Capcom's DEVIL MAY CRY 4 is a big, loud, garishly goofy game.

It's stupid fun.

It's cotton candy.

It's pure sugar and brilliant color, frenetically spun until it looks huge and appetizing and substantial.

One taste, two, and you're smiling from ear to ear. Three tastes, four, and the immediate sugar rush tightens your smile into a line. Five tastes, six, nausea begins to rise.

I liken the game to a Jerry Bruckheimer production, big and slick, a well-oiled entertainment machine that dazzles with its bells and whistles and tries so hard to deliver on its promise of sheer spectacle that it just ends up numbing us into quiet submission. No brains, no soul, just empty thrills. Not to ... (more…)

RESISTANCE: FALL OF MAN

Video games about World War II, though extremely popular, tend to bore the hell out of me. After you've played through CALL OF DUTY 2 (the pinnacle of WWII shooters) what else is there? True, many of them do a very nice job recreating the chaos of trench warfare and capturing the bleak, war torn European landscapes, but I get awfully tired of the shoot Nazis, advance, shoot Nazis, advance, game mechanic. Also, their undying faithfulness to era weaponry, though accurate and historically sound, generally presents very little in the way of pizzazz. Standard issue rifles and machine guns kill efficiently enough I suppose, but they can't shoot through walls or track ... (more…)

Okay, THE SOPRANOS was the best show ever. Period. I usually have trouble making such declarative statements, but in this case no problem. Another declarative? Okay, Faith No More was one of the most underrated rock bands of the nineties (listen to their seminal 1992 album ANGEL DUST and try to tell me I'm wrong). One more (last one, I promise)? Comic books rule.

So when I heard about THE DARKNESS, developer Starbreeze (the team responsible for the fantastic THE CHRONICLES of RIDDICK: ESCAPE FROM BUTCHER BAY) and publisher 2K's (BIOSHOCK) gory, first person shooter, with its Mafioso storyline, vocal work from Faith No More lead vocalist (and demented artistic visionary) Mike Patton ... (more…)

EDITOR'S NOTE: Congratulations to Michael Louis Calvillo for his Bram Stoker Award nomination for Best First Novel for I WILL RISE.

Generally, horror aficionados have a thing for metal and vice versa. Hard rock's iconic staples - Satan, death, despondence, murder, suicide and on and on - are on full display in the horror films, comic books and literature we love and the relationship between the two is a comfortable one. GUITAR HERO III: LEGENDS OF ROCK, the rhythm based phenomenon developed by Neversoft and published by Activision, fully understands this. And though it's definitely not a horror game, its visual palette contains plenty of screaming skulls and heavy metal dragons. There'... (more…)

DEVIL MAY CRY 4 will help kick off 2008 with a large bang across the PS3, 360 and PC.

DMC 4 will present two separate difficulty levels for players to test their skills with. For newcomers to the series, the Human setting should offer a challenge while helping to ease the newbs into monster killing. For veterans of the franchise, however, the Devil Hunter setting should present more than enough of a challenge. After selecting a couple of options, players are thrown into the game. You are presented with a cutscene and story sequence set in the town of Fortuna, which culminated in the appearance of Dante, who promptly slaughtered some of Nero's friends. Of course, this sudden attack ... (more…)

VIDEO GAME REVIEW: CRACKDOWN By Michael Louis Calvillo From what I hear smoking crack is bad for you.

Dementia, tooth decay, soul sucking need, a fleeting feeling of euphoria - they (who exactly are they?) say it's the high you can't catch, but plenty of addicts have thrown away their lives chasing it anyway.

Sitting on my couch, three in the morning, feeling a little crazy, breath surely stinking, compelled, driven, endorphin overload, trapped within the world of Microsoft's CRACKDOWN, I think I have developed a modicum of understanding, a bit of empathy. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I've become a fiend of the highest order and god help anyone that stands between me and my ... (more…)

Rage Video Game News and Trailer

Attention DOOM and QUAKE fans: Prepare to start salivating over RAGE.

Famed programmer John Carmack announced id Software's newest game at QuakeCon 2007 and it's quite a departure from the company's traditional first-person shooters.

RAGE will have shooting action, but it will also feature racing and driving gameplay in a post-apocalyptic world. This may draw comparisons to classic movie THE ROAD WARRIOE. The game is being developed for the PC, Mac, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3.

The name RAGE was chosen for several reasons. The game is set after a comet destroys civilization, and your character finds himself aiding settlements and villages in ... (more…)

Perhaps it's my age (33 - not too old, but not too young), but I generally can't stand action movies. Which is a shame because when I was a kid up through my late teens, early twenties, I used to get excited over the next Bond, or DIE HARD, or Stallone / Schwarzenegger / Manly Action Man movie. Now, explosions just give me a headache, one-liners are simplistically idiotic and frenetic camera work frustrates rather than stimulates. The last action movie I sat through (the name escapes me) put me to sleep. Others tend to produce grocery lists or backyard projects or if I am able to completely detach myself, new book ideas (which usually have nothing to do with the action movie in question)... (more…)

Blood. Sword swipes. Rivers of blood. Nunchaku carnage. Decapitations. Mesmerizing fountains of arterial spray. Soul rending magic. More blood. Exploding arrows. Oh, and loads of blood hungry ninjas, badass limb slicing blood hungry ninjas.

Hell yeah!

That's right, I said "Hell yeah," and if you like a little action with your carnage I guarantee you'll be saying the same (or some variation thereof) while fighting your way through Team Ninja's sanguine brawler, Ninja Gaiden, by far one of the most intense, brutally satisfying gaming experiences ever created.

Released to moderate fanfare way back in 2004 as an exclusive title for Microsoft's original XBOX, initially Ninja ... (more…)

The skeptic in me simply can't buy into Role Playing Games (RPG). Which is weird because I unabashedly love all things geeky: video games, check, comic books, check, computers, check, STAR WARS (even the new ones), check - you name it, the geekier the better. But RPGs? Forget'em.

Sitting around a table and pretending I am a warrior or wizard or whatever while rolling dice, taking direction from an idiot Dungeon Master, guzzling Mountain Dew and monitoring stats just doesn't do it for me. Believe me, I hated sports growing up so I've tried and tried, but aside from drinking that delicious Mountain Dew, I simply can't get into it. While dorky to a degree, I seem to be lacking that ... (more…)