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I do not dislike this game. Dislike is a passive sentiment. I actively hate this game. This game drove me completely bonkers, entirely independent of any scandals or controversies floating around lately. Kane & Lynch: Dead Men is a very poorly designed product, with a story that tries way too hard to be gritty and comes off as adolescent; a completely useless aiming and control scheme; lazily designed levels, and a downright infuriating save and checkpoint system. When a game pisses me off, I stop playing it; but when I'm reviewing it, I have to soldier on and take the continual emotional beatings it provides. After playing Kane & Lynch, I hate my life, myself, and my Xbox 360.



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Kane & Lynch: Dead Men is a game that wants to be a lot of things and fails at them all. Surely foremost in their attempts is to be a "bad guy game." Either Eidos or IO Interactive probably took the popularity of their Hitman franchise as a sign that people like games where you play as a "bad guy" and decided to take that to an extreme. What they overlooked is that why we love Agent 47 so much isn't that he's technically bad, but that he's a sympathetic character and a master at what he does. He's cold and collected: all he knows is assassination and he does it better than anybody on the planet. He's not after money, glory, or fame. Usually, he's after the truth or vengeance. Kane & Lynch, on the other hand, contains two of the most contemptible characters of all time who do absolutely nothing to redeem themselves.

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If you haven't yet gotten your fill of actors with movies to promote and barely-relevant musicians being fed lines about video games from a teleprompter, or truly worthy games being beat out for awards by games that aren't even out yet, or just wanting to throw your remote straight through your TV, it's time for more Spike Video Game Awards!

Yaaaaaay!!!

Hosting again this year is Samuel L. Jackson, perhaps still riding the gamer cred he earned by doing a movie about an aircraft laden with pheromone-wild asps. Also expect many gratutious references to a particular brand of soda beverage named after the condensated water vapor that gathers on Earthen agglomerations of dirt and rock, including an entire award category "fueled" by it.

Also, hot chicks with cheat codes. Because that's what gamers want, right? They want hot chicks who read off cheat codes. I know that's my fantasy. Me being a mid-adolescent troglodyte. I also loooove TAG body spray; I hope they advertise too.

Actually, the "advisory panel" this year is made up of some actually respectable names in the gaming journalism industry, including Dan Hsu, Chris Baker, Jeff Gerstmann,  Andy McNamara, Chris Kohler and other people I often see at E3 and other events but never bother talking to even though I'm sure they're all really interesting people. Whether their ratings for games have any bearing on whether games "win" is doubtful, however, as this show really knows its audience and therefore Halo 3 will win every category, even those it is not eligible for.

This mess show airs on Sunday, December 9th at 9pm but films on Friday, December 7th. Check out the attached link for a list of the categories.

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The best first-person-shooter of the year. Better than Halo 3. If you need me to say more: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is nearly perfect on all accounts. Instead of picking a few gimmicks and rubbing our noses in them, weakening the rest of the game, this game just gets everything right. Unless you were expecting a tactical shooter like Rainbow Six and will cry if that's not what you get, this game should thoroughly entertain and enthrall any curious FPS fan.



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“The WW2 market was already well-established when we came in, and we stomped all over those guys. We're going to do the same with this."

That's what an Infinity Ward developer told me at this year's mini-E3 as I watched him play Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. He's right, on both accounts. Before Call of Duty was released on the PC, games like Medal of Honor and countless strategy games had already swept up the World War II gaming field. With much trepidation I loaded up the demo for that game, but 30 minutes later I was blown away.

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This is a $40 game that can be beaten in a day and offers next to nothing over its $20 predecessor. Personally, I find the gameplay more irritating than enjoyable, but even the people who have chugged the Katamari Kool-Aid won't find their money's worth here. Series fans looking for more should maybe rent this game and get it out of their systems, and people who want their first taste should get Katamari Damacy on the PS2 for half the price.



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This iteration (that word was chosen carefully) of the Katamari series is my first. I somehow managed to avoid "Katamari Fever" as most of the gaming hipsters I knew were logging hours into the bargain-bin-priced PlayStation 2 game, then its sequel, then the PSP port. I always thought it seemed a bit simple, but I didn't avoid it by design or spite, I just never got around to it.

I thought Beautiful Katamari on the Xbox 360 would be a good place to start. With between two and two million times the processing power of the PS2, the 360 should allow for so much more compelling, dynamic, and... well, beautiful gameplay. That's what I thought, anyway.

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