Evan Narcisse

The Best Games for Your New Tablet or Smartphone

Look, let’s not call them prayers. Rather, you can say that your deepest desires were answered when you got a shiny new smartphone or tablet under the Christmas tree today. Sure, you’ll need it to stay on top of the ungodly pressures of modern life but, dammit, you need some good games for your tech…

This “Sex Invaders” Art Show Isn’t Quite As Naughty As It Sounds

Girls in bikinis. Classic video games. Star Wars characters. Put them all together and you get… art? That’s the formula for the Sex Invaders exhibit by artist duo The Ultravelvet Collection, currently showing at New York City’s Hionas Gallery. A press release for the show explains the thinking behind the imagery: “Video games appeal to…

Merry Christmas! Here are Five New Screens of Grand Theft Auto V.

Rockstar Games’ next giant crime caper is going to be massively huge, big enough to warrant lots of air travel. This we know. But it looks like players will be getting up to no good in the oceans, too. The bathysphere, scuba gear and colossal frikkin’ shark in these new screens hint that you’re also…

So Who Made Kindergarten Killer, Anyway?

When NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre spoke at a press conference today, he lambasted video games as a medium that “sells and sows violence against its own people.” LaPierre called out five games as examples of video game evil. Four of them are big-budget affairs, produced by multinational corporations. But it’s the naming of…

Classic Apple Game Karateka Makes a Fun but Flawed Return to iPad and iPhone

The original version of Karateka launched on an Apple II two decades ago and helped show that video game design could deliver idiosyncratic, narrative experiences. Back then, both Apple and video games were in their toddler stage, stumbling around trying to figure out what they could do. Now, both the medium and the tech company…

Somebody Who Actually Researches Video Games Says Proof that Media Influences Violence Just Isn’t There

The flurry of private citizens and professional pundits opining about what role video games might have played in the awful Sandy Hook shootings probably isn’t going to stop soon. And while commentary has been ranged from inflammatory to poignant, the central issue of whether games influence behavior is far from being a fact. Just listen…

Report: Disney’s Infinity Project Will Combine Toy Story, The Incredibles and Wreck-It Ralph in One Massive, Cross-Platform Gameworld

Disney’s ambitious video game project looks like it will be rolling out on a broad, multi-platform experience that will let users create, share and play games based on popular properties like Pirates of the Caribbean or Monsters, Inc, according to details leaked to Polygon Images and video sent to Polygon reveal that aspects of familiar…

Create Star Wars Sequels and Spy on Mitt Romney in These Great Games Based on the Year 2012

It’s great to see Dishonored getting appreciation on so many end-of-year lists, isn’t it? And it’s also nice to see the love being showered on The Walking Dead for delivering an emotionally affecting experience. But a lot more than a few good game releases happened this year. Debates! Elections! NFL referee idiocy! Star Wars sequels…

Mario’s Evil Doppelganger and New Super Mario Bros 2 DLC Get Naughty on the Nintendo Download This Week

Is Wario really bad? Or is the zig-zagged ‘stached bounder just really, really focused on being a baller? Either way, in Wario Land 2, he’s taking on some fools who were crazy enough to steal from him. The 1999 classic game features all sorts of hilarious transformations amid a brightly colored gameworld full of unrevealed…

The Star Trek video game is out on April 23, 2013. Find out about pre-order perks and more info on the official site

A Rare Arcade Game Killed by an Atari Lawsuit Comes Back to Life After 25 Years

Maybe you’re like me and never heard of 1980s arcade game Meteors. If you guessed that it was a clone of Asteroids, though, you’d be right. The coin-op arcade game stood at the center of a lawsuit aimed by Atari at competitor Amusement World. Video game designer/scholar Ian Bogost runs down the impact of the…

Peter Molyneux’s Son Doesn’t Seem to Care About Half-Life 3 Anymore

Peter Molyneux has been a bit of clock-watching lately. Right now, the game designer behind the Populous and Fable game franchises has been watching time tick down on the Kickstarter for the Godus project from his 22Cans dev studio. I spoke to him about raising money for Godus but also asked him about his son…

Bully—one of Rockstar’s best games—comes to PlayStation Network today, with Midnight Club 3 and Red Dead Revolver

Sleeping Dogs Goes for the Full Bruce Lee with Today’s Zodiac Tournament DLC

In Sleeping Dogs, you could get a outfit that was basically what Bruce Lee wore in Game of Death. And lead character Wei Shen kicked ass in a way that paid homage to the martial arts icon. Now, the next big add-on for Square Enix’ open-world hit goes even further into the funky world of…

Three Comics Filled With God-Like Relationships This Week

If you’re here in the Panel Discussion programming block, you might be a lapsed comics reader, trying to find a way back to the JLA Satellite. Or you might someone killing time until you pick up your weekly Wednesday pull list. Or maybe you’ve said goodbye to dozens of longboxes to embrace the promise of…

This Is the Worst Comic Book I Read All Year

Professionally made comics simply shouldn’t be this bad. I certainly read more amateurish work in 2012, from a storytelling standpoint. And other comics had events transpire that I strongly disagreed with, like Avengers vs X-Men. But the bad taste that Justice League #13 left me with lingers even now, months after it came out. The…

Too Awesome: Rows and Rows of Ms. Pac-Man Machines Being Built Back in the Day

It took a lot of skill (and quarters) to rack up an epic run on Ms. Pac-Man back in the day. Turns out it took sharp hand-eye co-ordination to assemble those iconic cabinets, too. This raw archival footage—from a series about the arcade craze that apparently was never finished—looks inside a factory where one of…

Still have Resident Evil 6? The Xbox 360 version’s getting a bunch of new multiplayer modes today.

Businessweek Says Zynga CEO Is the 4th Worst Boss in Corporate America

Zynga’s had a rough year. After their hotly-anticipated IPO, their stock price tanked in dramatic fashion. There have been lay-offs, lawsuits and all sorts of bad mojo in the last twelve months. And the guy who’s supposed to be the brains of the operation? He’s reportedly been near tears as he tries to figure out…

Peter Molyneux Needs Your Money ASAP Because “I Am Not by Any Measure a Hugely Wealthy Individual”

Peter Molyneux hasn’t really had to worry about the money needed to make games before. Back when he was making games as a smaller operation, he’d starve himself until a project was done and kick the software out into the world. Then, in his later days as a Microsoft exec, he had access to the…