I've been playing a lot of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive lately on the pc. Having not touched any CS in many years, it's very refreshing to come back to a multiplayer FPS game that's so barebones, for lack of a better term. What I mean by that is that there's no XP, weapon unlocks, loadouts, kill streaks or anything crazy. It's just you and your gun. I played a lot of old CS back in the day,...
While the curtain hasn't fallen with certainty yet for Vigil Games , it seems unlikely that they will be bought if no one at the auction was willing to bite. Vigil isn't the first studio to fall, and it certainly won't be the last, given the increasingly oppressive climate of AAA development. Budgets are ever-increasing, development teams get bigger, and publishers are only investing in sure-fi...
Spoiler warning! This is going to be something of a story analysis for The Walking Dead, so if you haven't finished the season yet, stop reading. Videogames and traditional storytelling seldom make for a good pairing. The best game stories are often the ones player created themselves by playing with the systems. The Walking Dead is more of an interactive story than a game in this sense, as play...
Like many of you, I bought Diablo 3 on day one and loved it, right until I reached Inferno difficulty. Getting frustrated by the game's difficulty, I swiftly put the game, and my level 60 Barbarian, down. I dabbled a bit with the other classes (got a Monk about midway through Nightmare on hardcore before dying unceremoniously) and stopped playing the game entirely for several months, along with...
Note: I will avoid Mass Effect 3 spoilers in this article, but I will link to them, so click at your own risk. If the Mass Effect 3 ending controversy has underlined one thing with a neon marker, it is the fact that there is a huge divide between the people writing about videogames and the people reading about them. This is something that's been on my mind for a while, but hasn't been so starkl...
Figured I'd share some of my experience playing the TOR beta today. If you want the short version: Much, much better than I expected. First off, and maybe this is redundant, but don't expect this game to reinvent the wheel. It's an MMO as we've come to know them post-WoW, meaning it's a lot like WoW. There's classes, hotkeys, mount vendors, reputation vendors, quest givers, auction houses, all...
Once again, street dates have been broken and I have obtained a copy of Skyrim for the Xbox 360! Having put like 14 hours into the game over 2 days I can with some authority say: This shit is awesome. Let me get something negative out of the way first: If you install this game to the hard drive, some textures will look messed up. So, just a word of warning, you might want to put up with the hor...
I got my copy today thanks to broken street dates. I played till chapter 10, which took about 4-5 hours. I like the parts where I'm not playing that game the most. Now more than ever the shooting feels outdated and unsatisfying and the incredibly rigid scripting isn't really doing it for me anymore. There's no tension because there's no question about the outcome. Maybe you die and have to do t...
My full review from here: http://www.giantbomb.com/dark-souls/61-32697/user-reviews/?review_id=21057, please rate :) Thanks Things are grim in Dark Souls. The undead roam the world, looking for warm bodies to tear asunder, and here you are, just trying to figure out why everything wants to kill you so badly. It does not take long for you to stop wondering about the why's and wherefores, because...
Did you guys see that new Hitman Absolution trailer? I felt super bad for those cops getting picked off one by one! They gave the cops more personality than 47 ever had in all of the previous Hitman games combined. But that's the nature of the character, right? He's a sneaky assassin and doesn't afraid of anything. As a fan of the previous games, Blood Money in particular, I'm pretty stoked tha...
I haven't blogged in ages, and I'm not publishing this on the forums for various reasons, so I'm hoping someone will read this! I've been a bit concerned with the quality of Giant Bomb's content recently. The issue came up when I heard that a bunch of people on NeoGAF were not reupping their subscription because they felt quality of original output on GB had dropped, and I can't really blame th...
http://www.giantbomb.com/bulletstorm/61-30088/user-reviews/?review_id=18715 Please leave any feedback, criticism is always welcome, and thanks for reading!
I played through Bulletstorm over the course of the last two days and some of the things I experienced are worth writing down. Join me as I navigate the labyrinthine passageways of my own thought process! The ad campaign for Bulletstorm was god-awful, I think we can all agree on that. The Epic people tried so incredibly hard to drive home the point that Bulletstorm is totally crazy and fun, and...
