Contributor: Kevin Simpson

Call of Duty: Black Ops II

It’s not surprising that in the edgiest of all the war games, Call of Duty, the good and bad of armed conflict is a twisting, hard-to-pin-down thing. What is surprising is how many gamers don’t seem to care.

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Darksiders II

The seal has been broken and the horseman Death is on the move. But this Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse tale won’t be following any sort of biblical script.

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Spec Ops: The Line

This grinding shooter wallows in the physical and psychological fog of war. No, make that the mess of war. The horror of war.

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The Games Bullies Play

I recently read a pretty disturbing article from the BBC about video games. But this isn’t the usual heard-it-all-before-video-games-are-evil fodder. No, the subject matter we’re talking about here is different, and it involves a subject we hear about …

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What Do Your Apps Say About You?

I’ve got 120 apps on my iPad 2. My iPhone 4 sports 99 of ’em. I’ve got apps that range from the Holy Bible to ABC Song (it’s supposed to teach my kid the alphabet). I have three different apps for checking the weather and one for Bay Area news. The las …

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Inversion

Inversion takes the familiar shooter formula and asks, What would happen if gravity got turned off?

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Ghost Recon: Future Soldier

Tom Clancy is selling big again. But it’s not his new novel. It’s his new third-person shooter.

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Gaming Through a Piece of Art

What if you walked into the Smithsonian American Art Museum and on display was … wait for it … video game art? Well, wonder no more. That’s right, an exhibit called “The Art of Video Games” is already here—and will be at the Smithsonian through Septemb …

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Starhawk

Crazy-eyed outlaws. Fortune-hunting prospectors. Gunslinging good guys. Even Star Wars-like planet battles. It’s the Wild West in space.

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Prototype 2

Same quarantined city. Same ravaging virus. Same malevolent government types. Maybe a new shape-shifting killer will make a difference. Or not.

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Silent Hill: Downpour

Silent Hill is being drenched by a stormy and sinister weather front. But don’t screaming children and shrieking beasties sort of contradict the name?

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The Darkness II

What do you get when you (again) give gun-toting mobsters demonic superpowers? Pretty much exactly what you’d expect.

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My Jaw Is Still on the Floor (In a Good Way)

It’s one thing to see random acts of kindness on TV or in a movie. It’s quite another to personally experience one in real life. Times are tough right now, everywhere. The headlines are riddled with bad news about our economic situation. Gone are the d …

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The Goods on Gaming

I’m a gamer. A pretty good one, too. Good enough to review them for Plugged In, anyway. I just wanted to let you know that I love video games, before I say this: It’s an established fact that not all video games are created equal. Right? Right?! I mean …

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Lambesis Asks, You Want Fluff or Meat?

I was reading a recent blog post by Tim Lambesis, who’s the frontman of As I Lay Dying (a Christian metalcore band I really like), and he had some very interesting thoughts on how interactions between fans on a social networking site have become more o …

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