05/14/08
Guess what happens to part-time
gamers when real life hits? Yep. They wind up not gaming for a while, particularly when the game at hand is as massive as EVE Online. I don't know how long it will be, but real life demands my attention, so I need to take a break from. This provides a good opportunity to look back at the last few months of EVE Online and evaluate how things went. After all, I wanted to see if a game this large could even be fun for a....
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05/14/08
We've played more games of Trivial 
Pursuit: Silver Screen edition than we care to admit here at DailyGame, so it's with a weird mix of excitement and embarrassment that we decided to see whether Buzz: Hollywood Quiz would pass the muster. The PS2 game has a value price ($40) that includes not only the game but four proprietary controllers as well (that work on the PS3, no less), so our expectations weren't all that high. We were pleasantly....
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05/13/08
Early in Guillermo Del Toro's directorial
career, the then-young Spanish filmmaker explored orphaned children as troubled ghosts in The Devil's Backbone. Years later, Del Toro presents The Orphanage for young Spanish director J.A. Bayona, a film that explores an identical subject matter while borrowing heavily from classics like Peter Pan, Poltergeist and even The Others. The result is neither innovative nor memorable, but it serves as....
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05/12/08
With SingStar coming to the PS3 in
the next few weeks, we decided to check out SingStar's latest outing on the PlayStation 2 to see how the series is coming along. While we were rocking out to Guitar Hero 1 and 2, SingStar was there first, so color us late to the party in terms of the franchise. However, like the Guitar Hero games and others of that ilk, the song set list determines just how much fun you'll have, so the game is only as good as....
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05/08/08
Skullcrushers. The name sounds more
like a medieval torture device or a fantasy-game clan than it does a desirable headphone system, and the first half of that equation is probably true. Folks in the Middle Ages likely weren't big fans of bass, opting instead for lutes and harps rather than drums and rhythm, so to slip on a headphone system that absolutely glorifies every ounce of bass in a song would probably send serfs into a drumline-induced....
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05/07/08
They always say first impressions are the strongest. Making a good one is important when getting to know people. Making a bad one can be tough to overcome, but with some luck you might get to have a good laugh. Guess which kind I have in mind? As I was out merrily working to hone my PVP skills and regularly getting splattered all over screens worldwide, I decided to have go at it on the cheap using a free rookie ship, one of the little Reapers. The....
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05/06/08
When THQ announced Battle of the
Bands, the first thing that came to mind was a Wii-exclusive "me too" band game a la Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Yeah, yeah, it would use the Wii Remote rather than a peripheral ... whatever. Add on top of this unoriginality the confusing concept of "musical combat" and songs that dynamically changed genre in mid-level, and THQ was sure to have a stinker on its hands, right? Not even close....
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05/05/08
Run-and-gun videogame basketball really
got its start in the arcades, when NBA Jam introduced its over-the-top style and mixed NBA all-stars with, if you knew the codes, a handful of unlockable players like Bill Clinton and "Air Dog." In the years since, Midway and EA have traded shots with their NBA Ballers and NBA Street franchises, respectively, both of which have brought the arcade action home with a bit more hip-hop flair. Midway's latest....
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05/01/08
I was flipping through the
latest issue of Game Informer at a friend's house the other day, and as I looked at the advertisements, I realized something: I no longer knew all the upcoming games for all the systems like I used to. The ads were all over the place, page after page full of so many games I had never even heard of. But somehow they were all familiar. A lot of them looked like games I'd already seen, but in a slightly different shade. You may....
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05/01/08
The hard part about drafting a
film concept around cyber-crime fighters is their job doesn't translate well to the screen. These people peck away in front of a computer day in and day out, hardly the eye candy a filmgoer wants to fixate on for two straight hours. There needs to be a viable excuse for them to get up from their desk and stretch their legs until the credits roll. Otherwise their roles should be restricted to that of the geeky tech nerd dishing out comic....
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04/30/08
Sony knows when it's got a good thing
going, and so do most of its fans. The Gran Turismo series, for example, has a rabid following due to its graphical excellence and top-notch simulation gameplay, and Sony's own PlayStation team counts itself among the franchise's biggest fans. So when it became apparent that Gran Turismo was going to take its time appearing on the PlayStation 3, you'd better believe Sony scrambled for ways to give....
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04/30/08
It's safe to say most consumers' first
, if not only, exposure to Jason Bourne was the series of Bourne films starring Matt Damon. Sure, Robert Ludlum may have written a few novels, but Hollywood reigns supreme when it comes to mass-media action, and, well, Matt Damon's version of Jason Bourne is 100 percent action. With that in mind, it's a bit disconcerting to fire up The Bourne Conspiracy for the first time on the good ol' next-gen console....
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04/30/08
A philosophy I try to adhere to says not to judge things, but to take them as they are, essentially accepting that "it is what it is." This line of thinking brings to mind the user interface in EVE Online, notably that your character is, for most practical purposes, a ship rather than a person. What effect on game play does that have? As a fairly typical male of my species--I leave the identity thereof to your imagination and sense of humor--I note that in EVE Online....
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04/29/08
It's a shame a modern videogame based
on Krull has never seen the light of day. The campy '80s fantasy flick has myriad game-worthy elements such as horses that run with fire under their feet, a Cyclops with attitude, swallowing walls and rooms that sprout defensive mechanisms like blowfish. Best of all, Krull gave us the almighty glaive. The shiny, pointy throwing star slices and dices anything in its path, while its hero handler steers it....
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04/29/08
There's an unmistakable adrenaline rush when
firing up a new Mario Kart game for the first time, fueled by a nostalgic return to a gaming phenomenon running 15 years strong. There's also the anticipation of wondrous new features that elevate Mario Kart racing to a new level of addiction. In Mario Kart Wii, the payoff is a game relying heavily on its roots while simultaneously taking the series into uncharted online waters. Mario Kart's....
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04/29/08
David Lean was one of the few filmmakers
who could successfully balance the epic with the intimate. Be it The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, or Dr. Zhivago, Lean's epics gave us breathtaking widescreen visions of far away places while at the same time never losing sight of what really drove his films: character and plot. His winning ways stumbled a bit in 1970 with the Irish epic Ryan's Daughter, a film where....
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04/27/08
The Destroy All Humans! games
have always taken us back to an innocent time, a time when gas-guzzling cars were celebrated, not reviled; when hoop skirts and fedoras were fashionable, not ridiculed; and when giving people anal probes was novel and hilarious. OK, so that last one still holds true. This latest attempt by the Furons to wipe out humanity takes players to the 1970s, a more modern era than previous DAH outings but one with....
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04/26/08
It seems like the entire movie-going
world is awaiting the release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the latest and likely final chapter in the Indiana Jones series. Ironically, Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment is leading up to that movie's May 22 release with a Blu-ray iteration of Indy's spiritual successor, the National Treasure movies. Although nobody would ever mistake Nicolas Cage for Harrison Ford, the National....
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04/26/08
Much to the chagrin of portable
music-player companies, Apple and its iPod have cornered the market on personal audio devices. Sure, there's the Zune and a host of other MP3 players, but the name "iPod" is as synonymous with "personal music player" as the name "Google" is with "conduct a search online." So it's not surprising that ifrogz has created an entire line of cases for the various iPod iterations, including the new 3G iPod, to let....
