Now, Jay’s a friend of Dave’s and mine on Xbox Live, and we’ve played many a game online together (including 1 vs. 100) despite our distance (we’re in Ontario and he’s in Quebec). His site is way more well established than ours but, since our approaches are slightly different, we’ve never seen each other as competitors. But we’re also Facebook friends, and we’ve recently launched our Facebook fan pages.

So wasn’t it super sweet of him, after getting a bajillion more fans than we did, to offer us a prize for our first Facebook contest? Answer: Yes, it was.

And so, to make a long story short (too late), Dave and I would like to offer you (and your significant other) the chance to win a code to download Perfect Dark for XBLA. For two. Because it has co-op.

It’s easy—all you need to do is:

• Become a fan of our Facebook page
• Become a follower of our Twitter feed
• Comment on the link to this article on our Facebook fan page with your Twitter name and tell us a bit about how gaming affects your love life (please keep it relatively clean)

You could also visit GameFocus.ca and become a fan of their site on Facebook and follow them on Twitter as well; though this is optional, it will happen. Because Jay is awesome.

Anyway, I figure that, since it’s the middle of the week right now, I’ll give you all until Saturday at 5 p.m. EST to get in on the action. We’ll draw the lucky fan/follower randomly and DM you through Twitter. Good luck, kids!

P.S. We’re in Canada. I’m not sure if this code will work outside of North America. Please feel free to chime in and let me know if I’m wrong.

I recently went to the DSi XL launch event in Toronto (okay—it was a week and a half ago) to see what all the fuss was about.

Now, I was actually looking forward to getting my hot little hands on this newest iteration of the the DS line. We currently have only one DS Lite and, since we had to borrow Chris‘ for our Pokémon HeartGold/SoulSilver review (and we skipped over the whole DSi to-do), the idea of one-upping my husband in both size and features was a tempting one.

The reps at the event said that the screen was 93% bigger than its predecessor, and it shows. While I had bought myself a clunky case for my DSL so as not to lose track of it in my purse, the DSi XL has a good size and heft to it—it gave my DS Lite a bit of a complex, truth be told. I spent a little too much time playing with the camera, as I had not previously had a chance to do so; however, I’m not quite sure that I’m the target demographic for this feature (and, for that matter, I’m not sure that the target demographic of the DSi XL is, either). But it was kind of cool to have a couple of Brain Age titles pre-loaded on the machine (and a little humbling when I learned how stupid I really am after playing them), and the browser capabilities were a new and welcome feature to me.

But now come the drawbacks, of which I found two right off the bat (and one later)…

For one, it comes with the little stylus that you can stick in the side (like the DSL and DSi). Fine. However, though the DSi XL also comes with that big pen-sized novelty stylus we’ve all heard about, there is actually no place in the side of the unit where you can store it. And when you’re as forgetful as I am (and already have so much crap in your bag), keeping it separate just sounds like all kinds of annoying. And don’t start with the attaching it to the XL with a lanyard suggestion. I HATE those things. So it’s basically useless—I’ll just end up sticking with the little stylus, which is no improvement.

Secondly, the screen size is nice. But they were demoing The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks on the unit, and it really brought home the fact that Nintendo has kind of killed the buzz of all the shovelware developers out there. Bigger screens highlight crappy graphics. You can’t really say it any other way. And if you have an older DS title that you just love despite its rudimentary look, you’ll not want to play it on the XL—it’ll just make your soul cry.

Finally, for those of you with a DSi who are looking to transfer your downloaded games to the DSi XL, you can’t. Okay. Whatever. I can kind of see Nintendo’s point in that they don’t want mad piracy going on, but still—there are ways around it. If you’re NINTENDO, and you knew this might be a possibility, you might want to do some planning. Unfortunately, this may keep potential converts from making the upgrade. And when I was at the event, I met MANY people who fell into that category.

