VOA (Vote Our Adventure) is the working title for this tale until I settle on what I wish to call it. It’s been a while since we’ve done one of these, but with a little game new release dry-spell coming up, I figure now is as good a time as any to get back into […]

VOA (Vote Our Adventure) is the working title for this tale until I settle on what I wish to call it. It’s been a while since we’ve done one of these, but with a little game new release dry-spell coming up, I figure now is as good a time as any to get back into […]

“Oh boy, another zombie survival MMO!” said nobody ever. Look, I’ve held onto enjoyment of zombie-based titles a long longer than most people, but even I’m starting to get a little fatigued with so many of them continuing to pop up. You know what, though? Duck it. I actually don’t care if SOE wants to […]

Goat Simulator is an interesting “game.” I put that in quotes because, really, it’s a physics demo wrapped up in a ton of hilarious (an developer-approved) bugs and glitches. It’s popularity is just about entirely viral, and not critical. It works because just the right elements came together. It’s entertaining, don’t get me wrong, but […]

This is basically the TL;DR version of Phil Spencer’s first interview as Head of Xbox over at Microsoft. But it’s also how I wish it had gone. Microsoft started this console generation on their back foot thanks to muddy and uncoordinated PR, and for the next year or two they’ll be working against their own […]

I had a lively discussion with a couple of readers concerning Elder Scrolls Online this week. Long story short, one of them was so convinced of ESO’s merits as an MMO, that he offered to put his money where his mouth was. If I agreed to play the game to at least level 20, he’d […]

I tweeted about this game a while back when I saw a teaser trailer for it. It’s now up on Kickstarter where you can help make it happen. Skylanders/Infinity for grown-ups? Yes please.

In the interest of full disclosure, I did not purchase or play Elder Scrolls Online at launch. I played in two of the beta/stress test weekends. My first impression of the game was… less-than-favorable. I wouldn’t say I hated it, but certainly didn’t fall in love. I decided to give it another chance a couple […]

I’ve been enjoying inFAMOUS: Second Son. It is, of course, exactly as transparent with their “morality” choices as I’d suspected, but it’s a fun game regardless. And it’s a gorgeous game. It really feels like we’re starting to see what the PS4 will be capable with in this title. Beautiful particle effects, zipping down the […]

I love George R. R. Martin. I love his work, and he’s a fantastic person. I’ve had the pleasure of chatting with him on a few occasions… he first emailed me after he saw this strip, and I was honored to interview him on a panel at a convention we both did at Harvard. He’s […]

I’ve touched before on my dislike for the mechanic in games that claim to offer you choice, but then tie up other elements into those options that almost remove the choice entirely. The inFamous series is perhaps one of the most transparent, but Bioware does it often as well. What they really boil down to […]

I don’t think I’m very good at Titanfall. Granted, I’ve only played three matches thus far… in the video game hierarchy, Dark Souls 2 is king, and nearly all of my attention has been focused on that. With Infamous: Second Son out later this week, Titanfall is still in for a bit of a struggle […]

One of my favorite aspects of the Demon’s/Dark Souls games is how obfuscated most of the mechanics are. Tooltips and item descriptions often only give you the most cursory explanation, and unless you hit the wikis for everything, the entire game is an excersize in experimentation and discovery. Three games in now, I know well […]

I hate it when RPGs pull the “enemies level up with your character” crap. I hated it in Oblivion. It was tolerable in Skyrim because it was less obvious, and done in a crafty way. I’m not quite sure how extensive it is in Diablo 3 yet, I just happened to notice it in the […]

Path of Exile’s first mini expansion launches later today. Diablo 3’s expansion launches in a few weeks. If Torchlight 2 could surprise us with some new content before the end of the month, we’d have the action RPG trifecta. A buddy and I have been playing a bunch of Path of Exile the last few […]

AC4 mostly got kicked to the sidelines during my busy holiday season, but recently I’ve started picking it up again here and there (in no small part due to my enjoyment of Black Sails). I do still wish that it wasn’t an Assassin’s Creed game at all… that is to say, I wish it was […]

Twitch Plays Pokemon has been incredibly interesting to watch over the past week. Not for any consecutive stretch, of course… that just gets maddening. But checking in on it periodically to see what kind of progress has been made is remarkable. Taking inputs from the chat, thousands and thousands of Twitch viewers are trying to […]

I really dig the Thief series… but I’ve been very skeptical of the new Thief for most of the past few years since it was announced (As Thief 4… or “Thi4f.” Yuck.). There has been such a gap between games… ten years now since ‘Deadly Shadows’, that I worried the tone of the game would […]

The Elder Scrolls Online is currently in closed beta… they’re stress testing, but there is still an NDA in place, so I can’t really talk about whether I’m in it, or what I think of it. Instead, let me tell you about these chocolate chip cookies I tried. I’ve had chocolate chip cookies before, and […]

I’ve dabbled a little bit in the EQNext Alpha here and there since it opened last weekend… not much because, due to the volatile nature of an alpha test, things keep getting reset. Par for the course, but it makes me wary about investing too much time into detail building, knowing that nothing will last […]

While patiently waiting for Wildstar to hurry up and launch, a friend and I have taken up residence in DC Universe Online. I’d dabbled in it a couple of times over the past three years… at launch, and then again after they added the Hard Light powerset to the game. But I’d always done so […]

Apparently I’m not the only one who saw a whole lot of Assassin’s Creed in the trailer for Shadows of Mordor… Curious to see how this plays out.

SUMO just celebrated their ten-year anniversary. That’s a lotta beanbags! Congrats guys! You can get 25% off some of their chairs, too.

Shadows of Mordor looks interesting. Had I not seen the title of the video before I loaded it, I might have been easily convinced I was looking at footage of a new Assassin’s Creed game. I haven’t decided if that’s a compliment or not. I like Assassin’s Creed (again, anyway), but we have an Assassin’s […]