TrevorCarpenter.com

Today we picked up the new LEGO Indiana Jones Xbox360 game. Oh yeah, those Nazis had better watch out. I haven’t played enough to review the game, but we’re enjoying it this afternoon.

It plays identical to the LEGO Star Wars games. This isn’t bad. In fact, it’s what makes it fun for the kids to jump right in and start doing well. Even our #3, the four year old Wookie, has been enjoying it.

Popularity: 43% [?]

I want you all to know that I am in fact a geek. If thus far you had not figured that out, that should clear it up.

Last night, while couch bound from being sick with the flu, I played Halo 3 for the first time on my Xbox 360. I should tell you that I’ve never played any of the Halo series of video games. Quite often, I find that the most popular games are not too interesting to me. So I generally pass on the hot titles.

I rented it from Hollywood Video and popped it in with less than an hour available to play. That was a mistake.

I love this game!

It’s not overly complex, yet requires good concentration and a willingness to take “risks”. I didn’t play very much, or get very far, but what I did experience was great. I can see myself getting this game, and probably the earlier versions too.

Popularity: 55% [?]

Thanks Jerry!

As many of you know, we homeschool. The other day, Deanna told me that she had been watching The Padawan as he was playing The Bee Movie game on our Xbox360. He was playing a mini-game. He had to acquire 30 flowers. With just 26 completed, he numbered the remaining flowers 1-4, ultimately figuring out that he needed to acquire 4 more.

Deanna was excited as she watched The Padawan learn a basic subtraction lesson, all without her help or the help of a flash card.

Thanks Jerry!

Popularity: 25% [?]

OK, I played NES when I was a kid. I actually had an Atari 2600 when I was real young. Then, I strayed from the video game world. Stuff like school work while in college was imporant. (No comments about that, Dad.)

So, now I have kids and we got an Xbox 360 late last year. We had a Playstation 2 for a while, but it broke. Not a big loss though, I bought it used on ebay.

Back to the Xbox. We play it a lot. Deanna plays. The Princess plays. The Padawan plays. Most of us play. The Wookie and The Baby are a little to young, as you can guess. Those of us who play, play a few games together. Lately we’ve been playing 3D Ultra Mini Golf. It’s a lot of fun and we all get to take our turn. We can only play 3 at a time though, since we only have two wireless controllers and the free corded one that came with the system. I have several racing games that I play on my own, or with a few friends occaisionally. I also rent some of the hot games when I have to stay up late for work the next day.

Needless to say, video gaming has re-entered my life, in a big way. The Xbox 360 is an amazing machine. The HD games are amazing. The realistic games, like the Call of Duty series, and Collin McRae Dirt are amazing. Breathtaking. Even the more cartoony games like Cars and Surfs Up look great. They look quite a bit like the movies did.

I just saw a great preview for a new game in the Star Wars series called, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. I’m so pumped for that game. I’ll try to embed the preview at the end of the post.

One of the other things I love about the Xbox 360 is the media playing features. We’ve rented a few HD movies and downloaded them to the Xbox’s harddrive. Those that we’ve seen so far are also amazing. When given the opportunity to choose between HD and SD, choose HD, everytime. Even slower, no effects, character driven stories are great. You see the face of the actor, you see the emotion with great clarity. You just see so much more. And they’re so much cheaper than renting an HD disk at the local store. Maybe not as cheap as Netflix, but we don’t have any HD disk player. No blueray, no HD-DVD. We’ll probably eventually get the cheap HD-DVD drive for the Xbox 360. I think it’s like $200. Not bad. But for now, we get great, cheap flix on the Xbox Marketplace. And to top it off, MS just announced at the E3 conference/expo that they’ve added a huge number of Disney flix to the library. So, now we’ll get even more to choose from. Yee-haw!

Popularity: 20% [?]