Review
The ever-popular genre of medieval role-playing continues its downward march with Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, a collaboration between game-design heavyweight Ken Rolston, fantasy luminary R.A. Salvatore, and comics auteur Todd McFarlane. Michael Thomsen finds the results less than uninspiring; th
Review
Regardless of one’s familiarity of the game, some sports games just fall flat. Filipe Salgado paints a picture of why NFL Blitz won’t have Madden worrying about competition anytime soon.
Review
A collaboration between two of gaming’s most esoteric creators, Terry Cavanagh and Stephen Lavelle, deals with child abuse, rejection, and death. But it’s more broadly a short story about irreversibility. Lana Polansky explains how the game gets its hook in you in a matter of minutes.
Review
If we have come to expect choice in games, has the modern player forgotten about shared experiences? Drew Millard endures the latest Final Fantasy epic, a game that reaches for a free narrative but makes a bit of a stretch.
Review
This game about helping a family find itself wants to be lovable—yet is frequently the opposite. Lana Polansky explains how a few small, but resounding, design oversights brought the author’s meaningful metaphors crashing down.
Review
Do multiplayer games bring us closer together, or push us farther apart? Now on its seventh lap, the Mario Kart series introduces some bits and pieces of social networking to mix things up. Jon Irwin recalls furiously racing against friends after school in the original Mario Kart, and wonders what i
Review
Can politics really be gamified? Should they really be gamified? Lana Polansky plays the new Flash game Fear is Vigilance and finds herself revisiting her apathy over meaningless causes.
Review
A game about racing across the streets of America ought to be gripping and chaotic. That’s why Need for Speed: The Run does away with the rules and fairness of a real car race. So how does it end up feeling confined and joyless?
Review
Chances are you’ve heard of The Sims, Will Wright’s mega-hit about living, having feelings, and dying. What happens when that dollhouse game meets Facebook, a social experiment of a very different character? Filipe Salgado argues it’s a match made in hell.
Review
In this double review on updated franchises, Jason Johnson writes on how Aliens: Infestation happily conjures the memory of watching his first R-rated movie, while Filipe Salgado suggests that Space Marines conjures nothing at all.
Review
Lana Polansky takes a ride through space in Niall Moody’s Christmas-inspired game, and has to get off sooner than she thought.
Review
Jason Johnson steps onto Sega’s newest roller coaster, and discusses which parts make him want to step off.