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So, I loved the original SSX games. Winter sports never held much appeal to me in real life, but the reckless abandon of speeding down a mountain and contorting a character's body into insane tricks made me a lifelong fan of EA's snowboarding series. More »
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We already previewed the first few pages of Avengers vs. X-Men #1 this morning and now we've got an exclusive reveal of one of the grudge matches that'll be coming out of that miniseries. More »
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Let's get that first niggling thought out of the way: this Mass Effect iOS game isn't going to feel like that Dead Space iOS game. More »
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For all the hoariness of the heroes-vs.-heroes trope, the set-up of Marvel Comics' next big crossover event rotates around an interesting premise: The cosmic power known as the Phoenix Force is coming back to Earth, apparently targeting a young mutant girl called Hope. Once bonded with mutant telepath Jean Grey, the Phoenix Force has been wielded for both salvation and destruction. More »
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Street Fighter x Tekken is more than just the crossover of two powerhouse fighting game franchises. It's also a fusion of the sensibilities behind the two universes. Similar plot points—lethal government agents, shadowy underworld crime syndicates, etc.—get used in various Street Fighter or Tekken games, but the latter series tends to feel more self-serious than the former. More »
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Have you ever made a video game character fear you? More »
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How appropriate that a game as bonkers as Asura's Wrath was mailed to me on a disc that only contained some chapters from its middle. Who cares how this game begins? It's not like it would suddenly make complete sense. More »
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Major League Baseball 2K12 is widely expected to be in its walk year, the final season of a fat contract going back to 2005. Unlike a superstar in the big leagues, this is not a cause for optimism that fans will see an above-average performance. Not when the performer is the one paying the contract, and not when it has been notoriously inconsistent despite having the Xbox 360 all to itself. More »
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Season three of Sony's The Tester sees competitors doing completely ridiculous things for a chance at a production associate at PlayStation's Santa Monica Studio. What sort of ridiculous things? See for yourself. More »
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What if I told you Square Enix and Tik games were coming out with a game based on the celebrated and psychedelic characters of Nathan Jurevicious next week? What if I told you I've played it and it was a ton of fun? What if I told you it reminded me of one of my favorite PS1 platformers of all time? Would you be as curious as I am as to why nobody has been talking about this game? Of course you possibly might! More »
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The Darkness II is a video game about restrained sex and unrestrained violence. More »
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Forget everything you know about Agent 47, the bald-headed, bar-coded contract killer of IO Interactive's Hitman franchise. He does not don disguises, creep in the shadows, or deliver death with surgical precision. He is not a professional. Well, at least he doesn't have to be. More »
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Finish playing the best games of 2011. Then tape this to your refrigerator. This is a preview, of some of the biggest and/or most interesting games coming out in 2012 (with a heavy bias toward big-company consoles and handheld releases, since that's what gets announced earliest). More »
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There was a collective sigh from the JRPG faithful when Square Enix announced Final Fantasy XIII-2 earlier this year. Some wanted more FFVII or more Kingdom Hearts. Instead, a return to Gran Pulse was in the offing. But, based on my recent hands-on with FFXIII-2, the sequel holds some intriguing changes to the formula set in place by the game that preceded it. More »
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With the genius exhibited by Valve's Portal games, it wouldn't be entirely unfair to think that there's a conceptual no-fly zone around the use teleporting as a game mechanic. At the very least, if you're going to use the ability to pop in and out of reality in your game, then you need to make it demonstrably different than anything that happens inside of Aperture Science's testing chambers. More »
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When I saw Saints Row: The Third earlier this year, developer Volition showcased a spectacular bank heist from the game, a carnage-filled showdown with Steelport's SWAT team. It was a bizarre, comedically ultraviolent shootout that played like a major, mid-game highlight. More »
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Inspired as it is by 1980s action-movie tropes, you can probably guess the plot of Shank 2's story mode. If your guess involves the hero renouncing his violent ways and trying to embrace a quieter existence, only to have his old life come back to wreak havoc in his new one, then you get a prize. More »
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I'm now 24 hours into Dark Souls, the successor to 2009's brilliant and challenging role-playing game Demon's Souls. I have, of course, died many times in my struggle to become un-undead. I have killed a half-dozen of its major demons, explored deeply its open world, but have just barely begun to scratch its hard surface. More »
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The first act of Gears of War 3 is impressively muscular and surprisingly graceful, a role model for shooter fans that proclaims from the crowd of so many gun-wielding peers that this is how a blockbuster action game should begin. More »
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Of all the things that Batman: Arkham Asylum had going for it—and there were a lot of them—my favorite thing was the Riddler challenges. Placed throughout the game, these optional side-challenges ran the gamut from extremely easy to borderline impossible, and provided a welcome incentive to go off the path and explore. More »
