Stephane Petit-Clerc
A year and a half after its initial release, I still play Lumines religiously. Oddly enough, I can't say that about many games in my library. When I don't know what to play on the PSP, I play Lumines. When I don't know what to play on the Xbox 360, I play Lumines on Xbox Live Arcade. Read More.
I like to watch movies with Christopher Walken. I'd never run out to see one based on him alone, but when I realize he's in something, it generally gives me more incentive to see and enjoy it. I know he'll play the same character with the same speech pattern, but I like it and it entertains me. Read More.
One of the great ideas spawned on the Xbox and carried over to the 360 and the Xbox Live Marketplace was the Live Arcade. The idea of being able to take a break from traditional games and just play some mindless rounds of something simple to kill a few minutes (or hours) here and there was a godsend. Read More.
How often can you say this about a videogame: It made me smile? Well, LocoRoco made me smile. It's that kind of videogame. There's something infectious about it that makes you keep playing it, smiling the whole time. It's not hard, it's not long, it's not going to change the world or anything, but it's a breath of fresh air and it can easily be enjoyed by anyone. Read More.
Let's get right to it shall we? The reason I loved the first Splinter Cell was because it allowed me to sneak around, take out lights, bathe in darkness and be nothing more than a shadow. Sure, the story was derivative and just an excuse to keep levels stringed together, but it worked. Read More.
When EA Sports bought the exclusive rights to the NFL license, many gamers felt they had lost a home. While both the Madden and NFL 2K franchises were great for various reasons, they were also different enough to warrant separate purchases. A month into the 2005 football season, I needed my 2K fix and bad. Read More.
It's almost inevitable that any game that even remotely looks like an open-ended, action-oriented free-roaming sandbox game will get compared to GTA. When you're the grand-daddy of the genre, the grand-kids have big boots to fill. But in a day and age when every game seems to, in one way or another, try to steal a piece from the GTA ilk, we have to be careful to judge each game for what it truly is and not what it reminds us of. Read More.
As someone who plays more video games than most, I get asked the following question a lot: "So like, uh, which is better, the PS3 or the 360?" It's a fair question and also a very annoying one. As a reviewer, the responsible answer is really: "They're really the same. Read More.
Once regarded as the premiere fighting franchise, Tekken made no qualms about being a fighter's fighter. But after a few poor showings on the PS2 and other franchises stepping up the flash, the fan service, the over-the-top brutality, the additional modes of play and the speed of fighting games, many fans of the 10-hit combo were left wondering if Tekken and Namco could mount a suitable comeback. Read More.
Even as a reviewer, I have become jaded, desensitized and doubting of everything I read nowadays, regardless of the source. It's not an X-File worthy conspiracy, but simply the fact that in a day and age when anyone can say anything on a forum as big as the internet, without any proof or supporting arguments at all, it becomes harder and harder to see through motives and find the truth behind any given thing. Read More.
When the PSP launched, and for a long time thereafter, what it was in desperate need of was a decent RPG. Sony should have paid attention to this a bit more since the PSOne and PS2 have exceedingly strong RPG libraries and even a simple port of one of many RPGs would have been a smart move. Read More.
At a time when PSOne owners were clamoring for more Metal Gear Solid action, 989 Studios and Sony's release of the original Syphon Filter game was a stroke of genius. Not only did it become a huge seller, and being incredibly popular on message boards, but it was also different enough from Snake's adventures to keep critics happy. Read More.
In the great spirit of "the sky is falling, the sky is falling", many reviewers, myself included, have previously made statements to the fact that it may seem the adventure game is a dying breed. Oddly, these statements came after a year of playing and reviewing such titles as Still Life, Syberia 2, Myst 4 and Indigo Prophecy. Read More.
Some well respected, very important men wear funny looking pajamas to bed. I can accept this. It's odd, but no more than some Hollywood pairings we've seen. On a separate note, certain gaming franchises take chances. It's not a common occurrence, but Konami proved that it could be highly successful with its first Metal Gear Acid game on Sony's PSP. Read More.
A few years ago, I practically camped out at a book store in order to get the new Thomas Harris novel; Hannibal. I'd waited 10 years to find out what further exploits Clarice and Lecter would have and I had never been disappointed by a Thomas Harris novel yet. I picked up the book and read it in one sitting. Read More.
