Blog Posts by Mike Smith

You've really got to hand it to Sony. Undaunted by its recent rough ride at the hands of hackers, media, and gamers alike, the video games giant took the stage at its E3 2011 press conference this evening in Los Angeles and came out swinging.  Sony offered up new tech, new games, and a price point for its upcoming high-tech portable system that was as low as anyone had dared hope.

The handheld formerly known as the Sony NGP? It's now called the "Playstation Vita" (pronounced 'vee-tah') and is due out this holiday. In a decision that was widely applauded around the industry, it'll go on sale for $249.99 with WiFi only, or $299.99 for a 3G-capable model. That's a price that matches Nintendo's

Once a mainstay of the mid-80s arcade boom, helicopter shooter Choplifter didn't hang around. Sure, it dropped off a couple of sequels in the early 90s, but while Pac-Man and Space Invaders have cranked out remake upon remake and sequel upon sequel, Choplifter pretty much disappeared off the radar.

No longer. An updated, high-definition, zombie-packed spin on the classic rescue game is coming to the Xbox Live Marketplace and Playstation Store later this year -- and it's looking none the worse for its two-decade absence. Don't take our word for it:

Choplifter HD is in development at Inxile Entertainment, most recently responsible for this week's action-role-playing release Hunted:

If you've ever Walked the Dog, gone Around the World, or
Skinned the Cat, you've clearly spent some time with a yo-yo.

An ancient Greek image of a yo-yo - Bibi Saint-Pol Tracing its history back to at least 500 B.C., when the
ancient Greeks were making them out of terracotta, they're one of the oldest
toys around -- and thanks to a massive renaissance in the twentieth century,
they've never been more popular. But did you know that they (probably) weren't
ever used as weapons? Or that a yo-yo once presented to Richard Nixon fetched over $16,000 at auction? Read on for a fresh spin on an old
favorite.

Why are they called
yo-yos?

It's a curious name, isn't it? Something about the symmetry
of the word seems appropriate for the up-and-down

Take a stroll through your local video game store, and you can't fail to notice the tempting-looking toys lining the shelves. How about a plastic attachment that turns your Wiimote into a tennis racket? Or a special screen-wiping cloth for your DS? Or a $50 HDMI cable that'll make your picture extra awesome? Sounds cool, but they're often a waste of money.

If you really want to raise your game, pass on the gimmicks and stick with what works. Such as:

Xbox 360 Controller - Microsoft An extra controller...or three.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that no matter how many controllers you have, it's never quite enough. You never know when a four-player session will spontaneously kick off in your living room, and if you

It's Trivia time!

You probably take
it for granted, but the contents of your board game closet are rich with
history -- and littered with fascinating facts. Where did "Community Chest"
come from? What are Jokers? Why are there only four Ss but six Rs in a Scrabble
set? Read on to find out.

What was the first American board game?

Traveller's Tour Although European
settlers brought numerous games over the Atlantic to the new world,
the Puritans didn't look very kindly upon them. Dice, for example, were
associated with gambling, and like a great many other entertaining pastimes,
condemned as Satanic.

So the first board
game published in America, "Traveller's Tour Through the United States," doesn't
exactly sound like a

L.A. Noire [X360, PS3]

Few game developers can boast a track record like Rockstar
Games. Responsible for smash hits like the Grand Theft Auto series and last
year's standout Red Dead Redemption, the studio is famed for output that toes
the line between film and games.

With this week's release of gritty 1940s detective drama L.A.
Noire for the Xbox 360 and PS3, however, Rockstar has raised the bar for what
constitutes a cinematic video game experience. Boasting groundbreaking
facial-mapping technology, an all-star cast and a lifelike recreation of
1940s Los Angeles, it's already being tipped as one of the year's best games.

"Ever since it first worked out how to assemble pixels so
that they

World of Warcraft - Blizzard You probably already know that Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft boasts more paid subscribers than any other online game out there. Perhaps you also know that
its most recent expansion, Cataclysm, was the fastest-selling PC game ever
released. If you play many computer games, you probably know, too, that its
name and setting comes from a best-selling series of real-time strategy games.
But we're betting at least some of the following trivia will make you raise
your eyebrows.

It's quite big.

OK, you probably knew that. But did you know just how big? Blizzard gave the world a rare
glimpse behind its curtain back in 2009 in a trade-show presentation. It takes
over 13,000 server

The Witcher 2 - Atari Once upon a time, the
formula for making a hit console game was simple: Throw in an appealing central
character, give him a task, toss some dangerous-looking things at him, make him
jump a lot, hand him a gun, and you were well on your way to the big time.

The thing you absolutely didn't do was make a geeky, nuts and bolts role-playing game filled with inventory screens, branching dialogue trees and drawn-out battles against -- gulp -- dragons.

But that was then. These days, role-playing games have broken out of the garage and are taking up residence right next to the lucrative shooters and action games that seem to
nab twice as many headlines.

Two new RPGS arrive this week in The Witcher