The Walking Dead: Episode 1 - A New Day Review (Multi-Platform)
The living dead are stumbling down I-85. Black helicopters fly overheard. You are in handcuffs, stuck in the back of a police car. Welcome to the end of your world.... read more
Xenoblade Chronicles Review (Wii)
I’m glad Xenoblade Chronicles is on the Wii. If it were on the 360 or the PS3, then you could see my achievement list (Xenoblade Chronicles has achievements, which give you an experience point boost for unlocking them) and realize that I haven’t finished this game.... read more
Skullgirls Review (PSN/XBLA)
Skullgirls is the first fighting game ever made that wants you to play it like a fighting game. Most fighting games don’t care at all if you play them like a fighting game; they leave that to the people who have been playing them for decades. Some occasionally give a lazy, boring tutorial, asking you to press buttons every minute or so without explaining how they will ever become important, as if the game was an indescribably slow paced remake of Guitar Hero.... read more
Analogue: A Hate Story Review (PC/Mac)
On the most basic level, Analogue: A Hate Story is a visual novel, the kind normally filled with attractive anime-inspired characters and the promise of romantic entanglements. It’s much more than that, though, which isn’t a surprise, as it’s from the same developer as Don’t Take It Personally, Babe, It’s Just Ain’t Your Story, a game that offered a chilling look at how social media could be used to compromise privacy.... read more
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition Review (360/PC)
In videogames, players are, by design, prime donne. Even more than in static art, games pamper the consumer’s id, reminding him (for example) that his battle prowess saved the immobile townsfolk from the sedentary sea beast, that his infinite wisdom preempted the poisonous bog with anti-poison, and that his masterful stroke (pressing A) set into sequence the artificial justice of the “good ending”. How unfathomable, the game declares, is his well-timed save tactic! How divine his perusal of the Achievements!... read more
Fez Review (XBLA)
In videogames, we have to interact with surfaces, and use trial and error to construct a mental model of what lies below—how high we can jump, how far we can fall. The game knows this information to an exact degree. We can only approximate. This is part of the challenge of the platformer: first you figure out where you can go, then you go there.... read more
Silent Hill: Downpour Review (Multi-Platform)
When the original Silent Hill titles took abstractions of purgatory, character casts of mysteriously-burdened sinners and the visual language of personal hells and made them into games, it created a take on the horror genre that deservedly installed itself in history.... read more
Way Review (PC/Mac)
Way is a game about people. It’s about friends and strangers, about family members, about anyone willing to take twenty minutes to explore the surprising results of a 12-week student project. A brief yet haunting experience, Way is a co-operative side-scrolling platformer that hinges on a simple conceit: you can see things that your partner cannot. In order to “win” the game, you will have to help one another. There’s a catch.... read more
Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City Review (Multi-Platform)
Another in a long line of disappointing Resident Evil offshoots.... read more
Yakuza: Dead Souls Review (PS3)
For years now, the Yakuza series has had a convincing claim to the title of the best games no one was playing. After the commercial failure of the first game, back in 2006, Sega barely bothered to localize the sequels, including nothing more than English subtitles for the American market. Yet even that worked to its advantage. The Yakuza games are so strange, and so defiantly Japanese, that English-language vocals actually detract from the experience. These are games that must be experienced in their purest form.... read more
Kid Icarus: Uprising Review (3DS)
Where’s the fan outrage over this ending? Oh, right, sometimes a game is just a game. There is a story to Kid Icarus: Uprising, and characters talk to one another with real human voices, but that could all disappear and nobody would notice any difference.... read more
MLB 2K12 Review (Multi-Platform)
Drew Millard explains why baseball games are basically RPGs for jocks.... read more
Alan Wake's American Nightmare Review (XBLA)
Alan Wake understands the power of words. In 2010’s Alan Wake the titular best-selling horror writer lived through a novel he was forced to write by a black cloud dredged up from the bottom of a lake. In the downloadable follow-up American Nightmare he’s stuck in a TV show he wrote. We’re lucky he’s never written a videogame, or else the feedback would melt our 360s into toxic puddles.... read more
Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land Review (iOS)
The First World War demonstrated humanity’s capacity for self-destruction on a scale never before seen. The introduction of aerial combat, trench warfare, and chemical weapons, among other cruel innovations, contributed to a death toll that topped 15 million and left much of Europe an utterly devastated wasteland.... read more
Ziggurat Review (iOS)
A number of excellent iOS games have come out recently that can be summarized by the following: “Here is a thing that is fun to do. Do it while we try to kill you. Your performance will be judged on how many times you do the fun thing before you die.” (Now that I’ve written that out, that’s sort of profound.)... read more
Journey Review (PS3)
Thatgamecompany presents an abstract take on the hero’s journey.... read more
Asura's Wrath Review (Multi-Platform)
I think this is what anime is like. I mean, not all anime. But some. Science fiction blended with history and religion and lots of shouting and giants and robots and explosions. My anthropology of religion classes are almost a decade behind me, but I’m going to guess that the fleet of spaceships led by eight demigods (of which Asura is one) fighting space squids is, if not an invention of the game, at best a loose adaptation. The Brahmastra of the Mahabharata is definitely not a giant half-man floating in space.... read more
Prom Week Review (Browser / Facebook)
I never went to prom. I know this may sound shocking – a video game fan who grew up to become a critic, who also didn’t do the normal high school traditions?!? Strange but true! Really, the only positive associations I have with prom come from a single episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. So how on earth does a game named Prom Week hold any appeal to me? Two words: “social physics.”... read more
Oil Rush Review (PC/Mac/Linux)
Oil Rush is a counter-argument to the idea that real-time strategy games don’t have enough strategy. It attempts to simplify the style by slightly relaxing player control and adding in tower defense components. Combined with an interesting premise – a water-flooded future earth has factions squabbling over oil – and delightful graphics for an indie game, it has a lot to recommend it at first glance. But it has problems, too, largely resulting from over-simplification. By only trying to simplify some of the tactics used in the game without balancing other components, Oil Rush consigns itself to be known as... read more
Resident Evil: Revelations Review (3DS)
Capcom took a weird turn when marketing Resident Evil: Revelations.... read more
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