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Numinous Games presents us with a gut-wrenching experience that elevates the interactive medium.

"That Dragon, Cancer," is a game about hope -- its presence, and its absence. While forged in the anticipation of triumph, the end result is a meditation on failure and loss that is pretty hard to take, and without a doubt breaks new ground for the interactive medium. Created by Brian Green and his company, Numinous Games ("numinous" means "having a strong religious or spiritual quality"), this "game" (we have no other word for it that's adequate) is both gut-wrenching and an incredibly simple exploration of a young boy's four year battle with cancer. But while it takes on loss in a new way, it is also a commentary on games in general that is both surprising and profound. It is not without flaws, but the all-encompassing heart of it more than compensates for its failures. 

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Remember, information is the weapon!

It’s hard to believe that it’s been six years since Hitman: Blood Money hit the scene. It was released in that heady time around the launch of the “seventh generation” of consoles, when it was still common to see games come out for the Xbox and PlayStation 2 alongside the Xbox 360. As such, Blood Money wasn’t technically a seventh generation game; it was designed with the PCs and consoles of 2005 and upscaled to run on the 360. That was my introduction to the series, and even though the game came across as dated by the time I got to it in 2009 I was impressed with the sheer amount of options for completing objectives in every level.

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Lofty promises and vague ideas that have little to do with video games--Molyneux is back!

Peter Molyneux has always been known for thinking outside the box. The man behind Populous and Black and White found huge success with Fable on the Xbox, and ended up working on the franchise for nearly a decade, including the upcoming Kinect game, Fable: The Journey. Molyneux has since moved on from Lionhead Studios, the company he helped found in 1997, and has gone to work for 22 Cans. Molyneux revealed today that 22 Cans is working on 22 unique “experiments,” the first of which is set to be released in only six weeks from now.

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Getting stuck in this darkness will break you down with glimpses of scary hospitals, factories and circuses (oh my).

Closure has been haunting gamers since its release, and it’s easy to see why. A two dimensional, monochromatic platformer almost entirely shrouded in darkness, this game  has the ability to teach all of its players how to see the light.

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