PS3

Not the preciousss...

HIGH Finishing the game in two sessions and ending the agony ASAP.

LOW The entire project feels undercooked in every way.

WTF A bunch of f'ing hobbits take down the Balrog?!?

I love me some Dexter. It's easily one of the best shows on television and one of my personal favorites (right up there with Supernatural). So, when news that the series (which follows the life of forensic specialist Dexter Morgan–who happens to be a serial killer who kills other serial killers) was getting a videogame adaptation broke awhile back, I was nervous.

Games based on movies and TV shows tend to suck. I'd hate for a Dexter game to join the long list of failed videogame adaptations.

Anyway, here's the first look at the forthcoming game from Icarus Studios (which will appear on the PS3, Wii, Xbox 360, and the iPhone). I'm hoping this is iPhone footage because the graphics are pretty rough.

Am I the only person who's not completely bowled over by Street Fighter IV? I had a mad urge to run out and pick up a brand-new copy on the release day, but I held out in an effort to stick to my budget, and wow... I'm glad that I did. I finally got a chance to put some time into it and I've got to say, it left me a little cold.

For some reason, I thought the graphics would be better (and yes, I'm playing on an HD set). It's not just the resolution or whatever, it's that the actual art direction is just weird. The characters look kind of cartoony, kind of not… it's just odd. Besides that, the hit detection seems kind of wonky to me and I've got to be honest in saying that none of the characters really float my boat. Rufus, especially—I mean, how did that guy ever get off the drawing board at Capcom R&D?

News of Electronic Arts' God of War-esque Dante’s Inferno first broke last year because a bidding war for the film rights to the unannounced game broke out before the title had even been officially unveiled. Film companies were so excited about the IP that they fought for the right to spend money developing it. Universal eventually emerged victorious and now they’ve hired a scribe to pen the cinematic adaptation of the forthcoming game.

Variety reported on Tuesday that Dan Harris will be handling the writing duties on the project, which finds a character fighting his way through the depths of Hell. A quick trip over to IMDB will show you that Harris wrote X2 and Superman Returns and that he's directing I, Lucifer. Whether or not that bodes well for Dante's Inferno is a matter of personal opinion…

A couple of days ago I finally located a copy of Alone in the Dark: Inferno for the PlayStation 3. I'm not a huge Alone in the Dark fan in general, but prior to the game's release for the Xbox 360, there had been quite a lot of talk from the developers about different ideas they were trying out, and their approach to making something they saw as fairly revolutionary.

…Of course, it ended up accumulating countless negative reviews and extremely poor word-of-mouth. Last time I checked Metacritic, the 360 had an average score of 58. Basically, pretty much everyone who played it hated it, and it crashed and burned spectacularly.

After this potent feedback, the development team at Eden Studios gave the game a radical makeover and fixed many of the things that sunk the first release. This new and improved version (PS3 only) was subtitled Inferno, and despite addressing the concerns, this release also went nowhere. Currently, a brand-new copy can be had for $20 or less, and last I heard, any hope of a sequel has been utterly destroyed.

Please post your thoughts and impressions on Killzone 2 here and we will discuss your comments in an upcoming episode of our podcast. You can also record your question to an MP3 audio file and email it to podcast [AT] gamecritics [dot] com and we will play your question on the podcast. Thanks!

Is your mind on your money? Is your money on your mind? As the world teeters on the brink of an economic apocalypse we tackle an even bigger problem--the price of games! Plus, we give some failed franchises a second chance, and the games as art camp gets some new ammunition with the PS3’s Flower. With Chi Kong Lui, Brad Gallaway, Mike Bracken, and Tim Spaeth.

Download: Right click here and select "Save Target As..."
Subscribe: iTunes | Zune | RSS

Please send mailbag questions to podcast (at) gamecritics (dot) com.

Don’t get me wrong. I really like DLC when it's done right, and it's something that I think is going to become a very vital part of the industry, if it hasn't already. (And really, I think it already has.)

That said, certain companies and their practices are really starting to piss me off.

In my mind, it seems to me that the proper role for DLC is to extend the life of a game after it's been out for a while and would ordinarily have been put aside in favor of newer releases. Perfect examples would be something like the add-on missions for Oblivion, Mass Effect or Fallout 3, each new piece of content able to reignite interest in games that would likely have been traded in or covered with dust on a shelf if not for the knowledge that something else would be coming down the pike. A trait common to all of these is that their core games were all unquestionably complete in and of themselves, including all the trappings we'd expect.