So there have been a bunch of people maligning Nintendo for releasing the XL so close to their announcement of the 3DS (or whatever it’ll end up being called). Now, I’ve heard that the announcement was due to press leaks in Japan, but I’d rather believe that Nintendo was working in the interest of transparency. You see, without knowing the price point of this yet-to-be-released iteration (or even a release date!), it’s possible that it may just be so much of a step beyond that some consumers may feel that the XL suits their needs well enough. And there are those of us, myself included, who never got on the DSi bandwagon and, as a result, don’t care that the downloaded games aren’t transferable.

Personally, I think that there is a market for the DSi XL, and it’s not just old people. Nintendo is coming out with enough quality titles that the adoption rate for the DS should enjoy a steady enough increase. There are more and more people in my age bracket (25-35) who, if they aren’t big gamers, are looking to test the waters with a handheld unit and, if they’re not iPhone-tards, the DSi XL looks to be a good fit. Ultimately, it’s a good product with good features and, for only twenty bucks more than a DSi (and under $200 CDN), it’s worth a gander. I’m kinda still on the fence about it, though…

I failed miserably at my attempt to get through the EA Sports Active 30-day challenge. So now I’m trading in my resistance band for a Tamagotchi-esque pedometer and getting my Pokém-on.

Before I go any further, in the interest of full disclosure, I will say that Dave and I received copies of Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver to review. And to be perfectly honest, half of the reason why I wanted it was because it had multiplayer (and we don’t play a lot of multiplayer DS games)—the other half was the desire to see Dave play a Pokémon game. And get into it.

Another thing that I will divulge is that I had never played a Pokémon game before. I was fully expecting to play the game and review it with the end result being that, while it will likely appeal to my six-year-old nephew, it wasn’t the kind of game that would appeal to an older demographic.

Boy, was I wrong.

Dave: I admittedly wasn’t really looking forward to putting time in with SoulSilver, given that the games are aggressively marketed at children. However, I also know the games have enough of an adult following that they can’t possibly have that limited an appeal.

Never having played a Pokémon game, let alone the original Silver, I’m not qualified to discuss its merits relative to other Pokémon games… but as a Poké-noob, I’ve found it to be essentially a pretty standard (and pretty enjoyable) portable JRPG where the difference is that, instead of party members, you have pets.

Now, I never read instruction manuals—and I assumed that, because this game was geared towards kids, I wouldn’t need to. That said, once I was faced with the choice of which Pokémon to take as my first, I panicked. What if I choose incorrectly? What if it doesn’t like the name I gave it? Then, as if by magic, I took one look at the Chikorita and knew what I had to do. I choose you, ChickCorea!

As the game progressed, I discovered that Pokémon games actually fit my gamer profile rather well. You collect cool things, you talk to creatures until they like you, you grind around in the grass and fight lots of monsters, and you gain mad experience and swell loot. What more can a obsessive dungeon-crawler ask for?

I was scheduled to attend the DSi XL launch in Toronto last Thursday and, upon hearing that I had playing Pokémon HeartGold, Paul Hunter fom NextGenPlayer (who had SoulSilver) urged me to bring my Pokéwalker to the event. He and Alice Stancu were both there when I arrived, Pokéwalkers in hand, ready to trade; though I hadn’t gotten the hang of loading my Pokémon onto my device, Alice helped me out. Once ChickCorea was in and ready for business, the trading began, and we were like twelve-year-olds squealing excitedly at what we got. I got a Parlyz Heal! I don’t know what that is, but it sounds exciting!

After only having the game for less than a week, I’m not even close to finishing the game, and I haven’t tried out the multiplayer aspects yet; Dave’s been busy but, when he gets his Pokémon party up to snuff, I’ll let you know how it goes. But I actually find myself loading a new Pokémon into my Pokéwalker every day (despite the fact that I work from home and don’t walk around all that much) and, when I do leave the house, I feel no shame in showing it off to my friends. ChickCorea is still my favourite, followed closely by Ratman John… and though I still haven’t figured out what MetaPod does besides harden (quiet, you), but I named it FartPod, which makes me giggle.

