danielkempster's Articles

Hey folks. If, indeed there are still any folks around to see this. Don't mind me. I'm just stopping by to turn off the metaphorical lights before I leave this little corner of the internet for good. I've spent the last few days archiving all these old blog posts (yep, all four-hundred-plus of them) for my own reference, since I don't trust they'll be available here for too much longer. I start...

Hey there folks. It's been a while. Almost a year, in fact. I know it's a bit played out to roll out the ol' "where does the time go?" line, but I'm not sure what else to say. I've thought about throwing something up here a couple of times these past few months, but now feels like the right time to knuckle down and actually do it. This is going to be pretty scattershot, but I think it's better...

Hello and welcome back to another instalment of The Very Best, Like No One Ever Was, a series of blogs chronicling my efforts to complete an "ultimate playthrough" of the first generation of Pokémon games. If you're curious about what that entails, I'd recommend reading the introductory blog for this series , which outlines the different ways I'll be playing each of the three games in order to...

Hey folks. Sorry things have been a little quiet around here recently. For the handful of you waiting for the next instalment of The Very Best, Like No One Ever Was, I can confirm that I've started working on it and will hopefully get it finished and posted at some point over the long Easter weekend. I'm also sorry for not being able to take part in this year's Community Endurance Run, but I've...

Gen 9 is coming, baby! There's been a lot of buzz around the Pokémon franchise in recent months. After last year's remakes of Diamond and Pearl turned out to be a little less Brilliant and Shining than people were hoping for, public opinion seems to have U-turned with the release of Legends: Arceus in January and the announcement of the ninth generation of games, Scarlet and Violet , on Pokémon...

It's little wonder that I've found myself hankering after a classic Grand Theft Auto experience recently. News on the release of (and subsequent negative reaction to) the remastered " Definitive Edition " of the trilogy has been ubiquitous in the games press, reigniting a desire within me to return to the games that caused me to fall in love with the franchise almost two decades ago. They are o...

Oddworld has been one of my low-key favourite video game franchises for over twenty years. My first exposure to the series was all the way back in the year 2000, when I spotted a copy of Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus in a local newsagent for the very reasonable price of £9.99 and managed to convince my mother to give me an advance on my pocket money so I could purchase it there and then. Its 2D prese...

Hey folks, Daniel here with some timely (and some not-so-timely) musings on a few things Final Fantasy . The Final Fantasy franchise has once again become a dominant force in my entertainment consumption this year, arguably for the first time since I put a bow on Enduring Final Fantasy VII all the way back in 2013 (and as a side-note, how the heck was that almost eight years ago?). Since the be...

Hey there folks. It's been a while, hasn't it? I hope you're all doing well, staying safe, and getting vaccinated if and when you're able. For anyone reading this who might be interested, I am, for the most part, pretty good. While a lot of things going on in my life are much the same, there have been a few changes since my last blog post. Perhaps the biggest development is that I'm now engaged...

This is not a review. This is a reclamation. Last month I played Dead Space for the first time since the spring of 2009. It's a game that I have long held as one of my all-time favourites, a viscerally terrifying third-person action-horror title that pays homage to the likes of Ridley Scott's Alien while building upon the winning formula of the seminal Resident Evil 4 . Dead Space is often the...

Welcome, gentlemen and players, to the third instalment of Trashes to Ashes, a serial blog following my player avatar through the Career mode of Cricket 19 , starting at the bottom in club cricket and working all the way up to the most prestigious competition in the sport - the Ashes test series between England and Australia. For full details on the scope and aims of this series, be sure to che...

Welcome, gentlemen and players, to the second instalment of Trashes to Ashes, a serial blog following my player avatar through the Career mode of Cricket 19 , starting at the bottom in club cricket and working all the way up to the most prestigious competition in the sport - the Ashes test series between England and Australia. For full details on the scope and aims of this series, be sure to ch...

Welcome, gentlemen and players, to the inaugural instalment of Trashes to Ashes - a serial blog chronicling one man's progress through the trials and tribulations of Cricket 19 's extensive Career mode. I've been playing a lot of Cricket 19 so far this summer, the latest offering from Big Ant Studios (the developers responsible for Don Bradman Cricket '14 , and by extension one of this site's m...

We're now almost halfway through 2020. In the past five months I've beaten ten video games (and put an undisclosed amount of time into an eleventh). That's precisely halfway to my personal goal of twenty games beaten this year. This fact has got me asking the question: which ten games would I most like to clear from my backlog in the seven remaining months of the year? Inspired by these thought...

Like a lot of other people on planet Earth, I've spent the last two months attempting to escape the predicaments of the real world by living out an alternative existence in the world of Animal Crossing: New Horizons . It's nice to have somewhere I can go for an hour or so each day and forget about the stresses of 2020 thus far. I can hang out with other residents without having to worry about s...

I like Final Fantasy VII . To be honest, that statement probably goes without saying. FFVII played an integral part in how I earned my blogging crust on this website all those years ago, with my Enduring Final Fantasy VII series representing the biggest commitment I've made to any writing project I've ever pursued. That series, an epic undertaking that spanned thirty-five entries across almost...

Hey there folks. Just to clarify, this blog was originally posted on a different site in February 2020. In the interest of keeping all my games-focused writing in one place, I've decided to copy it over to my Giant Bomb blog. I've spent the last few weeks playing through Marvel's Spider-Man on the PlayStation 4 . As far as open-world action games go, it's up there as one of the very best I've p...

Hey there folks. Just to clarify, this blog was originally posted on a different site in January 2020. In the interest of keeping all my games-focused writing in one place, I've decided to copy it over to my Giant Bomb blog. The Portal Will Open in Three... Two... One... I'm not sure there's another video game whose first ninety seconds are as perfect as Portal 's. Fading from black, the player...

Hey folks. Long time no chat. Dan here, breaking my hiatus from the blogosphere to announce my participation in this year's Giant Bomb Community Endurance Run . Now in its tenth year, the Giant Bomb Community Endurance Run is a community-driven initiative spearheaded by Giant Bomb moderator @thatpinguino , wherein members of this incredible online community stream all manner of video games over...

Hey there folks, and welcome to the first instalment in a series of blogs I'm calling 'Eleven Years of Xbox'. It's intended to be a celebration of the time I've spent within the Microsoft gaming ecosystem, having decided earlier this year to part ways with my Xbox consoles and streamline my video game collection. You can read more about it in the introduction to this series by following this li...

Hey there folks. It's been a while since I last put anything up here. I hope this blog finds everyone well (if, indeed, it finds anyone at all). I had originally hoped to start up something away from Giant Bomb, for reasons I outlined in my last proper blog post way back in October . Unfortunately that hasn't come to fruition yet, with various other life-related commitments getting in the way,...

Hey there folks. Daniel here, breaking my blogging silence to make a special announcement. As some of you will know, the Giant Bomb Community Endurance Run is almost upon us once again. Now in its ninth year, the GBCER sees members of the Giant Bomb community taking on incredible video game challenges and livestreaming them in a bid to raise money for charity. Once again this year, the charity...

Hey there folks. Daniel here, with a bit of slightly sombre news. After a few weeks of deliberation, I've decided to take a step back from this space and cut down on my Giant Bomb blogging activity. I have a few reasons for reaching this decision. First and foremost, I'm getting old, folks. Ten years ago, when this site first launched, I was eighteen, between the end of my part-time job and the...

...well, that planned return to the blogosphere went swimmingly, didn't it? Hey there folks. I know I said that I'd be returning to regular blogging in earnest from last month , and that was initially my intention, but I ended up getting diverted from that plan for a couple of reasons. One of them was family related, and while I can't go into any great detail on that front, I can at least say t...

Hey there folks. How are you all doing? It's been a little while, hasn't it? Some of you may be wondering where I've been recently, to which the answer is definitely "around", albeit in a much more passive sense these days. Fellow inhabitants of the blogosphere might even have noticed that my previous entry (promoting my contribution to last month's Giant Bomb Community Endurance Run) put me at...

Hey there folks. A few days ago I posted a blog asking people to vote on potential ideas for my contribution to the upcoming Giant Bomb Community Endurance Run VIII . If you're unfamiliar with the GBCER, it's a fantastic community initiative that raises funds for Pencils of Promise , a charity dedicated to providing education to children in developing countries. First and foremost, thanks to th...

For the kids! It's that time of year again. The days are getting longer, the weather is improving, and the Giant Bomb Community Endurance Run is just around the corner. I'm sure most of you know the drill by now, but just in case you don't, the GBCER is a community-led charity fundraising initiative. Now in its eighth year, members of the Giant Bomb community take to the interwebs to livestream...

While everyone else plays this... As a video game enthusiast who likes to keep up with developments in the industry while predominantly playing old games, I'm very familiar with walking the interesting line between following the latest zeitgeists while not actively participating them. The most recent release to have captured my attention from a distance is the excitement surrounding Monster Hun...

Hey there folks, and welcome to my first blog post of 2018 - a belated 'Happy New Year' to one and all is in order, I guess. I had planned to put something out there a lot sooner than this. I'd been thinking about jotting down a list of priorities for 2018, both gaming and otherwise, but the moment has probably passed for such a blog to be relevant at this point. I'd also intended to resume my...

Hey there folks, and welcome to the seventh and final part of My End of 2017 Awards, my own personal take on the Game of the Year tradition. If you're just joining the festivities at this point, then you've missed a whole host of individual awards distributed over the last week. If you're interested in these tailored acknowledgements of the best and worst aspects of every game I played this yea...

A good day to all you duders, and a hearty welcome to the sixth and penultimate part of My End of 2017 Awards. Every year I put together these awards as a tribute to the games I've played over the last twelve months, honouring the good and the bad with a series of novelty individual accolades before revealing my top ten. If you're new to these awards, if you've missed any of the previous instal...

Hey there everyone, and welcome to the fifth part of My End of 2017 Awards, the Game of the Year-styled awards ceremony that just keeps on giving, even when everyone else has had enough. Every year I pay tribute to what I've played by coming up with some novelty gongs as well as a definitive top ten at the end of it all. If you're new to My End of 2017 Awards, if you've missed any of the previo...

Bon soir mes amis, and welcome to the fourth part of My End of 2017 Awards, my personal answer to the Game of the Year-oriented questions that Giant Bomb and other gaming communities find themselves asking at this time of year. If you're boarding this awards train halfway through the journey, or looking back from the lofty heights of 2018 and want to peruse any other part of this monstrous cere...

G'day mates, and welcome to the third part of My End of 2017 Awards, my personal answer to the Game of the Year-oriented questions that Giant Bomb and other gaming communities find themselves asking at this time of year. If you're just joining us and missed the previous two parts of these awards, or you're joining this party after the fact and want to peruse any other part of this monstrous cer...

Welcome one and all to the second part of My End of 2017 Awards, my personal answer to the Game of the Year-oriented questions that Giant Bomb and other gaming communities find themselves asking at this time of year. If you missed the first part of these awards, or you're joining this party after the fact and want to peruse any other part of this monstrous ceremony, then I'll be updating the ta...

Merry Christmas folks, and welcome to the inaugural chapter of My End of 2017 Awards. As in previous years, I present these multi-part awards celebrating the games that I've played over the course of the previous twelve months, working towards one of those Top Ten Games of the Year lists that seem to be all the rage around these parts this time of year. This year has been unparalleled for me in...

Hey there folks and welcome to another instalment of An Hour With..., my blog feature wherein I choose a random game from my enormous backlog and spend sixty minutes with it to determine whether I should PLAY it to completion, or PASS on the experience. The overarching aim of this feature is to help me whittle down my immense Pile of Shame by giving me some formative time with each title rather...

"What's this? Two think-piece blogs in less than a week? Does this mean danielkempster is finally getting back to regular blog writing?", I hear you cry. I wish I could dub this some kind of triumphant return to the blogosphere, with updates hitting at regular intervals from now on, but that isn't the case. Truth is, the stars have just aligned over these past few days - I've been playing games...

I'm playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword at the moment. It's a game that I've been meaning to get around to for quite some time. Initially I couldn't play it because I bought the game long before buying a console to play it on (yep, I may well have been the only person in existence not to own a Nintendo Wii in the winter of 2011). When I finally picked up a second-hand Wii a couple of yea...

Hey there folks and welcome to another instalment of An Hour With..., my blog feature wherein I choose a random game from my enormous backlog and spend sixty minutes with it to determine whether I should PLAY it to completion, or PASS on the experience. The overarching aim of this feature is to help me whittle down my immense Pile of Shame by giving me some formative time with each title rather...

Hey there folks and welcome to another instalment of An Hour With..., my blog feature wherein I choose a random game from my enormous backlog and spend sixty minutes with it to determine whether I should PLAY it to completion, or PASS on the experience. The overarching aim of this feature is to help me whittle down my immense Pile of Shame by giving me some formative time with each title rather...

Hey there folks and welcome to another instalment of An Hour With..., my still relatively new blog feature wherein I choose a random game from my enormous backlog and spend sixty minutes with it to determine whether I should PLAY it to completion, or PASS on the experience. The overarching aim of this feature is to help me whittle down my immense Pile of Shame by giving me some formative time w...

Hey there folks and welcome to another instalment of An Hour With..., my new blog feature wherein I choose a random game from my enormous backlog and spend sixty minutes with it to determine whether I should PLAY it to completion, or PASS on the experience. The overarching aim of this feature is to help me whittle down my immense Pile of Shame by giving me some formative time with each title ra...

Hey there folks and welcome to another instalment of An Hour With..., my still relatively new blog feature wherein I choose a random game from my enormous backlog and spend sixty minutes with it to determine whether I should PLAY it to completion, or PASS on the experience. The overarching aim of this feature is to help me whittle down my immense Pile of Shame by giving me some formative time w...

Hey there folks, and welcome at last to the inaugural instalment of An Hour With..., the new blog feature that I teased last month wherein I pick a game at random from my backlog, play it for sixty minutes, and then write about my experience with it. For a more thorough explanation of what this series is, I'd recommend checking out my last blog in which I introduced the premise. For the first A...

Three months is a weird amount of time. It somehow manages to be a long time and a short time simultaneously. Case in point - it's been three months since my last proper blog entry . On the one hand, that's a hell of a long time to leave a blog dormant. On the other, I can remember writing that blog post just like it was yesterday. A lot has happened in those three months, but ultimately not a...

As I write this, there are just under twelve hours remaining until I start playing my part in this year's Giant Bomb Community Endurance Run . In case you missed my announcement a couple of weeks ago, I'll be attempting a Randomizer Nuzlocke run of Pokémon Gold . The aim is to complete everything up to the first round of Elite Four and Champion battles with a self-imposed Nuzlocke ruleset (only...

Hey folks, and welcome to the latest instalment of the Ba- ...hold on, this isn't the Backlogbook. What's happened here? To tell the truth, it's been pretty difficult finding the time and motivation to put together the Backlogbook blogs on even a semi-regular basis recently. For that reason, I'm going to put that feature on hiatus for a little while, while I work out how best to present it in a...

Blogging can be a frustrating game sometimes. You spend four days pouring your essence into a piece of writing, only for your computer to spontaneously restart while installing an update, casting every word you've written into the ether, never to be seen again. So it was a couple of weeks ago, when I put my laptop down vowing to make some finishing touches to my Week Ten edition of the Backlogb...

Last Week - Week Six (13/02/2017) Next Week - Week Ten (coming soon) Hey there folks, and welcome to a massively overdue edition of the Backlogbook, my usually-weekly breakdown of what I've been playing and what I'll be slaying in a bid to bring my enormous Pile of Shame down below two hundred titles by the end of the year. I say "usually weekly" because I haven't been able to find the time to...

Last Week - Week Five (06/02/2017) Next Week - Weeks Seven, Eight and Nine (20/02/2017, 27/02/2017 and 06/03/2017) Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's this week's instalment of the Backlogbook! Once again I must apologise for the delay in getting this out, but the start of this week has been a little busier than usual, what with dental appointments and Valentine's day preparations encroaching...

Hey there folks, and welcome back to my Pokémon Sun Nuzlocke Challenge. Apologies for not getting round to this last weekend, but real life managed to get in the way and prevent me from playing enough of the latest Pokémon game to warrant an entire blog's worth of content. Luckily that hasn't been the case this week, and I'm back with another chapter of my journey across the Alola region on the...

Last Week - Week Four (30/01/2017) Next Week - Week Six (13/02/2017) G'day folks, and welcome to the first Backlogbook entry of February. Apologies for the slight delay in getting this one out, but my usual Monday slot for writing these things was upset by some real-life happenings, and this is the first chance I've had to make amends for slipping off-schedule. Given this is the fifth one of th...

Last Week - Week Three (23/01/2017) Next Week - Week Five (06/02/2017) It's Monday, and that can mean only one thing - time for me to sit down and write another one of these Backlogbook blog entries! For those not in the know, the Backlogbook is a weekly serial blog I've committed to writing throughout 2017, documenting my efforts to whittle down my Pile of Shame . This week sees more thoughts...

