Game Hound is a Windows Phone 8 app that delivers a healthy database of gaming titles to your Windows Phone. The app also lists upcoming gaming titles with Live Tile support to countdown the days until release.
Add gaming news feed and lockscreen support to show upcoming titles and Game Hound is a Windows Phone app with potential. However, while the database is vast, the information on each title is a little on the thin side which holds this app title back.
Your main pages for Game Hound include a Home Page with links to the database, upcoming games and a store locator along with a News Page that lists, as you would expect from the heading, the latest gaming news.
Game Hound Main Pages
The game database has an alphabetical listing of all games and a favorite’s page for any titles you tag as favorite. Along with scrolling around the rather extensive gaming catalog, you also have a search button at the bottom of the screen to hunt down your title by keyword.
Upcoming games are listed with Game Hound as those being released this month, next month and the month after next. The store locator feature should pull up gaming stores based on your location but for some reason I was only able to see Play N Trade stores located in the Northeastern United States (I’m in the Southern U.S.). I am not sure if the game locator is solely looking for Play N Trade stores but, if this feature is searching for video gaming stores in general there's a bug in the app.
Game Hound Alpha Listing and Game Title Pages
The details with individual gaming titles is a little on the thin side. The main details page lists the games release date with the ability to pin the title to your Start Screen or tag it as a favorite. If you pin an unreleased title to your Start Screen, the back side of the tile will countdown the days until release.
You also have a Search Online page that has a series of web links to search for online content concerning the game (Bing, Gamespot, Google, and Wikipedia). It would have been nice if more detailed information were available within the app for each title. The option to search the web for information is a nice touch but if that is the only way to get detailed information, it is just as easy to do a Bing Search to begin with and not worry with the app.
Game Hound’s strength likely comes with the app’s upcoming game release information. Game Hound is a nice source to find out what gaming titles are on the horizon. The game database is decent but lacks enough substance to be a focal point for the app and the store locator was useless for my area.
All in all, Game Hound is an app worth looking into if you need to keep tabs on gaming title releases but for more detailed information on a game, you may find the app falling short of the mark. Game Hound is a free app, available for Windows Phone 8 that you can pick up here in the Windows Phone Store.
