For the past week I have been testing a 3D home entertainment setup in my lounge thanks to the guys at LG that sent me some equipment to combine with my own system. The picture above is of the wall in my lounge. Before we talk about the realities of 3D television, let’s take a look at the bits and pieces and their prices.

1. LG LX9500 47” LED LCD TV - This is the heart of the system: a beautiful 47″ monitor with 4 HDMI inputs that handles five different ways of producing 3D imagery. This is honestly the most ridiculously thin television I’ve ever seen and does a great job of rendering 1080p high definition visuals and, of course, 3D. More about that later. Price: R42000
2. LG AG-S100 3D glasses - The LX9500 television comes with two pairs of glasses and additional pairs can be bought separately. The glasses are charged using included USB cables and a micro USB port. A 2 hour charge and they’re good to go for at least a week of moderate viewing. Price: R1000 per pair.
3. Microsoft Xbox 360 - The Xbox 360 with HDMI port is 3D compatible, but older XBox 360 units without HDMI don’t cut the cheese. The only game I had to test with the Xbox is Avatar, which was provided by LG. The Korean company has allied with Microsoft for the development of 3D gaming. Price: R3000
4. Sony PS3 Slim - The Sony Playstation 3 is also 3D compatible, but I don’t have any 3D games to test it with. Time will bring them though. Price: R3300
5. LG BX580 Blu-ray player - LG’s latest model of Blu-ray player handles 3D and also has n-class wireless for accessing network media silos and online services like YouTube. That said, the n-class settings are curiously missing from the menu. It did produce the goods in 3D, however, with a disc of demo 3D footage provided by LG. Price: R3500
6. Sony HT-CT150 - This is a compact sound system that makes use of a speaker-bar and woofer to produce 3.1 sound. It also does a great job of playing 5.1 surround sound audio. Most importantly, it has 3D-passthrough for compatible devices. Price: R3000
7. Logitech Harmony 1100 - A universal remote is a must when you’re dealing with this many components. The 1100 is overpriced but does the job fantastically and is programmed via Logitech’s online Harmony service where just about every device known to man is catalogued. Price: R2500
8. Dude with a camera - That’s me. For 3D effects to work properly I need to be at least two meters away from the TV with powered-up glasses on my face. Price: Name it.

Now my only problem is that all I can watch in 3D is the demo Blu-ray disc that LG sent me to play with and the Avatar game for Xbox 360. But it is early days. If I was in the USA and signed up with a compatible pay-television company I’d be able to watch live sport in 3D on ESPN. Japan has also commenced live 3D broadcasts. In South Africa none of our pay-television providers have plans to do that just yet but we should have 3D movies on Blu-ray and console games arriving soon.

I am suitably impressed with the footage on the LG demo disc. High definition 3D is a fantastic experience although there is some noticeable blurriness here and there. The only real disappointment I’ve had is with the Avatar game for Xbox 360 which doesn’t look very good at all. The 3D works, but when you start running around in the game things get blurry and unplayable. It’s also a crap game. Definitely not a shining example of what the LG television can do.

It’ll be interesting comparing 3D gaming on Xbox and PS3 in future. PC gaming is also entering the fray with 3D monitors now making their way into the market and technology from Nvidia that even converts existing titles into 3D.

3D is a nice to have, but it’s not indispensable and I would wait for prices to come down before investing in a compatible HD TV. That said, this is one of the most fantastic monitors I’ve seen and if I could I would definitely keep it attached to my wall. As I continue to use it I’ll post more reviews in the various publications I write for, and on Twitter.

Platform: Wii
Price: R450
Verdict: Next-level Mario.

One of the best days of my life, as a kid, was being 10 years old and using saved up pocket money to buy a Famicom (Japanese NES) 8-bit console. I had enough cash to get two games with it and chose Goonies and Super Mario Brothers. I had played Atari and other early consoles but the NES was a milestone and Super Mario set the stage for a new era in console gaming. Anyone old enough to remember MacGyver, The A Team and Airwolf will likely also have some nostalgia attached to Mario. But you don’t have to be a child of the eighties to appreciate Super Mario Galaxy 2 which once again raises the bar for platform games.

This is the second in a 3D series of Mario games set in space, along with an amazing variety of power-ups and physics tricks. And it’s ridiculously fun.