Hey folks, and welcome to the sixth chapter of my Pokémon Sun Nuzlocke Challenge, a series of blogs chronicling my efforts to play through the latest release in the popular Pokémon series with a self-imposed Nuzlocke ruleset and no idea what to expect around every corner. If you're new to the series, or you've missed any of the previous chapters, you can find them linked in the handy-dandy tabl...

Last Week - Week Two (16/01/2017) Next Week - Week Four (30/01/2017) Happy Monday, duders, and welcome to the latest instalment of The Backlogbook, my weekly video game progress breakdown. If you're not familiar with the format by now then allow me to enlighten you. The Backlogbook is split into two main parts - This Week's Log , which goes into some detail on the game's I've been playing throu...

Hey there folks, and welcome to the fifth chapter of my Pokémon Sun Nuzlocke Challenge, a series of blogs documenting my efforts to play through the latest generation of Pokémon with a self-imposed Nuzlocke ruleset. If none of that makes any sense to you, I'd advise you to start reading this series from the beginning - Chapter One is here , Chapter Two is here , Chapter Three is here , and Chap...

Last Week - Week One (09/01/2017) Next Week - Week Three (23/01/2017) Hi there folks, and welcome to the sophomore instalment of The Backlogbook, a weekly blogging feature in which I chronicle my ongoing efforts to whittle down my enormous Pile of Shame from an unconquerable mountain into something slightly more surmountable. Last week, when I posted my first one of these, I had intended to put...

Last Week - No Entry Available Next Week - Week Two (16/01/17) Hey there folks, and welcome to a new blog initiative I'm starting up here on Giant Bomb. Apparently one roughly-weekly serial blogging project isn't taxing enough for my diminished writing schedule, and in a positively @Mento -esque maneouvre, I've taken on a second regular write-up that I've decided to dub 'the Backlogbook' . It's...

Hi there guys, and welcome to the fourth chapter of my Pokémon Sun Nuzlocke Challenge, an ongoing series of blogs documenting my efforts to play through the latest instalment in the Pokémon franchise with the added difficulty and dynamism of the self-imposed Nuzlocke ruleset. Before this properly gets underway, I feel the need to acknowledge that this is not only my first blog of 2017, but also...

Hey folks, and welcome to what's likely to be my final blog of 2016 (unless by some miracle I manage to get the next chapter of the Pokémon Sun Nuzlocke Challenge written before midnight). It's been a really weird year for me in terms of video games. It's a year in which I played significantly less games than I usually do - my total of completed games for 2016 sits at just twelve titles, less t...

Hey folks, and welcome to the third part of my Pokémon Sun Nuzlocke Challenge, a series of blogs documenting my efforts to play through the latest Pokémon game with a set of self-imposed rules to make the experience harder and more unique. Apologies for the delay in getting this one up, but real-life stuff got in the way last weekend, preventing me from writing this until now. If you're not fam...

Hey there folks, and welcome to the second chapter of my Pokémon Sun Nuzlocke Challenge, a weekly serial blog chronicling my attempt to play blind through the latest generation of Pokémon with a self-imposed Nuzlocke ruleset. If you haven't seen one of these blogs before, or you're not familiar with the concept of a Nuzlocke challenge, I implore to read last week's inaugural entry before you ge...

Hey there folks, and welcome to a very special Epilogue edition of 'Gotta Catch 'Em All!', the serial blog documenting my efforts to obtain a complete living National Pokédex . If you haven't seen any of these posts before, you can find the first part here , the second and third parts here , the fourth and fifth parts here , and the sixth and seventh parts here . I had planned for the previous...

Hey folks, and welcome to the first chapter of my Pokémon Sun Nuzlocke Challenge. This is the first instalment of what will become a weekly serial blog here on Giant Bomb, documenting my efforts to play through the brand new generation of Pokémon , completely blind and with the added restrictions and increased difficulty of the self-imposed 'Nuzlocke' ruleset. I've never played a blind Nuzlocke...

Hey folks, and welcome to the final instalment of "Gotta Catch 'Em All!", a mini-series of blogs documenting my efforts to amass a complete living National Pokédex before the UK release of Pokémon Sun and Moon this Wednesday. If you've missed any of the previous entries in this little series, you can find the first part here , the second and third parts here , and the fourth and fifth parts her...

Hey folks, and welcome to the third instalment of "Gotta Catch 'Em All!", the serial blog chronicling my efforts to amass a complete living National Pokédex before the release of Pokémon Sun and Moon . If you've missed the previous entries in this series, then you can find the first part here and the second and third parts here . I'm sure those of you reading this in the US will be thinking, "B...

Hey folks, and welcome to another instalment of "Gotta Catch 'Em All!", a series of blogs chronicling my efforts to complete a living National Pokédex before the release of Pokémon Sun and Moon later this month. If you missed my first entry from last week, you can find it here . For those of you who are all caught up, let's get this underway, shall we? I can't see this without hearing the origi...

Hey folks, and welcome to the first part of a mini-series of blogs I plan to write over the next few weeks. It's part of my drive to get back to writing regularly after taking some time out over the summer, so I can resume steady progress on The Hawker and Midnight Son before the year is out. It's also part of another drive, though. A drive that's been happening, on and off, for the last three-...

Hey there folks. It's been a while, hasn't it? I hope you're all keeping well, and have been playing tons of those awesome video game things. In case you hadn't worked it out yet, it's me, The Artist Formerly Known As 'dankempster', back from the dead and ready to blog once more. The name change is a minor one and it doesn't signify a change of style or approach, it's more an attempt to breathe...

I'm not in the habit of writing speculatory blogs. It's something I've only done once before that I can recall, having put together some brief expectations for Grand Theft Auto V around the time of that game's announcement back in late 2011. As I outlined in that blog, these wishlist-type things invariably seem to have the quality of screaming blindly into a void, with inevitable disappointment...

Even eight years after its original release, The Witcher is still pretty cool It's been a few weeks since my last blog here on Giant Bomb. There are a few reasons for that, some of which I won't go into, what with this being a video game website and all, but the main cause of that inactivity is that I just don't really have anything to write about right now. At the time of writing this I'm play...

Stranger's Wrath is the best Oddworld game, and a new candidate for one of my favourite games ever Hey folks, Dan Kempster here with my first proper Giant Bomb blog entry of the year. I had hoped to put something together about Axiom Verge after making it my first completed game of 2016 last week, but I found myself struggling to articulate how I felt about it at any length. It's a pretty cool...

Hey folks, Dan Kempster here with the fifth and final part of My End of 2015 Awards. Apologies for it being a little on the late side - I had intended to get this written yesterday, but between work, New Year's celebrations and deliberating which games would actually make this list, I ran out of time and had to push it back to today. If you missed any of the first four parts, where I handed out...

Hey folks, Dan Kempster here, presenting the final batch of individual acknowledgements from My End of 2015 Awards. This one's taken slightly longer to put together than the first three parts (which you can find here , here and here , if you missed them), mainly because I've been at work all day and haven't had as much writing time as I've had the past few days. Worry not though, because I've s...

Hey folks, Dan Kempster here, bringing you the third part of My End of 2015 Awards, my own take on the Game of the Year proceedings currently underway here on Giant Bomb. If you're not aware of the specifics of these awards, or you've missed any of the last sixteen individual acknowledgements, you can find Part One here and Part Two here . Today we reach the midway point of the ceremony, and gi...

Hey folks, Dan Kempster here, back with another batch of shiny ceremonial trinkets to hand out in this, the second part of My End of 2015 Awards. If you missed yesterday's inaugural entry, which outlines the premise of these awards before handing out the first eight individual acknowledgements, you can find it by following this link . To the rest of you, let's get cracking with the next batch o...

Hey folks, Dan Kempster here. I hope you've all had a pleasant, relaxing Christmas. I wish I could say I had, but I didn't. I won't go into any explicit detail, as this isn't really the place, but I'd say it's been my least favourite Christmas on record. That's not to say it was wholly terrible, mind – I received some genuinely lovely, thoughtful gifts, and my mum's Christmas dinner was as deli...

No matter how hard I try, there's just no penetrating the Power Armor that Fallout 4 seems to have encased itself in I put Fallout 4 down yesterday. Not in the temporary "I need a break from this" sense, where you leave the game alone for a week and give yourself some breathing time in the hope you'll return to the game with renewed vitality and vigour. Nor in the permanent "I'm finished with t...

Hey folks. After the relentless tide of backlog-based bloggery that was October , I elected to play it a little quieter through November. There were a few external factors that limited my time for both game-playing and blog-writing, the most obvious one being my attempt to participate in NaNoWriMo this year (which I'll cover in more detail a little later in this blog). That's not to say my Nove...

This was my Everest, and I was... whatever the game-playing equivalent of an Ice Climber is Well folks, it's been a really interesting month. For those of you who may have missed it (although I'm not sure how you could, given how uncharacteristically ubiquitous I've been this month), I should probably explain. Throughout October I've been participating in something dubbed ' Backlogtober ', a bo...

This calls for a celebration, guys! Help yourselves to cake! I did it, guys. I actually went and did it. Those of you who've been following the Backlogtober 2015 blog series since it began will recall that on the last day of September I set out a list of ten games I intended to beat in the month of October , all in the name of cutting down my colossal Pile of Shame . Well, last night I beat Unc...

We're almost at the end, guys. Backlogtober 2015 is finally winding down, and frustratingly, I seem to be winding down with it. My latest conquest, Zeno Clash , was projected to take me just one or two days to blitz through, but ended up taking me four. This was partly due to delays in starting the game, but predominantly because of a very busy schedule through the back end of the working week....

Pictured: my Pile of Shame. If you look really closely, you'll see me cowering in fear somewhere near the base Dagnabbit, am I really writing another one of these already? It's barely been two days since I waxed lyrical on Telltale 's The Walking Dead: Season Two , and here I am with another beaten game to discuss in another Backlogtober update. In case you're late to the party and haven't seen...

Hey guys. I feel like we've got to know each other pretty well over the last few weeks, so I'm going to level with you folks. When I started this Backlogtober initiative, I thought I'd maybe clear half a dozen games from my onimously stacked Pile of Shame before falling off the wagon and... I don't know... replaying a Pokémon game, or something. Instead, here we are - a little over halfway thro...

I'm now almost two weeks into my Backlogtober initiative, and I can't believe how much progress I've made in that time. Since my last update three days ago I've managed to beat two games, and decided to cut a third from my Pile of Shame altogether. This is also the first of these updates that I've ended up writing a little later than I'd expected to, for reasons that will become apparent in a c...

Hey folks, Dan here with another update on my progress through Backlogtober , an initiative that's seeing me try to clear as many games as possible from my Pile of Shame this month. Truth be told, I wasn't expecting to be writing this blog today. After spending ten-and-a-half hours at work, I figured when I got home that after eating and sorting out some other stuff, I'd have maybe sixty to nin...

I still haven't quite had my fill of MGSV's terrific stealth action The first week of Backlogtober has come to an end, and I'm really happy with the progress I've been making so far. Since my last update posted on Sunday, I've managed to put another pair of big dents in my challenge for this month. The first of these was reaching the end of Chapter 1 in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain . I...

Hey duders, Dan here once again with another update on my Backlogtober shenanigans. In case you missed some of my earlier posts on the subject , allow me to explain - Backlogtober is an initative I've taken up to try and clear a sizeable chunk of my Pile of Shame through the month of October. I got off to a cracking start by beating Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons on Day 1, and I can report that I...

Hey there folks, Dan here with my first proper update for Backlogtober 2015 . I'm pleased to report that so far I'm one for one in one day, which is about the best sort of progress one can hope for in an initiative such as this. As predicted, I ended up finishing Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons in one day, across two ninety-minute sittings (one before work, and one after). It's a stunning game tha...

Tomorrow marks the true start of Backlogtober 2015 , my upcoming effort to blitz through a significant chunk of my Pile of Shame through the month of October. I've posted a couple of blogs in the run-up to this crazy initiative, but none of them have dealt with arguably the most important aspect. The running order, the schedule, the agenda... Call it what you will, they all amount to the same t...

Where the hell did September go, you guys? Like a legendary stealth operative, the month seems to have crept past me while I was busy doing other things (mainly playing too much Metal Gear Solid V , in case you couldn't tell from the awkwardly-shoehorned-in simile). That, in turn, means that there are only four days remaining until the official start of Backlogtober 2015 . For those of you who...

Fellow duders of Giant Bomb, my name is Dan Kempster, and I have a problem. Pretty much as long as I've been on this site, I've used it to keep track of my 'Pile of Shame', the proverbial stack of unfinished video games that I've acquired and, for various reasons, never seen through to completion. Through discipline and hard graft, I managed to start whittling down that pile, taking games off i...

I've played a few great games lately, but none of them have made me want to put down the controller and pick up a pen Hey folks. Once again, it's been a little while since I threw anything up in this space. I wish I had a decent excuse for that, but I don't. Mainly I've been avoiding my blog for Kingdom Hearts -related reasons (which I'll get to in due course), but there's also the fact that no...

Wondering where this is? Hopefully this blog will explain everything Hey folks. Almost two months back, I teased the start of a brand new blog series called The Keyblade Chronicles . It's supposed to be an analysis of the Kingdom Hearts series from the perspective of a player who used to enjoy the games, but hopped off the bandwagon quite a while ago - an attempt to experience and understand th...

Revisiting Lightning's first adventure has been interesting for some unexpected reasons It's funny how, even with a Pile of Shame so large it spreads over two lists , I still find ways to avoid it in favour of revisiting games I've played before. The most recent example of this trend is Final Fantasy XIII , a game I haven't touched since its original release five years ago. I've been toying wit...

In my last blog , I teased some ideas for what my next serial blog project ('bloject'?) for Giant Bomb might be. For a while it was looking like the Diary of a Monster Hunter idea was going ahead (and it may yet still, running concurrently with this project, as I'm really keen to get stuck into MH4U while it still has a large active community). I toyed with the idea of leaping into Blue Dragon...

It's been a little while, hasn't it? I haven't had much of a presence on Giant Bomb over the last couple of months. I've been incredibly busy with real-life stuff, most of it work-related. Those of you who've been following me for a while will be aware that I work at a doctors' practice, dispensing prescription drugs to patients, and to that end I've been devoting a significant proportion of my...

For over a decade, this was the pinnacle of video game skateboarding for me It's been a long time since I got caught up in a skateboarding game. The last one I became completely absorbed in was probably Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 , for a couple of big reasons. First, it was the first game in the series to mark a radical change in design philosophy. Gone were the two-minute runs and compact, linea...

It's 2015. A new year, a new start, a chance to cast off the shackles of the previous year and embrace new possibilities and opportunities. It's an invitation to try and make changes in our lives for the better, that we might make this new year better than the last one. Never was a 10/10 less deserved It's apparently also the perfect time to play bad video games. I'm not sure what possessed me...

So here we are, at the dénouement of my End of 2014 Awards. Today’s fifth and final part sees me hand out my last two awards to games that defined this past year for me. If you’ve missed any of the preceding eight awards, you can find them by following these helpful, handy-dandy links to Part One , Part Two , Part Three , and Part Four . Before I give out these last two gongs, I’d like to take...

It’s the fourth day of my End of 2014 Awards, a five-part blog series wherein I honour the most memorable games I’ve played this year by presenting them with awards whose names rival their very concepts in terms of ridiculousness and stupidity. Just in case you missed them, here are some helpful handy links to Part One , Part Two and Part Three . In this penultimate instalment I’ll be handing o...

It’s Boxing Day, which means it’s time for Part Three of my End of 2014 Awards. If you missed Part One and/or Part Two , you can find them by clicking through on their respective links. Today sees us reach the halfway point of this little awards ceremony, with two more awards going out to games that managed to define the last twelve months for me. Here they are. Second Chance Award for Being Be...

Welcome back to the second part of my End of 2014 Awards. If you missed the first part of my own take on the traditional Game of the Year format, you can find it here – it outlines the motives behind these awards and also justifies the format, so if you’re a bit perplexed as to why games from the late nineties are appearing on this list, you’ll find the answers there. Today I’ll be presenting a...

I don’t normally go in for Game of the Year awards. While I’ve always enjoyed the coverage from Giant Bomb at this time of year, I tend not to get involved in the discussions myself. There are two main reasons for this. First, I tend not to play many games at their time of release. Thanks to the combination of a pretty small gaming budget and a ridiculously large backlog, I usually gravitate to...

So I've been a little quiet on Giant Bomb recently (and by 'recently', I mean the last three months). There are a multitude of reasons for my inactivity, and I'll do my best to explain what they are in due course. Before I do, I want to stress this is not an "I'm back!"-style blog. I framed my last blog entry as one of those back in August, and look where that got us. Nope, this is just me touc...

It's been around six weeks since I last posted a blog here on Giant Bomb. There are a handful of reasons for that. I think some of them happen to be pretty good, but don't just take my word for it. I'm going to outline them in this blog post, so you can be the judge. July was a very busy month... ...with most of my time divided between working and attending 'the Tringe'. For the uninitiated, al...

