PC Features

Whether they’ve advanced menacingly toward our camera lenses, hidden their faces when we look at them or just sort of hovered aimlessly, ghosts have been a semi-constant threat in videogames almost since the medium was invented. One of the great things about games, however, is that they’re a way to explore unusual viewpoints – and every once in a while, they give us a chance to see through the eyes of these undead phantoms, and find out what it’s like to flit insubstantially through an earthly plane that’s perpetually, almost comically afraid of us.

Only a handful of games have actually offered a chance to see things from the proverbial Other Side, but these are our favorites...

It is required by law that every fitness videogame published after 1978 must include an attractive female in tight clothing on its cover, regardless of actual content. This naturally got the attention of our boner, as most things eventually do, and launched us on a Quixotic quest to discover which videogame fitness coach will best service your insatiable autoerotic needs. But buying fitness games can be embarrassing, so rehearse this simple script before entering the store...

When did professional darts players attain to the status of WWE stars, playing to stadiums full of screaming fans and strutting into the place with an effing intro? Bluster aside, there is no way that holding a Wii remote like a dart is “realistic.”

It is required by law that every fitness videogame published after 1978 must include an attractive female in tight clothing on its cover, regardless of actual content. This naturally got the attention of our boner, as most things eventually do, and launched us on a Quixotic quest to discover which videogame fitness coach will best service your insatiable autoerotic needs. But buying fitness games can be embarrassing, so rehearse this simple script before entering the store...

I’m not a miserable sexist ass; I’m just a practical observer. One thing I’ve observed is that men and women are different (I figured that one out pretty early on). Since I’m a rational person, I’m aware that nothing is entirely one way or another. Even the divide between life and death is ambiguous (uh, zombies, amirite?).

July is a bit dry in terms of new-stuff quantity, but we’re really looking forward to the majority of its releases. We have a healthy amount of oddball gems, sequels and re-releases to look forward to. It’s as much a month to experiment on weird stuff as it is to catch up on stuff you may have missed a year (or five) ago. What’s particularly exciting is that we’re seeing a solid number of awesome-looking downloadable games. If you’d rather not spend $60 on bananas-bullshit like Catherine (which we’re way into, by the way), put that money toward a few XBLA games instead. You’ve got slimmer pickin’s than usual, but them pickin’s look good...

Fact: Gordon Ramsey, that TV chef who screams at everyone all the time for putting too much pan-seared fennel in the sous de l’orange, loves chili dogs and tater tots.

Okay, that particular fact is probably not true because we just made it up. But we bet there is something he loves that you can get in a drive-through. The point is a meal doesn’t need a five-star chef’s intimate knowledge of ostrich curd and starfish sauce to be enjoyable. And by the same token, a videogame can absolutely fantastic even if there’s no highbrow artistic statement mixed in with the action. Here are the games we can’t wait to dive into, even if they appeal to the summer popcorn-movie side of our brains instead of the snooty, art-critic lobe...

This week, we delve into the reasons why a uniquely old-school 17-year-old RPG about kids hitting things with baseball bats maintains such a devoted cult following…

Re-releasing older games is getting more and more common, but there are still plenty of greats out there that are tough to track down outside of auction sites. Here are a few we think particularly deserve a second shot at life…

There’s something very special about the process of old-fashioned, frame-by-frame, 2D animation. In the old days, the only way to get your animated character to wave his or her arm was to spend hours upon hours painstakingly crafting each frame and constantly readjusting your work to make sure everything flowed correctly. Now you just set a couple of keyframes and let a computer do it all for you.