saddlebrown

Best of 2009

7 items in list • Created Dec 18, 2009

I just played through The Last of Us in one sitting. Was that smart? Of course not.

Jun 16, 2013

In the Quick Look for The Last of Us, @patrickklepek recommended not playing the game in huge chunks because it's so emotionally draining. That's nice and all, but I live with three girls who love to talk over movies and games, and I was not about to deal with that with The Last of Us, so the minute I knew none of them would be home, I did exactly that. I burned through the whole game in one 14...

Smoke & Mirrors: How BioShock Infinite Tricks You Into Liking Elizabeth

Apr 2, 2013

AI sidekicks in video games are pretty uniformly terrible. They get in your way, they're incredibly stupid, and they rarely add anything meaningful to the story. That's why escort missions in games are among the most hated, and why I wouldn't begrudge a player for assuming that BioShock Infinite would be little more than a ten-hour game about babysitting Elizabeth and making sure she doesn't ru...

The Many (Major) Missteps of Far Cry 3

Dec 22, 2012

I've been having a blast with Far Cry 3 , but no game is perfect and neither is this one. I already covered the game's more annoying minor issues, the ones that pop up frequently but aren't that bad, really. They don't significantly detract from the quality of the game, but they're there. You can work around them, but you can't avoid them. You deal with them. They're the kind of flaws you can l...

So I Bought A Vita

Dec 21, 2012

Yep. I saw this very quickly turning into a PSP situation for me, where I just kept putting it off and putting it off, waiting for it to drop in price to a comfortable level for so long that eventually I realized I'd may as well just wait for the Vita to come out. But Sony's strategy of continually giving you Vita versions of the PS3 games you buy and extending PlayStation Plus to Vita for no e...

The Many (Minor) Missteps of Far Cry 3

Dec 18, 2012

Guys, I'm hooked on Far Cry 3 . Seriously, somebody pull me away from this thing. I've beaten the story, cleared out all the outposts, and collected all the relics, letters, and memory cards. And now I'm considering starting it all over again because there's no one left to kill. But when you spend this much time with a game, you really start to notice all the minor flaws. After spending dozens...

I can't even tell what Dead Space 3's monsters are anymore.

Dec 15, 2012

Before Dead Space came out, I loved watching the developer diaries that came out because it showed just how much thought and care was being put into it. They'd talk about how the designs for the Necromorphs told a grotesque story of pain: bodies twisting, bones breaking, skin tearing. And that story was what made them so terrifying. You could see how the transformation happened just by looking...