Metal is not dead. It can never truly die, for according to Brutal Legend, it was passed down to humankind by our creators, the Titans, and it is the weapon by which we defeated great evils (read: shitty music). Tim Schafer, the man behind Psychonauts, the game we’ve guilt-tripped you for not buying almost as much as we’ve mentioned Okami, is one funny game designer. ...

In 2005, developer Rockstar Toronto expertly transformed the stale 2D beat-‘em-up into a full-blown 3D brawler with The Warriors. The long-forgotten cult flick was immediately revitalized by the superb game, setting off waves of special edition DVD releases, and a rock-solid PSP port a few years later. Fast forward to now, where the game is an easily obtainable, must-buy bargain bin treasure, and we’re baffled. ...

Being a game that has received a less than enthusiastic reception in recent years, EA Sports’ NBA Live has more room for improvement than most of the company’s other sporting franchises. While it might not have the most solid gameplay foundations to build on, there probably won’t be too many people desperately upset if EA were to tear it all down and start from scratch. ...

Talk about cashing in on the current craze. Zombie Apocalypse is double dipping on this generation’s obsession with the undead and twin-stick shooters. The result? An enjoyable top-down action game that does a decent job of keeping things interesting for a little while, but isn’t much more than a brief distraction. ...

One the one hand, you’ve got EA’s shiny but occasionally flawed NBA Live; on the other, a game that doesn’t look quite so polished, but is built on a super-solid core that has consistently outplayed the opposition for years. If you’re a casual fan of the sport, then either title will probably serve equally well. ...

Armored drop troopers plummet from orbit to do battle with hostile forces on a war-torn planet in Section 8, a sci-fi first-person shooter from developer TimeGate Studios. Unfortunately, despite a few surprisingly fun gimmicks, Section 8 falls short of greatness and winds up playing like a generic cookie-cutter shooter. ...

When pinball enthusiasts talk about the way a shot "feels," they're actually talking about tiny variables within the game, like how far the plunger can be drawn back, or how lanes line up with the flippers, or the size of the ball gutters. For short, they refer to this as "kinetics," and that's reason the original Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection caught everyone's attention. ...

It never ceases to amaze me that Gran Turismo sells as well as it does. Oh, it’s certainly well deserved, but as far as painstakingly authentic sims go, they’re ridiculously dense, difficult, and not all that accessible when compared to other game series that sell fifty million copies and move PlayStation consoles. ...

We feel bad for all the people who will probably take one look at Ion Assault and write it off as yet another generic arena space shooter. They'll be missing out on what's probably one of the coolest mechanics we've seen in the genre. Harnessing power from the latent energy fields around your ship, you'll launch bombardments of charged ions at foes until they overheat, reach critical mass, and burst like big space pimples. ...

The Clone Wars is little more than yet another tedious, overly-simple, unengaging, repetitive arcade-adventures that proliferate the bargain bins of games stores, preying on the wallets of well-meaning grandparents and leaving behind a stream of traumatized children in its wake. ...