Though a little on the lean side in terms of content, Gears of War: Judgment is pretty good… provided you like third-person Halo games. Shooters are the video-game equivalent of jazz music. To some people they seem like so much chaos and noise, and many have trouble discerning the subtleties that distinguish one work from…
Although Halo 4 introduces great new enemies, weapons, and environments, 343 Industries ultimately plays it safe with this new chapter by skillfully iterating on the canonical Halo experience. One of the most disorienting experiences a critic can have is liking something, but not knowing why. In the context of video games it’s an epistemological hazard I usually…
At times tightly designed and brilliantly executed, while at other times uninspired and juvenile, Borderlands 2 is an idiot savant of a first-person shooter. On the lawless border world of Pandora, four “vault hunters”—a soldier, an assassin, a brute, and a powerful sorceress—are on a quest to find an legendary alien treasure. Guided by a…
As should be obvious from the date of my last post, my blog has been on a bit of a break while I finish up my Ph.D. degree. However, I hit a major milestone this past weekend when I turned in a nearly final draft of my thesis to my committee. After doing a bit…
In the supper of video gaming, first-person shooters are the red meat: bloody, delicious, and unlikely to be dethroned as our dominant form of sustenance, no matter how many heart attacks they cause. Our latest helping of hamburger is Bulletstorm, an FPS from People Can Fly (makers of Painkiller) and Epic Games (of Gears of…
Call of Duty: Black Ops is the seventh installment in the Call of Duty series. Set this time in the 1960’s, it shows that the only thing with more longevity than the Call of Duty franchise itself is American nostalgia for the Cold War. I’d say things have gotten pretty bad when game developers start…
I recently jumped on the Call of Duty: Black Ops bandwagon. (Or maybe just I fell off of the “I’m too cool to play the new CoD game” bandwagon—either way, I’m certain there was a wagon involved.) Regardless, the irony of this choice is threefold, because that’s as many fold as I feel like discussing…