The controls are a bit niggly at first, especially the irritating (to me) Wiimote-twist that you have to do to get Mario to spin up against things. This move is the same as in New Super Mario Bros. for Wii and I still can’t get the hang of it. I’m not a big fan of motion gaming in general but at least you can play Galaxy 2 without needing to be standing in front of the TV. You do need to point the controller at the set, however, to manipulate a star-cursor used to collect stars in the game that can also be fired as a weapon.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 requires the Nunchuck attachment for the Wii-remote and uses most of the buttons for specific jumps and moves. A second player can also join in with just a Wii-remote and control a little star that follows Mario around and helps him out. This is a neat feature, but not much fun for the second player.

So we’ve established that this game is fun, but it does also contain some of the frustration common to Super Mario titles. For example, dying will send you back to the beginning of a level and it can be highly annoying to play through again, especially if you were close to a save point before dying. There are also camera angles that sometimes make your movements difficult to judge, sending Mario flying off a planet, for example.

Those annoyances pale when compared to the storyline, however, that is as inane as they come. You can’t skip through the ridiculous dialogue about… like… candy-floss and mushrooms and stars, either. Luckily these sequences aren’t too long, but you have to wonder why Nintendo even bothers with a storyline for Mario games.

That said, the variety in Super Mario Galaxy 2 makes up for any shortcomings and will keep you busy with this game for ages. There are heaps of spherical, 3D worlds to run around on, 2D levels that set a new standard in platform gaming, gravity-reversed levels where you’re stuck to the ceiling and power-ups including a suit that lets Mario create clouds  in mid air to use as platforms and a bee suit for flying around in.

Yoshi, Mario’s dinosaur-friend is also back in this title and you can ride around on him, using his tongue to zap enemies.

If you have a Nintendo Wii this is a must-have title that will keep you busy for ages. You have to push through the first few levels before things really get going, so bear that in mind. It’s a good time. And it’s Mario.

Platform: PS3, Xbox 360, Wii
Price: R400 – R600
Verdict: The best official FIFA title to date.

I’m  not big on sports games, but a good football title is a must for any gamer’s collection and 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa by EA is the one to own right now. The world cup is in South Africa for the first time and this game introduces some firsts too.

One of the new features is the Virtual Pro that allows you to customise a virtual player and then insert him into any team you want. This opens up a sort of career mode for you and there is a set of achievements linked to your Virtual Pro.

The game is also rich with features. For example, you can map out your own set-pieces for games and then have these played out by your team. There is also a Manager Mode for team and player management.

The amount of game modes and options is overwhelming, but it’s easy to ignore these and get on with things.

As for graphics and animation this is the best looking FIFA game ever and player movement has reached a new degree of realism.

But as good as this game is it’s hard to find much to say about it without boringly listing features. It’s a soccer game, after all, even if it is one of the best I’ve seen. And it’s fun, especially in multiplayer mode.

If you’re looking for a game to satisfy the soccer fever that currently grips the globe then you won’t be disappointed with this title, which is also reasonably priced.

Making the announcement at the massive E3 gaming conference and expo currently underway in Los Angeles, Mirosoft said that the service is set to launch in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Greece,  Hungary, Poland, Russia and South Africa.

Said Marc Whitten, general manager of Xbox Live for Microsoft,“This expansion is another step toward our vision for Live – to deliver the entertainment you want, shared with the people you care about, wherever you are in the world.”

The service will be available in the USA summer, which means it should come online in South Africa within the next three months, and definitely by the end of September.

Microsoft said that Xbox Live in South Africa will focus first on delivering core gaming and community features including matchmaking, friends list, achievements, Gamerscore, a tailored Games Marketplace and other features, with content like movies and music being excluded at launch, but on the cards for addition later on.

Yvette van Rooyen, product and marketing manager for Xbox 360 in South Africa added that, “Xbox fans in South Africa will now be able play the best games in the industry with 23 million other Xbox Live users across the world who have made this their online gaming destination of choice. “

Given the long wait for Xbox Live it is likely that most South African Xbox users will have already created international accounts by lying about their location and will be loathe to switch to a South African account because they will lose all their stored information in the service. This will keep numbers down, I predict, while making it look like regions such as the USA and UK have unrealistically high numbers, as is the case with, for example, the Apple iPad which claims 2 million sales in the USA in under 60 days while I’m willing to bet that half those sales ended up elsewhere in the world (heck, I bought two).

