Email Author Harold Goldberg

2005 Stories by Harold Goldberg

• Best Video Games of the Year

  published December 27, 2005

  Blistered fingers, a fair amount of bitching and carpal tunnel syndrome. It's no easy task to come up with the best games of 2005. Then again,... More >>

• Games That Reveal the Meaning of Life

  published December 20, 2005

  Back in the 1600s, Mulla Sadra was da bomb. As one of the most important of the Persian philosophers with his existence-quiddity concepts, Mulla... More >>

• Games the Bush Regime Should Not See

  published December 13, 2005

  You're the ultimate procrastinator. You didn't make plans for the first day of the Armageddon Strike and got stuck at the back of the line on the... More >>

• The Grinch Who Froze the Xbox

  published December 6, 2005

  Maybe it's because the holidays are upon us, those depression-inducing weeks during which a minute of egg-nog-without-snog socializing seems like... More >>

• Xbox Makes Us Dance

  published November 29, 2005

  "Lose yourself in the music, the moment," ranted Eminem. Martha Graham sagely mused, "Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the... More >>

• Xbox 360 Games That Are the Shit

  published November 22, 2005

  Last week, they fought in line in Cecil County,... More >>

• Why Xbox 360 Is the Shit

  published November 15, 2005

  Ever since May at E3, that Texas Chainsaw Massacre of a video game convention, I wondered whether the XBOX 360 would be a mammoth... More >>

• Red Bull Addicts and Kerouac Insights

  published November 8, 2005

  When games take place in New York City, instead of some boring West Coast berg, I'm all over it like an all night club kid sucking up a six pack... More >>

• A Cross Between Courtney Love and Peter Pan

  published November 1, 2005

  There is a certain creepy, meticulous, lurid quality to the Spider art of Louise Bourgeois. Like, when you go to the cavernous Dia:Beacon and see... More >>

• Is Dick Cheney a Real MOTU?

  published October 25, 2005

  Forget the Tom Wolfe crap about Masters of the Universe. They weren't walking here in Manhattan. In fact, forget the old toys and the old TV show.... More >>

• Satirical Football; Pinball on Steroids

  published October 18, 2005

  Oliver Stone's Any Given Sunday is milquetoast compared to BLITZ: THE LEAGUE, and so is Green Bay Packer Jerry Kramer's brutal... More >>

• Zombies, Monsters, and Steven Colbert

  published October 11, 2005

  "Last night you were, unhinged. You were like some desperate, howling demon. You frightened me . . . Do it again." So spewed the beautiful... More >>

• Sports Game Ushers In the Apocalypse

  published October 4, 2005

  The apocalypse is upon us in the form of a sports game "with beasts so terrible that the ancient symbols of St. John will seem like cooing doves... More >>

• Macho Geeks of the World, Unite!

  published September 27, 2005

  Gamemakers are really becoming proficient in making remarkable offerings based on comic books. It's probably because both industries employ the... More >>

• New Yorkers Whack Everyone; Ulcer-Inducing Puzzles

  published September 20, 2005

  What if you started killing people? Not because you’d had enough of the suck-ass way of the world that had so embittered you. But because . .... More >>

• Bumper-to-Bumper Autocide; Wrestling in High Heels

  published September 13, 2005

  Playing BURNOUT REVENGE, the latest in the crash 'em up Burnout series, almost feels like autocide. You're wiping out so many cars... More >>

• Will Game Companies Help Katrina Victims?

  published August 30, 2005

  The other day, I sent an email to all the game company PR people. My question? What are you going to do about helping the Hurricane Katrina... More >>

• Ghost of Jerry Garcia Makes Video Game

  published August 23, 2005

  Cowboys and vampires? Alright, it's been done before, as far back as 1959 in the movie Curse of the Undead. But it hasn't been done much in... More >>

• Grim Reaper Catches Worm; the Next Pokemon

  published August 16, 2005

  Sanguine, I head into the post-Labor Day doldrums because the most wonderful time of the year, Halloween, is near. Believing the early Grim Reaper... More >>

• Love Child of Billy Elliot and Billy Banks

  published August 9, 2005

  You're going to look like the love child of Billy Elliot and Billy Banks when you give EYETOY PLAY2 a spin. The gimmick? Use the EyeToy... More >>

• Nobel Prize in Football; You're Clay and Can

  published August 2, 2005

  The New York Times' Matt Richtel was probably right in taking MADDEN... More >>

• Original Scoop for 'Grand Theft' Sex Scenes

  published July 26, 2005

  Allow me, just for a minute, to leave the dog days of summer gaming—when the great releases are few and far between—to talk about a... More >>

• Shooting Makes Us Hot; Brush Cuter Than the Sword

  published July 19, 2005

  These are the dog days of summer for gamerheads. Until mid-August, the releases are serious woofs, woeful pieces of mongrel doo shoveled your way... More >>

• Trymaster

  published July 12, 2005

  To call Suzanne Somers a superwoman would be stretching it. But she has undoubtedly maintained a vivid, uniquely American pop presence over her... More >>

• Better Than Sex in 'San Andreas'; Yr Own Plumber's Crack

  published July 12, 2005

  Not since Psychonauts, has there been a game this crazy interesting. FLIPNIC makes pinball so wacky, so other-worldly, so jazzed up... More >>