This is the Bright Hub Console/Handheld Games Channel, and I’ll be your host. I and my able and well-groomed team of capable and worldly contributors will be writing articles, tips, and reviews to help you wring every last drop of toe-wriggling delight out of your console or handheld gaming device unit.
The Manifesto
Well, it’s not exactly revolutionary, but the plan is: we’re not gonna cover everything. Nope. Not even gonna try. We don't have the manpower, time, or patience to write up every game. You're not gonna find the OMG latest screenshots of a game
that's still months away, or pictures of user-created Mario sfogliatelle. We’re gonna sift through and find the good stuff and let you know about it, whether it’s old, new, or coming soon.
We’re cheap, so we’ll be looking for bargains on new, used, and downloadable games. If a game came out two years ago, and you’ve never played it, does that mean it won’t be fun if you pick it up now? People still play StarCraft, for god’s sake, and that’s ten years old. An old, good movie is still a good movie.
We play many, many more games than you'll read about here, and not many of them will be very good. So you'll only rarely see a review with a bad rating -- only if we feel we have to warn you away from something that's had a huge ad campaign, say. We’ll wade through the slush pile of available games for the machine in your living room or messenger bag and give you just enough good suggestions that you’ll always have something good to play. Because, really, the particular smug anticipation of having a good game ready to play when you get home isn’t much different than the satisfaction of knowing you have a great book by the bed just waiting to read. The hard part is finding which one to get next.
About Me, BoringlyWe had Video Pinball and then the 2600; I even got about half a version of Q*Bert programmed on my Commodore 64 before I got bored. A not-uncommon progression followed: NES, Sega Genesis, Xbox/PS2, Wii, with PC games all throughout. I hope to be playing video games 30 years from now with a brain implant.
I'm probably more of a first-person shooter player than anything else -- from Quake II through Unreal Tournament 2004, Half-Life 2, and now Team Fortress 2, with some time with Halo 1 and Riddick, and way too much on Age of Empires II (I probably installed and uninstalled a dozen times). I tried WoW but the fantasy crap annoys me; I've spent a lot of time in City of Heroes and more in Villains, leading supergroups, etc. That was my big entry into playing online; previous efforts with FPS games led to me being killed near-instantly by, I'm certain, freakishly neuro-augmented 12-year-olds. And being an editor, it's no surprise that I like word games. I put in many hours of speed-round Scrabble on the original Game Boy.
The newest gaming development for me has been playing Wii games over at my sister's house, with her kids. I never thought I'd play games with a 40-year-old, a 9-year-old, and a 5-year-old, and all of us have a great time. But there is, and we do. The Wii's different than any other console I've seen. I like that.
However! I'm agnostic in the console wars. I'll try any game, anywhere. I loved Doom RPG on my phone, I have seven Scrabulous games going on Facebook as I write this, and I very occasionally have the most points in a TF2 round on the PC. So anyone with fanboy allegations can point them elsewhere.
I love games, but I don't love many games. Finding a game I want to play can be a pain. So I hope we'll help you find something great to play.
In SummationAnyway, that’s the plan. It'll change, but that's where we're starting. Any ideas? I’d love to hear from you.
Jamie
Console Games Guy
brighthubgames@gmail.com