There’s been an insane amount of speculation surrounding the Grand Theft Auto franchise lately. With a speculative launch in the near future, most analysts speculate that Grand Theft Auto V may hit store shelves sometime in 2013. Some have even said that Rockstar will be releasing the title late this year. I’m a bit of a skeptic though. I can’t tell you when GTA V will be released, but I would be surprised if it was sometime in 2012. I can, however, tell you exactly what I want from this heavily anticipated game. I’ve been playing the GTA series for a while now and in this story I’ve noted features… (more…)

The recent announcement of The Elder Scrolls Online set the gaming world ablaze. My first reaction was to imagine completing quests and hunting dragons in Tamriel with friends, but as news about the game trickles out, my excitement about the game is pretty much gone. I’m a big fan of The Elder Scrolls series; I’ve put over 120 hours into Oblivion and Skyrim and I’ve enjoyed both games extensively. The reason I, like many others, enjoy Elder Scrolls games, is because they present a comprehensive, well-written single player experience that is matched by few games (except maybe other Bethesda titles). The story of each Elder Scrolls game is focused around… (more…)

A few years ago I downloaded a generic Trials game on my old Blackberry Curve. I played the game to death and killed countless hours on the subway doing back flips on my two dimensional dirt bike. Honestly, I don’t know why I enjoyed the game. It was repetitive, insanely hard and very frustrating, but something about the mechanics kept me coming back for more. The first Xbox 360 Trials title, Trials HD, was released on the Xbox Live Arcade in 2009. When it came out, I tested the demo but didn’t feel compelled to continue playing. There wasn’t enough ‘game’ to warrant purchasing the full version. The title’s sequel, Trials Evolution, seems to have… (more…)

I sat down to my computer on Thursday night with a notebook, a pen and Steam’s client opened on my desktop. I copied the review code we received from Telltale games into the correct box and waited as The Walking Dead Episode 1: A New Day quickly downloaded. This is my normal routine for sure, but I wasn’t expecting to play what is likely one of the best point and click action/interactive titles of the last 10 years. Telltale seems to have got almost everything right in their approach to turning The Walking Dead into a video game. You take control of a story about a man with questionable morals, and shape that… (more…)

Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir is a very different kind of video game. The title focuses on the 3DS’ augmented reality feature, only instead of utilizing the cards included with the handheld, the player uses a small paper diary included with the game to solve puzzles. The player points the 3DS’ camera at it and three dimensional objects appear through augmented reality. The game begins by asking the player to take a self-portrait. This is when the game’s flaws first appear. The 3DS’ camera’s low 1.6 mega pixel camera preforms very poorly under low lighting conditions. My face ended up a noisy mess of pixels. Through the 3DS’ built in camera, Spirit Camera places… (more…)

Bloodforge is one of many recent Xbox Live arcade (XBLA) titles that attempts to blur the lines between downloadable and retail game releases. Its production values and graphics are impressive (especially for a downloadable title). What’s unfortunate is that the game isn’t very much fun. With a name like Bloodforge, I expected the title to be full of blood and gore. I was absolutely correct. Bloodforge is extremely violent—red fluids are constantly squirting out of enemies as you hack and slash through them. But the blood effect looks cheesy and forced. The game is obviously trying to maintain a serious tone through its extreme violence but it ends up looking borderline comical. In Bloodforge, you play as a… (more…)

A sad moment in gaming history is about to fall upon us. Atlus announced that Demon’s Souls‘ servers will finally be shutting down on May 31, 2012.  They made announcements in the past saying the servers “may” be shutting down, but this time it seems final.  When you load up your game, you see a message saying the servers will be shutting down and they will be taking votes on how to shift the world tendencies for each half of the month.  This message never showed up with the previous announcements. Demon’s Souls is truly an amazing game! Many people called it brutal and others called it down right frustrating.  I,… (more…)

It’s been a while since I played an engrossing game on any platform, and when I finished Persona 3 Portable at 3 in the morning last night, I was terrified by the game’s ending. Persona 3 Portable is one of the finest games available (Substitute it for Persona 3 FES if you like). Putting 60-odd hours into the game made me wonder about something though. As I grow older, I have less and less time to play games. Should I still play long games rather than titles with a short but engrossing storyline? The answer is yes, but also no. The problem with long games is that there is almost… (more…)

There is a hubbub on forums everywhere decrying the end of the current generation every time a rumor teases details of the next Xbox or PS4. “The current generation isn’t maxed-out,” say fans. Others chime in with the common, “fancy graphics don’t make games better, gameplay does,” argument. Are these assertions true? Absolutely. Do they offer up a reasonable argument to delay the next inevitable generation of consoles? No, and here is why: The Law of Diminishing Returns The idea that a console can be “maxed out” is a fallacy. The fact is, while the console is static, the programs the box runs are not. In other words, the more… (more…)

Phil Fish’s Canadian developed indie video game Fez is unlike any title I’ve played. Graphically, it’s on par with a Nintendo title from the mid 80s, with a bit more polish and a few interesting graphic effects. The title isn’t about visual flair though—it’s about going back to the lost simplicity that makes retro video games so appealing. Fez is a simple game but that’s what makes it so much fun. At first glance, it resembles a generic 2D side scroller with pixelated old-school graphics but it goes much deeper than that. Fez allows the player to rotate its world in order to solve puzzles and collect cubes. It forces the player to think about… (more…)