Review: Midnight Club: Los Angeles (Xbox 360)
Developer: Rockstar San DiegoPublisher: Rockstar GamesPlatforms: Xbox 360, Playstation 3Flying on four wheels in the City of AngelsWhy bother visiting the car dealership when technology now lets you shop from the comfort of your own home? Last night I picked up a 2006 Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder. It cost me $175,000, which is roughly the same amount my wife and I spent on our house. Thirty-year payment plans are a hassle so I opted to pay in cash. Granted, I don’t usually have that kind of money lying around, but I’d just made the painfully tough decision to part with my... read more
Interview: Todd Howard (Fallout 3 Game Director)
With the October 28th release of Fallout 3 less than a week away, we spoke to Todd Howard of Bethesda Game Studios about the company's latest epic RPG. Our conversation touched on the game's post-apocalyptic setting, Bethesda's approach to tackling game projects of such monumental scope, and the challenge of creating a wasteland environment that's lonely enough to have emotional impact but doesn't grow boring to players.... read more
Review: Fable II (Xbox 360)
Developer: Lionhead StudiosPublisher: Microsoft Game StudiosPlatform: Xbox 360Long-awaited RPG tests your glee thresholdA wise old bard once shut his eyes, entered a trance-like state and advised his audience in a cloud-piercing tenor, “Doooon’t stop…bee-lieeeevin’!” Though his words echo down to the present from tens upon tens of years ago, the message they carry is a timeless one. Early in Fable II, while your character is but a young street urchin in the mythical land of Albion, you and your sister encounter a traveling salesman hawking a magical music box he claims will grant a single wish when played. Though you... read more
Review: Rock Band 2 (Xbox 360)
Developer: Harmonix Music SystemsPublisher: MTV GamesPlatforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PS2, WiiRock Band 2 is therapy for your inner rock snob—that sneering music cynic that resides in many of us. You know the one. The jerk who shivers every time an overplayed relic pops up in classic-rock radio rotation. Or the naysayer who loves telling people that their favorite band hasn't made a great record since the '90s. See, Rock Band 2, just like its predecessor, has a way of making players come to appreciate songs outside the taste boundaries they've erected over the years. ... read more
Interview: Will Wright (Spore Creator)
Will Wright’s Spore seemed destined for controversy. The game is, after all, about evolution. And we know that a significant chunk of the American public believes that a loving God created the heavens, earth and everything in between. Yet the game has shipped with nary a peep from detractors. The only cannonball fired in the game’s direction—a fairly whacked-out blog called Anti-Spore—turned out to be a hoax (and a Rickroll, to add insult to injury). Regardless, we were eager to speak with Wright and discuss the intriguing push and pull at work in a "God game" that’s goal is to... read more
Review: Mega Man 9 (Wii)
No one in my generation who grew up playing video games needs to be reminded that the production qualities and technological muscle of contemporary video games have reached once-unimaginable levels. There was a time back in the halcyon 8-bit days of yore when too many Octarocks crawling around the screen in Legend of Zelda caused your game to lapse into a lurching slow-motion cadence until things cleared out a bit. You could practically hear Scotty’s muffled brogue coming from inside your NES console: “I’m givin’ her all she’s got, Cap’n.” And 'all she had' was enough. We were too busy... read more
Unglued: The Casual-Gaming Olympics
Major League Gaming, or MLG, is a professional video gaming organization founded in 2002. Its tournaments draw the hardest of the hardcore out of their dank, Doritos-strewn warrens to compete for bushels of prize money, lucrative endorsement deals, and the envy of carbuncular, homophobic, Vitamin-D deficient fragsters across the world. (The hardcore gamers Paste queried for this article declined to comment, standing on the principle that magazines are “gay.”)... read more
Sam Potts' Geek-Formation Flowchart
Mmm....Gandalf, Mountain Dew and Hot Pockets. Delicious.Mr. Potts, we salute you. In the vulcan manner, of course.**Click on the image to see a larger version... read more
NetHack: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Death
Our memory has grown a bit hazy lately with the glut of cookie-cutter, loot-based RPGs that have carved a wide swathe across the gaming landscape. For many, Diablo is the earliest incarnation of the dungeon crawler that readily comes to mind. Diablo, iconic as it may be, is forever indebted to a game that came nearly a decade before and set the gold standard for hack ’n’ slash RPGs, Nethack, a game that is simultaneously more complicated than any other game out there, yet almost small enough to fit on a single 3.5” diskette. As a representative of your deity,... read more
This Title Brought To You By Nabisco!