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04/25/08
Agatha Christie is synonymous with mystery
novels, and The Adventure Company is synonymous with -- you guessed it -- adventure games. It would seem like the combination of these two entities would be a point-and-click mystery match made in heaven. Unfortunately, as good as the source material and pedigree might be, the Wii game Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None is an absolute disaster, a perfect example of an idea that....
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04/23/08
Dead Space, a new survival-horror
franchise for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, is set to ship this Halloween, which means the development team is knee-deep in code and bug fixes. Amid the madness, the developers are updating gamers periodically via their blog -- and now, through DailyGame as well. In this exclusive article, EA has provided DailyGame readers a complete look at what they'll be posting in the next Dead Space blog entry. We know....
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04/23/08
A few weeks back I had conjured images in my mind of myself as a latter-day Captain Jack Sparrow, a fabulously successful -- albeit unconventional -- pirate. Add an eye patch and the vision was complete. It sounded like fun, and I was bored with what I was doing. In fact, I became fixated on the idea and wanted to get started right away. As they say, "location, location, location," and with piracy comes LowSec. But I just knew I could make this....
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04/22/08
Technology and gaming skeptics alike 
knew what Microsoft was up to when it announced the first Xbox. Bill Gates, as opportunistic as he is, wasn't necessarily interested in videogames, even in spite of their revenue potential. He was more interested in creating a digital hub for the household, a living-room PC that would bring computer functionality to the sofa. The fact that the Xbox played games was gravy; Gates and Microsoft wanted to....
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04/22/08
As the Blu-ray format continues to introduce
new features such as BD-Live, Picture-in-Picture and D-Box Motion Code support, it's funny to see so many older movies appear in high definition. Films like Commando and Predator make sense on Blu-ray, with their action-packed scenes and cult-like followings, but quirkier titles seem a bit less obvious. Case in point: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, a Terry Gilliam film with Eric Idle, a cameo....
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04/21/08
What is "fun"? We have often used
this term when reminiscing about Disneyland or summer vacation, but how foolish we have been not to use this term to describe the joyous occasion known as the SATs and IQ tests. What's that, you say? The SATs and IQ tests are the exact opposite of fun? Well, apparently Best of Tests never got the memo. Best of Tests for the Nintendo DS is not only a great new tongue twister, but an attempt to....
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04/17/08
As the "PS3 vs. Xbox 360" arguments reach
a fever pitch heading into the launch of Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA IV), we decided to go right to the authorities to find out which version of the game -- and which console -- will come out on top. Dave Hulegaard, Game Crazy's buyer and all-around "video game expert," wrote the article below for DailyGame to provide his take on the debate. And he uses some concrete pre-order and sales numbers to illustrate....
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04/16/08
It's tempting to think that bigger is better in EVE Online. Get the bigger ship, the bigger guns, whatever. Bigger always seems better, at least on the surface -- then sometimes I find that things aren't quite like I'd imagined. I had been flying these little frigates -- gnats, really -- all over the place and had been shot up and blown up a few times, and I started thinking: "You know, maybe something bigger might not get blown up quite as easily. Maybe I....
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04/15/08
It's ironic that at a time when the
entire world feels at war, when guns and rescue operations make regular appearances on the nightly news, that home-movie audiences are seeing a resurgence of 1980s action films. Never did movie studios spend more on machine guns, blank rounds, near-nuclear explosions and gratuitous violence than in the mid to late 80s, so maybe it's par for the now-desensitized course that these action films are....
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04/14/08
Codemasters' DiRT, previously known as the Colin
McRae Rally racing franchise, has had somewhat of a stranglehold on the rally-racing scene for the past half decade. Other publishers and franchises have given it a go, from Microsoft and Rallisport Challenge to Sony and Motorstorm to Sega and Rally Revo, but nobody's succeeded in toppling Codemasters' game. Even the fabled Gran Turismo has included off-road racing, but that series....
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04/14/08
Condemned: Criminal Origins was the
most underrated game of the Xbox 360's launch. Part survival-horror, part first-person shooter and part adventure game, Condemned flew under the radar of those more interested in Perfect Dark Zero, even though it was arguably a better game. So with Condemned 2: Bloodshot, Sega and Monolith spiced-up the gameplay in an attempt to reach more a few gamers, a valiant attempt that ironically makes the....
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04/14/08
Slipping the G36C's ACOG sight up to my eye,
I whisper ever-so-calmly into my headset mic, "OK, this time, let our two AI guys frag and clear the door...OK?" And sure as the sun shines on Sunday, my teammate pops open the door and runs in with guns blazing...and leaves yet another bloody teammate-shaped pulp on the floor. After I've swept the room with my AI squadmates, my less-than-useful real-world squadmate returns to the co-op....
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04/13/08
His vision fading, Ryu Hayabusa
slumps to the ground as the hundreds of fiendish abominations surround him. It seems as though evil has won this day as Ryu breathes his last and falls to the ground. Elsewhere, a controller is hurled against the wall as the words GAME OVER decorate the screen once again. This sounds like something out of a gamer's nightmare, but it was the typical story for anyone who played Ninja Gaiden on Xbox. A great game, to....
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04/11/08
The most successful action games of late 
have featured characters and/or times of historical significance. Kratos (God of War) relied heavily on Greek mythology, for instance, while Altair (Assassin's Creed) jumped his way through the Third Crusade. But no characters or period is quite as universally recognized as the four horsemen and the apocalypse, which will provide not only the basis of THQ's action game Darksiders: Wrath of War....
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04/11/08
It used to be that the independent
film scene consisted of small, struggling studios that had no association with the Tinseltown fat cats. In the late 80s and early 90s, that all began to change. The separate universes of independent and mainstream American cinema began to slowly edge closer to one another thanks mainly to Miramax Pictures. Despite a few bumps here and there, other mini-majors have begun to echo Miramax's....
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04/10/08
Since Sony launched its first PlayStation
console in 1995, videogaming has enjoyed a rapid transition from the bedrooms of pubescent boys to that most coveted of locations; the space under the living room TV. The demographic has also changed accordingly. Those teenage boys have grown up and now sit nicely in the 18-34 bracket; their wives and girlfriends regularly join in play, particularly with social games and more....
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04/10/08
When we first saw Katamari
Damacy at E3 several years ago, nothing the PR reps said could have convinced us that the game was particularly compelling, let alone that its would be so successful that gamers would be clamoring for sequels as well as King of All Cosmos T-shirts. With that history as our guide, when we first heard about de Blob, a game that's part platformer, part action game and part color-mixing tutorial, we were puzzled but....
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04/10/08
Now that you've read about how
brands can take advantage of various in-game advertising opportunities, it's time to explore how current technologies, media spending trends and consumer habits and attitudes will shape the in-game media landscape in the next few years and beyond. Play and buy: One of the most applicable extensions of in-game advertising -- and one that also closes the loop between above-the-line awareness....
