A bonus for this game is your young boys and girls will really enjoy it.  I’ve had a hard time finding games that are simple and straight to the point for my young son.  When we are on a road trip, he’s constantly asking if he can play “shooting games” or “boy games.”  Duck Carnage has been a life saver for those trips!  The game also helps develop motor skills as they have to follow the ducks on the screen and press quickly in order to shoot them.  The sound effects are easy on the ears, but if you are really in a quiet spot, there are options to disable sound effects.

The name of the game is a little misleading – no real carnage takes place.  No blood or excessive violence, just fun cartoony play time.  Check out Duck Carnage now in the Android market.

Geeky Moms’ Top 5 Family Games to Come in 2011

1.  Diablo III – PC

The first question which comes to mind is, will Diablo III really come out in 2011?  The game has been in development for several years, and Blizzard has been releasing small teasers.  The anticipation is really building!  The second question which comes to mind, is this a family game?

Yes – for the geekiest gaming families!  Diablo II was so much fun for my family.  My son was around 8 when we introduced him to this game.  You can group together and complete levels as a team.  The game is different from an mmorpg as you have a more top-level view of your character.  The art, music and game concepts are amazing. 

2.  YooStar 2:  Movie Karaoke – Kinect Xbox 360

If you love movies and generally find yourself quoting movies, you will love this game.  You are featured as a character in a blockbuster of the past.  You are then edited into the scene.  The game is a lot like karaoke where it scores you based on your improvisation and how quick you were to respond to a line.  The game play looks hilarious, and will make a great family night!

Check out the video here:  http://123kinect.com/kinect-gameplay-yoostar-2-movie-karaoke/

3.  Mario Sports Mix – Wii

Yea for the Wii!  The Kinect is really outshining the Wii as far as new game development goes.  Nintendo still has the Mario card in its back pocket.  Mario Sports Mix allows up to four players to play locally or up to two people per console to play online.  The game consists of your favorite Mario characters, in addition to a few new ones.  In this edition of Mario game play, the gang is going to be suiting up for basketball, dodgeball, volleyball and hockey. 

4.  Super Hero Squad – PC

This MMORPG allows you to play as one of the fabulous Marvel Super Hero Squad characters.  It was developed with the 8 year old in mind.  Rather than free text chatting, it gives the player built in scripts that you can chat to others.  This is great for kids, as you don’t have to type and you don’t have crazy people on the game saying whatever they want.  The game is so much fun.  I demo’d the game at PAX with my 4 year old son in mind.  I can see us all getting online in the future and playing for an hour together.  In addition to the MMORPG side, there is also a set of mini-games built in, that is related to the actual card game you can purchase.  Basically, you can either go out and fight with your character or roam about the world, or you can play the card game. 

5.  Kinectalloons

Scheduled to release in May 2011, Kinectalloons is an adventure family game.  The game is similar to Kinectimals, but you interact with balloons and do tricks to get through the levels.  Your kids of all ages will enjoy jumping, reaching and stretching into ridiculous situations in order to complete a level. 

Happy gaming everyone!  Schedule a family game night and enjoy the benefits of connecting with your kids.

The time management game presents a nice introduction, with a simple story line for youngsters to follow.  My 6 year old daughter jumped in right next to me to explore the secrets this game has to offer.

As the story unfolds, my daughter desperately tried to ‘skip’ the intro movie.  I stopped her from doing so in the hopes that she would get more into the story of the game.  She still wasn’t convinced, but I was impressed with the introduction movie.  Flo is approached by Mr. Big to take over his theme park restaurants because he is having an awful time running them.  Of course, Flo accepts the challenge.  The intro scene has character audio and text that you can read, and for those impatient 6 year olds, a skip button!

After the intro scene, you dive right into serving customers, bringing them their food, taking the bill, cleaning up, and even cooking!  Flo does her share of cooking on the deep-fryer with Fries & Fish as her specialty.  The game is very fast paced.  I especially appreciate the coordination and color matching it has to offer for children.  Customers are different colors, such as red, yellow, or green, and can only be seated at a matching color table.  You have to multi-task a great deal to make sure all the customers are satisfied.  If you keep a customer waiting too long, they will get upset and leave, thus draining your points and keeping you from the next achievement.

The game also offers a really nice Help section.  I was really impressed to see this, as most casual games of this type just throw you in with a small tutorial and don’t spend a lot of time on documentation.

Your kids will enjoy this game, and it offers a great way to expand their mouse and multi-tasking skills.  It also includes some really fun mini-games.  Secretly, you will end up playing the game for hours.  Cooking Dash offers a nice stress relieving activity, after a long day at work or being a mom!

As I explore this game more, I will give you a sneak peak of some game play footage!

For now, give it a try.  You can download the game at Big Fish Games.  Enjoy!

How do you satisfy a young gamer who is looking for at least 10 different games in 30 minutes?  Download an emulator!  Emulators are available everywhere for any type of console.  I prefer the using a console emulator for Nintendo (NES) but you can find a mirad of different emulators.  1000s of ROMS  are available for download on the Internet.

In this example, I will show you how to find an NES emulator, download, install and run Super Mario for it.

1 – Download Jnes, a popular NES emulator for Windows.

2 – Save the download to your computer.  After it has finished downloading, run the installer.  Take the defaults on the install.

3 – Next, you will need to find a rom to play.  Romnation.net is very reliable and easy to find good free roms.  Another option is to do an Internet search for "NES Roms."  Be careful, as many of these sites have a lot of ads and hidden download links.

4 – Once you have found a Rom to download, save the file into a directory on your computer that you can easily find.  I created a folder called Roms on my C: drive, and then created additional folders for each emulator. If you have multiple emulators, its important to organize the roms by emulator type.

5 – Open Jnes.  Go to File – Open and select the folder where you stored the downloaded rom.

6 – Play!  There are options to change your inputs on the keyboard, or to configure  a joystick or game controller.

The added bonus to downloading emulators & roms – you get to revisit all those old games for yourself!  You can find a lot of different systems’ emulators online;  start with romnation.net and give it a go.