HP Envy Touchsmart Laptop at Best Buy

April 24, 2015 by 4 Comments

The reviewer has been compensated in the form of a Best Buy Gift Card and/or received the product/service at a reduced price or for free.

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Laptops are a great way to keep your work with you where ever you go, from the afternoon commute to the beach- anywhere is your office.  The newest line of laptops not only run all those office applications, but also rock some excellent gaming and entertainment, giving users a real reason to bring their laptop with them on vacation. One of these new powerhouse laptops is the new AMD FX APU featured HP Envy.  The HP Envy Toushsmart 15.6″ touch screen laptop is built for multitasking and speed.  The processor makes daily tasks a breeze, as well as streaming movies, PC gaming, and loads those cat videos as fast as lightning.  The AMD FX APU makes short work of gaming and productivity applications, and all this with incredible performance to boot.  Laptops featuring the FX APU have the processing power of 10 cores, 4 CPU cores and 6 GPU cores.  The Envy also sports a 750 GB hard drive, 6 GB of RAM, and Beats Audio.  This leads to an unbelievable PC performance in gaming and entertainment, including video and music, bringing the laptop experience full circle including any application you could need (office stuff) or want (gaming stuff).
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Mario Party 10 for Wii U

April 18, 2015 by 6 Comments

Parties come and go, but a real smash stays in your mind forever.  In order to have a real party, your group of friends must be closely knit, and of course the party has to be hopping.  Parties have to be fun, and for a change of pace why not have Bowser butting in every so often.  Makes total sense.

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This is Mario Party 10 for the Wii U.  In this game, players go through a mini game filled board, trying to reach the end of the track in first place and with the most points.  Points are given for various reasons, most of which are winning mini games.  This game mode is called Classic Mario Party.  This seems simple enough, but Mario Party 10 takes this familiar game style and turns it on its head a bit by adding Bowser, and calling it….Bowser Party.  Very creative.  Bowser races around the game too, but instead of trying to win, he is simply trying to wreck everything and make your game less fun.  He does this by swapping rules in games, inventing painful Bowser based mini games where your players are smashed, burned and swept away.  Sometimes he just steals all your points.  My son thoroughly enjoys the Mario Party line of games and was incredibly excited to play as Bowser in this most recent addition to the series.  The game is well worth it for the little guy, he loves playing as Bowser and enjoys it even more with extra people playing.  The more, the better.  The game also supports Amiibo figures to unlock added fun in the game, as well as a special game mode called Amiibo Party.
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Nintendo’s Box Boy and Affordable Space Adventure

April 16, 2015 by 5 Comments

There are a plethora of downloadable titles available for the 3DS and Wii U, most of which are good games, but to sift out the gems can be difficult and costly. I’m really liking the new and less expensive Affordable Space Adventure for the Wii U and BoxBoy! for the 3DS.
Affordable Space Adventure takes the player on a (surprise) space adventure aboard a space ship navigating an alien world. The ship is controlled with lots of switches and buttons which would be confusing for one player with a normal controller, but the Wii U’s Gamepad makes controls a breeze. Where this game really shines is in two player mode. Both players control one ship, each delegated certain responsibilities, from navigation, to engines, mass control and signal flares. This may sound confusing and convoluted, but actually it works quite well. Navigating to the next area is often a puzzle where players must work together and communicate well in order to proceed. This is great for my son and his daddy-  this game gets the two of them to work together and talk out what they need in a reasonable way or the puzzle will be unsolved. This game is great fun and was developed by Swedish Indie developer Nifflas. The graphics are eye catching and colorful, yet dark and foreboding. Not only is the game fun to play but as a by stander not playing it is interesting to see the player dynamic between two players working together constantly.
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Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D

March 30, 2015 by 6 Comments

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The Nintendo classic Zelda franchise is full of great games which are the reason Zelda games are classics.  One of the most popular is Majora ‘s Mask, which was originally released for the Nintendo 64.  The newest version of this game Legend of Zelda: Majora ’s Mask 3D, is a reworked, updated, cleaned up, and enhanced version of the original.

Majora’s Mask follows the story of Link as he tries to keep the moon from falling from the sky leading to the destruction of Termina.  The twist is that you only have 3 days to complete this epic quest.  In this 3 day period, Link will have to explore dungeons, solve puzzles, and fight gigantic bosses (of course).

