Creators of digitally distributed games have enjoyed a financially and creatively successful couple of months. One-man developer Markus “Notch” Persson has siphoned millions of euros from his growing army of MINECRAFT acolytes (I’m one of them), and the moody 2-D platformer LIMBO managed a healthy profit this summer on the Xbox Live Marketplace, which...

When people tell tales about the controllers they’ve flung in fits of gaming-induced madness, I generally shrug. This hobby of ours is something we do to keep madness at bay, right? How frustrating could a game be, and whose interests are served by chucking a $50 peripheral at a wall? But I’m starting to sympathize. In the ten days since I bought SUPER MEAT...

I follow NIS America like a hawk. Why? As a publisher, the games they bring to us tend to be one (or both) of the following: a) quirky b) awesome In the case of VIRAL SURVIVAL, a $5 WiiWare title developed by Peakvox, we get a lot of a, but only a bit of b. Much to my surprise, this game actually does come from Japan (original title, “Escape Virus”). It...

Perhaps the best way to begin an anxiously anticipated interview is not to babble at your source about just how anxious you are and how much you can’t wait to get home. But that’s precisely what I did to Dave Grossman, who worked closely on THE SECRET OF MONKEY ISLAND at LucasArts way back when and is now design director at Telltale Games. The company is...

If Square simply would concede that Crystal Chronicles is its own universe, we wouldn’t be stuck with the tongue-tying title FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: MY LIFE AS A DARKLORD. On the bright side, the unwieldy name is this game’s biggest shortcoming. At its heart, FFCCMLAD — you know what, let’s just go with “Darklord.” At its...