Once again, this review is exceptionally late. The football season is almost over, and Madden has already sold its bazillion copies for this year. So anything I say here is kind of moot when it comes to helping people decide whether or not to buy this year’s game. But maybe – just maybe – my critiques will help the developers provide us with a better game in the 7 or so months that they have left to make Madden 13.

After being thoroughly disappointed with last year’s Madden game, and not being won over by either the new demo or the gameplay in NCAA 12, I didn’t rush out to buy Madden 12 on day one. I waited till September and bought the game used. This also contributed significantly to the tardiness of this review.

Overall, Madden still just seems uninspired, even when compared to EA’s NCAA Football game. All the same gameplay enhancements go into both games each year now, but NCAA has at least taken some efforts to better represent its sport. Setting up “linked” plays is simplistic but was a start towards a better representation of football strategy. Integration of the No-Huddle offense into the game is a bit clumsy, but is a major component of modern college football, and is thusly represented in that game. Requiring the QB to “read” the defense on option plays doesn’t work as well as last year, but it’s actually an important part of the option strategy. The collegiate look and atmosphere really looks and sounds like Saturday afternoons, and the ESPN integration is actually pretty slick at times.

• All the inspiration is going into the NCAA game
• So why's it so bad?
  • PRO-TAK is gone, and consecutive hits are in
  • No wasted motion wastes the game's potential
  • Pass blockers need to learn to double-team
  • Psychic defensive backs and passive receivers ruin the passing game
  • Will special teams ever be fixed?
  • Depth and simulation are sacrificed for the casual player
• Franchise gets some fan-requested attention
  • Recruiting fails to live up to its NCAA counterpart
  • “GamePlanning” feature doesn’t actually involve any game planning!
• Lazy presentation
• I honestly wish that EA would just drop Online play completely
• Nitpicking
• Conclusion

Despite the over-corporatization of the video game industry, not every game is going to be a consumer mega-hit like whatever Call of Duty game that happens to be coming out any given November. Sometimes, these little-known, niche titles can be real gems in the rough (Demon’s Souls, Trine). Other times, they just barely get by. But more often than not, they are utter garbage.

Catherine is not a game for everybody. Not only does it have a very mature plot, but most people probably won’t find it’s gameplay very appealing either. But even though I wouldn’t consider Catherine to be a particularly good game, it isn't a horrible game either, and I have no doubt that its charmingly quirky nature will earn itself a very hardcore following from its niche fans (particularly among adolescent boys). And I definitely have to give the developers credit for really trying to create something that is new and interesting instead of just something that has mass-market appeal.

The entire game consists of pretty much 3 parts that loop a handful of times:

1. Long-ass cutscene that the player has absolutely no control over.
2. A scene at the bar in which you walk around with your hands stuffed in your pockets, talking to friends and fellow patrons, and sending/receiving text messages on your phone.
3. A series of increasingly-long and increasingly-difficult puzzle/platforming sequences in which you push blocks around in order to climb to the top of a wall of cubes.

Rinse and repeat. Or not rinse. But definitely lots of repeating.

The first two parts tend to be the most interesting parts, while the puzzle sections start off being fun but quickly devolve into a frustrating mess of bad camera, twitchy controls, and unnecessarily escalating and cheap difficulty.

The rumor mills are ablaze with the idea that the next Star Trek movie (being directed by J.J. Abrams) will feature Khan as the primary villain. Benicio Del Toro was originally planned to portray the villain, but contract negotiations broke down, and Del Toro bailed from the project. Maybe Toro realized that reviving Khan is a creatively bankrupt concept and didn't want to be a part of such an uninspired and contrived movie. If so, good for him.

The idea of bringing back Khan for the next Star Trek sequel is offensive to me on many levels. First and foremost, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is an exceptional movie, and there is absolutely no need to revisit that film's premise or the Khan character. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. There are plenty of examples of broken Star Trek villains that could use a reboot: Sybok (Star Trek V: The Final Frontier), Garth of Izar (TOS: Whom Gods Destroy), or even the Gorn (TOS: Arena) were all handled poorly in their original incarnations and would have been much better material for improvement and refinement.

Has it already been two years since Uncharted 2 was released? Wow, I suppose it has. Doesn’t seem like two years. But I guess that’s partly because Uncharted 2 is a game that really sticks out in your memory when you play it. It doesn’t go away. It doesn’t stop feeling new and impressive. Uncharted 2 is one of – if not the – best games on the PlayStation 3. It was an order of magnitude better than the first Uncharted, which was also an exceptional game. What few flaws existed in the first game were fixed or rendered moot by the sequel, and Uncharted 2 is one of those rare games that is as close to perfect as a game can possibly be.

So, of course, Uncharted 3 has big shoes to fill. It was hard to imagine how a game could be better than Uncharted 2, whereas there were obvious areas for improvement with the first game.

Recently came across this post on Cracked.com, through a Facebook link from Geek Fights.

I just couldn't read through this whole thing and not provide my two-cents of input. So I am going to provide a defense for every "reason" that this article gives for the movies making "no God damn sense". Because I like the Terminator movies. And the author is wrong.