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to The Pokémon Center, a 'hub blog' of sorts that I'm putting together to centralise my Pokémon FireRed Nuzlocke Challenge blog series. Much like the Compilation of Enduring Final Fantasy VII and Looking Back on My Month in Skyrim did for my previous serial blogs, it collates all the episodes of the series in one place, making it easier to both find a...

Back to the Pokémon Center Hey guys. After a week off, I'm back and ready to deliver more of the adventures of Team Judi Drench in my Pokémon FireRed Nuzlocke Challenge blog series. As always, if you're not familiar with what a Nuzlocke is or how it relates to this series of blogs, I suggest you stop reading this blog and substitute it with Part Zero . It covers everything you need to know in o...

Back to the Pokémon Center Part Ten - Keep Calm And Don't Carry On >> Grab your Poké Balls and your Pikachu, folks - it's once again time to head back to the region of Kanto for the latest instalment in my Pokémon FireRed Nuzlocke Challenge blog series. If you're new to the series and have a hard time telling your Arceus from your Electabuzz, this probably isn't the best place to start. Instead...

(Edited on May 30th, 2021) Hey folks. So this used to be a duplicate post of another blog, the ninth part of my Pokémon FireRed Nuzlocke Challenge series. If you're looking for the actual post, you can find it here . I was going to just delete this duplicate entry when I realised it was here, but apparently you can't delete blog posts on Giant Bomb any more? I've only got options to Edit or Fla...

Back to the Pokémon Center Part Nine - Back To The Badges >> Hey folks. It's back, and it's back sooner than you or even I might have thought possible. That's right, it's time for a new instalment of my Pokémon FireRed Nuzlocke Challenge blog series. As always, if you're new to the series, I recommend starting with its genesis - Part Zero . It explains what the concept of a Nuzlocke is, and how...

Back to the Pokémon Center Part Eight - The Search For A Cutter >> Hello one and all, and welcome back to the return of my Pokémon FireRed Nuzlocke Challenge blog series. I've taken a month-long break from adventuring in Kanto (mainly to spend more time in Kalos), but I'm now back and braced to endure once more! It's been a little while since the last instalment in this series, so here are some...

Hey guys. I've been a little slack on the blogging front over the last week or two, so I'll begin this entry with an apology. There should have been another couple of episodes of the Pokémon FireRed Nuzlocke Challenge series last week, as well as the April instalment of Letting Off Some Steam last Saturday, so I'm sorry those blogs are yet to see the light of day. This blog is neither of those...

Back to the Pokémon Center Part Seven - The End Of The Road...? >> Hey guys, and welcome to the sixth part of my Pokémon FireRed Nuzlocke Challenge. Once again, I'd like to start by apologising for the delay in bringing you this blog. I was off work last week and had plenty of time to turn out an extra episode or two of this serial blog, but I ended up pouring pretty much all of my Pokémon time...

Back to the Pokémon Center Part Six - Tunnels Of Death >> Hey guys, and welcome to the fifth episode of my Pokémon FireRed Nuzlocke Challenge, a blog series chronicling my playthrough of Pokémon FireRed Version with a set of self-imposed rules to make things more challenging. This instalment has come to light a little later than planned on account of my weekend being a little busier than I'd an...

Back to the Pokémon Center Part Five - Grounded Lightning >> Hey guys, and welcome to Part Four of my Pokémon FireRed Nuzlocke Challenge. As always, if you're not familiar with the concept of a 'Nuzlocke', I highly recommend starting with Part Zero of this blog series, as it should answer any questions you might have about the specifics of this self-imposed challenge. If you've missed any of th...

Back to the Pokémon Center Part Four - Two Badges, Three Fallen Comrades >> A very happy Tuesday to one and all, and welcome to the third part of my Pokémon FireRed Nuzlocke Challenge. As usual, I'll get the formalities out of the way first. If the word 'Nuzlocke' means nothing to you beyond looking like a loan-word of dubious origin, then I highly recommend checking out Part Zero of this serie...

Back to the Pokémon Center Part Three - The Clownbat Under The Mountain >> Good day one and all, and welcome to Part Two of my Pokémon FireRed Nuzlocke Challenge. Over the next few weeks I'm planning to play through this remake of the original Pokémon Red, with a set of self-imposed rules intended to make the game both more challenging and more interesting, and periodically blogging about my pr...

It's the second Saturday of March, which means it's once again time to start looking through my vast digitally distributed backlog in search of unfinished games to feature in this month's instalment of... March Edition - Point-and-Click Adventures! If you're not familiar with this monthly featurette, permit me to get you up to speed. Letting Off Some Steam is a blog I'm planning to run on the s...

Back to the Pokémon Center Part Two - Rockin' With Brock >> Good day one and all, and welcome to the first proper part of my Pokémon FireRed Nuzlocke Challenge blog series. Over the coming weeks I'm going to be playing through the Game Boy Advance remake of the original Pokémon Red in a way I've never played Pokémon before - under the strict and unforgiving restrictions of a Nuzlocke challenge....

Back to the Pokémon Center Part One - It's A Team-Building Exercise >> If there's one thing that can be said of my user activity on Giant Bomb, it's that I enjoy writing serial blogs. In my time on this website I've put together two big blog series - January 2012's A Month in Skyrim , a daily journal chronicling my in-game actions in the most recent Elder Scrolls game from my character's own pe...

Today is my twenty-fourth birthday. Those of you who've been following my blogs for any length of time should be aware that I'm not a celebratory person when it comes to my own birthday. This year, for reasons I can't really articulate, feels different. It's the first time since my mid-teens where I've actually let my guard down enough to revel in the attention and enjoy the generosity of other...

There's no denying this is a great driving game, but it's got some issues... I've been playing quite a bit of Forza Motorsport 4 over the last month or so. It's proven a great accompaniment to getting caught up on my backlog of Bombcasts - a game I can turn to and mindlessly grind out races for a couple of hours while listening to the dulcet tones of the Bomb Crew. That's not to say it isn't a...

I'm a little later posting this week's blog than originally intended. I'll spare you the detailed reasons why, but suffice it to say some difficult family matters have dominated these last couple of weeks, and that, combined with a week of feeling under the weather myself, has resulted in me not really wanting to do anything this weekend. However, I have a tight blogging schedule to uphold, and...

January was a pretty successful month for me, gaming-wise . I made it through all four of the titles I'd intended to finish through the month, and started a fifth that I'll hopefully be able to wrap up in this month. Now, as January disappears over the temporal horizon and February shuffles in to take its place, it's time for me to put together another Gaming Agenda blog - a sort of gaming 'to-...

It's the last weekend of January, which means it's time for my first monthly gaming recap of the year. In the absence of a decent title, I've gone down the lazy pun route and decided to post these entries under the blanket title of ' Post Game Dan-alysis '. You can think of them as companion pieces to the Gaming Agenda blogs I'll be putting out at the start of each month, basically breaking dow...

I really, really enjoyed playing this... Over the last couple of months, I've spent a fair bit of my gaming time playing the Legend of Zelda series. December was a month centred around a playthrough of the most recent title in Nintendo 's long-running adventure franchise, A Link Between Worlds on 3DS . Not content with just one Zelda adventure, I began 2014 by starting Link's Awakening DX , whi...

This blog very nearly didn't happen today. On Tuesday evening I returned home from work and attempted to power on my crummy laptop, only to have it stubbornly refuse to co-operate. A few simple diagnostic tests revealed it to be, in what I believe is the correct technical terminology, "fucked". It's been a shambling husk for a long while now, to tell the truth, and I believe a traumatic blow it...

2013 (and in particular the latter half of the year) was a year in which I seemed to go 'off the boil' in several aspects of my life, and one of the most telling of those was in witnessing my writing drop off from semi-regular to practically non-existent. As one of my myriad little New Year's Resolutions to try and get myself back to where I want to be, I've decided to aim for regular weekly bl...

Yesterday I spent hours working on a lengthy blog to mark this transition from 2013 into 2014. There were beautiful pictures, informative hyperlinks, and reams of text long enough to make even Leo Tolstoy consider asking me to steady on a bit. It was a glorious celebration of the year that was, and a contemplative look forward to the year that will be. Then my laptop crashed, and all of it disa...

Welcome to Compilation of Enduring Final Fantasy VII . For those who may not be aware of what this is all about, allow me to explain. Between February 2010 and December 2013, I wrote a series of blogs documenting a playthrough of Final Fantasy VII. As someone with a lot of love for the game, I wanted to determine whether or not it was still worth playing in this age of high-definition graphics...

Ladies and gentlemen, the time is finally upon us. After thirty-four episodes spanning almost four years, punctuated by several hiatuses and nearly being stopped completely at least twice, my Enduring Final Fantasy VII blog series, in which I take a semi-cynical, semi-nostalgic look back at Squaresoft 's Final Fantasy VII to determine whether it's still worth playing in the twenty-first century...

My oh my, just look at the time - it's Enduring Final Fantasy VII o'clock! Why not pull up a seat, take a load off and enjoy some semi-nostalgic, semi-cynical commentary on one of the gaming industries most divisive exports, all courtesy of your host with the most, Giant Bomb user dankempster? You're just in time to see the title card roll: Episode Thirty-Four - Journey To The Centre Of The Pla...

In December of 2000, almost thirteen years ago to this very day, a fresh-faced ten-year-old boy wandered into his local video game store, intent on parting with some of his Christmas money in exchange for something new to play on the PSone he'd been lucky enough to receive for Christmas a few days before. After browsing the shelves for a while to no avail, the young lad happened upon a second-h...

First things first - apologies for falling off the Blogvent wagon this week. It's been an absolutely horrendous week at work, one that left me wanting to just come home and get straight to bed rather than put any effort into writing something (or even play any video games to give myself something to write about). Being as I've broken the chain, I don't see a lot of point in continuing with the...

It's been a little while since I wrote anything for Blogvent that was actually about video games. Today I'm going to make amends for that, with a little list. Not one of those fancy-schmancy Game of the Year lists that everybody else seems to be trotting out right now, though. This is a list of games with no end, that I wish I'd played more of in 2013, and intend to play more of in 2014. 1. Viv...

Behind today's door on the Blogvent Calendar, I've hidden something pretty special. You may remember that on Day 12 I shared a bit of information about some songs I've been working on, under the umbrella of a concept album called Project 17 . Well, today I bit the bullet and released them. Yep, the album I've spent all this time working on is now finally a thing that you can listen to, download...

Once again, I've left it ridiculously late to throw anything up here for Blogvent. I've spent the evening with a group of good friends, doing our pre-Christmas gift exchange. For lack of anything else to write about tonight, I thought I'd just share some of the awesome presents that I got from them. Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to get some photos of the gifts to put up here as well. My friend Jo...

It is late. I've just got back from an awesome night playing music I love to an audience that seemed to love us. I am also rather drunk. So for tonight, I'm afraid there won't be a sizeable contribution to Blogvent. I'll write something substantial tomorrow. Instead, have this cool picture of us being a band and playing songs quite well. You can't see me, but I am doing awesome drums just behin...

It's been a long week. I'm absolutely exhausted and fit to drop, but first I'm going to muster up the last few ounces of my waking strength to put together today's Blogvent contribution. It'll be a short one, structured with bullet points and not really about anything in particular. As long as you're prepared for nonsensical rambling, let's continue, shall we? I'm now six badges to the good in...

As a rule, I try to keep any piece of writing that isn't video game related off of Giant Bomb these days. This is a website about video games, after all, and I have a personal writer's blog for all that other stuff. Over the last couple of weeks, though, this self-imposed and horribly titled Blogvent thing has forced me to re-think that rule slightly. Results, it's fair to say, have been mixed....

Today, when I finished work, I came home, sat down and made the list . You know which list I'm talking about. The list . The one made up of names, every one of which corresponds to a person or family to which you're planning to send a Christmas card this year. The list . I haven't made the list for about eight or nine years now. The last time I handed out Christmas cards en masse was in seconda...

Hey guys. I'm at a bit of a loss for a single specific thing to write about at length for the tenth day of Blogvent (a pun that I feel more ashamed of every time I type it), so today's blog is going to be a jumble of different things. I'll try to keep it somewhat organised. Now where'd I put those bullet points...? I finally trained my first level 100 Pokémon in Pokémon Y on Sunday. My Blaziken...

Buying gifts for family is a nightmare. I thought seeking out presents for my friends would be difficult, and to an extent it was, but I found that potential ideas came much more easily there. We're friends for a reason - we know each other well, we have similar likes and dislikes (to an extent), and that's an advantage when it comes to looking for things to get them. I can source gifts that re...

I found myself once more returning to Pokémon Y today. One of my friends got a 3DS for his birthday, so I justified this most recent relapse with the excuse that it would be cool to check out his Friend Safari and see if I could grab anything new to add to my slowly-filling National Pokédex. Fast-forward an hour and I was once again camping on the outskirts of Camphrier Town, riding back and fo...

As someone who works in a customer-facing role, I know what it's like to get the occasional 'problem customer'. You know the people I'm talking about - people who complain when things go wrong, who put on that passive-aggressive stance or get verbally abusive when they don't get their way. I live in a pretty pleasant part of the UK, so thankfully I don't have to engage with problem patients at...

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I woke up this morning to find this post already sitting in the Giant Bomb text editor, written but un-published. I can only assume it's what my drunken mind thought would pass for a Blogvent entry. Given I've already missed my deadline, I figured it was probably best to just tidy everything up and post it as-is. Apologies for the late post, guys. I'll try not to let it happen ag...

Apologies for the lateness of today's entry. I've been out for a meal with my work colleagues tonight. As a consequence, what follows may seem like the inane ramblings of a half-drunk man. Rest assured, that's because that's exactly what they are. When I've not been Pokémon-ing over the last week or so (yes, there are times when that is the case), I've been putting a bit of time into another 3D...

It's already the 4th of December, which means it's time for me to open another door on the Blogvent Calendar and share some hastily-scrawled musings with you all. I know I promised you all some brief thoughts on A Link Between Worlds today, but last night's events have left me wanting to write about something a little different. Hopefully you can forgive my change of mind. I assure you, those Z...

Hey guys, and welcome to the third entry in this twenty-four day self-imposed blogging initiative. Today's entry isn't about games, so if you're not keen on reading about non-game-related stuff, feel free to skip this and come back tomorrow, when hopefully I'll have a little something to say about A Link Between Worlds . I love the written word. Coming from a blogger, that sentence probably doe...

Hey guys, dankempster here, proving that I haven't dropped out of this self-imposed blogging cycle quite as early as some people (myself included) probably expected. Day 2 of Blogvent is here, and with it comes another bite-sized block of bloggery from yours truly. Yeah, I realise I'm no Mento when it comes to strings of alliteration, but it's not downright terrible, right? Anyway, moving on......

In the absence of a new Christmas avatar, I'll post the old one here for now ...Man, I need to stop falling off the blogging bandwagon. A new episode of Enduring Final Fantasy VII should have been written three weeks ago. It wasn't, and I apologise for that. It's one of many potential blogs that have fallen by the wayside in recent times, partly due to being busy, but primarily due to a severe...

I bet you thought you'd seen the last of this, right? You thought I'd retired this silly blog series to the confines of my profile's archive, where it would sit unfinished and forgotten by all. Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but much like a stealth agent past his prime, it's been coaxed out of retirement for one final mission. That's right, folks - it's time for the final episode of Metal G...

It's become something of an unwritten tradition towards the end of the year for me to put together a list of games I'd like to beat before the clock strikes midnight on December 31st. So far this year I've finished a total of twenty-eight titles , so I figured with just under three months still available to me, it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect myself to finish another ten games in 2013. Be...

It's been a long while since I last did one of these blog thing-a-ma-jiggies. I haven't scrolled back to check, but I think the two-month gap between my last blog and this one might make for my longest Giant Bomb blogging hiatus. There's no good reason for this, unless of course you count a profound lack of desire to blog as a valid excuse. I just haven't really wanted to write about video game...

The last month or so has felt pretty stagnant for me games-wise. In a move that's more reminiscent of me five years ago than me right now, I've been wanting to start a lot of games, attempting to start quite a few of them, and not finishing any of them. I've ended up with a few games that currently stand unfinished, a couple of which I've lost all desire to play. This blog is an attempt to clea...

I know a lot of people on this site are writing blog posts in light of the terrible news we've received this week. I realise everything that needs to be said has already been said by others much more eloquent and affected than myself, but reluctant though I am to go over well-walked ground, I feel an urge to post something of my own, if only as a means of personal catharsis. I'm not posting thi...

Welcome back, one and all, to the penultimate instalment of my Metal Gear Madness challenge. Formerly known as the Metal Gear May Madness challenge, it was a calculated attempt to play through the entire Metal Gear canon within the month of May. Despite failing to hit that challenging milestone, I've been continuing the challenge into June, mainly because I still have a desire to see the whole...

May may have ended a couple of weeks ago, but one thing that's soldiered on undeterred is my Metal Gear Madness challenge. Formerly dubbed Metal Gear May Madness, the original aim was to beat all eight canonical stealth games in the Metal Gear series within the month of May. I didn't succeed, only managing to make it through the first five games, but I decided that time constraints be damned, I...

