Well, today is the long awaited “Big Game” for football fans as the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints meet in Miami for Super Bowl 44. Although the Colts are 4 point favourites, according to EA Sports Madden 10, it looks as though the Saints will squeak out a 35-31 victory…and end their fairytale season with their first Bowl win in their 40+ year history of the franchise.

Though it’ll definitely be great for the Saints to shake off the “Aints” moniker if they win, I think that the Colts are way too good and Peyton Manning is playing some of his best football in his Hall of Fame career. One thing is for certain though, it should be a high scoring affair and hopefully it’ll be a close one!

-Stephen

With the success of FPS games like Modern Warfare 2 and Left 4 Dead 2, console gamers are looking for the ultimate FPS experience where they can have larger environments and more players online simultaneously…enter MAG. Massive Action Game (or “MAG” for short), the game allows up to a whopping 256 players online simultaneously in a single battle. With those kind of numbers, you’ll definitely need to have leaders to help co-ordinate the combatants or it becomes utterly chaotic.

I’m not really one to play FPSes, but I can see how playing online with all these people can be pretty fun and exciting. I suppose this is how WoW players feel when they have massive clans battles? Anyhow, MAG definitely opens the door for huge online FPS campaigns and with it’s success, you can bet on more developers delivering something similar in the future.

-Stephen

I remember as a kid always wanting to be a comic book superhero and do good for mankind. I guess with the recent popularity of comic based movies, I think it’s only fitting to create an action/comedy where regular people try to be superheroes. I can definitely see how someone can gain popularity through Youtube viral videos and people wanting to emulate their idols. I’d imagine if people were to become ACTUAL superheroes, it would also spawn supervillains..and that wouldn’t be too good right? =)

-Stephen

Well, with still a whole slew of games I haven’t had the time to play, I was hoping that I would finally get to them, but there always seems to be another game I REALLY want to play…and one example is the game above. White Knight Chronicles definitely looks like an interesting RPG…with great graphics and exciting real-time battles, it’ll definitely tide me over till the English release of SE’s Final Fantasy XIII. Perhaps I should stack all my vacation days together and plow through my backup of games yet-to-be-played!

-Stephen

So the Superbowl is just around the corner and with the big game, comes huge sponsors and advertisements. Among the ads is one from EA Games, which is promoting their upcoming game, Dante’s Inferno. Now the video you see above, was actually rejected by CBS because of the end tagline, “Go To Hell”. So in order to appease the network and censors, EA has revised their ad and have changed the tagline to “Hell Awaits”:

Which do you prefer?

-Stephen

Kinekt Design’s Gear Ring from Glen Liberman on Vimeo.

I normally look around for some cool, unique gadgets and I just so happened to stumble upon the ring above. Called the Kinekt Gear Ring, it’s a stainless steel ring that has gears that can actually move while spinning the ring. Though it has no practical function, it’s definitely a neat gift for the geek/gadget freak/engineer in your life. It comes in 4 different sizes (9, 10, 11, 12) and retails for $165 USD. If you are interested, you can buy one right here.

-Stephen

So with Avatar recently being announced as the highest grossing film of all time, passing James Cameron’s own movie, Titanic, there has been tons of reviews and spoofs spawned from it’s popularity. The video does point out the fact that Jake didn’t really explain to the Navi tribe in regards to the reasoning for them to gather resources and also letting the humans go will just lead to more trouble in the future (what is going to stop them from honestly nuking them from space?!). I guess the open ending was needed for the proposed trilogy.

-Stephen

Even though we’ve only gone through a month of 2010, there has already been some great game releases like Darksiders, Bayonetta and Mass Effect 2. Now I’ve played the demo for Dante’s Inferno and although it does seem like a God of War knockoff, it does imitate a lot of the good parts of GoW like the FMV action sequences and gratuitous violence. I guess if you are a successful franchise, you’re bound to get other developers trying to duplicate your success.

-Stephen

So Season 9 of American Idol is well underway and recently there was a contestant by the name of General Larry Platt who sang his own original song entitled, “Pants On The Ground”. It was basically a short rap which tells young people today to start pulling up their pants instead of wearing them so low. Though it was basically a joke, the video has gone viral and people everywhere are singing the song…even Brett Favre in the locker room:

Though Mr. Platt got his 5 minutes of fame, I’m sure his song will have a lasting impression.

-Stephen

So now that the world has seen the capabilities and specs of the new Apple iPad, it looks as though the general consensus has been that the device hasn’t lived up to expectations. I’m sure that most gadget geeks were anticipating a whole new evolution of tablet computers with the start of the Apple iPad, but so far it’s looking like a “larger iPod Touch”. I guess from the standpoint of many gadget fans, they feel that existing products like netbooks can basically everything the iPad has to offer (and more!) at a fraction of the cost.

I think the iPad is supposed to be market towards a more casual crowd, as opposed to the techies who clamour about features and functionality. I have to admit that the device does look very nice aesthetically and the screen is beautiful to look at photos and watch movies. I suppose people will buy this as an inbetween for their smartphone and laptop/desktop, but I think that the netbook market fills that segment nicely. The largest barrier for mass adoption for this device (or any tablet device/ebook reader) would be price. Though it would definitely save space in terms of storage of books, many people will refuse to buy ebooks unless they become cheaper than the printed form.

The iPad is a good start into the tablet market, but for it to dominate, they’ll either have to make the device A LOT cheaper or start adding more functions that most techies are accustomed to. I’m still on the fence with getting an iPad, but I’ll have to wait till it’s released to test it out personally. Until then, I still have my iPad Nano (which is basically my iPhone..lol).

-Stephen