By Shane McGlaun

My kids have a slew of LeapFrog toys lying around the house. I can honestly say that most of them play the most annoying tunes. You know the sort of tunes I am talking about, the ones that stick in your mind and you end up humming them all day like “C says “kuh”, C says “kuh” every letter makes a sound, C says “kuh”". Crap, now it’s stuck in my head again.

I have a hard time when I am sitting near my kids getting them to leave my iPhone alone as it is. LeapFrog has now announced its first iPhone app called Number Rumble that will have them wanting to play with my phone even more. The game helps kids six to ten learn math by teaching addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

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By Shane McGlaun

I am a big fan of PC shooters and my favorite all time shooter was Crysis from Crytek. I was almost as giddy as a schoolgirl when I heard they were launching Crysis Warhead. Warhead had great graphics, but the story line wasn’t quite as good as the original.

EA and Crytek announced that they are offering a free trial of the multiplayer shooter Crysis Wars available through Friday April 17. The trial allows players to play all of the games three multiplayer modes and all 23 maps.

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By Shane McGlaun

The Nintendo Wii makes for a much more involved video game experience than competing consoles. Some games like boxing are as much of a workout as Wii Fit. The popularity of the console for people looking for a fun exercise platform is undeniable with the Wii fit game being at the top of many sales charts.

For Wii Fit fanatics looking to get more from their workouts a new product will be shipping soon called the Riiflex dumbbells. The dumbbells are cut out to hold the Wii remote and nunchuck while you play games.

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By Shane McGlaun

I tend to play more video games than board games, but when you have a group of friends over sometimes it can be fun to go old school and whip out some board games. Star Trek fans looking to prove that they have the most useless sci-fi factoids stored away in their neural net will be glad to hear a new Star Trek board game is available.

The game is called Star Trek Scene It and it’s a trivia game that uses a DVD to show clips from the various TV series and feature films int the Star Trek franchise. I see Picard is included on the box image; he was the best Enterprise captain ever if you ask me.

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By Shane McGlaun

The first Fast & Furious movie was really cool and I liked it a lot. The second and third films in the franchise were not nearly as cool and enjoyable to me. Friday marked the release of the fourth film in the franchise with the original actors, and from what I hear it is a pretty good movie.

As typically happens today, a new video game launched alongside the movie for the iPhone. The new Fast & Furious game is the sixth game in the franchise to come to the iPhone and iPod touch. The game is available now on the iTunes store for $5.99.

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by Shane McGlaun

If you are an avid PC gamer or console gamer who likes first person shooters, odds are that you have played a Call of Duty game before. The franchise started out in the World War II setting and by the fourth installment had made it to modern times.

I can honestly say that COD 4: Modern Warfare was the best title in the franchise in my opinion. The game has great graphics and had some of the best online multiplayer action to be had anywhere. When the most recent COD game came out and was in the WWII era again I was saddened. I hoped for another modern setting.

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By Shane McGlaun

The lazy summer days of my youth were often spent throwing lawn darts with my brother. Honestly, most of those games involved more throwing lawn darts at my brother than with him. Hitting a moving target was much more difficult than that big circle, especially with all the screaming for help and ducking behind trees my brother usually did.

I’m sure kids like me are why you can’t buy lawn darts like we had back then. The company behind the popular golf game Golden Tee has announced that lawn darts are back, at least in virtual form in a new arcade game called Target Toss Pro: Lawn Darts.

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By Shane McGlaun

Music games may look geeky to those who aren’t into video games or music. Even if you have friends who don’t like to play the drums, sing, or play guitar in a virtual band, at least they can sit around and make fun of you while you rock out.

Guitar Hero fans that have been waiting for the next title in the franchise, Guitar Hero Metallica, to launch can now get a taste of what the full game will offer with the playable demo for the game now available on the Xbox Live Marketplace.

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By Ian Chiu

Headsets come to mind when you often play late at night, or at a LAN fest with a cadre of other gamers. In the latter scenario, headsets even become a necessity as speakers aren’t allowed in the venue. Thanks to all manner of 3D APIs, you don’t really have to worry about losing out on positional audio even when you limit yourself to a pair of cans. Creative recently brought us two USB gaming headsets united by the use of X-Fi as their sound processor to create emulated surround sound.

Despite this similarity, the HS-1000 (left) and HS-1200 (right) are largely different in that the latter is wireless – relying on lossless compression to deliver richer sound than Bluetooth. The HS-1000 wired USB headset however is reminiscent of the analog original Fatal1ty analog headset endorsed by none other than Johnathan Wendel. Everything USB has taken an in-depth look into both headsets, and provided comments on aural experience during gameplay of three different games, including Call of Duty 4, Mediveal II: Total War and Battlefield 2142. They found out that both headsets perform equally well in games that rely on OpenAL, EAX X-Fi as well as X-Fi CMSS-3D emulation. But since they don’t include any Dolby processing, just don’t expect these cans to replace other surround options when listening to music or watching movies.

[Creative HS-1200 Review, HS-1000 Review @ Everything USB]