Jul 23, 2011

Exhibit A: Unfortunately, not even our esteemed editors are clever enough to make this one up.  No joke, Squenix will soon bless us with a Final Fantasy rhythm based fighting game on the 3DS.  Actually it may be more accurate to characterize it not so much as a “game”, but more like a laser guided missile targeting their seemingly inexhaustible demographic...

Jul 20, 2011

It wasn’t so long ago that the term “eSports” referred exclusively to a fad inspired by Starcraft-crazy Koreans.  Recently, however, it seems that competitive gaming is being taken more and more seriously as an industry unto itself.  The fighting game scene provides a quintessential illustration of this phenomenon.  With the approach of EVO, players...

Jul 19, 2011

Ocarina of Time is not just the best Zelda ever made, it’s arguably the greatest video game of all time. Anything else is heresy.  I challenge anyone to pick out a serious problem in this flawless title.  Can anything else on this godforsaken planet invoke nostalgia like this: Prepare for more unfettered and unqualified subjective statements. The...

Jul 15, 2011

I’m sure you all remember your first thoughts upon seeing this: It was a common reaction. Nintendo had us salivating at the previous E3 by showing off a realistic Link vs Gannon sword fight, only to replace ‘mature Link’ with a winking ‘toon. At the time it seemed like the world’s cruelest bait and switch. Not only did Nintendo buck many gamers’...

Jul 14, 2011

When Michelangelo said, “The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection,” I’m pretty sure he had just finished playing Twilight Princess.  The Zelda series has an unparalleled number of great games to its name, yet it is also a definitive example of a franchise whose Alpha is its Omega.  The original Legend of Zelda is still...

Jul 2, 2011

Universe Sandbox is something special.  Not truly a game, it’s more like a simulator-research-tool-program retrofitted for actual enjoyment.  You are presented with any number of astronomical objects – our solar system, nebula’s, galaxies, whatever – all open for total manipulation according to your godly whims.  Conceptually bankrupt AU’s by...

Jul 1, 2011

Dear Nintendo, Is it time for the big N to go the way of the Sega? Any gamer not sucking their thumbs in the 90s surely remembers the heated console wars. You versus Sega. Your NES versus the Master System. Your SNES versus the Genesis. Mario versus Sonic. Eventually, Sony entered the fray with its Playstation, and by the dawn of the new millennium, proved that...