I was innocent, once.

To be honest I didn’t think much of Peggle when it first came out on Xbox Live Arcade. Call it judging a game by its cover, if you will, but the prospect of playing a child-centred pinball-type game didn’t appeal at all. But I went ahead and downloaded the trial version anyway while I was busy creating extremely sexist female characters in Soul Calibur IV and pondering the worthiness of using Blanka against those cheap Sagat players in Street Fighter IV.

To my ultimate surprise and similarly for the hundreds and thousands of people who have purchased the game, Peggle is brilliant fun. I was sold as soon as the final orange peg was struck and… Read More

So this is what Bionic Commando was like. Having never played the original 1989 NES game, opting instead for a Sega Master System II (hey, II sure beats I) in the 8 bit generation, I always wondered why my Nintendo buddies raved on about it. And the reason? The absolute awesomeness in controlling a character with a grappling hook bionic arm, a brilliant gameplay gimmick that existed at just about the perfect time when action movies were all the rage; in between a bit of Predator and Terminator 2, the ability to swing like you were invincible may well have been a young boy’s ultimate fantasy. You know, back before other things start entering your mind post-puberty.

So how

I’ve tried studying its movements, to no avail. I’ve tried alternating my right thumb shooting patterns to keep it on its toes, but more often than not it’s me who comes off second best. And everytime a whole bunch of them are on screen, I’ve tried carving out a path, holding them back with firepower and frantically bolting for the temporary space I’ve created only to get cut down by the one green rhombus from the pack who decides to rush me. Do they possess hive intelligence? Some sort of psychic ability? Because no matter what I do, it’s almost always them that get me.

The addiction of Geometry Wars Evolved 2 presents itself in constantly making you believe that, no matter… Read More