Everyone experiences different moods at different times to one extent or another. Can our mood affect the gameplay and overall enjoyment of games? Can being happier make it more pleasant? Angry a more mass-scale blood bath or more saddened a worst off score/ not wanting to play a game?

Should we only play video games when in a certain way? Or perhaps to change our mood?

What do women want from video games? Is it the same as men?

Often guys would say girls just want to play a pretty looking game, perhaps on a pink console with flower decoration to complete the ensemble.

Their types of games would be stereotyped and labeled "lame" with games that teach them life skills such as fashion designing or a simple puzzle game. Not those big hit, mass killing and explosives galore awesome games that guys play.

But, is this all one big collection of stereotype...

Everyone remembers when the Xbox 360 first launched. Tons of them broke down, and the buyers had to send them back. Dean Takahashi, a writer for VentureBeat, explains how all of those problems diminished almost all of the advantage that the 360 had by going first.

He points out that Microsoft knew that their next-gen system had flaws, and they thought they would go away, so they decided not to delay the launch of the system. In addition to that, Mircosoft didn't have their workers standin...

Portable games were designed to be played anywhere. Over the years, they've rapidly developed into their modern day counterparts.

Playing in the school grounds, on the local bus or train to even overseas on a holiday these games are easy access and open to anyone wanting to play. Through these means we can strike up conversations with other gamers, or simply play together to have more fun.

Are video games slowly becoming a standard way of developing a more tight knit community?

"Also, see if you can incorporate sex into the headline even if the article has nothing to do with sex at all. Any article involving sexuality rockets to the top of news aggregator websites as if by magic. If Blizzard changes the boob size of female characters in World of Warcraft by a centimeter, I guarantee you'll see an article at the top of Digg the next day with virtual nipple comparison shots."

"GameGrep is fairly easy to describe: similar to Digg but exclusively for video games. Yes, gamers, no longer do you have to wade through hundreds of articles worshipping Barack Obama in order to get to your social gaming news. Unlike Digg, this site has a fairly small community, and every article posted is guaranteed a chance to hit the top 10. That's because every single article that gets the necessary three approvals goes directly to the front page of the site. A lot of otherwise undiscover..."

These days, everyone knows that there are a lot of different gamers out there. For example they may love playing by themselves, or go to such extremes they only play the one game series.

These days there are both good types and bad types of gamers, so which ones do you think will become top of the food chain or eliminated? What is the best type to be?

"We don't recall it always being like this. We still remember the agonizing wait for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (period from announcement to store shelf debut: 35 months)

It may sound bizarre to criticize this tactic (because hey, less waiting time is better, right?), but now we barely have a chance to get excited."

The Exploding Barrel was at the PAX located in Washington, checked out a few games, decided to talk about them: LittleBigPlanet, SOCOM: Confrontation, and others!

LittleBigPlanet really impressed everyone. TEB notes that the game gives you so much options when designing your levels that it's unbelievable. You can make fiery pits of doom or turn a ordinary car into a rocket! LBP could be one of the first games on the consoles that has quality user-created content.

Next up is SOCOM: Confr...

"Banjo Dev Diary 2: Banjo and the Giant Robot
Hello, Banjo fans.

I’ve continued to play the game over the last couple of weeks, and the improvements between builds are getting more and more dramatic. For example (and this could turn into an awfully long list), the game’s opening has now been fully populated and animated—you’ll see various contraptions flying and driving around Spiral Mountain dynamically—they don’t follow a set path, so no two presentations of the opening scene will be 10..."

Let me ask you something: Would you have ever heard of Media Molecule if it wasn't for LittleBigPlanet? Everyone is addicted to the game, and it's not even released yet! What makes the game and the Sackboys so popular? GameXtract explains.

They note that the game really isn't that original. The idea of creating and playing your own levels has always been there, it's just that LBP does it better than everyone else. Another example of polishing up technology is with the Wii. Motion control w...

Throughout the Tales franchise, the Wonder Chef has been disguised as random things and if you're able to recognize him, you shall receive a rare recipe.

GamersPlatform has revealed where the Wonder Chef is and the twelve different recipes he will give you in Tales of Vesperia. Check them out in the quote below.

The PC has been around for a long time and is the only machine that you can game on that isn't a console. A lot of people eventually expect the PC to die from the consoles sooner or later, but that may not be the case.

With a lot more people gaming on consoles now, the controls on certain games need to be "compromised". RTS games are a great example of that because there is no mouse or keyboard to help you along.

