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I've noticed a bit of an internet scuffle breaking out over Simon Parkin's 8/10 review of Uncharted 3 for Eurogamer. "Uncharted 3 is the most exciting game in the world," he writes, "but only until you deviate from the script." More »
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Gears of War has always felt as though it was built with metaphor in mind. The slam of a clip locking into place; the thudding, oversized boots of a COG soldier. The pinwheeling spokes of combat, lines of engagement moving in two opposing semicircles; the rev of a chainsaw's motor. More »
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Metacritic's founder made a little bit of a stir earlier in the week when he went on the A Jumps B Shoots podcast to discuss a wide variety of topics, one of them being that game reviewers were obligated to "review all the shit," not just good games or those expected to sell well. GamePro followed up for a clarification of his remarks. More »
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Nine out of ten reviewers will enjoy today's Speak-Up on Kotaku, in which commenter Wocalax wonders if review aggregate sites like Metacritic make it easier or harder to decide which games to buy. More »
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Metacritic, whose cumulative scores provide a thumbs-up/thumbs-down barometer that can move games publishers' stock prices, has expanded. The review aggregator has begun listing iPhone and iPad apps. More »
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It was a week of under the radar misfires, charming downloadable games, portable audio hardware and one mild-mannered Kotaku editor turned super villain. Miss any of this week's reviews? Well, they're all right here. More »
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Call of Duty: Black Ops wasn't a huge game for just Activison and Treyarch, it was also a big deal for Mad Catz, the king of franchise-specific add-ons like glasses, controllers and headphones. More »
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The Xbox 360's Kinect launched today with more than a dozen games. We played through half a dozen of them. More »
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Kmart's new review policy, which places customer game reviews on their store shelves, recently went live with some important tweaks. More »
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It is, perhaps, the ultimate compliment. More »
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High prices are always a stumbling block to new tech adoption and with SSDs it hasn't been any different. More »
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The most important new name in video game criticism could be yours with the help of Kmart. More »
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Want to have massive influence over the powers of marketing and publishing that back the world's biggest video games? Then you might want to try writing a game review for K-Mart. More »
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We're officially more than half way through the year, basking now in the glow of a sweltering summer and a look back at a surprising long trail of games we never reviewed. More »
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These aren't the games we think are the best of 2010. They're the games that a system designed to track scored review averages thinks are the best of 2010. More »
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Funny, I think the same thing can be said of NPR's music and book reviews. Via Fake AP Stylebook, which anyone in media should be following. And anyone outside of media. More »
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Just what you've been waiting for: A site that lets you critique the critics, review the reviewers, shit all over the shit all overers. More »
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Lost slightly amidst all this "end of year" review business is the fact this is also the end of the decade. Which means it's time to take a look back and what the best games of 2000-2009 were. More »
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Video game publishers might rethink their marketing budgets when they see the results of the latest study from Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, which indicate that friends are three times as likely to influence a game purchase than traditional advertising. More »
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Media review aggregator Metacritic has released a list of the top games and consoles of 2009, with the PlayStation 3 coming out on top of the site's first annual Game Platform Power Ranking. More »
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A unanimous ruling by the Federal Trade Commission today would update truth-in-advertising language to require the disclosure of "material connections" - hint, hint "cash or an in-kind payment to review a product" - by the recipient of such considerations. More »
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A U.K. company named Vertical Slice claims it's able to predict video game review scores a year in advance of release, by reverse engineering magazine reviews, combined with an analysis method used by marriage counselors. More »
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Earlier this year, Kotaku began running its reviews under a unified template that was designed with a trio of key components in mind. More »
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Picture the scene: your mum walks into GameStop. She walks to the PlayStation 3 section, and picks out a game for your birthday. At random. What are the odds she picks a good one? More »
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Self-described Metacritic-expert Tim Sweezey over at GameQuarry.Com has a fascinating report up about the developers that are most consistent in publishing a certain quality of game. More »
