I picked up my first guitar when I was in elementary school, and I asked my father -- an amateur guitarist who strummed along along to David Bowie vinyl records for fun -- to teach me a basic chord. It wasn’t 15 minutes...

When the most recent NHL lockout led to the cancellation of the entire 2004–05 hockey season, the popularity of the sport in America -- which was already not that high to begin with when compared to the other three majo...

We’ve all died at some point. Hit by a brown sedan while crossing the street, shot in the face by a drug dealer with bad skin, fell into a lava pit, crushed by a rampaging wild horse, vital organs consumed by a skinless...

Eight years. That’s a mighty long time, and it’s the last time Capcom delivered a “proper” entry into the Street Fighter series. But it’s not as if the 2D fighter has been out of the minds of gam...

The Killzone franchise has earned itself a place as one of gaming's more turbulent properties. All sorts of self-perpetuating controversies seem to spring up in its wake, often providing a disservice to the games themselves. ...

I wonder if people will look at the above screenshot and say, "oh, it's another puzzle game," and just scroll on past to the next bit of news or info. I would understand that inclination, as the downloadable services seem to ...

When I read the "word" BlazBlue, I immediately hear Bill Cosby in my head babbling a "Blazem Blazblue Blippity BLOP". Did Bill Cosby ever actually say anything like that, or is that something we just believe due to the antics...

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The old Dickens passage might never have applied so well to a videogame as it does the release of SNK Playmore and Ignition Entertainment's KOF XII. It comes to us hot on t...

EA Sports’ NHL franchise has a distinguished pedigree -- the past two games in the series have earned 19 “sports game of the year” awards from various videogame publications and Web sites, and the games have...

When Codemasters announced DiRT 2, I was very happy to see that it still had Colin McRae's name on it. I found the first game to be "okay," and after playing the demo for this second installment, it seemed we had a great raci...

Capybara Games' rainbow barf-filled puzzle title Critter Crunch is set to arrive on Steam next week. When it drops this Tuesday, September 11, you'll be able to pick it up for PC and Mac for a cool $6.99. There's support for ...

The biggest game of the year is finally here. Infinity Ward created one of the most popular, well-crafted and subsequently imitated first-person-shooter games in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and a sequel was inevitable. Tw...

A year ago, the music game genre was at its peak. Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour had recently launched to rave reviews, and looking back, it appears that the developers of those games -- Harmonix and Neversoft, respec...

"I don't know anything about it," said of God of War III producer Stig Asmussen of a God of War I/II Blu-ray collection, "so I don't think it's likely it's gonna happen." That was at E3 earlier this year. Months later, Sony a...

Last year’s CSI: Deadly Intent was a bit of an ugly duckling, and something many of us would easily scoff at if we saw it in a store. Yet even though it was just a CSI version of Ace Attorney with a crime lab -- witho...

Sparing intergalactic civilization from annihilation isn't a new narrative construct -- all budding sci-fi game writers and novelists must have soggy dreams about weaving this sort of epic -- but the foundation isn't exhauste...

"I'm a hustler, baby. I just want you to know." Well, those would be the lyrics I would sing as I entered my local pool hall, hoping to scam friend and stranger alike in a friendly game of billiards. Of course, I was no hustl...

Kratos has successfully killed the God of War, Ares. He has challenged Zeus, the King of the Gods, and lived. What's next? Well, take down all of Olympus, of course. In the latest and final installment of the God of War...

After a number of misses from its competition, last year Harmonix and MTV Games proved that it was possible to do a band-specific music game "right." The Beatles: Rock Band was an incredible journey through the band's career,...

[As originally posted on Japanator] Or even better, in some ways! I'll admit I stopped following Naruto a while ago, but watching the new trailer for Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 makes me wish I had kept up with ...

It has been the year of fighting games. Dragon punches, quarter turns, blocks, double jumps, ultras, aerials, health bars, tag teaming, crossovers, and a whole lot more means it's practically 1997 all over again. Know what el...

In a gaming landscape that has grown increasingly splintered, EA Sports’ Madden NFL franchise remains one of the select few names that not only attracts a massive annual audience, but can rightly be called a mainstream ...

Military personnel looking to pick up Medal of Honor this October will have to do so off-site. The Army and Air Force Exchange Services has announced that the game will not be stocked in any on-base GameStop or other post ...

The boys of The Mega Man Network were able to visit the Capcom booth at PAX and grill the rep for any new details on Mega Man Universe. There was no demo on hand, sadly, but they were able to glean a couple of clues as to wha...

Regular Nick: "Hey, The Dillinger Escape Plan made it into Guitar Hero! That's awesome. And, nice... you can play through Rush's 2112, and it's narrated by bassist and vocalist Geddy Lee himself. Man, this is going to rock." Warrior Nick: "Sweet holy hell, why did I just turn into a f**ing rock n' roll chupacabra?"

Hockey is definitely not North America’s most popular sport, but even non-fans can recognize that the past two entries in EA Sports’ NHL franchise stand among the all-time great sports videogames. But with its sim...

If the main hero of your comic is a pointy-eared young girl with perky breasts and pink hair, it is one of two things -- a Japanese Manga, or a Western comic that desperately wishes it was a Japanese Manga. Blade Kitten, a co...

Those who think videogame reviewers have it easy are, to be honest, mostly correct. Playing videogames all day and getting paid to tell people what one thinks is a pretty sweet deal. Then along comes a game like Razing Storm,...

Before writing this review, I promised myself that I would not write "ATATATATATATA" or make any reference to things being "already dead." Unfortunately, such a noble ambition is next to impossible. In fact, before I even mad...

With 2008’s Burnout Paradise, Criterion Games solidified its spot as the king of fast-paced, arcade-style racing. So when Electronic Arts decided it was ready to take the Need for Speed series back to its earl...

