It only took two days for Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution to sink its hooks into me. I became addicted like no other game I’ve played before. But as much as I love Civ Rev, there are so many little things that could make it so much better. Before I get to the suggestions though I should mention, I’ve never really played any of the Civilization games that preceded Revolution so it’s entirely possible that the features I want to see were part of the formula prior to the franchise’s makeover. However having said that I found a lot of similarities between Civ Rev and a far less known PC game called Starships Unlimited. They are essentially the same game except where Civ Rev is focused on Earth and using historic civilizations, Starships Unlimited is set in a fictional universe and utilizes a variety of alien races along with humanity. Read More...

Being a working mother can be difficult, not that I speak from experience, but when your “occupation” is that of an adventurer and costumed superhero, I guess it’s easy for things to get a little complicated. Like the rest of the Fantastic Four, Sue Richards (then Sue Storm) was a member of Reed Richards’ crew who piloted his experimental spaceship designed for interstellar travel. Bombarded by cosmic radiation, the four were altered genetically and granted superhuman abilities. Sue initially obtained the power of invisibility, but even with such a power she was often relegated to the “damsel in distress” role. Read More...

September 16th of last year saw Lucasarts release the much anticipated Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Right from the get-go, TFU was all about giving players a more thorough Force-wielding experience. Powers like Force Push and Force Lightning could be used in ways far beyond anything we’d ever seen before in a Star Wars game. Following the games release though, Lucasarts supported the title by creating several downloadable packages. There were two costume packs that added several new costumes for The Apprentice, as well as a number of alternate character skins. Read More...

It’s no big secret that I’m about as much into comic books as I am video games, which is saying something. I’ve always felt that comics and video games are natural extensions of one another. That is why it’s easy for properties to cross over so that we have games that have been adapted from comics and vice versa. Marvel Comics is probably the best example of using a comic to create a video game. They have inspired the most adaptions. Read More...

Imagine walking around, living your life and then suddenly you have this revelation that everything you thought you knew and everything you thought you were turned out to be a lie. Now imagine the same thing except that the revelation is that you are a mythical god. Now you can better understand Donald Blake. Believing himself to be a human being, Blake lived as a medical student eventually graduating and becoming a surgeon until he came across the magical hammer Mjolnir. The hammer awakens the godly spirit of Thor inside of him. Read More...

Last week when I was discussing the changes I would make for the upcoming Smackdown vs. Raw 2010, I got to thinking about another annual franchise that’s due to hit store shelves soon. NHL 10 is perhaps the sports game I am most excited for this year and with a North American release date of September 15th the wait has just about two months left. Of course with so little time left until release, it means that all the little things I hope and wish for probably won’t make into the final game. But this is a wishlist and as such I can still dream about what won’t be but might be in the future. Read More...

One of Earth’s most brilliant scientific minds, Dr. Bruce Banner was always quiet and reserved. Never brash or spontaneous, it wasn’t until his involvement in an experimental Gamma Bomb test that Banner would unleash his inner self. A young teenager named Rick Jones had wandered onto the test site and Banner rushed out to save him. He was able to move Rick to safety but was caught in the blast. Though he survived, Banner was mutated by the Gamma rays. Read More...

For fans of the WWE, there was a lot to love about last year’s WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2009. Visually the game was astounding. The characters models were about as lifelike as you could possibly get with attention paid to the smallest details. A great amount of time was spent revamping the tag team matches adding things like hot tags, illegal blind tags, and having inactive teammates being more attractive while standing on the ring apron. Add in the Inferno Match which debuted in the 2009 game and you have one heck of a game. But having played so many of the previous WWE games (going all the way back to when the company was still known as the WWF) I personally felt like there was so much I had seen before that had been cut out. Read More...

There’s a reason they call Deadpool the “Merc with a Mouth”, the guy literally never shuts up, even when his head has been removed from the rest of his body. He is by far the most insane character in comics which makes it a little hard to believe any one of his possible backstories. Generally it is known that he was born to a father who served in the United States Army eventually rising to the rank of general. His mother had died due to a terminal illness when Deadpool, real name Wade Wilson, was a young boy. Wade joined the army when he was older enlisting with the Special Forces. Read More...

Activision Enlists Gamers To Join The Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 VIP Community No, the confusion isn't on Activision or Raven's side of things, but more on mine and anyone else that may have sat in on the media briefing for this game. Let me explain. While being shown the game, we were all informed of one of the new characters to be revealed as a playable character. The Juggernaut. We were also shown how he can use fusion powers with everyone of the announced characters as well. Read More...

I think if you look at the landscape of films that have been adapted from video games, generally it looks a lot like what comic book movies were like when they were first being released. Yes the original Superman and the original Batman movies from the mid-late 1980’s are classics, but look down the line at some of the sequels. Look across the board to movies like The Punisher or Captain America. These were awful movies. Read More...

Matt Murdock was born the son of former Heavyweight boxer “Battling Jack” Murdock. Growing up in Hell’s Kitchen, New York, Matt learned from his father the importance of education. His father wanted nothing more than for his son to get ahead in life using his brain rather than his fists. Matt’s nobility was no more evident than on the fateful day where he saved a blind man from being run over by a truck carrying radioactive material. The waste managed to fall from the truck, partly splashing into Matt’s eyes. Though it blinded him, Matt’s other senses were heightened to superhuman levels. Read More...

Born more than a century ago in Canada, James Howlett has overcome numerous ordeals in the path to becoming Wolverine. In his time James, more commonly known as Logan, has taken part in many conflicts including World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War. He learned much as a soldier and even more when he became a spy for the CIA some years later. Besides his time spent as a soldier and a spy, Logan has spent an extensive amount of timing training in various martial arts. He became a master of many forms of armed and unarmed combat, but above all it was his training as a samurai that helped keep his feral nature in check and define his own personal code of honor. Read More...

The zombie apocalypse is one of only a handful of things that are universally cool. Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on how prepared you are), a zombie invasion is likely to never occur, as such the only way to take on a horde of the undead is in a video game. Quite a few titles have been based on the zombie apocalypse, but I’ve always felt like there was something missing. Left 4 Dead is probably the best zombie game to come out in the last few years and just about anyone who’s played it is looking forward to the sequel. As great as it was though, I found it to be a little too mechanical. Read More...

Being a genius is one thing, being a comic book genius is a whole different ball game. Think of it as having the combined intelligence of Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edison and Stephen Hawking…times 10. So to say that Reed Richards a.k.a. Mr. Fantastic is not just a comic book genius, but the smartest human being in the Marvel Universe should give you some understanding of just what the man is capable of. Reed was a child prodigy to say the least. His father Nathaniel Richards was a scientific genius who passed on his aptitude in various fields to Reed. Read More...