They say New York is the city that never sleeps. That’s probably because it can’t seem to go more than a few days without an apocalyptic disaster dropping in to ruin everyone’s week. Between giant monsters, sweeping plagues, foreign invasions, alien invasions and attempts at domination by supervillains it’s a wonder that the New Yorkers consider batting an eye these days.    So here we have Prototype 2, a game about an apocalyptic disaster in New York City. This particular series has decided to go the way of sweeping plague, but it threw in a few superhero elements as well (although the …

Pre-rant clarification: I am not a Resident Evil fan. I’ve actually never played one before this because I never owned an original Playstation and even when I had a PS2 I quickly traded it in for an Xbox at the persuasion of a friend.  The first one to become available on the 360 was Resident Evil IV, and I didn’t see the point of playing the fourth installment (or rather something like the fifteenth if you count all the remakes and spinoffs and side stories and crap).  So anyway, yeah, I’m not a fan or even a vet. It probably stands to reason, then, that I have no right to critique the …

This week, I’d like to talk about games that made me marvel at the direction the industry is headed. So instead of a review, I’d like to take a quick look back at some of my favorite games over the past several years.   5. Saints Row II While we’re all about Saints Row the Third nowadays, it’s worth remembering where that drunk, foul-mouthed, psychotic blob of whacky fun that didn’t make the slightest bit of sense got its roots, and that was with its predecessor, Saint’s Row II. Why not the first installment? Well, it was alright, but it was a gangster game -you know, the kind where you start…

For those of you who are not aware (although I’m not sure how you couldn’t be at this point), Minecraft is an indie game made by the Swedish company Mojang, which was founded in 2009 by one Markus Persson. Since then, it has gone on to become one of the most popular Indie Games of all time, so much so that it was selected to be featured at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s “The Art of Video Games” exhibit in Washington. So, just what is all the fuss about? Well, let’s take a look.  Plot and Characters None. You play a square man in a square world. What he looks like is up to you; there …

  Some of you may be thinking: "What is The Darkness?" For our standards it's the name of a video game series available for the PC, Xbox 360 and the PS3 based on a comic book I've never read nor heard of before I picked up The Darkness II from Redbox.  I never played the first game, mostly because I had heard almost nothing positive about it.  The game is rated "Mature," although I wish they'd change it to Adult. There's nothing mature about ripping somebody's limbs off in a sea of F-bombs.  The Plot Darkens Fortunately for me, there's an option to have a quick synopsis of the first game …

  This week I shall explore arguably the most underappreciated medium of modern gaming: free online games. If you don’t know, there are literally thousands of simple games available for free. All they take is a Google search. For free online games, I recommend ArmorGames.com. Funnily enough, game developers have managed to swindle people into paying to have them on their smart phones (guilty). Example: the casual gaming phenomenon known Angry Birds, which to date has grossed over $1 billion in games and merchandise, is a simple palette swap of any of the hundreds of tower destruction-type …

In light of my disappointment in recent first-person-shooter games, I’ve been keeping away from them for the past few weeks.  I think I’ll keep that up this week; instead of shooty-explody, I’m going with hacky-slashy with Soul Calibur V, a game about a bunch of anime characters whacking each other with what appear to be swords but must not be considering they can’t cut anything and only knock people unconscious.   Plot and Characters I’m throwing my hands up here because the plot is completely impenetrable.  I know some suburban caveman holed up in a basement somewhere has actually bothered …