Some people will tell you that Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is a game about Lara Croft and her new partner Totec (a reanimated “Guardian of Light”) running through tombs and temples filled with a series of deadly traps while killing hundreds of demons and hostile animals.

These people would be lying to you.

Lara Croft’s latest adventure is about sitting on a couch with a friend and yelling, laughing, and sharing sighs of relief as you just barely escape a gargantuan rolling spiked ball (or whatever ridiculous horrors the game throws at you).

While it abandons the Tomb Raider moniker, Guardian of Light is more observant of the Core values of the series than the recent AAA releases. Early Tomb Raider games were built on three major principles: Difficult puzzles, impractical-but-deadly traps, and a focus on exploration in locations that were fantastical (if not logical). Guardian of Light wholeheartedly embraces these values and throws story to the wind.

Because Guardian of Light’s story is cheesy and implausible at best, it’s given the freedom to set up over-the-top situations that would feel out of place otherwise. I’ll avoid spoiling any of the game’s moments but, once you’ve played through Guardian of Light, you’ll be referencing some of the sequences in conversation with your co-op buddy for weeks to come.

Although Guardian of Light is forgiving, it isn’t easy. Lara and Totec will both die many times, but getting your friend back in the game is as simple as a button tap. If one happens to fall out of reach into a spike pit or off a cliff, they’ll be automatically respawned within a few seconds. An actual “death” in the game is when both players wipe at the same time. Even then, the game checkpoints very often, and you’ll never find yourself frustrated.

Co-op puzzle solving is a great experience; each one is so ingenious in its design that every solution will come to you through a logical realization (like in Portal) before you resort to random attacks at the puzzle in an attempt to stumble upon the seemingly illogical solution. The dialogue that will happen between your co-op partner and yourself isn’t restricted to high-energy situations, either. Puzzle solving will have you suggesting tactics, directing (or being directed), and copious amounts of high fives after the fact.

Guardian of Light gave us five-and-a-half hours on our first playthrough, and it seemed to end just as it started to rehash contents (such as boss and level reskins). If you’re the obsessive/compulsive type, there are collectibles and different challenges in each level that result in new weapons or costumes, as well as score and time goals to beat.

While Guardian of Light’s faults are few and far in between, there are some little issues that crop up throughout the game. The biggest issue I had was that the game made checkpoints too often. The euphoria that rushed in after surviving a particularly deadly gauntlet was muted by the checkpoints made at each quarter of the sequence. I think there could be a bit more risk involved in Guardian of Light that would both heighten the stress during the climactic scenes and allow for a greater sense of accomplishment once complete.

Lara’s latest adventure is a steal for $15; you owe it to yourself (and your co-op partner) to play this one through as soon as possible.

Some excellent points were raised—most importantly, just imagine what a troll would do with your real name—I must admit that I hadn’t considered that angle.

I still think that the WoW forums are a cesspool of the nastiest sorts of trollish behaviour. But perhaps making everyone reveal their secret identities is not the way to go. At least, not yet.

Unless you wrote a complaint to the ESRB—in which case, everyone already knows who you are.

I had recently shaved my beard off and was regretting the decision… perhaps playing Demon’s Souls would be faster than re-growing it?

So, at risk of being redundant to every paragraph ever written about it, Demon’s Souls is hard. But while I did get frustrated at points (many, many points), I never felt that the game was being unfair. No situation could not be overcome with a different approach (or, at worst, choosing another world to explore).

Make no mistake—if you don’t like being challenged (read: Failing 10 times before succeeding), Demon’s Souls is not for you. Lori loves RPGs, and Demon’s Souls is not for her (which might be for the best, given that I’d prefer my wife not be turned into a man). As she watched me play, I could feel her patience stretching to the breaking point as I replayed sections over and over, punctuated only by simulated bouts of Tourette syndrome.

But its difficulty also creates a tremendous sense of accomplishment—highs that match the lows. Returning to previously traversed areas to absolutely dominate foes which had caused you so much trouble in the past is incredibly satisfying. Likewise, the game is filled with fairly complex systems that require considerable effort to understand (or the help of online fan sites and wikis, of which there are many) but offer considerable rewards for their mastery. It is a game that requires your full attention, patience, and commitment—something not everyone looks for in their recreation choices. In the current console gaming climate, Demon’s Souls is a unique experience: an undeniably hardcore game in an era when game design has shifted decidedly towards mainstream accessibility.

