[This post originally ran as impressions on the open beta and is now updated to reflect the full release, which came two weeks later.] Call of Duty has dumbed down the modern shooter to being about planting bombs, capturing p...

Dungeon Hearts is a match-3 game, yet that observation didn't solidify until I sat down to write this review. From music to mechanics, Dungeon Hearts is so ingrained in traditional Japanese role-playing games (think Final Fan...

Evoland, an exploration of adventure games' evolution from independent developer Shiro Games, is currently available for PC through Steam and GOG.com, with an iOS release due later this month. However, given the nature of the...

If there's one thing that's more overplayed than zombies, it's reviews for zombie videogames talking about how overplayed zombies are. Truly, nobody can win anymore. We're worn out on the zombie thing, and worn out by our own...

Downloadable content is a touchy subject among the vocal game playing community. While I personally think such content has its place, the piecemeal selling of a game risks becoming a tasteless endeavor -- and videogame publis...

The original Sword of the Stars games were deep and complex space strategy games akin to the Galactic Civilizations franchise. Sword of the Stars: The Pit takes place onboard a ship in space, but that is where the similaritie...

The coffee in Boston's FBI offices must be a really special kind of black sludge, capable of turning ordinary investigators into relentless machines. Or maybe Special Agent Erica Reed has just transcended the need for rest or...

DON'T look at this until after you've beaten BioShock Infinite. Seriously, come back after you have. For the rest of you that have cleared the game, you're about to have your minds blown.

Remember the Warhound unit from the beta of Heart of the Swarm? Originally planned as a replacement for the Thor, the Warhound was removed because they became a very strong focus of the competitive scene and were simply...

As the elderly, yet oddly toned kung-fu monk decapitated my time-traveling, identity-losing hero-with-nothing-to-lose for the fifth time in as many minutes, I couldn't really be blamed for impotently throwing my mouse at the ...

After climbing down 350 floors of traps, monsters, and ninja ghosts, not to mention the extra levels seemingly without end, I've come to one conclusion: I should never become a ninja. Sure, I should have known that before I e...

Richard & Alice is, ostensibly, an adventure game. It's simply presented, short, indie fare made created by the two-man team of former games journalist Ashton Raze and Lewis Denby. Underneath its brevity and simplici...

When we first heard of The Banner Saga and its success on Kickstarter last spring, it was a single-player focused turn-based RPG. Since then, it has split off into two releases: a narrative-driven single-player game to come a...

Guys, EA heard you. Your complaints about SimCity have finally been answered! "Why is my city so polluted and gross?" "Why would someone build a coal plant between a school and hospital in downtown?" "Why must my sims live su...

Indie puzzle platformers seem like they're a dime a dozen these days. Start with an art style, something unique or just simple pixels, add some cool gameplay hook, and then make some levels. It’s a standard formula that...

I never thought I'd ever say this after the '90s, but there are simply too many interesting adventure games to keep track of. Back in 2011, I had been keeping close tabs on Cognition: An Eric Reed Thriller, after it ticked al...

Development on Driftmoon began seven years ago. Seven years! For some context, this game began development when there was only one New Super Mario Bros. and Saints Row game. It is anybody's guess as to the quality of a game w...

The mod tools from Paradox's grand strategy masterpiece, Crusader Kings II, are now a part of March of the Eagles. This new set of tools will allow players to customize just about any aspect of the game and run multiple mods at once. Hopefully this means we'll get to see some crazy mods, like this one. This update also has a patch with gameplay tweaks and bug fixes. 

By the time Bit.Trip Runner burst onto the scene three years ago, Gaijin Games had already established itself on WiiWare with a trio of some of the best games on the platform. The retro-inspired rhythm series shared certain c...

There is a vast, tumultuous ocean between good ideas and their actual application, and lost in the middle of that ocean is Impire. In fact, it may very well be stuck inside the belly of a whale. I had high hopes for the dunge...

Special Forces: Team X looked to fill a certain void in the PC market. One without the joint effects of chest-high walls, competitive multiplayer, and a cover system. Mass Effect 3's multiplayer helped bring third-person cove...

Proteus has no objectives, no actions other than movement, and no text. It's a game based entirely off of exploration, using intelligent design to guide the player through. It also has a definitive structure; there's an openi...

Dungeonland, the ARPG-ish dungeon crawler, has quite a lot going for it. Chris came away quite surprised with the game, despite hearing some mediocre things beforehand. A large part of the game's charm has been the humo...

If you're curious about Omerta: City of Gangsters on the Xbox 360, a demo is now live. The game itself is basically a bare-bones simulation similar to the Tropico series mixed with portions of gameplay similar to XCOM. There'...

It's impressive to reflect on how far-reaching and influential indie games have become in recent years. Small teams and one man acts are emerging from the woodwork to deliver experiences that rival those manufactured by the o...

The Game Developers Conference currently going on in San Francisco is home to the Independent Games Festival. A couple of months ago, the finalists were revealed. Last night, the winners were revealed. Richard Hofmeier’...

When Euro Truck Simulator 2 was first brought to my attention, I'll admit I thought the attraction had to be based in irony. To wake up one morning and find the gaming community is going crazy over a trucking sim is unusual e...

One of the most striking things about Antichamber is how the sound design makes the world feel bigger and more lush than it really is. The sounds and visuals create a hypnotic world that fills the imagination. And now, Antich...

If I'm being honest, I want the Kentucky Route Zero developers, Cardboard Computer, to take as much time as they need perfecting each and every episode of the game. But if I'm being serious, I want them all right fr...

[Warning: NSFW, even if censored, images following.] "At the beginning of the 22nd Century, an anomaly began occurring in the bodies of women," so goes the tale of Boob Wars. "All the women of the world became either E Cups a...

