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'Go Vacation' Is 'Sports Resort' All Grown Up

Add Go Vacation to the ranks of social games that bring face-to-face interactions into a virtual world. Its premise is simple: the game takes you to a virtual resort where you can participate in a variety of mini-games thinly disguised as sports and recreational activities.

                                      
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PopMatters is moving to WordPress. We will publish a few essays daily while we develop the new site. We hope the beta will be up sometime late next week.

Add Go Vacation to the ranks of social games that bring face-to-face interactions into a virtual world. Its premise is simple: the game takes you to a virtual resort where you can participate in a variety of mini-games thinly disguised as sports and recreational activities.

Nintendo might do well to remember that we, as gamers, crave a challenge every once in a while.

The reality is that both American Idol and karaoke are conceptually voyeuristic endeavors for the audience. But for the participants, the competitiveness of a contest like American Idol doesn't necessarily translate.

New releases for the week of 2009-03-16...

Space shooters: where the art is in the execution.

This simulation of animal behavior may further the Sim-franchise's interests in simulating human behavior.

While plenty of games have been very clearly inspired by Super Mario 64, SPRay might be the first that's drawn so directly from the underrated Super Mario Sunshine.

If you really like the experience of chopping a lot, you're gonna love Iron Chef America: Supreme Cuisine.

For all the innovation in Mushroom Men, it is not applied in a way that suitably overcomes the inherent problems of the genre.

Many of the characters in Judgment seem like caricatures of themselves, their designs clearly influenced a bit too much by Soul Calibur.

Skate It stands as one of most realistic skateboarding games ever made while maintaining the playability and casual attitude of its predecessors.

What truly shines in Quantum of Solace is the single player mode, not the multiplayer that the series has become notorious for.

For all intents and purposes, Art Style: Rotohex is Tetris with triangles.

For a player wanting a good laugh, Sam & Max delivers.

A look at the latest iteration of Tetris via Nintendo's WiiWare.

Where Miyamoto says you're creating music, you're actually just creating varying rhythms, stringing together eighth and sixteenth notes.

How does one evaluate the challenge of a game that features an entirely unique play style?

A Dramatization of the Console War of 2008.

de Blob is imbued with the same sort of grinding, childlike Zen that Katamari Damacy perfected.

Wario Land: Shake It! may be the best post-modern video game ever.

With the baseball postseason in full swing, Mario Super Sluggers steps up to the plate with a typically psychedelic take on America's pastime -- and hits an RBI triple.

Carnival games on the Wii is a great idea whose time has come -- and apparently gone -- without any developer truly realizing the potential of the concept.

As a movie, Space Chimps tanked pretty hard. As a videogame, though, it's got a lot going for it.

Order Up! takes the simulator aspects of a game like Cooking Mama and adds a broader frame and purpose.

L.B. Jeffries offers his experiences with eight weeks of Wii Fit training.

Opoona fails as a character because he's a weird little bulbous alien with a pom-pom on his head named Opoona.

There's a psychological advantage to a game that allows you to play as yourself, or at least as someone created by yourself, as opposed to one that simply offers someone who looks a little like you.

Poor Gordon has seen better days.

The different weights of blocks and projectiles alike are so well realized, they are almost tactile.

Seeing Sonic and Mario alongside each other in the same game is still a synapse fryer along the lines of seeing Mickey Mouse guest star as a cadaver on CSI. Something about it just...ain't...right.

"Mama Said Knock You Out" becomes a whole different song when sung by a jug band.

Even though many of the core game mechanics have not changed a jot from Melee, it's still almost impossible to return to the older game after seeing what the newer stages were capable of.

Arun Subramanian takes a look at the recent Wii release of the Dreamcast/arcade fishing sim Sega Bass Fishing.

Mario Kart Wii has reached critical mass levels of madcappery.