Daily Loaf

I’m exhausted. It’s the good kind of exhausted though, like finally lying down in your bed after weeks of traveling on vacation. Dragon Age: Origins, the new high-fantasy role-playing game from Bioware really is an epic journey to a far off land, and like anyone whose traveled abroad knows, there are plenty of rough spots and minor annoyances as you go, but looking back all you’ll think about are the grand vistas, the strange cities, and the demon spawn you got to kill. With well over forty hours of play time (at least), Dragon Age: Origins is no weekend getaway. It requires commitment, endurance, a desire to learn new language and the patience to put up with some unsavory meals. In return you’ll get memories that will last a lifetime (or at least until Mass Effect 2 or Final Fantasy XIII come out).

Set in a fantasy world of Bioware’s own creation, Dragon Age: Origins tells a familiar but satisfying tale of evil hordes invading the mortal world, threatening to destroy all creation with their gnashing teeth and overly-spikey armor. The developers take pride in making their generic fantasy setting not totally generic. The elves are either slaves, serfs, or nomads, not scions of high civilization. The dwarves obsesses over politics and scheming and have American accents. The arch-demons are really dragons. Read the rest of this entry »

Saying Borderlands is my favorite combination of first person shooter and role-playing game is like saying Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are my favorite mass market peanut butter and chocolate candy – sure there’s not a lot of competition, but damn they’re both really good.

Set on the a sci-fi western/post apocalyptic planet called Pandora, Borderlands puts you behind the gun sights of one of four different mercenaries trying to find an ancient alien Vault and the presumed techno-treasures sealed therein. Each character has a different specialty: Roland the soldier, Lilith the elementalist siren, Mordecai the hunter, and Brick the berserker. Each has unique skill trees giving them special powers that define a large part of how they play. For example, the siren can turn invisible for short periods of time, the hunter has a helpful and deadly hawk companion, the soldier can deploy auto-turrets, and the berserker can pound people to a pulp with his bare hands. All the characters and the world they inhabit are rendered in a striking, almost painterly style that gives Borderlands a look that helps it stand out among virtual worlds.

One thing all these characters have in common, the unifying force that ties all of Borderlands together into a giant, violent, explosive ball of fun is the panoply of guns. There are pistols, revolvers, SMGs, assault rifles, shotguns, rocket launchers, sniper rifles, grenades, and even alien weaponry. Within each category weapons vary by damage, elemental effects, clip size, rate of fire, accuracy, and other special features. Although the some characters specialize in some weapons, all of them are useful and most characters routinely run around with at least one or two of each type. Enemies and monsters drop guns when you kill them, boxes scattered around the landscape hold guns, vending machines sell guns, piles of trash have guns in them. The game advertises “Bazillions of Guns!” and they ain’t lying. The constant quest for new weapons, something just a little better or a lot different or both drives you to keep playing, to keep shooting, to keep exploring It’s every bit as addictive as it’s meant to be. Read the rest of this entry »

When approaching any piece of media, it’s vital to engage the work on its own terms. What are the creators trying to accomplish? Do they have a specific audience in mind or message they’re trying to convey? How did they use the resources at their disposal?

So it would be unfair to judge the second Brady Bunch porn parody, Not The Brady’s XXX Marcia, Marcia, Marcia, on the quality of the acting, writing, or cinematography. It makes no claims to excellence or even competence in any of these areas (and a good thing, too). It’s a porn movie that parodies an already ridiculous, previously parodied TV show, The Brady Bunch. Its goals are to turn you on with hot, XXX sex and to make you laugh. Sadly, it doesn’t do a very good job at either. Read the rest of this entry »

Is Nathan Drake the best video game character of this console generation? I think he must be. Part Lara Croft and part Han Solo, the star of the Uncharted series for Playstion 3 brims over with goofy, roguish charm and is just the right amount of both badass and smarty-pants. Voice-acted to perfection by Nolan North (who you might remember from every other game in the world), Drake never grows tiresome, holding players’ interests from opening cut-scene to the make-you-want-to-smile/cry final lines of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Add in the equally alluring and well-acted characters of Elena, Chloe, and Sully combined with action and graphics worthy of a mega-budget movie, and you get one of the best games of the year.

Uncharted 2 is most definitely going for that blockbuster movie experience. In an age where open worlds and non-linear stories get all the glory, it seems almost quaint that Uncharted 2’s game play and story unfold along a very strict course. It has a complex story about Marco Polo’s lost fleet in Borneo and an ancient treasure hidden in the Himalayas to tell, and there’s no time for open world dilly dallying with side quests. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve got mixed feelings writing this review, and not just because it means I have to figure out how to use umlauts. No, those mixed feelings are more primal, more basic than that – they are the painful discomfort associated with having something not live up to your expectations. And my expectations for Brütal Legend were as high as they get. Lead designer Tim Schafer made Psychonauts, my favorite game of the last console generation.

He’s been a consistently innovative, funny, and entertaining game developer with a unique sense of style. He always pushes the limits, always tries to give us something we haven’t seen before, and he does all those things with this game too. I firmly believe that reviewers should do everything they can to ignore their own expectations. Each game deserves to be taken on its own terms, judged according to what’s actually there, not what I wanted to be there. Judged on its own, Brütal Legend has all those Schafer hallmarks: an evocative, unique setting, a smart-yet-ridiculous sense of humor, and well-written, engaging characters. It’s also only kinda fun. Read the rest of this entry »

Full disclosure: At the time, when it was still just some book and not THE DA VINCI CODE, I recommended that mega-selling novel to several people. I read it front to back one rainy Sunday afternoon, and had a fine time. For me it was a pulp thriller, a breakneck-paced, over-the-top tale that layered on the Templars, secret societies and hidden codes that are classic components of any good action tale. It was a novel in the grand tradition of Doc Savage and The Shadow – flatly written, out of control, race car pace and set in a larger-than-life world.

The fact that people began to take the historical plot devices from this novel seriously came as quite a surprise. And so, like so many others, The Da Vinci Code phenomenon turned the whole thing sour for me.

