Reviews 
Mario & Luigi: Dream Team review - sometimes a snooze
Mario's role-playing forays provide a welcome diversion from the franchise's saccharine, straightforward personality. As great as most Mario games are, the RPGs are appreciably different, almost irreverent in how they twist that fallback of plumber-saving-princess into something weird, wonderful, ...
Beatbuddy Review: A Few Wrong Notes
Beatbuddy's beautiful underwater world is full of puzzles and music, the latter of which serves as a life-sustaining resource for the residents of Symphonia. These vital notes reverberate through the world's labyrinth, emanating from the dreams of three spiritual buddies: Melody, Harmony and Beat ...
Charlie Murder review: Search and destroy
Damn it, Charlie Murder. You're a fiend. You're a hardcore, chaotic mess of heathenry and horror. You're worse than a pre-epiphany Grinch, bloodier than Bunker Hill, messier than an unsupervised 2-year-old eating spaghetti and chocolate ice cream, and more outrageous than Lady Gaga at a PETA ...
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Review: Do Not Separate
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is an essential treasure to play. I promise, the game's sincere quality absolves the terribleness of its title, which is barely a step up from "Characters: A Story of Them." And yet it truly is a story of them, two boys who leave their humble village behind in a ...
The Drowning touches on mobile FPS greatness
This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go. The Drowning has the best controls of any touch-based shooter I've ever experienced. I'm in love; I don't ever want to go back to the way things were before. I hope I never touch a virtual thumbstick again. It's ...
Tales of Xillia review: Xillia-rating
As a fan of Japanese role-playing games, you kind of have to get used to overwrought stories. There's some kind of meteor, or reborn god, or a god reborn as a meteor, and the hero has amnesia/a mysterious past/a tortured soul/a tragic destiny. High drama is pretty much par for the JRPG course, ...
Shadowrun Returns review: Hack the planet
There is no single word in the English language more objectively radical than "cyberpunk." One could even describe the word as "awesome" or "gnarly" or any number of other terms that really should have died off around the time MTV stopped playing music videos. Cyberpunk may not have been invented ...
Rise of the Triad review: Everything old is still old
Interceptor Entertainment's bang-up job of recreating Rise of the Triad for the modern era unavoidably highlights some of the original's flaws, and serves as a stark reminder that certain relics just can't live up to our warm, fuzzy memories. Rise of the Triad starts off fabulously well. A ...
Dragon's Crown review: King of brawlers
Beat-'em-ups have been through a bit of a rough patch lately. The arcade-style brawler suffered a decline that coincided with the downfall of arcades themselves, and aside from standout efforts like Castle Crashers and Double Dragon Neon, little has been done in recent years to progress or ...
Pikmin 3 review: To boldly go
-–-Transmission begins--- Sinan's Log, Hour 0 Disc, check. Wii U, check. Pen and paper, check. Way too many snacks ... check. Looking at reconnaissance. The Pikmin are an alien race of little colored globules, creatures that are half-plant, half-animal, and full-cute. In their new ...
The Joystiq Podcast
Super Joystiq Podcast 061: Tales of Xillia, Skullgirls, Brothers, QuakeCon 2013, GaymerX
Latest episode: Friday, August 9th, 2013