PSP Features

Perhaps not everyone got the memo. See, power-ups are meant to be a good thing. They are, by definition, supposed to power you up. As in 'not power you down'. So why be so cruel as to program things into your game that can be collected by the player that don't offer a few brief moments of awesome? Why would you do that? That's like selling sweets that are actually poos. And that's just mean. So why the following 7 'power ups' exist is anyone's guess…

Thanks a bunch, Christopher Nolan. Ever since Batman Begins took the universally-reviled cinematic bastardization of a cool character and redrew it in the drab colors and long shadows of The Dark Knight Returns, the “gritty reboot” has been back in fashion. In Hollywood-speak, the term's a nice way of saying “we've screwed this up, can we have a do-over?” Of course, games being a forward-looking sort of medium, players have been wise to this trick for years now – and we're still suckers for it.

Whether it's a deeper-'n-darker sequel or restarting from scratch, rejigging your series with a darker palette and more distorted guitars is a great way to draw attention to what might otherwise be just more sequel-abuse. But how well does it work? From a player's perspective, a gray coat of paint is hardly going to turn gameplay upside down... but from a “cataloguing the tricks they'll pull to sell a new installment” standpoint, dark reboots are just gravy...

Film and television quotes are so entangled with our language that their origins have become irrelevant to most speakers. We use Seinfeld-popularized neologisms and phrases constantly without considering who popularized them (“shrinkage,” “yadda yadda yadda,” “close-talker,” “not that there's anything wrong with that”). But games are a younger medium, and for a time were thought to be the...