Roots over Reboots: Talking Double Dragon Neon with WayForward's Sean Velasco

Double Dragon Neon’s beating up people this September in a world where brawlers aren’t the mainstay. We get the occasional one that breaks the mold of not only being just a brawler, but also offering deep combat like Castle Crashers

Beating up God in Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth

In a laborious 45 minute cutscene (you have been warned), Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth reiterates that we have no control in our lives. Circumstance and directives rule this universe and you better get used to it, otherwise you’ll be spending an awful

Magic Needs To Be Mysterious and Unpredictable In Games

Most of the great writers of fantasy know that magic works best when left unexplained, when it is allowed to be mysterious and unpredictable.  There is, after all, little point in writing a story featuring magic if you then make

The Fate of Final Fantasy Versus XIII

The only interesting games to come out of Square Enix in the last ten years have come from Tetsuya Nomura. Kingdom Hearts, The World Ends With You, and Dissidia Final Fantasy respectively gave us crazy cross overs, Atlus-esque insanity and epic aerial combat to relieve fans from a stagnant slew of turn-based RPG’s. And now we’re being told that Final Fantasy XIII, a game that would promised the incredibly fun combat of Kingdom Hearts in a mature* setting with characters that don’t look like they just escaped a zipper factory, is cancelled.

Breaking Up With "League of Legends."

Hi everybody, I’m Kevin and I have a problem with games. (Muffled chorus: Hi Kevin.) I’ve uninstalled Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri because I stopped doing anything else.  I’d sit down to play at my desk for fifteen minutes and then

Summer Sale Steamroll: $25 for 5 Great Games

It’s the last day of the Steam summer sale. Don’t think you can afford to spend any more on games? Well, how about $25 for 5 great games you may have overlooked? See if you can stretch your wallet a

After Pressing Start: Majora's Mask

The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask is, to this day, one of the strangest, most unique titles in The Legend of Zelda series. There is no princess to rescue, no Ganondorf to defeat, no Hyrule to voyage through and defend.

Surviving Day Z: 10 tips that will save your life

The world of Day Z is a cruel one — so unpredictable and so volatile that even a seasoned veteran will hit the deck at the sound of a gunshot in the distance. Beginners have it even worse. In most

Indie Devs vs New Games Journalism [Feedback Loop]

The last year has seen the rise of the independent developer as hero. Does this growing consideration of the developer challenge an eight-year-running trend in game journalism?

The explosion of commercially accessible independent games on platforms like Steam or XBLA have introduced us to a new successful and far more accessible generation of game developers. These new indie game dev stars have induced a change in the approach of some game reviewers. A change brought to the forefront in Walter Garrett Mitchell’s piece on The Escapist, “Alfred Hitchcock Would Make Good Games.”

Mitchell’s focus on the developer is entirely unlike the experience-focused New Games Journalism style proposed in 2004 by Kieron Gillen. That experiential style has more recently been popularized by Zero Punctuation, the rest of The Escapist, @Play, and a variety of other reviews that approached games based on how they played, instead of how people created them.

The Real West of Red Dead Redemption

Gaily bedight, A gallant knight, In sunshine and in shadow, Had journeyed long, Singing a song, In search of Eldorado. When I thought about the American West, I used to imagine an aging gunslinger riding out across the vast plains