We're back, baby! Nothing stops the Metal Gear May Madness train from rolling on to its next destination! If you're unsure what that destination is, you can find an outline of the journey here . If you think you may have missed your stop, please check the route planner below: The Episode Roster Episode .01 - Metal Gear Episode .02 - Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake Episode .03 - Metal Gear Solid Episo...

It's a little later than planned, but at last, here's the continuation of Metal Gear May Madness - an attempt on my part to play every single game in the core Metal Gear canon within the month of May. If you're not sure what's going on here, I'd advise you to stop and read the inaugural entry for the series here - it'll explain what I'm up to, and how I'm doing it. If you've missed any of the e...

As May moves on apace, so too does the Metal Gear May Madness challenge. If you've managed to miss my entries from the last couple of weeks, then have no fear, because I've got you covered. If you're still unsure what the hell is going on here, I'd recommend reading the introductory episode to this series, which you can find here . If you've missed my thoughts on a specific game, you can find t...

Before I get this episode properly underway, I want to do something I should have done at the start of the last episode and draw your attention to @demoskinos ' blog ' Metal Gear March '. It's a challenge with an almost identical concept to this one, but it pre-dates my blogs by a couple of months, and is therefore much better. I highly recommend you read it - it's well written, and clearly dem...

Kept you waiting, huh? (That's the last time I'll do that joke, I promise.) Welcome to the first proper episode of Metal Gear May Madness, a serial blog in which I'm chronicling my efforts to make it through eight core titles in the Metal Gear franchise before the end of this month. If you missed my first post and aren't entirely sure what's going on here, I'd recommend checking out Episode .00...

Oh Dan, will you ever learn that writing these serial blogs isn't good for your health? Don't you remember the gruelling, demanding task of both playing video games and writing creatively for several hours a day when you spent A Month in Skyrim ? And what about the long-running, still unfinished blogging behemoth that is Enduring Final Fantasy VII ? Haven't these exercises in episodic bloggery...

Please be warned that this blog contains story spoilers pertaining to Telltale's 'The Walking Dead'. If you don't want the game spoiled for you, please move along. Larry's had a heart attack. His daughter Lilly is leaning over him, hands on his chest, administering CPR to her father in a manner so frantic that none of the other survivors sealed in this meat locker can be sure if she's desperate...

So this is how it feels to be relevant... It was with a combination of excitement and trepidation that I approached playing the new Tomb Raider , Crystal Dynamics ' long-awaited reboot of one of this industry's most recognisable franchises . See, I've been playing Tomb Raider games for a long time. My relationship with Lara Croft spans roughly fifteen years, through the good , the not-so-good ,...

It's been a little while since I last wrote one of these, hasn't it? I'm not sure if that's because of a lack of completed video games on my end, or because a few weeks on, I'm still not really feeling the revamped site. Don't get me wrong - it looks incredibly slick, the editorial content is still as great as it's ever been, and I'm more than happy to ride out the storm of bugs and errors that...

More Dead Space is on its way The release of Dead Space 3 is now less than one week away. On February 8th (or earlier, if you're one of those lucky types who doesn't live in perpetually-behind Europe), Isaac Clarke 's latest foray into strategic dismemberment will be finding its way into the eager hands of players. I could be one of those players, but right now I'm undecided as to whether or no...

It's been a pretty eventful month for me in terms of both playing and actually finishing some video games. I kicked January off with a pretty thorough playthrough of United Front 's Sleeping Dogs ( my thoughts on which you read here ). Since then I've made my way through a few other titles, none of which are really big enough to sustain a whole blog post on their own, but as a collective should...

Hey there Giant Bomb, and welcome to my first blog post of 2013. I had hoped to write something a little earlier than this, something that would likely have taken its cues from the numerous excellent New Year's Resolution-style blogs that I've been reading, but as we're already nearing the halfway point of January I think that ship might have sailed. Instead I figured I'd embody the spirit of t...

Well guys, here we come to the end of the long road that was 2012. There's just enough time on this, the last day of the year, to deal out a few more of My End of 2012 Awards. ...Actually, if you haven't already seen the first three parts, you've probably got just about enough time to catch up with those as well. Part One is here , Part Two is here , and Part Three is here . Be quick about it,...

Welcome, welcome, one and all, to the third part of My End of 2012 Awards. Those of you who've missed Parts One and Two can find them here and here respectively. The rest of you should pull up a chair and get comfy, because we've got some gongs to hand out. The first of today's eight categories is: ' Take Me Back To The Islands ' Award for Best Atmosphere Dear Esther Dear Esther is nothing shor...

Welcome back to the second part of My End of 2012 Awards. On the off chance you missed the first part of this four-day extravaganza, you can find it by clicking this link here . Let's hand out some more o' them there awards, shall we? First up: ' Halo / Halo / Halo ' Award for Being More Halo Halo 3 Master Chief's third outing is just as much fun to play as his first two Quick disclaimer time....

Welcome, one and all, to the first part of My End of 2012 Awards. I've been doing these end-of-year, Game-of-the-Year-style blog posts for a few years now, but it wasn't until last year's sprawling effort that I hit on a formula I was really happy with. I've decided to stick with that same formula for this year, using the next three days to present each game I played in 2012 with a unique indiv...

The gifts may all be opened and the turkey all gone, but here at DanKempster Towers, Christmas isn't quite over yet. There's still one thing that must be done, and I'm not talking about that mountain of washing-up in the kitchen. I'm referring to the writing of the final instalment in this year's three-part Christmas Mega-Blog. If you missed part one or part two, you can find them here and here...

O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant, unto the blog of dankempster. You're just in time for the second part of Dan's 2012 Christmas Mega-Blog. If the first part eluded you, it can now be found here . It also explains the concept of the Christmas Mega-Blog, and the tradition behind it, so I won't get into all that again here. Instead, I'll plough straight on into the meat of this blog:...

I am dankempster! I am feeling festive! Christmas is a time that's all about upholding tradition. From the giving of gifts and the cooking of tremendous turkey dinners, through to the heated family arguments over games of Trivial Pursuit , we all feel somehow obliged to adhere to these Yuletide mainstays every December. Break with any one of those traditions, no matter how inconsequential it mi...

Tomorrow, I'm going to be doing something I've never attempted before - playing video games for twenty-four hours straight, to raise money for charity. I've spoken about it a little in my last few blog posts, but as the event looms ever closer, I feel it's probably a big enough deal for me to devote a full entry to it. I'm ready to game for leukaemia research! I was inspired to set myself this...

Hey guys. Once again, I've found myself back in that position where I don't have a lot to say about any particular game, but I do have a little to say about a few titles I've played recently. This means I'm reverting to the 'A Little, More Often' blog format this week. Let's get started, shall we? DOOM I don't think I've ever played an FPS as fast and frenetic as DOOM I've owned The Ultimate DO...

Welcome, one and all, and especially you, to Episode Thirty-Two of Enduring Final Fantasy VII. That's right - much like the original PlayStation I first played this game on some twelve years ago, this blog now has 32 bits. This is the most recent instalment of a long-running, fairly ubiquitous serial blog in which I try to determine whether Final Fantasy VII (one of my all-time favourite video...

Oh boy. I knew I'd be making my return to blogging at greater length about individual games at some point, but I never would have guessed this would be the game to make me do it. Around this time last year I was bemoaning how Forza Motorsport 3 had all but destroyed my enjoyment of the racing genre, proclaiming that it would be a very long time before I could invest myself in another driving ga...

Welcome, lads and ladettes, to the thirty-first episode of Enduring Final Fantasy VII. If you're new to this series, then welcome. You're a little late, but I'll fill you in anyway. Enduring Final Fantasy VII is an episodic blog that chronicles my current playthrough of Final Fantasy VII , one of my most beloved games, through the critical eye of a more mature gamer in 2012. Nostalgic and cynic...

Crazy to think it's already been two weeks since I last penned one of these, but here I am sketching out a third edition of A Little, More Often - a series of brief blogs intended to get me back into the habit of writing at length. I'll keep this introductory segment short, so I can get on with talking about what really matters - them video games. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City 80s Florida is stil...

It's been a while, huh? Specifically, it's been just over three months since I last sat down with what is arguably my favourite game of all time, played a chunk of it, and then wrote down some semi-cynical, semi-nostalgic thoughts about it. I guess that makes this special thirtieth anniversary episode a little overdue, but better late than never, right? Ladies and gentlemen, it's once again tim...

Welcome, one and all (and especially you) to this, the second instalment in my 'A Little, More Often' series of blogs. I had planned to write this last weekend, but instead opted to hold off for an additional week so as to drum up some more material to write about. The decision seems to have paid off, as I've not only completed two games since the last blog , but I've also made significant prog...

It's been far too long since I last wrote anything for this blog. Truth be told, it's been far too long since I last wrote anything at all. Work has kept me stupidly busy these last couple of months, but that's really only part of the problem. The biggest obstacle I'm trying to overcome is lack of motivation, a feeling that's caused more than just my writing to suffer this summer. To try and co...

Doctor Dan Prescribes 50ccs Of Strategic Salubrious Silliness! ...now that I've fulfilled my contractual obligation to Mento by shoe-horning in that sentence, let's get down to business Way back on the first day of this year, I wrote a blog here on Giant Bomb outlining some of the things (both gaming and non-gaming) that I wanted to achieve over the course of 2012. It's pretty embarrassing to l...

The best Splinter Cell? Definitely, but it's by no means perfect... Over the last couple of weeks, I've been playing through Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory . Having now finished Sam Fisher 's third outing (and consequently completed UbiSoft 's original trilogy of Splinter Cell games), I feel like a brief blogging recap is in order. In particular I want to talk about how the game's pre...

It's July, and while the summer weather might still be eluding us, one thing that's here to stay is my fortnightly foray into my favourite Final Fantasy . Let's get Enduring! Episode Twenty-Nine - Touching The Stars After last episode's efforts to begin breeding a gold chocobo ended up being all work and no play, I've decided to return my attention back to story progression with this entry. It'...

There's no denying that 2012 has been a slow gaming year for me. Even by my own snail-paced standards, I've been much slower to play and complete games than in past years. Heck, it took me almost two months to finish my first title of the year, and just a few weeks ago I'd only managed to beat nine games since starting my usual annual list on January 1st. In stark contrast to the rest of the ye...

That dankempster is so unreliable, isn't he? Promising regular instalments of his serial blogs, and then failing to deliver when the time comes. Honestly, why won't he just either keep the blog regular, or give up and let the damn thing die? ...So I'm sure many (read: none) of you have been thinking since the failure of this episode to materialise on its appointed slot of release. There's a (ba...

Vagrant Story is one of gaming's true classics I've long held up Vagrant Story as one of my favourite games ever. Throughout my long and colourful history with video games, I've never hesitated to mention it in the same breath as titles like Final Fantasy VII , Metal Gear Solid 3 and Shadow of the Colossus . A little over three years ago, when such things were all the rage on the Giant Bomb for...

Hey guys, dankempster here. I would write up a fancy preamble to this blog post, but I'm too busy Enduring Final Fantasy VII right now. Sorry. Episode Twenty-Seven - Tying Up Some Loose Ends In the last episode, we witnessed Cloud and the gang infiltrate the Underwater Reactor near Junon , recovering another piece of Huge Materia and pilfering a Shinra submarine in the process. Rather than pres...

I really enjoyed playing through Halo... ...and its sequel at the end of 2011 Right at the end of last year, I played through the first two Halo games back-to-back. It was an impulse decision, encouraged by the atmosphere surrounding the time - I was halfway through Persona 3 , eager to start Skyrim , but wanted something straight-forward to tide me over without distracting me from the commitme...

Last weekend saw me reach the end of Final Fantasy XIII-2 , the latest semi-canonical instalment in Square-Enix 's flagship RPG franchise . From start to finish, I sank about thirty-five hours into the game over the course of five weeks, and overall I really enjoyed the experience. Coming from somebody who went into this game tentatively, and whose opinion of Final Fantasy XIII was often divide...

Another fortnight has passed, and that means it's time for another episode of Enduring Final Fantasy VII to grace the Giant Bomb blogosphere. If you don't know the drill by now then you probably never will, but allow me to entertain your curiosity with a quick explanation anyway. As a long-time Final Fantasy fan who's become somewhat disillusioned with JRPGs, I've been revisiting my favourite g...

What I was able to play of Soul Reaver was great About a week into April, shortly after my war of attrition with Grand Theft Auto was finally won , I started playing Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver . It's a game I've been wanting to play for quite a while now, ever since I experienced the sequel all the way back at the start of 2009. Its environment-based puzzles, brilliant voice acting and complex...

They say there ain't no rest for the wicked. Here I am, giving up time I'd otherwise be using to nap, just so I can push out another update for my fortnightly serial blog which aims to determine if Final Fantasy VII still has something to offer a modern audience. I must have been really cruel in a past life. Roll title card! Episode Twenty-Five - Revealing A Clouded Truth At the end of the last...

Fuck this game. Seriously. The last ten days have witnessed one heck of a war of attrition. On one side, yours truly - a twenty-two-year-old white male whose love for games is apparently only outweighed by a masochistic desire to self-inflict horrific gaming punishment. On the other, Grand Theft Auto - the fifteen-year-old great grand-daddy of one of the industry's most popular critically-accla...

Beamed into your home fortnightly by nothing but a writer's imagination and the magic of the interwebs, it's time for another episode in everybody's fourth-favourite JRPG-centric serial blog - dankempster's Enduring Final Fantasy VII! Episode Twenty-Four - Fort Condor's Final Stand In the last instalment of our mammoth journey, we followed our band of intrepid adventurers to North Corel , where...

Underworld is more Legend than Anniversary Yesterday, I completed Tomb Raider: Underworld . Seeing the credits roll on this final chapter in this journey has brought my time with the Crystal Dynamics Tomb Raider trilogy to an end. It's also made me feel a little bit like a video-gaming version of Orpheus, because having descended into Underworld and spent some time looking back, I can't help bu...

Best Tomb Raider? For me it is My continuing journey through the Crystal Dynamics Tomb Raider trilogy hit another milestone yesterday when I reached the end of Tomb Raider: Anniversary . Essentially a re-imagining of the original Tomb Raider , Anniversary was released to (sort-of) coincide with its tenth anniversary, as well as to bridge the storyline between Legend and Underworld with a slight...

Hello everyone. My name is dankempster, and when I'm not reading middling epic fantasy, throwing darts in the vicinity of a board, or eating copious amounts of sausage rolls, I like to pass my time by playing Final Fantasy VII , determining if it's still a good game by modern standards, and then writing about it in serial blog form. If you've got ten minutes to kill, why not join me? Episode Tw...

Tomb Raider: Legend doesn't quite live up to my fond memories of it I've long been a Tomb Raider fan. It's a love affair that I've reiterated many times over the years, so I'll keep this version of events fairly brief. I was introduced to the series by my parents all the way back in 1998, when they bought a PlayStation along with copies of the first two games in the series. Since then I've been...

Are you the kind of gamer who has fond memories of Final Fantasy VII , but is reluctant to return to it in case those memories are shattered by unremembered mediocrity? If so, then worry no longer - I'm here to do it for you! Presenting the latest instalment in the semi-cynical, semi-nostalgic, Endurance Run-inspired retrospective that is: Episode Twenty-Two - Mideel Or No Deal At the end of th...

Hey guys, just wanted to throw a quick blog up into this space to discuss my birthday. I turned twenty-two yesterday. As some of you probably know, birthdays aren't really a big deal for me and haven't been for a while now. It is nice to spend quality time with friends and family though, and it never fails to astound me just how many people care enough to drop me a birthday greeting (which in i...

Sonic... in a car... ? After reaching a point this week where I'd become genuinely scared of burning out on Skyrim , I decided to put it down for a few days and spend some of my gaming time playing something a little less demanding. Something devoid of story and complex mechanics, something that didn't expect a great deal of commitment on my part. My game of choice was Sonic & Sega All-Stars Ra...

- A quick note before we start - this blog is going to be a follow-up from (and in many ways a sister piece to) the Persona 3 blog I wrote last November . If you haven't already read it, I recommend doing so. It gives a pretty good impression of the first thing that made this game really resonate for me - the emphasis on time management. This blog concerns itself with the second thing - its hig...

After a delay that was slightly longer than scheduled, I'm happy to bring you another episode of Enduring Final Fantasy VII - the continuing series of semi-cynical, semi-nostalgic blogs chronicling my latest run-through of arguably Square's most revered (and most loathed) JRPG. Episode Twenty-One - Breaking Out Of Junon Episode Twenty culminated with a pretty spectacular finale - Cloud ended up...

It's kind of sad to think this is the last time I'll ever use this blog header Those of you who've been following me for the last month should be well aware of A Month in Skyrim , my ubiquitous series of thirty daily journal-styled blogs about my first experiences with the latest Elder Scrolls game. Those of you who don't follow me have probably had the misfortune of encountering it floating ar...

Day Thirty - The Last Few Pages... I found myself barely able to sleep last night. In my dreams I was visited by the faces of Vigilant Tyranus and Logrolf the Willful, their lifeless eyes blood-red, their voices not their own, replaced with the disembodied growl of Molag Bal. More than once I woke in a cold sweat, even calling out loud enough at one point to awaken Lydia, my housecarl, who thou...