I have been an Xbox Live Gold subscriber for some time and have compared the service to Sony Playstation Network (PSN). In my opinion there is no competition really, Microsoft’s service is streets ahead of Sony’s – but the latter gets all the credit for betting on South Africa first.

Microsoft had a slew of announcements at E3 2010, including unveiling its Project Natal accessory which will go to market as Microsoft Kinect and a new version of the Xbox 360 called the ‘Slim’ that will retail in the USA for $299.

Microsoft has unveiled a new Xbox 360 accessory called ‘Kinect’ that was previously known as Project Natal. Unveiled at the annual E3 gaming conference currently underway in Los Angeles, the Kinect enables controller-free gaming for the Microsoft console. Demos of the accessory included fighting, driving, dancing and other games all controlled by player’s actions without controllers. Checkout the video above for a taste of Kinect in action.

The device can also be used to control media playback on the Xbox 360 by just waving your fingers around in the air, which looks pretty sweet.

I personally like lying on the couch in a semi-vegitative state while gaming, but the Kinect is certainly the most impressive piece of console technology to hit the scene of late.

Kinect will be available worldwide from November 2010.

Red Dead Redemption is easily the best game I’ve played this year. It features cowboys, guns, horses and hot chicks – the ingredients of a good time.  The title was developed by Rockstar Games, makers of the Grand Theft Auto series and features the same sandbox-style, go-anywhere-do-anything gameplay of its stable partner.

The game is the nearest thing to perfect I’ve experienced on a console. Your character is former outlaw John Marston. You can ride horses and carriages, hunt animals, pick herbs, have gun battles, lasso and tame wild stallions, hogtie bandits and shoot people in the face.

The storyline is captivating and engrossing, but you can put it on hold at any time to roam the wild west, help or rob characters in-game and cause general mayhem.

The game environment features rich, beautiful graphics and no end of mini-quests, enemies and other encounters to keep you busy with. As with Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption is one of those titles you can kill hours with, just running around and causing kak. It also features a similar ‘wanted’ system whereby you can get on the wrong side of the law, forcing you to evade arrest, and a system for saving your game at specific safe areas where your character can ‘sleep’. In RDR, however, you can also set up camp while in the wilderness and use this to save your game or teleport to parts of the map you have already visited, saving time otherwise spent traveling.

The game did seem a bit buggy in parts and some of the quests feature clumsy combinations of actions that can be frustrating. These are few and far between, however.

The gameplay is rich with everything from being able to whistle for your horse to having choices between killing wanted bandits or tying them up, participating with the law or getting on the wrong side of it and dozens of mini-games including poker, horseshoe-toss and others. You can also hunt and skin animals to earn currency.

If you’re looking for a console game there is no other new title more worthy of your money. Red Dead Redemption offers a perfect balance of fun and challenge and won’t leave you short-changed as it features hours and hours of endless gameplay that is highly re-playable. Rockstar has delivered another winner and its hard to imagine any of its competitors coming up with anything better this year.

I have become a highly demanding gamer. New titles have five minutes in which to grab me. If the intro montage is too long or the gameplay anything less than spectacular, they’ve lost me. Gone are the days where I had hours to spend in front of a console after school or between classes. What I need now is short, potent doses of escapism, delivered without prelude, so I can get back to work.

Alan Wake is one of the few titles in the last year that gripped me from the get-go and kept me glued for longer than the gameplay tutorial. And that isn’t because it delivered on premise, but rather because it didn’t. What I was promised was an action thriller from the creators of Max Payne with a clever gameplay gimmick involving light. With bad memories of the flashlight in Doom 3, I was immediately skeptical of the light-bit. The title also seemed a bit lame, tying the lead character to the storyline a bit too literally.

What I got was an intriguing storyline with robust gameplay and gorgeous graphics. Elements that, on their own, would not hold up – but combined to keep me interested and wanting more after the first play.

Alan Wake is not “scary”. The zombie-like foes one faces in the game are about as frightening as a stumble in the dark. There is little suspense or believable danger – but the psychological element that underpins the story is compelling and this is part of why I like this game so much.