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More than 80 years ago the movie rating star system was born in the New York Daily News. More »
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Metacritic put together a list of the best and worst games of 2008 on every console. The top reviewed aren't that surprising, but there are some real doozies in the duds. More »
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It's November and the number of high-end titles hitting store shelves is reaching the saturation point. What's a gamer to do? More importantly, what's a gamer on a budget to do? Well, we'll start rolling out our platform-centric gift guides later this week, but until then why not check out our reviews for some of the bigger titles and make up your own mind about where you plan on plunking down the cash. More »
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I almost didn’t write this. It feels a bit like beating a dead horse. But then I drank a cup of coffee and decided maybe some dead horses deserve the beating. More »
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It's just a tragic facet of the human condition - a tribal instinct that can pit friend against friend and brother against brother. Catholic v Protestant, Sunni vs Shia, Spectrum v Commodore 64 and now - perhaps most bitterly of all - Xbox 360 v PS3. More »
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Variety's Ben Fritz points out that his review copy of Fable II just landed at his office and along with the usual fare of review guide, tips and details came a personal plea from developer Peter Molyneux about how to review the game: More »
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Malcolm Ryan is putting together a most interesting list of game design-related books — except these are the ones that are flying under the radar as it were. Ryan describes these 'secret books' as "books that are not explicitly written about games, but which any game designer who reads them just knows that they are really about games." As part of this, Ryan will be reviewing a book a week on a variety of narrative and game-related topics (even if the connection isn't immediately apparent). In the 'secret book' category, he's got two examples: Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud and A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander. More »
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You guys are so mean to game reviewers. In sincerity, though, as games themselves seem to be creatures of far more depth than they once were, the role of the game reviewer has come under increasing scrutiny. I like to think that we're all trying to do the best, most ethical and most useful work we can, and so there's been a lot of talking amongst ourselves in the games press about what the ideal way of doing our jobs is. More »
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Over at PopMatters, the capstone of a nine-part series by L.B. Jeffries; this edition's topic is the problems with game criticism today. Reviews and critical pieces are generally worlds apart — and critical reviews should be providing feedback for the makers of games in a way that a standard review can't: More »
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Former GameSpot reviewer Jeff Gerstmann is no stranger to controversy. His 8.9 scoring of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was met with unhappy campers, while his 6.0 Kane & Lynch review *might* have cost him his job. But does Gerstmann have any regrets? From MTV Multiplayer: More »
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Whenever we hear about the travails of a video game company, snark abounds, and ultimately, the chorus cries, "Why don't you just make some games that don't suck?" More »
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Stephen Totilo of MTV Multiplayer continues his week-long look at video game review practices by exploring the practice of game publishers withholding certain bonuses and/or royalties if the game doesn't achieve a certain Metacritic average. Basically a publisher agrees to finance the development of a game as long as the developer in these sort of situation agrees to Metacritic score limit stipulations that could theoretically see a low-scoring game that sells millions (any children's licensed title really) hardly earning the devs a dime. More »
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Over at MTV Multiplayer, Stephen Totilo is hip-deep in Reviews Week, his week-long look at all things having to do with game reviews, from advertising concerns to stupid PR tricks, such as the following More »
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Boom Blox is an odd creation. It's a casual game created with the help of a director known for the stories his movies tell. So what happens when Stephen Spielberg teams up with Electronic Arts to make a game for the Wii? Lots of explosions of course. The game has you throw, grab, shoot and explode "blox" in such a myriad of mind-bending puzzles that you might actually forget you're playing a "casual" game. Boom Blox includes ways to play with friends or on your own, through a story or just for fun. More »
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Target: Terror was always a game behind its time. The light gun game featuring a terrorism theme and digitized bad guys came out in 2004, well after the blending of faux guns and digital graphics created a mini-light gun renaissance in arcades. Even the fact that Eugene Jarvis, the man behind Defender, was behind the game couldn't get it off the ground. I was a more than a little surprised to see that Konami had decided to lift this game, of all of the light gun titles, out of the arcade graveyard and try to give it new life on the Wii. More »
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