Day Twenty-Nine - A Daedric Mis-Step I left Solitude with the sun still absent from the morning sky and began my journey south towards Markarth - not to stop at the city itself, but to put me on the right path to reach Fort Sungard. During my last visit to Markarth, an Orc blacksmith by the name of Ghorza gra-Bagol had asked me to recover a copy of The Last Scabbard of Akrash , a book that she...

Day Twenty-Eight - Tying Up Loose Ends A night's rest did nothing to diminish my new-found resolve, and I awoke next morning determined to tie up as many loose ends as possible before returning to Delphine in Riverwood. My first port of call was Jorrvaskr, to speak with the Companions and see if I might extend my sabbatical indefinitely. Farkas didn't seem to mind my asking this, but he did ask...

Day Twenty-Seven - Dragonborn, Dragon-Slayer I was up with the sun next morning, and raced down the southern path to Riverwood. I had thought about waiting until the next night to visit the Sleeping Giant Inn, but I needed answers as soon as possible. No sooner had I arrived in Riverwood than I was inside the inn and asking the innkeeper, a Breton woman by the name of Delphine, to rent their at...

Day Twenty-Six - Giant Killer, Horn Blower I woke up the next morning still unsure as to where I might go or what I might do. Leafing back through the pages of my journal, I recalled accepting a bounty on a Giant in Eastmarch hold, back when I was serving the Stormcloaks in Windhelm. At the time I had felt the task above my abilities, but now, armed with a refined suit of Orcish armour, a razor...

Day Twenty-Five - Putting Spirits to Rest I set off from Falkreath at the break of dawn, and arrived at Valthume a little before midday. The barrow proved more difficult to find than I'd expected, being nestled deep within the Druadach mountains southeast of Markarth. Upon entering I was greeted by the ghostly apparition of an old warrior, who introduced himself as Valdar. He explained that Val...

Day Twenty-Four - Fragments of a Legend The next morning I settled my bill with the innkeeper at the Winking Skeever and left Solitude for the nearby barrow of Folgunthur. Just in front of the entrance to the barrow I stumbled upon a recently-pitched trio of tents, one of which was sheltering an abandoned journal from the elements. The journal, which had been written by an adventurer named Dayn...

Day Twenty-Three - Secrets Beneath the Sleeping City I was awoken suddenly in the early hours of the next morning by a tremendous crash on the roof of the Frozen Hearth. I sprang from my bed immediately, gathering my things and rushing out of the inn. Outside, a huge dragon was laying siege to Winterhold, setting what remained of this once great city aflame with its breath. I Shouted at the bea...

Day Twenty-Two - A Grey-Mane Saved and a Mage Made I parted ways with the residents of Dragon Bridge the next morning and continued my journey to Northwatch Keep on the province's north-western coast. I tried to be diplomatic with the Thalmor guards keeping watch over the old fort, but my pleas fell on deaf ears, as did my attempts to persuade them. A sword through the neck, I soon found out, p...

Day Twenty-One - Whiterun Errands and a Missing Gray-Mane After waking next morning, I headed straight back to the Hall of the Dead to search for Andurs's missing amulet of Arkay. It proved fairly simple to find, mislaid on a table at the back of the catacombs. I put the few disturbed skeletons back to rest and returned the amulet to Andurs, who repaid me with a small purse of coins. From there...

Day Twenty - Search for the White Phial After waking and leaving Candlehearth Hall, I decided to return to the White Phial, where I had purchased some potions the day before. I'd witnessed an argument between the proprietor, an Altmer by the name of Nurelion, and his assistant, the Imperial Quintus Navale, and was curious to know what it was about. Nurelion explained that he was in the final st...

Day Nineteen - Siding With the Stormcloaks The next morning saw me rise with a fresh feeling of resolve in my heart. I left Solitude's city walls behind, beginning my arduous trek through the province's northern snowfields and back towards the wreckage of the Pride of Tel Vos that I had searched a few days previously. Serpentstone Isle lay a little further to the northeast, and although the cle...

Ladies and gentlemen of Giant Bomb, this is my two hundredth blog post. I've been trying to come up with a way to mark the occasion in a way befitting such a milestone. For my fiftieth blog , I wrote up a retrospective looking back at some of my personal favourite entries. For my hundredth , I related what I hoped were some thought-provoking ideas shared by me and my ex-girlfriend about the rol...

Day Eighteen - Two Sides of the Same Septim I awoke this morning with the issue of the Civil War still at the front of my mind, and my own allegiance still unplaced. As a son of Skyrim, and not to mention after the incident at Helgen some weeks ago, I feel duty bound to support Jarl Ulfric and the Stormcloaks. I dislike the idea of Imperial rule as much as the next Nord, and given Ulfric challe...

Day Seventeen - Tracing the Telvanni Line The events that unfolded the day before ensured I slept well into the next morning, but woke up feeling well-rested. As I made my way down the stairs and towards the Bee and Barb's entrance, I was stopped by a fellow Nord. He introduced himself as Brynjolf, and began enquiring as to how I'd amassed such a healthy purse of septims. I tried dismissing his...

Day Sixteen - Finding Lost Books and Lost Words I rose this morning with my next course of action already in mind - to head for Halldir's Cairn, just west of Falkreath, and retrieve Runil's missing journal. Although the Altmer had left a clear mark of its location on my map, I had not counted on the fact it would be nestled so deep in the Jerall Mountains, and the climb to the cave's mouth was...

Day Fifteen - The Axe and the Masque After thanking Gerdur and Hod once again for their hospitality, Barbas and I continued on our way to Rimerock Burrow, in pursuit of the Rueful Axe for Clavicus Vile. The Burrow we were heading for is situated in the mountains west of Solitude, practically on the provincial border that separates Skyrim from High Rock. As a consequence, the journey was likely...

Day Fourteen - A Daedra and His Dog When I awoke this morning, I was unsure as to where I might head next. I considered re-visiting the Companions and asking them for more work, but decided instead to make the journey to the southern town of Falkreath, and see what I might find there. As I left Whiterun, I was approached by three brutish-looking men who all drew their weapons and began sprintin...

Day Thirteen - Treason and Betrayal My first port of call the next morning was Klemmik's house. I told him that I'd left the supplies at High Hrothgar's offering chest, and he thanked me with a payment of seven hundred and fifty septims. Remembering the courier's letter that I retrieved yesterday, I decided to check it for an address or recipient. I found none, but the letter itself spoke of a...

Day Twelve - Counsel from the Greybeards Once again I began my day early, leaving Breezehome before the sun rose and heading to Dragonsreach to collect the bounty on the bandits at Redoran's Retreat. Proventus thanked me for my services to the Jarl and paid me a hundred gold coins for my trouble. From there, I left Whiterun and headed for Pelagia Farm. I recognised the farm's windmill as being...

Another week, and another return for Enduring Final Fantasy VII - the serial blog chronicling my journey through Square 's seminal work , as I attempt to play it with the objective eye of a twenty-first century gamer and determine whether or not it's genuinely deserving of its stellar reputation. A pre-emptive warning - this is a long episode, much longer than these things usually weigh in at....

Day Eleven - Old Towns, New Faces For the first time since my days as a smith in Cyrodiil, I woke in a house that I own yesterday morning. As I outlined the last time I wrote in this journal, my plan for this day was to visit my old hometown of Karthwasten. I knew I would run the risk of soiling my fond memories of the place, but I felt somehow obliged to return. My plotted route took me far to...

Day Ten - New Thu'um, New House While I was settling up with the innkeeper at the Frozen Hearth, I incidentally asked him if he knew of any work available in the Hold. He told me that a band of thieves had set themselves up in Fort Fellhammer, an abandoned outpost to the west. Apparently a bounty had been placed on the bandit leader's head by the Jarl, and anybody willing to visit the fort and...

Day Nine - Retrieving the Star I left for Ilinalta's Deep early the following morning, giving myself adequate time for what was likely to be my longest journey since my return to Skyrim from Cyrodiil. Located directly to the west of Riverwood, Ilinalta's Deep is actually an old fort that sank into Lake Ilinalta many years ago. I'd heard rumours that the abandoned fort had been occupied by necro...

Day Eight - Azura's Champion I woke much later than planned today, probably on account of our late return from Dustman's Cairn last night. After the events of yesterday, particularly the revelations concerning the Companions, I feel like I need to spend some time away from Whiterun. With that in mind, I charted a course to the spot on my map where I'd been told I would find the Shrine of Azura....

Day Seven - Wuuthrad and Werewolves I woke this morning a little later than usual, but feeling renewed and refreshed. I decided on impulse to return to Jorrvaskr, and discover if the Companions had any more work befitting a 'whelp' like myself. On entering the mead hall, Skjor intercepted me and told me that I'd been selected to perform a trial of initiation. A piece of Wuuthrad, the legendary...

Day Six - Kynareth's Will Be Done? I rose before the sun this morning, but that choice was not my own - I woke to find a hooded figure standing over me in the darkness, and a dagger at my throat. What my attacker had not reckoned on was my power of the Voice. With a cry of "Fus!" I pushed him away from me, and drove the Nettlebane into his neck whilst he was still stunned from the blast. At fir...

Day Five - The Companions and the Sleeping Tree It was strange to wake this morning and find myself somewhere other than Gerdur's house in Riverwood. I took a moment to find my bearings before I left the Bannered Mare and crossed town to the Jorrvaskr mead hall, headquarters of the Companions. As I stepped into the hall, a fight broke out between two Companions. It did not take long for the fra...

Day Four - Duelling With a Dragon After a freshly-prepared breakfast of apple cabbage stew, I left what remained of Mistwatch at around 10:00am. My trek back to Riverwood was peaceful, leaving me free to take my time and admire the area south of the White River. I arrived in Riverwood mid-afternoon, and informed Ralof, Gerdur and Hod of my return. While I was away, the three of them had been ta...

Hello to all of you lovely ladies and gents, and welcome to the first episode of Enduring Final Fantasy VII of 2012. I was originally hoping to write and post this on Wednesday, but those plans were sabotaged by my PSP charger going missing. Again. Thankfully it didn't take me long to find this time, and now I'm ready to carry on Enduring. With a bit more time on my hands and a lot more drive t...

Day Three - The Bandit, The Wife and Her Lover I woke a little later this morning, and once again was treated to a substantial breakfast courtesy of Gerdur. I told her and Hod of my plans to head for Mistwatch, and warned them that I would likely not return for a few days. They wished me luck and prayed for my safe return to Riverwood. I left town in the same direction as yesterday, but instead...

Day Two - The Golden Claw I rose early this morning and breakfasted with Gerdur, Hod and Ralof. I thanked them for their hospitality and bade them farewell, promising I would soon return. I spent the morning wandering round town, and eventually found what I was looking for - a general store named the Riverwood Trader. I walked into the shop and was greeted by the two proprietors having a terrib...

Day One - Escape from Helgen If the events of late are any indication, I sense strange happenings may be afoot in this world. For this reason, I will keep this record of my journey as a testament to those happenings. My name is Lenah'd Retsmek. I am a Skyrim Nord through-and-through, born and bred in Karthwasten, but for the last eighteen years I have plied my trade as a smith in the province o...

...Am I really going to do this to myself? Am I honestly going to embark on a new serial blog, running in tandem with my other serial blog? Have I seriously learned nothing from the draining, time-consuming process of writing and incredibly protracted management of Enduring Final Fantasy VII ? I guess not. Welcome, one and all, to the prologue for my new blog series, entitled 'A Month in Skyrim...

Happy New Year, Giant Bomb! 2012 is finally upon us. In habitual fashion, I saw it in sipping cider and playing board games with my family. That's become something of a tradition for us, as it allows us to be sociable and see the New Year in together, while also having a lot of fun in the process. This year our weapons of choice were Trivial Pursuit and Scrabble, with my dad pretty much cleanin...

We've finally come to the end of the road. On the last day of the year, I bring you the last part of My End of 2011 Awards. This is the spot reserved for the biggest movers - the titles that left the most profound impact on me over the course of the year, and the gaming experiences that I will forever associate with 2011. Before we get stuck into the Top Ten proper, though, I'd like to acknowle...

Giant Bomb. It's a website. About video games! But, crazy as it might sound, video games aren't the only thing in my life that I'm passionate about. This part of My End of 2011 Awards is dedicated to those things that aren't game-related, but still had a pretty big impact on my year - the music I couldn't stop listening to, the books I couldn't put down until I'd finished them, and the moments...

Hey guys! You're just in time for Part Three of My Best of 2011 Awards! Come on in, grab a seat and get comfortable! While you're waiting for the show to begin, feel free to leaf through the first and second parts at your leisure. The scheduled programming will begin shortly. ' Ten Years Gone ' Award for Game I Should Have Finished a Decade Ago Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation After all these y...

Hello, and welcome back to the second part of My Best of 2011 Awards. If you missed Part One, you can find it here . Go on, go ahead and read it. We'll wait for you while you catch up. ...Have they gone? Good. Let's get started before they come back! ' Andy, You're a Star ' Award for Best Appearance by Andy Serkis Enslaved: Odyssey to the West Andy Serkis plays two brilliant roles in Enslaved I...

Hello one and all, and welcome to the first part of My End of 2011 Awards. Last year, I came up with some categories for awards, and then assigned them to the games that I felt were most deserving of those awards. This year, I've opted for a slightly different approach, inspired by Sparky_Buzzsaw 's Awards Extravaganza posted earlier this month (if you haven't read them, I recommend you go and...

Christmas Day has come and gone. We've all celebrated, exchanged gifts, and filled ourselves with so much food that we're frightened by the prospect of ever eating again. What does that leave for us to do? Well, you could always read the third and final part of this year's Christmas Mega-Blog. Part Three - Loading My Last Save I'd like to preface this instalment of the Mega-Blog with a disclaim...

Hello, and welcome to the second part of this year's Christmas Mega-Blog. If you missed Part One, chronicling my plans for the festive season, you can find it here . If you're new to my Christmas Mega-Blogs, you'll also find a handy explanation of the concept there. To save getting too bogged down with formalities here, though, let's leap straight into the bulk of this blog: Part Two - The Fest...

Is it really already this time of year again? Is Christmas really almost upon us? Then that can only mean one thing - the inevitable return of my annual Christmas Mega-Blog! Yep, I still like the word 'Mega-Blog' a little too much. Also, stock Christmas image! For the uninitiated, allow me to explain. Every year, over the Christmas period, I write a huge blog. A blog so indescribably massive th...

- I initially posted a variation of this in NekuSakuraba 's recent thread asking for advice on how to tackle his own backlog. What I'd originally intended to be a few helpful pointers developed into a lengthy analysis of my own backlog-battling techniques. Given its length and detail, I figured it might make for a pretty interesting blog. That's why it's here now. - As someone who's been wrestl...

Hey look! It's another episode of that serial blog in which Giant Bomb user dankempster plays through Final Fantasy VII and tries to objectively determine whether or not it's still good! I hope the timeliness of Episode Eighteen's arrival doesn't lure us into believing there will be regular updates from now on, only to go months without seeing Episode Nineteen! Episode Eighteen - Story Expositi...

You know what I haven't done in a while? Revive my seriously slow-moving and hiatus-prone episodic blog series in which I replay Final Fantasy VII and try to objectively determine whether or not it's still worth playing. Shall we do that today? Yes. Yes we shall. This episode sponsored by Plants vs Zombies. An apt choice, considering this blog has effectively risen from the dead. Episode Sevent...

Hey guys. Just wanted to give those of you who read regularly a little heads-up on what's going on with me at the moment. In late September of 2008, I met a remarkable young woman named Karen. On January 13th 2009, we became an item. Last weekend, on December 3rd 2011, we ceased to be that item. Karen decided to break it off, saying she believed that we just weren't working anymore. Given that...

I've always found the concept of writing feature wish-lists like this a little strange, mainly because there's no way that any developer is going to be reading the ramblings of often rabid fans on the internet, and then tweaking the game experience accordingly. In that respect, it doesn't really achieve anything except setting up the writer for inevitable disappointment. And yet here I am, writ...

I don't ordinarily blog about a game until I've seen a significant portion of it. The reasons for that are probably pretty obvious - I wouldn't want to misrepresent a game by saying things that might not be true, or make myself look stupid by bemoaning the lack of a feature that could only be half an hour's gameplay away. In the case of Persona 3 , though, I feel like I can make an exception. I...

The Prince and I have quite a bit of history I've just finished playing Prince of Persia: Warrior Within . It's a game that I have quite a bit of history with, and a torrid one at that. I initially played the game back in 2005, when I received it along with several other games after buying a friend's original Xbox . I don't remember what my problem with the game was, but it didn't endear itself...

In hindsight, we definitely got the bum deal on this box art It's pretty hard for me to come to terms with the fact that Grand Theft Auto III is now ten years old. That may be partly because I can remember the quiet hype surrounding its UK release - the infamous TV trailer that set it up like an epic crime movie, and the excited twittering of friends and classmates awaiting the killer app that...

