Console

In concept, Hyperdimension Neptunia’s allegory of anthropomorphized consoles reconciling their differences to fight a common enemy might have been one of role-playing’s most creative themes. Yet, once players immersed themselves in 2010’s inaugural entry and ...

Eric’s Take: Being the fighting game addict that I am, one of my missions is to try as many franchises from the genre as possible. Back around 2005, that mission led me to cross paths ...

Look past the coquettish DLC swimsuits and intermittent instances where ditziness serves as comic relief, and the Atelier franchise reveals its principal virtue: it’s a series that focuses on female empowerment.  From Rorona’s efforts to ...

When 2007’s Pinball FX was released for the Xbox 360, critics had a common stickling point: the steel-ball simulation failed to recreate actual machines. Although Zen Studios has yet to fulfill that wish, over the ...

Not long ago, blind-buying a manga or anime-based game was a dicey proposition. Although sporadic standouts such as Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and Astro Boy: Omega Factor resisted mediocrity, the majority of ...

In theory, MUD FIM Motocross World Championship seems like an obvious progression for Milan-based developer Milestone S.r.l. Combining expertise garnered across six iterations of the SBK: Superbike World Championship asphalt-centered series, with some of the ...

From Doom’s demon decimating BFG 9000 to Call of Duty: Black Ops II’s demoralizing PDW-57 submachine gun, first-person shooters have a long history of conveying empowerment through dominating devices. That said, few franchises can compare ...

Literary critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge once proposed that if authors impart “human interest and a semblance of truth” into an otherwise far-fetched story, readers could temporarily suspend disbelief.  Over the years, this theory has been ...

While I’ve generally had little difficulty maintaining journalistic objectivism during E3 demonstrations, Randy Pitchford’s Aliens: Colonial Marines walk-through proved to be one of the rare exceptions, stoking the fires of a fervent Aliens fanboy. Driven ...

Although survival is a pervasive theme in interactive entertainment, the first two entries in the Dead Space franchise provided a pair of remarkably engrossing depictions of the struggle for existence. Pitting protagonist Isaac Clark against ...