A hero's only as good as the companions they keep company with. If you can't rely on your allies when push comes to shove, there's a good chance you're going to end up going up in smoke. We've already scraped the bottom of the barrel and looked at some of the worst, most useless,... [more+]

The classic genre needs a little recognition. The only thing more fun than playing video games, may just be talking about them. What we do here and at video game outlets across the net is weigh in on popular conversations that we've all had in the real world. What you must always realize with... [more+]

Lautering Bytes Podcast feed:   Sep 27, 2012 (65.6 MB)Duration: 1:11:42 m - Filetype: mp3 - Bitrate: 128 KBPS - Frequency: 44100 HZEp. 36: Dusting Things Off... and Summer Gaming on XBLA and Steam Rando decided he needed to lock himself in a room and play Chrono Trigger while... [more+]

This year I fulfilled a long-time ambition, dragging myself up the West Coast from Los Angeles to Seattle to attend the 2012 Penny Arcade Expo Prime. Since the first PAX — an offshoot of founders Jerry Holkins and Mike Kahulik's popular Penny Arcade webcomic — took place in 2004, the... [more+]

It took video games much longer to develop decent voice acting than it did to develop voice acting in the first place. This was especially true for translated Japanese games, as many of the game companies were completely unprepared at matching lip flaps and matching the language to an English sentence... [more+]

Tokyo is the official capital of video game entertainment, at least for the next few days, during TGS. Check out our coverage (news, previews, screenshots, videos, etc.) of the Tokyo Game Show  2012 right here! ... [more+]

It's starting to bother me. People are already saying the Wii U is not a real console upgrade, that it brings nothing new to the table, that it seems way too uncomfortable to offer any kind of entertainment, and that it's made for kids. Well, I beg to differ, and let me kindly explain why. We... [more+]

Subscription plans for MMO titles have been seen as the norm in the past, especially for RPGs. You pay a monthly fee, which helps to maintain the servers, and you get to continue enjoying your game unabated. However, with the rise of free-to-play gaming, developers are finding other ways to make money... [more+]

Some titles lend themselves well to sequels. Others…not so much. There's a great many reasons why a developer shouldn't put together a sequel to a title. Maybe the narrative of the original was self-contained enough that it could easily stand on its own (and future installments simply... [more+]

For a long while, at least up until the video game industry's revenue surpassed that of Hollywood in 2009, the business of film was seen as an aspirational model for the young gaming medium. While there were and are valuable lessons to be learned from a popular medium with a century's... [more+]

Haha! Tomb Raider's star Lara Croft chasing Nathan Drake from Uncharted. I had never considered this could happen, but of course it would! And if it were to happen, this would be the result too, no doubt. Thanks for the good time, Machinima! ... [more+]

Sometimes, you can set your sights a little too high. Sometimes, you can go a little too far. Sure, your brilliant concept and original design might set you light-years ahead of the competition… but that might not necessarily be a good thing. Sometimes, being too revolutionary is just as bad... [more+]

There's nothing as pure as the heart of a child, especially when it comes to cruelty. Without the maturity to understand consequences and distinguish right from wrong, children can be capable of some ghastly things. It therefore follows that many adults who commit really horrible crimes are immature,... [more+]

September is a good month for gamers. It's a month that gets us ready for what's to come, a month where we go back to our routine and get back to our habits. Those habits include gaming, of course, and to ease you back into it before the holiday hits arrive, you may want to have a look at these... [more+]

It takes brutal amounts of training to properly wield a sword. It's already hard to use a regular blade, but it must be even harder to wield a weapon twice your size. Of course, video game characters love to use outlandishly large weapons, and this is facilitated by the digital realm's lack... [more+]

I can't believe it's already been 25 years since Final Fantasy was first created by Hironobu Sakaguchi and the talented developers at Square Enix, which was then known as Squaresoft. What makes the series so special? What has allowed the franchise to survive when other RPGs have faded into... [more+]

In a gaming environment where it often seems that the vast majority of titles have fallen under some kind of creative ennui, the indie game development scene is a welcome and refreshing change. The degree of innovation, creativity, and quality found in these games and developers puts the vast majority... [more+]

If a franchise proves popular enough, it's inevitable that it'll see not only sequels, but spin-offs into different types of games and audiences. Sometimes, they'll even take a franchise way out into left field, territory that most people would never consider unless in a chemically altered... [more+]