My explorers were underdeveloped, but I’d spent my meager gold supply on the strongest armor and weaponry I could, and spread it amongst the party to minimize collateral damage as they endeavored into a dungeon they might not all survive. The going was treacherous but manageable; the healers, in back, tossed regenerative spells to the truncheon-wielding marauders on the front line, as my ranged-weapon users chucked arrows and bombs into the fray from safe distance. At once we came upon a mighty dragon, and I was unprepared for its fiery countenance, and breath. Down went my front line of fighters,... read more
E3 2008 (Video games and stuff like that)
If I ever get jaded about video games, somebody please slap me...hard. This year's installment of the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles is winding down and there's enough exciting stuff on the way to keep you crossing out calendar days in red Sharpie from now till eternity. When Bethesda Softworks' post-apocalyptic epic Fallout 3 (pictured above) arrives this fall, I will be calling in sick every day until I a) get fired for lying, or 2) get sick for real and still get fired. Or maybe I'll just do what I did with Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: play until... read more
You Don't Know, Jack
It’s a good thing anti-gaming attorney Jack Thompson doesn’t give a damn.In 2005, when the “Hot Coffee” scandal broke regarding sexual content (inaccessible to players) left on the extra disc space in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, he was among the first voices of outrage, yelling to all who would listen that the downfall of civilization was nigh, and that we could subvert the catastrophe if we’d just forget about the First Amendment and get on board with governmental legislation of the gaming industry.... read more
This Title Is Rated "I" For Immature
What hasn’t shifted is the public perception of games as being just for kids. Whenever violent or sexual content in gaming is brought up in the media, it is universally accompanied by some blowhard espousing the haggard old platitude, “Won’t someone think of the children?” as if it’s still relevant or fresh. read more
Whither Accountability?
By: Justin Cooper Not long ago, Chuck Klosterman wrote an editorial for Esquire which explored gaming’s noticeable dearth of a true critical voice. Certainly there are review sections in gaming magazines and websites, but more often than not they focus on tech jargon and system specs, serving more of a consumer advice function than of true criticism of a game’s place in the world into which it was born. The great films can be discussed in that context; the American Film Institute has made a cottage industry of just such discussions, in numbered lists meant to engender debate. Why does... read more
The Art of Scapegoating
By: Justin Cooper We’ve grown weary from battle. We try to keep a level head, stay calm in the face of adversity. We remember Bunker Hill, and Prescott’s famous advice, “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes.” But we see the enemy closing in on all sides, and it’s suffocating and saddening in equal terms. The “we” I speak of are gamers, and the war we fight is seemingly never-ending, for as long as there are politicians and media willing to pervert a misunderstood hobby beyond reason in order to make a good story or stump speech,... read more
Press X Chromosome To Continue
By: Justin Cooper I was fourteen, and nervous. She looked the same age, but far more self-assured. And gorgeous. I dropped my quarters into Street Fighter II, selecting Guile to face off against her. Ken (with whom she’d just dispatched two other knock-kneed dudes before my turn), and I had roughly three seconds to ponder whether chivalry dictated my keeping it close, before the match was over and I was just the latest boy this siren had laid waste to in the arcade that day. Not too long ago this tale would’ve been met with a raised eyebrow, The Myth... read more
Heeeeello Halo!
I consider myself a pretty hardcore gamer. I’ve got multiple consoles and at least one handheld and stacks of games cluttering one corner of my living room. I regularly light incense and bow prostrate before the guy who came up with the idea of an Italian plumber jumping on turtles in a toadstool kingdom (mushrooms indeed!). Even still, for the past several years Halo was something that other people stayed up all night playing. I had my precious RPGs and Action Adventures—my Final Fantasys, my Zeldas, my Elder Scrollses—and decided I had no interest in first-person shooters. However, after recently... read more
The 20 Best Gadgets of the Decade…
The 17 Best Romantic Comedies This Decade
The 20 Best Live Acts of the…
The 25 Best Movie Performances of the…
B.O.B. - Put Me On
Kim Taylor - Days Like this
Blind Pilot - The Story I Heard
Punch Brothers - Punch Brothers at CMJ
David Bazan - Hard To Be
Anya Marina - Whatever You Like