Now here comes the much-anticipated sequel, Dan Brown’s first new novel in years: The Lost Symbol. I went into it striving to reacquire those pre-phenomenon eyes, to judge the novel just on its own terms. And you know what? It’s a pretty terrible book judged on its own. Also, judged by the standard of the surrounding phenomenon, it’s still a pretty terrible book. Read the rest of this entry »

Video games allow us to simulate amazing feats and experience what it’s like to possess superhuman abilities, or to put it another way – to act like superheroes. Even games like Halo or Call of Duty owe as much to the super-heroic experience as they do to modern warfare. In real life, you can’t just shrug off a burst a machine gun fire by hiding behind a rock for five seconds. That’s a bona fide, Wolverine-style super power. It’s off then that there have been so many bad superhero games over the years. But we’re in a new golden age of such games, and if you read my Batman: Arkham Asylum review then you know it’s possible to make a superhero game that perfectly captures that comic book experience. Batman focused all its efforts on simulating one particular hero. The new Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 takes the opposite approach, offering a whole comic book universe of heroes to choose from in an attempt to recreate the world of Marvel Comics in one giant epic tale.

Ultimate Alliance’s story is drawn straight from two recent cross-over events in Marvel Comics – the Secret War and The Civil War. The Civil War in particular strove to achieve some really interesting political and social relevance with the legal and moral issues facing superheroes mirroring real world debates about freedom vs. security in the age of terror. With Marvel’s heroes split into two camps – Pro-Government led by Iron-Man and Pro-Freedom led by Captain America – the high drama of brother against brother that only comes from a civil war played out in dark, dramatic fashion across the pages of dozens of different comic book titles. This game offers a pretty close (but not by any means exact) version of that story, leaving it to the players as to which side they will support. And of course since it’s a video game, you can always go back and play it again from the other side. Read the rest of this entry »

I can’t think of another game that combines the utterly familiar with the intricately unique as well as The Beatles: Rock Band. The Fab Four’s music transcends fame, and everyone knows it (whether from growing up with it, discovering it as classic rock in their youth or hearing it in commercials). The game play is straight forward, Rock Band/Guitar Hero rhythm game stuff, modified only enough to make it more accessible and fun for new players. The resulting product may never be repeated. With it’s dedication to historical detail, its treasure trove of behind the scenes pictures and rare footage and its stunning visuals, this game celebrates The Beatles with every pixel. What other band’s story offers such a journey? What other band’s music has had such impact? What other band deserves such a great game?

The game’s Story Mode offers a glossy, cartoonish, and utterly engaging overview of The Beatles’ storied career. Divided into chronological stages representing different performance venues and recording sessions, The Beatles: Rock Band gives players all the highlights and none of the controversy. As musical history unfolds on screen in rhythm to your button presses and strum-bar clacks, it’s hard to imagine someone not coming away impressed or even moved by the Beatles’ evolution as both pop culture icons and rock and roll musicians. With each stage, the Beatle avatars change, from suit-wearing teen idol youngsters to bearded 60’s icons. The early sections feature the band in famous performance venues like the dingy Cavern where they got their start or Shea Stadium where they played for tens of thousands. Afterwards they move into a series of Abbey Road studio sessions, and players are treated to trippy, dream-like interpretations of songs like Yellow Submarine and I Am the Walrus. Of course it all comes to an end on the roof of Apple Corps. (A video preview of the game after the jump.) Read the rest of this entry »

I admit to that I have a mild obsession with celebrity nudity. I also have a major aversion to paying for it. So part of my daily Web routine involves regular visit to some free celeb nude sites like Egotastic, Nudography, and Babes of Babylon. The pics are free, at least when they first go up, and I collect them like found coins, stuffing them into a folder on my computer in hopes they’ll some day pay future dividends (if you know what I mean). But what about the stuff I miss? What about the stuff I’ve lost? Just the other day I couldn’t find my pic of NCIS supporting actress and resident goth chic, Pauley Perrette. I knew she’d posed topless and the pic was on some site somewhere, but Google totally let me down. So I did something I’ve never, ever done before: I searched using Bing! Read the rest of this entry »

The best game I’ve played all year.

Go buy it now.

There have been a lot of super hero games (I myself helped make one), and there have been even more games based on licensed properties. Most of them have been bad, disappointing, or insulting in some combination. Batman Arkham Asylum is great, totally satisfying, and utterly true to the source material. It is, quite simple, the best super hero game ever made.

No, it’s not perfect. There are a few, rare false notes and some brief, needlessly frustrating sequences but fade into smoke in the face of a game that really does make you feel like you’re playing Batman. Others have called it a Batman Sim or even a Batman RPG, and they aren’t wrong – Arkham Asylum not only offers some leveling-up mechanics and upgrades – but what we really mean when we say that is that the game captures the essence of Batman. He’s sneaky. He’s a detective. He’s bad ass in a fight. He’s fearless. As you play him you become all those things as well, and the only thing that sucks is that it has to end.

Arkahm Asylum is the mental institution where Gotham City houses its criminally insane super criminals. Its rusty, dark cells and brooding Gothic architecture set the scene for a classic confrontation between Batman and his arch-nemesis, The Joker. The game opens with Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t have any reason to think 99% of the developers who programmed, designed or otherwise helped create the new X-Box Live Arcade game Shadow Complex hate gay people. I’m assuming they don’t. But I do know that one man associated closely with the game is a talented writer and outspoken anti-gay advocate named Orson Scott Card, a man whose books I used to love and whose fevered anti-gay rhetoric I utterly despise. Shadow Complex is set within a fictional near-future America that is the setting for Card’s novel Empire. That novel is also published in conjunction with Chair, the developers of the game. Chair previously worked with Card on the game Advent Rising and their Web site state plans for future projects based on his work. Card himself has done interviews promoting Shadow Complex. I lay all this out in advance because I want to make clear that Card is firmly connected to this game, albeit at an inspirational rather than hands-on level (as far as I can tell).

The game itself is really a ton of fun. Read the rest of this entry »

‘Tis the season to be killing Nazis in alternate history epics, or at least in my life it is. First there was the history-bending, tense-monologue laden glory of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. Now there’s Wolfenstein, one of the oldest game franchises around and the mirror image of Tarantino’s talky WWII pic.

