Ever since the advent of the VCR, it’s been a tradition for kids to pop in some horror flicks when Halloween night rolls around. But a new generation is here, one that grew up playing console video games, and one that saw the rise of the “survival horror” genre. So it makes you wonder what horror game character would make the best movie? As you can see, we've thought about that already It only makes sense, then, that Halloween tradition accommodate video games as much as movies. Who knows, with the rise of  technologies like VR, maybe gaming will become so immersive that one day soon it will render scary movies obsolete. In the meantime, here are some scary games perfect for Halloween night. First-person shooters, platformers, side-scrollers, shoot-em-ups—these are just a few of the many video game genres out there. Add all those sub-genres into the mix, and you have...

Before we begin, let’s get something out of the way. There’s literally no one on the planet who hasn’t dreamed of waking up one day, receiving a holographic phone call from a hot secretary who tells you “The world needs you. Now!” as you smirk out of bed, put on your suit, head over to the bay and strap yourself into a 40-foot machine built for absolute destruction. I mean, words and diplomacy can solve a lot of problems, without a doubt. But sometimes, you need to pilot a badass mech and just… Blow. Enemies. Away. Mech games are a lot of fun. When they’re done well, it’s almost too much fun. Without further ado, let’s take a look at the best mech games of all time. Note that these aren’t in any particular order, they’re all awesome games. Mobile Suit Gundam: Extreme Vs. Full Boost – PS3/Arcade Extreme Vs. Full...

We know what you’re thinking. With all the retro systems out there, why are we talking about the GameCube? What do GameCube party games have that you can’t get from other systems? Actually, a lot of the best party games ever made are found exclusively on the GameCube, like Super Smash Bros Melee. And yes, we know that most of the franchises on this list have moved on to newer, “better” systems. Ok, fine. So tell us, where else you can find another Mario Kart: Double Dash title besides the GameCube? The answer: nowhere. Double Dash is a super-unique Mario Kart game that was only released on GameCube. And this is just one of many GameCube exclusives we’re going to review for you today. Get your multiplayer retro gaming party on with these hit GameCube titles. Oh, and don’t forget: GameCube games are playable on Wii consoles, too. 1. Mario Kart:...

As entertainment consumers, most of us love remastered old releases. Whether it’s music or film, giving the classics an update is more often than not a net positive. And the trend of remastering old video game titles has also grown to be a mostly positive thing, as we discussed in a previous post. That article ended with a call-to-action that encouraged readers to think of video game updates that have all but ruined the originals. But besides the titles themselves, there are factors to consider when weighing the negatives and positives of video game remasters. Remasters from the development perspective Another one of our posts politely elucidated the myriad ways in which publishers are screwing gamers for money. It’s a real problem and these companies should be taken to task for their anti-consumer practices. But where it concerns remastered video games, it might be valuable to look at the trend from...

I’m not the kind of player who longs for “the good old days” when games seemed to hate you and want you to die. My attempt to replay Paperboy and recapture the glory of my NES days was short-lived as I realized how needlessly, unrewarding cruel that game is—I just didn’t know any better as a kid.  But I’m also not the kind of player who wants games to be easy. My first walkthroughs are more often set to Hard than to Normal. My biggest disappointment about the death of my first PS3 Console was that I lost the save data for my finished Hard play through of The Last of Us and so wouldn’t be able to play Survivor mode next. The difference is in what makes the game difficult Difficulty, like everything else in a game, can be designed well or poorly. To see what good difficulty plays like,...

I started playing Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones for GBA yesterday, and while on the Fire Emblem Wiki I glanced over the summary of the game’s reception, which went something like this: “This game isn’t different enough from the previous Fire Emblem game on the Game Boy Advance, but it’s still good overall because the first one was good.” This got me thinking about the weird task game developers have when making sequels. Because audiences for sequels largely want them to be different, yet the same, right? So, you know, that’s all you have to do, game developers – make it different but the same. Playing through The Sacred Stones, I can see exactly what they mean – I basically needed no refresher whatsoever after having played the previous game, Fire Emblem, last December – the combat system is pretty similar. There’s a World Map that gives you a little freedom...

In another post, I argued that video games (like all expressive media) influence the world but that, cumulatively, their influence is more likely to be positive than negative because games can show us new.  Good ways of thinking and acting that we can then rally around, whereas the bad ways of thinking and acting depicted in video games are news to no one and so unlikely to spur mass adoption by naïve, impressionable gamers. Today, though, I want to consider the minor, individual negative effects that I’ve conceded games can have on players. Specifically, I want to consider the effects of sexist and racist stereotypes in game characters, plots, and mechanics. Video Games do more good than bad They have the potential to encourage negative stereotypes, and some games definitely do. Grand Theft Auto V called it a flawed masterpiece, the flaw being the dull, stupid sexism and cynicism weighing down the many, many things...