Yes, I’m twelve.

(P.S. I know that the accent is missing in the title of this post. It’s a bug.)

Okay. So I’m not going to be completing the 30-day challenge—yet. But the fault lies with me.

It was a little bit of the fact that I had gotten a lot of client work coming in at odd hours in the past couple of weeks, and I was on-call to go into the agency where I’m freelancing (sometimes for sixteen hours at a stretch), which screwed with my schedule. Mostly, however, it all boils down to my being a thoroughly lazy sod.

All told, I really did enjoy the workouts and felt great afterwards though, after the first two days, it took me a very sad five minutes to get down the stairs in order to leave my house. I did, however, find that I was hitting myself in the face with the cord during the alternating shoulder presses (I have a Nyko cordless nunchuk adapter, but it doesn’t fit into the pocket of the leg strap).

Unlike some other Wii exercise titles that failed miserably to accurately gauge activity via the controller/balance board combo (I’m looking at you, Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum 2009), I found EA Sports Active to be rather responsive. I do agree with Jen (who commented as much on my previous post), however, that this was not a 100% success rate; while she found that her sit-ups weren’t being recognized, I had a similar issue with the curls and presses.

I also found that alternating equipment from one exercise to the next became kind of a pain in the ass. Considering the fact that each exercise only lasted a couple of minutes, I found that it took me more time to arrange myself with the resistance band or drag out the balance board than it did to complete the set for which I was setting up. One way that I got around this is by eliminating the balance board altogether—the exercises were just as challenging without it. I’m also not the most coordinated person at the best of times, and I often found myself forgetting to put the nunchuk in the leg strap and then wondering why my lunges weren’t being recognized.

Ultimately, I liked EA Sports Active. It made me sweat and feel the burn and all those other oogy things that come from physical activity—things with which I’m not terribly familiar. If I were the type of person who actually set goals and stuck to them, I would find this a challenging and rewarding experience. Then again, if I were said kind of person, I’d probably have a gym membership.

I think what I’ll do now is look through all of the exercises and create a customized two-person workout that doesn’t require the balance board, leg strap, and resistance band. That way, Dave and I can do the workouts together without investing in a separate leg strap/resistance band kit, which means that I’ll have the encouragement I need to wake up earlier in the morning and get it done. As well, for those of you who want to buy a stand-alone (read: used) copy, you’ll know what exercises you can do without the peripherals. I’ll post this list once I’ve completed it.

In January, a bunch of Toronto-based gaming bloggers and well-wishers (in that they don’t wish us any specific harm) got together for our first-ever Blogamoke. Hands were shaken, songs were sung, and drinks were consumed in varying quantities.

What followed was a long month of, well, not getting together.

Recently, however, Dave and I happened to run into Dillon Andrews and Paul Hunter at a Hand Eye Society social, and we got to talking about what our next social experiment should be. Interestingly enough, Eric Brazier was there as well. Why is this interesting, you may ask? Well, Eric happens to run a monthly event that perfectly coincides with our love of video games, karaoke, and drinking.

So this time, we’re trading in our microphones for guitars and drums and… uh… microphones. Okay, so we’re not trading in our microphones. Okay, well, some of us are. But I digress.

On Saturday, March 6, there will be a Rock Band Video Game Jam Session at Rockie Raccoons Eatery (their spelling, not mine), located at 2579 Yonge Street in Toronto. Check out the Facebook event page for more details and to RSVP.

We will be there. You should be, too.

(Oh, and in case you were wondering why I didn’t think of a clever name for this shindig, it’s because I’m lazy. So there.)

Update: Shaun Hatton, EP’s newest correspondent (congrats, Shaun!), is planning to attend the night’s festivities. Epic.

What do you do when it’s Thursday night and you find yourself in downtown Toronto and you want to re-enact a 1989 Fred Savage movie? Why, you go to an art gallery for skaters and play Mario Kart, of course!

