AJ Glasser

Tetris Preview: Adding and Subtracting From A Classic

It’s hard to preview a game you’ve been playing most of your life – especially one that has no narrative, little in the way of visuals and long history of success in its simplicity. But, I’m going to take a stab at it anyway with the upcoming downloadable installment of Tetris on the PSP Go.…

Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron Graduates To Holocron Canon

Star Wars Battlefront’s story never made it into the books, comics or cartoons that comprise most of the Expanded Universe – but Elite Squadron is completely canon as far as LucasArts is concerned. They’ve got this thing called the “Holocron” which keeps track of continuity in the Star Wars Universe. Most of what gets done…

Undead Knights Preview: Tag! You’re A Zombie!

Undead Knights had nobody representing it at Sony’s PSP media frenzy, but the game pretty much speaks for itself. In the moaning screams of the undead, that is. The story doesn’t seem too hard to follow: there was a king who had some knights and he decided to kill them and one of their girlfriends…

PSP’s Comic Book Store: Watch Civil War Unfold

I’ve always scorned digital readers because no matter how nifty the controls are, they just don’t have the tangible joy of real books. The PSP Comic Book store, though, puts me in a position where digital reader technology might actually trump the feeling of holding a real comic book in my hand. Because unlike books…

Fat Princess: Fist Full Of Cake — Cake or Death? That Is The Question

Fat Princess may have disappointed a few fans with its single player mode, but Fist Full of Cake aims to get it right while still keeping the best bits of the PlayStation Network game. To that end, developer Super Villian (working closely with Titan Studios) added 50% more content to Fist Full of Cake, plus…

LittleBigPlanet PSP Preview: PSP Platforming At Its Cutest

There are plenty of platformers to pick from when it comes to the PSP, but only one of them has Sackboy. Aside from gameplay features like the level editor and the ability to smack your co-op buddies in the dace, there’s a special charm to LittleBigPlanet that sets it apart from other platfomers. Part of…

Jak & Daxter: The Lost Frontier PSP Preview: A Blast From The Past

I used to work as a QA tester at Sony Computer Entertainment and while there I met a a Lombax, man named Caley and developed a desperate need for a barrel roll. Jak & Daxter: The Lost Frontier brought back all of this within seconds because first of all, Jak & Daxter have obvious parallels…

Army of Two: The 40th Day PSP Preview: A Fixed Perspective

I missed the first 39 days of whatever this game is talking about, but the 40th day is pretty exciting. Stuff explodes, people shoot at me and I have a dude to boss around. It’s like one-third of my life in Oakland, California. But enough about me, let’s talk about how to get a third…

Assassin’s Creed: Bloodlines Opens Up Gameplay And Closes The Book On Altair

Ubisoft listened carefully to criticisms of Assassin’s Creed to craft an improved outing for the sequel – but some of that feedback also made its way into Bloodlines on the Playstation Portable. That means that we spend less time with Desmond and actually get to find out what happens to Altair at the end of…

Finally, A Marathon I Might Actually Finish

Sarcastic Gamer and Texas Children’s Hospital (where yours truly went for many a medical malady in her youth) are teaming up for a second annual gaming marathon to benefit pediatric cancer research and treatment. Extra Life, as the gig is called, generated $120,000 last year with their 24-hour gaming marathon event. This year, they’re kicking…

Get Tales of Monkey Island Free On Talk Like a Pirate Day

Telltale Games and LucasArts have teamed up to make this year’s Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19 — same day as Rosh Hashanah) memorable with a free download of Tales of Monkey Island, Episode One. The giveaway goes on all day on the 19th, but through the 21st of September, they’re also giving gamers…

Operation Flashpoint Trailer: Watch Stuff Get Blown Up

Everybody loves a good explosion. And text flashing on blank screens is nice, too. Actually, the explosions in Dragon Rising might not be what you’re expecting, based on past war video game experiences. The developers behind the game did research, you see, and concluded that explosions are more about smoke and oily fumes than about…

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising Multiplayer Preview: War Is Hell. And Mostly Colorless.

Sion Lenton, Executive Producer on Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, says the game isn’t competing with Modern Warfare 2. It’s just trying to get out the message that war is scary. There are several ways games can communicate the horrors of war. Watching your squad die or witnessing a nuclear explosion, for example, could make quite…

Watch Major League Pitcher Play Wii Fit

Remember that baseball player who wanted to slim down his Mii and wound up losing 25 pounds in real life? The Wall Street Journal chronicled his success story in a video. San Diego Padres pitcher Heath Bell bought Wii Fit for his 11-year-old daughter, originally, but hijacked the game for himself as part of his…

Writing for MMOs: A GDC Perspective

Gamasutra has a great write-up of a Game Developers Conference Austin panel wherein Tracy Seamster of ZeniMax Online and Steve Danuser of 38 Studios talk massively multiplayer online game writing. To me, MMO writing seems tough. There’s just so much text to take into account like menu text, quest text and dialogue trees (to say…

Assassin’s Creed II Dev Diary III – Now With More Variety (And Gameplay)

Assassin’s Creed II‘s second developer diary gives gamers a better look inside Italy’s churches and pickpocket-ridden streets. Designers, directors, writers and other production people at Ubisoft also promise a lot of variety in this second outing for the series. Players can expect everything from collectable quests, climbing puzzles and the chance to run down (and…

It’s Official: Valkyria Chronicles II Coming Stateside!

Valkyria Chronicles II for the PSP is confirmed for a US release in Summer 2010, according to Sega’s blog. The new handheld game takes place two years after the events of the first Valkyria Chronicles, when Gallia is plunged into civil war when a group of rebels — called Gallian Revolutionary Army — rise up…

Another Professor Layton Move Trailer — Now With English

Level-5 told Kotaku we can’t expect Professor Layton‘s first animated feature stateside anytime soon, but trailers for the film have me hoping that it eventually makes the jump. This second full-length movie trailer (with some handy English fan subtitles) again skips out on the puzzles the teaser trailers had. But it adds an exploding boat.…

OKCupid Dating Survey Gives Gamers An Edge Over Literature Nerds

You don’t need to be embarrassed about visiting dating sites unless you’re into literature instead of video games, insist on using netspeak and cannot spell the word defenestration. Okay, I made that last part up. But this survey conducted by dating site OKCupid — which analyzed over 500,000 first messages exchanged between users — shows…

I Remember The Lizzies Being Sexier…

The Lizzies were a revelation in women’s lib as far as gang warfare is concerned, but you’d never know it from watching this trailer about them in the upcoming The Warriors: Street Brawl game. Far better to watch this video instead, if you want to know what the Lizzies were about. However, you should still…