There is always a risk involved with returning to childhood favourites. It's often the case that our indiscriminate young minds forged pleasant memories out of things that, in hindsight, really weren't that good. In returning to an old, once-loved video game, you run the risk of upsetting those memories, smashing the rose-tinted spectacles and discovering the ugly truth. As a result, there are...

Now that September is drawing to a close and the end of the year is fast approaching, I feel like it's time to lay down the 2011 incarnation of The To-Do List. Those of you who've been following my blogs for a while are probably aware that for the last few years, at around this time, I've laid out some rough plans for how I intend to spend the remainder of my game-playing year. Usually it takes...

Yesterday, after about a month and a half of on-off play, I finally reached the end of The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass on DS . Coming out of it, I'm left with impressions of a pretty neat little game that does some really great things with the capabilities of Nintendo 's money-printing handheld. More than that, though, I'm left wondering about the future of the Zelda franchise on Nintend...

The last month or so has been pretty tough, to say the least. Moving back in with my parents has been a struggle to readjust to, as I relinquish the comparative independence of my last three years at University. My girlfriend, who I'd been living with for the last two years, has also had to move back in with her parents, meaning we're not seeing much of each other at all at the moment. My hunt...

If I've been reminded of one thing this weekend, it's that video game treasure doesn't always have to be in-game. Sometimes being a gamer results in me rediscovering treasure troves of my own. I last experienced this just over a year ago, when I stumbled across a box containing all my old Game Boy games . Something similar happened to me yesterday, although just saying that doesn't really do it...

As the title states, I'm not professing this to be a comeback of any kind. It's simply yet another long-overdue update to my increasingly-neglected portion of the Giant Bomb blogosphere. The last time I wrote anything was almost two months ago, a rambling muse on the status of collectibles in video games . I'm sorry to report that this blog won't be anywhere near as focused or as interesting as...

Collecting at its simplest Video games and collectibles are inseparable concepts. Go right back to the origins of video games and I'm pretty sure you'll find plenty of examples of this symbiotic relationship at work. Probably the best example I can think of off the top of my head is Pac-Man , a game which revolves entirely around collecting things. As time has passed, things have changed - the...

For those of you waiting for it, I promise Episode Seventeen of 'Enduring Final Fantasy VII ' is on its way. Given the number of delays and hiatuses that series has gone through so far, that promise probably seems pretty hollow, but it really is in the works. Unfortunately, that's where it's going to have to stay for the time being, while I prepare for (and sit) my final-year University exams....

Those of you who've followed me for a while probably know that when I'm not playing video games or pretending to study, I work part-time as a cleaner for my University's Students' Union. Yesterday morning, I was cleaning up the aftermath of a particularly messy night in the Union's underground nightclub. While scrubbing the floors in the toilets, I cast my bored eyes over the walls. These walls...

I'm Back! It's been a while since I last typed up anything for my Giant Bomb blog - just over a month, to be precise. The truth is I've been incredibly busy throughout April working on what will hopefully be the last batch of academic essays I'll ever have to write. My University lecturers, being the kind bunch of souls that they are, managed to squeeze all four of my final essay deadlines with...

Time to weigh in on this Just under two years ago, I played an action-horror game called Dead Space . I really enjoyed it, and I wasn't the only one. Anybody who's been following me since then might recall a blog I wrote about how much my girlfriend got into the game , to the point where she wouldn't let me play any of it unless she was in the room with me. Earlier this year saw the launch of t...

You were honestly expecting drastic changes? Just over a week ago, Nintendo dropped the fifth generation of Pokémon games into our laps. Released with fairly little fanfare (from what I've seen, anyway), Pokémon Black and White were supposed to mark a fresh start for the franchise. A new region to explore, new Pokémon to catch, and most importantly, new gameplay elements to revitalise what has,...

Today is my twenty-first birthday. As somebody who's not a huge fan of birthdays, my twenty-first is quite possibly my most perplexing one yet. A lot of people have told me that it's an age which marks the true transition from adolescence into adulthood, but I'm convinced I already made that change a few years ago. I'm frequently told I'm twenty-going-on-forty, and I'm happy to admit that withi...

Would you look at that? I've gone and pulled a Radiohead this week, and brought you the latest episode of Enduring Final Fantasy VII a day earlier than planned. The reason behind this is pretty simple - it will be my twenty-first birthday on Monday. Because of this, I'll be spending a long weekend back at my parents' place, so tomorrow is going to be very hectic. To avoid disappointing you, I'v...

2011 has proved to be a very draining year for me so far, at least from a gaming perspective. Pretty much all my game time has been devoted to huge experiences - two immense open-world RPGs in the guise of Fallout: New Vegas and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion , the sprawling JRPG Final Fantasy VII , and a vast racing sim in the form of Forza Motorsport 3 . Even Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise...

It's Friday! It's still number one! It's Top of the Pops! ...Wait. No it isn't. It's Enduring Final Fantasy VII, the serial blog in which Giant Bomb user and longtime Final Fantasy fan dankempster replays the seventh instalment of the popular JRPG franchise to determine whether or not it's still relevant in a modern gaming environment. Ah well, I guess that'll have to do. Brought to you this we...

Ladies and gentlemen, step right up for the Show of the Century! Witness a wild, savage JRPG tamed by a humble blogger! Come! Be amazed by this revolutionary spectacle! Brought to you this week by Ginster's Peppered Steak Slices. Getting me through this delicate hangover morning Episode Fourteen - The Great Materia Heist After a run-in with Rufus at Rocket Town , I pick my game back up to find...

"Oh hey, would you look at that? It's another episode of that there Enduring Final Fantasy VII, in which Giant Bomb user dankempster seeks to determine whether or not this incredibly divisive JRPG is still worth playing today through a series of half-nostalgic, half-cynical blog posts. Let's settle down and see what he has to say this time." Yes, it's back Episode Thirteen - The Rocket Man Load...

It's not often I use my GB blogging space to talk about something other than games, but I figured that today I'd make an exception. I'm sure I've made it perfectly clear that I love to write. I love maintaining this blog, but I love working on creative projects too, and particularly writing song lyrics. I used to write lyrics pretty frequently, but over the last year or so I've let that side of...

Thusfar, my 2011 has been spent almost exclusively with open-world RPGs. While I've spent some time dabbling with Forza Motorsport 3 and also went through a brief addiction to Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise , January has been dominated by two veritable juggernauts of gameplay - Fallout: New Vegas , and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion . While both have been incredible experiences in their own r...

-- This blog was originally written on January 1st 2011 -- Happy New Year, Giant Bomb! I hope you're all feeling well and your collective hangover isn't too bad. I had a pretty quiet one, seeing in 2011 the only way my family knows how - with a few beers and several hours of Trivial Pursuit. Rested and recovering from a little too much lager, I've dragged myself out of bed this morning to write...

-- This blog was originally written on December 31st 2010 -- Hi guys, and welcome to the final part of My Best of 2010 Awards. If you missed the previous parts about Mechanics , Moments , Characters and Things That Aren't Games , then you can find them by clicking those links. They're not necessary reading going into this part of the Awards, but they do give a bit more insight into why some of...

-- This blog was originally written on December 30th 2010 -- Hi guys, and welcome to Part Four of My Best of 2010 Awards. If you missed parts One through Three (you know, the ones that are actually about video games), you can find them here ( Part One - The Mechanics ), here ( Part Two - The Moments ), and here ( Part Three - The Characters ). In a bid to break up the flow and mix things up a b...

-- This blog was originally written on December 29th 2010 -- Hi guys, and welcome to the third part of My Best of 2010 Awards. If you missed parts One and Two, you can find them here and here respectively. Before I get this underway, I just want to clarify that this is going to be a little different to most other end-of-2010, game-of-the-year style blogs. For a start, this isn't limited to game...

-- This blog was originally written on December 28th 2010 -- Hi guys, and welcome to the second part of My Best of 2010 Awards. If you missed Part One, you can find it here . Before I get this underway, I just want to clarify that this is going to be a little different to most other end-of-2010, game-of-the-year style blogs. For a start, this isn't limited to games that came out in 2010. Instea...

-- This blog was originally written on December 27th 2010 -- Hi guys, and welcome to the first part of My Best of 2010 Awards. Before I get this underway, I just want to clarify that this is going to be a little different to most other end-of-2010, game-of-the-year style blogs. For a start, this isn't limited to games that came out in 2010. Instead, it encompasses every single game I've seen th...

-- This blog was originally written on December 26th 2010 -- Well we've spooned up the prawn cocktail of part one and wolfed down the turkey dinner of part two . Now, ladies and gentlemen, it's time for the Christmas pudding and custard of this year's three-part Christmas Mega-Blog. This year's part three is a comprehensive personal review of Nintendo 's most recent home console - the Wii . Par...

-- This blog was originally written on December 25th 2010 -- Welcome back for the second part of the 2010 edition of my Christmas Mega-Blog! If you missed the first part, you can find it here . Now, I promised something special for this part, and here it is – a humorous poem chronicling a hypothetical Giant Bomb Christmas dinner. I'm sorry I couldn't fit more of you in - I tried to include more...

-- This blog was originally written on December 24th 2010 -- As the year draws to a close, it's once again Christmas time. Time for family get-togethers, exchanges of gifts and overindulgent meals. For me, on top of all of those things, that means it's also time to sit down and write up my traditional three-part Christmas mega-blog. I'm sure you know the drill by now – three days, three blogs,...

-- This blog was originally written on December 23rd 2010 -- It's weird for me to think that six months ago I'd never played a Mass Effect game, and yet here I am at the end of 2010 with a lengthy playthrough of both games under my belt. Having just finished Mass Effect 2 the other day, I'm eager to share my thoughts on it while it's still fresh in my memory. After spending over forty hours fol...

Ladies and gentlemen of Giant Bomb, I believe I owe you all an apology. In my last post I laid out a pretty solid foundation for my blogging schedule for the remainder of 2010. My plan was to crank out one blog a day from Christmas Eve right through to New Year's Day. It was an ambition that terrified both you and myself alike, but one I was determined to stick to, having very little else to ke...

...What they said. I've spent the best part of the last three weeks pumping my spare time into finishing two University assignments before the end of term. Last night, I finally finished them, proof-read them, and submitted them online. Today, I handed in the hard paper copies. So ignoring the minuscule amount of reading I have to do for my final week of lectures, I am essentially free from aca...

Hey guys. I hope no one's expecting anything major from this blog. It's simply an excuse for me to take time out of essay writing. I plan to just ramble for a bit about games I've played, games I'm playing, games I plan to play, and blogs I hope to write before the end of the year. With any luck, it'll postpone my writing about Shakespeare's last plays for another hour or so. On Wednesday, I fi...

Points! Achievement Points! Microsoft Points! Experience Points! Every gamer loves points! Here's three of my own! Exclamation marks ceasing now! ...Ahem. I Got 800 Free Microsoft Points... How appopriate, you fight like a cow... wait, what? ...which came as a bit of a surprise to me, as I didn't actually remember spending a lot of MSP in October. Although, looking back at it, there was Super M...

As a blogger, there's only so much satisfaction one can derive from writing yet another entry in the "here's what I've been playing this week" mould. Speaking purely for myself here, the real enjoyment I get from blogging comes from picking up on trends within the community, analysing them, and trying to formulate some kind of personal response in the form of a blog post. Sometimes that trend i...

It's been a long time coming. Specifically, it's been over two months. I've written seven unrelated blogs and completed seven games in the interim. I've attempted to write this twice in that time period, both ended prematurely by web browser crashes. I've also stocked up enough notes for four further episodes beyond this one. Looking at all those statistics, it's probably time I returned to the...

Right. Time to stop making excuses, pull my finger out and actually blog about video games for a change. To keep things feeling new and fresh, let's experiment with a new format, shall we? Here's how it should work: One blog Three key points Lots of games Minimal waffle Got that? Ok, good. Then let's begin. I Completed A Couple Of Games Recently... FFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUU-- ...and since I haven't...

It's not very often that I get the urge to give up on a game. Sure, I'm prone to putting titles down when I tire of them. I think we all are, to some extent. But I'll always endeavour to pick them back up at a later date and plough on through to the end. For me to irrevocably say "fuck you" to a game is rare. I think the last time I experienced any such feeling was way back in 2005, when the ea...

I thought this week was going to be a breeze. You see, it's Freshers' Week here at my University. It's the week before lectures start, when both new and established students return to campus in anticipation of both the new academic year, and the non-stop run of messy events going on throughout the week. Being a cleaner for my University's Students' Union, I knew I'd have to put some time in to...

I've just returned to my flat after spending a little over a week away, and boy, is it good to be back. Part of me feels a little bit socially inept in confessing that I missed a website, but I really did miss Giant Bomb over the course of my absence. It looks like I've got a lot to catch up on from the last ten days - a slew of editorial content, both written and recorded, as well as a healthy...

Yep, I think Billy Connolly sums it up pretty well there. I am indeed, fellow Giant Bombers, going away. Rest assured this is only temporary, and I will be back in a week or two. I just thought I'd better alert some of you, just to make sure you don't start mourning my sudden departure from the site :P In all seriousness, it's my girlfriend's birthday on Friday, and I'm heading back to her plac...

My history with the Fable franchise is a very complicated one. They've always been games that I've wanted to really enjoy, but for various reasons I just haven't been able to settle into them. My first experience with the series was back in 2005, when I bought a second-hand Xbox from a friend, along with a sizeable stack of games. In amongst the torrent of first-person shooters was a copy of Fa...

While only tangentially related to this blog, here is a Fable II screenshot to break up the text This morning was a morning that started out pretty much the same as any other. I woke up, had some breakfast (crumpets with jam, in case you're curious), played a little Fable II , and then powered up my computer to see what was going down in the digital realm. I checked into Facebook to Like a few...

Episode Guide Episode Twelve - Just A Little Nibel >> Yep, it's that time again, folks. It's the latest episode of Enduring Final Fantasy VII, the serial blog in which I chronicle my return to Final Fantasy VII , playing it through the objective eyes of a modern gamer to find out if it still has something to offer. This episode has emerged a little later than planned, but better late than never...

I was originally going to write this blog yesterday. You see, last night, I made it to the end of Silent Hill 2 , and it left me in such an odd state of mind that I found myself unable to write this. After an evening of pondering and dissecting what I'd played, and a night's rest, I'm feeling ready to try and piece my experience back together into something that's worth reading. I should probab...

Space ain't usually my scene, but in this case I'll make an exception To say I approached Mass Effect with caution would be a surefire candidate for Understatement of the Year. I've never been one to buy into the whole " space opera" aesthetic, you see. I've never sat down and watched a Star Wars movie or an episode of Star Trek, and it's primarily because the galactic setting doesn't really ho...

Or, 'A Blog In Desperate Need Of A Snappier Title' One previous owner. Respectable mileage. Today, I picked up a copy of XIII . It's a game I remember playing a smidgen of way back in my mid-teens and being impressed by the overall look and feel of, but for some reason never bothered to follow up in any way. Fast forward to 2010 and I'm wondering through my local CeX store, perusing the shelves...

Episode Guide Episode Eleven - Canyons And Caverns >> Hey guys, and welcome to yet another episode of Enduring Final Fantasy VII, the serial blog in which I examine Final Fantasy VII through the objective eyes of a modern gamer and attempt to discern whether or not the game still has relevance to a contemporary audience. Roll title card! This episode brought to you by Mike Oldfield's Tubular Be...

I'll start by saying that the following blog is a little bit of an experiment on my part. Anyone who's been following me for a while will no doubt be familiar with my 'Discovering Gaming Greatness' series of blogs, a simple review-like format that I adopted way back when I started blogging here in August of 2008, to put across thoughts about games that I was either close to finishing, or had re...

Episode Guide Episode Ten - Going Gongaga >> Hey, and welcome once again to yet another episode of Enduring Final Fantasy VII, the serial blog in which I return to one of my favourite games of all time ( Final Fantasy VII , in case that wasn't clear), and look at it through the objective eyes of a modern gamer to determine whether or not the game still holds up today. Not too much of a preamble...

Resi 5 is the video game equivalent of your crazy grandpa - still entertaining, but definitely showing its age For the last week or so, on top of returning to Final Fantasy VII , I've been playing Resident Evil 5 on my Xbox 360. I picked it up quite cheaply while shopping in town last week, and after remembering the awesome time that my girlfriend and I had with Dead Space last Easter, I figure...

Episode Guide Episode Nine - Face-Offs And Race-Offs >> Ladies and gentlemen, gather round, gather round! The event they said might never have happened is finally here! It's the return of Enduring Final Fantasy VII, the serial blog in which I attempt to play through fan favourite Final Fantasy VII to determine whether or not it still has something to offer to a modern audience. For those of you...

Ladies and gentlemen... Writing this blog really does feel like a resurrection of sorts. Some of you might have been aware of a marked drop in my activity on this site over the last couple of months, and there are a few reasons for that. I've been a little bit preoccupied with some other stuff, most notably working and putting more time aside to spend with my girlfriend. I'm sure a few of you c...

