Bulls vs. Blazers sucked, sucks and will suck.

An aspect commonly overlooked in classic gaming is how solitary the experience is. Like lonely teenagers in a basement, the heroes of Super Mario Brothers and Sonic the Hedgehog work in complete isolation. While they may be working to save the world, there is little representation of this in their respective games. Outside of fun, the only reward for playing is rescuing pixelated princesses and fuzzy animals. These games rely solely on the strength of their gameplay to attract ...

The .hack series has established itself as a guilty pleasure of roleplaying video games, akin to Sylvester Stallone and action movies or The OC and cheesy teen dramas. Despite repetitive button mashing and frustrating artificial intelligence, .hack remains entertaining because of a ruthlessly addictive storyline and the encompassing universe around it. .hack//Quarantine is the culmination of the four-part .hack series.

With the explosion in accessible information and playable video game roms via the Internet, few video games remain truly obscure to this day. Chances are, if a game is worth playing for any reason, someone has played it and felt the need to inform others. Games formerly considered obscure due to short/limited production runs (Radiant Silvergun) or translation issues (Bahamut Lagoon) are soon exposed by diehard fans on the Internet who appreciate the value of the gameplay.

Do you remember the music of the early nineties? It featured a wave of experimental genres and new hybrids, at least compared to the music of the eighties. From Seattle, the raw sound of Nirvana refined the rougher edges of punk, paving the way for later acts such as Green Day, which itself was a hybrid of British punk and “new” alternative. The Black Crowes tried a new fusion of Southern blues with rock and roll. Rage Against the Machine combined political protest lyrics with an aggressive ...

If X-Men Legends was a Diablo expansion pack, would anybody care? What if it was named Final Fight 4? For all the allure provided by the possibility of controlling a squad of X-Men, X-Men Legends comes up amazingly short with tired game design and an overall lack of excitement. This is a cardinal sin for an X-Men game, a comic book series which is anything but tired.

A Game John Wooden Can Appreciate

Disgaea belongs firmly in the first camp of superior tactical roleplaying games, although it should be noted that it’s hanging by its fingernails off the edge of the cliff. The requisite tactical gameplay needs some tweaks, but this is balanced by the charm that the characters of Disgaea possess.

If the tedious fights were taken out of Base Wars, or if the faulty computer intelligence had been fixed, a better baseball game would have been produced. As it stands though, Base Wars is just an inferior hybrid.

Overall, Breath of Fire 2 is a game that's just below great because of a bad translation and a lack of new content from the previous release.

Tougher than tough actin’ Tinactin! Tastier than Outback Steakhouse! Better to watch than Little Giants! A better deal than Greyhound buses!

Ever Wonder Why 'Taxi' Has An I But 'Candy' Has A Y, Unless It's An Exotic Dancer? Me neither, so luckily I'm reviewing Crazy Taxi and not our country's exotic dancing scene!

Every once in a while, the screen will fade, the sound clatters even more unrecognizably, or the button will jam, but these are inconsequential annoyances which do not interrupt the unconscious flow of gaming.

While Ogre Battle now receives the credit it deserves, Vandal Hearts has gone ignored by the same audience. It may not offer the immense depth of these previous titles, but it does feature simplified gameplay and a good plot that should endear itself to the Final Fantasy Tactics crowd.

The cold truth is that Beyond the Beyond would suck regardless of when it was released.

It’s simple to recommend The Frozen Throne. It lengthens the experience of an already great game, while providing a new style of gameplay and balancing to top it all off. If you enjoyed Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos, then there’s no question that you will also enjoy The Frozen Throne.

Being a roleplayer immediately signifies your intelligence over casual gamers, because the ability to read dense text and make simple statistical based decisions requires far more mind power than split second reactions and nerves of steel seen in nearly every other genre.

While it lacks the elaborate back story of a Mario game (omg savu tha princez??!??!), Pipe Dream provides a solid time wasting experience for those tired of Solitaire and Bejeweled.

Programmers of baseball management games must make a decision between two paths early in development. The first option is to faithfully reproduce all the nuances of real baseball management - hiring coaches, setting up minor league teams, drafting amateur players, etc. The second option focuses upon the “important” aspects, such as setting major league lineups and pitching rotations, letting a computer AI handle complex decisions.

Hearing old baseball players and analysts like Joe Morgan on television waxing poetically about the “good ole days” of professional baseball and players playing “for the love of the game” and not “multi-million dollar contracts” can warp the distinction between perception and reality. False beliefs, such as teams winning with “clutch” hitting, defense, and determination are held up and idolized by the paid professionals who play and cover the game of baseball. Despite recent hard work by stati...