Meredith Sweet

The fourth installment in PlayFirst’s Wedding Dash series sees the return of wedding planner Quinn, along with her roomie and familiar face Flo, star of the best-selling Diner Dash series of games. Quinn’s own wedding with photographer hottie Joe was called off in the last game, but her well-meaning mother Lynn, a former Miss Texas, hasn’t heard…and Quinn’s terrified of telling her. While avoiding telling her mother the truth, Quinn and Flo have to put up with Lynn interfering in their joint wedding planning-and-catering business, for better…or for worse.

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Adam Bruno

Remember the old side-scrolling, 2D Castlevania games? Now, remember when they got updated with Symphony of the Night for the Playstation and the numerous DS entries? Well, get ready for the ultimate homage.

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Meredith Sweet

I remember reading a letter to the editor in a recent issue of Game Informer that complained about an article featuring FarmVille, one of the most wildly-successful casual gaming apps to hit the Internet. Rather than buy standalone games for their consoles or computers, people are now turning to the Internet for brief spurts of entertainment in the form of Facebook games. Like it or not, casual games like FarmVille are increasingly popular and look like they’re here to stay. And of course, they still merit all the poking and prodding of any other game we might deign to cover here at Gaming Dead. When you feel like wasting time without burying yourself into strategies and replays, casual games certainly have their advantages.

In the case of Diner Dash maker PlayFirst’s first entry into the social gaming arena, Chocolatier: Sweet Society is definitely a tasty appetizer, whether you are a “hardcore” casual gamer or a true on-again, off-again player looking to sample some of PlayFirst’s delicious wares.

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Kevin Roberson

I’m not sure what I expected out of Crackdown 2. When I first saw the television ad, my immediate reaction was “are they serious?” Who would air an ad showing your game slowing down to 15 frames per second and explosions amid terrible lighting effects? But they were serious; dead serious. And Crackdown 2 certainly lives down to the hype.

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Kevin Roberson

Alan Wake is a self-admitted homage to Stephen King. Up ’til now it was my belief that Stephen King was a book writer and therefore any homage to him would be best served in this style. I’ve certainly never seen homage to Michelangelo done as an interpretation of the Sistine Chapel through rock music. So though Alan Wake is a good game and good story, the two seem to have lost a little in their collision.

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Kevin Roberson

The power of video games is remarkable. The technological advancements made in the name of cheap entertainment are incalculable. World governments would be fools not to harness this power for good. Moonbase Alpha is NASA’s attempt to make an immersive entertainment medium educational.

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Kevin Roberson

Games that cash in on recent movie success tend to be worse than the games that are based on the movies themselves. Television franchise games barely have a better record. For every Turtles in Time there are ten bland hack’n’slash wannabes. So with expectations at an all time low, I said to Transformers: War for Cybertron, “make my day.”

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Kevin Roberson

Time travel is often looked down upon in games because it’s usually poorly written and really, games no longer need an excuse to use bullet time. But we keep coming back to it because, in the end, everyone liked Back to the Future, Star Treks 4, 8, 11, and Terminator. When time travel is well written, it’s incredible, and the writing in Singularity is certainly no waste of time.

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Kevin Roberson

I’ve always said sequels need to be able to stand on their own. I never thought that statement would force me to look on a game more favorably. Mario Galaxy 2 isn’t a startling reinvention of Mario, or even a significant improvement off its predecessor. But when the formula you have has been perfected like this, I wouldn’t change a thing either.

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Kevin Roberson

I have never encountered a game as noncompliant as Lost Planet 2. With no internet connection present, I had to tell it repeatedly that I wanted to play a single player campaign at which point it asked me how many other people would be joining me. I get it Lost Planet 2, you’re intended as a cooperative experience, but your downfall is that you need more than one person playing at a time to consider you entertainment.

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