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So, after what was a playtime that ran on for far too long, I finished (but not completed) the game tonight. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with it, and definitely had a good time in terms of the singleplayer mode. Apart from a length that overstayed its welcome, the difficulty curve was right where it needed to be and most of the tweaks that had been made to the PS2 formulary were good ones.

An article in the February issue of the journal Emotion presents some strange findings regarding players' emotional reactions to killing and being killed in a first-person shooter (FPS). Conventional FPS wisdom would suggest that players like shooting enemies and dislike getting shot. The research findings, however, paint a different picture.

This year, one game stood head and shoulders above all the others, the chasm in quality between it and even its nearest competition was such a yawning chasm that it would take 8-12 Batmobiles to vault across it. Which game was it? Discover within...

Most anyone who has been playing videogames for any appreciable length of time is well acquainted with the agonizing distress of “dying” in a game and losing several hours of hard fought progress. Like it or not, save systems have a huge influence on our enjoyment of a game.

As anyone who spends even a small amount of time on internet websites or messageboards knows, the vast majority of people who post use aliases or 'handles' when posting. Whatever the reason, I've found that the percentage of folks who submit comments under their real names is quite small, almost to the point of being nonexistent.

Does the “videogame” label properly capture what videogames have become? Will the term “videogames” still be used 20 or 30 years from now? Recent titles like BioShock and Mass Effect are pushing games to a realm of narrative and interactive depth that make the term “game” seem ill-fitting. As the boundaries of the medium continue to expand, I suspect that the “videogame” label will only feel increasingly inadequate.

After listening to Jonathan Blow’s “Design Reboot” lecture last December, I made a small resolution that I would try to reduce my time spent on games that rely on meaningless reward systems. Putting it into practice, however, has proved tougher than I thought.

Now that the Wii's novelty has worn off, a number of questions come to my mind: Is the Wii really all it’s cracked up to be? Does the Wii remote actually improve the gameplay experience? Do motion-sensing controls really do all that much to increase the player’s overall enjoyment or sense of immersion?

Just as English literature buffs should be knowledgeable about the heavyweights of the Western canon—Macbeth, Huckleberry Finn, Ulysses, etc.—so too should videogame critics be acquainted with gaming’s megahits, games like Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, and, yes, the Halo series. So, like the English lit student who struggles to wrap his or her head around Ulysses, not because it’s enjoyable but because it’s important, I decided that I should at least try to understand Halo.