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Basketball is the sport that always unmasks me as a panicky klutz, whether that is in a video game or in real life. I don't see things very well, don't have great anticipation, and overreact to most everything. On defense, it takes nothing to get me in the air, although such a statement implies there is actual daylight between my feet and the hardwood. More »
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The throwaway guns of the original Borderlands, which numbered in the hundreds of bazillions, were nothing compared to the fire and forget disposability of the game's sequel. And Borderlands 2's "disposable razor-style" guns from fictional manufacturer Tediore, the Walmart of intergalactic gunmakers, already stand out as one of the game's better features. More »
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Juliet Starling is a dangerous high school girl in trouble. She's the star of Lollipop Chainsaw, the rainbow-bright zombie game and maybe the first to employ foul language as a physical weapon. More »
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The people showcasing From Software's role-playing game Dark Souls—which you've likely heard is something of a challenge—were prone to frequent deaths during a brand-new demonstration of the game. At least its prison break was a breeze and we learned a few new things about the Demon's Souls spiritual sequel. More »
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At first glance, The Hidden looks an awful lot like Face Raiders, one of the free augmented reality games pre-installed on every 3DS. Like Face Raiders, The Hiddenis a shooter that uses the 3DS' camera to superimpose things for you to shoot in your real world environment, turning whatever room you're in into a shooting gallery with ghosts coming in from all directions. More »
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Beautiful adventure game Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet comes to Xbox Live Arcade next week. It is a mysterious, quiet game—Dimmu Borgir music notwithstanding—that is Metroid-like, full of exploration, power ups and re-exploration, at least on the single-player side. More »
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I've played as army men, bounty hunters, spies and killers. I've built towering office buildings as a city planner. Raised beasts as a super being. Strategized as a world-conquering general. But I've never been the breath of god. More »
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"If you're a fan of Lost, Assassin's Creed Revelations level design director, Falko Poiker, told me last week, "then you know that it really sucks to be left with questions." More »
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Gears of War's developers certainly didn't invent "Horde Mode." But Epic Games, creator of Gears, is lucky in that every other game developer who copies their popular multiplayer mode gives the studio credit for it when showing off their own take on Horde. More »
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Playing Demon's Souls spiritual sequel Dark Souls at E3 2011 left me with just as many questions as answers. How, exactly, does the beacon fire system work? What does it mean to be "hollowed"? And why won't Namco Bandai answer those questions when asked about this punishing and complex role-playing game? More »
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I checked out some of the new features of Mario Kart 3D at the Nintendo booth today. In addition to looking pretty, partially thanks to Donkey Kong Country Returns developer Retro Studios, the 3DS version adds customizable vehicles, flying sections and "underwater driving". More »
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It's not unfair to say that vehicle combat games have gone out of fashion. There are very few, if any AAA franchises anymore, which is definitely a big part of why Twisted Metal's multiplayer is so refreshing. The combat in the game is just as fast-paced and competitive as a FPS or fighting game, but without the reflex-based twitchy feeling that deters players who don't have that competitive streak. This version of the game sets itself apart within its own genre as well with improved controls. More »
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X-Men: Destiny, Activision's newest attempt to channel the franchise into beat-em up form, really wants indulge your fantasy of becoming a part of the expansive lore of the comic series. Rather than choosing their favorite heroes and villains from the series, players choose one of three new mutants whose powers you can cultivate and strengthen until they are as powerful as any one of the comic book characters. More »
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Guns. Swords. Balls. The video games of E3 2011 will have all these and much more when the industry's annual conclave kicks off this week in Los Angeles. More »
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Beat on a quarterback for 45 minutes of an NFL game and you'll see a different guy in the fourth quarter. Some start forcing every throw. Some will run like hell. Some go catatonic. More »
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Sick of military shooters, third-person action adventure and grinding for experience points? There's still something for you at E3 2011 in this, the best of the rest of the games we're expecting to see grab our attention next week. More »
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You want crazed murder and hilarious mayhem in your Saints Row? Developer Volition is going to give it to you, right out of the box, in Saints Row: The Third. More »
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They call it their flawed masterpiece. More »
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StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm is a mutated beast of last year's real-time strategy game infused with traces of point and click adventure. For StarCraft II's first expansion, the second chapter in Blizzard's trilogy, the game is getting a dose of role-playing game elements. More »
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