Reviews & Articles

The last thing I had a chance to do at I/ITSEC was the honor of presenting the award for Best Government Game at the Serious Games Challenge. The full list of winners can be found here.

Distilled down to its essence, Wind Up Robots by Soma Games is a tower defense game with movable towers. That, however, isn’t saying much or giving it the kudos due. There’s a story behind the game. Zach is a little boy who is just a little wary of the dark and things that go bump in the night. His grandfather Jack has made him a little wind-up robot, which doesn’t just keep him company — it seeks out and destroys the boogeymen! How cool is that?

Fever Frenzy is a task-management game for the medically inclined. (OK, so no real medicine is involved.) Charlie and Hannah have just graduated from medical school. You get to pick which one you want to play. At their graduation party, there is a wild outbreak of a mysterious virus. The world is in danger, and you must save the day.

Steampunk is a style, to me, best characterized by the mixture of steam-powered technology coupled with current technology to create a fun, unique blend. This sort of style can be used in anything from computer hardware, to wardrobes, to everyday objects such as tables and chairs. This popular style is especially cool when coupled with games. In the browser-based Iron Grip: Marauders it's used throughout the game from the story to the graphics to the general theme and feel, and this makes it shine.

The dark and colorless world of Limbo is void of everything but life and adventure. The game has a relatively short playtime, which is countered by endless frustrations and riddled with deaths. However, it is fun and rich.

As an avid gamer and dabbler in the development arts, I usually consider myself a pretty good and fair judge of videogames. However, Global Agenda leaves me in a state of dumbfounded bliss, which totally contradicts everything I would normally judge a game on. At first glance, I am tempted to say this game is one of the infamous “love it or hate it” breed, but after a month of playing, I still do not know for sure which I fall into.

Shadow Era is a free-to-play collectible trading card game. This high-quality strategy card game starts by prompting the player to create a human character from a selection of battle classes. There are more than 100 beautifully designed game cards in Shadow Era.

Every now and then something comes along that shines brightly and separates itself from the rest of the pack. Whether it be a Blockbuster movie, New York Times bestseller or Twisted Pixel’s ’Splosion Man. This game is something that should not be missed.

The return of the turn based space strategy game (for me)! Oh no!! Save me! I remember playing these games in the 90s, and oddly, they have all been pretty much the same game with just new branding/gimmicks, or shiny graphics since. This genre essentially hasn't changed over time, at least to me. Maybe I have been burned out on strategy games, so now I tend to get bored quickly with them. I love strategy games most times, but this genre here.. well it can bore me with its plain un-originality. So I am here, trying to hope for the best, and hide that maybe I am a little.. biased.

Zombie games seem to be everywhere this day and age, and I literally do mean everywhere. There is not a place you can turn to that does not in some way, shape or form reference zombies, or has you killing zombies. That is not a bad thing, as most of us have those post-apocalyptic fantasies that have an urge to be taken care of. I would hope that my post-apocalyptic fight would be to that of the Frank West — one of the most awesome guys in the zombie-slaying world. Dead Rising 2: Off the Record takes you away from the original story of Dead Rising 2, and puts you in the shoes of the first hero Frank West.

There’s a reason in the game review community that the phrase “what can be said that hasn’t been said before” is both exceedingly accurate and cliché. Certain games reviewed are so popular that the same themes are reiterated in almost the same voice and phrases. So it brings up the point: Why review an over-reviewed game? Keep that in mind as we retread one of the most popular games of the last decade: Resident Evil 4.

The demo released for Need for Speed Hot Pursuit, and my first thought was that I needed to go and download it for my Xbox 360 and see if it lives up to my standards of Need for Speed.

King’s Bounty has been a fixture for a long time in the computer gaming world. Unfortunately, I’ve never played any of the series. I don’t know why I’ve never shelled out greenbacks for what is considered a very popular title. But I’ve jumped right in to see what the hoopla was all about. Boy, was I pleasantly surprised at what I had missed all these years.

I love Minecraft. And the crazy thing is, for a game that has been “complete” at its core for well over a year. The down part is that it fell off my radar due to school and other pressing games to review. So when I recently logged into my account into the full-blown 1.0 version, nothing was truly surprising. However, it still sucks me into its world and makes the world melt away.

