Hello reader! Happy hump day! Are you ready for some old news? What, you’re here for NEW news? Well tough. I’m too busy playing Arkham City to scour the internet for you. Besides, this is kind of hilarious. Either video game footage has gotten really realistic, or the editors / producers / every single person involved in the making of Britain’s ITV documentary “Exposure: Gaddafi and the IRA” are too lazy to double check the description and comments on the YouTube videos they download, because somehow footage from Arma II ended up in the doc. It would have been…
Author: Barb Steele
Here’s a trippy little game for you, a Half Life 2 mod called “The Stanley Parable” that was downloaded 100,000 in 3 weeks when it was released a couple months ago. It’s gotten a lot of well deserved buzz in the gaming world, and since I TAed one of creator Davey Wreden’s film classes at USC a while back, I was especially curious to check it out. It’s really better if you play the game with no preface. Just know that there are six potential endings, and I really recommend playing through to find them all. If you…
If you have female friends (or are the proud owner of your very own ladybits) you might have seen this article from CNN contributor and former Secretary of Education William J. Bennett popping up on your Facebook and Twitter feeds in the past week. It examines statistics which show that young women today are increasingly more well-educated, ambitious, and successful than their male counterparts. The big culprits, in Mr. Bennett’s opinion, are decaying social and moral values… and… waiiiiit for it… video games (oh snap! bet you didn’t expect THAT!). What are you waiting for? Off you…
If this were for real, I definitely wouldn’t be holding off on buying the 4S…
Thanks to my finicky gaming tastes, which drive me away from most FPS, RTS, and platformers, I’m excited when I find a new genre to explore. “The Cat and the Coup” is the first “documentary puzzle” game I’ve played, and it far exceeded my expectations of how historical events could be related in an entertaining way in an interactive environment. Hit the jump for all the deets.
Out of 446 submissions, thirty-six indie games have been selected as finalists for the 2011 IndieCade Festival in Culver City, CA October 6th-9th. Among the finalists are a couple of my top picks from this year’s E3, “Desktop Dungeons” and “Skulls of the Shogun”. Way to go! If you happen to be in L.A., go check it out! Check out the full press release after the jump.
Oh hai, reader! I didn’t know it was you. You know what’s great? Tommy Wiseau’s amazingly campy movie The Room. You know what’s even better? The incredibly campy game The Room Tribute! You haven’t heard of The Room, you say? Well, you’ve been missing out. It’s L.A.’s favorite “midnight movie” cult classic, filling theaters once a month with rowdy fans (actual celebrities and comedians included) who throw spoons and footballs and yell callback lines in unison. It’s the dramatic version of Rocky Horror Picture Show, except without any of the awesome songs, and much worse writing. It’s so bad…
I came across this simple Flash game during last week’s internet wanderings. It was part of the Neoludica exhibition. I don’t know whether or not Italians actually do it better, but this game is pretty neat. Produced in six days for the Experimental Gameplay Project by Molleindustria, this little indie is a short, existential commentary on alienation and the mundane. It’s also a pretty sweet interactive music video. Your routine is to get up, get dressed, go to work, and sit at your cubical – wash, rinse, repeat – and the fun of the game comes from the discovery…
SCIENCE shows that video games can cause serious injuries! Thank god the internet is here to warn us of our doom. (Because really, are a couple of pictures going to stop us?) Here’s a sample from Game Arthritis: Check out the site, and then come back to me, baby. I’ll be waiting for you right after the jump.
