civlization Revolution on Xbox 360, Metal Gear Solid 4 on PlayStation 3, Race Driver GRID on Xbox 360, and Secret Agent Clank and Everybody's Golf 2, both for PlayStation Portable. On our first couple of sessions, all of these games are looking fantastic with the standouts currently being the absolutely gorgeous GRID which takes the DIRT approach to a whole new level, and, of course, Metal Gear Solid which is much more than just a game.
So look out for our reviews of these and more in the next week. It's a great time to be a gamer.
One last thing - with the recent release of LEGO Indiana Jones and the imminent release of LEGO Batman, both coming off the back of the highly successful LEGO Star Wars games, our latest poll asks - which franchise would you like to converted to a LEGO video game? Make sure you vote - it's all in fun, but we may just send the results off to the developers if we get enough voting happening. :)
(Oh and don't forget that in just over a week Guitar Hero On Tour for DS will be released - so that combined with the likes of Top Spin 3, and the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games, the good times are going to just keep on continuing!)
New Review Alert: We review Speed Racer for Nintendo Wii and see whether it's just a simple cash-in-the-movie deal or something with a bit more depth. With its Wipeout-esque visuals and driving style, Speed Racer is an intriguing game - check out what we thought after a week of hands on.