Summary: Rockstar’s newest addition to the series is wicked fun and really gorgeous.

Setting: A ginormously rendered Los Angeles complete with mindless citizens, street signs and other stuff to look at instead of the road.

Systems: Xbox 360, PS3

Genre: Racing

Mood: Empty headed racing fun.

Read the full review by Shawn.

Alllllllllllllll Righty Then! It’s time to announce the winners of our Gears 2 Gold-Plated Hammerburst Contest!

First, a great big THANK YOU to everyone who entered and took a few minutes to check out GameLemon. Thank you for all your comments and we hope to see you back here a lot more often than never from now on :)) And now, without further ado, the WINNERS!

1. 8cloud8
2. Alexander (email ends with @rogers.com)
3. Abner
4. seraph741

and finally….

5. paddy

CONGRATULATIONS!!! Your codes will arrive shortly to your respective emails. Please reply back with a confirmation once you receive your codes.

Enjoy your Gold-Plated Hammerbursts, see you online, and for those in the US, Happy Thanksgiving!

Why oh why, do I always fall for these lists? Oh yeah - I am a man. Keep forgetting that, gosh darnit. Anyway, you can argue about the rating of the various ladies up and and down the village until the cows come home, but regardless, the sheer breasts …. oops, I mean “breadth” of the games that the list covers definitely deserves some credit. Special kudos go out for reaching as far back into gaming history as the girl from Leisure Suit Larry (#28) and Morrigan from Darkstalkers (#11).

To be sure, a few names have of course been missed - my personal complaint is with the non-inclusion of April Ryan and Zoe Castillo from The Longest Journey series - but that is nearly always inevitable with lists like this, and it still remains a fun click-fest at the end of the day.

I thought you had to be 18 to change your name in most states?

The forthcoming Halo 3 expansion, previously known as Halo 3: Recon, has gone and pulled a switcheroo on the Bungie fanbase by morphing into Halo 3: ODST. While “Recon” happened to roll off the tongue a little smoother, ODST seems to jive with what the game is going to focus on, since you play as - duh - a couple of ODSTs attempting to kick some Brute ass around the ruined streets of New Mombassa.

This doesn’t change any of the hype surrounding the game, or my intense want to play it, or the fact that the interesting twists revealed in this month’s cover story in GameInformer - including the fact that you not only play as the unnamed “rookie” character, but as his squadmates in flashback sequences - sounds totally badass.

Oh, and in case the picture didn’t give it away, the Bungie folks were good enough to go through all of their DLC (wallpapers, trailer, captures from the trailer, etc.) and change the tag from “Recon” to “ODST” so as to avoid any confusion.

We’ve got 5 Gears of War 2 codes to give away, and we’ll enter you into the drawing just for acknowledging our existence! Yes, we are that desperate! There is really very little we won’t do for a little extra attention, like that one time when I jumped naked from the second floor of an old jailhouse building into a tub of hot chocolate sitting in a bush of poison ivy… but I digress. We won’t torture you with anything that onerous this time, I promise - all you have to do is leave a comment on this thread and we’ll enter you into the drawing for the codes.

The drawing itself will take place at noon on Thursday, Nov 27, 2008 (Thanksgiving Day, appropriately), and the winners will be notified by email - so make sure you leave a working email address.

The codes will give you a Gold-Plated Hammerburst for use in online play.

Now, while you are here, please do take a minute to check out the rest of the site. We really do have some nice reviews, and a few rather contentious articles, and even our own comic about video gamers! A few minutes of your time is all we ask. Remember, it beats working!

Happy Holidays!

The GameLemon Team.

By now most of you have heard of the Large Hadron Collider currently working at CERN over in Europe to either: A) Find a “god” particle, B) End the world, or C) Something in between that’s equally as important scientifically. Depends on who you ask, I guess.

Anyway, the point is that the good folks over there seem to have great humor in the face of pending success/doom, as several clever staffers realized that one among their ranks looked a lot like Gordon Freeman from the Half-Life series. Now the folks over at 1up.com have shared links to plenty of pictures of the scientists taking this joke to its extreme, having “Gordon” equip his hardhat and crowbar to take care of a minor headcrab infestation that seems to have affected the lab.

