Jun 25, 2011

The Wii U is going to fail us all, continuing the hallowed Nintendo tradition of thwarted expectations. Recall a time in 2006, when Reggie Fils-Aime boasted that the Wii was not competing with the Xbox and the PS3.  The Wii was the only real next-gen system.  He mesmerized us with our own imaginations: we dreamed of swinging from Samus’s grappling beam, of...

Jun 25, 2011

Let me begin with a ballsy claim: the release of the Wii U will mark the return to the focus on a gaming experience that we want from Nintendo (et al) and usher in new innovations that will be of genuine value to those of us outside Nintendo’s newly courted demographic of yoga moms and pony loving tweens.  Rather than another fresh gimmick, the new console...

Jun 23, 2011

Duke Nukem Forever is finally out, and the reviews are in, and they are… not looking good?! How can this be? Was this game not in development for twelve solid years? Shouldn’t this game be better than all the Half Life episodes and every Halo game put together? This seems to be the common reaction from most of the big gaming sites. IGN gave Duke Nukem...

Jun 19, 2011

Jun 19, 2011

Our story begins with a simple gesture: a man throws his hat.  It glides past the man’s dazed ninja adversary in an elegant arc.  Then, with a devious rotation, it darts back to its owner’s hand, decapitating the ninja on the way. EG Justin Wong’s Kung Lao has just performed a Fatality on Tom Brady’s Sub Zero to close their second match in the Mortal...

Jun 12, 2011

The E3 2011 Microsoft press conference began as a showcase for multiplatform blockbuster games that took a turn for the worse once they started busting out the motion controls. As the show started, the lights dimmed, neon green soundwaves raced across every screen, and radio chatter buzzed on the speakers.  This could have easily been mistaken for the beginning...

Jun 11, 2011

Before getting into the legitimate content of this article, I must share the tale of my Lionhead Studios appointment, easily the most embarrassing and slipshod operation in the whole of E3.  The rep running the Special Olympics event started with a kind of pep rally for the dozen or so media in the room.  Some general Fable talk and history ensued, but I...

Jun 11, 2011

Every Zelda fan that’s seen screen shots of Skyward Sword and noted the obvious similarities between it and Twilight Princess has the same question: what’s different about this game? Allow me to run down everything I picked up on. A neat looking scarab seems to be the first dungeon-linked item that Link gets to play with. During my hands-on I guided the...

Jun 11, 2011

Just when you may have thought Activision was shooting blanks, holding only stale ideas for its perennial shooter, they follow through with Call of Duty Elite.  In a true show of the capabilities held by the largest interactive entertainment company Earth’s seen since the Coliseum, Activision created and staffed Beachhead Studios, which promptly hammered out...

Jun 10, 2011

Want to know what Dark Souls is like?  Go buy Demon’s Souls used at Gamestop for like 8 bucks, so priced because it was tragically passed over by the 2009 gaming zeitgeist.  Dark Souls was the only game I saw in SCEA’s giant fortress that usually didn’t have a line and sometimes was actually left vacant – so it seems there’s blood on the door...