Welcome back to "Backhanded Box Quotes," a collection of measured, thoughtful criticism from the user reviews of Metacritic and elsewhere on the Internet. » 12/21/12 9:00pm 12/21/12 9:00pm

Welcome back to "Backhanded Box Quotes," a collection of measured, thoughtful criticism from the user reviews of Metacritic. » 12/14/12 9:00pm 12/14/12 9:00pm

Welcome back to "Backhanded Box Quotes," a collection of measured, thoughtful criticism from the user reviews of Metacritic. » 11/30/12 8:30pm 11/30/12 8:30pm

Welcome back to "Backhanded Box Quotes," a collection of measured, thoughtful criticism from the user reviews of Metacritic. » 11/16/12 8:30pm 11/16/12 8:30pm

I've tried to be fair to the concept of free-to-play games, which you see a lot of in mobile gaming. Yes, it all seems a bit cynical—it trades a single price for a potentially unlimited revenue stream, but there's nothing necessarily illegal or unethical about that. It does depend on making some substantive portion of… » 11/16/12 8:00pm 11/16/12 8:00pm

Welcome back to "Backhanded Box Quotes," a collection of measured, thoughtful criticism from the user reviews of Metacritic and elsewhere. » 11/09/12 8:00pm 11/09/12 8:00pm

There's a new insane study of children and video games out there, and it makes me grateful the Wii died without that ridiculous Vitality Sensor » 10/26/12 11:00pm 10/26/12 11:00pm

Download a game on the Xbox 360 or the Wii and you're good to go. You can play it. Download a game on the PS3 and you just might have to then tell the PS3 to install it.

You have to manually install any game that you have downloaded in the background. This is strange, sort of like the PS3 is getting back at you for… » 10/26/12 9:00pm 10/26/12 9:00pm

Welcome back to "Backhanded Box Quotes," a collection of measured, thoughtful criticism from the user reviews of Metacritic and elsewhere. » 10/26/12 8:30pm 10/26/12 8:30pm

Welcome back to "Backhanded Box Quotes," a collection of measured, thoughtful criticism from the user reviews of Metacritic and elsewhere. » 10/19/12 9:00pm 10/19/12 9:00pm

How would you like to be fired? Do you want to go out in a take-this-job-and-shove-it blaze of glory? Would you like security to martyr you, marching you out by the elbows, as you clutched your box of things like Richard Gere carrying off Debra Winger » 10/19/12 8:00pm 10/19/12 8:00pm

Welcome back to "Backhanded Box Quotes," a collection of measured, thoughtful criticism from the user reviews of Metacritic and elsewhere. » 10/12/12 8:30pm 10/12/12 8:30pm

No, seriously. This is a question I've had to wonder of late thanks to Dexter, the hit TV show that follows a serial killer who kills other serial killers. This would make him a "good" serial killer—at least, as good as someone who murders people can be. That may sound ridiculous, but being privy to Dexter's… » 10/12/12 8:00pm 10/12/12 8:00pm

Welcome back to "Backhanded Box Quotes," a collection of measured, thoughtful, sometimes plagiarized criticism from the user reviews of Metacritic and elsewhere. » 10/05/12 8:30pm 10/05/12 8:30pm

If you never saw Crazy People, a 1990 film starring Dudley Moore, I highly recommend it. Basically, an advertising agency is taken over by the insane, who decide that honesty—the anathema of marketing—is now the best policy. Volvos are sold as "boxy, but they're good." Another stunt offers "a free plant for fat… » 10/05/12 8:00pm 10/05/12 8:00pm

Audio is NSFW. » 9/30/12 1:00pm 9/30/12 1:00pm

You probably don't know Elizabeth Tobey. She didn't voice an outrageous character or design an outlandish weapon in any video game you're currently enjoying. But she did, legitimately, have a hand in the creation of —or at least stirring up the desire for—two big 2K Games hitting shelves right now. And she didn't get… » 9/28/12 9:00pm 9/28/12 9:00pm

Or outrage, or scorn. Video games are just one pushcart in the vast marketplace of ideas, where everyone shouts down the quality of the goods. Then again, sometimes the merchants deserve the berating. So let's recap the week's most noteworthy reactionary topics, scoring them for the outrage they summon and the… » 9/28/12 8:00pm 9/28/12 8:00pm