One of the most pleasant surprises of the end of the PS2’s life cycle were Atlus’s Shin Megami Tensei Persona 3, Persona 3 FES, which was an add for Persona 3 (2007) and Shin Megami Tensei Persona 4 (2008), all released in North America long after the next generation of consoles had come out. The Battle System in these RPGs is party-based combat In standard level-grinding dungeons, but the other half of the gameplay makes Persona games unique. Each game is split almost evenly in half between dungeon combat. . . And working through one year in the daily life of high school students in Japan (including occasionally answering questions in school). The player directs the protagonist To determine how to spend free time, by spending time with friends, potential girlfriends (all playable relationships are heterosexual and only Persona 3 Portable the PSP version offers a female protagonist), or local residents, eating or...

I never owned an Xbox system until I bought a 360. I was almost exactly ten years late to the Halo party when I fired up a hand-me-down copy of Halo 2 that fall. Halo 2 was showing its age by that point, of course, but it still made an impression in a couple of ways. First, it was clear that this was a shooter with an unusually elaborate universe and backstory. Second, I was surprised by the large investment seemingly required to get much out of that story. As I continued on to Halo 3, Halo 4, and then (backtracking). I was struck at each point by How difficult and nearly irrelevant it was to figure out what was going on. Should Halo Expanded it's giant Universe going forward? Or Not? I played most of these campaigns local co-op Is Local Multiplayer on Its Way Out—or Its Way Up? (on Legendary)...

Is there a revenge element to the plot?, so there aren’t any direct plot spoilers here. You only need to avoid reading the post if you don’t want to know whether a character or game’s situation is morally ambiguous or complicated. In the early days of games, when narrative wasn’t much of a concern for most games Plot structures were generally like Super Mario Bros or Doom – you play the good guy (usually male, then as now), the game points you at the bad guy, and off you go. No one plays Pokémon and wonders if they’re the bad guy.  As games and game narratives got more complex, we began to see some anti-heroes, player-character protagonists whose values and actions are morally problematic. Max Payne is after criminals for justified revenge but, in classic noir fashion, doesn’t concern himself too much with keeping his hands clean. Kratos in God of...

When I saw the roller-coaster-like movie Gravity, I was surprised to realize that I occasionally felt like I was watching a video game on a giant screen. The film fluidly changed perspectives back and forth from third to first person, often framing the action as a game would, and the focus on challenging environments presenting life-and-death decisions almost constantly was also very game-like. The sheer effectiveness of Gravity and its resonance with game conventions brought up a question I find myself asking at least once a year: why hasn’t there been a great movie based on a video game? Mainstream movies based on video games have been around for twenty years now Since Super Mario Bros. in 1993 (though the first game-adapted movie was a 1986 Japanese Mario Bros. anime). There have been over thirty released internationally since then, including high-profile films like Mortal Kombat, Wing Commander, Tomb Raider, Pokémon, Resident Evil,...

1996 is the year that the little cuddly monsters called Pokémon first appeared on everyone’s favorite Game Boy. The title was a labor of love created and slaved over by famed designer Satoshi Tajiri, who, as legend has it, was inspired by his childhood hobby of collecting insects. This seed of an idea eventually grew into a premise involving the collection of monsters for combat purposes. For its part, Nintendo was ambivalent about releasing the title at first, only doing so initially in Japan. But after a strong response in that country, Nintendo took it to the states, and a global phenomenon was born. So why has Pokémon continued to dominate for so long while other would-be franchises (Bubsy the Bobcat, anyone?) died with a whimper? While opinions may run rampant on the subject, here are five cogent arguments that should help explain Pokémon’s global domination. Pokémon Games are the Swiss...

A lot of role-playing games (RPGs) new and old let you pick the sex of your character (male or female) before you start. Which is awesome. I’ve played Mass Effect with both Maleshep and Femshep characters and got two games’ worth of quality voice acting for the price of one.  (We could have a similar discussion about choice of race or species in RPGs, but that’s an article for another day.) But aside from just letting you have more options for what kind of character you want to create and role-play, So how does allowing both male and female protagonists affect story, gameplay…and meaning? You might be surprised at how far—and how subtly—the effects go beyond simply choice of romantic partners. Choosing the sex of your character goes back at least to Resident Evil 2, which gave you the choice not to create a character from scratch but to play as either Chris...

