The A.V. Club - Games

Music: Newswire:No Doubt expands the war on video-game avatars

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:30:00 -0600

The sturm and drang over Kurt Cobain's avatar appearing in Guitar Hero 5 to sing songs by other artists has settled, but the war may be just beginning: Billboard reports today that No Doubt is suing Activision, the makers of Guitar Hero and the new Band Hero, for unauthorized use of its members' likenesses in songs by other artists. Just as Cobain could rock out some Bush jams in Guitar Hero 5 (and nearly destroy the space-time continuum), No Doubt leader Gwen Stefani can sing the decidedly less embarrassing "Honky Tonk Women" by The Rolling Stones (among others) in ...

Games: Newswire:District 9 Blu-ray to include playable demo of God Of War III

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:00:00 -0600

Well here's something new. On December 29th, Sony will release the hit sci-fi film District 9 on Blu-ray, and are adding a unique bonus feature: a playable demo of the PlayStation 3 game God Of War III, due in 2010. According to Sony's press release, "after successfully completing the game demo, the consumer will be able to unlock an exclusive making-of featurette about the game." (And what's at the top of the sphere? An information desk!) Sony is touting this as "the first movie/game demo hybrid Blu-ray in the US." And a pretty smart pairing of ...

Games: Review:Borderlands

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

Finally, a videogame with the balls to depict the generic post-apocalyptic wasteland as it really will be: utterly boring and lifeless. Borderlands takes place on Pandora, an Arizona-like planet where the bleakness is offset by its cel-shaded-esque appearance. Though Pandora is mostly deserted, bandits, mercenaries, and other hired guns troll its surface in search of the Vault, an intergalactic piggybank filled with untold riches and awesome technology that a supposedly advanced species had the foresight to abandon for the sake of plot. If this all sounds like a lazy rehash of last year’s revolutionary Fallout 3, hang on: Borderlands ...

Games: Review:Tekken 6

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

With a simultaneous PS3 and Xbox 360 release, Tekken 6 marks the first time the hardcore fighting series has migrated from arcades to living rooms via a non-Sony console. But that’s the only true fanboy heresy of this adaptation, which is otherwise a hard-hitting continuation of the brief, brutal fisticuffs that have propelled Tekken for years. Core gameplay is focused on beatdowns between any pair of the 42 playable characters. The action encompasses realistic and highly fantastic martial arts and fight techniques. The stratospheric leaps and elephantine bouncing breasts of some fighting games are kept to a minimum; Tekken ...

Games: Review:Nostalgia

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

Nostalgia is a look back at a time that never existed, a version of the late 19th century where adventurers cross the world in airships, doing combat with sky pirates and recovering lost treasures. But while the characters are constantly digging through the past, the game designers would be better served by more forward thinking. Instead, they’ve produced a game that’s beautiful and detailed, but unlikely to fully satisfy players. The story follows Eddie Brown, son of the Indiana Jones-inspired Dr. Gilbert Brown. When Gilbert goes missing on one of his adventures, Eddie takes his father’s airship ...

Games: Newswire:Cross-platforming in action: Reality shows become videogames; art films become iPod apps

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:39:00 -0500

Two stray, loosely related news items: -Discovery Communications and videogame developer Crave are teaming up to covert the popular reality series Man Vs. Wild and The Deadliest Catch into games that will be playable on all the major gaming systems. (Yes, but can we get a Man V. Food game? How about Ice Road Truckers?) -The National Film Board Of Canada now has its own, fairly impressive iPod app, which allows users to stream documentaries, experimental shorts and cartoons from the NFB archives and--and here's the cool part--download those films to watch offline in an iPod-ready format. The ...

Games: Hater:Finally! Something Will Tell You When To Blink

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:00:00 -0500

Staring: It's the great human pastime. There's nothing like a good long stare at a wall, or computer screen, or darkened window to really get the mind nice and empty. Well, emptier. It's the perfect way to sink into the vast nothingness that is forever lapping at the tiny shore of our miniscule existence. Just open your eyes and...stare. But how many times have you been staring at something for hours and forgotten to blink? Hundreds? Thousands? How many times have you gone to the eye doctor complaining of chronic dry eye only to have the ...

Games: Sawbuck Gamer:October 26, 2009