This past Tuesday showered gaming junkies with an embarrassment of riches, proffering two of the year’s best titles so far and hopefully setting up the next few months for the sort of retail bliss we enjoyed last spring. I’m speaking specifically about Valve’s PORTAL 2 and Netherrealm Studios’ MORTAL KOMBAT reboot, the former of which has...

I’ve spoken before about the hazards of being a die-hard gaming generalist — someone so preoccupied with new experiences that he or she rarely unearths the rich, creamy stuff at the end of a game. It’s the pits, really. As a rule, today’s games bloom like onions, and when you chronically peel only the first few layers, you’re often getting the most shallow,...

In their first few minutes, video games are almost never honest. That’s a boondoggle developers have been sorting through since the dawn of gaming. How do you kick off entertainment that’s meant to last a dozen hours or more? Tipping the scales in any direction — too exciting or too placid; too instructional or too obtuse — can muck things up. Consider a case...