Blazing Saddles, The Three Amigos, perhaps WestWorld. These are the great Western spoofs, and now games have their own parody of the gritty genre about the American West’s sharpshooters, Sheriffs, and tumbleweeds. It’s called Even Cowgirls Bleed, a short, funny, poignant adventure game from Christin
So many videogame to film adaptations end up in the dustpan that we wouldn’t blame you for not taking seriously the big-screen version of Deux Ex: Human Revolution. But, it sounds like the film will soon be going into production, so we felt free to speculate. What I’ve come to realize is that there
Possibly the only live-action role-playing game (long for LARP) cool enough for me to actually consider playing, IRL Shooter (short for in-real-life) is the popular game native to Australia that blissfully unites laser-tag, a haunted house, and the campaign mode of first-person shooters. If the pros
Diablo 3 is a deep and brilliantly spit-shined game. A work in progress for over ten years, it was developed by a massive team who exhausted a massive budget to satisfy a massive fan-base. It is pontifical and grandiose, to say the least. And that’s why it’s ironic that Miya Omaru, an unknown indie
In the wake of Newtown, state legislatures in Connecticut and Missouri are considering additional taxes on violent videogames, lumping our favorite digital pastime in a category alongside slot machines, soda, smokes, booze, and Prince Albert in the can. In an excellently informed article over at Th
In all the hoopla that surrounded Sony’s PlayStation 4 conference, the creators of Little Big Planet showed off a newfangled tech demo that lets players sculpt statues, which vaguely look like the Venus of Willendorf. Judging from what was shown, you take a Move motion-controller and dutifully sketc
With console makers intent on selling games digitally, it certainly looks like standalone game shops are a dying breed. In a fond retelling of his days working at Babbage’s, a former major game retailer ubiquous in shopping malls across America in the 90s, Lee Hutchinson says that is a sad thing, th
If the rest of Kentucky Route Zero turns out to be anything like the first chapter, the game will go down as a dark, strange, slick, mature, artistic, and mysterious venture unlike any other. My theory is that’s because while most adventure game designers pull from older adventure game designers for
After seeing this brilliant arcade cabinet that pours the winner a pint of pilsner, I’m suddenly optimistic about the future of drinking games. Called the Barcade, the machine was made by an ad agency to promote Big Boss Brewing Company of Raleigh, North Carolina’s sweet carbonated golden brews. It
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 wasn’t so much about the Cold War, or a response to Solaris, or an answer to the question concerning the misuse of technology. To me, anyway, it was about interior design. To this day, I still dream of finding at an estate sale Dave’s podlike swivel chairs, which captured the
Over the weekend, The Writers Guild of America, who you may remember as the labor union responsible for the Hollywood writers’ strike a few years ago, got together to hand out some avian-shaped trophies for best screenplays, and as always they were amenable enough to include screenplays for videogam
It’s no secret that China has a constrictive grip on what it’s citizens are allowed to access over the internet. Google’s struggles to operate within the nation were prominent, and residents within the country can’t use social networks like Facebook or Twitter, instead relying on state-sponsored var
A jaw-dropping collection of games, chockablock with more videogameania in one place than this games writer has ever seen, was put up for auction on eBay with a starting price of $575,000.00 but ended without receiving a bid. What gives? – – – The sale was for some 6850 games, 330 systems, 220 co
The sad fact of the matter is, like the AR-15, the RQ-1 Predator and “drones” in general have achieved a notorious cachet. That’s why you are reading this article about a 1:97 scale, die-cast toy version of the winged death-machine — currently out of stock on Amazon. That’s why I’m writing it. And t
The history of the West is a violent, teeth-gnashing, and unholy succession through the centuries. And while empire-builder games let us toy with the past — to stroke our chins and speculate what if Rome had been defeated, say, in the War against Nabis in 195 BC — they’re typically a war of attritio
There’s nothing that will get two stolid, amenable, friendly people at each others throats faster than the issue of climate change. Speaking as a liberal living in the South, this is a topic I’ve learned not to broach because you will not win, even after the entire island nation of Maldives has been
Valve certainly aren’t gun-shy about ousting their best-known talent. Though critics and fans admiration of Portal approached adulation, designer Kim Swift soon parted ways with the company. And you might have heard that after only a year Jeri Ellsworth — the quirky electric engineer who began her c
People often ask why games aren’t more ambition with in terms of scope. The reason is because things break. A lot. – – – Even with games that give you a good deal of agency, like Mass Effect or The Walking Dead, your path always pivots back into an overarching throughline. And when I profiled Ivan
Like many, I’ve always had a fascination with Tetris. In Indie Game the Movie, Fez designer Phil Fish says that, alongside The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros., Tetris completes the trifecta, and he’s right. There is something about the futile search for perfection in the inexorable rain of twi
Everyone is pretty much in universal agreement that Aliens: Colonial Marines, the fresh-off-the-presses shooter of the Ridley Scott ilk, is unapologetic schlock, and it is currently getting buffeted in reviews. Complaints about quality abound, and one reviewer claims to have completed a level withou
There are few things more unrevealing, and I say unnecessary, in gaming marketing campaigns than the teaser. These are the mysterious websites with ambiguous imagery and countdowns to the reveal of a game that we don’t know if we want or should even care about. If we’re lucky, as with the case of Sq
A few years ago, when retro games were making a comeback, and new games were frequently “nostalgic” of games from the ‘80s and ‘90s, I admit I thought it was pretty great. Games looked like something I played as a kid on my huge analog tube television while sitting on shag carpet. We got a new class
Dr. Jeff Brand is a Professor of Interactive Media at Bond University in Gold Coast, Australia, and his Minecraft character looks more or less like he does. It’s balding, has two black square eyes, and wears a wide toothy, gaping smile. This is relevant because Brand had his students replicate in Mi
