Just wanted to let everyone know that from 10 AM Pacific on November 5th until 9 AM the next day (thank you very much daylight savings), JC & WallE and a bunch of friends will be livestreaming for 24 hours to aid Extra-Life. To watch the stream, head to the Whiskey & Waffles YouTube channel at any time. And, more importantly, if you’d like to make a donation, you can go to the Extra-Life donation page.

Extra-Life has already raised more than $22 Million for the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals since its inception in 2008. This year, before tomorrow’s Game Day 2016, it has already raised over $3 Million.

Last week, I got to check out a special invite-only event put on by Activision at the YouTube Space LA to preview Guitar Hero Live. While I had seen it in action at E3, this was the first time I really got to spend time with the game, as you’ll see from my less than stellar performance in the video after the jump.

When it comes to the presentation, Guitar Hero Live has absolutely stepped it up. In GH TV, you’re able to play over some of your favorite music videos for songs you already love and there is a massive library of music to select from. At the event, I was the only one to play Green Day ‘Oh Love’ but was thrilled to have the chance to. On the other side is the concert experience with GH Live where the player sees the perspective from being on stage as a member of the band and looking out at a real crowd, not just some polygonal fans.

LEGO® DIMENSIONS™_20150703082142

Have you ever been playing Portal and wondered how The Doctor would do in Aperture Science? Thanks to Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment now you can find out. LEGO Dimensions announced at San Diego Comic-Con the upcoming inclusion of Doctor Who. It is the first time Doctor Who has ever been in a LEGO videogame.

The stars of the BBC America show have lent their voices to their respective characters in the game as well. Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, and Michelle Gomez have all brought their Doctor Who personas to LEGO life in Dimensions. The game is truly a mash-up of worlds. The TARDIS could pop up in Gotham City or The Doctor could ride along with Scooby and Shaggy.

As is seen in the trailer, all twelve doctors are included in Dimensions. In fact, LEGO has pulled out all the stops to please Whovians. When the Twelfth Doctor is defeated in a level, he returns as the First Doctor and then continues regenerating back up to Twelve. The TARDIS interior changes depending on which Doctor is “alive” but can also be manually chosen by the player. A jukebox inside the TARDIS allows players to select different versions of the Doctor Who theme music.

At Comic-Con in San Diego we got the opportunity to take a closer look at the latest additions to Skylanders with Skylanders Trap Team. While we had already gotten a peek at the title, there were still some awesome announcements behind the game along with some great insight from the designers as well.

First came the announcement of the Skylanders Trap Team Dark Edition Starter Pack. Like last year’s SWAP Force Dark Edition, the set will come with some special dark paint variants of characters. Unlike last year’s though, there will be only three new Trap Team members without any sprinkling of classic characters.

It will also come with a new Portal of Power which will have a new feature in addition to a new look, the ability to use Traps to capture villains in game and use them while playing. The Dark Edition will come with a limited edition over sized trap allowing players to capture Chaos.

The funny thing is that movie games have a pretty terrible reputation in the gaming world. Most are quickly put together knock-offs of what could be considered a full game that depend upon riding on the fame of the established franchise. But back in 2004, Spider-Man 2 based off the Sami Rami take on the franchise changed all that.

Without reliance upon the movie, Spider-Man 2 as a game was just good. It was a great movie game, a great super hero game and most importantly a great Spider-Man game (considered the best of the character up to this point). But ten years later, the game and movie franchises have both gotten a reboot and that’s not always a good thing.

The Long…

First let’s talk about the story of The Amazing Spider-Man 2. While I applaud the writers trying to separate themselves from the movie slightly be adding in a whole new subplot connecting the scenes between the movie as previous games often do, the beats in this one just feel off. The early beat that introduces the game’s main antagonist also directly messes with the whole Uncle Ben story and what happens to Ben’s killer. It feels about as accurate to the character as Superman killing in Man of Steel.

Microsoft knows that Halo is a system seller. That’s why last year at E3 we saw the TBD titled Halo get a tease. But without knowing when the next Halo would be coming out, they needed to keep the appetite wet for gamers before the hoopla of this year’s E3 kicked in. What better way to do so than open up preorders to the world. If you head to Amazon you can place your preorder on Halo 5: Guardians which is set to ship by end of year 2015 (no doubt, this will be more formally announced with an actual release date at E3 or at least a quarter).

There are two things that stand out about Halo 5: Guardians based off the current cover artwork. The first is the name. Since Halo: Combat Evolved, this is the first proper Halo title to have a suffix attached to it. This leads one to believe it is either because they feel just another number isn’t enough of a differentiator to keep motivating new purchases or these new Guardians are that essential to the plot.

