From the Vault columnist. Grew up feeding quarters to the Ms. Pac-Man machine at his uncle's pizza place; still owns his childhood SNES and every Nintendo Power he ever begged his mother for. Writes the retrospectives and the hidden-gem hunts.
Epic’s sequel sinks cities, rides a Brumak and invents Horde mode along the way. Gears of War 2 is the rare blockbuster sequel that improves on its original in almost every direction.
The game that taught a generation to hug cover. Gears of War’s gravel-voiced war against the Locust is still a masterclass in weight, impact and co-operative design.
Bungie bowed out of Halo with a prequel about a doomed squad on a doomed planet — and made their finest campaign. Reach is an elegy with a DMR: bleak, beautiful and mechanically superb.
Bungie’s trilogy closer landed in 2007 like a meteor: a thunderous campaign, Forge, saved films and multiplayer that defined a generation. Nearly two decades on, Halo 3 remains the complete package.
Beyond the God of Wars and Monster Hunters lies the PSP’s stranger shelf: a drill-wielding schoolgirl, a thirty-hero roguelike and a game about leaving rooms. Ten hidden gems, unearthed.
Sony built a PlayStation portable; the homebrew scene built everything else. How unsigned code, emulators and custom firmware made the PSP immortal.
No disc drive, no cartridges, a sliding screen and a store nobody trusted yet: the PSP Go was the future, on sale in 2009, at the wrong price. Our feature.
It held a film, a game and Sony’s entire media empire in 60mm of plastic: the Universal Media Disc was the PSP’s boldest idea — and its most instructive failure.
Thirty seconds to save the world, four modes, one goddess of time with a credit card: Half-Minute Hero is the PSP’s funniest, fastest RPG. Our review.
Sega shrank its beloved strategy hybrid to PSP without losing its heart: school drama, BLiTZ battles and a civil war worth fighting. Our review.