AJ Glasser

Tekken 6 Preview: When Pigs Fly

The Tekken series holds a special place in my heart for its elaborate ending sequences, its NPC-fraught arenas and the inclusion of capoeira as a martial art. Tekken also strikes a balance among fighting games between rewarding button mashing and encouraging players to learn character-specific combos. In other words, I could play through all the…

Star Trek D-A-C Preview: Boldly Going Where Others Have Been Before

Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network lend themselves to quick, pretty games with multiplayer – and that’s exactly what Star Trek D-A-C aims to be. Rather than licensing a full-blown movie tie-in game for Star Trek’s upcoming “reboot” film, publisher Paramount is pushing for a decent game with a smaller scope. Pretty much the only…

Dante’s Inferno Preview: Looks Like Hell

Is there some game developer’s guidebook that I don’t know about? If so, I need to find it and tear out the page that says “cloning God of War = best idea ever.” To their credit, Dante’s Inferno developer EA Redwood Shores doesn’t shy from their original IP essentially being God of War set entirely…

You Want Your Dead Space Original Or Extra Crispy?

It’s been two weeks since we had anything to say about Dead Space: Extraction, so EA has seen fit to send out new screens to keep the Wii exclusive on the radar. In case you can’t be arsed to go back and read through the EA Spring Break Event impressions, here’s a couple of highlights:…

Mafia II Delivers Room Service

Mafia II is a “buddy story,” in the words of Producer Denby Grace – a tale of a mid-50s era mobster protecting his family and The Family in the face of organized crime. For the world’s first look at the game, 2K Games demoed a single mission about halfway through the game’s branching storyline. Vito…

What AJ Learned About Machinima Law Today

Today kicks off Stanford University‘s Play Machinima Law Conference with panels of machinima artists, copyright lawyers and legal representatives from Blizzard, EA and Microsoft. Machinima is one of those hazy areas of artistic expression not quite covered by copyright law and not quite insignificant given how many people have jumped on the bandwagon. Kotaku first…

GameFly Pays First Class Postage For Second Class Treatment

GameFly, the enormously successful rent-video-games-by-mail service, filed an official complaint yesterday with the Postal Regulatory Commission over the treatment of the games it ships, saying its costing them a fortune in broken discs. The Los Angeles-based company says that the United States Postal Service is responsible for breaking between one and two percent of 590,000…

Top Gun iPhone Preview: Bringing Back The Cold War

Remember when Russians were the staple bad guy of good films? If not, you may be too young to own an iPhone. Top Gun for the iPhone remembers the glory days of the Cold War – a time when men wore leather jackets, women (apparently) didn’t wear bras and the B2 Spirit was next-gen. Developed…

BioShock 2 Impressions: Spoilers? What Spoilers?

How can you spoil BioShock 2? You already know the gameplay and setting from BioShock — or so you think. Good thing the preview 2K showed was a “fake” level that won’t appear in the final game, making it impossible to spoil BioShock 2 for anybody and focusing more on the game itself and less…

Celebrate Earth Day By Playing These Games

April is a busy month – April Fools, tax day, Hitler’s Birthday and of course that day where we all try and pretend our planet isn’t going to drift into the sun tomorrow: Earth Day. Earth Day got going back in 1970 with U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson declaring a teach-in to educate Americans about the…

Nintenducation – A New Take On Edutainment

It’s a great time to be in grade school, if you live in Japan or Great Britain. Several dozen schools in both countries are putting Nintendo DSs in K-12 classes. Games are no stranger to schools, of course. Think back to the 80s when at least 30 minutes of every school day was given over…

Damnation Trailer Proves It Really IS Steampunk

After my last look at Damnation, I wasn’t totally convinced that Damnation was really a Steampunk game on account of there being no zeppelins or frilly Victorian dresses. This new trailer addresses my concerns with Art Director Adam Diller discussing why the game really is Steampunk. He does admit that Damnation creators had to do…

TASER Sues Second Life For $75,000

A lawsuit filed in Arizona on April 17 charges Second Life creator Linden Lab and a slew of other individuals for trademark infringement on TASER’s handheld self-defense device. Insert zap joke here. Massively got a hold of the complaint and today posted a pretty lengthy breakdown of the charges and their credibility. Highlights include pointing…

ESA Welcomes Trion and XSEED

Just when you thought everyone was jumping ship, the Entertainment Software Association welcomes two new companies to its ranks. Trion World Network, Inc. isn’t familiar to most gamers – because they haven’t actually put out any games yet. The company is working on “server-based games and original entertainment” and made a couple of headlines last…

Sacred 2: Fallen Angel Dev Falls Into Bankruptcy

Developer Ascaron Entertainment has filed for bankruptcy protection in its home country, Germany. Their newest game, Sacred 2: Fallen Angel, hit the PC last November and the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 ports are due out this May. But as decent as the game’s been doing so far, that four year development cycle apparently murderized…

Shadowbane Goes Into The Shadows

After a successful six-year run, MMORPG Shadowbane will shut down on May 1 according to publisher Ubisoft. Shadowbane is known to MMO devotees as a bastion of player-versus-player gameplay. I seem to remember sieges also being a big draw to bloodthirsty gamers. Ubisoft bought the game’s developer, Wolfpack Studios, back in 2004 and closed the…

Celebrate Hitler’s Birthday By Killing Him In These Games

On this day 120 years ago, the headman behind World War II and the Holocaust was born in what was then known as Austria-Hungary. He died in 1945, but lives on in video games as the eternal bad guy. “Celebrate” Hitler’s B-day or just seize an excuse to play video games with the following titles…

Games As Journalism: A Quick Fix For A Dying Medium?

An Online Journalism Blog article says that traditional news outlets need to start making video games that either replace or improve the delivery of news stories. It’s no secret that print journalism is a rotting corpse; legitimate new sources are packing up and heading for the web left and right. With new levels of interactivity…

Tales Screens Tell Little, Show Rocket Ship

Somebody likes to wear white, Stan loses to Cless and Japan’s deep-seated obsession with pirates somehow ties into space and kabobs. That’s about all we can tell from this slew of Tales screens Namco Bandai reportedly released today. There’s a batch each for the upcoming Tales of Graces on the Wii, Tales of VS on…

See The OneUps And The Megas In Concert

If you’re into video game music cover bands, get a good look at these vids — you won’t see either band at the Penny Arcade Expos this year. The OneUps and The Megas performed a free concert for participants of the Bay Area Game Jam a couple of weeks back. Sadly, their audience was rather…