If Hollywood wants to learn from the videogame industry — which outgrossed the box office last year — it should pay careful attention to Shadow of the Colossus, a game with the epic scale of a summer blockbuster but the emotional heart of an indie flick. Shadow is brought to…
Putting together a sequel to a hit videogame is tricky business. Play it safe and give people more of the same, and it ends up feeling stale. But try to innovate too much, and you dilute what made the game great to begin with. Soul Calibur III somehow manages to…
Rockstar Games has a winning recipe: Blend a nuanced story with a rich environment, add a dash of sensational marketing, then drench the confection in blood. What else would you expect from the publisher that gave us Grand Theft Auto? Rockstar’s latest release, The Warriors, proves that the bad boys…
Pity the videogame zombie. He spends his short afterlife dodging self-righteous heroes hell-bent on peppering him with buckshot, setting him on fire, or blowing him to smithereens with a bazooka. Well, Stubbs is here to even the score. Set in the 1950s, Stubbs the Zombie casts players as the eponymous…
We’ve all been kicked in the junk by Marvel superheroes before. Watching Elektra was like two hours of nut-pummeling by a relentless, sac-hating donkey. But superhero films — even bad ones — gross bazillions of dollars. So it’s no surprise that Marvel is cashing in with a slew of licensed…
It’s ugly to watch a grown man gush over a puppy. The kissing. The cooing. The “widdle-doggie” talk. Embarrassing stuff. So it was with trepidation that I approached Nintendogs, the cuddly dog-rearing sim for Nintendo DS. A million and a half people have already adopted virtual pooches, making the game…
Waking from a trance, you find yourself in the restroom of a diner. You just stabbed a complete stranger to death as he urinated. Blood is on everything — including you. And to make matters worse, a police officer is sitting outside, drinking coffee. Should you take the time to…
Last year’s Katamari Damacy was so quirky, it should have been subtitled “Marketed to Stoners.’ Its star, a little green prince, was forced to roll a giant gravity ball to atone for the sins of his father, the King of the Cosmos, who had gotten drunk one day and knocked…
It’s hot as hell, and you’ve got no AC. You have two choices: Sit at home and simmer in your own bodily fluids and damp T-shirt, or get out of town. The obvious question is, where? Glenwood or Ouray? Durango or Alamosa? There’s just so much to do. Don’t fret:…
I love vacation. Let me rephrase that: I fucking love vacation. I have loved vacation since I was three years old and we went to Arizona to visit my grandparents and I got to swim in their pool and eat ice cream for seven glorious days. Second only to vacation…
Having attended at least one all-day fest at Red Rocks Amphitheatre per year for over a decade, I’ve been lucky enough to see nearly every great reggae band in the world. I gave a high five to Toots Hibbert while the Maytals looked on, aghast at my dancing. I watched…
Things are coming together nicely. You’ve managed to purchase your $6 foot-long bratwurst, $3.75 lemonade and $3 bag of peanuts while simultaneously avoiding the caterwauling of some unfortunately clad woman belting out the national anthem with near-freakish zeal. This pleases you, because you’ve never really been too fond of the…
Sex rules. Actually, sex rules for ten months out of the year. Sex in July and August is an act of love, an act of desperation or a combination of both. Sure, when you’re sixteen and doing it in your boyfriend’s parents’ basement, it’s one thing. But as a grownup…
If you have an extreme fear of heights, it’s wise to not accept a job that requires you to work on the side of a mountain. I realized that a little too late last May, as I found myself faced with a dilemma: choose certain death working on the side…
Sweat cascading over your brow, one eye on a road atlas and the other on the road, anger percolating as you curse yourself and everyone within earshot of the car. You’re completely, utterly and hopelessly lost. Go with it. It doesn’t matter that you don’t have a clue where you…
You know the drill: brake lights, deceleration, standstill traffic and indignant yawns. Until the people up ahead learn how to drive, here are a few time-killers to make your boredom less angry and your anger less boring. One perennial favorite pastime of those with out-of-state plates seems to be snapping…
No matter how many summer vacations you plan or how well you plan them, a moment comes when you realize that you will never sword-fight with Lord of the Rings fans in Kazakhstan or reach that tiny island off the north coast of Australia where the school shuts down for…
There’s so much to do in Colorado during the summer, it’s almost paralyzing. There are the always-popular but always-sold-out concerts at the Denver Botanic Gardens, the KBCO World Class Rockfest, the Shakespeare Festival, the Taste of Colorado, the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival, the Grand Prix, the ever-expanding number of farmers’…
While summer days are great for lounging, it’s the hot summer nights that will truly make memories. And nothing heats things up faster than a tacky theme party. Here are four summer evenings that are sure to live on in infamy — and make you the social director for summers…
I’m here at the Off Track Betting room at the sprawling Red and Jerry’s complex on Oxford and Santa Fe for one reason: to learn how to gamble. Or more accurately, to learn how to play the horses. Gambling in its simplest state is no more challenging than sleep. Want…
As the sultry musk of summer gets ready to coat our bodies like a clammy dishrag, here are a couple of homemade mix tapes to keep you cool in the midst of all that global warming, sticky sex and melted ice cream. The first tape is made up of some…
Crystal Sharp, owner, SheShe boutique KissMe mascara “It acts like a waterproof mascara, but it comes off with warm water. It’s fabulous. You can swim in it; you can tan in it and not worry about it running all over your face.” Gabriel Conroy, designer Large-scale bone, coral or turquoise…
