The Ten Best Videogame Straplines

Any games journo worth his salt knows the power of a good strapline. Forget the flabby luxury of a lengthy critical analysis. The popularity of Twitter and the disheartening cult of text-speak indicates a trend towards concise sound-bites of information.

Print is struggling to maintain its relevance. Videogame reviews have had to evolve. Over the past decade straplines have become shorter, snappier and more succinct. Below are ten of the best.

‘Faith no more?’
Mirror’s Edge

It works because it captures the increasing sense of disillusionment with a game that was touted as the most visionary IP in years. As journos became better acquainted with the gameplay it soon became clear that Mirror’s Edge was not quite as seminal as they were led to believe. Bonus points too for eschewing the easier ‘Leap Of Faith’ cliché.

And it also works on a much simpler level. Faith is the name of the game’s female protagonist. Faith No More is a well known American alternative metal band. There’s an awful lot of info being conveyed in that innocent little strapline.

‘Heaven Cent’
50 Cent: Blood On The Sand An excellent example of the good old fashioned pun. Ultra concise and totally unambiguous – all the hallmarks of a great strapline. Hell, it’s better than the actual game.

‘Get your ass to mars’
Red Faction Guerrilla This one has it all: the mention of Mars; the funky pop culture reference; the indication that, yes, the game is worthy of your attention. It’s a micro review that tells you exactly what you need to know.

‘Dead Mobs And Boomsticks’
Left 4 Dead

Straight up brilliant. A riff on the Disney musical Bedknobs And Broomsticks. It’s cheeky, funny and a totally accurate description of the game.

‘Put annelid on it (sigh)’

Worms Armageddon

An atrocious pun, but one that’ll make you smile as well as groan. The bracketed ‘sigh’ pre-empts our exasperated response. The journo responsible was no doubt sniggering to himself as he pictured the pained grimaces on reader’s faces.

‘Time to call Rentokill’
A Bug’s Life This strapline is a call to arms - it’s time we rid the world of the cancerous movie tie-in by any means necessary! The reader is left under no illusion as to what the reviewer thinks of this game.

‘He chutes! He soars!’
Just Cause 2 Poetic, triumphant, and bang on the money.

‘Political Broadcasts not included’
Mario Party With seven sequels worth of sugar coated mini games, Mario Party is far from the political powerhouse alluded to in the strapline. It’s in the top ten because it lingers in the memory (whether one wants it to or not). It’s now impossible for me to look at Mario Party without thinking of Benito Mussolini.

‘Slam-dunk the street punks’
NBA Street No prizes for guessing what this one’s about. And it rhymes too!

‘All sewn up?’
LittleBigPlanet LittleBigPlanet is a living, organic tapestry, made not of pixels or polygons, but of playroom detritus that has a texture so convincing you want to reach into the screen and touch it. The sewing reference perfectly encapsulates sackboy’s handmade look and the game’s patchwork aesthetic.

Better still is the cynical tone of the question – it’s a clever nod to the gratuitous level of hype the game managed to generate before its release. We all knew, long before the first reviews were published, that LittleBigPlanet would score a perfect 10 across the board. And we were right. All sewn up? All stitched up more like.

How to create the perfect strapline