Category Archives: Previews

10 Things I Want In The Elder Scrolls Online

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Within hours of Game Informer’s announcement  that The Elder Scrolls Online would be the feature story for their upcoming June edition, scans of the entire article had been leaked, and with it came information that enraged some and excited others into a frothy rapture.  The biggest points of contention came from it being “just another WoW clone,” and that it looks and feels “nothing like proper Elder Scrolls games.”  They weren’t completely wrong, either — many of the leaked screenshots didn’t evoke a strong sense of the Tamriel I know — but that isn’t to say that I was put off by the aesthetic.  Along in this continuum, I actually fell somewhere closer to the latter, not wanting to call it a failure, but also not ready to deem it a success.  There are things I need to see before I get too excited, but the groundwork is laid for something that could be pretty epic… especially if they stick to my ten bullet points of success. (Trust me, I’m a MMO veteran & expert.*)

1. Tamriel should be filthy.
One of the most memorable features of Skyrim was just how dirty everyone was.  No, I’m not talking about all the sexual …

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The Next Step: Towns is Everything Minecraft Isn’t

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The first time the spiders attacked, I wasn’t prepared.  A legion of black chittering death-bringers led by the red commander that loomed over the rest had decided that my small agricultural hamlet had had it too easy for too long.  With a population of only thirteen completely unarmed townspeople, I watched the army march ever closer, knowing that there was a good chance that these were the last moments of their lives.  It is in this moment that Towns’ tagline of “Build, Explore, Die prematurely!” comes into shockingly clear focus.

From that first paragraph, you would probably assume that Towns was a real time strategy game, and you wouldn’t be wrong, but not necessarily right.  Describing it as an isometric Dwarf Fortress would be along the right track as well, but still, no dice.  In fact, any genre designation you try to give it — from city builders to dungeon crawler to god sim — helps describe the game, yet fails to completely capture the essence of it.  In many ways, the genius of Towns is that it pulls from these genres without ever becoming one of them — paying reverence without pledging fealty.

In Towns, you are the omniscent mayor of …

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First Look: Game of Thrones

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‘Video game adaptation’ doesn’t carry a positive connotation – it’s hard to remember a game that did a movie or TV series justice. Dramatic scenes, a well-tempered script and commendable acting have a tendency to not translate well into gameplay and cutscenes, but fortunately French developer Cyanide Studio have recognised this problem. The self-proclaimed ‘huge fans’ of George RR Martin’s fantasy epic have set the upcoming RPG not in the footsteps of the original series, but as a totally separate plotline within the same universe.

At first, I was disappointed not to be cutting down enemies as the great Ned Stark or going on wild misadventures as Tyrion ‘The Imp’ Lannister. Upon seeing more of what Cyanide have done, I’m glad. Had it attempted to directly adapt from the series, it would have been trying to be something it’s not, its primary aim to replicate a creation built for a different medium altogether. Instead, here is something built from the ground up to be not a clone, but an RPG. The game visits many classic areas brought to life by the show, and some old faces can be seen – but it steers clear of the main narrative. The original characters …

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Tommy Guns and Steel Drums: Our First Look at The Journey Down

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Times are tough for Kito and Bwana, the proprietors of Kaonandodo’s Gas n’ Charter.  The power has just been shut off by the shady new power company,  but with some quick ingenuity (read: pulling a switch) Bwana is able to subvert the power company’s meddling and restart the power.  But to keep it on, they’re going to have to find a way to make up the four thousand dollars they owe.  Luckily for them, a young professor from St. Armando University shows up looking for an old book that she has tracked down to Kito and Bwana’s place, located up in the attic.  To get to the book, you build a ladder out of breadsticks.

The thing about The Journey Down is that all throughout the experience you’re going to have to give yourself to that oft-maligned adventure game logic.  For example, after Lina (the professor searching for the book) suggests that Kito and Bwana fly her back to the campus, we are to assume three things that can only be deemed ridiculous: 1.) that she can clearly not see that the plane in question has no motor, is missing a propeller, as well as something with which to pilot the …

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Is Indie Royale’s Alpha Collection ready for prime time?

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When I think of alphas nowadays I tend to recall Minecraft, a game eminently playable in its alpha state. In reality, alphas (and even betas) are not like that: they’re more proofs of concept than full games. Alphas are not feature complete, but represent where the game’s going.

