Everyone keeps talking about Bully and how it got away with a teen rating despite its violent context, but little do they know that there is one game that is corrupting our youth day after day -- and it got away with an E for...

So, here’s the thing: The majority of gamers are already decided on whether or not they’re going to purchase Stranglehold. If anything, the question of whether or not to buy seems like a no-brainer: if you’...

When Virtua Fighter 5 hit the PlayStation 3 earlier this year, everyone loved it. On a system lacking in quality software, it was hailed as the second coming of Christ (albeit, Christ with a wicked left hook and lightning fas...

If you haven't played the original N, then that's great. Well, it's not great, since you've essentially missed one of the greatest flash games ever created, but it's great that you'll be able to go into N+, the game's update...

I’m not sure what Dark Sector’s lead Hayden Tenno thought he was getting into when he signed up for the “elite black-ops agent” program, but it’s hard to feel bad for this guy. Sent by his agency...

After a great deal of anticipation and a painfully long wait in the certification line, Ikaruga finally arrived on Xbox Live Arcade last week. Boasting new high-definition graphics, online co-op, and the ability to save and s...

One of the things we were really excited about when we originally reported on Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 was the fact that the game appeared to have four-player cooperative play. Recently, Xbox360Fanboy got word from Micr...

Braid is a game that has generated a lot of press before its Xbox Live Arcade release, be it for its unique mechanics, gorgeous watercolor graphics or controversial price point. The brainchild of independent game developer Jo...

I picked up my first guitar when I was in elementary school, and I asked my father -- an amateur guitarist who strummed along along to David Bowie vinyl records for fun -- to teach me a basic chord. It wasn’t 15 minutes...

When the most recent NHL lockout led to the cancellation of the entire 2004–05 hockey season, the popularity of the sport in America -- which was already not that high to begin with when compared to the other three majo...

Eight years. That’s a mighty long time, and it’s the last time Capcom delivered a “proper” entry into the Street Fighter series. But it’s not as if the 2D fighter has been out of the minds of gam...

On the cusp of a number of PC summer sales, Indie Royale has released another mostly-fantastic indie game compilation. Known as the The Mayhem Bundle, players will get five indie titles that sufficiently "bring the pain" thr...

Let’s rewind to E3 2009. I’m inside LucasArts’ conference room. I’m a few minutes early for the Star Wars: The Old Republic presentation. They have food and drink in both corners of the entrance. I&rsq...

Twisted Pixel pushed its way onto the Xbox LIVE Arcade scene earlier this year with The Maw. An original title based on an original IP, we thought it was pretty damned impressive for the studio's first effort. Its sophomore e...

When I read the "word" BlazBlue, I immediately hear Bill Cosby in my head babbling a "Blazem Blazblue Blippity BLOP". Did Bill Cosby ever actually say anything like that, or is that something we just believe due to the antics...

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The old Dickens passage might never have applied so well to a videogame as it does the release of SNK Playmore and Ignition Entertainment's KOF XII. It comes to us hot on t...

Chair Entertainment's Shadow Complex is out today on Xbox LIVE Arcade for 1200 MS Points, or 15 American dollars. It's a "Metroidvania"-style side-scroller, heavily influenced by Super Metroid. You blow a lot of things up, an...

EA Sports’ NHL franchise has a distinguished pedigree -- the past two games in the series have earned 19 “sports game of the year” awards from various videogame publications and Web sites, and the games have...

When Codemasters announced DiRT 2, I was very happy to see that it still had Colin McRae's name on it. I found the first game to be "okay," and after playing the demo for this second installment, it seemed we had a great raci...

Racing games are not for everybody. Well, the old ones were, but time went by, we slowly got away from the simplicity of just getting over the finish line first. Now we're at a point where we're controlling high-end simulatio...

The biggest game of the year is finally here. Infinity Ward created one of the most popular, well-crafted and subsequently imitated first-person-shooter games in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and a sequel was inevitable. Tw...

A year ago, the music game genre was at its peak. Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour had recently launched to rave reviews, and looking back, it appears that the developers of those games -- Harmonix and Neversoft, respec...

Last year’s CSI: Deadly Intent was a bit of an ugly duckling, and something many of us would easily scoff at if we saw it in a store. Yet even though it was just a CSI version of Ace Attorney with a crime lab -- witho...

Reader Raffi sent us this video he shot from a holiday party where a developer for Natal was playing Geometry Wars with just hand gestures. We can't say for sure if this is really a Natal powered game of Geometry Wars until ...

Sparing intergalactic civilization from annihilation isn't a new narrative construct -- all budding sci-fi game writers and novelists must have soggy dreams about weaving this sort of epic -- but the foundation isn't exhauste...

The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom has been anxiously anticipated by many members of the Destructoid staff. I am not one of those people. Despite repeatedly hearing the name followed by words of praise or excitement,...

A few days ago, I was crushing beers at Shenanigans, a restaurant-cum-watering-hole in Sewanee, Tennessee, home of my alma mater, The University of the South. Specifically, I was talking with my friend Reed about videogames, ...

After a number of misses from its competition, last year Harmonix and MTV Games proved that it was possible to do a band-specific music game "right." The Beatles: Rock Band was an incredible journey through the band's career,...

[As originally posted on Japanator] Or even better, in some ways! I'll admit I stopped following Naruto a while ago, but watching the new trailer for Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 makes me wish I had kept up with ...

It has been the year of fighting games. Dragon punches, quarter turns, blocks, double jumps, ultras, aerials, health bars, tag teaming, crossovers, and a whole lot more means it's practically 1997 all over again. Know what el...

In a gaming landscape that has grown increasingly splintered, EA Sports’ Madden NFL franchise remains one of the select few names that not only attracts a massive annual audience, but can rightly be called a mainstream ...

