The American Dream revised:   Having already sold more copies than most countries have citizens, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has now transcended the video game industry to become a major player on the world stage. I feel as if Call of Duty should have its own representative at the UN, bullying countries into trading resources in exchange for Modern Warfare’s two top exports: flashbang grenades and anti-war quotes. Modern Warfare 2’s economy ...

The viking slayer.:   In Trine, you assume control of a group of three characters that happen to be the destined chosen ones; a burly but duty-bound knight, a scantily-clad female thief and a wizard that quotes scribes off the top of his head like a bookworm. They must traverse forests, caves, castles and dungeons, slaying legions of walking skeletons to rescue the kingdom from an evil spirit. Right now it sounds like ...

Oh, how Dusty.:   I could’ve sworn that the appetite for Halo was long ago sated. We already got not one but three very sizable shooters. All of which were very similar (albeit incrementally improving) titles that involve largely the same identical marines-hurting-aliens gameplay. Halo 3 was a sufficient finale, offering more of the same chunky levels, all co-op friendly, a strong online component and neatly closing up the story so that the ...

Things that go flop in the night.:   I think Luigi’s Mansion may have traumatized longtime Nintendo fans. Imagine a group of kids that were raised by their parents to eat a hearty breakfast every morning. This breakfast would be nutritious and delicious; scrambled eggs with gourmet ketchup, French toast with sugar powder sprinkled on top and a hot chocolate with whipped cream and a cherry. Life is great, kids go to school happy. Now imagine one ...

Jeff Hardy would've used his drug money to buy this game.:   The situation with our annual wrestling video games seems to mirror the wrestling scene in reality. Every year, Yukes, THQ and the Fed pump out their annual Smackdown vs. Raw title, rudely telling the fans what features they want to see implemented (like last year’s tag team system, in spite of the WWE’s general lack of tag teams.) All the while, they ignore the existing flaws of the series ...

Pretty fly for a white guy. :   Oh Uncharted 2, how hard you try. Uncharted 2 feels like that one insecure kid at school that puts too much effort into fitting in. He buys the most expensive pre-torn jeans and matching Rocawear shirts, and totes the newest IPhone (he’s in Grade 5 by the way) so that he can post more text in Twitter updates per day than this review’s length. However, the fear of being ...

Nothing to get soiled over:   The female orgasm and gaming have by and large been kept two separate entities for decades. While its easy for male gamers whom have never known a kiss beyond their mother to seek arousal from a blocky Playstation-era Lara Croft and her triangular cleavage, women tend to need a bit more. The onset of force-feedback controllers and in particular that Rez vibrator thingy have given grrl gamers too ashamed ...

Birthday bust (a not very professional review):   Here’s where you cross your fingers and hope that your good friend doesn’t read your internet reviews. There is no greater way to devalue the birthday present that you’re fixing to give someone than for them to learn that you’ve slagged their present-to-be. And really, what kind of person buries the very gift they’re about to wrap and hand over? I don’t know. I don’t know. As long as ...

Bowser deepthroats Mario:   Bowser is heartless indeed. Seriously, I’ve been exploring his insides and he doesn’t seem to have a heart. There are an assortment of nodes, cavities and assorted “regions” but during my entire time spelunking King Koopa, I’ve been unable to find a heart. Or much of a brain either, though Nintendo may have intended that to be the joke. There aren’t any kidneys or bladder, though, so I wonder ...

The gods of metal are confused:   There is something powerfully ironic about Tim Shaffer’s Brutal Legend, a game designed to be a love letter to heavy metal…a letter which would likely include a parcel containing a still-beating human heart/ After all, it got published by the biggest third party developer and subsequently sued over by the second-biggest company over publishing rights. Maybe it’s that “selling out” is the anti-thesis of metal-ideologies (ideologies that  I guess ...

The worst named game of 2009!:   Kingdom Hearts is a lot like that daughter of yours that started life so cute and innocent, but progressively grew more rebellious and spiteful of you and authority. Her pink dresses turned to black leather, her pink hairbands turned to spiked collars with matching wrist scars and your conversations turned from “I wuv my dadday” to “YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND ME!” The first Kingdom Hearts was a fun, innocent piece ...

Shaft your opposition:   I halfway feel bad for underground illegal street racers, for their culture has stagnated in the eyes of the world. After a couple dozen Fast and Furious movies, a couple dozen more bad spinoffs (who remembers “Torque”?) and far too many wave-riding video games with matching trip-hop soundtracks and badly-voiced characters whom wouldn’t know machismo if it bit them in the nuts, (and Nick Hogan’s little jaunt) people are ...

I've got a bone to pick:   I’ve only sparingly heard of this before. But apparently, there are Singstar parties happening all around the nation. People from far and wide gather in groups to huddle around their Playstation to sing, dance, remember that they’re not scored on dancing and get back to singing. I’ve only known one Singstarian in the past and she was from the Land Down Under, so I dismissed this as an international ...

Anyway the cash flows, doesn't really matter to me:   First and foremost, Singstar: Queen and all Singstar games must be imminently docked in points for breaking “the truce.” By “the truce”, I mean the unofficial agreement that Harmonix, Activision and whomever else that is making music games obey in making all of their games compatible with all major instrument controller adaptors. I can play a Guitar Hero game with a Rock Band drumset, a Rock Band game with ...

Absolute imagination corrupts absolutely:   Nauts-based video games have made something of an impact on our gaming culture. Tim Shafer’s Psychonauts is a universally praised platformer and work of genius the likes of which will always feel like a perennially-underrated underdog, regardless of how much adoration it may receive. Hideo Kojima released a game called Policenauts about…well I don’t know what exactly Policenauts is, but the Metal Gear Solid games keep referencing it in ...

Inferiority Complex:   Previously in my Super Metroid review, I had made numerous petty swipes at the critically acclaimed Shadow Complex for imitating the master but missing the point. When I wrote that petty cheapshot disguised as a review for an all-time classic, I was but two-thirds of the way finished playing Chair’s downloadable Xbox Live Arcade release. And now that I’ve finished the game, I’m proud to report that I was ...

Exploring the long lost land of the bargain bin:   For almost two years now, I’ve been refusing to buy Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune on account of the game’s $70 asking price on the free market. While some of the praise lent to the game by friends of mine tantalized me into making the plunge, I could never bring myself to invest money in the archetypical “next-generation game.” By that term, I mean that Uncharted has cutting-edge technology, “Hollywood-esque” story ...

Some very powerful hair:   Call the King of Fighters a precursor to emo culture if you will. A bunch of pale, teenage, sometimes-effeminate male fighters (and masculine-female fighters that are at least a bit more gender-obvious, if just because of their big boobs) flinging fire, ice, crystal or blood-attacks with either the greatest of ease or angst. In a way, the King of Fighters series is like the many “underground” emo bands my ...

I Pledge alligiance to the flag...:   A little while back, a pre-Mickey Mouse Marvel Comics made a bit of noise with the Civil War storyline that pitted heroes against heroes over government legislation. It was intriguing in its parlaying of real-life events and made for an eventful time to be a comic book fan…or at least eventful enough to mark the one time in history I consistently read a comic book series as it happened. ...