Review: Fruit Ninja Kinect
Discovering friendship by karate-chopping an imaginary piece of fruit. Jason Johnson field tests Fruit Ninja Kinect, the game of juicy assassination.
Jason Johnson
Review: Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Cyberpunk role-playing game Deus Ex: Human Revolution weighs in on philosophical questions of technology and humanity. But can it transcend the conflicts and contradictions of its subject matter?
Review: Trauma
Krystian Majewski’s debut game evades overt mechanics, feeling, and meaning. Jason Johnson explains why this is a good thing.
Review: Fotonica
Jason Johnson starts to feel like a mechanical man in Fotonica—and it’s not a good feeling.
Review: Realm of the Mad God
Jason Johnson describes how indie MMO Realm of the Mad God brings out the ugliest in us. And why that’s mostly a beautiful thing.
Review: From Dust
The new god game from Another World creator Éric Chahi takes the wide view. Jason Johnson considers what is lost.
Review: Deflex
Jason Johnson bounces through the mesmerizing—and esoteric—psychedelia of Jeff Minter’s Deflex.
Review: Shadows of the Damned
Goichi Suda and Shinji Mikami’s new horror adventure is rough and outright broken in places. Jason Johnson explains why that’s not so much a problem for Grasshopper Manufacture.
Review: PicoPicoFighters
Looking for a quick distraction while waiting in line? A new iOS shoot ’em up has even less time for you. Jason Johnson reviews the murderous PicoPicoFighters.
Review: 1-bit Ninja
Jason Johnson explains why 1-bit Ninja will never live up to—let alone surpass—the 1989 Game Boy title it tries so hard to imitate.
Review: Trouble Witches Neo!
Something’s lost in translation in this tribute to tributes to shoot-’em-ups. Jason Johnson wonders how many licks it takes to get to the center of this otaku confection. (The answer: a bazillion neon bullets.)
Review: Carcassonne
Jason Johnson schemes his way to victory in a tight head-to-head battle of Carcassonne, the boardgame-turned-videogame where the self-interest and greed of land ownership make for strange bedfellows.
Review: The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile
James Silva turns oppressive machinery into a dance with death. We review his latest blood-spattered cyberpunk fantasy.
Review: Portal 2
More story, more laughs, more portals. Portal 2 hits all the right notes when it comes to delivering a bigger, better Portal. Jason Johnson explains how it gets away with being more than a sequel.
Radical Dreamers
Timothy Leary isn’t remembered for his contributions to videogames. The controversial pop theorist’s body of work consists of exactly one game and a handful of prototypes. For Leary, the trouble with making finished products was a matter of self-restraint. Leary had lofty ideas about the role and fu
Review: 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
One of the best compliments I can give 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors is that it has nice-sounding text. (After all, it is a sound novel, marking the fiction-focused genre’s maiden voyage to the West.) The dialogue spoken by the game’s nine personalities isn’t voiced, but conveyed in a pl
Review: The Dream Machine
“SURREALISM, n. Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express—verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner—the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral conc