Nancy Drew is fast becoming known as a video game character combating stereotypes. Yes, you read correctly, on top of being an adolescent sleuth she\'s also a kick-in-the-teeth to top-heavy, silver-haired bombshells who are so prevalent in gaming nowadays. In \"Danger by Design,\" Nancy takes on the fashion and food industries in classic adventure game point-and-click fare. Our girl game guru Lauri is here to tell us why Nancy Drew: Danger by Design is great for young girl gamers and also gets a parental--as well as political--seal of approval.

[color=\"navy\"].[/color]

Turtle Beach brings their Xbox-targeted headphones to a whole new level of quality with the Ear Force X2 Wireless Xbox Headphones. The Ear Force X2 is a (mostly) wireless setup that works very nicely with your Xbox 360 console, providing high quality audio and voice chat in a audiophile quality package. And the X2 headphones deliver the goods for just under a hundred bucks, which makes them a natural choice. We can see why the MLG would license these as the \"official\" headphones of Major League Gaming.

What with all the VOIP and voice chat in PC games these days, a good headset with stereo speakers and a mic are very much appreciated. Altec Lansing has delivered a solid and inexpensive product with the AHS302i headset, but the comfort factor may be enough to convince many people to go with a more expensive product. Our man Tristan took on the headphones challenge, and now we have to speak a little louder to him. Get the full review right here.

In all the hype of the videogame industry, celebrity gamers and stereotypes often become the representative face of an enthusiast group comprised of some of the most interesting human beings on the planet. Regular gamers are a vast array of individuals: fans who have never been content to merely assimilate to industry wishes, makers who have hack and mod, and young scholars and fashionistas who have legitimized and accessorized games. Sometimes it\'s nice to pull back from the glitz and focus on the grassroots gamers who make up the real gaming community. In an effort to examine the role games play in the life of a single gamer, Aaron spent some time with Janny Stratichuk, one woman who loves her videogames.

It\'s only about a month until Serious Sam II appears on the scene, and the screens are looking sweet. Serious Sam II is the second in a series of wacky first person shooters made famous by its complete disregard for any sense of reality. As Sam Stone, you\'ll face hundreds of enemies per level, fire thousands of bullets, and battle everything from stereotypical gothic chicks to evil stockbrokers. Unlike many recent FPS titles, which are dark, gloomy, and slow paced, Serious Sam II promises to keep things light and happy... well... funny, at least.

There are stereotypes in the gaming industry. There's the concept of the nerdy guy that never goes outside, that never plays sports, that weighs too much, and has a pale, colorless complexion. But most of the time, these stereotypes are inaccurate. For starters, you could take the above example and, at least nearly every other time, read it girl? where the guy? is now. And the rest of it? That's just right out. Battling stereotypes is one of the obstacles our industry has to overcome. Are columns like GameSpy's new GirlSpy a way to do that? Aaron doesn't think so. Do you agree with him? Be sure to read and find out.

My wife hates it whenever I make a significant electronics purchase; she doesn't mind the money spent as much as the buyer's anxiety I always experience after plunking down a few hundred dollars for something I know will be obsolete within a few months. The DVD player, the stereo, the camcorder are all sources of great anxiety to me whenever I think about them. Should I have waited for them to go down in price? Could I have gotten a better deal if I had looked around a little more? Did I get the right brand? Because of this tendency to second guess myself, I try to avoid making major purchases of things new to the market. I waited a year to see if DVD would really take hold, and it did. I had intended on breaking the waiting restriction with the Playstation 2. I didn't think that there could be a surer bet. At the beginning of the summer I started putting pennies away in anticipation of October 26th. I would be the first one on my block to own it, and it would be glorious. There was no doubt. After all, Newsweek even ran a cover story on it. Sure, there were rumors about an X-Box and a Dolphin, but what were they in the face of Sony?

I\'ve wanted to write an editorial about female gamers for a long time now; I just didn\'t know what I wanted to say. I toyed with the idea of slamming the sexist way women are portrayed in games, mainly because I felt like complaining about how sick I am of seeing Lara Croft\'s square butt everywhere. But I realized that both sexes are hyper-idealized in video games. Metal Gear Solid wouldn\'t have had the same effect if Solid Snake was a screechy-voiced, pimply-faced, fat guy (well maybe that would be kind of fun). We live in an age of equal opportunity sexism. Women have anorexic Vogue models to look up to and men have their muscle-bound fantasies fueled by Men\'s Health and GQ. I decided that it\'s not the games or the gamers that are the problem, but the damned video game advertisers along with a strong dose of our cultural stereotypes.