Home Sweet Home is an awesome time management game which lets you play decorator to your heart’s content.  The first game in the, as yet, two-part series focuses solely on living rooms.  Your boss gives you clues involving what the owners of the room want.  Your score is based on how close you get to the ideal.  Some people want Asian inspired design, others want a homey, country feel.  You get the picture.  After completing the room to your — and your client’s — satisfaction with a variety of furniture, tables, lamps, entertainment pieces, paints, wallpapers, and flooring options (not to mention paintings, wall hangings, window treatments, and other accessories), it’s time to get the room built with the help of three carpenters.

Home Sweet Home 2: Kitchens and Bathrooms is, clearly, dedicated to kitchens and bathrooms.  The second game in the series is much improved over the first, with several bugs and problems dealt with satisfactorily.  We fans of this game are hoping that, soon, we’ll be able to tackle bedrooms and maybe even dens next.

So … this is not going to be about standard gaming news.  I have recently gotten into PC games – not WoW or things like that, but the kinds of games you can find on places like BigFish and iWin.  Two titles stand out, each of them with two games in their series’.

First up is Jojo’s Fashion Show, parts 1 and 2.  This is known as a time management game.  I played the first one for hours upon hours.  Basically, you get to go through a succession of fashion shows, wherein you match clothing to the style of each model.  It begins with Bollywood and Sockhop styles; in later levels you get to deal with everything from Disco, Bridal, Goth, and even Flamenco Punk.

In part 2, all the antes are upped.  There are few repeat fashions, so you get to deal with a whole new world of styles and awesome clothing.  Furthermore, you get to dress male models as well, and participate in photo shoots.

Part 1 features Jojo and her daughter Ros.  Jojo is returning to the fashion world years after her assistant and protégé, the game’s villain, stole her designs.  With her daughter’s edgy sense of fashion and well timed help, naturally she rises to the top again.  Part 2 features new characters and a new storyline: this time Jojo and Ros are teamed up, forming Las Cruces.  But will Ros’s trendy style be able to mesh with Jojo’s classic elegance?

Stay tuned next week when we take a look at Home Sweet Home – and then, I promise, we’ll get back to some gory games!

Silent Hill: Homecoming is due out September 30, much to the delight of creeptastic fans everywhere.  This is the sixth installment of the popular horror based survival series, which gamers have been anticipating since it was announced in the summer of 2007.  Platform wise, the game is set to be available for Xbox, PS3, and there will be a PC version through Microsoft Windows.

Alex Shepherd, a war veteran, will be the game’s protagonist.  He comes home from a tour of duty overseas, only to discover that his dad and baby brother are MIA and his mom’s pretty much catatonic.  In searching for his brother, Alex rather predictably ends up in Silent Hill – because where else would he go?  However, Shepard’s Glen and the “Otherworld” versions will also be featured in the game play.  The requisite Girl Tuesday is a chick named Elle, a friend of Alex from the old school.  We’ll also get to see Pyramid Head.

The game’s combat will rely heavily on Alex’s experiences as a soldier, and the plot will be rich with psychological aspects.  Nemeses will include nurses, an androgynous enemy named Siam, a humanoid, pointy headed creature named Schism, and a boil covered, emaciated, poisonous gas spewing corpse named Smog – very reminiscent of Silent Hill 2′s lying figure.

Yahoo news’ gaming coverage has posted up its current list of the best five games of 2008, which reads as follows:

5. Professor Layton and the Curious Village
4. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
3. The World Ends With You
2. Lost Odyssey
1. Grand Theft Auto IV

There’s also a “worst of 2008″ consolation prize, given to Konami’s “Target: Terror”.

You can read the full article by clicking on this link.

Check out this list of the ten best Xbox 360 games out in the market right now. The compiler describes himself as someone who plays nothing but XBox 360 games. What do you think about his ranking?

10. Orange Box
9. Assassin’s Creed
8. Mass Effect
7. Bioshock
6. Guitar Hero
5. COD 4
4. GTA IV
3. Madden 08
2. Gears of War
1. Halo 3

Read the complete list here.

The website Seattle P.I. lists twelve reasons why Grand Theft Auto 4 is better on the Microsoft XBox than on the Sony Playstation 3:

1. Better Native Resolution : Xbox 360′s 720p beats the pants off the PS3′s “640p”.

2. The ANA chip : built-in, hardware-based scaling of images on the XBox vs. software-based scaling on the PS3.

3. More available RAM on the XBox.

4. Better CPU GPU architecture on the XBox.

5. Developers, Developers, Developers! The Xbox 360 game development software libraries trounce all others.

6. Faster optical disc access.

7. Exclusive downloaded content.

8. In-game messaging via Xbox Live.

9. In-game network data.

10. Achievements and Gamerscore.

11. Xbox 360 version’s network code does not crash the game.

12. Better controllers.

What do you think? You can read the whole thing here.