Just a brief blog today, I'm afraid. In fact, it's barely that - the term "shameless plug" would probably be more appropriate. I'm currently in the process of setting up a personal, non-video games related blog in an attempt to chronicle my quest for self-improvement. After recently finishing Richard Herring's book 'How Not to Grow Up', I've been inspired to fix some of the things that I'm not...

Giant Bomb is a website about video games. In some way, shape or form, that's what brought all of us here. Whether we read about video games, write about video games, discuss video games, even watch other guys play video games while talking about them, video games are at the core of everybody's Giant Bomb experience. Personally, I come here for a little of everything. The Wiki is an incredible,...

Hey guys. I had originally planned for this week's blog to be Episode Eight of Enduring Final Fantasy VII , but that plan has suffered a couple of minor setbacks. The first is Red Dead Redemption , which has managed to hold my attention so strongly over the last couple of weeks that it's managed to prevent me from playing anything else. As a result of that, I still haven't gotten round to finis...

Welcome, fellow Giant Bombers, to my first blog of the summer. Those of you who keep track of my escapades will know that my blogging activity has been a little infrequent over the last couple of months, as a result of having to devote my free time to essay writing, exam revision, and part-time work. Thankfully, all those commitments (bar work) have dispersed. On Thursday morning I sat my final...

Episode Guide Episode Eight - Over The Mountain, Into The Saucer >> Hey guys, and welcome to another episode of Enduring Final Fantasy VII, the serial blog in which I attempt to play through fan-favourite Final Fantasy VII through the objective eyes of a modern gamer to determine whether or not it still has something to offer a contemporary audience. I've got a lot of ground to cover in this lo...

I'm writing this blog to apologise for my sporadic contributions over the last couple of months. I've done the excuses to death time and again, so you probably all know by know that it's exams, revision and work that are keeping me away from this text box at the top of my blog page. But I'm not here to make excuses. I'm here to say sorry, and I'm here to say sorry in a way that will hopefully r...

Hey guys. It's been a while since I last blogged. Almost two weeks, in fact. Since then I've had a lot that I've wanted to say about quite a lot of things. On top of that, there are still a lot of topics I've been wanting to address with blogs for some months now, that I still haven't found the time to articulate into anything worth posting. Unfortunately, this blog isn't going to clear up any...

This is my hundredth blog. A worthy candidate, but there's no end in sight The moment of realisation that hit me yesterday upon noticing the '99' in the lower right corner of my blog page was a pretty sobering one. The prospect of reaching such a milestone brings with it a kind of self-expectation to create something special, and memorable. While I have a lot of ideas for potential blogs right...

Episode Guide Episode Seven - Hitching A Ride >> It's hard to believe that it's been just over a month since I last put one of these blogs together. I had intended to push this episode out at the end of March, but a computer crash resulted in more or less the whole episode disappearing into the inter-abyss. Following my three-week hiatus from the blogosphere, I decided the best way to cement my...

Essays are finished! Bring on the cider! Hey guys. It's been a while, hasn't it? Those of you who read my last entry will recall that I decided to take a break from blogging in order to focus on finishing essays and assignments for my University course. I'm happy to report that all those essays are now finished, and I'm returning to the blogosphere. The last time I updated this blog was a hefty...

I'll start this short blog with a forewarning - this is going to be my last blog for a while. With essays starting to encroach more and more on my free time, I'm simply not going to have time to blog over the next few weeks. Although, I'm not going to have time to play too many games either, so it's not as if I'd have much to write about anyway. Before you ask, that goes for episodes of Endurin...

Keeping a blog is a commitment. Much like playing for a darts team, staying on top of my University workload, working a part-time job, and maintaining a healthy relationship with my girlfriend, it's something that requires a great deal of both my effort and my time. Also much like those other things, it's sometimes difficult to keep things balanced. Such is the way things seem to have gone with...

Episode Guide Episode Six - An Abundance Of Big Birds >> Hey guys, and welcome once again to another episode of Enduring Final Fantasy VII, the serial blog detailing my return to Final Fantasy VII through the objective eyes of a modern gamer. First off, some apologies are due. In terms of my progress with the game itself, I've been in a position to write this episode for just over a week now, b...

Hey guys. Sorry I haven't been maintaining the blog of late. I've been busy juggling University assignments and my new job as a cleaner with the Student Union, so I've not had much of a chance to play games, and I've had even less of a chance to write about playing games. Hopefully, this short round-up of affairs will compensate for the lack of updates in the meantime. Where the hell is my copy...

Episode Guide Episode Five - All Kalm On The Eastern Continent >> H ey guys, and welcome to another episode of Enduring Final Fantasy VII, the serial blog in which I record a playthrough of one of my favourite games - Final Fantasy VII - through the objective eyes of a modern gamer. Progress has been somewhat slow this week for two reasons. The first of these is essays - I have four to write ov...

Hey guys. I feel compelled to write a short blog today, and this is the result. It's just a quick update on what's going on with me, games-related and otherwise. This year, the cake was indeed a lie - I didn't get one :( Some of you may have noticed that I turned twenty on Sunday. First of all, I'd like to thank those of you who left me birthday greetings. They didn't go unread or unappreciated...

Episode Guide Episode Four - Escape From Midgar >> Hey guys and welcome back to another episode of Enduring Final Fantasy VII, the serial blog in which I play through the fan favourite Final Fantasy VII through the objective eyes of a modern gamer. I apologise for the delay in bringing you this episode. It's a result of a combination of factors including University assignments, a brief bout of...

My wireless Xbox 360 controller has finally given up the ghost. It was almost expected, to be honest. It's been temperamental ever since I received it packaged with my 360 last March. The left analog stick always had a tendency to pull ever so slightly to the left, but it was something that I learned to cope with and compensate for. This morning, I settled down with my controller in hand to pla...

Hey guys. I feel compelled to blog, but don't have an awful lot of time to write one (QI starts at 8:30), so this is going to be a fairly short update focused solely on what I've been playing lately. No time to pad out this intro with unnecessary sentences, so let's dive straight into the bulk of the blog! I've just completed Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts . That's pretty much all I'm going to say...

Episode Guide Episode Three - The Valiant Rescue Effort >> Hey guys, and welcome back to the second instalment of my serial blog chronicling my playthrough of Final Fantasy VII through the objective eyes of a modern gamer. You probably all know the story by now. If you don't, then I recommend you check out the previous entries listed under the 'The Story So Far...' section near the end of this...

My girlfriend is a pretty amazing woman. She's fun, she's gorgeous, and she plays games. No, I'm not sharing We've been together for just over a year now, and things continue to be awesome between us. To be honest, that kind of surprises me at times. While we share a lot of common interests, we're also pretty different in a lot of ways. Yet we seldom argue. Part of what I think makes us so grea...

Episode Guide Episode Two - Flower Girls And Honey Bees >> Right folks. Here we are at the start of what is likely to be a pretty substantial blog series - a chronicle of my present run through Final Fantasy VII . If you're not entirely aware of what's going on, I'm embarking on an objective Endurance Run of one of my favourite games of all time - Final Fantasy VII - to determine whether or not...

Episode Guide Episode One - Initial Reactors... I Mean, Reactions >> Earlier this week I wrote a blog covering my thoughts of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII , the PSP prequel to one of my all-time favourite games, Final Fantasy VII . My initial plan after finishing with Crisis Core was to start playing Final Fantasy VII itself, and chronicle my progress in an Endurance Run -style series of blog...

I don't go for collector's editions very often, but I wanted this one Looking back over the last four and a half weeks, January was a pretty good month for me. I returned to University to find myself doing really well with my course assignments, and discovered that we'd be reading some pretty awesome texts this term (Spenser's The Faerie Queene , Milton's Paradise Lost , and Camus' The Outsider...

When I sat down and had a good long think about what I wanted to achieve from a gamer's standpoint in 2010 , one of the first things that came to mind was "I need to play more PC games". Ever since I signed up to Steam shortly after the launch of Giant Bomb, I've been meaning to treat my humble PC with a little more respect as a games machine. My little laptop may not be the most powerful machi...

I wasn't planning on blogging until the weekend. I had the intention of voicing my opinions of the Half-Life expansion packs, Opposing Force and Blue Shift . On this quiet Thursday, with University lectures cancelled and no pressure from essays or exams, I thought I'd just kick back and chill. Maybe read a little of Mrs Dalloway or The Faerie Queene in preparation for my Literature seminars nex...

Chinatown Wars is without a doubt the best portable GTA yet Hey guys. Long time no blog. There's a simple explanation for this - I've been completely pre-occupied with Linguistics essays over the last couple of weeks. Thankfully they're all finished (for now, at least), and once again I have free time to devote to my passion for writing. So, what better way is there to simultaneously get back i...

"We only sold HOW MANY?!" All the time, critically acclaimed games are being released into the public domain and subsequently being overlooked by the majority of people who play video games. It's been that way for years - just look at titles like Okami , Second Sight , ICO and Psychonauts . One of the latest titles to join the ranks of Great Games That Sold Poorly is Rockstar 's Grand Theft Aut...

Hey guys, Dan here with the first blog of 2010. I'm a little bit busy with other stuff right now, which is why there hasn't been much blogging activity on my part over the last week or so. Just so you're all aware that I'm not dead, I thought I'd write up a quick bullet point blog to fill you all in on what's been going down since I last blogged on Christmas Eve. So, here goes! Christmas Day wa...

Welcome back, readers, to the second part of my Christmas mega-blog 2009! Just in case you missed the first part, here's a link to it. The second (and most likely the longest) part of this Christmas mega-blog is going to focus heavily on 2009 as a whole, and my experiences within the year. In essence, it's the sequel to the 2008 in review blog I wrote back in February. While it'll largely be fo...

I am dankempster! I am feeling festive! Hey guys! It's Christmas Eve, and that can mean only one thing - it's time for the return of Dan's Christmas Mega-Blog! Those of you who've been around Giant Bomb long enough to remember this time last year might recall me pushing an epic three-part mega-blog into the blogosphere over the Christmas period. Well, I intend to do exactly the same thing this...

More of the wheat, less of the chaff I'm not normally known for impulse blogging, but I'm going to break that tradition for today. I've just finished Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow and now I feel like briefly sharing my thoughts on the game with all of you. I bought the first three games in the Splinter Cell franchise incredibly cheaply for my PS2 some time ago, with the view to p...

Retroactive Game of the Year 2008? Let's find out... It's been a long time since I last wrote a Discovering Gaming Greatness blog. A quick glance back through the archives seems to indicate that the last instalment was written way back in August, in relation to the first two Oddworld games. A lot of games has been played since then - I've worked my way through two Pokémon games (namely Yellow a...

First things first. I'd like to apologise for my recent absence from the Giant Bomb blogosphere. I've been a little preoccupied with writing an essay for my Early Modern Literature module (a rather interesting one, actually, concerning racism and sexism in Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta ). While I still have yet to finish said essay, I'm also up pretty early for a Sunday morning, so I f...

As I write these words, the credits are rolling on Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony. At this point, I figured I'd write up an analysis of the content similar to what I did with The Lost & Damned . However, after wrapping up the game in a little over a week of on-off playtime, I'm left feeling pretty indifferent about the whole thing, and I'm not sure it warrants such an analysis. Before...

After having what may well be the worst morning I've lived through in recent memory, I'm in a pretty bad mood. The kind of mood where I want to bitchslap everybody I see because the mere sight of them seems to do me some grave injustice. So, I'm going to try and dispel all the nastiness by writing this blog. Hopefully I'll be at least moderately successful in this endeavour. Thankfully, I have...

Crystal may well be the best Pok émon game I've ever played In my last proper blog , I presented my Official 2009 To-Do List - a list of five games that I want to finish before the year comes to a close. First off, I'm happy to report that I took the first game off this list yesterday, when I beat the Elite Four in Pokémon Crystal . I'll be sure to put out a more meaningful blog on this one ove...

Seeing as I've not spoken a single word on the whole Modern Warfare 2 debacle, I'm finally going to break my silence now and state my position on the game. MODERN WARFARE 2-RELATED OPINION: Click here to reveal hidden content. I'm not hyped in the slightest. I've never played Call of Duty 4. In fact, I've never played a Call of Duty game. I won't be buying Modern Warfare 2. I'll probably rent i...

Hey guys. It's been a pretty hectic week here at Dan Towers, what with essay deadlines coming in thick and fast. Nonetheless, I've still managed to break free from my busy schedule and write up a quick update on what's happening with me. DEATHCLAWS!!! The main point of conversation right now with regards to what I've been playing is obviously Fallout 3 . In between my excursions into the Capita...

If I had to pick one aspect of my life to define myself, I'd tell people that I was a writer. For a long time now, I've wanted nothing more than to become a published author. Not a popular author, mind - I have no interest in attaining the same status as people like Dan Brown or J. K. Rowling. The appeal lies more in the creation of something that other people can pick up and enjoy. The thought...

Hey guys. Just another quick update for now. I'm sorry this blog isn't more substantial, I promise some pretty lengthy, interesting entries are on their way. I've just been a little busy with University over the last week, and a nasty bout of head cold didn't exactly help matters either. Next week will bring more meaningful content, I promise. So, on to what I've been playing lately: Now Playin...

So let's get down to business. I've been playing loads of games lately. I mean loads. I don't think I've had this many on the go for quite a while. Usually, I would go to the trouble of paragraphing this kind of information, but I've just noticed that lists can be imported into blog posts, and I'm quite curious to see how that works. Let's see how this pans out... Now Playing ...Wow, it worked!...

HEALTH WARNING: Viva Pinata will steal your girlfriend and leave you feeling isolated and unfulfilled My Xbox 360 has been stolen by my girlfriend. After watching me play Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise , she asked me if she could have a go last night. In the last twenty-four hours, she's assumed total control of the console, has obtained a bigger garden than I have, attracted more types of pi...

Hey guys. Another day, another set of demo impressions to get off my chest. There's also some other stuff, both game-related and not. Dig in and enjoy! Forza Motorsport 3 Demo Impressions Yep, it looks pretty hot Today the Forza Motorsport 3 demo became available for Xbox LIVE Silver members to download. As a fan of the franchise , I decided to momentarily put off my quest for 100% completion i...

Hey guys! This blog, I figured I'd focus more on the games (what with this being a games site and all). So I have some demo impressions to share with you all, followed by an update on what I've been playing recently. Pro Evolution Soccer 2010 Demo Impressions I've been a fan of the Pro Evolution Soccer games more or less since the franchise's inception. I own and have extensively played every i...

Hey guys. It's been a long time since I last blogged (nearly a month, in fact), and for that I apologise. I've been busy with a lot of stuff, as you'll discover should you read this. Given I have a lot to say but don't really want to drag it out over three or four blogs, I've decided to revive the Rapid Update In A Train-Of-Thought Stylee for a third instalment. I've set myself the time limit o...

It's been a bit of a rollercoaster ride here on the Bomb lately. I shan't beat around the bush - I'm talking about the controversial permanent banning of regular (and popular) GB users SuperMooseman and Disgaeamad . I'm not going to dwell too much on the events that have transpired, but instead I'm going to share a couple of tributes for both of these undeniably memorable members of this excell...

Hey guys. I've not got very long, but I felt the urge to blog, so figured I'd give you all an update on what's happening in my world right now. It's mostly game-related, but there are some other interesting developments to note as well. In terms of its gameplay, Lost Odyssey is 100% old-school JRPG In an attempt to cure another bout of the JRPG blues, I decided to start playing Lost Odyssey . I...

As much as I love playing games, it does sadden me that the industry is driven on the back of shooters and sports simulations. I suppose that's why every now and again, I take a break from the plethora of generic consumer-pleasing games and indulge in something a little more off-the-wall. The latest example of this is my recent foray into the quirky realm of Oddworld . Over the last week or so,...

SuperMooseman Hey guys. It's been quite a while since I last blogged (nearly three weeks to be exact), so I'm sorry for the recent lack of blogitude. Things have been pretty hectic the last couple of weeks, for reasons I will soon explain. I'd also like to apologise for my lack of presence on the Giant Bomb IRC in the last few months. Rest assured it has nothing to do with you guys. Truth is, I...

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This blog contains some plot spoilers for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Consider yourselves warned. For those of you who are fairly up-to-date with my game-playing habits, you'll know that I've devoted the last six weeks of my gaming life to The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind . I picked up a copy of the Game of the Year Edition for the Xbox quite a while back, and finally decid...

Hey guys. As you can probably tell, the whole "let's blog more regularly over summer" thing kinda fell through. Therefore, I'm going to treat you to a sequel to the original Rapid Update In A Train-Of-Thought Stylee blog from two weeks ago. I have about half an hour before I have to break for dinner, so here goes: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind continues to tighten its grip on me, so much so...

Hey guys. Just thought I'd let you all know that I'm still alive, and provide you with a brief update on the situation in the land of DanK. I have about twenty minutes spare, so I guess I'll just write whatever comes to mind in the time I have. Here goes: I've developed an addiction to The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind . I've been playing for 66 in-game days, and I've probably clocked up about t...

