In Gears of War: Judgment, Epic Games and their newly acquired People Can Fly studio have tried to maintain the classic look and feel that made the original trilogy such a resounding success and flagship franchise for the Xbox 360, while at the same time implementing new features to keep gamers (and themselves) from getting Gears fatigue. But with the stellar Gears of War 3 having been released less than a year ago and key members of the development team dropping out towards the end of... Read More »

Despite numerous hits during this console generation, the Tomb Raider franchise has begun to feel dated ever since the Uncharted series took the treasure-hunting action-adventure genre to the next level. Not to be outdone by their imitators and successors, Crystal Dynamics has once again brought back the video game industry’s most popular heroine in an effort to reboot the iconic series and help Lara Croft climb back up to the top of the genre that she helped build. But the new Lara ... Read More »

After numerous delays, the game Gearbox claims to be unrelated to the cancelled 2001 Alien: Colonial Marines on PlayStation 2 is finally here… and still manages to look like something that you would see on the PS2. All joking aside, the new Aliens: Colonial Marines isn’t that bad looking, but when stacked up against other recently released games and the original E3 2011 demo shown off by Gearbox, it probably should have shared the same fate as the previous Marines and just been can... Read More »

With big budget games pulling in higher grosses than Hollywood blockbusters, gamers have been spoiled over the past few years with amazing Triple-A titles from talented developers. The Dead Space series has been one of the best examples of brilliant new ideas emerging during the current Golden Age of gaming. But has the latest sequel in the popular horror series become a perfect example of how this Golden Age is dying as games become more expensive to produce and more publishers try to... Read More »

To celebrate the mid-season return of AMC's hit TV show The Walking Dead tonight, we took a look at Telltale Games' first set of The Walking Dead video game episodes, which were also based on the original comic book series from which the show was developed. And like the critically acclaimed and popular TV zombie drama, the cerebral and emotional game left us hungry for more. Telltale's character-driven point-and-click adventure is a companion piece that complements the television sh... Read More »

Your girlfriend’s missing, your boat’s been destroyed, you’re trapped on a mysterious island where everyone is crazy... and best of all, like one of last year's best games, you don't have to worry about any of that if you don't want to. That's because in Far Cry 3 you can either worry about all that serious stuff by strictly playing the campaign, or you can ignore it all for as long as you want and instead hunt wild animals in the jungle, discover secrets scattered throughout the... Read More »

With the Xbox 360 in its twilight years, the franchise that built the house of Xbox has returned one last time this generation with its iconic hero back at the helm. It's been five years since we've last seen Master Chief and Cortana after Halo 3's post-credits stinger cliffhanger that left their fates up in the air (literally). With Bungie's last Halo game not involving the Chief or Cortana and the studio stepping away from the series, many were left questioning not only the fate of t... Read More »

Admittedly, I was pretty hard on Resident Evil 5 in my review three years ago that was almost more of a rant than a review. Being a fan of the series since the very first game, I had high expectations after Resident Evil 4, and the next-gen sequel was sadly a train wreck of dated gameplay mechanics and a story that seemed to be straying even further away from the classic Resident Evil universe than the movies. Surprisingly, unlike most people, I actually really enjoyed the latest n... Read More »

After three title changes, the game that simply wouldn’t play dead is finally here. First developed as an original IP, then announced as the third installment in the True Crime series to help sell more copies, True Crime: Hong Kong would eventually be cancelled by Activision after numerous issues with its development. Rescuing the game from being put down for good, Square Enix has returned the IP to it roots without the rights to the “True Crime” name and renamed the game once mo... Read More »

Like the series of films, the Transformers game franchise has seen its share of ups and downs over the past few years. After a string of terrible low budget movie tie-in games, High Moon Studios delivered one of the most enjoyable games of 2010 with their breakout hit War for Cybertron. Their transformation of the gaming franchise seemed to be on the right path until their follow-up Dark of the Moon proved even they couldn’t make a great movie tie-in game with limited time. After the... Read More »

With the company falling on hard times due to financial problems, it’s safe to say that THQ and their development studio Vigil Games have a lot riding on the success of Darksiders II. The sequel to 2010’s breakout hit is far bigger than the original with a new lead character and a vast amount of improvements -- but is the second coming of the Horsemen enough to keep the struggling publisher alive, or do repetitive gameplay elements and glitches ruin the riders' return? The Good ... Read More »

After just getting through Inversion last week, which was a decent Gears of War copycat that will be almost completely forgotten by everyone who played it in a couple years, I wasn’t dying to play another third-person shooter this month. Spec Ops: The Line aims at Gears of War-style gameplay in a modern war environment like Call of Duty but never crosses over into knockoff territory and instead creates its own memorable path through its use of mature subject matter in a very violent ... Read More »

Yet another take on the popular Gears of War franchise from a Japanese publisher, Inversion is a Gears of War copycat on a tight budget with an interesting gimmick. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and developer Saber Interactive, who were behind the surprise hit TimeShift early on this console generation and more recently Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, have done their best to give Inversion that big-budget feel by borrowing key elements from the Gears series an... Read More »

Taking over one of gaming’s most well known franchises and moving away from the open world genre that they made the standard in the industry many years ago, Rockstar has proven once again that they’re one of the best in the world at what they do. With no open world, no story-driven player decisions, and no revolutionary L.A. Noire facial animations, Rockstar has released the third installment in the Max Payne franchise, which instead focuses on fixing everything the iconic develope... Read More »

The product of 1995’s singleplayer-only Warhawk on the original PlayStation and 2007’s multiplayer-only Warhawk on the PlayStation 3, Starhawk has undergone many transformations over the years. Like the legendary tale of the phoenix, the Hawk series hasn’t made many appearances since its debut and like the development studio behind the series and the Hawks themselves, Starhawk has risen from the ashes after said transformations to emerge as one of the best multiplayer games of al... Read More »

Like Hollywood, the gaming industry has a trend of releasing similar competing games around the same time. One of the most recent and biggest gaming showdowns after Call of Duty and Battlefield is the epic battle between Prototype and Infamous -- both good games, both involving superheroes in open-world cities, and both debuting in the summer of 2009. Although Infamous seemed to be the overall favorite amongst gamers and critics, I’ve always considered it a bit overrated and preferre... Read More »