Second Story Gamer

Most gamers head on over to Metacritic to get aggregated scores from real reviewers and a secondary user score; usually, these scores are fairly similar and you can get a good idea of the quality of the title.  That score then influences you to buy, rent, or pass on the game.
Well in a not so [...]

Two years ago, before the release of the original Gears of War, a commercial was release that swept the internets into a frenzy.  The commercial, dubbed “Mad World” looked gorgeous and was full of emotion.  Unfortunately, that one commercial had more emotion than the entire original Gears did.
Back to the point: the creators of that [...]

For me, yesterday’s announcement of Star Wars: The Old Republic was bittersweet.  It was sweet because I’m definitely looking forward to this game; it was bitter because it seemed like one my favorite games of last year, Mass Effect, wasn’t going to be having a sequel for some time.  I mean just how many games [...]

In case you didn’t know, Microsoft’s Larry Hryb, AKA Major Nelson, runs a podcast that gives inside, albeit somewhat PR laced, information about the going ons in the Xbox division of Microsoft.  And in this week’s show, he gave a teaser regarding early access to the New Xbox Experience, which is expected to be released [...]

One of the most hotly anticipated games of this fall, LittleBigPlanet, will be seeing a slightly late release because a reference to the Islamic Holy Book, the Qur’an, that the developers failed to notice.
A Muslim gamer reported on the Sony forums that while playing the game, one of the soundtracks had lyrics that matched writings [...]

Once again, the NPD numbers of the month have been released and it’s time for the internets to light up once again reporting about them.  Let’s start out with the hardware figures:

Wii - 687,000
Nintendo DS - 536,800
Xbox 360 - 347,200
PSP - 238,100
PlayStation 3 - 232,400
PlayStation 2 - 173,500

The Xbox 360 was the biggest gainer [...]

Although it is the grandest war of all time, games based on World War II are really starting to get old.  Luckily, Treyarch, agrees and says they are glad to “end the war”.  However, that doesn’t rule out a return visit.
Speaking to CVG, Treyarch senior producer Noah Heller spoke about Call of Duty: World at [...]

Now that Halo 3: Recon has been announced players around the globe are demanding more information about the game.  And, for once, Bungie has given us some.
Speaking to Joystiq, Bungie Studios Community Director Brian Jarrard cleared up some questions about the game and gave some interesting information.  Perhaps the biggest reveal of the interview was [...]

Joining Mass Effect and Too Human on the planned trilogies bandwagon is Mirror’s Edge, the game that is gaining more and more hype by the day.  For those of you who still don’t know what this game is all about, the most efficient description of the game is a first-person Prince of Persia.  Interested?  Check [...]

The New Xbox Experience’s launch is impending and the hype is building.  In the past few days, Microsoft has given more information about the Xbox 360 revamp, including possible movie and photo sharing, the structure of updates (Fall and Spring?) and the size of NXE.

Sony Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida talked to Eurogamer in the mix of all of this TGS hype, most of which has, surprisingly, revolved around Microsoft and the Xbox 360.  The most interesting thing about this interview: he was completely honest.  He wasn’t afraid to tell Eurogamer that “we haven’t seen real acceptance of the [...]

Two weeks ago, Bungie teased a very interesting game that they were making, referring to it just as “Keep it Clean”.  Well, Bungie realized that wasn’t a very good title, so they have officially announced that that teased title is actually called Halo 3: Recon and re-released the trailer with new footage at the end.  [...]

Most people would call the period we are about to be entering the holiday season.  Us gamers refer to it as a different name: FPS season.  And one of the plenty of shooters releasing this fall that hopes to stand out from the pack is Far Cry 2.  We already know the game is gorgeous [...]

EEDAR, Electronic Entertainment Design and Research, have released their monthly estimate for the console sales of the previous month.  Remember, these are just estimated figures; don’t freak out about over them.
Hardware:

DS - 600,000
Wii - 600,000
Xbox 360 - 320,000
PSP - 235,000
PS3 - 215,000

Software:

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed - 360 - 505,000
Rock Band 2 - 360 - [...]

Nintendo has one thing to say to those of you who wanted to import the Japanese DSi: “Forgeddaboutit”.  Nintendo told CVG that the “DSi software (software that is only compatible with DSi) is region locked, eg: European DSi software can only be played on European DSi consoles.”
Note that this region locking only affects DSi exclusive [...]