I’ll shamefully admit that I don’t have much experience with the “Tribes” franchise. I bought “Tribes 2” when I was younger, yet I was so frightened by the complex ESDF control scheme that I never got around to playing it much.

The original “Monday Night Combat” (“MNC”) remains one of the oddest genre experiments in games, and luckily it happens to be as fun as it was experimental.

With “Mass Effect 3,” BioWare finally looks poised to balance the RPG and action duality of the game, which leaned toward the former in “Mass Effect” and the latter in “Mass Effect 2.” New additions like melee attacks, a larger skill tree and weapon upgrades should make it a more complex game than its predecessors, though I’d wager that most people will be buying the game to see the trilogy reach its conclusion.

There’s nothing like going to a bar with friends, kicking back with some wings, and watching the big game on Championship Sunday. The big game I’m talking about has no burly Americans or bone-crushing hits, but it does involve skinny Korean dudes and their ridiculously nimble fingers. It’s not football. It’s StarCraft. And it’s coming to a bar near you.

“To the Moon” is the first game to make me cry. It’s actually the first anything to make me cry, as I’ve never shed a tear over any form of media prior to finishing the game last week. I didn’t bat an eye at the montage in the opening act of “Up,” but I felt a single tear roll down my cheek as I watched the ending to this pixilated adventure game written by one man.

“What’s my game worth to you?” It’s a question that many independent game developers have been asking consumers increasingly often. Lately, the pay-what-you-want pricing model has become more and more successful, and other interesting pricing models are taking hold in the meantime. Here’s an overview of how indie developers are changing the way you pay for games.

Another year, another “Treehouse of Horror” episode for “The Simpsons.” Come Oct. 30, the ridiculously long-running show will be premiering its 22nd Halloween special. Although “The Simpsons” in recent years has been hit-or-miss compared to its infallible golden age during the mid-’90s, that doesn’t mean the show hasn’t already given us some of the finest [...]

Red Orchestra 2 was released almost three weeks ago, yet here I am delivering reactions to the game instead of a proper verdict. The reason for that lies in the game’s shaky launch, which had no shortage of performance issues, crashes and other bugs that have no place in the ostensibly finished version of a game.

Summer is an oddly quiet time for video game releases. While Hollywood tends to release their latest and loudest titles during the summer, video game publishers choose to hold their sure-fire successes and big name sequels for the fall, right in time for the holidays.

“The Orange Box”: Four years later, each game in the dreadfully named “Orange Box” has graduated to becoming legends in their own right. “Half-Life 2: Episode Two” was the last the world has seen of Gordon Freeman, and he has yet to reappear. “Team Fortress 2” has gone from elegant class-based shooter to war-themed hat simulator.