PSP 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...

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.”

E3 2009 is alive and kicking, and T-Dar is bringing you the first of many updates from the show floor. Up first is a look at Batman: Arkham Asylum, Just Cause 2, Aliens vs Predator, Microsoft’s Natal motion tech, the big three press conferences and oh so much more.

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.

Over the years we've enjoyed steering some of the animal kingdom's most awesome specimens through some pretty awesome games. Banjo the bear. Donkey Kong the ape. Amaterasu the wolf. We've loved them all. But it's not always nature's most magnificent beasts that game makers deem suitable for the role of hero. Some creatures that have made the jump from wildlife to virtual life are little more than food chain filler. And this is those pathetic

Generally, the first rule when it comes to rescuing hostages is ‘don’t let everybody get horribly done in.’ But sadly, this proves too much of a stumbling block for many game heroes. Be it accidentally killing geriatrics with a killer virus or letting the damsel in distress get crushed by a cow, the following rescue missions all get botched. Spectacularly.

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.

We like to end things on a positive note. That’s why 2009 was capped with not only our annual Platinum Chalice Awards, but also a whole week’s worth of celebratory articles talking about the accomplishments of the past decade. Now though, with ’09 safely out of range for a retaliatory strike, we can piss all over the idiotic, baffling and just plain dumb occurrences that peppered our otherwise fine year.

There are two kinds of good game. There are the good games that come out, get fine reviews, sell adequately, and then fade into well-regarded obscurity: your Vortex, your Space Station Silicon Valley, your Land Stalker (a perplexed, blank stare is the correct response here). And then there are the good games that have a lasting impact on the medium. These games aren't necessarily any better, but they get talked about more often because they defied – and redefined – our expectations. Red Dead Redemption may be such a title. It's the first time a cowboy-themed game has transcended the resolute OK-ness of Sunset Riders, Mad Dog McCree and their ilk, capturing audiences without compromising its sand-and-saddles chops to prove that Westerns were a viable game genre all along.

But now that that point's finally been made, there are plenty of other film genres for games to try adapting next. Some haven't been touched since valiantly failed lo-fi efforts; others have never really been given a day in court. Maybe it's time to put the next Space Marines In Space title on the back-burner and try plugging a controller into one of these under-represented movie styles...

There's always a lot of talk in games about developers pushing things to the limit. Several not-yet-released games are promising that the pushing of limits will be taken to their very limits. And possibly beyond into a hitherto unexplored dimension of limits.

But what about games that promised much limit pushing that have been released? These are 8 games that all modestly claimed to be spanking consoles to breaking point. Was the big talk justified? Let's find out.