One of the funnier properties of human thought is that paying for something will make you think it’s valuable, and the more you pay, the more you think it’s worth. The opposite is true as well, where the less you pay, the less valuable your purchase seems. It’s called cognitive dissonance. When you pay the [...]

Well, at least the recession has had some positive impact on the world, because the Castlevania movie has finally been cancelled. The troubled film has chewed through staff (including the luminary directors of Aliens vs. Predator and I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer), but now no one seems willing to take the reins. [...]

Fans of graphic novels will have heard about the infinite canvas—the idea that comics on the web needn’t be saddled with the limitations of their paper counterparts. And Yet It Moves is the proof of concept that the same principle applies to video games, although in this case it’s more about the simulation of natural laws than simple space. It’s a game that capitalizes on the freedom inherent in simulated spaces, and the result is smart, lean, and topsy-turvy.

Don’t look now, but your childhood is trying to pick your pocket again. The supposedly recession-proof games industry is mining its back catalog for free money, and Nintendo struck a pure vein of Metroid Prime. The rerelease of the surprisingly successful FPS trilogy will be retrofitted with gestural aiming and crammed on one $50 disc. [...]

We covered the flash version of Armor Games-developed Shift in our flash roundup a while back. The silhouette polarity platformer caught our attention by violating expectations of what counted as floors and corridors in its rapidly rotating world. Now iShift has found its way onto the iPhone, one of the few gaming devices out there [...]

Geneforge came out in late 2001, so it might seem a little early to be doing a retro review. However, it offers a portal into state of the art RPG design circa 1988, so it’s fair game. Although fascinating as an historical artifact, the brutal difficulty, tremendous time investment, and spartan graphics and sound mean that Geneforge will appeal to a very narrow audience. That audience will probably fetishize it, though—it’s not like they make ‘em like this anymore.

Poor Duke Nukem: Forever; the only postmortem for its development team will be an elegy. When Forever developer 3D Realms collapsed a week ago, it seemed like the end of a 12 year saga of promises, delays, and jokes that were more easy than clever.

However, the show must go on, and Take Two interactive is keeping the Duke Nukem farce alive by suing the closest living relative to 3D Realms: Duke Nukem creator Apogee Software. Take Two has alleged that the closure of 3D Realms constitutes a breech of Take Two’s contractual publishing rights, and that Apogee is responsible for the failure. It’s like a 12 year setup for a spit take, only instead of saliva there are summons.

This news seems to put to rest any theories that 3D Realms was conspiring with Take Two for media attention to the ailing FPS franchise. Instead it appears that Take Two is trying to recover losses from the $12 million publishing rights they purchased in 2000 and renewed during the intervening years.

Come to think on it, I’d really like to see a postmortem from the development team. It seems like it’d be an instructive reflection on how not to make a game.

Innovation is in the eye of the beholder, but trying to undermine established genre tropes is a good place to start. Valve is finally unveiling the sniper update for Team Fortress 2, and the first unlokable is a bow whose limited range should draw snipers closer to the fray. If you’ve ever held a virtual [...]

Defense Grid: The Awakening is a refreshingly gameplay-oriented experience. Unemcumbered by the pomp of cinematics and cut scenes, it manages to build a simple story without interrupting eight hours of harrowing tower defense gameplay, and both are better for it.

SALE: This game is $5 on Steam until May 13th

Games have rules and part of the fun is learning how to use and abuse them. It always starts out innocently, like figuring out a way to screw your friends while playing Settlers of Catan, but the rabbit hole goes so much deeper. You may have heard of theorycraft, the trade skill favored by Blizzard’s most dedicated customers for crafting war. There’s also speedrunning, which is the art of abusing the glitches in games to beat them at inhuman speeds. However, the Retronauts twitter feed just linked tool-assisted speedrunning, which blows them all away.

Video games have such complex rules that you need a computer to track them. Tool assisted speedrunners use computers to exploit small weaknesses in the game’s code that the designers missed or that happen too fast for a human to really make use of them. It’s a sort of metagame you can play by manipulating the rules of another game. That’s pretty cool on its own (for a geeky value of cool), but where it gets interesting from a game design standpoint is how deeply these speedrunners need to know the game mechanics. For example, there’s a fascinating discussion of how items drop in the Legend of Zelda that can help you understand why you can never find a heart when you need one. Have a look, but beware, not everyone comes back from Wonderland.