Features

If you've ever wanted to zoom around the charred remains of the Statue of Liberty, Race After 1977 is your game (you statue-and-possibly-freedom hater). The game takes place on 10 tracks over five different environments, all depicting a different landmark that's been leveled by a nuclear holocaust. Funnily enough though, that's the sole gimmick of the game. There are no weapons you use against other drivers, no environmental hazards to crash down upon you. You can only advance by placing in the races with good white-knuckled steering...

Another week, another pile of evidence that iPhone isn’t the only game in town (though even we have to admit Infinity Blade is awesome). No matter! We’ll drown our sorrows with these ample offerings...

As internet speeds and digital storage gets cheaper and cheaper every year, downloadable games get closer and closer to matching the experiences provided by their retail counterparts. They also offer the chance for smaller development teams to experiment or stray off the beaten path; we doubt that EA would ever publish a game featuring a dead fetus is a power-up. They draw the line at killing unbaptized babies in hell thank you very much. And hey, there’s no better way to detox from a 100 hour Skyrim binge than with a quick, fun 5 hour game. In anticipation of our year end Platinum Chalice awards, we’ve compiled a list of our favorite 2011 downloadable titles across all platforms to help you separate the w00t from the chaff...

For this week's iPad feature, we're looking at a mix of recent releases – ZombieSmash HD and Time Crisis 2nd Strike HD – as well as a handful of slightly older 2010 releases still well worth your attention: Radio Flare Redux HD, Ninjatown: Trees of Doom! HD!, and Gravity Hook HD. We thought about changing the name of this week's feature to "iPad reviews of the week HD" to match the suffix of all five apps, but thought better of it – probably for the best, really...

This year's E3 press conferences might have been a tad on the dull side in terms of big revelations, but Sony has pulled a few interesting smaller announcements out of its big corporate sleeve today.

Call of Duty: Black Ops is out, and if you've been counting down the days on your calendar and filling your living room with snacks like a modern-day fallout shelter, chances are your iPad is going to feel a little lonely in the coming weeks. But if you need a respite from Black Ops and the rest of the big-budget holiday blockbusters, here are five fresh iPad picks to help you fill every last second of the day with gaming goodness...

id’s famous for pioneering the FPS genre with Doom and Wolfenstein 3D, and their next shooter, Rage, is aiming to change things all over again. Running on the mechanically and graphically impressive id Tech 5 engine, Rage has makes the post-apocalypse look fun, so long as you enjoy shooting mutants and driving through wastelands. And if you don’t like that, we don’t want to know you. Learn more about the huge adventure in our E3 show floor interview...

Doom 3 then. Too dark. Too claustrophobic. Too many corridors. Not enough carnage. Closet monsters, closet, monsters, closet monsters. And that torch-or-gun mechanic is cheap as hell. That’s the accepted wisdom of much of the internet these days. But you know what? Much of the internet is full of crap. Yes, Doom 3 has some flaws. Yes, it’s very different from the Dooms of old. But taken on its own terms, it’s also a blistering, nerve-pounding, brutally affecting thrill-ride, one that got under my skin like few other games before it, and had the scare-power to turn my very own home into a nightmarish domain of half-seen horrors, ambiguous noises, and thick, black shadows that absolutely, resolutely did want to kill me as soon as the sun went down. But you know, in a good way.

So follow me, if you will, through the mists of time, and let me recount to you just why Doom 3 is so special.