Confused? You won’t be after this week’s episode of Things that Sound like Mad Libs…

Here’s the preamble: When I was writing for Torontoist, I would rarely come across events in the editors’ story feed that appealed to my own interests enough to write about and, when I found something on my own, I’d have to pitch the hell out of it in order to appeal to theirs. Needless to say, I was rather surprised when I heard from the editors about a Mario Kart tournament in December of last year called “Relive The Wizard” (because of the lack of italics, it didn’t occur to me until later that they were referring to The Wizard). Unfortunately, I was unable to attend and, because nobody else was interested, no coverage was provided.

Since I’m no longer with Torontoist (and therefore get to write about things that interest me), I figured that the second iteration of “Relive The Wizard” (my italics) deserved a little love. And not only are Dave and I going out of our way to attend this one, but I’m also competing. And I have every intention of losing.

So I shot a quick note to the kids at Offshoot Inc (who’s hosting the shindig) with a request for a few deets and a sound bite or two…

“We laid a solid foundation for future events with the first Relive the Wizard,” replied James Hamilton, Offshoot’s managing partner. “It was a great night for both our friends and the new faces we met. I didn’t know what to expect going into the first event, but the night was a very memorable experience for us and for everyone that came out.”

Well, that takes care of the ambiguous PR quote… so here are the deets:

This Thursday, February 25, a bunch of people are going to be at The Baitshop, a gallery space located at 358 Dufferin Street (Suite 117), to play and/or watch people playing Mario Kart. There will be prizes. And cookies. And $4 drinks. And a DJ. (Dear lord, please let this not be some sort of hipster scene fest…)

Anyway, if you want to compete, you’ll have to show up at 7 p.m. in order to sign in and ready yourself for the mad ass kicking you’ll likely experience from everyone but me. If you want to simply observe said ass kicking, you’ll need to be there at 7:30. Either way, registration at www.relivethewizard.com is compulsory or your name won’t be on the list and you can’t get in. And you do want to get in, don’t you?

(Oh, and because I’m sure you’re just itching to know, “The Creeper” is the pseudonym of last year’s champion Chris Woodford. Yes, kids, you too can have a potentially inappropriate nickname if you attend!)

Ever since my nephew received a Wii from Santa this Christmas, my focus has shifted slightly. Sure, I’m always on the lookout for co-op titles for all consoles (and for all ages) but, when a press release finds itself in my inbox for a family-friendly game that sounds potentially educational, I now actually read it.

Today’s tidbit from Nintendo extolled the virtues of Endless Ocean: Blue World, a sequel to 2008’s, um, Endless Ocean. “The plot involves Oceana, a girl who investigates the ‘Song of Dragons,’ which her father, a prominent ocean explorer, sought before his death,” read the rather succinct summary of this iteration’s storyline.

Here’s the requisite selling quote: “‘Endless Ocean: Blue World gives Wii owners the chance to take a round-the-world vacation from the comfort of their living rooms,’ said Ron Bertram, Nintendo of Canada’s vice-president and general manager. ‘With exotic locations and hundreds of new marine animals to encounter, the game’s adventures are as vast as the ocean itself.’”

And here’s the nitty-gritty: I think my nephew might like it because he can control the temperament of large marine animals with the Pulsar tool, though I daresay that he would prefer to create an army of gigantic, wet minions to do his more nefarious bidding. My sister will enjoy the fact that it’s educational (in fact, we were reading a book about crocodiles when I came to visit last Friday, so the subject matter is quite timely). I, on the other hand, am all about the loot; apparently you can salvage items and sell them for coral gewgaw to bling up your own underwater pad. And if I can’t make it out for a visit, we can hook up via Wi-Fi to do some online-co-op exploring (as long as we both each have copies of the game and, optionally, Wii Speak™ microphones).