These are my favorite games of 2010, the ones I enjoyed the most and/or consider the best for various reasons. It was very hard to whittle this list down to just 10 and rest assured there were more games that I really enjoyed. Shout outs to games that JUST didn't make it: Civilization V, Red Dead Redemption, Just Cause 2, Rock Band 3 and Battlefield BC2. 1. Heavy Rain Hands-down the most emotio...
I live in the future (Europe), and this is what I have seen We're on a boat And sure enough... It's better down where it's wetter. Also, more crowded than ever. So I went over to Mount Hyjal and ran into a certain big dragon And his fiery friend OH GOD GIANT SQUID That's all for now. It's been a damn hoot, but it's 6:30 in the morning and I need sleeeeeeeeeeep
In the most egregious of ways. Yes my friends, in my 1,5 year long absence, some hooligan has hacked into my WoW account and sold a large number of my gear and probably stole a bunch of gold as well, though I have no idea how much I had. I log back on and find that almost all of my Protection (Paladin) gear is gone, so I went from being a pretty good tank to no tank at all. What I'm left with i...
Quoth Microsoft: New Browse Experience For 100 Percent Completed Games -- you spent a lot of time and effort earning those Achievements, so instead of only being able to view your first dozen completed games, we're giving you a new and better way to browse all of them. Are you crazy like me, and do you have over 20 S-Ranks ? You want to stroke your e-peen and pore over all of them? FUCK YES YOU...
Confession time: I am not enjoying this game very much. Partly this is my own fault, I really expected the world from this game, I was kind of setting myself up for another Arkham Asylum event, and this game is not that level of quality, not even close. So for one, my expectations were literally through the roof. This was my most anticipated game of this year. So what's the problem? Several. Bu...
Single-player DLC can be a tricky thing. In Bioshock 2's case, the story had a clear beginning and ending. Rather than just splicing (ha!) a new level in the middle of the campaign or making stand-alone challenge levels (like the recent Protector Trials), 2K has this time opted for a self-contained bit of narrative set in areas of Rapture that we haven't seen yet in the previous games. For 800...
I finished Red Dead Redemption a few days ago. Great game, fantastic ending, but it had some problems. My main issue lies with the narrative of the game. This doesn't just apply to Red Dead, I think it also goes for GTA 4 and games that take a similar approach to storytelling in a sandbox environment. Some mild Red Dead Redemption spoilers follow so it's probably best if you've completed the Me...
Have you ever thought to yourself "you know what would make Mario better? If I could play as Mega Man! Or Simon, from Castlevania! Or Samus! Or Contra guy!" Well, wonder no more friends, because this fantasy has become a reality. http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/super-mario-crossover# Mario Bros is so much better as Mega Man. I'm kind of freaking out but maybe it's all the sugar from the candy...
(go to http://www.gametrailers.com/episode/bonusround/402?ch=3 if the link doesn't work, part "the big move") Go to Chapter 3, "The Big Move". It's almost creepy! They even mention Zampella and West by name. Jason Ruben, former head of Naughty Dog, calls it extremely unlikely that any publisher would pick up just these two guys without a team behind them and fund their own triple-A game. Keep i...
Darksiders is a game that has a lot to prove. Its developer, Vigil Games, has no track record to speak of and the game liberally borrows elements from several different franchises. It could easily have turned into a hodge podge of unoriginal, poorly implemented ideas, yet it feels more unique, fresh and original than most mainstream releases these days. What instantly sets Darksiders apart from...
This isn't really a new idea: let's talk about old video games! But I thought it'd be nice to talk about older games that I'm still passionate about and maybe introduce some people to them. The Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2 Soul Reaver 2 is obviously the sequel to Soul Reaver. Both are part of the Legacy of Kain series, which started with Silicon Knights' Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen. Kain and Ra...
When I'm playing this game, I don't want to stop. There's something about the world, about how lived-in and real it feels, that pulls me in like nothing else. The first game had this effect on me as well, this one possibly does it more. There's something about the fiction, and the Dan Brown-esque stuff going on with the present-day stuff that really grips me, too, and I hate Dan Brown books. It...
What am I talking about? Crane Simulator 2009 , of course! What are you waiting for, go out and buy it! It's the best crane sim since 2008, what more can I say? PEACE
In a vain effort to attribute some relevance and artistic credit to everyone's favorite pastime (blogging, duh), I've decided to compare them to the crowning achievement of a totally different medium. These blogs are like the Orson Welles...es of games. I mean blogs. About games. Or something. 1) http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/video_game_king/blog/ Video Game King has mastered the art of blog...
