It’s easy to make gamers happy. A couple pretty explosions, a half-second nipple shot, a shiny new sword—that’s generally all it takes to ensure a game will sell half a million copies. Conversely, it’s extremely difficult to genuinely upset a gamer. Bad games annoy them, but very few have the emotional impact to actually make […]
Earnest "Nex" Cavalli
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Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Developed by Sora Now Available for Nintendo Wii
By the time you read these words, Super Smash Bros. Brawl will have become Nintendo’s fastest-selling game of all time, with over 1.4 million copies sold in the first week it was available in the States. Normally, I wouldn’t point out sales numbers as an indicator of quality—but the fact that Brawl has beat out […]
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Army of Two
Developed by EA Montreal Now Available for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 During a gunfight toward the end of Army of Two, one of the game’s two masked protagonists casually asks the other who his favorite member of the Wu-Tang Clan is. Normally this sort of dialogue would earn the game a gold star, but […]
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Swan Lake. With Guns.
Swan Lake. With Guns.
What deep, underlying moral truth is there in Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!? What does Donkey Kong say about man’s inhumanity to man? Those are both very stupid questions, but with gaming moving ever closer to highbrow art, more and more often we see games that should come with a complimentary monocle and side of brie. Devil […]
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Of Burning Rubber and Broken Glass
Burnout Paradise
Burnout Paradise Developed by Criterion Games Now Available for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 Car A is traveling east at 120 miles per hour. Car B is traveling west at 140 miles per hour. When will Car A reach Boston? Answer: never. Car A and Car B collide in an eruption of broken glass and […]
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How To Use A Laser Sword
No More Heroes is what happens when the Japanese try to interpret American action films and end up subtly spoofing our entire violent history. Lead designer Goichi Suda has a history of creating hyper-stylized games (like the GameCube’s Killer7), and with No More Heroes, he continues his streak. No More Heroes has lofty, bizarre aspirations: […]
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Videogames Are Hard!
The problem with nostalgia—particularly gaming nostalgia—is that while you can easily recall all the happy, wonderful memories of youth, over time you forget all the pain and suffering that comes with being a dumb kid. While Contra 4 retains the series’ fantastic graphics, tight controls, and hyper-macho, shoot-first-and-never-ask-questions gameplay, it also retains the series’ trademark […]
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The 2007 Mercury
Game Awards!
From blockbusters like Super Mario Galaxy to innovative titles like Rock Band, there was no shortage of great stuff to play in 2007. Here are our picks for the most notable games, characters, and creepy Ayn Rand references. Most Controversial Game: Manhunt 2 (Wii, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable)—Between being banned in Europe and adding new […]
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Virtual Stardom
After the release of Guitar Hero II, the series’ creators, Harmonix, left the cash cow and teamed up with MTV to develop a rhythm game to end all rhythm games. The result of their efforts is the much-ballyhooed Rock Band—and while the game doesn’t render the recent Guitar Hero III totally obsolete, it’s still a […]
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He’s-a Inna Space!
Remember your childhood? We do. You were an unloveable child—shunned by your peers, neglected by your parents—and, too young to turn to hard drugs, you drowned your sorrows in the next best thing: the Nintendo Entertainment System. Now, do you recall the first time you played Super Mario Bros. 3? Continuing this series of lies, […]
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Bump and Grind
Last week, Erik Henriksen brought you a review of Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground, asserting that the only thing the game managed to prove is that the Tony Hawk skateboarding series is on its last legs. And what happens when a game becomes old and feeble, children? That’s right: It’s run down by a cheetah and […]
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Like a Hurricane
If the original Guitar Hero was an acoustic Tegan and Sara show in an Austin coffeehouse, and Guitar Hero II was a Pearl Jam concert circa 1994, Guitar Hero III is the electronic equivalent of that Black Sabbath gig that left an innocent bat headless. Everything about this latest iteration of the series is bigger, […]