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Kickoff: Madden NFL and the Future of Video Game Sports
Pregame: How Are We Going to Play This? Sport-based video games occupy an odd space within the sphere of modern home entertainment. Reliably enjoyed by millions, the sport-based video game stands at...
View ArticleRelationship Blues
You could make a strong case that the average gamer has spent the last half-decade trapped in an abusive relationship with the Call of Duty franchise. When a new Call of Duty game comes along, the...
View ArticleColluding With Nilfgaard
Last year, on a state visit to Warsaw, President Obama was given an executive swag bag by Poland’s wonderfully named prime minister, Donald Tusk. Among the cultural riches that Tusk wanted Obama to...
View ArticleVicodin Visions
Max Payne is, among many other things, really bad at his job. Always has been. In previous Max Payne games (and one extraordinarily ill-advised movie) Max worked as an NYPD police officer with an...
View ArticleThirteen Ways of Looking at a Shooter
I. In early June, at the E3 convention in Los Angeles, I attended a demo for a game called Splinter Cell: Blacklist. In the demo, I watched the Splinter Cell franchise’s long-established hero, Sam...
View ArticlePromises, Promises: On Arkane Studios’ Dishonored
Video games are an important medium of human expression, but sometimes it’s nice to remember that they also allow you to stab a Bismarck-helmeted dude in the neck and teleport to a distant windowsill....
View ArticleDead Space 3: Are Necromorphs Thetans?
I‘m a video-game reviewer who insists on playing 90 percent of my games set to the “Hard” difficulty. I’m also an idiot. Why do I do this to myself? I have no idea. Possibly it’s just simple masochism,...
View ArticleDoes the Sneaker Have to Matter?
Last winter, I received an interesting invitation. Would I, and my video-game-writing partner, Rob Auten, like to travel to Boston to spend a weekend playing a complete but not yet fully polished build...
View ArticleTrue-ish Grit
If you were to anthropomorphize the contemporary American mainstream video game, it would look, I think, a bit like a harrowingly male, shaggily haired, extremely confident 18-year-old capable of any...
View ArticlePoison Tree
Dear Niko, Last week, the latest installment of the Grand Theft Auto series was released. It made a billion dollars — the GDP of Mongolia — in 72 hours. I’d love to know how that makes you, the...
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