I’m not usually interested in games that, diplomatically put, don’t exactly fit Dave’s and my usual gaming profile, but I’ve been thinking about things a little differently lately. Though I’d love to see more Wii titles that appeal to the older kids (like No More Heroes), I’m starting to realize that a lot of the older kids (like those of us old enough to buy our own console) might have children of their own, and it may be prudent to seek out family-friendly titles that, diplomatically put, don’t suck.

So will Endless Ocean: Blue World suck? I don’t know but, despite the fact that it’s not out until February 22, it’s been getting some relatively favourable reviews over at Metacritic (at the time of this posting, it’s ranged between 70 and 90.) But if it keeps up its score, dropping thirty bucks on it may not be such a bad idea if it tricks the kid into (heaven forfend) learning something.

Well, that time has come for this couple of gamers.

Actually, that’s not exactly true. Dave’s already hot and perfect; he just made the commitment to work out more often because, well, he’s a smart cookie. You see, we both lead rather sedentary lifestyles. For the most part, we work at home and, in our leisure time, we play video games—not exactly activities conducive to physical fitness. In my case, however, I needed to accept the fact that I’ve gained fifteen pounds since our wedding three-and-a-half years ago, and five of those have been in the past three months.

Dave bought me EA Sports Active for my birthday in December, but not as a hint; it was simply that I had tired of Wii Fit. I bought him a stepper for Boxing Day, but not as a hint; it was simply that he was tired of our extremely old (and loud) exercise bike. I had tried EA Sports Active for a few days and really liked it but, being a lazy sod, I let things slide for a few days. And because of the traumatic experience of being passive-aggressively yelled at by an animated balance board in Wii Fit, I was reluctant to return for fear of compunction.

Well, I was at my in-laws’ last night, and they gave us a print of a photo they took at Christmas. I had more than one chin. That tore it.

So tomorrow, whilst Dave is stepping his way to cardiovascular superiority,I’ll be donning the ol’ leg strap and mounting the board for some hot, hardcore virtual action. And this time, I’m going to stick to it. Really. I’ll even blog my weekly progress. And if I fail, I’ll submit myself to your mocking castigation.

On Friday, January 29, Dave and I (as well as Paul Hunter from NextGenPlayer.com and Dillon Andrews from vE3tro.com) will be descending upon the Fox and Fiddle at 280 Bloor Street West in Toronto for our first-ever Blogamoke, a night of mayhem and music for gaming bloggers, blogging gamers, and the people who love them.

So whether you want to hook up with your fellow gaming enthusiasts, meet the people who write about your favourte pastime, drink mad amounts of alcohol, sing bad ’80s hits, laugh at those who do, or a combination of any of the aforementioned activities, feel free to RSVP to the event on Facebook…we’d love to see you there!

Update: Shaun Hatton from TorontoThumbs.com will be singing “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress”…not to be missed!

I’ve been shot through the heart—and Ubisoft’s to blame.

I was really excited about the fact that the release date for Splinter Cell: Conviction fell on the eighth anniversary of my first date with Dave—so much so that not only was I willing to play a game that totally goes against my own playing style (read: I suck at stealth and shooting) because it looks cool, but I was also considering filming our gameplay for a possible video review. Nothing fancy (or saucy)—just a little something I’d been thinking about for a while and, since the game recently announced split-screen co-op play, it seemed like an excellent candidate for our inaugural vodcast (or whatever it is the kids are calling it these days).

Yesterday, however, my anniversary plans were ruined. A press release from Ubisoft, announcing its third-quarter performance and targets, broke the news that the release date of Splinter Cell: Conviction was to be delayed until April. The release said other stuff, but my vision was blurred with tears after I saw those words that broke my heart.

(Actually, I did read the whole thing and, personally, I think that if Ubi focused more on titles like Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes and less time on the Imagine and Petz franchises, they could take their place as a strong contender in the DS market and wouldn’t have to scale back on their tentative grasp on this platform. But that’s just me…)

So yes, I now have to make other plans for my anniversary. I may even have to use some…shudder…creativity. But what are we going to do for our first video review? We can’t wait until April. Any suggestions?