If you have been a gamer since the mid ’90s, you know who and what Rayman is all about. However, Rayman has been on a bit of a sabbatical of late. We have seen somewhat recent titles such as Rayman Raving Rabbids, but the game is as far from being a Rayman game as it possibly can be. Rayman Raving Rabbids is a good game in its own right, but this isn’t what I intend to review. For now at least.

Do you remember the old text-based role-playing games? Where you looked around the scene, picked up seemingly unrelated objects and used them to solve a puzzle? Or maybe you grew up helping Guybrush Threepwood through his adventures in the Tales of Monkey Island. Well, Kaptain Brawe leaps right smack bang into the middle of that genre.

Every other year is special time for Call of Duty fans as the giant known as Infinity Ward struts its proverbial stuff. Activision/Infinity Ward’s latest installment in the Call of Duty franchise is proof that they are not losing their firm grasp on the game’s success.

Chances are, you’ve probably heard of Pavlov. He was not a psychologist; he was a physiologist and did research with dogs. He had a laboratory, and he measured how much a dog salivated before being fed and after the food was presented. While this was a pretty basic experiment, he forgot one variable: The door to his lab had a bell. Eventually, the dogs associated the bell with being fed. Imagine his surprise, coming into work one day and finding dogs salivating for no apparent reason. So what does this have to do with videogames? In many ways, games are set up to be rewarding and to engage the senses. Now throw in a recognizable developer and publisher. What happens? People get excited and anticipate the possibilities of what could happen in any number of scenarios. This is what I had in mind when writing my review of Super Mario Galaxy.

Revenge is one of the oldest reasons in the book to respond to anything. Don’t believe me? Watch a bunch of children and see how long it takes for them not to hit each other over some misdemeanor. It also makes for a great plot. Also, I am aware of the Kill Bill movie series. However, I never really got into the films whenever I saw them on TV as it was just too grisly for me. So why in the world do I enjoy Shank so much?

If you want to experience an epic tale full of fun puzzles, lovable characters, heartbreak, hope and change, then Illusion of Gaia will be your best friend — as it was mine. Taking an average of 15 to 20 hours to beat, Illusion of Gaia is a role-playing game that rejects the all-too-common random battles in exchange for what I think is a better leveling and fighting system.

Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D was never a game people paid for. It was a free unlockable option when you beat Resident Evil 4 and 5. It offered something rewarding after running through an already excellent campaign. This little unlockable game gave you a few Resident Evil characters that you could pick at your choice and run through a few stages where you just run and gun under a time limit. It was a fantastic addition and gave you a reason to be competitive about your score for each mission. It was not the traditional Resident Evil horror, but it was still a welcomed feature. Now Capcom has made it available for full retail price on the 3DS, but was it worth it?

Deep down (deep deep down), I think we all secretly feel that meteorologists are messing with us. Those meteorologists out there reading this - they know it's true. In Elements of Destruction you play Marty, the crazed meteorologist. His boss, Miss Burns, has just fired him for too accurately predicting bad weather. Drew McCoy, who sees nothing but sunny days ahead, is his saccharine replacement. Marty does what any self-respecting meteorologist with a hobby in mad science would do in that situation: he uses his evil machine to control the weather and wreak havoc on an unsuspecting world.

Mad Blender is a fun game that is aimed at purely entertaining people. The point of the game is to take a photo via the iPhone’s camera or use an existing iPhone’s photo album image and throw it in a virtual blender. One can even crop a portion of the photo so that only a part of it ends up inside a blender.

I think if we were to sit down and watch the cartoons we watched as a kid, we would see that violence was a common bedfellow with the comedy of the likes of Wile E. Coyote and so forth. This really doesn’t mean those cartoons were bad and they created violent children; we were just enlightened by the comical chase. The game Naughty Bear takes this idea and makes it into a modern-day game that feels very reminiscent of those Saturday cartoons ... with a tad bit more emphasis on the violent atmosphere.

When I first heard of Halo: Combat Evolved, years ago, I did not think much of it. Its name did not inspire me to look at it beyond the cover. However, upon trying it at the request of a friend, the game became an absolute delight to me. The controls are easy to understand, and the character’s actions, along with the camera, are smooth. Combining these slick movements with the eye-catching, vivid graphics allows for an experience that feels fantastically interactive and enjoyable. With excellent voice work and some amazing music, including the menu theme, Halo is a joy to listen to as well.