I stand atop a facsimile of The Empire State Building. It looks pretty good - a little pixilated, not as sharp as most current gen visuals - but the cornices are rendered adequately and scale, at least in terms of height, seems fairly accurate. The rest of the world, far, far below, the whole of Manhattan, splays out before me in a knobby stretch of angular skyscrapers. The landscape sprawls gray and more gray, punctuated with the shine of glass here, the shimmer of chrome there, interrupted by a large rectangular patch of Central Park green and brown. Again, everything looks pretty good, but again, again, shit is a little muddled and not as crisp as I've come to expect from high def ... (more…)

If the world was to fall into an apocalyptic tail spin, and in the tumult, you were granted an arsenal of awesome super powers, would you use them to help those in need or would you shun altruistic responsibility and simply strive to take care of number one? So goes the moral quandary at the heart of Sucker Punch Production's PS3 exclusive, INFAMOUS.

Right off, despite any shortcomings I may gripe about as this review unfolds, I have to say INFAMOUS is one of the PS3's finest offerings. It's a class act from start to finish. I had a blast with it and it kept me coming back hour after hour after hour after hour until I beat it into a sorry, throbbing pile of bruised and battered pixels. Which ... (more…)

How about a nice long intro? Some interesting setup? Okay, here we go...

Movie games have a long history of sucking. Why? Time mostly. You see, movies and video games were made for each other. Plots, characters, spectacle, action, are generally interchangeable between platforms and are perfect for adaptation in either medium. I used to get super excited over the prospect of a LORD OF THE RINGS game or something featuring one of the X-Men, but each time I take a chance on a licensed title, I've been burned again and again. Developing a game takes a long freaking time. If you understand basic computer programming - say something easy like HTML - then you understand True Frustration. Well, ... (more…)

Where to begin? Let's see... Like Faith Connors, the lithe, kick-ass, courier you control in Electronic Art's hyper runner, MIRROR'S EDGE, I'm having a tough time getting a proper foot hold. My brain keeps bouncing between extremes, alternately praising and lamenting the title, gaining ground, ready to run, ready to write, and then plummeting back to square one.

MIRROR'S EDGE is something special...MIRROR'S EDGE sucks...MIRROR'S EDGE is ground breaking...MIRROR'S EDGE is nauseating...MIRROR'S EDGE is beautiful...MIRROR'S EDGE is frustrating...MIRROR'S EDGE is all of these things and more and I truly don't know if I love it or hate it.

What I can say is that the game is a deeply flawed ... (more…)

Scary is hard to pull off. I'm one of those - the hardened horror junkie that barely bats an eyelash at decapitation or bloodshed or disembowelment (Fear Zone readers can probably empathize). It sucks, because I LOVE horror, love, love, love it, but spend more time then not sighing at movies or books or video games. Especially the latter. Games can be thrilling and fun, but scary? Not likely.

A quick roundup: RESIDENT EVIL? More gross than scary and saddled with a ridiculous storyline. SILENT HILL? Creepier, I guess, but still goofy and gross. What else? THE EVIL DEAD games (HAIL TO THE KING and A FISTFUL OF BOOMSTICK)? Blech! FATAL FRAME? Boooooring. F.E.A.R? Scary little Asian girls ... (more…)

A while back I reviewed a game called UNCHARTED: DRAKE'S FORTUNE, a PS3 exclusive that in my humble opinion sounded the death knell for the action movie as we know it. It did such a beautiful job of combining story and immersive game play that blockbuster action entertainment ala DIE HARD or INDIANA JONES paled in comparison. I've been playing action games and watching action movies my entire life, but this was the first time a game seriously had me wondering why I even bothered watching action films. Why just sit there whiling away the time, wondering how long this car chase or that fire fight was going to last, when I could load up a game and control the action? Why fade out, waiting for ... (more…)

Holy crap! Valve (developers of the HALF LIFE series) really knows they're stuff. You see, LEFT 4 DEAD, their latest title, is a fast paced, run and gun zombie fest that is so simple and so surface that I was ready to write it off as piffle and move on. I mean, I love zombies and I love guns and it seems hard to go wrong with any combination of the two, but I'm not much into online gaming and LEFT 4 DEAD is all about cooperative, online play. Its no frills game play and wild action are best enjoyed in the company of friends. Or so it may seem.

If you're an online gaming aficionado the title is instant gaming nirvana. You partner up with three friends and fight your way through zombie ... (more…)

Dear FALLOUT 3,

Look, we have to talk. We've been spending a lot of time together lately and... Well, let's start from the beginning shall we?

When we first met I was a little uncertain. I mean, I never got to know FALLOUT or FALLOUT 2 and I wasn't really sure if I should just dive in cold. It wouldn't be fair to you - like all I cared about was your looks (stunning) and your parents (Bethesda, maker of the phenomenal OBLIVION), but not the real, playable, quest heavy YOU. I kept thinking this match was ill made, unfair, and maybe I should go back and play through your earlier incarnations on my PC first, but you didn't care. You begged me to pick you up with your ominous cover art and ... (more…)

The American Dream means many different things to many different people. Some say it's dead. Some claim to be living it. Whatever your take, it's an enthralling theme that has been tackled in countless literary and cinematic works. I love Fitzgerald's THE GREAT GATSBY and its discourse on the warping disintegration of American ideals (see my BIOSHOCK review in the GamingZone for more on Fitzgerald's gilded America) and most of my own fiction revels in gleefully disemboweling American principles. As long as America has been in existence pundits and politicians and artists alike, from Benjamin Franklin to Lil' Wayne, have debated what constitutes America. With such a weighty pedigree behind ... (more…)

By nature I'm a pretty laid back guy. I try not to sweat the small stuff and don't let much rile me. Yoda and Ghandi are my idols. I dig Zen philosophies. But sometimes, maybe stuck in traffic, or standing in the wrong line at the grocery store, the beast within awakens and I just want to kick some ass. And by kick some ass, I mean really KICK SOME ASS, I mean really, really, really KICK SOME ASS - not weak smacking or punching or goofy grunting grappling. No sloppy fisticuffs here. I'm talking limbs flying, bones shattering, heads rolling.

I envision cold steel and warm blood.

I envision a gridlocked highway littered with bloody chunks.

I envision the slow-as-molasses check writer at the ... (more…)