Here we have action, action, action, as befits the latest iteration of the first 3-D first-person shooter. There’s a similar story too – a tale of a Jewish American soldier fighting behind Nazi lines, only instead of fancy-pants allegories about the power of film, Wolfenstein offers occult powers, particle cannons, and monsters from other dimensions. That’s the beauty of our modern media marketplace – Nazi-killing options are more diverse than ever.

The new version of Wolfenstein has flown a little under the radar. Read the rest of this entry »

Back before it was the Wii, Nintendo had code-named its new console The Revolution, and when the best selling console of this generation did come out a few years back, its motion controlled game play was indeed revolutionary. Like so many revolutions, it didn’t quite live up to its original promise.

Take the original Wii Sports, which came bundled with the system and offered a whole new experience – tennis, golf, baseball, bowling, and boxing that all felt somewhat, or even a lot like the real thing. You couldn’t help but smile a big, delighted grin the first time you tried it. But then came almost everything else for the damn Wii. Shovels full of middling to poor games, just a few bright gems (mostly from Nintendo) trying to shine from the towering dung heap of third-party cash-ins and motion-gimmick nonsense. My Wii, like that of many gamers, sat lonely and empty and un-played.

But those big, goofy grins are back baby! Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve lived most of my life playing video games — 37 years that span the vast majority of video game history. We had a dedicated Pong console in my house growing up, and an Atari 2600 after that, and home computers after that. So as and old hand, it’s interesting to see everything old turn new again and nostalgia for the good old days become the new new thing. Thus we get the spiffy new, re-mastered version of the 1990 classic adventure game from Lucas Arts: The Secret of Monkey Island. It spawned many a sequel and many more fond memories amongst gamers, and its humor remains a touchstone moment in many gamers’ lives. It’s one of the classics. And until two weeks ago, I’d never played one second of it.

The less said about what happened with King’s Quest and why I stopped playing point-and-click adventure games when I was in middle school the better. Suffice it to say, I missed the whole Lucas Arts adventure game phenomenon of the early ’90s. But everyone says that Secret of Monkey Island is one of the best that’s ever been, and so, always eager for something new to play (even when it’s old), I downloaded the game to see what all the fuss is about. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a long time since I had a game experience more mixed than Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood. There’s lots to like, some things to hate, a fair amount that’s on the border, and even something I hated and then came to like. Playing this game was like riding an emotional roller coaster as I went from mildly interested to mildly annoyed and back again. Okay, maybe not really a roller coaster so much as a see-saw in the kiddie playground, but you get my point. There are some thrills to be had, but also some jarring landings.

Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood is the prequel to a game I never played, nor do you need to have played it. It’s a perfectly competent first-person shooter set in the Old West, full of two-fisted six-gun action and horse riding and even a lasso or two. You play alternately as Tom and Ray, defending your car repair business from angry public radio listeners who haven’t received their tote bags yet. Or rather, Thomas and Ray, two nasty Confederate soldiers who abandon their posts to try and save their farm from the evil Sherman as he marches through Georgia. That doesn’t work out too well, and the brothers end up fleeing to the wilds of the West, their preacher little brother William in tow. There they hear tell of lost Aztec gold, both fall in love with the same Mexican seductress, fight various tribes of Indians, and have their pasts come back to haunt them. There’s a lot of shooting. Read the rest of this entry »

I need your help amassing 43 million kills as quickly as possible. And it’s not just me – people around the world want you to join the battlefields of Wake Island, Guadal Canal and Iwo Jima right now. And if you can die or kill a few thousand times, that’d be awesome.

Last week, Battlefield 1943 went live on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Each platform is now racing to be the first to 43 million in-game kills, and I’m right there on the front lines of the X-Box 360 doing my part. And what happens when we reach the blood-soaked final goal? A new map, Coral Sea, becomes available for all of us, and the killing can continue on a brand new field of battle! Normally the release of a new map for an online shooter wouldn’t get me this fired up, but the fact of the matter is, Battlefield 1943 is addictive, high energy fun, and right now I can’t get enough of it.

The game is an online first person shooter set during World War II. Players are randomly assigned to either the Japanese or U.S. Marine side of one of three different battles. Before you join the fight, you choose from one of three weapons kits: Read the rest of this entry »

Remember 1989? Remember the disappointment? How exciting the mere prospect was, the idea that we’d get more of that magical, hilarious madness. Another two hours worth of memorable quotes – what would replace “When someone asks you if you’re a God, you say yes!” or “Listen; Do you smell something?”

But then we got Ghostbusters 2 in all it’s lifeless, tepid, walking Statue of Liberty forgettableness. Who would want another sequel after that mess? And how could we get it two decades after the fact? Of course you’ve guessed the answer – Ghostbusters: The Video Game, which really is the sequel I’ve been waiting for.

All the original busters are back, Murray, Aykroyd, Ramis, and Hudson playing digital, young versions of their now aged and expanded selves. Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis are even credited as writers of the game, and I can believe it. The story has the same sensibilities as the original movie, the same over the top mythology and paranormal gobbledygook, and I found it a lot more interesting and entertaining than the Ghostbusters 2 plot. Of course it’s spread out over 7 hours of game play, but that works fine. It’s the transition to digital actors and recorded voice overs that’s less satisfying.

More review and video after the jump: Read the rest of this entry »

It’s hard to feel guilty when people don’t even bother to move out of the way of your tank when it’s about to run them over. That’s good, because Prototype is a game that clearly doesn’t want you to be thinking too much about innocent bystanders, especially if doing so would get in the way of tearing the hell out of anything and everything around you. Still, even I felt a twinge of discomfort while going for the achievement points for running over 500 people with a single tank. In retrospect, this actually works within the convoluted framework of Prototype’s story, but at the time it was just one more way of causing mayhem. Prototype’s all about the mayhem.

