I’m the oldest of four brothers. All of us play games to varying degrees and, as with any family and any medium, our tastes vary. There is only one game that’s ever resonated with all four of us in equal measure: Rhythm Heaven on the Nintendo DS. (more…)
Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers is one of the few TV shows in the ’90s that managed to become so ubiquitous, so iconic, that it transcended its medium to become a full pop culture phenomenon. By re-cutting Toei’s Koryu Sentai Zyuranger and filming new live-action sequences with American actors, Saban Brands took something foreign and exotic and introduced it to an audience that had never seen anything quite like it before. It was an instant hit and, even today, most people are at least somewhat familiar with the concept, even if they’ve never seen the show. (more…)
Superficially, Max Payne 3 is an action game centered around blowing the heads off of thugs in ways that would give John Woo a giddy erection. Diving down stairs, pistols akimbo, raining a torrent of hot lead that would seem more fitting spouting forth from the vengeful maw of an ancient Aztec blood god – Max Payne 3 is the pure, raw distillation of everything gamers crave in their shooters.
Peel back a few layers, however and, much like the majestic onion, Max Payne 3 reveals itself to be a hard-boiled noir detective story, very much akin to the classics of the genre. Our titular ex-cop is an emotionally broken wreck, haunted by the murders of his wife and daughter, and seeking to either kill the pain with booze and prescription narcotics or throw himself into one more firefight that just might end it all. He’s a hero, but the fact that he does good is more an incidental side effect of his ongoing battle with internal demons than anything else. Granted, this is routinely expressed by Max shooting up the place in spectacular fashion, but the overarching mood of the game is far from jovial, adolescent posturing. Instead, everything is awash in fatigued, melancholy overtones. At one point, Payne himself describes the experience as “another futile quest for revenge.” (more…)
Long in advance of the whole Before Watchmen kerfuffle, I had the opportunity to interview Alan Moore for the local Brooklyn literary journal, Slice Magazine. (more…)
“Your only worth is your partner; it doesn’t matter what you do, it’s who are you with,” Christine Love tells me, matter-of-factly. I’m pretty certain at this point that I am the only person in the world who has ever Skyped a game developer I’ve never met to complain about my love life but, goddamn, if you’re going to do it, it better be Christine Love you call. Love by name, love by nature. (more…)
The 24-foot bronze fist sits across the street from Detroit’s Hart Plaza, in the shadow of the towering Renaissance Center. At its most literal, “Monument to Joe Louis” is a tribute to the pugilistic prowess of one of history’s most noteworthy boxers: a fist suspended in the center of a steel pyramid and trailed by just enough of an arm to make it look like the world’s deadliest battering ram. In many ways, it’s the perfect symbol for the Motor City – an image of violence and kinetic energy crossed with a rich history of hard-fought racial coexistence and working-class adversity.
If this is the competition, RoboCop has his work cut out for him. (more…)
The life of Ezio Auditore da Firenze – and it is a life, fuller than any other character in videogames to date – raises an interesting question, namely: why do we care? (more…)
