Picking up my pace, trying not to run, but rushing to get safely back home – I glance over my shoulder to see if anything is behind me.  I am freaked out.  Paranoid.  Skittish.  I’m not looking for otherworldly critters or anything, I’m worried I might get arrested or -- at best -- confronted by a pissed off neighbor.  I’ve been skulking around my neighborhood at odd hours and spending minutes at a time spinning in front of strangers’ homes, occasionally taking pictures.  I should be put in the slammer just based on appearances.  But really, I’ve just been playing The Hidden and hating every minute.

Without ever having been to Disneyland, I can only assume that Frontier has done a spectacular job recreating the iconic park. The virtual representation of the park seems to have everything covered, straight down to themed garbage cans, benches, and vending carts. Despite all the effort, it's held back at every turn by the peripheral that should be immersing you. The fact of the matter is, the Kinect controls are cumbersome and unnecessary and often just don’t work right.

Since its humble 32-bit beginnings, the PlayStation brand has been home to some truly unique and sometimes downright weird games from its native Japan. The PlayStation gave us games like Incredible Crisis, Bust a Groove, One Piece Mansion, and Rising Zan: Samurai Gunman. The trend continued on PS2 with Mr. Mosquito, Katamari Damacy, Gitaroo Man, and Okage: Shadow King. Sadly, with the video game industry being such a volatile, cutthroat business in the current climate, releasing quirky games like these has become a gamble that rarely pays off for publishers. Thankfully, we still have handheld machines like the PSP to give us our experimental Japanese games. Enter Corpse Party, a digital release for PSP that is so niche that I’m surprised it was translated. Surprised, but happy; this is one of those unique, under-the-radar games that is not to be missed.

The creation of the sixth installment of the Heroes of Might & Magic series sent the small turn-based RPG gamer niche through various emotional highs and lows. The two biggest sources of concern was the renaming of the brand to Might & Magic Heroes (which made many think back to the failed 3DO series), plus the “dumbing down” of the unit tiers from the almost double digit tiers to just three. It seemed that the things that made it great would be forsaken in pursuit of the lucrative mainstream market.

Scene It? has been around for a while now and there have been more than a few video game adaptations of the popular DVD/film based trivia game.  Now the game based on the premise of useless cinematic know-how has wound up on the PSN and XBLA as a downloadable game. The move to a digital format makes perfect sense for this type of game, but this stripped down version fails to capture the more fleshed out experience we've come to expect from the franchise.

Imagine a world where schools are secretly facilities to train kids to become fighter pilots. There is an underground spy at the school masquerading as a science professor. The fate of the world is at hand! Does any of this matter? Oh no it doesn't. Skimpy clothes on teenage anime girls, bullets, bullets, and more bullets, along with several boss fights define Otomedius Excellent.

Sonic Generations starts great. When I started playing the game, three acts in, I was on the phone with Nick. “Hey, this game might be better than the console version,” I said. “I'm not surprised,” his response. All the while, I thought to myself, these stages really capture the feel of the original Genesis Sonic games.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but until now, I've never played Cave Story. Not for free on the PC, nor for the low price of admission on the Wii or the DSi. It's always interested me, but I just never got around to playing it. Cave Story 3D has changed that for me, but in retrospect, I don't feel as if I was missing all that much. Unquestionably, Cave Story is a solid game and that's made all the more impressive by the fact that a single man, Daisuke Amaya, created the game himself. While impressive, this doesn't make up for the fact that the game is a bit rough around the edges.

Its manual claims to be a “fantastic action jump 'n' run game” and there is certainly a lot of jumping. The three playable characters, Pixie, Madboy, and a dog, Rex, can be switched to at the press of the C button. Each has specialized, if minimally effective moves that are required to get through levels which do contain considerable amounts of platforming. But it can be more honestly described as a “plat-borer” because The Kore Gang's 30 levels are a near-nonstop string of menial and utterly pointless fetch quests that will bore players of all ages.

On June 23, 1991, Sega released Sonic the Hedgehog for the Genesis and started one of the fiercest rivalries in video games. The two were neck and neck in the 16-bit generations and blah, blah, blah. You know where this is going.

It only takes about 15 minutes to get an idea of what exactly Saints Row: The Third is about.  Actually, let me rephrase that.  It only takes about 15 minutes to understand that Saints Row: The Third is as illogical as it can possibly be without the dialogue being performed completely in pig latin.  The ends don’t justify the means here.  The means unapologetically justify themselves and you should just be glad that you get the pleasure to tag along.  In just 15 minutes you’ll commit mass murder dressed as a bobblehead, ride a bank vault being yanked into the air via helicopter, and jump out of a jet with your guns blazing.  There is no real justification for any of this, except that it’s fun to be absurd.

The catastrophe that occurred on Isla Nublar back in 1993 was a classic example of Murphy’s Law in action.  Everything that could go wrong did go wrong and it did so with spectacular results that have deeply imbedded themselves in the brains of many a movie goer, including your humble reviewer.  Even though it's been nearly 20 years since it was released I can’t help but smile every time I hear the first few notes of John Williams’ iconic score.  Welcome to Jurassic Park, please don’t feed the animals.

With the production costs of video games increasing by leaps and bounds as the years go on, platform-exclusive titles are going the way of the dinosaur. Somehow though, Sony has managed to recover from the rocky start of the PlayStation 3 and has secured some really great exclusive games. Developer Sucker Punch is responsible for one of those all-new PS3 IPs, with the inFAMOUS games. While they saw some success with Sly Cooper on the PS2, that franchise never quite “popped” like Ratchet & Clank and the Jak games. It looks like inFAMOUS was just what the upstart developer needed to make it to that next level, and the sequel to the 2009 debut cements the series as one of the best exclusives on the PS3.