Most games based on a licensed property are terrible. It's a sad truth of the gaming world, and many players have accepted this as a foregone conclusion. Licensed games are bad until proven good. Merely tolerable licensed ...

UK indies Mediatonic sure are a busy bunch. Not only did they release a ton of browser games for the likes of Adult Swim and SEGA, as well as mobile games, but their previous PSP Minis title Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princ...

If there's one thing The Shoot does really well, it's make the player wish that each level was its own videogame. The artistic style is just so fantastic that levels feel like they would have been an awesome title in its own ...

With Pac-Man Championship Edition for Xbox Live Arcade, Namco Bandai set the bar for the evolution of its pellet-munching mascot. Now, the little yellow hero is back with Pac-Man Championship Edition DX, and despite the fact ...

Sidhe Interactive’s Blood Drive welcomes players to Las Rulettas, a fictional Las Vegas-inspired setting for a vehicular homicide reality show that shares the game’s name. Bonus: Blood Drive’s arenas are lit...

Splatterhouse has never really been a great franchise, but it earned its cult following thanks to obscene content, disturbing creature designs, and a Lovecraft-inspired aesthetic. Your humble reviewer is one of those follower...

Every game these days needs its gimmick.   If you had to point to Nail’d’s, it would be that the game is fast. Really, really, really fast. Really.

"Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans win." So quipped Gary Lineker, an English international, after losing to West Germany in the 1990 World Cup. As in life, so in art: Pr...

GoldenEye 007 for the Wii wasn’t the only Bond game to come out this holiday season. No, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 also got their dose of Bond in the form of an original Bond adventure called Blood Stone. Since the...

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Vietnam is one of those rare products where if it simply works as promised -- or gets even marginally close -- it's a crowd pleaser. DICE ran into some temporary technical issues with online multipl...

History is full of games that boasted fantastic concepts, but failed to deliver when all of its brilliant ideas were put into practice. Some of the most creative games are also some of the absolute worst, as whoever came up with it simply lacked the funds, time or talent to see it through.  You'll be thrilled to know that MindJack does nothing to buck the trend.

If one thing can be said of Visceral Games, it's that the studio is true to its name. Visceral is a word that can adequately describe any of the team's violent, blood-drenched titles, and nowhere is this more true than with t...

In 2008, Capcom rebooted the Bionic Commando franchise with two remarkably disparate approaches. On one end of the spectrum was the third-person action retail title, Bionic Commando, which found ex-Faith No More singer Mike P...

Back when I wrote for one of those girl gamer sites (yes, even I have a dark past), I got a press release about a game the got me pretty excited. Small German development team, Deck 13 were to publish Venetica, a fantasy them...

Omega Force is best known for the Dynasty Warriors series and its related hack n' slash spin-offs, due mostly to the fact that it's made a billion of them. In fact, the last truly unique game Omega Force made was the rather g...

I'm extremely happy that the racing genre seems to be picking up again.  In 2010 we had some spectacular titles like Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, and Gran Turismo 5 so I couldn't wait to see what was in store for 2011.&n...;

What's worse than an escort mission in a videogame? A videogame that is nothing but escort missions.  This is Knights Contract. A game in which your health meter is determined by a meandering, mentally subnormal woman wi...

I literally fell asleep playing Hyperdimension Neptunia. Full on, snoring for thirty minutes while my characters bobbed up and down in battle stances waiting for me to input their next attack. Now I will admit it was late, bu...

Despite being released in late January, Dead Space 2 has effortlessly become one of my most played games of all time. I'm currently on my fourth play, and I still find the game utterly engaging, helped in no small part by the...

Keeping annualized sports franchises fresh year after year is an unenviable task, especially within the constraint of a ten- or eleven-month development cycle. Generally, sports-game developers endeavor to bring a few importa...

The Dynasty Warriors series is incredibly notable in terms of demonstrating how different Western and Japanese audiences can be. In Japan, Dynasty Warriors is a chart topper and system seller, a cultural phenomenon. Over here...

As someone who grew up in the ’80s, I have fond memories of these rubber WWF toys that I’d ricochet all over my house. Drop Hulk Hogan on his rubbery toes in just the right place and he’d spring forward, sma...

Commander Shepard, protagonist of last year's undisputed GOTY Mass Effect 2, has a lot of favorite things. Whether it's a store on the Citadel, carrying out Pyjak genocide, or punching reporters in the face, Shepard likes ...

More than any other game I can recall playing, Swarm gets right to the point in its main menu screen. As with all PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade titles, there are the usual options to select from by hitting, in my c...

A few days ago, we brought news that Japanese-exclusive Mega Drive title Monster World IV was heading onto PSN and XBLA. Considering that the previous entries in the Wonder Boy / Monster World series had been released on VC, ...

The Tomb Raider series has become a rather inscrutable collage of mountains and breasts in my mind. Its multiple sequels and franchise "reboots" have turned the franchise into a vague soup where I find it increasingly difficu...

Little Charlie Blackmore may have succeeded in rescuing his doll family from the evil baron, but his adventures are not yet over. A new quest for the smallest Matryoska doll arrives this week on PlayStation Network and Xbox L...

The Need For Speed: Shift series has been about capturing the adrenaline pumping speed and finesse of hardcore style racing. Now, the Shift series is making a return to the iOS with a port of Shift 2: Unleashed.

Few gamers expected Ar Tonelico III to arrive on North American PlayStation 3s after it was released early last year. The first game's quirky, thoroughly Japanese atmosphere earned it a cult following, but an embarrassingly b...

Bonk: Brink of Extinction was one the more prominent titles to get the big boot once Hudson Entertainment closed. Sure, our impression from last year's E3 was rather lukewarm, but it was still a revival of a beloved property ...