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• The Villains of Batman: Arkham Asylum Should Really Visit a Medical Professional

  Let’s take a moment, shall we? We spend so much time reflecting on the influence of the 1980s on contemporary game design, we sometimes forget the looming retro reach of the 1990s. Not even 90s games, per se. Just the nerd zeitgeist. For example, at one point in time, people thought Todd McFarlane was a talented comic book artist. He drew things like this: Look at that guy! How does he walk through doors? You’d think we, as a society, would have gladly left this sort of anatomical chicanery in the past. But no. No it lives on in our games. For example: How do they walk through doors?! Batman: Arkham Asylum, despite the fact that it’s shaping up to possibly be the best Batman game ever made, features character art that’s an unsavory confluence of McFarlane and Cliffy B’s legacy. Read More... Posted Apr 17 2009, 08:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, gears of war, cliffy b, warner bros, batman, rocksteady games, harley quinn, batman arkham asylum, warner bros interactive, todd mcfarlane, spawn, epic games, bane

• Dr. Spock vs. The Watchmen vs. Terminator: The New Movie Tie-In

  Nostalgia, as Cole’s post on the ever-ubiquitous Final Fantasy VII so deftly illustrated, is a disease afflicting games criticism. It’s understandable why. The people writing about games today (not to mention the majority of people making them) came of age during videogames’ golden age. It’s no wonder fond memories color their perception of the entire medium. Nostalgia isn’t always a bad thing, especially when it inspires creativity. Just look at Bionic Commando Rearmed. But as Luc Sante says, “Nostalgia can be defined as a state of inarticulate contempt for the present and fear of the future.” Me, I love the future. I’m a ceaseless optimist, fueled by the promise of tomorrow, I am. When I feel the symptoms of nostalgia (itchiness, aquaphobia, uncontrollably defending Battletoads, frothing at the mouth) taking over my brain, I remember movie tie-ins. I think about going to Pompey Video and plunking down four dollars to subject myself to The Rocketeer on NES. I think about buying Die Hard Trilogy as one of my first Playstation games. Then I vomit and, like an exhausted drunk, I feel a little bit better. The movie tie-in is changing though. While you still see trash like Secret Level’s Iron Man game making millions, the big budget retail rush job isn’t the guaranteed success it used to be. Iron Man may have been a hit for Sega and Secret Level (providing the cash flow to finish the giant flop Golden Axe: Beast Rider), but The Incredible Hulk tie-in, released by Sega just a few months later, sold about as well as cans of Coke II. It isn’t just brand strength and high cost that makes tie-ins a greater risk. Read More... Posted Mar 10 2009, 08:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, bionic commando, grin, sega, the dark knight, bionic commando rearmed, warner bros, watchmen, golden axe beast rider, paramount, racketeer, die hard trilogy, the incredible hulk, iron man, superman returns, star trek

• Curveball: Hands-On With Wanted: Weapons of Fate

  When I first saw the trailer for the film Wanted, my brain immediately said, “Wow, a Joe ten years younger than current Joe would have thought this was the best movie ever made.” Current Joe still hasn’t seen the movie, but briefly getting my hands on Wanted: Weapons of Fate, the feeling was distinctly similar—that a younger version of myself would be completely blown away by this specific vision of adolescent bombast. I’m pretty sure I’m complimenting my time with the game when I say that. Read More... Posted Jan 23 2009, 02:00 PM by Joe Keiser with | with no comments Filed under: playstation 3, warner bros, joe keiser, Wanted, preview

• F.E.A.R. 2 and Crafting the Bigger Sequel That’s Actually Better

  It was F.E.A.R. that pulled me, for the first time in twenty years of gaming, into first-person shooters. Like everyone else, I played my fair share of id’s shooters throughout the ‘90s. But being a console gamer, my time with turn-of-the-century FPSs, games that saw the genre evolve into a serious creative force and not just “Doom clones”, was always second-hand. I downloaded the demo for F.E.A.R. off of Xbox Live just looking for something to play and was entranced. The scares weren’t exactly gripping. Spooky little girl walks down the hall and *GASP* disappears! Walk into a room that’s covered in bloooOOOoood and then *WHOA* it’s not! The action, though, was unlike anything else I’d played up until 2006 thanks to the game’s still-impressive enemy AI. Walking down a hallway with the barrel of a shotgun jutting from the base of the screen was something I was used to. Bad guys jumping through windows to avoid exploding grenades and cursing at me wasn’t. Every single encounter was dangerous and forced you to consider how you moved through the mundane office cubicles and hallways that made up the bulk of the game’s setting. Unfortunately, F.E.A.R. was a classic example of how a game needs to have more than just an excellent set of fundamental rules to be great. Despite the incredible programming that made the baddies so interesting, there wasn’t much else to F.E.A.R. Every environment was the same, the story too vague to ever really hook you. After nine hours of wandering through identical hallways and realizing I was only three-quarters of the way through the game, I shelved it, opting to watch the ending on YouTube rather than finish it myself. If the demo of F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin I played today is indicative of the entire game, I think I’ll be finishing the whole thing this time out. Read More... Posted Nov 10 2008, 08:30 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, half-life, fps, fear, monolith, project origin, fear 2, warner bros