I feel sorry for Fusion Genesis. Right out of the gate, this game just has too much going against it. It has an unfortunate name that brings to my mind thoughts of mediocre Xbox launch games and inferior 16-bit consoles. It’s a digital release that not only had the misfortune of releasing during a season crammed with some of the biggest games in recent memory, but it comes in the wake of some truly stunning XBLA releases already, like Bastion and Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet. And beyond that, the best game I can compare it to (Armada on the Dreamcast) is a game that no one bought for a failed console from ten years ago. No, at first glance, Fusion Genesis is at a severe disadvantage. But look closer and you’ll find a pretty great XBLA game that deserves your attention.

Whether due to hardware limitations or a reputation for simpler fare, the Wii hasn't seen much of the sandbox/open world genre. Considering the drop in horsepower and the inability to implement the “switch to any car, any time” gameplay, I'm surprised Ubisoft bothered making this Wii version at all. Still, effort was clearly spent in building this version from the ground up -- it uses the pointer controls for shooting (which is very handy), and it's got DS connectivity (remember this feature, Nintendo?). It does a decent job creating a large San Francisco-looking city to drive around in, free of load times. However, too many bad ideas and cut corners make it all seem pretty average.

The Elder Scrolls series is rightly famous for defining what an open world game should be, and Skyrim can arguably be considered the most worthy in the lineage. As the title suggests, the game takes place in Tamriel’s northern most province, a rocky and inhospitable land that is home to the Viking-like Nords. The assassination of the High King of Skyrim has precipitated the next prophecy found in the Elder Scrolls foretelling the return of dragons and the destruction of the land unless a destined champion can fight them off. Guess who you play as?

Pac-Man has a lot going for himself, but most of it just isn’t in this game. The best point of the cartridge for older gamers will probably be portable versions of classic Pac-Man, Galaga, and Dig Dug. While there are a few saving graces to Pac-Man Party, the problems outweigh its finer points. After a few games in party mode, it becomes apparent that the game could have used a few more months of polish.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 may just be their best game yet. While this game will by no means reinvent the genre it does provide a number of noticeable tweaks that help to refine the overall experience, while continuing to remain true to past iterations in the franchise.

With HD collections of our favorite games of the past becoming a regular occurrence, we here at PixlBit have been trying to decide how best to cover them. When reviewing an HD remake, do we do a normal critique of the original game? Do we evaluate the quality of the HD conversion and special features? Or is the answer found with a little of column “A” and a little of column “B”? Well, I’m going to try a little experiment with this review of Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, and hopefully you wonderful readers will let us know if this format works well for you.

A lockdown has bound Tokyo. No one knows who started the lockdown, and why the government is preventing any civilians from leaving the city. Shouldn’t everyone be able to flee, since angels and demons have begun to appear all around the city? Your party has no choice but to fight or die. If you can defeat them, you’ll make a contract with these powerful entities and enlist their aid in the fight for Tokyo. You will help eradicate Tokyo from the onslaught of evil...except if you’re some kind of monster who abuses their power when they choose their character's moral decisions. With the modified, portable “comps” you have inherited, you can summon your demons and stand a chance at survival.

It took ten years for Capcom to release a sequel to the popular fighter Marvel vs. Capcom 2. Marvel vs. Capcom 3 finally released in February of this year, and nine months later, we already have a follow up with Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Many gamers and fans were angered, while others were optimistic. While Marvel vs. Capcom 3 was a fun game, it suffered from a lot of fundamental problems regarding balance issues and lack of content, among other, smaller issues. Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 served to not only fix those issues, but provide more content to please people that weren't happy with the original. Overall, the main problems were addressed, and while there are still obvious things missing that should have been included in the game, it manages to trump MvC3 in every way.

It’s time to rise up, my friends! It’s time to storm Nintendo HQ and liberate the concentrated fun they slowly leak out to us, the common man. We’ve been waiting years for the next proper handheld Mario game, and they finally deigned to give us… Super Mario 3D Land. Now that we have it we know what we’ve been missing out on and can only wonder what else they must be keeping from us. Super Mario 3D Land is a delicious feast from Nintendo’s fun hoard that is not only a worthy installment in the Super Mario Bros. oeuvre, but it also evolves the series, makes good use of the 3DS’s capabilities, and offers a flawless platforming experience.

“Hey, listen!” Apparently someone at Nintendo got the message. After the release of Twilight Princess, universally, fans were begging for change. While Nintendo seemingly gave their audience everything they ever wanted with the Wii’s first title and the GameCube’s last hurrah, they still weren’t happy. They wanted a reinvention; they wanted something new, something fresh. Well there’s little question about it, Skyward Sword is absolutely the answer to the fans. Though not something wholly new, Link’s latest adventure manages to shake things up enough to make them fresh.

I have some amazing memories of construction/simulation heavy games, like Sim City 2000 and Dawn of Discovery. When done right, games in this genre are absolutely captivating. Tropico 4 comes extremely close to hitting the nail on the head, but stumbles in its implementation.

While millionaires and billionaires argue amongst themselves on how to best split NBA revenues in the midst of a depressed economy, the fans that support them are left without the sport they love.  Lucky for us the pesky lockout hasn’t stopped 2K Sports from delivering unto us what may be the very best game in the highly touted NBA 2K series to date.