You play as Alex, a scientist who always wears a hoodie for some unexplained reason, and who has been infected by a virus that’s quickly turning him into a monster/superhero. And of course you have amnesia. So you’ve got to find out who did this to you while Manhattan dissolves into a chaos of nasty soldiers and even nastier infected who’re constantly attacking each other and you. You get to tear your way through both sides in a blood filled, high speed romp up and down the length of the city as you unlock the secrets of your recent past and search for who’s responsible. If the story sounds typical and uninspired, that’s because it is – amnesia, virus, shadowy government agency, trust no one, and did I mention amnesia? Blah, blah, blah. We’ve seen it all before. Protoype’s setting and story don’t break any new ground and are almost throwaway.

But it’s not the why’s and therefore’s that draw you into Prototype – it’s what you do. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m clearly not the target audience for this game. I’ve never seen the cartoon Totally Spies; I’m not a pre-teen girl, and nothing with a mini-game called “Let’s Talk about Clothes” was ever created with me in mind. But having said all of that, I feel I’m still qualified to judge whether or not a game is good based on its intrinsic merits. Is it well made, does it work well, is the fundamental game play fun or interesting – in short, does it achieve what it’s trying to accomplish?

Unless Totally Spies! Totally Party is trying to engender a hatred for video games among young women, then this game is a total failure.

The premise of the show Totally Spies seems like a solid kid-show premise: Three roommates who move into an apartment above a top secret spy agency and are thus recruited to become spies themselves. Their ensuing adventures involve fighting wacky villains, dressing up in different fun outfits, and using nifty spy gadgets like jet packs. There is a lot here to make a game out of, plenty of exciting elements where you could capture whatever it is about the show that it’s fans enjoy.

Or, instead, you could make it into a virtual board game with 35 of the most inane mini-games ever created for the Nintendo Wii (and there’s a lot of competition).

More review and video below the jump: Read the rest of this entry »

I have certain weak points – topics that just get me interested and excited without hearing more than a few words. Armed revolution against The Man is one of those. I’m a sucker for tales of bold freedom fighters living underground and facing incredible odds as they try to tear down the system. Red Faction Guerrilla not only delivers a great smash the state simulator, it also gives you a great smash EVERYTHING simulator. Indeed, on reflection, the game’s central plot of freeing Mars from the tyranny of Earth is just fine but not thrilling, but the fact that very single building is destructible ii exciting, chain-reaction inducing, Mars-shaking ways, is what makes this game a ton of fun.

You’re just a working guy, come to Mars to make your way as a miner, but when the bastard Earth Defense Forces kill your brother because he’s part of the revolutionary Red Faction, it’s time to take up your sledge hammer and fight the man. The game is an open-world, third-person actioner, with Mars divided up into six different districts. Each district offers core missions that you have to complete in order to liberate the zone, but it also has a host of side missions that lower the EDF’s control. There’s nice variety in these side missions – driving around manning a turret for an insane revolutionary, freeing captured prisoners, intercepting EDF convoys, participating in Red Faction raids, stealing cars, and of course blowing up buildings. Most people will not enjoy all of these equally, but Red Faction’s OK with that – you never have to do all the side missions, and if there’s a type you don’t enjoy you can easily ignore them completely. In fact, you could ignore them all and just go around blowing up buildings and doing the core missions if you wanted to. I admire that level of freedom in a game like this.

More review and video below the jump: Read the rest of this entry »

Most of the time I like my fighting games fast, furious, and full of fireballs (like, say, Street Fighter 4). But when it comes to watching fights, I’ve lost some interest in the artfully choreographed wire work of kung fu flicks. These days I prefer my bloodsport to be less Bloodsport and more Mixed Martial Arts. I’ve been watching UFC fights since the first, dreadful, ridiculous pay per few events in the 90’s. The sport has come a long way for me since then, ruining my interest in boxing, wrestling, and even martial arts movies along the way. While a dull UFC fight can be as yawn inducing as Steven Seagal’s latest flick, a great, exciting, balls to the wall UFC is as exciting as exciting gets. In THQ’s new video game version of UFC, almost every fight is that exciting.

With its combination of punches, kicks, grappling, and joint locks, MMA is a complicated sport, and I was wary about how the game would be able to capture that kind of diversity, but UFC: Undisputed rises to the challenge, offering a complicated but intuitive game that matches the sport its emulating. Through combinations of button presses and analog stick movements, you can punch and kick with either leg at three different heights and with three different modifiers. When you’re in close your fighter throws knees and elbows. You can grapple the neck in a clinch or shoot for the legs for a take down. Once on the ground, button pressing and swings of the right analog stick make your fighter scramble for better position, rain down blows, or try and submit the opponent with a joint lock. All of this wears away at your fighter’s stamina, so it’s wise to take short breathers and pick your shots rather than just flail away.

So yeah, the game’s complicated. Or, if you prefer, it’s deep. (Video clip below the jump.)

Read the rest of this entry »

That’s two weeks in a row where I’ve spent a significant portion of my free time exploring a city that has recently suffered from a massive explosion. Last week it was Bionic Commando, and I was just the guy to traverse the urban wasteland because I had a bionic arm. This week, it’s inFamous, and I’m just the guy to explore the city because I’m the one who set off the bomb. Plus, it gave me super powers.

InFamous is a super-hero game, or a super-villain  game, depending on your personal preference. You play as Cole, a bike messenger who sets off a bomb that screws up Empire City and gives you the power to control electricity. Why did you set off the bomb? You have no idea, but given the cadres of villains, FBI agents and shadowy figures who immediately start pulling your strings, maybe you were set up. The only way to find out for sure is to explore Empire City open world, Grand Theft Auto-style, do a bunch of missions and shoot lightning at anything that gets in your way. And when you’ve done all that then yes, inFamous delivers a satisfying conclusion to a solid story full of twists and turns, but really it’s all about the lightning powers that get you from here to there.

Well, lightning and parkour. Because Cole can scale buildings like a monkey, leap with ease from ledge to wire to light post, and generally navigate the city via sidewalk or rooftop with equal ease.