You are Alan Wake, a famous writer who is escaping to an island on a lake in the country with your partner Alice for a much needed break. But everything goes pear-shaped when your dream-states start merging with the real world. People and objects referred to as ‘The taken’ are after you. Some of them are characters from your books, others are people from the local community of Bright Falls.

It’s not the most ingenious of story-lines but in the world of video games is about as intelligent as they get. There are also absorbing little additions to the story – such as references to old-school scuba diving in the murky waters around the island – that keep the intrigue going.

Alan Wake also breaks the mold of immersive storytelling in games that all too often happens at the expense of gameplay – which was one of the reasons I didn’t like Heavy Rain much.

Then there’s the gameplay. This is a third-person shooter, with a twist. The Taken are pretty unstoppable in the dark, but shed some light on the matter (sorry, couldn’t resist) and it impedes them allowing you more time to take them down with a gun. You can use a torch to slow down or knock back your enemies and a flare gun can be used to spectacularly blow away groups of Taken.

Whereas this approach to gameplay could’ve turned out to be more annoying than anything else, in practice it just works. The only improvement I would’ve added is some form of targetting system, ala GTA.

Another effective gameplay element is that you can dodge axe-swings and the like which leads to a brief, slow-motion cinematic sequence that is highly satisfying.

This is undoubtedly one of the most intelligent video games I’ve played and a coup for Microsoft in that it is exclusive to the Xbox 360.  It remains to be seen how long it will manage to keep me intrigued, but for now Bright Falls will be a preferred destination for my brief spurts of escapism.

The UK press are smoking something serious when they publish kak about machete gangs roaming the streets of South Africa. But an epic fight is about to break out all over the country – albeit a virtual representation thereof.

Legends of Echo is a new location-based mobile game developed by the guys at The Grid (a Vodacom subsidiary). It combines massively multiplayer online gaming with location-based services and runs exclusively on mobile phones.

The game is set in the world of Echo, which you could think of as another dimension. The online world has the same basic geography as South Africa and is loaded with real locations all around the country. Your character in the game travels around Echo either by teleporting to locations or as you travel around with your mobile phone.

You can then fight, exchange items or hang out with other characters, build your own virtual home in Echo, create and sell items, go on quests and other stuff.

Says the official launch release, “Echo is a parallel virtual universe based on the South African map. Instead of cities and skyscrapers, however, players will find rolling green fields, rocky outcrops and valleys to explore and establish their base.”

“The Echo is entirely populated by players of the game, as well as their bases. Real-world place names are still used to navigate, e.g. a player can teleport from Belville in Cape Town to Randburg in Johannesburg to battle another player.”

“The objective of the game is to become a legend of the Echo (i.e. gain enough Legend Points to appear on the high score sheet). To do this, players need to battle other players, obtain advanced weapons and other items by exploration or trade with other players.”

“The game is unique in that it mirrors real-life locations in a multiplayer environment. Interaction is always location-bound i.e. a player is battling a player in close physical proximity to him/herself.”

More details are available on the Legends of Echo website.

Legends of Echo can be played from any cellular network – although you’ll want to be in SA while playing since the game is at it’s best when you combine it with actual location. To play SMS ‘ECHO’ to 33313 (50c/SMS) or visit http://www.legendsofecho.mobi/ on your phone.

In terms of devices, Legends of Echo is currently available to S60 Symbian phones – so no BlackBerry, iPhone or Android. Yet. But it will run on most Nokia, Sony Ericsson and other Java-enabled devices.

Vincent Maher and Nic Haralambous are the clever f**kers behind Legends of Echo and I’ve invited them to (tech)5 on 5FM this Thursday to come and tell us more – so listen out for it just after 14:00.

The DSi XL has two 4.2″ screens that are 93% bigger than the screen on the Nintendo DS Lite. It also has a larger pen-like stylus whereas most of the DS Lite left you feeling fat-fingered as it was clearly developed with 5-year-olds in mind.

Core says it will launch the DSi XL in two colours – wine red and dark brown, with a glossy sheen on top and matt finish on the underside for gripping onto tables and other surfaces.

The new console also comes pre-loaded with two Nintendo DSiWare software titles – Dr Kawashima’s: Little Bit of Brain Training: Arts Edition and Dictionary 6 in 1, as well as the Nintendo DSi Browser.

The DSi XL also has a camera that can be used for video chatting and putting your mug into games, amongst other things.

Core has not confirmed pricing yet.