Reviews & Articles

Get ready to slip on some virtual spandex and take to the streets fighting crime as a dorky comic book fan turned superhero teen in Kick-Ass. Based on the movie and comic book of the same name,Kick-Ass will be a downloadable action-based fighting game from PlayStation Network. The story is about Dave Lizewski, a high school student that brings to life every fanboy’s dream of becoming a superhero; at the Game Developers Conference, I watched as players inKick-Ass the game, did so, too.

Despite the fact that the book series has come to an end, there are still two movies left to go, and the Harry Potter saga lives on. And it will continue to do so in pixel form, thanks to the newest installment in the Lego series — Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4 — which I got a glimpse of at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco in March.

Taikodom is one of those games that will give you a sense of déjà vu when you give it a thorough looking over. There’s the fly-by-the-seat of your pants space combat and an economic depth that makes you break out a green visor and a scientific calculator. It seems Taikodom borrows from the legacy of other games, but when added up, it’s different from the sum of those other games. That was my initial impression after looking at GamersFirst’s Taikodom at GDC, but Joe Willmon, the game’s producer, gave me a tour that explained how this sci-fi massively multiplayer online game is its own game.

Augmented reality and 3-D are two of the biggest watch words in technology and gaming right now. Someday we’ll be playing games that overlay high-resolution graphics with the world around us, played by GPS-located social gamers using virtual reality helmets or neural implants. Now, before all this technology is sprung upon us unsuspecting gamers, the hardware junkies at Vuzix are making sure to ease into the future a little more gently. They’re already implementing a taste of the future with their current top-of-the-line product, the Wrap 920, and expanding upon it with the upcoming Wrap 920AR and the 6-DoF Tracker. At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, I steeled my nerves for future shock and took a quick tour of one company’s look at where the visuals of gaming might be going.

Hero: 108 from Gamania is an excellent example of cross-media entertainment. Hero: 108 is a Flash-based animation series on Cartoon Network, and Hero: 108 Online is a free-to-play massively multiplayer online action game based on the cartoon. At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, I got to see just how well the game resembles and complements the show.

I recently had a chance to interview Jon Virtes, aka “Lazlowe,” about a couple of features in Runes of Magic’s upcoming expansion and his role as community manager.

Lazlowe is new to the Frogster America team and has been a community manager there for about a month. He got into the industry 14 years ago and worked his way up from a mailroom at a major publisher, through QA and a few other roles, to Frogster and Runes of Magic.

There have been plenty of motorcycle racing games on various platforms for many years, many that are quite good and simply enjoyable to play. However, I can’t think of a time when they haven’t been overshadowed by games dedicated to their arguably sexier four-wheeled supercharged 200 mph racing cousins. Joining the fray on the undermanned biking game side is Valcon Games’ SBK-09: Superbike World Championship. At GDC 2010, I had a chance to check out the latest version in this well-known series from Europe.

The only thing better than a fantasy game that combines puzzles, cards, strategy and combat is a sequel that improves on the best qualities of the original. D3Publisher’s Puzzle Quest 2 aims to be exactly that better sort of a mouse trap. The sorta-kinda sequel, the sci-fi-themed expansion Puzzle Quest: Galactrix, diverged from the road paved by the original fantasy-themed Puzzle Quest. Infinite Interactive, the creator of the first game, returns the gamer to the familiar fantasy road with Puzzle Quest 2. During GDC 2010, I had the opportunity to try the nearly finished Xbox Live Arcade version of the game.

Flying games haven’t always been my strong suit. But at GDC 2010, I seemed to do fairly well with Kid Adventures: Sky Captain for the Wii. I’d hope so since — as the name implies — it’s meant for kids.

Blue Dragon was one of the better-known releases of 2007 for the Xbox 360 when Microsoft Game Studios published this role-playing game, which was an homage to classic turn-based RPGs on a console starved of RPGs. After a manga and an anime series and a spin-off real-time strategy title on the Nintendo DS, Blue Dragon returns to its roots with Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadow for the DS. As a fan of classic console RPGs, it’s a title that puts a smile on my face at the thought of being able to take a look at it. Luckily, at GDC 2010, I had just such an opportunity at D3Publisher’s media suite. D3Publisher demoed a nearly complete port of the game, which was released in Japan last autumn.

At the Game Developers Conference 2010 in San Franciso, I got to try the Xbox 360 version of Mafia II from 2K Games. The level I played was about 60 percent into the game, so I didn’t have the luxury of playing a tutorial, learning the ropes or knowing the backstory from playing the beginning of the game. And since I hadn’t played the original Mafia, I must confess I wasn’t exactly good at what I was doing. Despite my lack of skill, though, the bit of Mafia II that I got to play was rather enjoyable.

Have you ever made a flip book? A flip book is a collection of sequenced images that when the pages are turned quickly, you see an animation. Now, what if you remove some of those images? Or many of them? It’s just a jumbled, headache-inducing mess to watch. A similar result of stuttering gameplay is what happens to an online game when you introduce lag. Limiting that latency — at least on a user’s computer — is the main argument for Bigfoot Network’s Killer Xeno Pro network adapter card.