Read on for more info and video below the jump:

Read the rest of this entry »

A little nostalgia can buy you a lot of leeway. The new version of Capcom’s Bionic Commando is the perfect example – it’s a sequel to a much beloved classic from 1988. But things have changed since that glorious 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System days, and characters with names like “Rad Spencer” and “Super Joe” don’t quite cut it anymore. Nor does the name “Bionic Commando,” for that matter. But this sequel is a completer update – from the 8-bit side scroller to full-on 3D, open-world (kinda) third-person shooter. It’s an update in every way, but it keeps that most important element of the original: You play a guy with a bionic arm that can shoot out Inspector Gadget style and let you swing from things like Spider-Man. As long as it gets that right, the game is more than halfway there.

Read the rest of the review, with video, after the jump:

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I normally don’t like trashing games because of gameplay length. I think if a game is fun and well-made and sucks you in, it almost doesn’t matter how long it takes to play it through. I love my scores of hours spent on Fallout 3, but I also love the condensed fun of a well-constructed shooter or action game like Call of Duty (not a perfect analogy, as Call of Duty has all that great multi-player action, but I would have bought Call of Duty 4 just for that single player campaign; it was that good).  So I’m no short game hater. But Terminator Salvation? Come the hell on! This isn’t a game, that is 1/3rd of a game. That is DLC. This is a demo.

This isn’t a game … This is a demo.

The game is a prequel to the new movie, which still makes it a sequel to the older movies and the TV show. You play as a young adult John Conner, who hasn’t yet taken on leadership in the Resistance against Skynet. I kind of thought the whole point was that John Conner would start the Resistance, but whatever, fine. In this game you’re just one of the guys, out in the wilds of post Judgement Day Los Angeles, blowing up robots. When you get a distress call from some fellow Resistance fighters, your commanding officer won’t risk the lives of the many to save a stranded and doomed few. But you’re John Conner damnit, and you’ll leave no human life behind to those machines. The rest of the game is about traversing Terminator-controlled L.A. and saving those stranded but apparently well-ensconced soldiers from certain mechanized doom.

(Gameplay video after the jump)

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It’s the classic philosophical puzzler that ultimately led to the death of Socrates: who would win in a fight between plants and zombies? And just like plants beat Socrates, if you play your seeds right, so too will they defeat the oncoming zombie hordes. It won’t be easy. It will take a lot of mouse clicks. Some plants won’t survive the war. But in the end, Plants vs. Zombies is totally worth it.

There’s no doubt that it’s a name meant to provoke laughter and interest. Zombies are all over the place these days (at least in video games), and everyone from Call of Duty: World at War to lowly little desktop casual games like this one are trying to jump on the hot, new moldering corpse bandwagon. Plant vs. Zombies belongs in that loose category of Tower Defense games – you control some base of some sort (in this case, your house) and you need to array and organize your defenses (in this case plants) against the oncoming baddies (yep, zombies). Each level brings new zombies, new challenges, and of course, new plants.

Read the rest of this entry »

You should never grocery shop when you’re hungry or review a game when you’ve just quit after dying at the same spot twenty times in a row.

I just ate a sandwich, but I’m not going shopping. I also just boiled away most of my affection for Velvet Assassin in a frustration-infused prolonged session of being shot again and again and again by Nazis while wearing a nightie. And for the first time in the game, there wasn’t any morphine to take the edge off.

OK, let’s back up. Velvet Assassin is a third-person stealth-based action game. Set during World War II, the game sets you up as a sexy British assassin named Violette who infiltrates German-occupied territory to kill Nazi jerks and blow people up. It’s actually based on a real British secret operative, Violette Szabo, which is pretty cool.

This is a hard-core stealth game, which means if you get spotted by the fascists, they’re probably going to kill you within seconds. Luckily for you, the world of Velvet Assassin is filled with shadows and dark corners, giving you plenty of places to creep along and get right up behind someone for that silent, bloody close-in dagger work. Drag the body into the shadows before the others notice, and you can keep your cover. You get guns too — mostly a silenced pistol, but later shotguns, sniper rifles, and a sub-machine gun at the end. These of course attract a lot of attention, and while it’s easy to gun down enemies, it’s easy for them to return the favor, so it’s vital to make good use of cover.

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Here’s a sentence you don’t see very often: “The video game is better than the movie.”
Most of the time movie-based games are rush jobs, made to cash in on whatever success the movie might have at the box office. They have a low shelf-life and even lower expectations among gamers. Most of the time, they’re a safe bet to avoid. But what about when the movie’s really bad (like X-Men Origins: Wolverine)? Will the game be that much worse, or will it manage to overcome its nasty origins and work as a good game all on its own?
In this case, it’s absolutely clear that it’s the movie pulling the game down, and not the other way around. I can say with some confidence that the vast majority of the problems I had with X-Men Origins: Wolverine (the game) are directly related to story and plot elements they were saddled with from the film. Whenever the game developers had freedom or pushed boundaries, the game excelled.

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There’s a place for experiences like the one Ninja Blade has to offer. It’s the kind of thing you can really only do with a video game these days: surf a missile into a zombie helicopter, fight a giant lightning bolt spitting crab in a subway tunnel, run down the side of a skyscraper while chopping giant bats in half with a sward that’s as big as you are. Hit the X Button not to die. Ninja Blade gives you all that, and a lot more that’s pretty similar. But is it worth the price of entry? Maybe not, but it’s definitely worth watching the video trailer below. Read the rest of this entry »

I think everyone can agree that the best thing about being a mob boss is that you get to boss people around. It’s right there in the title, “mob boss.” Because you’re feared and/or respected, tough guys do what you say, even if that means blowing up some building, shaking down some store owner, or taking out some troublesome made man from a rival family. It’s good to be boss. Normally no fan of movie to game adaptations, I never looked at the first Godfather game from a couple years back. When this new one came around last week though, and I heard it was kind of like Sims Mafia Don, I thought that sounded like something for me. I like telling people what to do. I love the Godfather films. Perfect!

OK, so it’s not perfect, not by a long shot, but it is a solid, fun game. Read the rest of this entry »

April has been the month of Vin Diesel in America. Who would have thought such a thing would ever come to pass in our lifetimes, but here it is. Many have apparently gone out an seen Fast And Furious, an aggressively mediocre, overly-digitized, woodenly-acted action movie that somehow made $120 million in just two weeks. I’m personally responsible for $5 of that, I’m sorry to say, but I couldn’t help myself. Vin Diesel’s gravely monotone had hypnotized me after hours of playing that other Vin Diesel release of April, Wheelman.