Final Fantasy XIV, to put it lightly, didn't have the smoothest launch ever. In fact, I was able to play a near finished build a few E3s back, and I was utterly surprised that they were going to push it to market -- it was ba...

Military personnel looking to pick up Medal of Honor this October will have to do so off-site. The Army and Air Force Exchange Services has announced that the game will not be stocked in any on-base GameStop or other post ...

The boys of The Mega Man Network were able to visit the Capcom booth at PAX and grill the rep for any new details on Mega Man Universe. There was no demo on hand, sadly, but they were able to glean a couple of clues as to wha...

Better late than never! The latest piece of DLC for Mass Effect 2, Lair of the Shadow Broker, was released last week. As it is priced at 800 points, more expensive than any of the DLC to date, the obvious question is: is it g...

Plants vs. Zombies is free right now for the iPhone and iPad. You can get the game for free until February 28, so you better act quick if you somehow don't own this addictive as hell tower defense game yet. Seriously, what is wrong with you?! That's it for the news, so here's Laura Shigihara performing her Plants vs. Zombies theme because it's just the best.

Regular Nick: "Hey, The Dillinger Escape Plan made it into Guitar Hero! That's awesome. And, nice... you can play through Rush's 2112, and it's narrated by bassist and vocalist Geddy Lee himself. Man, this is going to rock." Warrior Nick: "Sweet holy hell, why did I just turn into a f**ing rock n' roll chupacabra?"

Hockey is definitely not North America’s most popular sport, but even non-fans can recognize that the past two entries in EA Sports’ NHL franchise stand among the all-time great sports videogames. But with its sim...

If the main hero of your comic is a pointy-eared young girl with perky breasts and pink hair, it is one of two things -- a Japanese Manga, or a Western comic that desperately wishes it was a Japanese Manga. Blade Kitten, a co...

Before writing this review, I promised myself that I would not write "ATATATATATATA" or make any reference to things being "already dead." Unfortunately, such a noble ambition is next to impossible. In fact, before I even mad...

With 2008’s Burnout Paradise, Criterion Games solidified its spot as the king of fast-paced, arcade-style racing. So when Electronic Arts decided it was ready to take the Need for Speed series back to its earl...

Most games based on a licensed property are terrible. It's a sad truth of the gaming world, and many players have accepted this as a foregone conclusion. Licensed games are bad until proven good. Merely tolerable licensed ...

Describing The UnderGarden is a very tricky prospect, because every description you could give automatically runs the risk of turning potential customers away. It's a slow-paced game, with no narrative to speak of, and your o...

Quite a bit of attention has been put on mixed martial arts due to the marketing efforts of Zuffa, UFC's Parent company. This attention has not only made UFC a household name, but has changed the sport as well. EA Sports MMA ...

With Pac-Man Championship Edition for Xbox Live Arcade, Namco Bandai set the bar for the evolution of its pellet-munching mascot. Now, the little yellow hero is back with Pac-Man Championship Edition DX, and despite the fact ...

Sidhe Interactive’s Blood Drive welcomes players to Las Rulettas, a fictional Las Vegas-inspired setting for a vehicular homicide reality show that shares the game’s name. Bonus: Blood Drive’s arenas are lit...

Splatterhouse has never really been a great franchise, but it earned its cult following thanks to obscene content, disturbing creature designs, and a Lovecraft-inspired aesthetic. Your humble reviewer is one of those follower...

Every game these days needs its gimmick.   If you had to point to Nail’d’s, it would be that the game is fast. Really, really, really fast. Really.

"Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans win." So quipped Gary Lineker, an English international, after losing to West Germany in the 1990 World Cup. As in life, so in art: Pr...

GoldenEye 007 for the Wii wasn’t the only Bond game to come out this holiday season. No, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 also got their dose of Bond in the form of an original Bond adventure called Blood Stone. Since the...

I adore Tim Schafer and Double Fine, but when Costume Quest was released a couple of months ago, I didn’t immediately download it. It looked interesting, but I wasn’t sure if it was something I was going to instan...

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Vietnam is one of those rare products where if it simply works as promised -- or gets even marginally close -- it's a crowd pleaser. DICE ran into some temporary technical issues with online multipl...

Ilo and Milo are two best friends who meet every day at the park for tea. One day, however, they find that either  the park has been rearranged or that their memories have become jumbled. They're not sure which it is, bu...

History is full of games that boasted fantastic concepts, but failed to deliver when all of its brilliant ideas were put into practice. Some of the most creative games are also some of the absolute worst, as whoever came up with it simply lacked the funds, time or talent to see it through.  You'll be thrilled to know that MindJack does nothing to buck the trend.

Atomic Games has had a rough time leading up to the release of Breach. Originally developing the controversial Six Days in Fallujah, which had publisher Konami famously pull support, Atomic went on to salvage what it could...

In 2008, Capcom rebooted the Bionic Commando franchise with two remarkably disparate approaches. On one end of the spectrum was the third-person action retail title, Bionic Commando, which found ex-Faith No More singer Mike P...

Back when I wrote for one of those girl gamer sites (yes, even I have a dark past), I got a press release about a game the got me pretty excited. Small German development team, Deck 13 were to publish Venetica, a fantasy them...

I'm extremely happy that the racing genre seems to be picking up again.  In 2010 we had some spectacular titles like Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, and Gran Turismo 5 so I couldn't wait to see what was in store for 2011.&n...

What's worse than an escort mission in a videogame? A videogame that is nothing but escort missions.  This is Knights Contract. A game in which your health meter is determined by a meandering, mentally subnormal woman wi...

Beyond Good & Evil is a game that needs no introduction, which provides a stiff challenge to anybody attempting to review it in 2011. One of the most respected videogames of all time, applauded for its rich characters, en...