Review
This game about leadership uses Kinect to project your body as a giant stick figure onto the screen. According to Richard Clark, in doing so it creates a rift between your power as a player and the value of a tiny blip’s life.
Review
Bethesda’s new role-playing game is finally free enough to be all things to everyone, even those with a dim and narrow view of humanity. Filipe Salgado looks at the why and how of self-expression in Skyrim.
Review
A new interactive fiction game builds a surreal world out of metaphor. So why does it feel all too real? Jason Johnson interrogates the subject.
Reset
When did Mortal Kombat get so tame? J.P. Grant on why the archetypal arcade series is the square peg in the round hole of modern platforms.
Review
In contrast to the urgency of Arkham Asylum, the latest Batman installment nearly suffocates with its diversions. Filipe Salgado chronicles his turn in Arkham City.
Review
A new iPad word game by independent developer Zach Gage illustrates some fundamental conflicts about operating within game systems, and then writing about them. Jason Johnson tries to untangle the letters.
Review
Jon Irwin meditates on the pink blob, whose latest game on the Nintendo Wii is an easy, frictionless antidote to the zeitgeist’s interactive murder.
Review
Drew Millard uses some complicated metaphors to describe the also-complicated physics puzzle game iBlast Moki 2.
Review
Is Dead Island lacking the blood of a real horror? Kyle Lemmon examines the territory where the mechanics of gameplay distract from genuine fear.
Review
The new dancing game from the Rock Band creators might make you happy, self-conscious, tired, or all of the above. Can you picture yourself in our illustrated take?
Review
Why the post-apocalypse isn’t all about you.
Review
A game about underwater exploration ironically drowns the player in its own vast world. Jason Johnson wants to chart new territory but finds his mind wandering.