In this case, Indie Royale’s Alpha Collection #1 has given us three alphas. It’s an interesting concept for a bundle: we gamers are used to buying four to six games in a bundle where we’ve heard of three of them and own two. That’s not the case here: as someone pretty plugged into indie gaming, I didn’t know these games existed before the bundle was announced. There’s something to be said for that level of novelty, but it also represents a risk: who’s going to buy three games they’ve never heard of? In reality, it works more like Kickstarter than a traditional bundle: you get a few unfinished games, but really what you’re doing is preordering and supporting continued development.

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Could multiplayer be Mass Effect 3′s saving grace?

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I hate multiplayer. Unreal Tournament 2004 with my college buddies was the most recently I’ve enjoyed playing with other people. I tried games like Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead and didn’t particularly enjoy them. Borderlands was fun, but I preferred playing by myself—it was sad and depressing, but I hated having to deal with other people.

Mass Effect 3′s multiplayer, though, is different. To use a sad, tired cliché, I had to force myself to stop playing it to write this up.

I complained quite a bit about the demo’s single player portion. And sure, the plot felt old and tired, but what surprised me was how differently the game played. It felt more like a corridor shooter than one of Mass Effect 2′s firefights, where you had a number of options at how to take out the opponent. I was worried that Bioware had forgotten that because we had all these exciting powers we didn’t want the game to become a run and shoot. Rather than guns and conversation, we should call it “Hit target with 1200 newtons of force and send him scuttling off a balcony” and conversation. That’s where the game is fun: when we’re pulling absolutely …

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Obligatory: Mass Effect 3 Ex Machina, Michael Bay, a demo

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I’ll preface this post immediately: I am not Aram, writer of our many lists about things wrong with Mass Effect 2. Of the forty five items on those lists, I probably disagree with about thirty five of them.

That being said, and I’m sure the full game will change my opinion, but ugh. This demo.

Here’s the thing: both Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 felt like they were games designed for specific audiences. Sci-fi RPG fans loved Mass Effect because it was complicated, crunchy, and had enough Star Trek epicness to be one of the greatest RPGs ever. Mass Effect 2 flipped the script and alienated a lot of fans, sure, but it was trying, unrepentantly, to be guns and conversation. It wasn’t trying to be an RPG except in conversation.

Mass Effect 3 is trying to be both games. It’s trying to make love to the world, and (to lean on an old standby) it feels like it has syphilis.

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Everything old is new: Diablo 3 beta impressions

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I have to admit, I expected something with more panache. With access to Diablo 3′s vaunted beta I expected something daring, something world-shaking. What I got was, well, Starcraft 2: a game of incremental improvements.

This is not to say I didn’t love it. When I think about Diablo 3 my palms get shaky now, even after conquering the beta with two characters, and I want to play with a third, a fourth, a fifth. I’m thinking of interesting skills I could unlock, the wonderfully simple but deep system behind them, and how I could make incredibly broken armor for my character. I keep fiddling idly with the skill set generator, thinking about synergies and how to break the game.

Blizzard games have always been gaming’s comfort food. With the lone, startling exception of Warcraft 3 their games are a sort of non-evil proto-Zynga: they take good ideas other people have and make them better. Warcraft and Starcraft codified and improved upon every Real Time Strategy cliché. Diablo took the roguelike and made it for everybody. And World of Warcraft made Everquest even more addictive; it removed the inconveniences that kept you from playing all day.

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“Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning”: Demo Impressions

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I’ve been looking forward to the release of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (KoA:R) since I first heard about it, not least of all because of the names associated with it’s production. There’s Ken Rolston, lead designer on two of the Elder Scrolls series; R.A. Salvatore, a prolific fantasty writer, perhaps best known for creating Drizzt Do’Urden; and Todd McFarlane, famous for the Spawn series of comics. Even before I had seen any sort of gameplay, I couldn’t imagine KoA:R being anything less than a stellar title. With the recent release of the demo, I took the opportunity to take it for a spin.

I’d forgive someone for drawing comparisons to the Fable series, but not as an excuse for passing it up. While it draws things like flashy combat moves, skill trees and townsfolk with exclamation marks above their heads from other action RPG’s, it blends them in a way that offers something distinct.

In the interests of getting a full idea for the game, I played through it twice. The first time, playing a wizard/rogue hybrid who sought to helpfully complete side quests and respect the tranquility of typical NPC life, and the second time playing an armored melee …

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Final Fantasy XIII-2 Demo Impressions

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Although I ultimately could not finish Final Fantasy XIII, I saw a lot of potential in its world and characters who I was actually starting to like right when the game became too frustrating for me. That’s why I was actually excited to try out the sequel for myself to see if the improvements were enough for me to revisit Cocoon and its surrounding territories.

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