Throughout the game there is a reoccurring theme of masks, and masks are one of the main collectables in the game.  There are 20 in total, each of which gives Link a new power or ability, like the ability to transform into a Deku, Goron, or Zora.
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Pokemon Omega Ruby and Pokemon Alpha Sapphire

March 23, 2015 by 6 Comments

Pokemon games are little gems of RPG, which have you addictively collecting Pokemon until the end of the game is met.  The real challenge is ‘catching them all’.  Through trading and lots of time and energy, it is possible.  Poke-fans, keep collecting.  Today we are looking at the newest entries in the Pokemon franchise, Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire which are for the 3DS, 3DSXL, and 2DS.

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In this game, players will collect and fight their way through the Hoenn region, trying to stop a secret group who plan to mess with Hoenn forever.  A new feature to use is Soar, so flight over the region is also possible now.  The two Legendary Pokemon of these games are Primal Groudon and Primal Kyogre.  Both Groudon and Kyogre both undergo a new Primal Reversion transformation, which unleashes new power from within your Pokemon, as well as Mega Evolutions and the ability to Pokemon favorites.
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New Tech for You and Yours

March 11, 2015 by 3 Comments

Not that we are all about the plugging in (in fact, quite the opposite) but there is a time and a place for everything.  When you are looking to upgrade, here are some ideas that can make your next trip that much easier.

pic9Tiggly develops interactive apps for toddlers and preschoolers, as it has been shown through research that manipulating physical objects helps develop key skills in early childhood development. Tiggly Counts is an award-winning math learning toy aimed at ages 18 months- 6 years old.  The goals of Tiggly is to help children develop spatial reasoning, motor skills, language, and creativity.  They have another product in this line available as well, Tiggly Shapes.   When you buy the Tiggly Counts package, you receive the counting objects, that children use to interact with the 3 included apps Tiggly Cardtoons, Tiggly Addventure, and Tiggly Chef . Kids can use the apps with mom and dad to help, or on their own.  They are pretty proud when they accomplish a task “all by themselves”, and the app and counting objects help them learn counting as well.  Available for $30 on http://get.tiggly.com/counts, works with iPhone/iPad and androids.

coloring appPainting Lulu is part coloring book, part app.  Kids can color in the activity book, then scan the page into their tablet using the included free Painting Lulu app.  The art shows up an the screen, where they can keep coloring, retouching, and changing it up as they would like.  They can also start with blank pages and go from there.  The pages can easily be printed, saved, and shared with parents as well.  It comes with the coloring book, app, and digital crayon (stylus) for $9.99 on www.paintinglulu.com. Works with apple and android devices.
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Fossil Fighters Frontier for Nintendo 3DS

March 4, 2015 by 8 Comments

pic8We recently tested out a new game at the New York City Nintendo store called Fossil Fighters Frontier,  for the Nintendo 3DS.  At that time, the game was being demonstrated for kids 10 and up, since it has quite a bit of reading and bigger words.  There are options for 3D and non 3D play, depending on the use of parental controls. You can use the Parental Controls to restrict 3D mode (always recommended for children 6 and under) for your child or yourself if you don’t like the way it looks or affects you.

You act as a paleontologist, excavating dinosaur bones, as well as battling your Vivosaur (dinosaur) with others that you encounter along the way.

Check out this video of the demo-

More about the game (courtesy of Nintendo);

The latest game in the Fossil Fighters series delivers a first: Players can now hop into their vehicles and drive around exotic locations to excavate fossils, which transform into real-life dinosaurs known as Vivosaurs. Players battle their Vivosaur with wild Vivosaurs they encounter on digging adventures.
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Kirby and the Rainbow Curse Video Game

March 2, 2015 by 5 Comments

Disclosure- we received the below in order to facilitate this review. All opinions are our own and honest.

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My son and his friend, trying the game out in the Nintendo store.

Nintendo has a quite a few classic characters but few are as fun as their pink fluffy one, Kirby. Kirby is the pink, round guy with a vacuum mouth, for those who don’t know. There is a new Kirby game by Nintendo, which is available now. The game is called Kirby and the Rainbow Curse and brings Kirby into a new style of game play, clay. The clay style is really neat, and must be seen in action. The animation smooth and seamless. It is like playing a cartoon of years ago like Gumby in game version. However, this cartoon stars our favorite little pink guy- Kirby.
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