Hey guys, and welcome to yet another of my blogs. As promised, I'm trying to keep them more regular and a little shorter, so consider this the first bite-sized chunk of my summer. Morrowind's visual style is pretty... unique In case you didn't already know, I've decided to start playing The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (specifically, the Game of the Year Edition on Xbox). I poured around twenty...

Hey guys, and welcome to another tantalising games-related blog from yours truly. I'm going to keep it fairly simple this time around and just focus on what I've been playing over the last week or so. As you can probably tell from the title of the blog, it's pretty heavy on the Metal Gear , but there is some other stuff thrown in too. Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Portable Ops is an excellent...

DISCLAIMER In anticipation of the flak I'm likely to get for typing up something like this, I'd just like to say two things: The product described in this blog entry is not real. Don't ask me where you can get one. You can't. I am well aware that the likelihood of Sony ever doing something like this is next to nothing. I don't need to be told this. This is a dream, not an expectation. Also, ple...

Hey guys. It's been a while since I last blogged, so I figured with E3 now out of the way, this is the perfect opportunity to return to the blogosphere with some opinions on the conference and a little info on what I've been playing recently. As a minor disclaimer, this blog is likely to end up being quite long. Consider yourself warned in advance. E3 2009 While I didn't follow this year's E3 c...

Hey guys, and welcome to a special edition of my blog. For those of you who aren't aware, this is my fiftieth blog entry for Giant Bomb. It feels really weird writing these words, because I've never maintained a blog like this before. I'd attempted to establish a blog back in the days of Gamespot, but gave up after I realised the community would be near-impossible to penetrate. Back when Giant...

the symptoms of JRPG blues include aversion to scenes like these. If you missed it, about a month ago I posted a blog regarding my experience as a sufferer of the JRPG blues. For those of you who are unaware, or who are lucky enough to have not experienced this debilitating condition, the JRPG blues is a slump in JRPG activity for a prolonged period of time. Sufferers of the blues are typically...

There are good and bad sides to everything. As an example, let's take my exam situation. I'm currently taking my end-of-year exams, having spent the last year at the University of Essex studying English Language & Literature - the first year of a three-year course. On the positive side, I have one exam left. It's a Literature exam and I'm reasonably comfortable with the texts I've been studying...

Dead Space was one hell of a thrill ride It's been quite a while since I last wrote a Discovering Gaming Greatness blog. The last instance was back in March, when I shared my thoughts on Rockstar 's Canis Canem Edit . I thought about writing one for Metal Gear Solid 4 , but instead opted to focus on the theme of closure for that. So, the first Discovering Gaming Greatness in over two months is...

Handle with care I'm a pretty careful guy. I always take care when handling fragile possessions, and seldom damage or deface anything through misuse or neglect. Never is this more true than with discs. As an owner of over two hundred CDs, fifty DVDs and over one hundred and fifty disc-based video games, I go to great lengths to ensure my collections are well looked after and immaculately preser...

Metal Gear Solid 4 provides all the closure I needed I think it's in the nature of human beings to strive for resolution. There must be something in our genetic make-up that means we can only deal in finite information. While we have a concept of infinity, it's impossible for us to fully grasp the notion that something may have no borders, boundaries or end. We don't like it when things don't g...

Too expensive for a mere student like myself... When the new generation of consoles hit, I was fairly sure that my decision to upgrade would initially swing the way of the PlayStation 3. I wasn't a Sony fanboy, having grown out of that stage at around fourteen, when I finally gave in, bought myself an Xbox and found out what I'd been missing. No, my mind was set on upgrading to Sony's third hom...

Hey guys, DanK here with a quick personal update. I figured I'd let you all know what's going on, why my activity's been on the slow side recently, and (naturally) what games I've been playing. Let's get started, shall we? The greatest alcoholic beverage known to man I finally finished the last of my essays for this year. I submitted the final one this morning, and while I'm not completely free...

Suspension of disbelief is when a game convinces you that Cecil isn't a stupid name It's been a long time since I got wrapped up in a JRPG. I've grown up being a huge fan of the genre, playing through instalments from well known franchises like Pokémon , Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts and getting a great deal of enjoyment out of them. In fact, up until about a year ago JRPGs were responsible...

I noticed on the forums the other day that there's a thread floating around featuring a video that instructs guys how to get their girlfriends interested in video games. I watched it, had a good chuckle, and moved on. While I'm sure most of us who play games in any respect other than casually would take the video with a pinch of salt, I had an additional reason to laugh off its tongue-in-cheek...

Hey guys, dankempster here, taking a short break from the tedium of essay writing to cook up a little blogosphere goodness for y'all (emphasis on little - they say time is money, and I am on a student's income). HOLYSHITWHATWASTHAT?!?! After finally finishing the first of my assignments last night, I treated myself to a bit of time on the 360. The game in question: Dead Space . I played through...

I don't normally approve of lolcats, but after last night's blog madness (check the comment) I felt this was appropriate. DanK --- Currently playing - Pro Evolution Soccer (PS2)

I shouldn't really be blogging. I should be working on one of the many essays I have to write over the next two weeks. But I feel like I should write something. I've just finished the main story missions of The Lost and Damned, the first part of DLC for Grand Theft Auto IV , and I wanted to share my opinion of it with all you readers. Considering time isn't something I have in abundance, I'll k...

Essays are a pain in the arse. I have four of them to do over the next three weeks. Three of them have a deadline for April 20th, the day my third term at University officially starts. As a result, I probably won't be blogging much for a while, or playing many games either, for that matter. So sorry to all regular readers of my blog, but I expect the next few weeks will be pretty dead as far as...

Hey guys. Here it is - the final part of my Top 30 Games list, covering numbers 5 to 1. Some of it may be expected, some of it may not. You may approve of the selections, or I may lose all credibility in your eyes because of them. Let the controversy commence! 5. Vagrant Story Vagrant Story may be the most beautiful PS1 game ever made PlayStation (2000) In at number five is one of the last grea...

Hey guys. Instead of revealing the final five games in my Top 30 countdown today, I decided to pay tribute to some of the games that were initially on my list of 50-something titles, but were dropped in order to bring the number down to a more manageable 30. I love all these games, though, and figured it wouldn't be appropriate to complete this list without giving them some kind of mention. So,...

Hey guys. Welcome to part five of my Top 30 Games list, where we finally hit top ten territory. All these games are ones that hold special places in my heart, and have helped shape me into the gamer I am today. 10. Pokémon Red/Blue I felt compelled to catch 'em all GameBoy (1999) Chances are, everybody who plays video games has dabbled with the Pokémon franchise at some point. I'm no exception,...

Hey guys. It's time for part four of my Top 30 Games list, covering numbers 15 through 11. 15. Resident Evil 4 Resident Evil 4 is filled with incredible boss battles PlayStation 2 (2005) I was very apprehensive going into Resident Evil 4 . I didn't enjoy any of the original games, despite having given them all a chance, and was worrried that the fourth iteration was going to be exactly the same...

Hey guys. Time for part three of my Top 30 Games list! 20. Second Sight Second Sight had everything I could want in an action game PlayStation 2 (2004) I'm fairly certain this will come as a surprise to most readers. Second Sight went undetected by quite a few gamers, probably due to it not being quite so well-hyped by the media as developer Free Radical 's TimeSplitters series. It was on this...

Hey guys. Today brings with it part two of my Top 30 Games list. I won't ramble on with an excessive preamble. Just get stuck in to five more of the games that shaped me into the gamer I am today. 25. Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus Abe's Exoddus is a cracking 2D platformer PlayStation (1999) I can still remember the moment I picked this game up. It was in 2000, in a convenience store in town. It cost...

Hey guys. Since a lot of people around here have been posting lists of their Top 30 Games, I figured I'd get in on the action and show my favourite games some love. I'd like to get some things clear before we begin: This list represents a selection of thirty of my all-time favourite games from all across my gaming years. As a result, it's not an illustration of what I think are the best games I...

Hey guys. It's that time again, where I sit down at the computer and spend an hour or two pouring my musings onto this page. Crashes in Burnout Paradise look incredible So after an eleven-week stint at University, I'm back at home for the Easter break. I remembered to bring my 360 back with me this time, so I've been playing plenty of games over the weekend. Most of my time has been spent with...

Hey there guys. Once again, I'm sorry to begin a blog with a personal note, but I really feel the need to do so this time. I'd like to open with a few words in memory of my beloved dog, Freckles, who was humanely put to sleep on Tuesday night following a brief but crippling battle with a tumour. I'm still very upset about the whole thing. Mostly because I wasn't there with her when she went. Be...

Hey guys. Before I get too carried away with the usual scope of my blogging, I'd like to throw something out there. On Friday I had to find accommodation for my next year at University. Initially I was going to be living with five friends in a house, but that plan kind of went out the window when my girlfriend and I were betrayed by our group of friends at the last minute and basically told to...

Welcome to Bullworth Academy! Rockstar 's Canis Canem Edit (Bully to any Americans reading this) is one of the greatest action games available for the PlayStation 2. I think a fair number of people would be willing to agree with me on that. I've just finished playing through the game's main story, and I can honestly say I didn't expect it to grip me like it did. I got it for Christmas way back...

Hey guys. Once again, I intended to push this blog out a lot earlier than I actually have, so apologies for the delay. I had an essay to write concerning the concept of the epic journey within works of literature, so I didn't have much time to even play games, let alone write about them. After submitting it, I'm now finally free to stretch my fingers and blog for a while. I've got a fair bit to...

Happy Birthday to me! I am nineteen! More information to follow later. DanK --- Currently playing - Canis Canem Edit (PS2) P.S. Don't forget to wish Happy Birthday to BiggerBomb . It's his birthday today too!

As your typical British fellow, I lead a rather uneventful, unexciting life. I eat, I sleep, I play video games. Sometimes I can fit a game of darts or a hastily-scrawled essay into my busy schedule. Last night, I stayed up with my girlfriend watching a DVD, then played a little of Chrono Trigger DS before turning in for the night. At 2am this morning, my girlfriend knocked on my door, saying t...

dankempster's Review of 2008! Understandably, people are excited about this It's the middle of February. All the fuss surrounding 2008 has well and truly died down now, as people either get stuck into the early 2009 releases like Street Fighter IV and The Lost & Damned , or are hyped for upcoming games like Killzone 2 and Resident Evil 5 . But, as is often the case, I'm not quite up to the mome...

The most upsetting screen I've ever set eyes on People of Giant Bomb, I invite you to join me in mourning. My Xbox 360 died today. I was preparing to play a little Grand Theft Auto IV before jetting off to my one o'clock lecture. Turned the machine on, booted up the game, and was greeted with a mesh of strange colours that looked very out of place in Liberty City. I turned the 360 off and back...

Before I begin this blog, I would like to warn you all that it contains some spoilers concerning the stories of Saints Row and Grand Theft Auto IV. If anybody does not wish to have these particulars revealed to them, it is advised that they stop reading now. You have been warned... So I just finished Saints Row . As I said in my last blog, I had a lot of fun with the game - more fun than I was...

"So I was sitting in my bedroom last night, with one girl to my left and another girl to my right..." If this doesn't evoke even the slightest bit of nostalgia, I pity you It's not very often I can start an anecdote like that. In fact, I don't think I've ever been able to start an anecdote like that before. But, such was the situation last night, as a couple of girls in my flat asked if they co...

For everybody awaiting the 2008 In Review blog, here's a pictorial representation to tide you over Hey guys, and welcome to dankempster's first blog of 2009. I've been meaning to blog for quite a while. I wanted to do a whole blog devoted to my gaming experiences of 2008, but I never got round to writing it. I will, probably later this month. Just rest assured it will be happening. I have some...

Well, here it is - the third and final part of my tantalisingly ginormous Christmas mega-blog! Sorry for the delay, but I had a headache by the end of Christmas Eve and wasn't really in the right frame of mind to write. Then, believe it or not, Thursday and yesterday were kinda busy. But I've knuckled down today and decided to bring you what will hopefully be the most thought-provoking part of...

Hello, old friend... Welcome to the second part of my tantalisingly ginormous Christmas mega-blog! If you haven't read the first part, you can do so by clicking this link right... wait for it... here . It's not necessary to read it before reading this, but it does kinda outline where I'm going with the whole Christmas mega-blog thing. Part two, as promised, is something I haven't done recently...

I am dankempster. I am feeling festive! Hey guys, DanK here with the first part of a tantalisingly ginormous Christmas mega-blog! I was originally going to post this as one enormous "mega-blog", but I decided to split it into three separate, normal-length blogs instead. Why? Because I am a comment-whore, naturally. This here, as the name would suggest, is the first part of that mega-blog, which...

Three weeks without this. How will I cope?! I feel really stupid right now. Not in a self-pitying kind of way, more just a throw-away "how could you be so daft?" brand of stupidity. Yesterday, I returned home from my first term at University. It was an awkward journey home to say the least - as neither of my parents drive, I couldn't be picked up from the Uni and had to make my way home via tax...

Courtesy of systech: the little bug sprite in the lower left Recently, something has upset me. Upon checking out TokyoChicken 's latest blog , I noticed that systech has created a pretty awesome promotional poster-like thing for Bomb Should Have A Face . As you can see, it's a bit like a patchwork quilt, made using the icons of all the most popular and iconic regulars on Giant Bomb. A quick gla...

Me. Being bitten. Uni is awesome! It's been almost a month since my last blog post, when I proudly stated that I was officially "back on the Bomb". Being at Uni, however, I have a lot of other stuff to be getting on with. There are assignments to be written, pints to be consumed, and a girl who's both captivated and annoyed me . Still, despite all these hold-ups, this is (from a literal standpo...

Hey guys! After a week away from the forums, the IRC and the site, I'm back. I've got a few things I want to say and I don't have a huge amount of time to say them in, but I'll do my best to squeeze in as much as I can. My new home. Pretty nice place, if I do say so myself As you may be able to tell from the title of this blog, the reason I haven't been active on Giant Bomb recently is because...

Since the whole community drive started, I've been trying to get involved with other users a lot more. Last week, my influence within the Giant Bomb community didn't stretch any further than a few posts in the forums and reading the occasional blog post. Now I'm using the Giant Bomb IRC , participating in the Let's Play events, listening to the community podcast and just generally trying to hav...

Greetings to my readers. I thought I'd just offer up an update for anybody who cares what the situation is right now. I'm off to the University of Essex in a few weeks to start an English Language and Literature course. I can't believe how quickly it's come around, and I'm starting to get anxious about it. That's not to say I'm not looking forward to it. Quite the opposite, actually, I'm really...

Resident Evil 4 caught me off-guard in more ways than one It's been a couple of weeks since my last Discovering Gaming Greatness blog , and I had a funny feeling I'd be writing one today. Just over a week ago, with the help of some forum-goers, I decided to give Capcom 's Resident Evil 4 a shot. Originally released for the GameCube in 2005, I picked up a preowned copy of the PS2 port in late 20...

Author's Note : Before I begin this countdown, I'd like to take this opportunity to warn all readers of this blog that it contains a lot of pretty major spoilers. Usually, I abhor spoilers and I like to avoid them at all costs. However, when dealing with a game's most moving scenarios, it's unavoidable. Therefore, I'm suggesting that if you haven't finished any of the games on this list and don...

It's a nice place to be Well, I'm there. It's taken just over a month of minor edits, full write-ups and screenshot assignments, but a few minutes ago I finally broke the 1000 point barrier with a fairly major edit on the Grand Theft Auto: The Classics Collection page. I'm really chuffed that I've made it to the four-digit mark. It makes me feel like I've really made a significant contribution...

Prepare to lose a few hours of your life, several times over As anybody who read my last blog entry will know, I picked up The Orange Box a couple of days ago. To be honest, I didn't think I'd be writing another Discovering Gaming Greatness blog for a little while. After all, I've already written one about Half-Life , and writing one about Half-Life 2 or either of its episodes would probably ju...

Coming soon to an Xbox 360 near me! This morning, I made the tough decision of trading in my copy of GRID at my local GAME store. With the £22 store credit I got, I finally managed to pick up The Orange Box . I can't wait to get stuck into Half-Life 2 again, experience the episodic content and also sample the apparently-excellent Portal . However, I've decided to hold off before I load up The O...

There's only one way to approach this situation, and you're going to die 20 times before you work out what it is First things first; no Discovering Gaming Greatness this blog. I've been trying so hard to get into Splinter Cell , but so far Splinter Cell has just been trying. Don't get me wrong, I love stealth games. The Metal Gear Solid games are among my favourite games of all time. What I don...

Half-Life on PS2 - one of the best FPS games I've ever played When it comes to games, I'm very guilty of making the occasional impulse buy. If I'm out shopping and happen to see something reputable in a pre-owned bin priced less than £5, chances are I'll whisk it away with the intention of devoting some time to it. Another thing I'm guilty of is putting said games on a shelf and leaving them to...

Hello everyone, and welcome to my Giant Bomb Blog. I figured I'd use my first entry as an introduction to myself and my gaming tastes. My name is Dan Kempster, better known among friends as DanK. I'm eighteen years old and live in the UK. I have a number of interests, gaming being an obvious one considering I'm using this site. Others include playing cricket and darts, listening to and playing...