4 days ago, SNK tweeted an announcement that had retro-gaming nerds like us drooling in anticipation. Today, November 9, 2022, we see that promise fulfilled. SNK has just released its second volume of 10 long-lost Neo Geo Pocket Color games on Steam and Nintendo Switch. If you’ve read our recent account of the original console’s tragic failure, this is very uplifting news indeed. Even better, the 10 titles included in Neo Geo Pocket Color Vol.2 make up an awesome collection. This selection exhumes many exclusive spin-offs of familiar franchises, like SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters’ Clash. There are also sports games, a puzzle game, and one rare oddity that finally gets a worldwide release. Using our extensive nerd knowledge, we’ve reviewed each of these titles in detail. Read on to see why we’re super excited about Neo Geo Pocket Color Vol.2. 1. Rockman Battle & Fighters Rockman Battle & Fighters is...

I remember a time in about 1991 playing one of my favorite childhood video game, Super Mario Bros 3. That I borrowed from a friend for a weekend. I wanted to beat it before I gave it back, but this being the relatively early days of console gaming. Super Mario Bros 3 had no save feature of any kind So in order to reach the end, I just left my Nintendo on overnight a couple nights in a row to maintain my progress until I could come back to the game. When I finally beat it on day three or so, there was an added sense of triumph – not only had I beaten the game, I had beaten the system by managing to finish it before I had to turn off my system and lose all my progress. As far as ten-year-old me was concerned, Raccoon Mario and I had...

Putting together a list of “the best PS2 RPGs” is both easy and difficult. It’s easy in the sense that there’s no dearth of role-playing games—the system has more RPG titles than some short-lived consoles, like the TurboGrafx-16, has of any kind at all. The difficult part involves separating the wheat from the chaff. The good news is that it can be done, and the below entries make up our 15 RPGs for PS2 (ranked from 15 to 1).  These amazing titles are sure to please any role playing enthusiast. Some of these options, dare we say, rise to the level of modern classics.  You can also find lots of PS2 on sale right here on our website! 15. Kingdom Hearts II The first “Kingdom Hearts” entry initially confused many gamers and reviewers by throwing Disney Characters into a “Final Fantasy” world. Kingdom Hearts II sticks with the same basic premise of the previous game,...

Spoiler note: This post contains plot spoilers about Borderlands and Borderlands 2 and, by default, spoilers about the characters in the upcoming Pre-Sequel who also appear in Borderlands 2. Spoiling Borderlands 1 for you might actually be doing you a favor, though. That ending’s terrible. With Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel right around the corner, I recently explained why the first two games are so hard to put down. You might notice that that post doesn’t talk about story at all. You don’t play Borderlands for the story. But—and this is coming from a gamer deeply interested in video game storytelling—that’s okay. Some games are fun enough that they can do just fine with no narrative interest whatsoever. Borderlands is one of those series. That being said, the ending of the first Borderlands was one of the bigger narrative train wrecks in recent gaming memory.  But to their credit, Gearbox admitted it, learned from it, and made the story and characters of Borderlands 2...

I recently finished a fifty-five-hour playthrough of Grand Theft Auto V. It’s a ridiculously fun game. It’s also can be a very disappointing game.  Unlike Grand Theft Auto IV, Grand Theft Auto V is a flawed masterpiece worth playing, thinking, and talking about whose good will never erase its bad and whose bad doesn’t, for me, overwhelm its good—it just cheapens it.   About ten hours into my Grand Theft Auto V playthrough My wife said to me, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you giggle as much as since you started playing this game.” And she was right. So many of the things that Grand Theft Auto IV almost got right were beautifully executed in Grand Theft Auto V. Driving (and piloting) was fun in its own right, and the different handling based on vehicle and terrain kept it exciting and strategically interesting. The quantity and quality of random things...

When it comes to games with stories, I’m a completionist. I’m a story completionist rather than a gaming completionist—once in a long while I’ll aim for 100% completion in a particularly great game, but mostly I’m content to do the main content and a selection of the side quest-y stuff.  But I almost always finish the main campaign of games I start. Or at least I used to. In the past couple of years, I’ve found myself giving up on games halfway through more and more often. Which puts me in decent company, as recent studies suggest that even among dedicated gamers, about 10% reach the ending of a given title and only about 1/3 of gamers finish even the most successful games. As I’ve gotten older and face more demands on my time, I’m more likely to put down a game that’s sort of fun but a big time commitment....

In 1941, the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges wrote a story called “The Garden of Forking Paths” that was basically a “wouldn’t it be cool” vision of a story that could include all of its different possible outcomes—when a decision was made, the story could follow each of the forking paths that result. Nearly 75 years later, Borges’ vision has come to glorious in the medium of video games. Games that give the player the agency to make story-impacting decisions are commonplace, popular, and dramatically interesting and represent the biggest innovation in storytelling since the rise of film as a narrative medium for telling stories with moving pictures (and, later, matching audio). Forking-path games (a genre often called “interactive fiction”) Like Adventure and the commercial Infocom games (Zork, A Mind Forever Voyaging, etc.), which featured optional content, variable sequencing, and often multiple endings and subplot outcomes. In the 1980s, multiple paths...