I’ve been neglecting The Social Gamer. This past weekend I was able to play an Xbox Live Arcade title called 3 on 3 NHL Arcade and thought it would be good to write up a quick review about it.

On Saturday night I popped my cherry with my first Xbox 360 system link “LAN” party. We kicked off the party with some Gears of War 2 Horde Mode, but when the 5th member’s wife came to pick him up for beddy time, the rest of us congregated on one TV and played 3 on 3 NHL Arcade.

I know it’s been out since February, and I did play the demo a few times but hadn’t thought of the game since. If you’ve ever played an EA Sports NHL 0X game the menus and controls will be familiar to you but what you will immediately notice is the menu sounds; “blorp”s and “woooooosh”es amusingly help you make your menu choices.

The teams can be made up of players from either conference and features a few select stars from each team. You’ll want a well-rounded team but bigger guys deliver more punishing hits. From there the game is a no rules, power-up riddled, game of shinny hockey. There are no face-offs other than at the beginning of each period and after each goal the puck is put back into play behind the net of the team that was scored on. That, however, does NOT mean the team that was scored on will always get the puck as I was able to easily grab the puck for a quick wrap-around goal multiple times.

You can read the rest of the article over at The Social Gamer.

If you’re following me on Twitter you might know that I’m extremely excited about upgrading my cell phone in a couple of months to the iPhone. I currently have an army of gadgets I carry around with me most places I go: my dumb-phone (Sony Ericsson S500i unlocked on Rogers GSM), my work cell phone (BlackBerry 8830 World Edition) and my MP3 player (16GB iPod Touch 1st Gen). Recently, however, Rogers brought the G1 (an HTC Dream running the Google Android Mobile OS) to Canada and this has made me rethink the iPhone. Continue Reading…

Yes, two games have already been played. Yes, both of those games have gone to the Detroit Red Wings. Yes, I still stick by my previous prediction: the Pittsburgh Penguins will win the Stanley Cup this year.

Stanley Cup Finals

DETROIT vs PITTSBURGH
PREDICTION: PITTSBURGH PENGUINS in 7 games.

Much as with my Conference Semi-Final picks, I did make this prediction before the start of the series, I just haven’t had time to write this entry. Pittsburgh, at least before the series started, looked more determined, and better than they did last year. With Crosby and Malkin playing better than anyone has played in the playoffs since the lockout and with Jordan Staal looking like an even better shutdown man than before, it looked like easy going. It hasn’t been that way thus far but I still have faith.

Home-ice advantage for Detroit really hindered Crosby’s ability to get anything done other than a few great plays in the first two games. Zetterberg is a talented shutdown guy. Home-ice for Pittsburgh should really let the Penguins play their game and bring it back to Detroit for game 5 tied at 2 games apiece.

One can hope at least.