I started reading Tom Bissell's EXTRA LIVES, in which the talented scribe writes about a particularly riveting LEFT 4 DEAD Versus match he played which exemplifies the exceptional gameplay design of Valve's game. It put me in the mood to re...

Most open-world sandbox games shouldn't be open-world sandbox games. As I write this, MAFIA 2 and LA NOIRE spring to mind in red-filtered flashbacks like traitors upon which I yearn to enact my revenge. Games that made me drive distances ...

It's weird, really. There I was worrying that MODERN WARFARE 3 would lose the franchise's identity due to being written and developed by a substantially different Infinity Ward. It didn't, and is perhaps the best installment in the series*....

(Warning: this article contains spoilers of MODERN WARFARE 1 and 2) Sure, it might become patriotic gunwank in a few days, when the third installment -- written and developed by a different team -- will be released. Writer Jesse Stern is...

Originally this was meant to be a list of great videogame scores, but when I realized I had gone well over two thousand words with it, I decided to do this in shorter segments. HEAVENLY SWORD was criticized for its short length and the com...

L.A. NOIRE has done something I thought impossible: it has made me look back at the time I've spent with HEAVY RAIN and miss it. Because regardless of David Cage's pretensions of being a filmmaker and his hard-on for himself, HEAVY RAIN wa...

(This article discusses aspects of MASS EFFECT 2's plot in the vaguest way possible to avoid spoilers, but it inevitably reveals details you might prefer not to know before playing it. It's recommended you've played MASS EFFECT 2 before you...

"Bias", most popular word in the Idiot Fanboy Dictionary (wherein they define it as "Jim Sterling"), is an inherently bad thing deeply-rooted in human nature: defined by thefreedictionary.com as "mental tendency or inclination, esp an irr...

I know, I know: it was 2005. Gameplay trends change with vomit-inducing speed; having to find a key to open a door was actually acceptable level design not too long ago, and judging by DEVIL MAY CRY 4, Capcom still believes it is. Also, GOD...