Contributor: Kevin Simpson

“The life of man,” wrote English philosopher Thomas Hobbes in 1651, “[is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Oddly enough, that Renaissance-era quote from The Leviathan is a perfect picture of how Hollywood, hip-hop and (more recently) video ga …

Investigative adventure game ‘Indigo Prophecy’ mashes up ‘CSI’ and ‘The X-Files.’ And in so doing breaks new narrative ground.

In the racing game Fuel, Earth has been devastated. Not from terror attacks or nuclear annihilation or even lead-filled paint from China. No, we’re talking the big one here … global warming. Our world has been decimated by dust storms and tsunamis an …

Rubi Malone slaughters almost everyone she meets and would do almost anything for the right price. That means the blood of thousands is on her hands, head, legs, torso …

Launched in 1994 as an arcade game, ‘Tekken’ has made its way through every version of Sony’s PlayStation, including (finally) the PSP.

On the heels of 14 years of karate chopping, hook-kicking success, the godfather of 3-D fighting games has released a new edition. And the years have been kind. The highly anticipated Virtua Fighter 5 makes its next-gen splash on Sony’s PlayStation 3, …

For players who’ve shouldered machine guns in other military adventure contests, the gameplay will seem familiar. But there is one big change…

“The game requires you cast your morality aside, and I’m sure the intended audience (you know who you are) will relish this celebration of depravity.” —Electronic Gaming Monthly There are some video game titles out there that don’t require hours and ho …

“No Gods or Kings. Only Man.” That’s the banner bidding you enter the underwater Art Deco mecca of Rapture. You get there via 2K Games’ newest first-person shooter, BioShock. It’s a city built by an eccentric, billionaire genius (Andrew Ryan) as a shin …

Growing up, I played a lot of games. Chess and backgammon came first, believe it or not. Then card games and epic Risk battles. And when my best friend and I weren’t cramming plastic numerals onto a map, we were playing video games. I’m talking old-sch …

A lot of basketball fans, players and coaches are crying foul this season. As part of a much-needed effort to clean up the on-court antics of NBA kazillionaires acting like kids, officials were told to slap a technical foul on any player who complained …

Two things have perpetually stayed the same as the Wolfenstein franchise fast approaches the age of 30: The dreaded Nazis are always up to no good. And the heroic one-man army B.J. Blazkowicz is ever diligent to foil their malevolent schemes.

I don’t know how many times I’ve found myself in vicious, close-in firefights with marauding aliens and wished, If only my machine gun had a chain saw too, I might make it. OK, I’ve never thought that. But the first time I saw such a weapon in Gears of …

When Resident Evil made its U.S. debut on the PlayStation in the mid ’90s, it raised an unexpectedly eerie head and launched a brand-new genre called “survival horror.” It was primarily an action/shooter game with a few twists—lumbering horror movie-st …

I carefully crept along the edge of the wall, my M-60 machine gun at the ready. The Marine across the street signaled that it was OK for me to round the corner of the building. Carefully, I peeked around the edge—and stepped right in front of an enemy …