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04/09/08
Sure, we've all been through it. Wedgies,
book reports, football games. Maybe you were never the bully in high school (please, don't hurt me), but most us probably have had fantasies of what it must feel like to pound the living daylights out of a bespectacled bookworm (please...don't. I also wear contacts!). Many years ago, Rockstar fulfilled every child's fantasy of joining a street gang with controversial game Bully. Now, if you missed your chance on PS2....
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04/09/08
Self-control and wisdom are good things, right? Sure, they are. You just have to remember to use them, that's all. And if you don't, well then, greed and stupidity are right there to serve quite admirably and illustrate why self-control and wisdom are so valuable. Which brings us to yours truly and EVE Online, naturally. In looking around for ways to make a living, I found courier contracts rather interesting. You take some stuff somewhere for someone....
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04/08/08
It's quite an accomplishment to
go from "cute little GTA 3 clone" to "distinct open-world game that gamers are excited about," but that's exactly what THQ's Saints Row 2 has achieved. Before the original game's launch, Saints Row was viewed as little more than a "me too" title, an open-world gangster game unabashedly trying to capitalize on Rockstar's success with the Grand TheftAuto series. But as gamers actually played Saints Row, as they....
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04/08/08
When Crackdown shipped for Xbox 360, 
it proved that online co-op in open-world games was not only feasible but incredibly enjoyable. The crew at Volition and THQ were apparently taking notes, because amid all the improvements and additions to Saints Row 2 (read our hands-on Saints Row 2 preview), the team is also including hop-in/hop-out online co-op. This feature isn't just a simple tack-on addition, though; it's turning into as....
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04/08/08
No Country for Old Men is a lot 
of things. An Academy Award-winning movie. A Coen Brothers film. A recent release on Blu-ray Disc. But more important, at least from an artistic point of view, No Country for Old Men is the closest anyone has come to re-creating a piece of literature since Pete Jackson did with his The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Based on the novel "The Road," by Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men is a film by medium alone. Its plot....
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04/07/08
With the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 hardware
, many developers claim they're finally able to achieve destructible environments. The thing is, Red Faction achieved it in 2001 on the PlayStation 2. With that background, it's not surprising to see Volition pushing the envelope once again with Red Faction: Guerilla, which ships for PS3 and Xbox 360 later this year. As the third game in the series, Red Faction: Guerilla marks a step forward for the....
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04/06/08
If Sainte-Chapelle's physics-defying
stained-glass walls are considered Gothic church design's greatest achievement, then Matrix's (Arnold Schwarzenegger) impossible retrieval of his kidnapped daughter in 1985's Commando embodies the '80s indestructible action hero. You've never seen anything so real yet simultaneously surreal like either one, and you probably never will again. Only in Commando can a lone man facing....
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04/04/08
The road to Pixar curves through a
range of neighborhoods, a metaphor not lost on those familiar with the Animation Studio itself. After taking the highway off-ramp, visitors to Pixar's Emeryville, California, headquarters pass into a sleepy part of town, an area where a black Chevy with 14 stuffed animals wedged between its cab and bed seems right at home outside the local market. A place where the 30-something woman walking in bedazzled....
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04/04/08
Space. It's very big and often home
to hordes of horrible monsters that want to kill us. In the case of Rocketmen: Axis of Evil, our enemies' home is just a stone's throw away on that big red ball known as Mars. Yes, it is a little cliche, but so are many things in this Xbox Live Arcade original. And it still manages to be fun. You play the part of Rocketman, a character whose appearance is customized before you ever start your adventure. Technically....
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04/03/08
The original Xbox endured its share 
of jokes about being nothing more than "a Halo adapter for your TV," so when you look at what most people play on their Wii, it's just as fair to say Nintendo's console is little more than "a Wii Sports adapter for your TV." Sure, there's Super Mario Galaxy, Zelda and Super Smash Bros. Brawl, but the Xbox had Dead or Alive 3 and a few other games up its sleeve as well. When it comes right down to it....
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04/02/08
Note to self: Never forget that you are not, and never have been, much of an entrepreneur. So the record of another misguided get-rich-quick scheme starts. What can I say? Even in EVE Online, there are certain things I'm just not capable of becoming. When I took the trip into NullSec a couple weeks back, one thing that caught my eye was the high prices on some items there. After getting back to HighSec and checking the local market, I found....
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04/01/08
Videogame fishing and motion controls
go together like eggs and bacon. You can heartily enjoy either one by itself day or night, but the taste is so much sweeter when they collide. This match made in heaven is precisely why porting the SEGA Dreamcast version of SEGA Bass Fishing to Nintendo Wii was a no-brainer. SEGA didn't have to manufacturer and produce a new "rod" accessory to simulate the sport's signature moves; The Wii's default....
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04/01/08
The initial draw to a second Aliens
vs. Predator film was to discover what the PredAlien, born in the final shot of the first Alien vs. Predator, would look like in its adult stage. Then effects wizards The Brothers Strause signed on as a directing duo, an odd move by Fox entrusting a beloved franchise to first-time feature-length film directors. Expectations immediately hit rock bottom for improvement from the first Aliens vs.....
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03/31/08
Although NCAA March Madness
has the broadcast audience's attention, "spring" to videogame and nice-weather-loving folk means it's time for golf. PlayStation 3 owners get the first taste of the digital fairway with the latest edition of Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds, which has finally arrived in North America. Those looking for golf simulator (i.e. Tiger Woods PGA Tour) should look elsewhere; this is a "simple" series, a common-man....
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03/28/08
Dear diary, Having spent the past three days playing 
the Battlefield: Bad Company multiplayer beta with other Xbox 360 gamers, the Xbox Live connection issues had all been worked out, and the online fighting had grown more intense. People aren't exploring the levels anymore; they know where the hard and soft points are, and they're exploiting them left and right to make every battle much more punishing. With such intense....
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03/27/08
Dear diary, Can I just say that I love blue skies? It's such a relief from the sepia tone filters we have to deal with so many of today's games. Thanks, Battlefield: Bad Company. Connecting to the Battlefield: Bad Company multiplayer beta was a snap today, with no lag and no waiting around. We decided today to test the destructibility of the environments. We fixed grenade launchers and tossed a bunch of grenades, and sure enough, those buildings....
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03/26/08
The Gamecube gave us some truly
spectacular Nintendo titles, although it didn't exactly give us the same from third parties. So, odds are high that if you owned a Gamecube, knew someone who owned one or came within 100 feet of one, you played or knew about the greatest Gamecube game: Super Smash Bros. Melee. If you owned Super Smash Bros. Melee, you've probably been playing it since its release, as its multiplayer slugfest never gets....
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03/26/08
I'll admit, the older I get, the harder it seems
to make friends. I spot things I don't like about people, am often unwilling to take the bad with the good, and am more set in my ways. The last time I made a new friend, someone I actually think of as more than an acquaintance, was around 1999, which seems a bit much when I look at today's calendar. Even worse, the time before that was 1984. I'm not sure what to make of it. Things are what they....
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03/26/08
Dear diary, So I was playing the Battlefield: Bad Company Xbox 360 multiplayer beta today. For some reason I woke up at 5:00 am and couldn't go back to sleep. Finally, after tossing and turning, I verified the time by checking the clock radio. It was now 6:00.
