More than 60 years of gaming history is available for sampling at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto.
Game On 2.0 — a hands-on exhibit — features more than 150 playable console, PC and arcade games.
God of War: Ascension review
The always-angry Kratos returns today in God of War: Ascension. Is the game worth your time and your dollars?
He’s cleaved hundreds of creatures in half with his whirling chain-blades, plundered thousands glowing orbs from heavily guarded chests, bedded a dozen perky-breasted nymphs – often more than one at a time – and used his inhuman strength to literally move mountains.
Kratos, the big, bald badass we’ve come to know and love over eight years of God of War games, has every reason to be tired. And in God of War: Ascension, his weariness is finally beginning to show.
Dad hacks Donkey Kong so daughter can save Mario
Game developer Mike Mika’s daughter Pauline had played the NES classic Super Mario Bros. 2 as the Princess, so she had assumed that would be an option in Donkey Kong, he says. (Fine choice, young Pauline — Toad and the Princess are the only playable characters.)
Tropes Vs. Women in Video Games is here at last
They called her names. They threatened her. They even made a video game about punching her in the face. But the haters couldn’t stop pop-culture critic Anita Sarkeesian from producing her Kickstarter-funded video series, Tropes vs. Women in Video Games.
The first episode hit the tubes today, and be warned, it goes after some of gaming’s sacred crows. But, as Sarkeesian says: “Remember that it’s both possible and even necessary to simultaneously enjoy media while being critical of its more problematic or pernicious aspects.”
Amen, sister.
New Castlevania delivers the goods
“Great to see you, Ted. You’ve really lost weight!”
Any new release in the Castlevania franchise is a pretty big deal, and fans have been especially eager for Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate, which lands on the Nintendo 3DS today.
Our resident video editing/producing guru James Groome somehow overcame the technical barriers of capturing gameplay footage off a Nintendo 3DS screen, and put together an awesome standalone video review. Check it out here.
Tomb Raider is a reboot done right
Hollywood’s appetite for reboots is so insatiable that you can almost count the minutes between a franchise running out of steam and the announcement that it’s being revived. Spider-Man 3 sucked? Reboot the series! That Superman reboot didn’t work out? Just reboot it a second time! Christopher Nolan’s all done with Batman? Maybe he is, but we aren’t! Reboot!
Video game reboots used to be a relative rarity, but with Halo 4 marking the return of Master Chief and DMC: Devil May Cry giving the demon-slayer Dante new moves and a new haircut, it makes sense that video gamedom’s most famous heroine is being reinvented for a new decade.
‘Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance’ best finished and forgotten
‘Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance’ (HO)
Raiden sure has come a long way since 2001’s Metal Gear Solid 2. Back then, our cyborg ninja protagonist was an amateur spy, loathed by the Metal Gear audience simply for being a far cry from series’ mainstay Solid Snake.
Fast-forward to 2008’s Metal Gear Solid 4 and it’s obvious that series mastermind Hideo Kojima and his team at Kojima Productions knew the character needed a serious influx of cool. So Raiden was reintroduced as a cyborg samurai, equipped with body armour and a deadly high-speed frequency blade capable of cutting through anything.
Knowing they had a game but unsure how to approach Raiden’s slice-and-dice nature while developing Metal Gear Rising, Kojima asked the Japanese action game experts at Platinum Games (of cult favourites Bayonetta and Vanquish) to step in and take the reins. After four years in development, we have the first MGS spinoff: Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.
Setting aside the weird, made-up subtitle, Kojima and Platinum have made a somewhat uneven game that settles for style over substance at every turn.
Assassin’s Creed IV sets sail, mateys
Yo-ho, yo-ho, an assassin’s life for meeeee.
The first time I played the seafaring segments of Assassin’s Creed III, I thought, “Wow, this looks really cool. But why would Ubisoft go to so much trouble to design all this naval warfare stuff? It seems like a lot of work for such a minor part of the game.”
I think we now have the answer.
Sandy Hook arcade ‘allows kids to be kids again’
The weekend grand opening of the Sandy Hook Arcade Center. (Via Facebook)
While America debates what role, if any, violent video games played in the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre, kind-hearted gamers are using the medium they love to help those most affected.
The Sandy Hook Arcade Center opened last week, thanks to two kind gamers and a lot of community support. According to Polygon, it all started on the day of shooting.
Andrew, who has always had an arcade in the basement of his home, was hosting a December birthday party for his son on the day of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. The family sent out emails to everyone invited, leaving it to the families to decide if they still wanted to attend.
“Not only did every kid come, but a whole bunch of the neighborhood came too,” he said. “I just knew from that moment that, wow, this is something that’s bigger than us, how kids would enjoy these games and have fun with it. I thought, hey, let’s see if we can make this a bigger sort of thing for the whole town.”
The arcade — which doesn’t charge anything for kids to come in and play with their pinball machines, arcade games or Xbox 360s — is run entirely on donations.
Polygon’s Tom Connors calls it “a place where families can perhaps for a moment forget the tragedy that swept through the town and shocked the nation. A place that allows kids to be kids again.”
So save the money you were planning to spend on the dissapointing PlayStation4, and give it to the kids of Newtown instead.
Or you can donate to Gamers For Sandy Hook, which is helping to cover the costs of victims’ medical bills and funerals.
IGN facing layoffs
Gaming news company IGN is facing a number of unspecified layoffs, according to an internal memo, Polygon reports.