Ah man, the Dreamcast. Cut down before its prime. To be fair, it was not a terrific console. It did not have THAT many great games. It made a fuckton of noise. The breakdown rate was pretty high. But it was just so far ahead of its time. It had online play, and I'm sure PSO influenced lots of developers. Shenmue was just amazingly ambitious. Soul Calibur was like... the perfect game, at the tim...
Time and time again, Blizzard manages to keep surprising and delighting me with their ongoing work to ensure World of Warcraft stays on top of the MMO pile. Just when you think they've abandoned the old world in favour of pumping out more and more endgame content to keep the hardcore happy, they announce the next expansion will only raise the level cap by 5 and will totally revamp the old world...
At the end of Demon's Souls introductory tutorial level, you die. You face a giant boss that shrugs off your attacks and kills you with a single hit. This perfectly encapsulates Demon's Souls. In a word, it is uncompromising. Unlike most games, the enemies in Demon's Souls aren't there for you to kill, they are there to kill you . In that, it is reminiscent of Ninja Gaiden, but it shares few ot...
Having just completed Bionic Commando and Fallout 3's The Pitt, I was left wanting by both. First off, Bionic Commando doesn't end. The game ends, but the story certainly doesn't, and I don't mean that in a cliffhanger sort of way, it just cuts off right in the middle, pretty much. The game introduces a mysterious character towards the end who vanishes and never shows up again, and makes a biza...
This is why we can't have nice things, on television. He's damned us for DECADES.
Day 2 has come and gone, and it was notable mostly because I actually talked to Jeff and Brad a little bit. Which is totally weird, being such a longtime 'follower' of these guys since the days of that website that shall not be named. I mean, it's no exaggeration to say that what these guys are doing is one of the biggest reasons I want to get into games journalism. So that was very cool. Here...
I am at E3. It's pretty awesome. Today was the first day, and I've already seen a bunch of awesome stuff. Also it's basically everything you probably expect it to be: noisy, busy, and huge. I only saw half of the stuff today, and there was still so much I didn't get to play. Wait times in general weren't as bad as I expected though, except for obvious stuff like ODST (which I didn't see yet). H...
Good I saw Watchmen yesterday. It's been a while since I've read the book, but I liked it well enough. It dragged in a few spots, but it was pretty much a panel-for-panel recreation, with a few ommissions and fewer changes. The actors were mostly well-cast, except I didn't like Ozymandias. Accent felt off, and I felt he should've been more muscly. He looks a bit wimpy, really. Man, Laurie (Silk...
I HAVE IT! FUCK YES!
That's right, European dating conventions, that's how I roll, being European and all. I felt like I needed to write something but couldn't be bothered to write a review. I've been playing a lot of Fable 2, again, getting the last achievements out of that game. I enjoyed the Knothole Island expansion. Look familiar? The quest itself was so-so, but the stuff you can get on the island is pretty co...
Earlier today, Square announced that Final Fantasy XIII, the company's flagship title, won't make it to the West until 2010, while the Japanese version is still on track for a 2009 release. Stephen Totilo wrote a piece that got me thinking, here . A 50-month gap between the start of this console generation and a Western release of Final Fantasy XIII. That is a long time. In general, all the maj...
As promised, my first review in blog format. Special thanks go to Matt Bodega for proof reading my review and helping me improve it! On we go: Much like one of Dead Space's necromorphs after meeting the business end of a plasma cutter, I am torn. I really want to love Dead Space for its brilliant graphics, brutally satisfying combat and creepy atmosphere. But I also want to berate it for its ge...
...Because no one seems to read the damn things otherwise, judging from the amount of comments they get! I feel very lucky, because my Super Turbo HD Remix got picked up by Brad for the community review roundup feature. That really feels very encouraging, as a wannabe games journalist/critic/whatever. So thanks Brad/Giant Bomb! As long as I'm blogging, might as well write about what's been keep...
In this blog I will be talking about the role of the player in a video game, illustrated by a very recent example: Prince of Persia. Don't read this blog if you haven't finished Prince of Persia. Wherein we discuss Prince of Persia, mostly the story. I found it a very interesting game. First off, you're put in the shoes of the Prince, who is a total enigma, and does not really open up much thro...