"Hmmm," says I, "'tis the 25th, and EA's Battlefield Bad Company beta servers are supposed to go live. Let's go see if those servers are indeed live, shall we? OMG they are up!" Thank....
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03/25/08
Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium intrigued 
me from the first time I saw its movie trailer. Dustin Hoffman playing a quirky old coot in a somewhat fantastical setting? Sounded a lot like "Hook" to me, and I enjoyed that one, so I figured Magorium would be up to snuff as well. And to top it off, you're going to put Hoffman alongside Natalie Portman and Jason Bateman? Sure, I'll check out that film. Apparently, I was alone. To say Mr. Magorium's Wonder....
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03/22/08
The Nintendo DS may sell more units
than any other gaming platform, but where handhelds are concerned, Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP) delivers by far the most console-like experience you can get this side of the sofa. Sure, it's got a gorgeous display, and yes, the Internet functionality is nice, but if you're looking for console-like games on the go, the PSP has got you covered. Case in point: God of War: Chains of Olympus....
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03/21/08
Faithful followers of ABC's Lost have had to wait 
more than three seasons for Ubisoft to release the first official videogame adaptation of the hit mysterious drama. As Lost: Season Four's climatic eighth episode's jaw-dropping cliffhanger approaches (c'mon, it's inevitable), the arrival of Ubisoft's Lost: Via Domus brings with it the promise of a new chapter in the Lost saga, seamlessly intertwined with the show's canon, characters and locations....
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03/20/08
In case you hadn't heard, the Xbox 360 is
supposed to be replaced by newer, shinier console in 2010. The PS3's replacement will probably roll around a few years later, if only because the PS3 seems much more future-proof and should have a longer shelf life. For that reason alone, I like to consider the PS3 the Twinkie of this console generation. The Wii's successor? All bets are off about when we might see that one, although it will surely....
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03/19/08
Curiosity, like money, can make people do interesting things. It usually manifests as a question along these lines: Just how far can I take this? Around 20 years ago, I was rock-climbing three days a week out West and thoughts like that eventually found me alone and 80 feet up the side of a cliff. With no rope. On purpose. Soloing, it's called, and I had finally done one. I had to prove something to myself, and despite appearances to the....
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03/17/08
Generally when a developer reaches the 
fourth installment in a franchise, the game takes a dramatic turn for the better or the worse. In the case of Devil May Cry 4 for the PlayStation (PS3) and Xbox 360, Capcom has undeniably taken its series in a positive direction, with incredible graphics, solid gameplay and a new character whose attributes introduce some new elements to the franchise. However, for everything new the game....
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03/16/08
The 1990s were certainly some great 
years for games. Sony and Nintendo were going at it, and Sega still made its own consoles. Now we find ourselves in the fast-paced, constant-one-upmanship that is modern gaming. Every now and again it's nice to have a blast from the past, something to slow things down a little. And what could possibly be more soothing than a homicidal clown trying to blow your head off? Twisted Metal was....
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03/14/08
Whether you're playing World of Warcraft on your
PC, Call of Duty 4 on your Xbox 360 or Resistance: Fall of Man your PS3, the chances are pretty high you spend about half of your gaming time playing online. Don't feel bad; you're not alone. However, if you're like most of us here at DailyGame, you're also not alone in your constant need for more Cat-5 and routers to keep playing smoothly online. Somehow, there just never seem to be enough Ethernet....
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03/14/08
Those of you who have been around
DailyGame for the past few years know that what draws me to game-engine discussions is my strong belief that graphics still have a long way to go before they are there. Months ago I mused that bouncing light and shadows were responsible for most graphical tricks, and that those elements are exactly what a Pixar film can do that video games can't. I used Splinter Cell as an example, because....
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03/13/08
As we've seen time and time again
on the latest Nintendo platforms, mini-games equal money. For a struggling franchise like Bomberman, perhaps the best thing for Hudson Soft is take their beloved characters and stick them -- against their will, I'm sure -- into another generic set of mini-games. It worked on the DS a year ago, and could well work for the Wii this time around. But if it doesn't work for you, at least Bomberman Land Wii....
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03/12/08
Shortly after getting my EVE Online account set up, I got emails from a couple of EVE corporation recruiters soliciting for members. I was interested in talking with them because major activities in EVE Online -- things like building space stations and fighting wars of any real scale -- are only practically available to good-sized groups of players. A single individual can't earn enough money or be in enough places at one time to accomplish....
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03/12/08
I Am Legend, the third and latest cinematic embodiment of
Richard Matheson's 1954 science fiction/horror novel of the same name (the first two being 1964's The Last Man on Earth and 1971's The Omega Man), was a project that had been laying around Hollywood almost as long as its lead, Will Smith, has had a film career. Over the past two decades, directors among the likes of Ridley Scott, Michael Bay, Guillermo Del Torro and....
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03/11/08
Shown publicly at E3 2007, Echochrome
garnered buzz with its simple look and unique presentation. Echochrome is a puzzle game, but with a unique twist: each level has players controlling the level's perspective. Although this gameplay mechanic is hard to describe in words, it's visually understandable in seconds. Basically, imagine an M.C. Escher drawing that players can rotate and pitch, thereby altering the optical illusion to solve the riddle....
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03/11/08
In Twentieth Century Fox Home
Entertainment's unrated version of Hitman on Blu-ray Disc, Agent 47's entire back story is told through a quick-cutting montage during the opening title sequence. It's learned he's been raised to fight until he escapes those who trained and brandished his neck with a barcode, but not much else. In the blink of an eye, Agent 47 is already an accomplished killer for hire knee deep in a nefarious international plot against....
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03/10/08
A funny thing happened on the way to the
Forum: The 40 Year Old Virgin became a father of three. Dan in Real Life, which releases on Blu-ray Disc Tuesday, March 11, is a pleasantly surprising experience for three reasons. First, seeing Steve Carrell in a complex role after watching him wax his chest in The 40 Year Old Virgin is an eye-opener, to say the least. Who knew he had it in him? Second, watching a story unfold about a single father....
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03/05/08
When Electronic Arts first announced Army 
of Two, DailyGame was among the first members of the media to see the game in action at E3. At the time, Splinter Cell had just delved into the world of co-op gameplay, and our excitement at the Army of Two demo was fueled more by the then-new concept of co-op play than it was by Army of Two's actual gunplay or graphics. Fast-forward a few years, and EA has just released Army of Two for....
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03/05/08
Having some extra money to spend can make people do interesting things. There I was, with a pile of cash in the bank from my newfound career salvaging, with no particular widget I wanted to buy. Believe me, that's not a situation I've found myself in very often. I could now buy Minmatar frigates by the half dozen, and with the single exception of a Rifter, replace them all with about half an hour's work. Surely, there must be some fun in this somewhere....
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03/04/08
Lost Planet: Extreme Condition proved to be
a smash hit on the Xbox 360. From its good-looking graphics to its creative combination of on-foot and in-Mech combat, the game flew under many people's radar yet still managed to win their next-gen gaming hearts. But that was a year ago. In early 2007, Capcom's game was an Xbox 360 and PC exclusive, and Microsoft couldn't have been any happier. A full year later, Lost Planet has now burst onto the PS3....