The pics are pretty funny, and it’s good to see that the guys and gals over at CERN aren’t all work and no play. No word yet on whether anyone sports this t-shirt to work, though.

Anybody out there remember the old Game & Watch handhelds from Nintendo? There was a pretty good selection of LCD-screen games, based on beloved Nintendo franchises and some completely new creations. Versions of The Legend of Zelda (shown below), Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros., and many others were available, although in a very stripped down fashion (understandably - come on, it was the ’80s). Plus, they had a clock on them! How cool was that? “I don’t need a watch, I’ve got Nintendo to tell me what time it is!” They were fun on the go before the world knew about the GameBoy, much less the DS.

The original Legend of Zelda Game-n-Watch game, over 15 years before the DS was released.

Now 1up.com is reporting that Nintendo may be bringing their Game & Watch gallery for the DS stateside. Some in-depth scanning of the ESRB’s ratings board showed that Nintendo has put in for a rating for a US release of the game that has been, til now, a Japanese Club Nintendo exclusive.

This is the Japanese version of the G&W Collection. Picture courtesy of 1up.com.

No word yet on whether this will be a retail release or Club Nintendo exclusive, when the latter launches in America sometime this holiday, but we’ll be keeping our eyes on it. Here’s hoping that it includes some of the better old-school G & W classics, and also that Nintendo takes care of the fans (which they usually do) rather than just trying to cash in on the hype memories (which is all too common nowadays).

There is a good article over at the Escapist on the subject of finishing (or, rather, not finishing) video games - something that cuts close to home for me personally. As much as I love gaming, if I finish 1 in 10 games that I try, that’s a pretty good result. What’s worse, many times I find myself not even fully comprehending why I lose interest in a game. When it’s a repetitive JRPG, the answer may be simple, but with a deep, innovative, amazing game like Bioshock I am left in awe at the fickleness of my own nature as a gamer. Often enough, many months later I find myself with fond memories of such games, and lingering regret at having “dropped the ball”. Yet such is the fate of the modern day adult gamer - not just me, but apparently others as well, which makes me feel a little better, I suppose. Anyway, the article is a good read whether you are in the same boat, or just enjoy some quality discourse on the subject of video gaming.

(Warning: me = obsessed.)

In anticipation of today’s shipping (not street-dated release, mind you) of Tomb Raider: Underworld, Eidos has released the final gameplay trailer and a TV spot for the new game. It’s enough to get you salivating, and not just because of Lara’s loveliness - the game looks fantastic, from the story to the action to the puzzles and everything else involved. Oh, and there’s a new wallpaper, too

Head over to the official Tomb Raider site or check out the equally obsessed and cool folks over at Tomb Raider Chronicles for a look at the trailer and commercial. Then start salivating and calling your local game store incessantly until they tell you that the game has arrived.

Well, since my previous slightly nudity-related post gathered such a veritable storm of responses (too bad no one bothered to type them in), here is another tidbit to gorge your testosterone-spewing self on: it’s come to my attention that the December issue of Playboy is featuring some sweet pics of digital (and yes, nude!) vixens from the world of gaming! No, shockingly, Lara Croft is not one of them. Apparently, the brainy editors decided to go with girls from a slew of second-tier titles this time around: Kane & Lynch, Conan, and Tabula Rasa, among others. Yeah, that’s right, second tier. You heard me, Garriot!

Now I know, I know - you haven’t bought a Playboy since your high school prom night. Which you spent at home playing chess with your grandfather. But this is different - this is for the good of the video game industry! Now there is something that’s finally worth saving a day’s lunch money over. So go out there, find the smallest, dinkiest newsstand out there and pretend to be 15 by pretending to be 19 again. Way to rekindle that youth, boy.

P.S. If you are an investment banker, understandably you can no longer afford Playboys, or lunch for that matter. In fact, I am shocked they haven’t turned off your internet for non-payment yet. But since they haven’t, you can get a little censored peak of the goodness here. And take this half a cheese sandwich while you are at it.