With the ongoing struggle of the current NBA lockout, much of the NBA season has been thrown into the gutter with almost no end in sight, which is unfortunate because last year gamers experienced what was probably the best basketball video game of all time in NBA 2K11.

Though they didn’t have to, 2K Sports has come out with NBA 2K12, and the game is every bit as good as its predecessor.

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The Hardboiled Chicken fights back against the Penguin regime in this 2D shooter on PSN.

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Last year, the much delayed and hotly anticipated Gran Turismo 5 was finally released for the Playstation 3. Fans of the series were pleased by its high level of quality, though most were a bit bothered by how inconsistent the game was across its various features. Some things were fleshed out, and others were bare-bones. Meanwhile, Xbox 360 driving enthusiasts were still putting hundreds of hours into Forza Motorsport 3. While the game may not have looked quite as good as its PS3 competitor, it still offered a complete and consistent experience. Microsoft and Turn 10 Studios have now released the much anticipated sequel to Forza 3, and consistency and quality seem to be the name of the game yet again.
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id Software is one of those developers who do not release a game until they feel it is done. Unfortunately, this also makes them less than prolific. The theory though is that quality trumps quantity. With Rage this theory has proven itself to be true.
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On Thursday, Oct. 5, the world lost a great innovator of technology.

Steven Paul Jobs will be remembered by most people as an esteemed founder CEO of Apple. His inventions, the “Mac,” iPod, iPhone, and iPad are all household names that are revolutionary because of their visual aesthetics and accessibility.

According to a release provided by the Jobs family, Jobs passed peacefully surrounded by his family.

While we don’t regularly cover happenings in the tech world, Jobs definitely did have an impact on our writers’ lives. What follows are thoughts from SmashPad’s writers. Read the rest of this entry »

All right, soldiers! It’s time to get back to the battlefield! It’s time for war! And this isn’t just like any other conflict. There are no crosshairs, ammo counters or health packs! If you are shot in the foot, you wrap a bandage around it and you walk it off! This is real! This is Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad.

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EA Canada, the Hockey branch of the EA Sports brand, has been on a complete tear for several years now. Just as competitor 2K Sports hit a monumental slump from which they still have yet to even show the earliest signs of recovering, NHL 07 debuted a fantastic new gameplay engine for the long-running franchise, with each subsequent year adding substantial improvements over its predecessor. The most notable innovations include the Be A Pro mode, which effectively transforms your Hockey sim into a customization-driven role-playing game (all while still remaining a Hockey sim), and the EA Sports Hockey League, which allows full teams of human players to connect online and compete. The ability to play NHL in so many different ways has combined consistently with the extremely strong and always improving core gameplay to elevate the series to one of the all-time sports greats. Now, NHL 12, displays this proudly on the front cover, touting the franchise’s 22 Sports Game of the Year awards.

Don’t be surprised at all if NHL 12 boosts that number considerably.

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Outside of the Halo franchise, Epic Games’ Gears of War series was intended to be a major player for the Xbox 360. The first Gears was a (literally) bloody hit. Gears of War 2 expanded that success and garnered its own rave reviews, and the final installment looks to top things off. Gears of War 3 is able to do more than that, making great improvements and creating a incredibly satisfying end to the series.
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For years, the Mortal Kombat fanbase was the polar opposite of the fighting game community at large. While most franchises were finding their success in implementing the greater depth and balance that a tournament scene thrives on, Mortal Kombat revelled in its simplicity, targeting a playerbase mostly bewildered by the more technical points of the genre and/or attracted by the spectacle that defined the series from the beginning.

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The Star Fox series is one of Nintendo’s most popular trademarks, but none of the games in the series even come close to the experience that Star Fox 64 had.  Like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D before it, Star Fox 64 has been given the 3D treatment, and the game is every bit as good as the original. Read the rest of this entry »