Meet the Pestridges
The Pestridge family have been playing video games sporadically for a few years. Family Gamer TV first started working with them in August 2011 when their two children were five and eight years old. Back then they had a Wii console but rarely used it, but were keen to find games to play together and investigate other consoles and handheld systems.
Their latest gaming hobby is Skylanders Giants and collecting the different figures. It's interesting to see how they are budgeting Birthday and Christmas money to ensure a range of the collectable Skylanders characters. Check our All About Skylanders Giants guide for more information from the Pestridges and other families.
FGTV originally visited them back in August to introduce the family to the different ways you can control console games in the family -- Xbox Kinect, Wii MotionPlus and PlayStation Move. As well as consoles we discovered they used their iPad for games as well.
"It's just finding the time to set it up. We play a lot on the Carnival Wii game, really enjoy the whole sling it around controls. But I find myself spending time getting them to share the game and not getting a lot of play time."
Then in September we went back to see how they were getting on with their new Xbox 360 and Kinect controls. We talked about how well this fitted in with the wider family, grand parents as well as children. While it took them a while to get used to it, before long they were playing racing games like Forza and virtual pet games like Kinectimals without any trouble.
"I wanted my dad to have a go and show it off, he's not really into games. I set him up with an e-type and the Le Manns track. I put some big headphones on him in front of the screen and he was just gob smacked. There's also a racing line that guides you round the track and there's auto breaking too, dad thought it was great. Also my son (8) could play it straight away."
Then in November we took some time to talk to them about portable systems. They compare the new 3DS handheld system to the DS they had been used to. To do this they tried out a couple of new games Super Mario 3D Land on the 3DS and Kirby Mass Attack on the DS. Vanessa told us what she made of it all.
"We have a family DS so the kids can't say I'm playing on my DS. They play on it a little bit and play on Mario games like Mario Kart and New Super Mario Land. [On the 3DS] you could move around a lot better with the dial thing [Circle pad] so it feels like you are really exploring it properly because it's in 3D. You can move the game and look around the game world, it's really fun. I still find it a bit hard, navigating around. And my daughter (5) finds that harder than my son (8) does."
As time has gone by the Pestridges have worked out which games work for them and which games don't. If you have children of a similar age perhaps some of the games that worked for them would also work for your family.
You can keep track with the Pestridges video game journey with their FGTV playlist.