When I was still wee, I often found myself stuck in my grandmother's house, far away from friends and video games and left with little to do other than draw or read. Once I filled every piece of paper in the house with doodle...

Born Ready Games has responded to community and critic feedback with a new patch for Strike Suit Zero which introduces a first-person cockpit view for all ships, multiple difficulty levels with the added promise that some dif...

It's going to be tough to talk about Krunch without also mentioning games like Super Meat Boy or VVVVVV, so I'll get it out of the way now: Krunch is similar to these titles in that you will die. A lot. You will also, however...

Way back through the mists of time -- 1990 to be precise -- fans of the relatively new RTS genre were treated to what is sometimes retroactively considered to be one of the world's first MOBAs, Herzog Zwei. Players commanded ...

Seduce Me is only on our radar because it was developed by folks who worked on the Triple-A Killzone franchise, and later denied a place on Steam's Greenlight project. We likely wouldn't have noticed it, much l...

Maybe it's just me, but it seems that every once in a while there is a game that comes out that makes a statement about MMORPGs. That the best part of those games is the player-versus-player segments. In 2007, there was the "...

The Sims series will always have expansion packs. It's part of the experience to slowly add more content to the game. Usually these packs add active content like new town locations, new interactions, or new career paths for y...

I've just saved the planet, and I couldn't be less enthused about it. A New Beginning is a self-styled eco-thriller with a spot of time travel and science fiction thrown in for good measure. It launched in Europe a couple of ...

Prior to being picked up by Jagex and released to a wider audience on Steam, Ace of Spades had an alpha build that was available as a free download. While both versions carry the same name, it was the earlier Ace of Spades wi...

[Image by Christoper Hastings] The fan-made, freely distributed, Capcom-backed mashup Street Fighter X Mega Man has crossed one million downloads, according to the game's creator, Seow Zong Hui. If it were to be counted as a ...

Pirates and Vikings have a lot of things in common. Pillaging, raiding, exploration, and adventure -- these are their shared loves. One could be forgiven for assuming that they might even be able to get along, but that is mos...

Sony Online Entertainment and Major League Gaming have announced a new partnership to bring free-to-play MMO first-person shooter PlanetSide 2 closer to the latter organization's audience of competitive gamers. In the coming ...

Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition is a hassle-free version of one of the best role-playing games of all time. It perhaps isn't as "enhanced" as it could have been, but since the core game remains largely untouched, you're ...

When death comes in Teleglitch, I can feel a part of myself being replaced with a weighted ton of soulcrushing loss and hopelessness. So goes the roguelike, a genre that has increasingly proliferated among bedroom developer...

This video contains huge spoilers! You have been warned. The Walking Dead from Telltale won all sorts of praise and awards for their amazing episodic series. Part of that had to do with all the choices you can make, with some of your actions determining some of the events that took place in the final episode, No Time Left. So, what did you all choose to do?

It seems as if Sherlock Holmes is more popular than ever; whether it's Robert Downey Jr.'s slow-mo charmer, Benedict Cumberbatch's gruff genius, or Johnny Lee Miller's American-based version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's detect...

There are thousands, if not millions, of games out there, begging to be played but last summer there was only one that mattered to me: Magical Drop 3. Whether I was practicing at home or showing off at my local arcade, Magic...

Unknown Worlds has issued a warning to everyone not to buy Natural Selection 2 Steam keys from any shady websites. The Natural Selection 2 developers revealed that 1,341 keys had to be deactivated, as they were like...

Deponia ended right when things were getting good, and so that’s where Chaos on Deponia begins. Despite the first reaching the West in January -- or August, really, for us Steam-lovin’ folks -- a full, bona fide...

Being the bad guy is typically more fun than a whiter-than-white hero. They get all the good speeches, the more extravagant plans, and commonly have far better dress sense. Over the years, some games have promised a...

Space. Since the dawn of time, man has looked up at the sky and dreamed what incredible wonders could be out there. There could be new planets with advanced civilizations, moons made entirely out of dairy products, and attrac...

I don't recall exactly when management games became unpopular. One day we were mastering the systems of "Theme" this or "Tycoon" that, and almost certainly dabbling in the field of dungeon administration, but then suddenly we...

Platforming fans, rejoice! Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams finally arrives on consoles where it firmly belongs! The game, which also happens to be the first Kickstarter-funded game to actually appear on XBLA, goes straight back...

Tower Defense games are fairly common these days but despite the rigidity of their design, developers still manage to take the basic tenets of the genre and make some interesting titles. Sanctum, Anomaly: Warzone Earth, and P...

In the very near future, the Earth will pass through the ominous "Dark Rift" gravitational plane and superheat from the inside out. In the ensuing chaos -- complete with tectonic plate shifts, super storms, volcanoe...

In a video Q&A, Chivalry: Medieval Warfare's lead game designer Steve Piggott mentioned that Chivalry's mod tools are currently "in the works" and that it shouldn't be too long before they're released to the public....

As I pointed out in my original Sleeping Dogs review, the game sorely lacked ghosts. Now there are ghosts. Rejoice.

Painkiller Hell & Damnation has been out on PC since Halloween, just long enough that I had forgotten console versions of the no-nonsense first-person shooter were ever announced. They were, and according to a new update ...

Out of the many phrases attributed to the father of comb-overs, Julius Caesar, "Alea iacta est" (The die has been cast) is undoubtedly the most appropriate for something that feels like one of the most complicated board games...

I haven't played Hotline Miami yet. I haven't played many games yet. I'm so buried in backlog that I wonder if it's even worth buying anything new when I barely even touch the stuff I do buy. But that's a discussion for anot...