Ah, this game brings me back. This is the sort of innovative game we haven’t seen since… well, since 1989. A simulation game that speaks to the little guy, like one of my favorite 80s games, Paperboy. A game with hooks like TOTALLY RAD celebrities, a SUPER COOL story and ENDLESS PLAY. Oh boy! Because why play a game that can transport you out of your shitty life into an epic fantasy world when you can play a game that replicates someone else’s shitty life? Enjoy the splendor that is Valet Parking 1989, and hit the jump for…
It’s back to school time, which means no more time for games with long, sprawling storylines. Instead I turn to quick bite games to carry me through the semester, phone games, Flash games, games with levels I can play for two minutes and still feel satisfied. Now for some reason I’ve never gotten caught up in the Angry Birds craze. Intellectually I understand the appeal, since it’s a perfect bite-sized game. Goddamn, though, it can be hard. Like throwing-wet-paper-towels-against-a-brick-wall-and-hoping-the-wall-falls-over hard. The last thing I want to do on my coffee break is get frustrated enough to throw my phone against…
I checked out few of the games at IndieCade which, if you haven’t heard of it, is an international festival of independent games. This year was their five year anniversary at E3, and their booth showcased 18 of the games which have been submitted to the Culver City festival in October, including video games, tabletop games, and installations. Check out the “Twister Race” installation: All the games I saw were pretty neat, a real breath of fresh air in terms of art and gameplay, after all of the mainstream stuff you see on the E3 floor. I’ll highlight a couple…
For the first time in my life, I am not enthused for a Final Fantasy title — namely, Final Fantasy XIII-2. There are several possible reasons for this. Maybe it’s the cringing flashbacks the overly-numerical name sparks, so reminiscent of Final Fantasy X2, a game that I absolutely detest. Maybe it’s the fact that I got bored half way through XIII and dread another game with the same rapid tunnel style of narrative and lack of open world exploration. Maybe I’m just finally getting old and tired of the franchise (God forbid!). Despite my reservations, I gave it a shot…
I’ve never really followed how the 1980s arcade games I used to play have evolved in modern gaming. Usually when I think of games like Galaga, I’m imagining my childhood dentist’s office. Yep, my dentist had one of those game tables with a whole variety of arcade classics. A great way to distract yourself from the fact that you’re about to get your teeth drilled, but still, not really a way to foster a fond connection to those. Galaga Dimensions blew those bad memories right out of the water. The E3 demo offered 5 levels, and the guy was very…
Sort of a weird title to review on a grown up gaming site, but this game was too adorable to pass by. The graphics were beautiful and everyone playing looked like they were having a blast. The story follows Elmo, Cookie Monster, and other Sesame Street friends as they find a living storybook called “Once Upon a Monster” which draws them in. The players move through the storybook chapter by chapter and page by page, as the characters try to befriend the monsters they meet. Hit the jump for some screenshots and a video of people playing the game.
And of course, dragons. I’m the E3 newbie on the crew, so rather than concentrate on hitting up specific games today, I spent most of my time soaking in the event itself and admiring the outrageous displays. As anyone who has ever followed E3 knows, this conference is huge. All of the big players have built themselves booths the size of miniature castles, full of game demos, private meeting rooms and viewing areas, and of course, ostentatious displays. Hell, they even have a smoke machine up in the rafters pumping out all sorts of misty atmosphere.
Sonic Generations demo! Aaron Webber demos the game. Break plays Act I And Act II
Dear Fallout: New Vegas, It’s been almost one year since we last saw each other. “It’s not you, it’s me.” That’s what I told you back then, after that long summer. “I’m sorry, this just won’t work out. I’ve got school. I’ll be too busy for your open world, your complicated multi-part quests, your endless PSN trophies.” We both know why I really left, though. I was on the rebound, and you were just a fling. I had just finished Fallout 3 and was looking for the same sort of thrill, and then there you were, a dead ringer for…
Let me preface this by saying I think the people at Valve are geniuses. Their games are consistently awesome, with brilliant writing and fantastic voice acting, and the games themselves are unique and compulsively playable. I beat Portal 2 within two days of it’s release (took me 12 hours… yeah, I know, I’m slow) and for the first time maybe ever I’ve gone back and replayed chapters just for the hell of it – to get more achievements, hunt down some Easter Eggs, or just to muck around with the developer console. Even the ARG (alternate reality game) marketing campaign…
Big life changes always make me a bit nostalgic, and as I’m getting dangerously close to finishing grad school and being chucked into the cold harsh real world, I’ve started revisiting old childhood loves, like listening to David Bowie mix CDs, painting my nails black, and watching episodes of Buffy on Netflix. That nostalgia is influencing my gaming habits as well, with mixed results. While blasting Ziggy Stardust will bring me joy no matter if I’m playing it off of a cassette tape or my iPhone, games, it would seem, aren’t quite so eternal.
I’ve played around with a number of RPGs for the iPhone (Dungeon Hunter: meh; Song Summoner: unbearably awful). Ash has been my favorite, by leaps and bounds. I mean, I actually beat it. And not only did I beat it, I’ve been playing it pretty compulsively for the past week, every time I’ve had 30 seconds or a half hour free to run around. Hit the jump for my full breakdown.
…half-assed because I didn’t finish the game, and probably never will, which kind of shocks me. As a fan of all things RPG and Disney, the combination of the two usually equals instant obsession and a loss of several months for me (Kingdom Hearts…. ahh, now that was a good summer). It’s not that I hated Epic Mickey, per se. There’s a whole lot to like about it.