Every good story needs a love interest, and it should come as no surprise that Portal had one with some very comical overtones. The Weighted Companion Cube has captured the hearts of millions? hundreds of thousands that have played the game, myself included, and now can be purchased as lovable merch on t-shirts, or [...]

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Just about every game hits a point where they need to start talking about fine tuning the balance of how their combat works, and oftentimes, guns are usually brought up as the proper way to get the balance ball rolling. Normally, this is a pretty good argument to base a balancing conversation on, but [...]

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As far as epic level hoppers go, Cave Story might have been legendary for its day, but there’s a really hot new web game making the rounds, called You Have to Burn the Rope. A classic 16-bit throwback retro level hopper, every minute of it a satisfying romp into childhood nostalgia.
There’s been a lot [...]

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The first time I saw GlaDOS in Portal, I was overcome with a distinct sensation that I was in the presence of someone in pain. Troubled. At the very least, immense frustration. At first I wasn’t sure if it was the gyrations of the physical construct of GlaDOS, or if it was [...]

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When the first Metal Gear 4 trailers first started hitting the net, the Mini Gears (or whatever the walkers are called) garnered a ton of attention. The Gears polarized a lot of opinion, ranging from “holy jeebs is that cool” to “why do the cow-walkers moo??!?”
They were decidedly…different. Some people claimed that [...]

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Ah, the Quick Time Event.  How do I love thee?  Not very much, honestly.  There was a time when I did love them, back when they were first born in the games Dragon’s Lair and the slightly lesser known Space Ace arcade games…
In “the day,” they were absolutely amazing. I can’t even begin to [...]

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Cutscenes. Cinematics. Full Motion Videos. Non Interactive Sequences. As long as there have been video games, there’s been story elements forced on the player. Sure, Pong didn’t have them, but Pac Man did.
And as long as we’ve had cutscenes, they’ve been linear cutscenes. It really doesn’t matter if [...]

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Was playing more Rock Band tonight (big surprise, I know), and started thinking about what they might do if when they release the sequel to it. There wasn’t a whole lot in the way of innovation between the Guitar Heroes; just a ton more difficulty piled on to keep their “subscriber” base happy with [...]

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Umpteen years ago, I played this kickass game that completely broke the level-hopping genre, called Bionic Commando. The idea that you didn’t jump, but swung everywhere was just amazing in a world full of Mario and Sonics. The gameplay was so utterly addicting to me that I felt punished when a “Super” Bionic [...]

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One of the things I’m noticing in my playthrough of Assassin’s Creed (although they aren’t the only ones doing this) that is bugging me a lot lately is this mis-placed idea that the character animations always have to “line up” with what he’s really doing in the world.  Somehow “next-gen” has come to mean “more [...]

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