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03/03/08
Most DailyGame readers are familiar with arcade shooters
and probably know the looks you get from middle-aged moms who see you clutching that AK-47 in the arcades. Fortunately, the Wii has been a pretty successful port-house for old arcade shooters, and now with the help of Samurai Warriors: Katana, we can clutch our Wiimotes in the privacy of our own homes. While Samurai Warriors: Katana comes nowhere near the quality....
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03/03/08
A large home nestled deep in the woods is
no place for children to take up residence. The home is guaranteed to be haunted, or some fantastical element is surely poised to turn life upside down, inside out and every which way in between. Such luck is the case for a trio of siblings in The Spiderwick Chronicles, the latest in a storied string of children's adventures whose narrative virtually guaranteed a video game counterpart. No surprise....
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02/28/08
Some people are born entrepreneurs. They see opportunities to make money and build business where others don't. They will spend their money, sometimes down to the last nickel, in the belief that they will make it all back, plus a tidy fortune on top of it all. I'm not one of them. In real life, risking what little extra money I have for the chance to make more feels like some people's description of skydiving: "Why would I jump out of a perfectly good....
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02/27/08
Never before has the "circle of life" been
more applicable to a home video release than it is to Paramount Home Entertainment's Beowulf Director's Cut. The high-profile HD DVD title comes at the end of the format's short run, and it will likely be one of the final films released in "red." But in HD DVD's death, a new life sprouts with the commercially successful use of new motion-capture techniques applied to animation that the director....
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02/27/08
It's not often you encounter a film that conflicts
you almost as much as its main character is conflicted, much less a film that leaves you in that state for well over a week. I purposefully took time away after watching The Brave One, a Jodie Foster film that just released on Blu-ray Disc, to see if the time away would give me some clarity about my opinion of it. On the one hand, the majority of The Brave One was a total chore to watch, mostly....
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02/26/08
Lost Odyssey is the second Xbox
360 game to come from Mistwalker, the Japanese game developer so touted by Microsoft for working on Xbox 360-exlcusive role-playing games. Having recently released Blue Dragon, Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi and Nobuo Uematsu wasted no time in teaming up with artist Takehiko Inoue and writer Kiyoshi Shigematsu. Their goal with Lost Odyssey was not to reinvent the wheel, but to give Xbox 360....
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02/26/08
Released on the PC well over a year ago, Dark
Messiah of Might and Magic: Elements is Ubisoft's Xbox 360 update to the game that addresses the issues from the PC version, adds a few new levels and improves the multiplayer mode to work on Xbox Live. To fans of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, this overview sounds like Elements might just be worth picking up. Sadly, it isn't -- and the fact that Ubisoft released it at full price is downright....
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02/21/08
Got a little money in my wallet now. No, I won't be owning the solar system in six months, but I am about ready to upgrade my ship again. Why, you ask? Well, it seems like the thing to do in most games: Work my way up to bigger and better. More skills. More guns. More stuff. Yep, that sounds like me, alright. This time, I'll make the move from a little frigate to a not-quite-so-small destroyer called a Thrasher. I can put seven guns and a rocket....
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02/21/08
Quentin Tarantino is the poster-child
of polarizing movie personas, because with him there's never a middle ground: people either love him or hate him. But while Tarantino may be the poster child, Monty Python is the originator of all things polarizing. The British comedy troupe -- Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin -- never met a topic it didn't want to ridicule, and the results were....
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02/20/08
With the box-office success of 
3:10 to Yuma and a leading role played by Brad Pitt, the producers of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford were warranted in their enthusiasm. Jesse James, always a hot commodity in Western American lore, being played by Brad Pitt? What's not to like about that? Judging by box-office sales, quite a bit. But with the film's recent release on Blu-ray Disc, the home-movie crowd....
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02/19/08
In the late 1980s (as I recall) came
the hype of Virtual Reality (VR). For $5-$10 at just about any major arcade or shopping mall, you could experience five minutes of virtual bliss. Just step onto a circular platform, put on some weird gloves and clunky goggles, and voila!, you were in a half-finished world with no realism whatsoever. I never had the $5, so I just stood and watched the television screen as other suckers squandered their....
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02/13/08
The workaday world isn't all that glamorous for most of us, is it? Even so, with the right frame of mind, it can be satisfying. And to the extent that a virtual universe models a world, the same thing is true. While in the stages of working toward a particular goal, depending on the distance of the goal, things can get repetitious. Boredom can set in if you let your state of mind get away from you. Of course, I would never let that happen....
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02/08/08
There's an old saying in politics that
"history is written by the winners." In recent console wars, from "N64/Saturn/Dreamcast vs. PlayStation" to "Xbox vs. PlayStation 2," Sony got cramps in its hands from writing so much. Whether by failed marketing or poor leadership, Sega couldn't overcome the Sony hurdle, and the original Xbox was picking up steam just as Microsoft unveiled the Xbox 360, relegating the Xbox once....
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02/08/08
How do you turn a word search, something
that comes free on newspapers and cereal boxes, into something people will actually shell out money to buy? Well, the people who created Word Puzzle tried to figure this concept out, but they fell far, far short of coming up with a decent answer. The premise of this Xbox Live Arcade title is, well, doing a word search. It really doesn't get much more complicated than that. The....
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02/07/08
"Sleeping with the Fishes" takes on a whole
new family-friendly meaning in Nintendo and Akira's Wii exclusive, Endless Ocean. Hunting, killing and violence are passed over in favor of exploration, knowledge and interaction. There is a beginning and an end, but not in a traditional sense. This ocean has been designed for gamers curious about marine wildlife to explore their curiosities without having to worry about beating....
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02/07/08
It's February, it's cold outside, and
some big football game called the Super Bowl just saw an incredible upset by the New York Giants. It's also the time of year for EA to roll out the latest incarnation of arcade fueled football in NFL Street, which has been neatly re-branded into NFL Tour. IN this re-branding, authentic NFL players travel from city to city playing in overly simplified smash-mouth football where the playbook is slim, the....
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02/06/08
As much as I like my little rookie ship, it's clear that I need to upgrade. I keep running out of things: Cargo capacity, slots to fit weapons and equipment, drone capacity, power grid, CPU, everything. Let's face it. It's a tiny little ship. That's why they give it away for free. And it's not the first one, either. The first one got blown to bits when I warped into a bunch of NPC pirates, engaged them a fight and had my mind sort of lock up. Granted, my....
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02/05/08
Admittedly, I'm not a fan of real-time
-strategy games, and it would take a darn good one to hold my button-mashing oriented attention. So while Warhammer 40,000: Squad Command for Nintendo DS is not a game I would go out and buy, I can confidently say it's not a horrible game, either. Actually, the multiplayer and Wi-Fi modes are enough to warrant a purchase for hardcore RTS fans, many of whom salivate over....
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02/05/08
You might be able to smell what The
Rock is cookin', but if you're like most members of the movie-going public, you probably never smelled a touching family comedy headed for Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's resume. Yet here we are, having just watched The Rock's latest outing, The Game Plan, courtesy of Disney Home Entertainment, a film that's got football and a football star at its core but that manages to make The Rock....
