The Leaderboard: When "Hard" Games Aren't Actually Hard

Baseball scout and Dark Souls fan Kevin Goldstein looks at how difficulty is relative.  read more

Bit Player: Over The Top

Over the past few years, a new marketing buzzphrase has taken hold in the world of gaming: "Over The Top." Those three words contain a plethora of implications—this game is going to be raunchy and violent, unrealistic and unserious. It will inspire joy in your inner sixteen year-old and chagrin when your significant other enters the room. And just maybe, it will even be… controversial. And so publishers, developers and spokespeople have started to make a big to-do about a game's over-the-topness. "We have identified the limit of taste," they seem to be saying, "and we have purposefully surpassed it."...  read more

Nine Ridiculously Oversized Videogame Weapons

There can't be many things more fun for videogame designers than dreaming up weapons. In the real world, building a 500-lb. shoulder-harnessed rocket launcher is fairly impractical, but...  read more

Bayonetta Review (Xbox 360)

Developer: Platinum Games Publisher: Sega Platforms: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3These boots are made for clockin' It's one thing to go over the top, it's quite another to go so far over the top that you start going back down the other side. But the third-person action game Bayonetta doesn't just go that far, it keeps on going until it swings back around and goes over the top a second time. It really is just that ridiculous. That gloriously, unrepentantly ridiculous....  read more