Video Essay: Videogames & Film Echoes
Diego Sulic's previous video essay on gaming/cinema can be found here.
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On the DL: August 2010
For many years, downloadable games have been viewed as nice little distractions when compared to their retail brethren. However, with these games increasing in sophistication year after year, more...
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Disney Guilty Party: Murder Can Be Fun!
The words "Wii party game" conjure up some pretty specific associations, few of them good. At this point in the Wii's lifecycle, "party game" has come to mean a mini-game collection full of boring...
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Space Between Us: Metroid: Other M
What a mysterious legacy the Metroid series of games has. It always seems to be suspended in limbo, above obscurity but below the ubiquity of other Nintendo franchises, a dangling thread unsure if it...
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Going Out with a Bang: Halo: Reach
Video games are well suited to pulse-pounding action, but heart-rending drama? Not so much, though that hasn't stopped them from trying. Halo: Reach, the latest entrant in Microsoft's cash-cow...
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If You're a Patient Strategist, Try Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City
Games like Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City can be polarizing, especially on a system that draws casual gamers like a Very Bradley sale draws soccer moms. On one hand, you've got a hand console...
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Let's Do the Time Warp Again: Mafia II
Avoiding speeding tickets is one of many things I don't want to do in a video game. Yet 2K Games apparently thought I'd feel differently when designing Mafia II, since going over the speed limit in the...
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Mind Games of a Tactical Kind: R.U.S.E.
Over the past couple of years, an interesting trend has taken over the real-time strategy genre. As more RTS games have come out, the genre has gotten, well, faster. What was once a genre that relied...
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Samurai Warriors 3: Bringing Slight and Dishonor to Action Games
Remember those side-scrolling, beat-'em-up arcade classics? The ones we'd play at places like Chuck E. Cheese's or laser tag joints, and they usually featured X-Men or Ninja Turtles? We can all agree...
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Shunning the Gothic: Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
The Castlevania franchise has been ferried across almost every platform imaginable during the last three decades, ceaselessly shedding its skin to suit whatever happens to be voguish in the...
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Hydrophobia Has a B-Movie Plan
Hydrophobia is the gaming equivalent of a good B movie: solid, unpretentious, and reasonably satisfying. It's not out to compete with the eight-figure budgets of the blockbuster gaming world, it's just...
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On the DL: September 2010 – Dead Rising 2: Case Zero, Shibuya, and TerRover
As the fall and winter months barrel down upon us, so does the cavalcade of retail video game releases. Traditionally speaking, this is a time for many video game fans to dive into the plentiful...
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A Solid Quarter-Eater: Explosionade
For anyone who grew up with video games, playing the games of Nathan Fouts is like rubbing your face in a Proustian madeleine scented with Chuck E. Cheese's pizza. You can practically feel the zits...
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Bronze at Best: Medal of Honor
Most reality-based first-person shooters use their authentic geopolitical locations, enemies, weaponry, and tactical strategies as mere window-dressing; regardless of what these environments or...
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Attention Inventive Megalomaniacs: Super Scribblenauts Beckons
The original Scribblenauts, released last year for the DS, promised: "Write anything. Solve everything." It's a mantra that's continued in this year's follow-up, Super Scribblenauts, a more polished...
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FIFA Soccer 11 vs. Pro Evolution Soccer 2011
Labour or Conservative? Pepsi or Coke? Blur or Oasis? These are three big questions that have plagued British consciousness in recent years, but even these topics fail to divide public opinion as much...
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Captain Smiley's Twisted Thrills: Comic Jumper
Captain Smiley wants a lot of things. He wants his own comic. He wants Origami Kid to get out of his pants. He wants his own chest to stop mocking him. But most of all, he wants you, dear reader, to...
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A Game of Chicken in Uncanny Valley: H.A.W.X. 2
With either a terrorist plot of assassinating the president or the threat of global nuclear war being a daily occurrence, the Tom Clancy universe is ripe with military conflict. For that reason, I've...
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Six Steps Backward in a New Direction: Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock
Back in 2005, peripheral developers Red Octane and software developers Harmonix came out with a neat little game called Guitar Hero for the Playstation 2. It would surpass everyone's expectations by...
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Creepy Posturing Galore: Saw II: Flesh & Blood
Jigsaw wants to play yet another game, but after the uninspired puzzles, monotonous environments and antiquated combat mechanics of last year's Saw: The Videogame, you shouldn't feel obliged to take...
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Bust a Move with Just Dance 2, Just Check Self-Respect at the Door
On the heels of the Dancing with the Stars craze, as well as the continued trend of workout games like Wii Fit, it should be expected that a dancing game like last year's Just Dance would spawn a...
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A Decent Primer for Greenhorn Artists: Art Academy
Starving artists—and satiated artists, for that matter—usually shell out what little money they may have on expensive supplies. Fortunately, Nintendo's styled a portable, virtual art studio that...
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E3 2011 Press Conferences: The Biggest Loser
Widely regarded as the most important trade show for the video-game industry, the Electronic Entertainment Expo brings developers and media every year to the Los Angeles Convention Center, giving...
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Happy Birthday Sonic the Hedgehog
Though Sonic the Hedgehog celebrated his 20th birthday yesterday, the spiky-haired Sega mascot's appeal has always come down to his enduring teenage spirit: He tears through every environment (be it...
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To the Wander: Kentucky Route Zero – Act 1
"Pseudoscience is the marriage of whimsy and process." So speaks a drifter in Kentucky Route Zero who's stopped to tell your character, Conway, about the experimental adaptation of a Robert Frost poem...
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