Longform

Believe it or not, I'm on my third copy of Sonic Shuffle. It’s a game I've played so much that the discs show their wear, back when review scores didn't influence purchases as persuasively as rentals and when game reception wasn't trapped in bubbles enforced by online comm…

Blizzard's name is an aptly-chosen one; this titanic game company is famous for its glacial development pace. New Blizzard projects usually have lengthy gaps between them, with release dates rarely getting mentioned until the product is finished and ready to ship. While it can be frustrating fo…

Hotel Dusk: Room 215 is a quiet achievement in Nintendo's library: an overlooked mystery game for the DS that felt like it belonged on the system, but still only "quiet" for being relatively unknown to most. Following the format of a visual novel, Hotel Dusk was heavy on dialogue with…

The games may be original, but their covers were total rip-offs!

After two years in existence, the newest PAX is still relatively small. There are few big-name publishers exhibiting on the show floor, with many of the biggest booths belonging to hardware companies like Intel, Alienware, and Astro. There aren’t as many prominent figures in gaming walking th…

Morality is a gray matter, a deep entity, and a thing that doesn't stop at the surface. It's also a subject that video games have played with constantly. Whether it was the evil Dragonlord presenting the hero with a choice to join his side at the end of Dragon Warrior in 1986 or Geralt cho…

This wave of customized amiibos by fans from all over is a positive and beautiful symptom of Nintendo’s first stab at mainstream gaming relevance in what feels like forever.

The “game over” screen has long been an experience that every gamer is familiar with. This dreaded ending to a gaming session is the most widely used example of a failure state.

I had planned to collect the entire Super Smash Bros. line before backing away and being more selective about my amiibo purchases. I had successfully avoided the NFC figure initiative until now because I'm a longtime Smash player and these are too cool to pass up. Notice I said I had planned to…

When I read the first rumors about Hideo Kojima leaving Konami, I, probably like many others, dismissed it as absurd. In my mind, Konami without Hideo Kojima was an impossibility. If Konami was a body, Kojima has undoubtedly been the face.