The 10 Best Movies and Games of the Year

Take full control of your home theater with the latest in interactive entertainment

We can stop pretending video games are kids’ stuff, right? I mean, there’s no reason to maintain that silly pretense. More than ever, video games are the domain of grown ups—those able to afford the system able to show off the full a/v potential of these so-called toys.

Crank these spectacular Show-Offs and even the oldest fogies in your circle will start spelling “you” with one letter or stick X’s on the end of their names at a whim.

I know what's about to happen. I'm about to sit here and type a thousand words or so, waxing left and right about The Beatles: Rock Band, how it fits into the current glut of music/rhythm games, whether it does justice to the band and their legacy, blah blah blah...

When really, what it all boils down to is this: if you like The Beatles, go buy this game. Now. If you like the Beatles and don't own a PS3 or Xbox 360 (or Wii, I guess), go buy one of those. Now. And then buy this game. Right after that.

Connecting even more dots between today’s hottest movies and games

Longtime readers of Home Entertainment may remember a handful of old columns in which I riffed on the popular six degrees of separation meme: the notion that every person in the world can be connected to every other by no more than six connections—in other words, you know someone who knows someone who’s related to someone who... you get the picture.

Our 10 Best Software Award winners.

Nothing less than our picks for the best demo material of the past year.

Sex and Drugs Sold Separately

The missus and I have never been what one would call large-scale entertainers. Parties at our house are few and far between; our modest media room seating has rarely been strained—until last year, that is, when we found ourselves the host of biweekly Rock Band parties.

Since then, every other Saturday night our home is packed with rockers-in-waiting, champing at the bit for their turn at a microphone or faux instrument.

Suffice it to say, Rock Band 2 has been hotly awaited.

Public Humiliation… Now Private!

I don't claim to have my finger on the pulse of the entire video game industry, but I know what I know. I recall first seeing Guitar Hero at RedOctane's booth on the floor of a trade show in New York City. Cool idea, I thought, but no one really wants to play this game with a standard PS2 controller, you really need a big plastic guitar with buttons, but who's going to go for that?

Everyone in the civilized world, apparently.

The Not-so-Incredible Hulk

Our friends over at Gamervision.com have done a review of the Incredible Hulk game, available for seemingly every platform except the SNES.

What the designers apparently forgot to do while they were writing and re-writing all the code for every console, is design a decent game.

Sadly, our green friend doesn’t fair well in this movie-tie in game.

Go left! Ok, now keep going left…

As much as we love gaming here at HE, there are only so many hours in the day (I'm told, 24). So we've partnered with the folks at Gamervision.com to bring us the latest game reviews. This epic collaboration will allow them to do what they do best, and leave us playing with all the TVs, speakers, amps, media distribution products, and the like.

To be honest, I'm not sure who's getting the better deal there.

Larynx Hero

We have become a nation of legendary guitar players and rock bands, if only in our imaginations, or at least in our living rooms. But long before plastic Stratocasters became a videogame staple, karaoke (Japanese for "empty orchestra") was a popular techno-pastime, and not just for inebriated Asian businessmen.