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01/30/08
The Devil May Cry series originally spawned from taking the Resident Evil franchise in a new direction, with the director of Resident Evil trying out some experiments after RE2. These experiments soon grew into a game of their own, and a new and now-beloved franchise was born. The first Devil May Cry was good enough and warranted a sequel, but Devil May Cry 2 stumbled by most accounts. The series quickly regained its footing....
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01/30/08
"Nowhere safe." That's what I'm thinking as this ship approaches out of that very nowhere. My ship is a little Minmatar rookie ship, a Reaper, one of those things I got for free when my EVE Online account was created, about the size of a gnat in comparison to the monster that just pulled up. I recently upgraded my ship and, for a minute, was quite proud of the new, bigger gun. The new mining laser. A little damage control unit. Some....
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01/30/08
Western movies are an interesting bunch,
if for no other reason than their inconsistency. The most obvious of these is release dates; Westerns have hit theaters with such irregularity that, save for Unforgiven, you'd be hard-pressed to name many good Westerns since the late 1980s. But a funny thing happened on the way to 2008: two Westerns released in close succession, each with big-name actors: The Assassination of Jesse....
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01/29/08
Tower defense games aren't new or
revolutionary by any stretch of the imagination. Countless iterations of "build a tower to thwart attacking forces" have appeared on the PC for years, if not decades. There have been so many, in fact, that they might even be considered a genre unto themselves. The latest "tower defense" title, PixelJunk Monsters, is a bit different, though. Not different in how it's been designed or how it....
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01/28/08
EA and Criterion must like Las Vegas.
Whether Vegas likes them is another matter entirely. EA acquired Criterion hoping to capitalize on other developers' use of Renderware, Criterion's proprietary middleware, and that gamble hasn't exactly panned out. Meanwhile, Criterion has re-tooled its popular Burnout racing franchise so often that it's basically asking to "hit" with 19 points. The latest outing, Burnout Paradise, recently....
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01/28/08
There has never been a genre
more classic than that of the side-scrolling shooter. There is just something about constantly scrolling to the right that brings a tear to a gamer's eye. The Xbox Live Arcade gets a fresh new spin on your father's scrolling shooter in the form of Omega Five, a game that will definitely bring tears to your eyes -- but for a vastly different reason. First of all, there really aren't any visible signs of a story here. That isn't....
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01/25/08
We watched the Packers game, so we 
saw the four-below temperatures. We've felt the cold fronts move in, so we've seen winter in all its glory. But somehow, winter just seems a bit more "complete" when there's a dude on the luge, a guy jumping in skis, a team pushing a bobsled and some ladies curling. Ah, yes, winter sports...nothing quite beats them, and nothing quite says "welcome to cold weather" like people freezing in spandex....
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01/23/08
For all the talk about Xbox Live Arcade and Wii 
Virtual Console simply re-hashing old franchises, it's funny to watch gamers get giddy about Capcom's announcement that it's updating Bionic Commando for the current generation of consoles. A 20-year-old, eight-bit game, being re-mastered for Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and PC? Yep. And gamers couldn't be any happier. Capcom is bringing Bionic Commando....
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01/23/08
Some geeks get old but never die. I suppose I'm one of them. The timer that a few minutes ago signaled me to finish up what I was doing is an HP 48G with an alarm set. What can I say ? For the past hour I've been engrossed with a bit of a distraction, but it's one I've been guilty of for months now: playing EVE Online part-time. I'm not a hardcore gamer by any stretch of the imagination, and EVE is known as a game for the hardcore types....
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01/23/08
For the past six years, we've done our
best to give you from-the-hip, honest and timely coverage of videogames and gaming systems. Last fall we expanded into Blu-ray Disc, HD-DVD and home electronics, and judging by your page views, that content has been a refreshing addition. Now we want to hear from you directly: what would you like DailyGame to write about in the coming weeks, months and years? Basically, we're pulling....
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01/22/08
Roman Polanski's The Pianist
is based on the memoirs of Holocaust survivor Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody), a winsome Jewish man revered for his piano performances on 1930s Polish public radio who lives with his close-knit family in an upscale flat in central Warsaw. The idyllic lifestyle of Wladyslaw and his family dramatically changes when Poland is invaded by Germany. Germany's constant bombing on Warsaw....
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01/21/08
I do game reviews for a kids' website 
most of the time. One of the things that helps me get a solid perspective on things is having my 11-year-old son play games with me. Recently we took a stab at Atari's new Godzilla game, Godzilla Unleashed, for PS2 and Wii. I was a bit guarded at first, because I'd been following the game for a while and had posted some early gameplay videos that, to be charitable, were ugly....
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01/21/08
Over the years, Denzel Washington has tackled
every fathomable emotion in film. The man has an innate gift to flip a switch and go from a smiling chum to a raving lunatic in the blink of an eye. It wasn't until Tony Scott's 2004 thriller Man on Fire when Denzel was required to express his full range and push his skills through the eyes of one solitary and extremely well written character. Denzel plays Creasy, an ex-special-ops agent dependent....
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01/18/08
The MX vs. ATV series technically has a storied
history, albeit under a different guise. Developer Rainbow Studios first released the PC-only game Motocross Madness in 1998, marking the first time a videogame motorcycle and its driver had separate physics. Say what you will about FlatOut and its driver-through-the-windshield hilarity, but Motocross Madness was actually a bit more fun, both due to its novelty and the sheer....
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01/17/08
You know you've been there: you're
in the middle of an online game, your clan is depending on you, the team's down by three kills, and all you can think about is how bad you have to use the bathroom. Mother Nature's calling, and the machine ain't about to pick up. We've heard stories of Big Gulp cups suffering inhumane treatment. We've heard tales of windows being opened in the middle of winter. We've even caught wind of....
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01/15/08
Raunchy comedies are all the rage these
days thanks to There's Something About Mary, American Pie, and any project with Judd Apatow's thumbprint smeared on it. And with any successful moneymaking formula, there's bound to be copycats and wannabes craving a slice of the profits. At some undefined point, "new and improved" successors degrade into juvenile "mine is bigger than yours" desperate stags to top their....
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01/14/08
My first exposure to RENT came in college
. At the time, many people my age were discovering the suddenly modern world of musical theater courtesy of writer/composer Jonathan Larson. My discovery came at the hands of a dorm mate's obsession with the show's soundtrack, which mixed powerful lyrics with modern rock. I'd seen Phantom of the Opera and other musicals, but never had I heard a show tackle such complex topics....
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01/14/08
Philips is a powerhouse when it comes to
electronics, whether you're talking HDTVs, home-entertainment systems, digital photo frames or toothbrushes. At CES 2008, the company came to the show with both barrels loaded, showing off its first Profile 1.1 Blu-ray Disc player, a new 700 Series for its FlatTV line and a new Ambisound Home Theater System. With the rush of product announcements at CES, some of Philips'....
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01/10/08
When SEGA slyly dropped not one but two demos
of Yakuza 3 on the Japanese PlayStation Network, we here at the DailyGame bunker brushed off that trusty Japanese account, gave Toro and Kuro the night off, and hunkered down for some Yakuza 3 game-playing and note-taking to bring to our readers on this side of the Pacific. If you're unfamiliar with the Yakuza titles, not to worry. The Yakuza are Japan's organized crime....
