The pen is allegedly mightier than the sword, but in Time Hollow for the Nintendo DS, a pen has the same powers as Doc Brown’s DeLorean or Bill & Ted’s phone booth. Even if the Back to the Future and Bill & Ted series are the only authorities you know on time travel, you should have no trouble with this game. Kiddies, it’s time to put away your flux capacitors and start practicing drawing time holes.

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Released last month, and just in time for Halloween, Konami has delivered the latest in the Silent Hill series. This newest entry to the Silent Hill family was not developed by original Team Silent, which has many avid fans debating if they should even bother with the game. With Double Helix Games at the helm, did they create a game that lives up to the legacy of the originals, or does it fall victim to the curse of Silent Hill?

To be fair, it’s a hard task to accomplish when you develop a game that someone else has established, and with such a well-developed series like Silent Hill, it’s even more difficult. In most cases, these types of games are critically panned for being unfaithful to the rest of the series. So let’s go over the good, the bad, and the ugly of this game and see how it stacks up against the rest of the series.

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Rumors are a funny thing; they have a tendency to stick around, long past the time when there is any reason to indicate that they’re true. Back in January, the story first broke that Metal Gear Solid 4, an exclusive title for the PlayStation 3, would be coming to its rival, the Xbox 360. After a while, the rumors seemed to go away, but recently, they’ve come back with a vengeance. And this time, could they be true? Is MSG4 coming to the 360?

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Castlevania has been around for over 20 years delighting gamers with great gameplay and a compelling plotline. While some of the games have been less than stellar, namely the fully 3D ones, the last couple of years have been great to the series; it has returned to the format of its glory days.  The newest game in the Castlevania family, and the third Nintendo DS title, is shaping up to be yet another amazing addition.

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In a continued effort to screw over Wii owners by making games they don’t want to play (Ninjabread Man and Dewy’s Adventure, I’m looking at you!), Konami has revealed the Wii-exclusive Castlevania Judgment, a 3D fighter in the vein of the Soul Calibur series.  The title will feature countless characters from the Castlevania universe, such as Alucard and Simon Belmont, duking it out in Gothic cathedrals and dilapidated clock towers with all manner of weapons, from whips to boomerangs to throwing knives.  If you find yourself weeping in disappointment and piling on black eyeliner while listening to The Cure, you’re not alone.

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Hey, put down that guitar controller for a second. Yeah, the Wiimote, too. Look toward that dusty corner of your bedroom, at the dance mat with all the arrows on it. Remember how much joy it used to give, before you realized you could have just as much fun with “star power” and not having to actually move around? Konami wants you to dust it off and get nostalgic, thanks to their new online community for DDR fans. The site is part of Konami’s year-long celebration of the tenth anniversary of their mega-hit dance rhythm game.

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The same criticism of Metal Gear Solid 4 is present in nearly every review, and these complaints are nothing new to the series.

Since Metal Gear Solid’s debut in 1998, the franchise has carved a niche as a solid espionage action title with an involving and, at times, overly complicated narrative. It has drawn in hardcore escapists, but always deterred those gamers who didn’t want to take notes in hopes of making sense of the painfully complex storyline or wait through cutscenes that sometimes are as long as feature films.

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It’s interesting to see how many games evolve from a common mechanic, yet have drastic differences. Let’s consider what’s currently known as the “Rhythm” genre. Guitar Hero and Rock Band are the reigning champs. I describe this game mechanic as “Linear Digital Timing,” or LDT for short. It has these rules:
-The player’s actions are tied to a fixed linear medium (like a video clip or a music sample).
-The player uses digital input ( e.g. tapping a button on or off, or pushing a joystick from center to right).
-When prompted, the player must do the specified input in a specific window of time.
Example: in Guitar Hero, you react to a linear song (like “Roxanne”), where you need to strum a note (where the digital fret button and strum switch must be “on”) at the exact time the note passes the strum window. Do it correctly, and a note plays. Miss, and you are penalized.
But Guitar Hero and Rock Band were far from the first to do this. Remember Dragon’s Lair?
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