Best way to use Post Types/Taxonomies for games directory?

Hi,

I’m not too WordPress savvy, but I can usually read through the codex and documentation and piece together what I need. What I’m wondering is how some of you more experienced WordPress vets might recommend I go about the following in the cleanest, most efficient manner.

I currently run a video game news blog. I read about custom post types and taxonomies in the current version of WordPress and decided it was time to update our theme (I wrote our current theme from scratch during the WP 2.8 days). I would like to create a directory of video games, where I can have a “page” (not necessarily a literal WP Page) for each game showing its title, box art, rating, publisher, review scores, etc., as well as maybe the 5 latest news posts related to that game, or forum posts related to that game (don’t worry about the forum, I’ll handle that later myself).

At the same time, I want news posts to have a small box with the game’s info either in the side bar, or perhaps just below the header and above the content… SOMEwhere. So maybe they announce Final Fantasy IX for PSN in North America. I assume I would have a taxonomy for each game, and classifying this post with the FFIX label would automatically stick on the news story’s Single post a box with FFIX’s box art, title, rating, platform, etc.

The goal is to do all this with the theme’s functions.php and other theme files rather than cluttering up the plug-ins page, and like I said I assume I’d have to use Custom Post Types and Taxonomies. I’m still very new to both, so do you vets have any suggestions on how to go about this? Maybe a framework of what I should look into doing or how to do it? (Don’t worry about details or actual code… I’ll manage).

Thanks!