A different example of this is the upcoming zombie shooter Left 4 Dead. Th...

GameInformer, the popular magazine about all things gaming that has somewhere near three million subscribers, always has a different game on the cover each time. MTV wanted to see if there was a GI cover curse, so they looked back into the past and pulled out magazines from 2-3 years ago.

One game titled Superman Returns didn't so well, receiving 6/10's. That's nothing compared to Fear and Respect, which was at one point on a GI cover, but ended up being canceled!

All in all, the game...

At the PAX 2008 in Washington, they have a room called the LFG (Look For Group) Room. If you're alone and waiting to play that special game, you can always head in there to chat with the fellow gamers and even play some tabletop games.

Joystiq had a pretty good experience when they headed into the game, noting that it's easy to start up a game with anyone that is willing.

"I’m sitting at the front row, stage right, watching trailers and teasers while everyone waits in anticipation for the first main event. We are recording this live in 1080i HD video. Ken Levine enters the stage to applause and country music."

"Sometimes you just gotta love coincidence. Take last night for example: I log in to WoW to check on my auctions, hoping to have finally sold some of the items I’ve listed multiple times when I notice a whole lot of hoopla going on in the area between the auction house and bank in Ironforge."

Any excuse to write about Cthulhu is a good excuse by me.

Eureka Dejavu was recently seen in the world of Second Life modelling this "fetal Cthulu bouff wig", created by Rikka Koi, who designed it for the Hair Fair (I assume a Second Life event).

If you aren't familiar with the greatness that is Cthulu, Koi explains:

Hp Lovecraft wrote these incredibly bizarre, dramatic stories about a great dark being who travelled the cosmos and kind of landed on Earth, who currently sleeps in the...

The official Bionic Commando IGN Blog has been updated with tons of information. So far, the rankings for Bionic Commando Rearmed have turned out pretty good. The PC version has a 91%, the PS3 is in second with a 88.1%, and the 360 is last with 86.2%. It's the highest Capcom has ever scored on a digital game.

In addition, the forums for the official BC website have opened. Ben Judd, the producer, says that they "have a great community" and that in terms of digital sales, the game is a "fri...

"In short: because he's in danger of becoming so ubiquitous that he'll become taken for granted - or worse, considered passé. Mario is linked so heavily with some of the most powerfully iconic games of all time that he is already rightly regarded as the face of gaming, but wouldn't it be terrible if his almost uncountable cameos in Nintendo games started to eat away at that impact?"

"As I descended into the dark, cavernous cave that is the Casino’s arcade, I immediately spotted the glow of the Street Fighter IV machine. It wasn’t hard - the game had attracted a large crowd of typical nerdy types. Most of them were male, most had bad haircuts, and a horrific smell of B.O. permeated the air like a high school gym."

"I really want to nuke Athens.

I know it's possible. Hell, I've watched and rewatched the YouTube videos of the 14-year-olds who've done it in Sid Meier's new game, Civilization Revolution. The guttural roar of the ICBM taking off, the flare of the missile as it arcs slowly across the sky, the terrifying rumble in your Xbox 360 controller as the nuke pulverizes the target: It's awesome. I can't sleep until I've rained that sort of death on the world.

What the hell is wrong with me? There..."

An interesting look at the trend towards only accepting Grade-A games that score 9 and above as being the staple diet for gamers these days.

Have we created a few generations of gamers that will not even consider a "good or average game" in the shadow of such high scoring games as Halo 3, MGS4, COD4 etc . . or would you be willing to play the "average" game if it still had decent gameplay, but only had a score of say 6-8/10? Or do they all need to be Grade-A blockbusters to catch your atte...

"Offered At:

Oberlin College in Ohio.

We admit we've never heard of this college, but at first glance it seemed like a legit school of higher learning. We found out that it's actually a 175 year-old private and selective school, and one that is fairly well-regarded even though their mascot is a Yeoman. What would the 19th Century founders say if they could see their own classrooms used to teach a course on Super Smash Brothers Melee?"

Nintendo's tremendously popular Wii console set a new bar for fun and interesting games; the motion sensor control scheme is what literally sells their titles.

Although the Nintendo Wii is big fun, and a big value, there are places it needs to be improved if Nintendo wants to keep up with its console competitors Sony and Microsoft; Nintendo's next console needs to keep up with graphics, or at least support 1080p resolution.

Read the full article for a look at what would make, and what...