The A.V. Club - Games

Games: Review:Buzz! Quiz World

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

It’s time to give up hope that quiz-show games will ever match the free-associating, pop-culture-obsessed brilliance of the 1990s’ You Don’t Know Jack CD-ROMs, but the Buzz! games are the closest anyone has come. The main difference between the two series is that Jack thrived by virtue of its writing, while Buzz! is fun because of its quick, varied format. So while Buzz! Quiz World offers a litany of mostly inoffensive tweaks, the best thing about the new version is that it doesn’t mess with the underlying design honed by its predecessors. Buzz, the Guy Smiley/Greg ...

Games: Review:Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 arrives all hammer and tongs, prepared to defend its title as the sole other title that average gamers give a damn about besides Madden. As with all war games, the message here is that macho posturing (and formidable mustaches) ultimately win the day. But what makes the Modern Warfare series so successful is the way it wraps gaming’s standard-issue let’s-kill narrative in a sophisticated-sounding package—dig that digital spinning globe!—which slyly makes gamers feel like they’re actually learning something useful about world politics. They aren’t. Like the original, Modern ...

Games: Review:Rabbids Go Home

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

The developers of Rabbids Go Home have no idea how to make a third-party Wii game. First, you debug code from an old, rejected GameCube project. Then you add inane waggle controls—because, you know, immersion. Create cover art in Photoshop Elements, pluralize the title with a Z if the game is for girlz, and you’re done. But Rabbids Go Home doesn’t go by the book. No, the snobs at Ubisoft Montpellier commissioned an original brass-band soundtrack, hired witty writers, and obsessed over the details of their character animations. Some nerve. Rabbids Go Home makes everyone else look ...

Games: Sawbuck Gamer:November 9, 2009

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:00:00 -0600

Hi, How Are You Creator: Dr Fun Fun Platform: iPhone/iPod Touch Price: $1.99 Daniel Johnston’s shaky, damaged music is pretty much the last thing imaginable as the source material for an iPhone game. But considering the imagery available from Johnston’s superhero- and Beatles-laden catalog, Hi, How Are You could be a lot more messed-up. His game plays like the bastard child of Frogger, Pinocchio, and Super Mario 64. You control Johnston’s drawing of a stalk-eyed frog who seeks to be turned back into a real boy and reunited with the woman he loves. How? By ...

Games: Review:LEGO Rock Band

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

Remember when rock was dangerous? John Lennon claimed The Beatles were bigger than Jesus, and it caused a massive shitstorm. A few decades later, their legacy has been immortalized further with this year’s highly celebrated The Beatles: Rock Band, which also further legitimized the videogame series as a pop-cultural touchstone. The Beatles are a tough act to follow, and LEGO Rock Band has that unenviable task. Problem is, The Beatles: Rock Band is a huge exception for the franchise as it currently exists. Rock Band games are pretty much all the same: What makes any particular title worthwhile is ...

Games: Review:Dragon Age: Origins

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

Your character’s journey through the world of Dragon Age: Origins is a bloody one. Battles and cutscenes are filled with spurting gore, and the trail your party takes along the world map is colored by sanguinary splatters. But the gratuitous pools of red your enemies leave on the battlefield helps paint the bigger picture: Whether you’re fighting ravening monsters or desperate refugees hoping to kill you for coin, everything bleeds, and everything dies. Players must decide how to make their way through such a violent world. After completing one of six unique, multi-hour origin stories determined by your ...

Games: Review:DJ Hero

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

Activision’s DJ Hero celebrates the origins of turntable-based music in appropriate fashion: It pushes the rhythm-game craze forward by swinging back around to its roots. Before developer Harmonix dropped the first Guitar Hero, the company created games in which little robot DJs flipped between rails of light, activating and essentially remixing songs by acts familiar and obscure. DJ Hero, by Freestyle Games, modifies that concept with a unique turntable controller. The experience of playing captures the DJ’s allure and gives players a glimpse of hip-hop’s origins. The controller features a turntable platter and mixer inputs. Onscreen, three ...

Games: 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: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: 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: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: 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