Yesterday, Microsoft dropped what they were hoping would be a bomb, but has truthfully only ended up being a cause for more contention in the console war. After about six months of being outsold by the PlayStation 4, Microsoft has announced they will be releasing a Kinect-free version of the XBox One. Hitting shelves on June 9th, this will be just in time for the E3 frenzy and most likely hope to capitalize on new titles being announced at E3 bringing more popularity to the system. It will also drop the price to $399.

Instead of people being happy about the new lower price, the negative backlash came. Sony fanboys decried the move as desperation. While it can be said that Microsoft did need to do something to put the console on even ground with the PlayStation, it wouldn’t be an act of desperation.

Microsoft listened to the feedback and instead of dropping the price and losing money due to cost, they removed the big elephant in the room that was associated with that higher price point. Had they kept the Kinect and dropped the price or dropped the Kinect and lowered the price below the $399 mark before Sony had enacted any price drop at all on the PlayStation 4, that would have been an act of desperation.

“Let’s Play” videos are all over YouTube. You can’t make it through the site without a horde of Let’s Plays. Because of this, the Whiskey & Waffles team decided they needed to get some going as well.

Check out their first in a series with the release of Trials Fusion.

Only a few weeks after Disney decided it was time to shoot a volley in the smart toy war by introducing the Avengers to Disney Infinity, Activision has fired back with a premiere for the latest Skylanders sequel. Again, focusing on innovation with gameplay implications, Skylanders Trap Team is coming to systems in October.

As you’ll see in the trailer below, Skylanders Trap Team introduces a new element to the series. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out this means traps. But it isn’t just a matter of trapping defeated foes. This game encourages players to take those villains and use them for good. Boasting 60 new Skylanders and 40 trappable villains, this could be the largest release of Skylanders to date.

It’ll be interesting to see how the traps work but it the trailer hints that specific traps work on specific enemies which means to catch them all, you have to buy them all too. How they are packaged will be interesting though. Skylanders may come paired with a trap or maybe a trap pack will be created with four or five traps sold together. Regardless, Activision has just renewed their license to print money.

Taking a cue from the designs of Pacific Rim, The Art of Titanfall shows the titans as less than beautiful pieces of hardware that feel like lumbering hulks meant to take a beating as well as delivering them. With only three basic units, there is a great balance in diversity and design of each titan. During the fast paced battles of the Titanfall game, it’s incredibly challenging to try and notice these details but the art book allows you to really appreciate it from the pulled back perspective.

The Art of Titanfall does an awesome exploration of the maps as well. Though not giving a full breakdown as if it was a strategy guide, The Art of Titanfall allows a player to again appreciate the care put into each map that they’d never get to during the heat of battle.

These kids today have it too easy. Back in our day there were certain aspects of being a gamer you just had to deal with. Polygons could be maxed out on screen. You’d have to use your imagination to see what the little collection of blocks represented. And one thing we all knew was that if you made it into the beta testing phase of a game, things were bound to be broken. But that was to be expected. A beta wasn’t a finished product and you “paid” for the early gameplay by dealing with the bugs. Kids today don’t get betas. They just get an extended demo and that’s why they don’t know the pain we went through growing up.

What brought on this jaded old man tirade you ask? The Titanfall beta of course. Don’t misinterpret, there is nothing wrong with the Titanfall beta. Between the beta and the awesome art book I got today (don’t worry, a review is coming soon), I am going to be picking up Titanfall on launch. But when playing it, it hasn’t been a beta experience. The game runs smooth, controls great and looks fantastic. The only limits are some of the maps and weapons not being fully unlocked. It’s basically a smaller version of the final product. And that’s not a beta. It’s a demo. But they’ve changed the name because beta access is a better buzz phrase for marketing.

Part of what we loved most about the High Moon Studios entry into the Transformers world is that it was the original G1 canon most of us had fallen in love with during our childhood. Wanted to know what happened before Optimus and the crew made it to earth, you got the story finally from Transformers: War for Cybertron and Transformers: Fall of Cybertron. But Activision has gone and done something that is not only unexpected but for some of the most hardcore of Transformers G1 fans… unwelcomed.

Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark will be a part of the G1 Universe but it will also be a part of the Michael Bay movieverse as well, with events taking place before Transformers Age of Extinction. That means that they are doing what could be the absolute worst offense when it comes to G1 territory by combining it with whatever Michael Bay is throwing at the wall this time.

A lot of people say I am too harsh when it comes to the Michael Bay films but after the first one, it just kept getting farther and farther away from the franchise I grew up on into a poorly put together film with sophomoric level comedy forced into it. In Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, we got Grimlock and the rest of his dinobot compatriots but now that could all be washed away because of the new Michael Bayified Grimlock that we were introduced to during the Super Bowl trailer.