Here it is, the list you've all been waiting for, the list to end all lists! Or, maybe not. But in case anyone cares, here are the top 10 games of this year, as decided by me and me alone! Rather than just make a numbered list, I'm just going to name all 10 nominees and then "anounce" the winner. I feel numbered lists are pretty arbitrary, and so 1998. Let's get to it then, shall we? Fallout 3...
I don't write enough. So this is me, writing about whatever games I have been playing/buying the past week or so. Hang on, folks. I've bought a shitload of stuff. As if being knee-deep into World of Warcraft isn't enough to keep me occupied, my Rock Band obsession has reached new heights as well. I've purchased the ION drum kit, a $300 piece of equipment. It's an Ain't she a beauty? absolute jo...
This blog is about Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, which is both the stupidest game name ever and the best fighting game I have ever played. You see, I've never been all that big on fighting games. I've enjoyed the occasional bout of Soul Calibur and Dead or Alive, but the only fighting game I've ever really gotten into was Smash Bros Brawl, which God help you if Akuma fills up his spec...
See what I did there? So yeah, I played the L4D demo on the 360, and was decidedly unimpressed. I really want to like this game, and I'm not completely writing it off yet, but I was disappointed in several aspects of the game. Unsatisfying weapons. Combination of weak sounds, lack of great visual feedback when firing, I can't quite put my finger on exactly what it is, but the weapons "feel" und...
Because I've played a lot of games recently and because I don't feel like doing reviews for each individual one, I'm going to briefly review them in order, like so: Fable 2 Fable 2's brand of action role-playing is fun, if a bit shallow. The main quest is quite short and not particularly memorable, but there are loads of optional quests that flesh out the world and feel like a meaningful Light-...
I'm copy/pasting my review here as a blog because these seem to get more comments, and any feedback, positive or negative, is always appreciated :) Welcome to the Wasteland Fallout 3's Capital Wasteland is a cruel and inhospitable place, fraught with danger. A nuclear armageddon has eradicated all but the most basic signs that this was once the capital of the USA. You might see some rubble that...
A couple of people have asked me for my opinion on Web of Shadows, so here it is. I haven't finished the game yet, but I spent a good 4 hours or so playing it, and according to some I've seen most of what the game has to offer, which, in a nutshell, is fighting, lots and lots of fighting. And of course the requisite web-swinging. Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, Duel in the sky The good news is the...
Guitar Hero, eat your heart out? I guess? If you need any more proof that money will make anyone go totally batshit crazy, one needs look no further than Miyamoto's latest attempt at settling you Wii Music. This is the man who made all the Mario games that mattered, the man what brought you Zelda, the man whose games used to sell themselves. And, to be fair, the Wii does sell itself. But Wii ga...
I am pretty excited about this Star Wars RPG in development at Bioware. Bioware make pretty rad games, and I am definitely excited in seeing their take on the MMORPG. Will I try it out when it comes out in 201x? Almost certainly. Will I stop playing WoW? Hell, maybe I won't be playing WoW by then. I play WoW off and on anyway, so I guess it depends at which point in that cycle I am when it come...
Yes, I'm crazy. I've bought a console I already own which works fine, again. I had an old 20gb model 360 and between the lack of HDD space, which will become especially annoying once the fall update hits, and the lack of HDMI, I bit the bullet and got an Elite, as they just dropped in price. Completely out of the blue, it turns out I get a 50 euro rebate! Awesome, right? Elite for only 250 euro...
So I finished The Force Unleashed the other day, and got right around to reviewing it before people completely stop caring. After initially agreeing completely with Jeff's 3 star review, after an hour or 2 I got super into the game and it got a lot better, in my opinion. Read the review to find out why, I guess, and please comment if you, uh, have any comments. I will accept gushing praise, hat...
Ok, so all in the space of one day, I bought Crysis Warhead, Yakuza 2 and The Force Unleashed, and to top it off I still have Heavenly Sword on the backburner. And all of these games are pretty awesome. I am actually having a hard time deciding what to play. What a problem to have, eh? The crazy thing is that after some time with all these games, Yakuza 2, a PS2 game, possibly has me the most e...