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01/09/08
It seems as though highways have always
been a tad on the boring side. Where are all the loops, dinosaurs, whales, black holes and bottomless pits? Luckily, Gripshift solves all of these problems, and even adds a soundtrack to boot. The controls in Gripshift, an Xbox Live Arcade game, are fairly simple, and the game will gradually guide you through them in the beginning stages. It basically boils down to the accelerate button and the....
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01/09/08
As we unveiled in our news section earlier
today, Corinex has used CES to debut a pseudo-wireless Internet product geared specifically toward gamers. We say "pseudo" because the new product, called GameNet, doesn't use any Cat-5 cables or routers to connect consoles to the Internet. But it doesn't use a WiFi connection, either. So how do Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii gamers use GameNet to play games online? By plugging....
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01/08/08
Considering the filmmaking past of Danny Boyle
, I went into Sunshine with some serious jitters. Semi-niche films like Trainspotting and The Beach can be forgiven for slight missteps, while horror films like 28 Days Later aren't expected to be masterpieces. But taking on the world of science fiction, with heavyweight films lurking in every corner? If Boyle screwed up even one iota with Sunshine, the film would fall apart fast. To....
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01/08/08
CES may be home to thousands of home
electronics and technological gadgets, but two trends are really distancing themselves from the pack this year: new HDTV technology and new iPod speaker systems. Among all the iPod docking stations and speaker systems at CES 2008, few stand out like the Tannoy i30. The i30 iPod speaker system is the first digital consumer speaker system from Tannoy, which is known in the UK and....
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01/08/08
To a guy, there's just something about the beauty of
a steel chair to the face that goes beyond description. It is a widely known fact that violence solves everything, and this has never been more true than in the world of professional wrestling. The WWE Smackdown series has pretty much cornered this market, with its digital headlocks and pile-driving pixels, but this year's outing, WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2008, seems to try to appeal only....
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01/08/08
I've had an unusual interest in The Kingdom
since it began production. Many of the outdoor scenes set at a U.S. base in Saudi Arabia were filmed roughly a mile from my home in Arizona, and a key highway action sequence was filmed a few miles from there. Although I never set foot on the set, I felt as if I had an intimate knowledge of how the U.S. base was being depicted and shot. Going into the finished film, I feared familiarity would....
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01/07/08
Whether you're playing Halo 3, Call of Duty 4 or Gran Turismo 4,
playing games in split-screen mode has its pluses and minuses. The pluses are anchored by the sheer rush you get from playing co-op or versus in person with friends, but that rush is often overshadowed by the biggest minus of split-screen play: having the play area be a small quadrant or, at best, half the screen. Widescreen HDTVs minimize the smallness issue to...
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01/07/08
Since the days of the original NES, Nintendo has been
synonymous with Mario and, let's face it, Duck Hunt. The NES Light Gun was an insanely gutsy and fun peripheral, yet it didn't really make a resurgence until the Wii Zapper became its heir apparent, even though the Zapper is just a hunk of well-formed plastic. With the Nintendo Wii's popularity, particularly during the 2007 holiday season, companies are hopping on the Wii....
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01/07/08
The Need for Speed series has always been a car tuner enthusiast's 
wet dream because of its endless list of customization options, beautifully rendered cars and gameplay that truly mimics the racing underground world. Thankfully, EA has taken the third in the series up a notch by reinventing the car models to look more realistic, enhanced damage effects, and vehicle performance that....
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01/05/08
In the yin and yang of home entertainment,
few companies or consortiums maintain market dominance forever. The "format war" between Betamax and VHS dragged out for just over a decade, with Sony's Betamax technology ultimately falling by the wayside. Likewise, the battle between Laserdisc and VHS endured for 22 years, with Paramount publishing the last Laserdiscs in 2000. Sony and Paramount find themselves at opposite ends....
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01/03/08
Three high profile television shows have
debuted on high definition home video this holiday season. In November, Paramount's Star Trek The Original Series: Season One HD DVD set broke banks but put a smile on fan's faces heading towards season two sometime next year. Earlier this month Universal, the other HD DVD exclusive studio, finally released the long-rumored first season of Battlestar Galactica to an....
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01/01/08
I went to college at the University of Oregon, not
exactly a basketball powerhouse or household name for college hoops, but a school that's quietly made its way to the Elite Eight and sent several players to the NBA (Luke Ridnour and Freddie Jones among them). Some might call The University of Oregon a small school, and by many accounts those claims would be correct. But the atmosphere and passion of small-school hoops simply....
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12/31/07
Musical movies come and go, each wave
gathering different levels of acclaim. Films like Grease and West Side Story, for instance, remain classics to this day, while Evita and Moulin Rouge, although excellent films, have more of a cult following than anything else. With those heavy-hitters behind it, you'd think Disney's High School Musical would have virtually no fans, no traction and future. Um, no. Not only was High School....
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12/28/07
Ignore for a moment that half of the shows
I watch on TV are reality programs and don't require a script (or do they?). Also ignore for a moment that my college roommate is a writer for CSI: Miami and that I hate to see him out of work. I'm about to ask a serious question about the TV and videogame industries, and I do so with complete solemnity: are game publishers secretly rooting against the Writer's Guild? I'm tempted to....
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12/28/07
Gamers love their Guitar Hero. The first two games
in the Activision-published series and subsequent expansion packs have all been met with high praise and record sales numbers. Perhaps this tidal wave of success is why Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock steers clear of straying too far from its proven and successful formula. True, the game includes some nice new multiplayer modes and boss battles, and yes, it has....
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12/27/07
The next iteration of Blu-ray playback
, Profile 1.1, is about to head into consumers' hands via a smattering of soon-to-release movies, but some groundwork for Blu-ray Profile 1.1 has already been laid, even if some consumers don't realize it. Last week's PlayStation 3 firmware upgrade included full support for Profile 1.1, a logical step for Sony to take with its PS3 considering Blu-ray is the company's own proprietary format. But....
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12/24/07
America's political correctness has spiraled 
out of control. During late November and early December it's fair to say "happy holidays," because people are preparing (and shopping) for a variety of cultural celebrations. But from December 20 through 24, why don't people just say "Merry Christmas"? It's totally acceptable to mention Chanukah or Kwanzaa, but if you so much as utter the word "Christmas," people clam up like a teen's....
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12/24/07
Matt Groening grew up in my hometown, went
to high school with my aunt and by all accounts is a pretty weird dude. Doesn't matter; his warped cartoon creation called The Simpsons still rocks. For nearly two decades, The Simpsons has parodied, pressed and pandered its way into mainstream audience's hearts with an irreverent mix of political satire, potty humor and skewed family values. Until this year....
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12/24/07
There's a laughable scene in the original 
live-action He-Man and the Masters of the Universe film when villainous Skeletor first warps into our universe and marches his stiff low-budget army down a suburban American street. That once-forgotten imagery is what invaded my mind while watching Korea's most expensive film, Dragon Wars, or D-Wars for short. Marketed as a complex special-effects masterpiece and....