Wheelman is sort of Grand Theft Auto Lite. You’re in a big city (Barcelona in this case), and you can pretty much steal any car you see, drive around in it, and run things over while shooting people. There’s a story going on, and it’s pretty inscrutable, derivative and uninteresting. You’re Milo, a wheelman who’s looking for work driving for various Barcelona criminal types, all part of your bigger effort to infiltrate them and, well, you know, do something. I don’t know what. The story’s a mess, and everyone has thick accents that make them hard to understand. Of course even with subtitles it’s not easy to figure out what’s going on. It also clearly doesn’t matter.

Bad dudes give you missions to do bad things. You get guns, and sometimes you run around shooting people and most of the time you drive around hitting and occasionally shooting people. Read the rest of this entry »

Much like opera, professional wrestling works for me in an abstract and nostalgic way more than up close and in person. I used to go to opera a lot actually. I used to watch wrestling every week, too. Now I mostly play video games it seems. And while I like an occasional aria, I love the fact that opera is out there and appreciate its rich cultural heritage. I don’t think I would actually like watching wrestling any more – Ultimate Fighting has stolen it’s place in my heart – and wrestling games have gotten more and more complex. It’s great in theory that men take steroids and shave their chests and slam each other around for a few hours a week, but I can’t be bothered to take it in. All of which explains why WWE Legends of Wrestlemania is the perfect wrestling game for me.

Legends is all about the nostalgia. It allows you to re-live key, dramatic match-ups from the first decade and a half of Wresltmanias, spanning the golden age of 80s and 90s wrestling. Hulk Hogan, Andre The Giant, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Ric Flair, and scores of others – even Dusty Rhodes, the American Dream! – all make appearances in the game.

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How do you make a video game based on a movie that every critic said was just like a video game? I’d assumed they’d just take the lazy, easy cash-in route and take the movie and render it in pixels and then add 10 more hours of Angelina Jolie’s ass. Because somewhere there’s a movie exec saying, “Come on, who wouldn’t pay $60 for 10 hours and two seconds of that?”

Hopefully no one, and luckily cooler heads at developers Grin prevailed. Although it’s a little sad that the star of such favorite films of mine (really) as Hackers and Cyborg 2’s butt is nowhere to be seen in Wanted: Weapons of Fate. They don’t even have an Angelina Jolie impersonator’s butt! They do have someone doing a really solid Morgan Freeman impersonation though, and some hard to understand French accents. Oh yeah, and a pretty decent game.

Wanted: Weapons of Fate is actually a sequel to the movie (which is loosely based on the comic book), a trend I like in licensed video games.

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First of all, let’s get the big question out of the way first: Is Resident Evil 5 a racist videogame? Not really. It’s just racially insensitive and culturally clumsy. More on that in a bit. The second big question: Is Resident Evil 5 a good game? Yes it is, depending on how you play it, except for the parts that suck.

Capcom had a daunting challenge to follow up the almost universally adored and acclaimed Resident Evil 4, a fun, cool, strange, challenging game that re-wrote a lot of the rules of the standard survival horror series and was almost the only reason to buy a Nintendo Gamecube. Resident Evil 5 tries to build on that success, and it definitely feels like a successor. It controls much the same way, has some enemies that carry over from the last game and has just as nonsensical a plot. It’s also shorter, more streamlined and maybe more racist (again, more on that in a bit).

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New release Madworld for the Nintendo Wii: It’s Sin City meets The Running Man meets Escape From New York. What more do you need to know? Well, you should probably know it’s actually just kind of mediocre and occasionally dull, more like The Spirit meets The 6th Day meets Escape From L.A.

Anyway, Madworld is a blood-soaked, profanity-laden, super stylish action game for everybody’s favorite family-friendly game console.

Before I got my hands on it, I hadn’t turned on my Wii in months — not since Wii Fit came out, and that exercise program only lasted a week or so. As many have lamented, no one’s really making much in the way of hard core or cool games for the Wii these days – it’s mostly just shovel ware for kids with the occasional gem from Nintendo. The cool games that do come out on Wii, like Rock Band, have better versions on the more powerful consoles, so why buy them? But developers are starting to expand their horizons, and Sega brings us this bloody romp that’ll have you flipping your wrists to cut dudes in half with a chain saw, ram sign posts through their skulls and slam them into spikes over and over again.

Madworld has mad style. It’s all black and white, comic-book-style art — very reminiscent of Sin City. This style serves double duty – adding real visual flair and interest to the game while at the same time hiding the Wii’s lesser graphical prowess. The only color is red (well, a little yellow too), and almost all of that red is blood. And there’s lots and lots of blood. Read the rest of this entry »

I really like the word stymie. I think I first came across it while playing an old tabletop role-playing game called TORG, where it was a game mechanic that happened to your characters, setting them back from beating the bad guys. Games, especially video games, are of course all about putting up challenges and having the players overcome them. But stymieing someone is more than just challenging them: it’s making things so difficult that they want — or are forced — to give up. Last week I played two games that just totally stymied me, not because the game play involved was challenging, but rather because the lack of fun forced me to quit playing them.

First off, there’s Tom Clancy’s HAWX, Read the rest of this entry »

I say this a lot: “Comedy is hard.” I don’t do comedy in my own writing. I throw in some funny here and there, sure, but usually to relieve the tension or because some amusing moment grows out of the larger narrative. But I can’t imagine writing a full on piece of comedy. It’s just too easy to screw up, because few things grate more than bad jokes. Weirdly enough then, the worst part of Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard (Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3)is not the comedy — not that the humor shines or even really succeeds very often– but it’s more consistently enjoyable than the actual game play, which is consistently dull, mixed with healthy doses of crappiness.

