Ask a random person five years ago what Sudoku was, and you’d be lucky if they mumbled something about Japanese ritual suicide. But go down any supermarket’s magazine aisle today, and you’ll find whole racks stuffed with cheapie newsprint books full of the addictive puzzles. People can’t get enough. They…
The concept behind All-Pro Football 2K8 is simply wonderful: Imagine a fantasy football league where you draft from a pool not of this season’s top players, but of the greatest NFL players of all time: Joe Montana, John Elway, Dick Butkus, Jerry Rice, Marcus Allen, Mike Ditka, and more than…
I was driving home from work the other day when it occurred to me that, despite being college-educated and reasonably intelligent, I have no idea how my car works. I know the gas goes in, because I do that part. But after that it gets fuzzy. When the mechanic’s telling…
Bold proclamation time: There wouldn’t even be an Xbox 360 without Halo. Microsoft lost billions on the original Xbox even with its mega-successful sci-fi games, so it’s hard to imagine the red ink that would have spilled without them; even suggesting a second go at the console business would’ve had…
There’s a unique challenge in designing superhero games: How do you make it fun to play a character who, by definition, is vastly more powerful than his opposition? Hulk encounters a purse-snatcher: Hulk smash! Hulk win! Hulk bored. With battles that one-sided, the thrill of being superheroic quickly wanes –…
A game based on 300 has no excuse not to kick ass. Just picture yourself leading 300 Greeks (that’s 1,800 abs) against the Persian empire’s massive armies, led by the evil, pierced, and preening King Xerxes. Since your Spartans are the deadliest soldiers in the world, the Persians’ only chance…
The residents of Mount Olympus haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep since Kratos moved in. Not only is the new god of war a grumpy, self-professed god-hater, he got the throne by killing Ares, something that naturally makes the other gods a little…jumpy. It’s not long before Zeus — who…
In the poem “In Just-,” e.e. cummings described the world as “mud-luscious” and “puddle-wonderful” — words so perfectly befitting MotorStorm’s gorgeously sloppy off-road hijinks, the game’s designers probably had them tacked up on a wall somewhere. And had Cummings paid $60 for MotorStorm, the verbally inventive (and upper-case averse) poet…
Whether it’s slaying dragons in Zelda, zapping aliens in Halo, or inserting foot A into ass B in Virtua Fighter, the best games are the ones that offer some level of wish fulfillment. Grand Theft Auto added “Help yourself to a car” and “Drive it on the sidewalk” to the…
For the aging video-gamer, nothing’s as sorely missed as the corner arcade. Unlike the family-friendly Dance Dance Revolution discos you see today, classic arcades were seedy little dives tucked into strip malls — dark caves thick with the musty bouquet of cheap carpet and adolescent stench. They were also thick…
Lately, the Nintendo DS has become a virtual Monster.com. You can play a defense attorney (Phoenix Wright), surgeon (Trauma Center), and even a cook (Cooking Mama). Now, thanks to Hotel Dusk: Room 215, you can add private eye to that list. But don’t expect the sexy detective work of Chinatown…
Imagine two game producers rushing down the hall. One wants to pitch a WW2 game, the other a sci-fi shooter. They round a corner, crash into each other, and their papers go flying everywhere — and in one of those great “You got chocolate in my peanut butter!” moments, Resistance:…
Viewed from an airplane high over the islands of San Esperito, the land seems to stretch out endlessly. The sun slowly rises over the ocean, bathing the clouds in ochre and throwing stark shadows on the lush jungle below. If only there were something worth doing down there. Welcome to…
The mall in Dead Rising is pretty much like any other you’ve visited. There’s a bunch of women’s clothing stores, a movie theater, and of course the obligatory food court. The only real difference is that it’s teeming with enough zombies to fill a stadium. Dead Rising opens with freelance…
Like a real war, Chromehounds involves long stretches of tedium, occasionally broken up by a few moments of sheer terror. After what feels like weeks of ponderous marching from point A to point B in your titular “Hound” (a walking tank), combat erupts. The fighting is fast and ferocious and…
Flight sims — games that emulate the experience of being in a cockpit — are plenty popular on PCs, but have never taken off on home consoles. This is partly due to their inherent complexity. When it comes to recreating an entire cockpit’s worth of buttons, levers, and gizmos, the…
From Pokémon to Dragon Ball Z, Japanese pop culture has captured the imagination of American kids. The latest import craze is Naruto. Anyone hip to Harry Potter will find the story familiar: A bunch of otherwise ordinary kids, including titular hero Naruto Uzumaki, study ninjitsu (rather than wizardry) in a…
Gamers are so used to Mario that the fundamental weirdness of his exploits no longer raises an eyebrow: A dumpy Italian plumber journeys through a fairy-tale land, where turtles throw hammers, mushrooms bestow magic powers, and a kingly turtlebeast holds a princess captive. Where other videogame plots might have been…
Yet another Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) has come and gone, and this one was the biggest yet. Exhibitors know all too well that a strong showing at E3 — an event heavily covered by both industry and mainstream press — can turn a great product into a blockbuster and a…
Mom always says that videogames rot your brain. Hell, some say that Grand Theft Auto trains kids to kill. So Nintendo’s claim that its new portable offering, Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!, actually makes players smarter has been received with a mix of curiosity, cynicism, and…
The biggest innovation videogaming saw in the past decade or so was the invention of the “sandbox”: Programmers create settings and consequences, but give you, the user, free license to do with them what you want. Grand Theft Auto is certainly the best-known of these games. The carjackings, the hookers,…
On paper, Black sounds like a sure hit: Criterion Studios (the developer behind the spectacular Burnout games) designs a first-person shooter that does away with all that boring sneaking and instead focuses on the pure pyrotechnic appeal of a Hollywood-style gun battle. The game promised sub-woofer-rattling explosions, frantic gunfire in…
