PS3

I'll admit that when Harmonix first announced Rock Band Blitz I was very very skeptical. I'm a huge fan of Rock Band and I play bass in the greatest fake band in the world 1.21 Gigawatts. My friends and I probably have at least one Rock Band session a week and head to a local bar once a month to show off our chops in public. So when I...

Outrunning The Walkers So, here we are at the third episode of the Telltale take on Robert Kirkman’s Walking Dead series. For anyone that is jumping into the series now, I have some absolutely essential advice; don’t do it unless you’re willing to play through the previous two episodes. This is a “serial” episodic game in that what you play now has all of its meaning and...

In Harold Ramis' Groundhog Day, Bill Murray's character is trapped in a never-ending time loop where he is forced to relive the same day. Before the film ends with Murray discovering the value of acting altruistically, he spends much of his time doing all of the petty stuff that most of us would if we were trapped in the same samsara style existence: using his clairvoyant abilities to steal...

Yes, It’s Another Party Game The Wii set the stage for casual gaming by creating the party/mini-game standard that has become a long, dark shadow stretching across the rest of gaming. Whether it’s with a Wii-mote, a Playstation Move controller, or the Kinect, they all amount to the same thing; a bunch of small games, lasting no more than a few seconds or minutes that people...

A Better Gaming Tomorrow What a torturous and circuitous route Sleeping Dogs has taken to finally land on retail shelves. First called Black Lotus, and started almost straight after Vancouver-based United Front formed, the stewards of the studio, Activision, decided the game might sell better with more brand name recognition. So they attached it to the True Crime series, which ended up being a mistake when the...

The concept of the auteur hasn’t fully caught on in videogames yet, but every year seems to bring us closer to an industry influenced less by faceless development teams than by recognizable and distinct individuals. When strong leaders like Suda 51, Hideo Kojima, Ken Levine, Tim Schafer or Fumito Ueda head up a project, players are now able to predict the shape their game will take. Despite the enormous...

Death Takes A Holiday The first Darksiders came out in the summer of 2010 and surprised everyone by being a decent, Zelda-esque romp through a post-apocalyptic world as imagined by comic artist Joe Madureira. It was a game that was as much about puzzles, exploration and getting new gear/abilities for further puzzle solving and exploration as it was about the 3rd person, brawling action in tradition of...

It Lives Down To Its Name The last of the big summer movies arrives to wind down the season and hint solemnly at more books, homework and classes. The Expendables 2 combines a dream team of classic and contemporary action heroes in one big cinematic brouhaha, and, as befits such spectacles, it’s got the obligatory tie-in game to accompany it. And if you were expecting another rushed,...

The Amazing Spider-Man marks Beenox’s third take on Spider-Man for Activision, only this time it’s a movie tie-in game, which is set not long after the events of the recently released film of the same name. It’s also a return to the open world sandbox featured most prominently in the Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man 3 movie tie-in games. Whereas the last couple games took out the open...

Spec Ops is hardly the new kid on the block, gamers were first introduced to this third-person military shooter franchise way back in 1998. Since then there's been some sequels and spin offs but the series has effectively been on hiatus since 2002. At one point the recently shuttered Rockstar Vancouver was even at work on a Spec Ops game that was eventually canceled. It may have been a...

Ubisoft really wants you to be God. Gamers first got a taste of wielding absolute power over tiny minions in From Dust but that was for the merciful gods out there. In Babel Rising you'll be playing as a much more vengeful deity as you rain down elemental attacks to prevent the construction of the Tower of Babel. First released in 2009 for mobile devices Babel Rising...

The Zombie Apocalypse Continues Telltale is blazing new ground in the genre of adventure games with their wildly dark, intense and horrific take on the iconic Robert Kirkman comic series. This second instalment, Starved For Help, continues the odyssey of Lee Everett, a new character created for the series with the blessing of Kirkman himself. It’s got to keep walking on some fairly high ground that the...

Generally speaking games based on movies are hastily cranked out affairs design to sucker kids and pushover parents into thinking that somehow the experience of the film can be replicated in the cheaply produced game. However, Disney movie games can and should be counted on for a little more. After all, the company has produced a few pretty fantastic games themselves over the years (Castle Of Illusion, anyone?) and...

At this point we all know what to expect from a Lego game. We’re going to see some appealingly goofy Lego designs, a story with reverence to the source material and a welcome sense of humor about itself, and of course endless opportunities to smash the crap out of villains and items until they fall into collectable plastic pieces. Yep, the series sure is consistent aside from whatever franchise...

The First Big Bomb Of The Summer Inversion is not a good game. On a good day, it might be a passable game, if you’re in a forgiving, patient, pitiable sort of mood, but if you’re the sort of person that is looking to have your $60 entertain you, rather than bore you or make you angry, you might want to spend that money elsewhere. As we...

What do you get when you mix together equal parts rainbows and zombies, throw in a cup of rock and roll, boil until sweet, then serve sprinkled with the warped sense of humor of Suda51? Chances are you'll get the latest game from Warner Bros. Interactive and Grasshopper Manufacture, Lollipop Chainsaw. It sounds like an odd recipe but it does taste awfully good. In Lollipop Chainsaw you play as...

Do You Believe In Magic Sorcery is finally here. The game that was initially heralded as the perfect ambassador for arguing Move’s relevance to hardcore gaming has had an uneven journey on its road to retail. It first surfaced at E3 2010 where it showed off some unique interface mechanics, and then promptly disappeared from the radar as a slew of Wii knock-off games waggled their way...

At first glance, Mad Riders serves up a delectable mixture of over-the-top tricks, plenty of bonkers race tracks, and high-octane thrills -- the type you look for in bigger-budget releases, not typically Xbox Live Arcade titles. When you get your hands dirty, the illusion is quick to fade. Techland's madcap racer is a cheap thrill ride, but it's niceties come at the cost of some awkward design decisions. ...

Fire The Dungeon Master Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale just reinforces to me that the company that owns this intellectual property, Wizards of the Coast, made a terrible, terrible mistake when they let BioWare stop making games for their IP. Daggerdale is an action RPG that tries to bring a little bit of that BioWare/Blizzard feel, and stumbles—almost fatally—in just about every department. Generic Dungeon Adventure...

Game of Thrones, the latest videogame version of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, attempts to do everything right. Its developers, Cyanide, take into account the wild success of the televised adaptation and the story’s ability to obliterate generations of fantasy tropes with its cynical view of morality, “righteous” warfare and, even, truth. The designers’ attempt to bring Martin’s complex politicking and multifaceted character creation into...