A little background: No, you’re not forgetting anything – there haven’t been any other Matt Hazard games. The conceit of this game is that Matt Hazard used to be a popular action game character from way back in the 8-bit days. The opening cinematic tells his story, voiced by Arrested Development star Will Arnett as Matt Hazard. He does his standard gravely tough guy voice, and it mostly works. The set-up made me chuckle. The load screens gave me a smile. Then it came time to play this ugly, third-person, cover based shooter and I was a lot less happy. It’s not horrible, but it’s not fun either. There’s some interesting variety as the game mixes and matches genres from Hazard’s prolific game past. So you might end up fighting cowboys alongside zombies alongside space marines. My favorite baddies are from a kids water pistol game Hazard was in called Soak-em. But there aren’t that many of them and the weapons they drop aren’t fun.

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Killzone 2 is an expertly made, AAA video game. It’s one of the best looking game I’ve played. The models and animations are fluid and life-like, the details gritty and immersive. This is just a flat out, no denying it, impressive visual experience.

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This is ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. And I love it. I’m not even going to try and defend myself, other than to say sometimes the craziest shit can be fun. 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand is ridiculous, crazy, and totally fun, and I’m not entirely sure why. It features a ridiculous, hackneyed story that’s poorly written and beyond contrived. It’s got uninspired, merely serviceable graphics, and utterly typical, unimaginative third person shooter, cover-based game play. And I spent the weekend playing the hell out of this game, often in lieu of playing clearly “superior game” Killzone 2. Why is this? I have a theory. Read the rest of this entry »

Wanna be called a “fag” over and over again by 12 year old boys from around the world? Well, that’s what X-Box live was designed to deliver – the young male gamer in all his puerility. I mean sure, there’s a kick-ass shooter or three in there too, but the name-calling can be hard to ignore. Unless you just turn off the voice chat like me, then you can revel in pure blasty goodness without the middle-school machismo. There’s no doubting it though – X-Box Live has a civility problem.

Microsoft has decided on a zero-tolerance policy as their last, best hope, and like all zero tolerance policies, it sucks and is offensive and makes stupid mistakes. In this instance, a woman who identified herself as a lesbian (presumably because she’s, you know, gay), was first hounded by Live idiots who harassed her because sex is scary when you’ve never had it. How did Microsoft respond to her plight? The booted her off X-Box Live because she’s identified herself as a lesbian, and in the wonderful world of Live, sex is verboten. Even having the letters “g-a-y” in your name is against the rules, sorry Mr. Gaywood. Read the rest of this entry »

OK, this is awesome. Really. Just awesomely funny. I mean, what good is a depression if you can’t laugh at it? And what’s funnier than real people pretending to be video game characters? From the video humorists at CB Fresh comes this vision of what would happen if Street Fighter IV was really about the economic crisis instead of, well, whatever the hell it’s actually about. To be honest, the Wall Street Fighter story is actually probably more compelling and logical than whatever’s supposed to be going on in actual Street Fighter IV.

Video below the jump:

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My whole basis for judging value in an entertainment product comes from Street Fighter. Back in my late high school/early college days, my friends and I played a heluva lota Street Fighter 2 at the arcade. It’s a quick game, and at a quarter a pop, you could spend a lot of money fast if you die too fast, too often (which I did at first). But eventually we all got better. I remember one regular at the arcade was so good he’d actually pay for other people to play against him because no one would throw away their quarters with him at the joystick. He would even give lessons on how to pull off a special move or time the perfect throw. I never got great at the game, but I got decent, and could pretty much count on $5 in quarters lasting me a solid hour in the arcade. I decided that $5 was therefore just about the right amount of money for an hour’s entertainment. Weirdly enough, almost two decades later I still think that’s the right price, although I’ve sure as hell spent lots more money for much shorter entertainments since then. At $60 though, Street Fighter IV is a bargain.

Read the full review, including in-game video below the jump:

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People say video games are bad for you, but those people are jerks, because games are in fact awesome for you. I think. Maybe. Well, some of the time anyway. Edge had this thought-provoking rundown of 15 benefits from gaming including sharper vision, better imagination and reasoning skills, and recovery from injuries.

To be honest, I think they probably stretched a little to put some of these on the list. But one advantage I’ve noticed, one you don’t hear people talk about: the benefits of the distraction factor when it comes to avoiding other, even worse habits, like smoking or overeating. I’ve found that, contrary to stereotypes, there’s no better way to stop me from snacking between meals than getting engrossed in a good game for a few hours. If the game’s good, it’s easy to ignore the munchies. There’s some interesting science to back this up, as a study of hardcore online gamers recently showed that the BMI of those who play a lot of games is actually lower than the average person. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a big fan of nudity in games, as I am of nudity in most situations.

I like how it helps push us past this last, weird, Puritan taboo this country has about sex and body image and all that. Never afraid of courting a little controversy if it gets them a lot of free press (you’re soaking in it), Rockstar Games has included some genuine, unabashed, in your face full frontal nudity in the new download-able episode for Grand Theft Auto IV. What’s particularly brilliant: They’re not using it to titilate — no tits at all in fact, just some jack-ass businessman getting a massage while he wheels and deals with a biker gang. It’s meant to make teeneage dudes uncomfortable, and it works great on that front.

Want to see for yourself? Of course you do. Follow the jump [potentially NSFW, depending on how your work views video game nakedness].

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Does a game so bold as to claim “fear” right in the title offer up anything scary? Can you play a sequel to a game you’ve never played and enjoy it? Do we need another first person shooter with weirdo psychic ghost-girls? Yes, yes, and yes we do. For me, there are few gaming pleasures that hit all my buttons in the right way more than a solid, well done first person shooter. F.E.A.R. 2 Project Origin is exactly that. It’s not breaking much, if any, new ground, but like a fun action or horror movie, it’s delivering an experience with skill and confidence and, most importantly, I had fun the whole way through.

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This is how I like my war: animated, turn based and with mini-skirts. Valkyria Chronicles for the PS3 offers all of that, and adds the additional bonus of being a really good game. It’s also an overlooked game, and the fact that it’s a PS3 exclusive means that even fewer people will have a chance to play it, which is a shame, because it deserves some love and attention.