Fancy that, an EA-published game on Steam! I was all set to go out and buy a boxed copy of Warhead come Thursday, but now I don't have to! And getting in on Steam is preferable than dealing with whatever DRM EA will force unto the game. I hope that sooner or later every publisher will add their catalogue to Steam. That would probably make me not buy a physical PC game ever again.
I wrote a Lost Odyssey review to flex my reviewing muscle. I finished that game about 2 or 3 weeks ago so it was still pretty fresh in my mind, so I thought hey, why not? As always, please comment, especially if you have any constructive criticism. Besides that I'm mostly waiting for whatever good game is out next, probably The Force Unleashed next week. Also, Yakuza 2 is out for the PS2 next w...
The devil you say! I just dug up this old picture, thought I'd post it. Isn't it awesome? Also yeah I know it's a shitty score, I think it was the first time I did that song on expert.
Finally did a review. Please leave a comment, especially if you have pointers about my writing. I'm trying to learn how to write real good-like, so any help is appreciated. On another note, that is what I've decided I want to do. I know it's corny as hell, but I've spent the last 2-3 years thinking about what is I want to do with my life, after finally passing high school, trying university (di...
Yeah, criticizing a game for having major bugs is well and all, but I shouldn't have reviewed it so harsly, a blog post would've sufficed. Especially since you can't edit/delete review, and I thought you could. Whoops. I was just kinda heartbroken over not being able to play such an awesome game with my friends. Hey, I'm learning this thing as I go along. Also I want my feed to update again bec...
Yeah, not that anyone probably cares, but I've been meaning to review Too Human, but I can't actually pull myself away from the game long enough to write a review. Here's a preview: I like it a lot more than most reviewers, but it's far from a perfect game. Besides that, still waiting on Castle Crashers to get fixed, because getting all psyched up to play some co-op with a buddy only for the ga...
So yeah, thanks to The Dark Knight I am now a complete Batnerd and have been getting into several Batman comics of late. After Batman Begins, I already read Year One and The Dark Knight Returns, but I decided I wanted more. I scoured the internets, looking for whichever books people say Batnoobs should read first, and I ended up with the following: The Long Halloween Dark Victory The Killing Jo...
Read my review to see why. It's a shame. Until the problems are patched, the game is simply not worth your money.
This here is why I haven't even bothered to buy a Wii, opting instead for a 360 and (mostly redundant, but MGS4 was too tempting) PS3. Call me when you start giving a shit about your old-school fanbase again, Nintendo.
Well, in the demo, anyway. I've been looking forward to The Force Unleashed for a loooong time, so to finally get the chance to play a portion of it definitely has me excited. I'm really expecting this game to be awesome, so I could be setting myself up for disappointment, but I've got a good feeling about this one. Also, because I am a PA whore, here is another relevant PA strip. Poor Bob Are...
So I finally got 1000/1000 in SC4. This is the second retail game I've maxed out the points on (first being Bioshock, 1100). And I am so done with that game. Farming Algol on floor 60 for money = not fun. But I just couldn't have 950/1000 with such an easy, if time-consuming, achievement left open. The completionist in me can't have that. Compare that to, say Halo 3, where I have 960/1000, but...
I'm the kind of guy that gets frustrated easily, but I never once felt frustrated in Braid, because I always felt a solution was right around the corner, and if I wasn't seeing it, it was simply my own fault, because the game gives you everything you need. And by the end of the game, I knew I was playing video game history. Amazing.
So as you you probably know if you've read any of posts lately, I've been thinking about Braid. A lot. And talking about it almost exclusively. And one thing that keeps popping up is that people say it's too expensive. They think, because Braid is 400 points, or 5 dollars, more than the average original XBLA game, that it's automatically too expensive. Let's dwell on this for a moment. Braid is...
I don't blog often. Because I rarely feel I have something to say that I really believe people need to read. But I have to spread the word, because I am worried that there aren't enough people out there who are aware of the brilliance of Braid. At first glance, Braid appears like a platformer with a unique art style and some time-based puzzle mechanics. And it is. But it's also so much more. It...
I'm already addicted to editing and adding things. Useful things, of course. Bummer that I have to wait until it's all moderated, but totally understandable, otherwise jerks would ruin the site. Also, someone put Zelda: Wand of Gamelon as the first Zelda game. What the hell . So I changed that right quick. Oh yeah, awesome.