Is Angry Brides making you smarter? (Hint: no.)

​Like a lot of kids, I nursed a healthy addiction to video games in prep school, trafficking kilos of cocaine across state lines on a graphing calculator from a desk in advanced Algebra. And according to gamer evangelists like James Paul Gee, this actually made me smarter -- it helped me create more neural pathways.

While video game research is still embryonic, there are smart guys with expensive degrees all over the country looking at graphs and MRI scans, concluding that video games enhance creative problem solving and trigger endorphins.

I'm no expert, but this sounds fishy. Sure, it might be true of some games. But the pixelated world is still a peculiar place, and there's no way all of it is contributing to the mental faculties of our impressionable youths. If you're looking for video game fun without all that pesky learning, check out these games.


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​Games aren't supposed to be all fun. Just ask Lee Szymczyk, the mind behind ILoveFoxConn, the smart phone gaming app with a social conscience. It's named after China's Foxconn factory, where millions of iPhones are manufactured. Conditions at Foxconn may be so bad, there's concern that it drove 17 of its employees to commit suicide (one as recent as yesterday).

Szymczyk, a Miami resident, says "The idea behind this app is to balance out the information presented to you, keep you informed, and give you a chance to actually express your opinion to a company without disrupting your life. Nobody wants to give up their iPhone or Android in protest. You almost can't. But we're talking about our hard earned money paying for some CEO's castle while his workers are being methodically exploited. It's a serious issue and we're being duped. I'm hoping most people want to do something about it."More >>

​"When the night falls, the legendary creature Chupacabra awakens, and he's ravenous. Devour as many goats as possible, jump over cliffs, evade your enemies and terrorize entire villages. Give life to the myth (or legend) of the Chupacabra and create panic."More >>

Seriously?

​Historically, the babes in video games have been, well, babes. Scantily dressed and kicking the other characters' teeth loose -- sometimes it's hard to pay attention to their mad fighting skillz when their boobs look 3D. But hey, isn't that one of the reasons you picked Anna Williams for this round of Tekken 6?

We know it's true. When the fighting game Wanted Dead or Alive came out, fanboys (and fangirls) everywhere were eager to finish the game so they could see the final cut scenes - the scenes in which the already half-naked female characters got completely naked and took....a shower? Yeah, that's right. A video game just wouldn't be complete without a shower scene. Duh. Well, we're celebrating the sublime, not the ridiculous, so you're not going to see Taki (and her nipples) from Soul Caliber or any of those other skank-ass hos. So, in honor of all the masturbatory fantasies that we, ahem, you've had over the years, here's Cultist's top digital hotties of all time.
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The modern day Dungeon & Dragons set.

​Long gone are the days when we would play kickball outside anticipating the ice cream truck's eerily familiar music. Those were replaced by days of huddling over our Nintendo trying to rescue the princess (Peach or Zelda, your choice). At least roaming pedophiles had a harder time snatching us up. Today, us older "kids" plug into our Xbox Live or Playstation Network accounts in anticipation of icing some fresh noobs.

The College of Business & Technology has found a way to combine the antisocial aspect of gaming with the über social pastime of playing outside with your friends by throwing Lanbash -- the college's interactive video gaming tournament.
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via Flickr Mustafa Sayed

Get your game on.

​According to the Entertainment Software Association, 40 percent of all gamers are female. Others put the figure at somewhere between 50 and 70 percent. That is probably the reason that Epic Games, creator of Gears of War, added three playable female characters to the not-yet-released next installment in the testosterone-fueled, supremely popular, first-person shooter (FPS) game.

Scheduled for release on September 20, 2011, Games of War 3 has four new characters in total: A new male character named Jace Stratton and three female characters, Samantha Byrne, Anya Stroud, and Bernadette Mataki. Female fans of fps games can now play using a character they can identify with. But girls aren't the only ones who have been clamoring for playable female characters.
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​We're hearing a lot of film news coming out of South by Southwest and it's not all about Jake Gyllenhaal peeing. And out of all the dispatches, the project we're most excited about is the new live action Super Mario Bros. movie. It's got everything: heart, grit, Luigi, the Princess, and trash-talking turtles.

Sure, a lot of it is rooted in nostalgia. Two notes of that theme song and we're back in the summer of 1985. We're wearing umbros and a hypercolor T-shirt. And we haven't left our playroom for hours, because there's always another power-up mushroom to gobble up on screen, always another koopa shell to slam into our foes. But we've grown up and eat significantly less magic mushrooms. Mario's grown up too, but some things never change. He must find the princess. Watch the trailer below:
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popculturegeek.com via flickr

What's cooler than a Tron lightcycle? Apparently a chair.

​Wasn't it enough that video game geeks across the planet nearly jizzed their pants with the announcement that Tron: Legacy, the much anticipated and long awaited (though only to them!) sequel to the 1980s flick, would be coming out this year? Apparently not. Now there is even more nerdy news. Tron: Legacy, the armchair, is going to be unveiled during Art Basel.

Yeah, you read that right. An armchair. Like Tron fans need any more incentive to sit on their asses all day long and play video games. Now they have an armchair that will match their goofiness, and make it even less appealing to go outside and interact with the rest of the world. Okay, okay, we're being a little harsh. This chair is actually pretty cool. It will be on display at the Cappellini/Poltrona Frau Miami Showroom during Art Basel, as an official satellite show of Design Miam/ 2010. There is an opening reception tonight from 7 to 10 p.m. Read on.
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Christopher Lambert's silver wig is invicible.

​After almost three decades of abysmally shitty console-to-screen adaptations, can we please agree that movies based on video games are a terrible, terrible, terrible idea? From Super Mario Bros. through Prince of Persia, the genre is nothing more than a giant, gaping suckhole of commercial and critical failure.

So why are video games such awful fodder for the silver screen? It makes no sense that moviemakers can turn other pieces of cultural trash (see Angels & Demons, Harry Potter, Transformers) into passably entertaining blockbusters while awesome games like Resident Evil become unwatchable widescreen abortions.

Whatever ... Here are five reasons why video game movies suck. More >>

This Hannah Montana game sucks ... obviously.

​Some video games just fucking suck. And it's no coincidence that the vast majority of shitty games are based on some other shitty media product -- a plastic Disney pop tart, some dumb movie, or softcore porn magazine -- that corporate America considers a sacred cash cow.

It's become routine procedure for greedy developers to rehash whatever pop culture crap they think will stick to the wall, so now every summer blockbuster comes complete with a half-baked game version for every single console on Planet Earth. The result is a bargain bin of disaster that fills faster than you can say Hannah Montana: The Video Game.

Check out the jump for the five worst video game tie-ins of all time.More >>