More on Valkyria Chronicles and a video of the game in action after the jump …

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In a book every gamer and every anti-gamer should read, author Brian Johnson argues that in fact, Everything Bad Is Good For You. It’s a good book, and he makes the case for the internet, television, movies, and video games and how they’ve grown more intelligent and thought-provoking in recent years, offering interesting and meaningful mental stimulus. I totally agree with this thesis, especially the parts about the internet and video games. As he points out, video games are hard. They require not just hand/eye coordination, but also problem solving skills and sometimes great stories. So it should come as no surprise at all then that UC Berkley is offering a course in Starcraft.

Read on below the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Fallout 3 is probably my favorite game of the past few months. I devoted hours and hours to exploring its version of post-nuclear war Washington DC, and am more than ready to spend hours more, so I was excited when Bethesda announced that they’d be releasing three downloadable expansion packs over the next three months. The first of these, Operation: Anchorage, Read the rest of this entry »

Amazon.com lurks on the Web, ever dreaming of conquest. Their latest gambit is to sell you inexpensive, casual games for your PC, and wouldn’t you know it, the first hit is free. I have to admit that Build-a-Lot, Jewel Quest II, and The Scruffs aren’t exactly the titles I’ve been waiting for with baited breath (that would be Street Fighter IV), but hey, free games.

Well, not for me, since I don’t have a computer that runs Windows, but for most of you out there, you can sample the casual gaming experience thrice over sans cash before you embark down the dark path of one-click downloads Read the rest of this entry »

Things are tough all over, even in space. The massively multi-player online roleplaying game EVE Online recently saw one of the biggest virtual thefts of all time, with thieving bankers stealing tens of billions of ISK (some sort of space-dollar) from customers. And best of all from the criminal’s point of view, they did it without breaking a single law in the corporeal world. It was within the rules of the game, and when justice comes it’ll probably be enforced through fleets of star ships engaged in epic exchanges of laser fire.

I played EVE Online for a while when it came out, and I recognized at once that it would require a lot more commitment than I’ve ever given anything in my life if I was going to experience all the game’s virtues…

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Sure, most of the world is filled with righteous, totally justified outrage that The Dark Knight was ignored for a Best Picture nomination in favor of five movies I haven’t seen, (although I actually read The Reader in its original novel form, though not in its original German). But there are more important awards out there to blog about, awards that recognize greatness in the newest and bestest field of artistic endeavor: video games. I’m not talking about that crazy awards show on Spike TV. I’m talking about The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Achievement Awards (or cheevies, as I’ve decided just now to call them). And unlike the Oscars, I’ve actually played all of the nominees for best game of the year.

The nominees for Overall Game of the Year Are:

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In one of my many never-to-be-realized daydreams, I start training really hard, hours a day, and become a parkour expert. I run around Southwest Florida rooftops, leaping from building roof to palm tree, doing flips and skipping up walls, defying gravity.

The truth is, I never quite make it to the running, let alone all the jumping and grabbing and sliding. This lack of follow-through on my part is of course why we have video games. And while running, jumping, and generally defying gravity in interesting ways have been a staple of great games since Super Mario Brothers, Mirror’s Edge is the first video game to focus entirely on the parkour (or free running) experience from a first person perspective. And if you love, or even just kind of like games, then it’s a game you have to play. But there are some caveats… Read the rest of this entry »

One of the more interesting trends in gaming these days is the rise of downloadable games for home consoles. While only a few have, so far, been really successful — like Geometry Wars and Castle Crashers — the ability for independent developers to make great, small-budget games and sell them directly to players through their consoles or online both expands the options for consumers and augurs what the future of gaming is likely to be: all download, all the time. And it really is the best way to buy a game – you download a demo and get to play the first level or so to see if you like it. Once it has you hooked, just a couple button presses and you’re out $10, but have a new game. If it sucks (and oh yes, some of them suck –- looking at you Interpol: The Trail Dr. Chaos) press those buttons in a different order and the pain is but a memory. A memory that is easily replaced by something good like, for instance, The Maw.

I totally fell for the marketing on this game. It was being pimped on the first screen of X-Box Live when I logged in, featuring a purple monster with a big mouth that reminded me of the classic board game from my youth, Awful Green Things From Outer Space. Read the rest of this entry »

Gamers get a bad rap – folks think we’re all about ultra-violence and bloody constraint. The more spines ripped from bodies, the better.

Well, I’m here to tell you that’s just a stereotype, a nasty, vicious one to boot. We’re fully rounded (sometimes really rounded) people, too. We laugh, we cry, we sometimes even read books, but most of all we appreciate a quality gaming experience over pure gore. Don’t take my word for it; some real, live scientists did a study and proved it’s true. All right, one study does not make it a fact, but this definitely jibes with what I know and like. The blood can be fun, but its novelty only lasts a few minutes. For a game to be good, you’ve got to keep on playing and playing it, and no way you’re going to do that unless the game play is fun. Unless maybe there are boobs too…

Which brings me to Game 4 a Date, a personals site for game players. Read the rest of this entry »

Every hobby and interest group should have its own pet charity. For hackers, it’s the Electronic Frontier Foundation. For comic book fans it’s The Hero Initiative (which supports aging comic creators fallen on hard times). For gamers, more and more, it’s Child’s Play.

Founded by Gabe and Tycho — those two maestros of video-game inspired comic strips at Penny Arcade — Child’s Play gives games, toys, books and money to sick kids. They work through hospitals around the world, who provide them with wish lists from their needy patients. Read the rest of this entry »

In these hard economic times, it’s nice to sometimes look around and see just how much worse things could be. Then again, if you’re at all human, looking at other people’s misery probably just makes you even more depressed. That’s why I prefer to get my schadenfreude from the virtual world – all of the gloating and none of the guilt. And when it comes to visions of extreme capitalism run amok, there’s no better game out there than last year’s Game of the Year, Bioshock.

Bioshock is a superb first person shooter set in 1960, but not a part of any 1960 you’ll recognize (although it might seem familiar to some of you Objectivists out there). The game begins with a plane crash that leads you to a vast, underwater, art-deco metropolis known as Rapture. Created by Andrew Ryan as a libertarian paradise, this vision of Utopia clearly takes its inspiration from Ayn Rand’s nasty, bloated behemoth of a novel, Atlas Shrugged… Read the rest of this entry »