Review
The Kill Screen Review: Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, a history of violence
The new military shooter from Treyarch helps us do our dirty work.
Joseph Bernstein
News
The Ocarina that almost wasn’t: my greatest Thanksgiving game memory
It was the half-day Wednesday before Thanksgiving break, 1998, and I had Zelda on my mind. From the moment I woke up until the last seconds of Mr. Sotella’s 8th grade English class announced four and a half days of unencumbrance, I had fixed in my brain the golden cartridge. I had planned, preordere
News
What would that Halo movie have looked like? Close your eyes and imagine
Remember the Halo movie? The one written by Alex Garland, produced by Peter Jackson, and directed by Neill “District 9” Blomkamp? Marty Sliva definitely does. Over at 1up, Silva closes his eyes and imagines what the movie – the script of which is widely available – would have looked like: Despite st
News
Introducing Drugbound, the game that advocates legalizing pot
Opinions in America about marijuana are changing. Voters in Colorado and Washington decriminalized possession of small amounts of the drug, and mainstream bloggers like Andrew Sullivan have adopted the end of “prohibition” a pet topic. Into the mix comes Dave Homan, a 35-year-old Omaha IT specialist
News
Is a new wave of non-terrible video game movies on the way?
The obvious answer is: no, you stupid child. Decades of absolute horseshit constitutes a preponderence of evidence against the idea of a competent, let alone compelling, film based on a video game. But, in the past few weeks, we’ve gotten news that two of the world’s most compelling and intense youn
News
Man with ironic name gets nabbed for counterfeiting games
Lawmen gave Justin Success-Brooks more than two years in jail for selling counterfeit Nintendo games. Success-Brooks, of Foxley Lane, Purley, sold thousands of games cartridges for Nintendo’s DS and DSi handheld consoles including a “very substantial” trade with buyers in China, Croydon Crown Court
Review
The Kill Screen Review: Halo 4, which gets everything wrong, except the most important thing
The fourth game in the science fiction series is a baffling, bland, repetitive, incredibly excellent experience.
News
Wait, when did Halo and Mass Effect become the Qur’an and the Torah?
Last night, after I beat the single-player campaign in Halo 4, a curious message appeared on the screen. It read: Every great journey begins with a single step. This is our beginning. Thanks for trusting us with the universe you love and joining us on this epic adventure. –343 Industries Yesterday,
Article
Is it even possible to define games?
Three of gaming’s brightest theoretical minds ponder what turns out to be a huge question.
Article
The woman behind League of Legends wants undead death knights as complex as Don Draper
Christina Norman, lead creative developer at Riot Games, thinks narrative depth is the way to keep her game on top.
News
A tribute to the TI-83 games that got me through trigonometry, and got me a C+ in trigonometry
The news that Texas Instruments is adding color to its ubiquitous graphing calculators brought streaming back a torrent of gaming memories. What Dan Rubinstein never realized as he struggled to communicate to me the principles of trigonometry was that I was engaged in the management of a large-scale
Interview
A conversation about Wii U with Jeff Ryan, the man who wrote the book on Nintendo
Is the new console a stopgap in Nintendo’s grand plans for a holographic game system? Who wants a Nintendo social network? Why is Mario in timeout? And much more.