— This appears to mark the return of the Cardboard Tube Samurai, or CTS, to Penny Arcade. Personally I think when it comes to continuity they doth protest too much — it generates some of their best stuff. Panel two of this CTS strip has long been my desktop wallpaper.
Gaming & Culture
Confessions of an iShoot Addict
I’m at a loss to explain why I’m still playing iShoot. I play it at home. I play it on the subway. I played it in between the last sentence and this one. I have played it while in the same room as a perfectly available PS3. How does that make sense?
iShoot is a turn-based tank combat game for the iPhone. It’s incredibly crude: you …
Is OnLive the New Fourth Game Console? Actually, Maybe
A games startup called OnLive will be coming out of stealth mode today at the Game Developers Conference. Here’s the proposition: they take the heavy processing part of video games and move it into — and I apologize for using this hated, hated word — the Cloud. All the high-end graphics heavy lifting happens at some server farm, …
Will the iPhone Remain The Fairest of Them All?
Palm’s Pre is still months away from launch, but already it’s making the world a better place. Proof? Apple today announced that a raft of improvements is coming to the iPhone–including, at long last cut and paste.
That critical feature, along with a bunch of others, will help the world’s hottest smartphone (17 million sold to date) …
Halo Wars Impressions
It’s not really fair of me to play Halo Wars. I mean, first it has to get past the apples-and-oranges comparison with the original Halo games. Which makes no sense, but you can’t help it. Then it has to compete with my memories of Bungie’s old RTS Myth, which are sacred and can never be superseded. To this day when I fly cross-country …
My Chat with Grand Theft Auto’s Dan Houser: “I Hate Myself Enough Already”
A few weeks ago I sat down for an hour and a half with Dan Houser, the creative force behind the Grand Theft Auto games, in particular The Lost and Damned, which came out this week. That conversation turned into this piece.
I was nervous about writing this piece. I’m a serious gamer and have been for more than 30 years. In fact among …
A New Trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned
It’s a Nerd World exclusive, y’all: the new GTA4:TLaD trailer:
[brightcove exp=1896788584&vid=11877182001]
He punched a toll clerk! Rather lovely. It’s sort of uncanny seeing Niko (at :55) when you’re playing Johnny — it’s like he’s you, but he’s not you …
EVE; Prince of Persia
This is microculture news, but too bizarre and delicious not to click on. Band of Brothers, a massive, longstanding, malevolent alliance within EVE — a game I don’t play, but which is, for my money, the most beautiful game in existence — was abruptly hacked apart this week by a double agent from the rival alliance GoonSwarm. Its assets …
A New GROW Is Here
Maybe you’re not used to seeing the word GROW in all caps. Or used as a noun. And yet, weirdly, when you see a GROW you feel like you recognize it, as if surreal Flash sculpture/games have been with you all your life — indeed have evolved to co-exist with us as a species. Like dogs. The new one is here.
For those to whom family honor …
My Top 10 Video Games List
I made one. I do it every year! They make me.
The way I see it, the basic problem facing any listmaker this year is that most of the games were either big or clever but not both. Gears 2, Dead Space, Rock Band 2: big but not clever. Braid, lots of little Flash and iPod games like Hunted Forever and Fieldrunners: clever but not big. …
Lara Croft Is Back and Remarkably Well-Preserved
I was never a huge Tomb Raider guy. I get it that Lara Croft is remarkably attractive. I’m just not really a puzzle-solving, box-jumping sort of fellow. And once you take that away, all you’ve got is an average-looking shooter with a hinky camera and lightweight weapons (and nowhere near enough of them). When I heard the quality of the …
Dead Space is Dead; Long Live Fallout 3
Man, there’s a lot of good games coming out. I ditched Dead Space to play LittleBigPlanet, then went crawling back, and now I’m ditching it again for Fallout 3. (I hate leaving a game like Dead Space unfinished, when I’ve actually become invested in the narrative, but duty calls. Plus I was really low on ammo and kinda needed an excuse …