Ultimately, the name of this site has the word “couple” in it.  This isn’t ManGamer.com (domain available!) and, while it is a game I wholeheartedly recommend to hardcore RPG or 3rd-person melee-combat gamers, Demon’s Souls is not a game for most couples. Lori and I enjoyed it greatly, however, and she can rest assured that her mate is indeed a man… though I’m hoping there was enough evidence of that beforehand.

Demon’s Souls is a 3rd-person (you see your guy in front of you) action-RPG exclusive to the PS3.

Well, then, let’s look at this missive from the World of Warcraft forums:

The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID—that is, their real-life first and last name—with the option to also display the name of their primary in-game character alongside it.

I heard a million trolls cry out in suffering and, then, silence. Well, silence—with the sound of a billion keystrokes—as they flipped out on the WoW forums.

How brilliant.

The World of Warcraft forums are scenes of some of the worst sexist, homophobic, and just downright nasty crap that I have ever seen. They are a cesspool of every stereotype known to gaming—and a few new ones that you hadn’t thought of yet.

The women whom I play Warcraft with don’t post there. The few men who will admit to me that they have posted there say that it’s a dark and scary place. I think that it’s a brilliant idea to unmask the trolls—especially in a game where one measures their worth on their gear score.

I do suspect that the Real ID system is open to tampering—already, players are discussing how to register with fake names. But I hope that it stops most of the anonymous, sexist, homophobic vitriol that’s posted there.

I’m going to put in a little stereotype of my own—$50 says that every dude who writes “your a fag” in the forums would never say that in real life—and probably has a gay friend or two. Time to own up to it, and let go of your inner douchebag.

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.

For those not familiar with the God of War games, they’re third-person action games that take place in a world (loosely) based on Greek mythology. They’re extremely visceral, incredibly violent, and awesome—and I mean that in the literal sense. These games have had the ability to make eyes widen and jaws drop, the first two console versions pushing the graphical capabilities of (the now 10-year-old) PlayStation 2 to their pinnacle; thus, many fans of the series have waited expectantly, wondering what spectacle could be accomplished on the first iteration available for the much-more-powerful PS3. In my brief time with it (about an hour, perched about three feet from a 50-inch plasma screen), it did not disappoint.

Dave: For context, I’ve played both God of War and God of War II, and I thought that both were superlative console action-gaming experiences. In both cases, while Lori did enjoy taking the controls at times, she generally preferred sitting back an watching me take the reins. Neither of us tried the PSP entry God of War: Chains of Olympus, though I’ve generally heard that it’s a worthy portable version of the experience.

Lori: Indeed. Though I did enjoy watching Dave play through the previous iterations of the God of War series, there’s nothing like the pure button-mashing goodness that these PlayStation titles have afforded me thus far.

Like the first two games, God of War III doesn’t waste time or start slow. Within the first few moments, you’re treated to the sort of daunting scale and thrilling action we’ve come to expect from God of War only, this time, paired with a level of graphical fidelity rivaling any entry of this console generation. The combination is impressive.

The gameplay and action itself are slick and smooth, worthy of a franchise that’s had some time to refine its mechanics. Indeed, there are a few welcome tweaks present; for example, during the frequent interactive cinematic fight sequences (QuickTime events—”QTEs” in gamer-speak), the button prompts are positioned on the edge of the screen that corresponds to the button’s position on the controller, allowing the player to know what to press whilst keeping their eyes on the action. And you’ll want to keep your eyes on the screen for this one…

… unless you’re not big on graphic violence, that is. Make no mistake: This is not a game for kids—or for kids to even be in the room. Maybe the next room. Playing as ex-Spartan Kratos, you do horrible, brutal things—and I’m told these sorts of actions (and, indeed, violent vengeance as a theme) persist throughout the game. On the flip side of the mature-themes coin, there’s plenty of partial nudity, and it’s also been confirmed that a sextastic mini-game is present, as in previous God of War titles.

Ultimately, God of War III is clearly poised to be the biggest (and most violent) of a series whose hallmark has been being very big (and very violent) and in doing so, it may become one of the biggest core console releases of this generation. For the many who have enjoyed the God of War games and wanted more (or maybe “MORE!”), GoWIII would appear to be all that—and a pound of flesh.

God of War III is a Playstation 3 exclusive and will be in stores on March 16th.

Photos by Michael Pierson.

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.