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12/21/07
When the Nintendo Wii came out of the gates
swinging, EA was one of the first companies to admit its "mistake" in not supporting the console more fervently and vowed to change its tune immediately. The first Wii-specific games to come from that promise have begun hitting stores, from Medal of Honor Heroes 2 to the more-recently released Smarty Pants. Designed for the Wii and within the premise of EA's "Family Play" model, Smarty....
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12/21/07
Competitive athletics spoofs of ESPN
8 "The Ocho" caliber have enjoyed a healthy run in Hollywood over the past few years. Beerfest and Dodgeball mocked their respective sports with honor, dignity and enough blatant cultural stereotypes to push conservatives to tears. The latest, Balls of Fury, thrusts the burgeoning genre into new territory by fusing the obvious spoof of ping pong with a spoof of kung fu, complete with legends....
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12/20/07
Finally Contra fans are treated to the nostalgic masterpiece they've been 
waiting for since the original. The fourth in series has all the right elements from the first game, but takes it to the next level with excellent level design, insane difficulty, and frenzy paced spread shot killing that feels and plays like a true Contra sequel. That said, Contra 4 is not for the passive gamer. The levels are often challenging beyond belief and only....
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12/19/07
If you've been paying any attention to
the retail situation this year, you know the Nintendo Wii is impossible to find. Unless you hit eBay, of course, at which point you're guaranteed to pay a premium to an enterprising / capitalistic / opportunistic / nefarious guy who bought 12 Wiis with the expressed purpose of turning a profit on each and every one. In light of this Wii shortage, kids around the world are left to ask good ol' Saint Nick for a Wii....
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12/19/07
Most Americans know Shakira as the
hip-swinging Colombian artist who tore up both Latin and American charts this past year with Hips Don't Lie, featuring Fugees guest artist Wyclef Jean. Beyond that hit, and maybe Whenever, Wherever, Shakira's music has been aimed squarely at the South American audiences she hails from. This hasn't stopped her unique style of primarily Spanish-sung music from stretching out....
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12/18/07
Monsters, carnage, brutality ... Angelina Jolie. Yes
, it's about time for another hack-and-slash adventure, and it's no surprise that Beowulf is ready and willing to let the bodies hit the floor in this Xbox 360 gorefest. Our story begins a long, long time ago in the age of Vikings, mead and Jesus. Beowulf is one of the first adventure stories ever written, and it's a great tale for anyone who still practices the archaic art of reading books. However, this....
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12/18/07
If you ever wanted your hand in designing your own game without the 
hassle of programming and story development, then you might find Drawn to Life for the Nintendo DS quite appealing. Drawn to Life lets you take your DS stylus and create a variety of things, from your character's avatar to the weapons you'll use in your adventure. While the limitations of the designs are left to the holder, the ability to design unique images for your character is a lot of fun, and it's....
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12/17/07
Geometry Wars tells an interesting tale of two
consoles. On the Xbox 360, the game built a cult following and foreshadowed the skyrocketing of Microsoft's popular Xbox Live Arcade service. On the Nintendo Wii, however, Geometry Wars illustrates what can happen when a company tries too hard to milk a franchise, as well as how a developers' attempts to pander to a console's strengths can both break a formerly simple gameplay....
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12/17/07
The holidays are a great time to
tinker with gadgets, because let's face it, the best electronics come out to play around this time of year. The holidays are also good times to get familiar with electronics that released earlier in the year that you missed, and the Mio C520 Portable GPS System and multimedia player is one such item, for three reasons. First, it's a sexy gadget that just begs for user input. Second, it's an incredibly useful tool for....
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12/13/07
I'll be the first to admit World War II 
shooters are getting insanely old. Yeah, yeah, "greatest generation" and all that...I don't disagree. But to re-live the same basic battles with the same basic weapons against the same basic enemies is now tedious beyond belief, so Infinity Ward's decision to create a modern shooter for its next Call of Duty game was refreshing. Honestly, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare could've ended up being....
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12/12/07
Ron Moore and David Eick's Battlestar Galactica
re-imagining has been around long enough to negate the need to embellish upon its greatness. We all know it rocks. Check that; it frakkin' rocks. It's the best thing to happen to science fiction television since Firefly, and even that pales in comparison. But as much as tuning in for new episodes on Sci-Fi Channel can be the highlight of any given week, peering at them through....
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12/11/07
Ladies and gentlemen, whether you want to
admit it or not, Christmas is merely two weeks away. And in case you hadn't noticed, the stores are just a mite busy this year, particularly in the world of video games and electronics. We know you're slammed with work, family and holiday beer -- er, cheer -- so we've taken it upon ourselves to prepare this 2007 Holiday Buyer's Guide with our thoughts on the items that will make....
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12/10/07
It's hard to talk about Mass Effect without talking
about KOTOR, which if you know what those initials mean you know what I'm talking about, but let me say right from the start: Mass Effect is nowhere near as good as KOTOR. Many times as you're playing through Mass Effect, though, you feel like an old friend has come back around, because what made KOTOR so great is still alive inside this game, and pieces of it are all over the place to....
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12/10/07
The Xbox 360 is no stranger to the open-world
style game, but games in this genre haven't really seen a world as beautiful as that of Assassin's Creed. Ubisoft has credited themselves for creating almost exact duplicates of some of the Crusade's most famous cities, and although they may or may not have succeeded in that venture (if anyone lived during that time and can verify this, send us an email--and then sell your story to the National....
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12/10/07
Let's just get this out of the way: I'm a
huge fan of the Disney theme parks. With that preface, the Pirates of the Caribbean series holds a special place in my heart, but it also makes the admission that Pirates 3 was a disappointment all the more difficult. Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl was an action-film masterpiece, and Dead Man's Chest, while slightly less impressive, was an enjoyable romp. But Pirates of the....
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12/10/07
Earlier this fall we saw what seemed to be an
inordinate amount of Halloween-related Blu-ray and HD-DVD releases. Most holidays inspire multiple appropriately themed movies, but this Halloween seemed especially brutal. Fast-forward two months, though, and 2007's Christmas-related films have been fewer and farther between, almost to the point that The Santa Clause 3 releasing on Blu-ray Disc elicited a response....
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12/09/07
Let's just get this out of the way: I'm a huge fan of the Disney theme parks. With that preface, the Pirates of the Caribbean series holds a special place in my heart, but it also makes the admission that Pirates 3 was a disappointment all the more difficult. Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl was an action-film masterpiece, and Dead Man's Chest, while slightly less impressive, was an enjoyable romp. But Pirates of the Caribbean 3....
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12/07/07
Chair Entertainment comes out of nowhere to bring us one
of the most surprisingly fun Xbox Live Arcade games we've played this year. Undertow mixes all the great elements of a dual analog stick shooter (like Geometry Wars), but throws your character in the depths of the ocean as you set out to protect your base and take over the enemy team's control points.
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12/06/07
The decline of light gun-based video games
over the years has been fueled by an industry switch to DLP, LCD and Plasma televisions, none of which is capable of supporting light gun pixel detection like an aging CRT tube set. Within the last year, the engineers at Nintendo piqued the interest of light gun hopefuls by including an infrared sensor with the Wii console capable of detecting signals sent toward the set, much in the....
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