A heartbreaking thing happened at a York County Walmart the other day. It was well after mealtime on Thanksgiving, and I had stopped in for a copy of GRAN TURISMO 5 (that I was in a Walmart on Thanksgiving isn’t the heartbreaking part, though there’s an argument to be made there). A middle-aged shopper was mindlessly browsing the retailer’s considerable spread...

I like this game. Well, I like this whole series. This review will be a shameless pitch of the entire series, including the most recent entry. Take it all in, and don’t think about it too much. You’ll want to save your brain power for the games themselves. ACE ATTORNEY INVESTIGATIONS: MILES EDGEWORTH is the fifth game in a series with a decade-long...

“Between the idea and the reality [...] lies the shadow.” – T.S. Eliot Welcome to the world of Kingdom Hearts; a place that started as a simple mash-up of Disney and Final Fantasy characters, and has since become a breeding ground for recapitulated and augmented concepts of identity. KINGDOM HEARTS 358/2 DAYS, for Nintendo DS, is the fourth major...

Last year’s SPACE INVADERS EXTREME celebrated the 30th anniversary of Taito’s classic arcade shooter. Taito and Square Enix released this game on DS and PSP, and an XBLA version was released with extra work from Backbone Entertainment. SIE was a success on all platforms, and it had small but useful differences on each platform. What kept the gameplay...

Is L. Frank Baum turning in his grave? Probably, but this game would certainly not be the first instance when a non-canonical “Oz” work threw the original plot out the window. Alongside the highly popular musical (and revisionist book from which it originated) “Wicked,” the Japanese had actually made one anime film and two anime TV series out...

Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of the Final Fantasy series, had varying levels of involvement with each installment. He was most actively involved in I through V, then had decreasing involvement from VI on (with IX being an exception). Then, after FFX, Sakaguchi left Square (Enix) and formed his own company, Mistwalker. But the old school, “Sakaguchi-style”...