The James Logan Courier

By Tish Wells
McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)

After reading "Bedbugs" you might want to fumigate any apartment you rent. You also might want to call in an exorcist.

Ben H. Winters, who authored the mash-ups "Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters" and "Android Karenina," takes on a modern re-working of the classic horror novel "Rosemary's Baby" and adds other gruesome touches.
Alex and Susan Wendt, with their young daughter Emily, rent a Brooklyn brownstone from its kindly landlady, Andrea Scharfstein. The apartment comes with an extra attraction — a secret room — that Susan falls in love with, intending on making it her painting room. A part-time nanny takes care of Emily, freeing up Susan to work on her canvases.

By Billy O'Keefe
McClatchy-Tribune (MCT)

When we greeted "Deus Ex" as a liberator from a first-person shooter genre that badly needed a growth spurt, few probably predicted history would repeat itself 11 years later.

But here we are, neck-deep in a genre that's reverted to old habits and covered them up with cinematic flimflam. And here's "Deus Ex: Human Revolution," which holds so true to its pedigree that what was amazing then is amazing all over again now.

This isn't immediately apparent, because while "Revolution" quickly establishes itself as a cover shooter — with a third-person perspective while in cover — it also makes a point to let you know that attacking enemies at the front door is as viable a tactic as using stealth to neutralize them from behind. The cover interface makes complete use of the controller and requires some finger gymnastics when "Revolution's" other systems are in play, but once you acquaint yourself, all the pieces — responsive controls, satisfying gunplay, intelligent enemy A.I. and an intuitive cover mechanic — are there.

By Billy O'Keefe
McClatchy-Tribune (MCT)

"From Dust" is impressive — visually, conceptually and simply for the intuitive way it distills playing God down to tossing sand and water around like a kid building a sandcastle.
Arguably most impressive, though, is the bold way it combines a genre synonymous with free-spirited aimlessness and the one thing — a ticking clock — that unnerves gamers unlike any other.

Framed like a real-time strategy game, "Dust" tasks you with utilizing nature and some divine tricks to guide a primitive civilization across lands teeming with tidal waves, volcanoes and other deadly natural phenomena.

By Billy O'Keefe
McClatchy-Tribune (MCT)

Those who stroll unknowingly into "Call of Juarez: The Cartel" are in for a serious case of video game culture shock. The third game in a series of gunslinging first-person westerns takes place in present-day Los Angeles amid a looming war between the United States and a Mexican drug cartel, and while the national park setting is slightly novel, the game's first shootout would otherwise feel at home in that other series that has "Call of" in its title.

"Cartel's" chief protagonist has ancestral ties to the previous game's protagonist, but otherwise, this may as well be a new series altogether. If you played previous "Juarez" games precisely to get away from assault rifles, C4 explosives, launching rockets at choppers and small armies constantly firing on your position, "Cartel's" embrace of all that in the first mission alone will leave you deeply dismayed.
Whatever attempt "Cartel" makes to justify this change isn't helped any by its storytelling. The leap to present day doesn't strive for novelty, opting for a pedestrian cops-versus-gangs story instead of something that calls back to the Old West or makes the main character a fish out of water. You can play as one of three characters — "Cartel's" online co-op functionality lets you assign two other players to the other two — but all three are dull caricatures who blather in cliches and (along with their enemies) repeat themselves way too often.

By Billy O'Keefe
McClatchy-Tribune (MCT)

Before it was cool to love "Deadly Premonition," "Earth Defense Force 2017" was everyone's ironically adored game of choice — a low-budget, sloppily assembled but wholly lovable Japanese third-person shooter that took bad graphics, terrifying voice acting, comically stiff controls and jerky animation and mixed in a too-ambitious-for-its-own-good scope and some dead simple but absolutely chaotic shootouts to create one inexplicably great time.

With "Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon," we have the third-person shooter equivalent of a cherished unsigned band putting out its major-label debut. An American developer has wrestled away the reins, and it's clear a bigger budget was in play during development. "Armageddon's" control tweaks — both on foot and in vehicles — are a night-and-day improvement over "2017," and while the visual presentation remains behind the curve, it's considerably more stable and much better equipped to handle the action when everything is collapsing and exploding.