It’s hard to start a review about a Zelda game without reflecting on the franchise’s legacy. A staple of the gaming scene since the NES days, while gaming has evolved Zelda has stayed largely the same. Graphics and controls have evolved, but Zelda’s core elements of classic action/adventure gameplay, intricate dungeon design and beautiful story-telling remain.
Spirit Tracks is the fifteenth official Zelda title and the second to be released on the Nintendo DS. As is now tradition, we have a hero, a princess and a world in peril. This time …

“Sacred Heart. Eight years of great memories. This place will live forever…”
Zach Braff opens the ninth season of Scrubs with a not-too-subtle metaphor, as a picture of the Sacred Heart Hospital we knew is trashed and the new building is clear for all to see.
In May, Scrubs was given that rarest of things for television: A fitting conclusion. With the characters and stories still bringing a smile to the faces of fans, seeing JD leave Sacred Heart for the last time was bittersweet, but it somehow felt right.
Though many would …

It’s Christmas time and, as Bob Geldof and his Band Aid cronies would have you believe, there’s no need to be afraid. When it comes to going to the cinema this festive season at least, they may be right. Holiday movies straight out of Hollywood, desperately trying to prove themselves the next National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation are nowhere to be seen. Instead, we’re being treated to modern spins on far more traditional tales.
Brit comedy Nativity! is out this week, but Robert Zemeckis’ A Christmas Carol has been out for almost …

Since the Wii’s release, Nintendo have sought to draw in a broader audience with a variety of games sporting the console’s name in the title. Wii Sports, Wii Play and Wii Fit are the three biggest sellers on the platform outselling established Nintendo heroes Mario and Link by several million.
Just over a year ago, they released another game in the Wii [Blank] arsenal with Wii Music. From a simple conductor’s demo at E3 2005, the project had grown into a product which featured more than 50 songs and 60 instruments …

It’s as traditional as buckets full of sweets, hastily-put-together costumes and badly carved pumpkins: another Halloween, another entry into the Saw franchise.
Though it took the title of the most successful horror franchise with its fifth entry last year, there’s no denying that fans were left disappointed by a generally sloppy production. The ingenuity of the traps had disappeared, John Kramer had died two movies back and taken most of the answers to the franchise’s questions with him and the normally brilliant Julie Benz was handed a script which had been …

To say that Mario is pretty versatile for a plumber would be an understatement. Over his two decades of stomping Goombas, ripping Koopas from their shells and bitch-slapping Bowser, the moustachioed maestro has found time for karting, tennis, golf and football (that’s proper football where you use your feet to connect with the ball 90 per cent of the time, my American friends).
But being a hero is what he does best, and alongside consistently impressive platformers Mario has a catalogue of equally entertaining RPGs. After the Square-developed Super Mario RPG …

When Michael Jackson died, as with all pop stars of his kind, musical experts and personalities who had been starved of attention for a while (yes, Uri, I mean you) were rolling out the hyperbolic tributes to the King of Pop. He was a born entertainer. He touched millions. He left a legacy that would last generations.
I had a problem with all of these tributes. It’s not that they weren’t true. The problem I had was that I’d been using the past tense to describe Michael Jackson, the artist, for …

It’s near-impossible to talk about Nintendo’s new-found success without addressing the massive popularity of their brain training games on DS and the casual gaming audience. While Dr Kawashima remains the name on most people’s lips when they think of the brain-teasing titles on offer, last year a new academic stepped into the picture and brought all manner of mind-muddling puzzles to the more traditional gamer.
Professor Layton’s exploits in the mysterious village of St. Mystere was a clever combination of logic, maths and wordplay puzzles combined with a compelling adventure storyline. …

A couple of weeks back, I saw Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, a computer animated adventure which had slipped under a lot of people’s radars. This week, I saw Up, a computer animated adventure which has been on every movie-lover’s radar for months – in Britain this is mostly down to a four month delay since the picture’s American release.
At the time of my Cloudy review, I said that Up would have a lot to live up to. Going on all of the hype and acclaim which the film …

Last week’s featured movie, Julie & Julia, had my stomach gently rumbling over for the majority of its runtime, with tastebud-teasing recipe after recipe appearing on the big screen.
This week, Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs gave my stomach a much more audible growl as the screen was filled with every delicious morsel you could possibly think of. The film is more than just eye-candy though. It’s an action-packed, fun-filled 3-D extravaganza – and possibly the best animation of the year (though Up is still to come later this month).
Flint …