Nothing’s truly bad or immediately flawed about this expansion pack; after Shogun 2, but after Rise of the Samurai, FotS is fatiguing. There are a lot of new things. Being able to bombard a province from the sea is strategically interesting. Railroad systems allow army stacks to move far beyond what a dirt path could provide, which makes the provinces with railroads that much more valuable, and balancing between modernization and old traditions often results in internal thought processes, like asking yourself if giving your samurais guns is worth the discontent that will follow.

“…it very much feels like Creative Assembly has peaked creatively.”

It’s just that at this point, it very much feels like Creative Assembly has peaked creatively. FotS is the culmination of every good idea and improvement that came beforehand. Napoleon was a massive leap relative to Empire, realizing much of the potential that lay in the new technology Creative had built. Shogun 2 revisited a setting and fully realized it with all this fancy tech, and, more importantly, the AI reached its game-changing potential.

Yet it’s still fun. Having played any of the Total War games since Empire will make you familiar with how this game works. The Imperial and Shogunate divide is the most fundamental gameplay wrinkle in FotS, functioning as the type of play style you want to use. Imperial armies will have the upper hand technologically, while clans loyal to the Shogun and its methods will continuously be at a disadvantage until you manage to close in.

It’s an interesting divide in play styles, as one functions largely on range, and the other excels when blades meet. You kind of have to create this type of scenario yourself, though, fully committing to a singular path of modernization or Shogun philosophies. The game gets far more interesting the longer you progress in the campaign, as the years pass and new tech surfaces, further pushing you in one direction or the other. Chances are you’ll dabble in some guns here and a spear there, but to make it more interesting upon yourself, stick to a single path and see where that takes you.

The multiplayer continues to be fun, but that’s dependent on the mode. Shogun 2 faced some serious de-sync issues when trying to play a cooperative campaign. It’s a shame, as the campaign game is well-developed and is rendered unplayable because of the possibility of the game breaking due to the troubles of playing over the Internet. That said, the avatar conquest and drop-in games work just fine, so that’s two out of three, if you’re looking at it as a glass half-full guy.

So what’s next? Creative Assembly knows how to churn out a Total War game in its sleep, but it’s hard to wonder if just a new setting will be enough to reinvigorate and reinvent. Creative has settled on evolution rather than the revolution-evolution-revolution cycle they have clung to until the release of Empire. It’s definitely smarter but far less ambitious and far less inventive. Maybe it needs to happen; maybe Creative needs to go lights out for the next two to three years before revealing something massive, because for as great Fall of the Samurai is, I’m not waiting for the next Total War.

Well, unless it’s Rome 2. That would be awfully persuasive.

Jackie Estacado, Don of the Franchetti family, has laid low with the Darkness bottled up for two years following the death of his girlfriend Jenny. After a failed attempt on his life, Jackie is ready to unleash the Darkness once again, to exact revenge and to continue fighting for Jenny. His new enemies have been tracking him for years, and their leader, Victor Valente, is after the Darkness for himself. Jackie also faces a reality problem, not knowing if what he is experiencing is real while having several brief visions of a psychiatric ward throughout the game.

Before I continue I’d first like to include a precautionary note. The Darkness II is definitely what I’d refer to as an adult oriented game. The entire thing revolves around harnessing evil for violence, has many demonic themes (eating hearts of dead enemies to regain health, collecting dark relics for points, etc.), includes adult themes, and is not something I’d ever buy for a kid. With the appropriate rating there’s nothing wrong that. I’m not discounting the game for this at all, but the “dark” themes turned me off a bit, and I’d guess that reactions to these themes among FPS fans would be mixed.

With that note out of the way, I’d like to continue with an annoyance. Game assistants, such as Wheatly in Portal 2, seem to be popping up more and more these days. The inclusion of the Darkling in The Darkness II was fine functionally, but it seemed like the character was intended to appeal to a younger audience, which didn’t make much sense to me. For example, there were several times where the Darkling would run up to an enemy’s body I had just killed to pass gas or urinate on it. If you’re making an adult game, I just don’t quite understand why you would include something like this. The Darkling just seemed too offensive to me; I wasn’t able to appreciate the character at all. I also feel like the horror element to the game would have been enhanced if the player were forced to play alone.

“…despite playing on rails, The Darkness II is a fairly solid and intense first-person shooter.”

On the positive side I’d say that despite playing on rails, The Darkness II is a fairly solid and intense first-person shooter. I didn’t encounter any bugs or gameplay issues, and there were plenty of enemies to kill. Locales were mixed, and even though I found it a bit cliché, the vacant carnival level was definitely an enjoyable setting. There weren’t exactly a large variety of weapons, but the inclusion of the ability tree, in which new abilities can be purchased with dark essence points (gained through killing enemies), helped. The abilities tree seemed like kind of an afterthought on the whole, but it’s better than just having generic weapons. Items such as extended gun clips, a swarm distraction to stun enemies, and better weapon handling can be purchased in the abilities tree. The Darkness itself is really the most powerful weapon, which can destroy enemies in a couple of swipes if they’re close enough. When things got crazy and I was surrounded by enemies the Darkness always seemed to allow me to break out; it was pretty incredible to use.

Another strong point of The Darkness II was the voice acting. It wasn’t all great, but I was especially impressed with David Hoffman’s portrayal of the half deranged occultist Johnny Powell (example trailer linked) and Brian Bloom as the new voice of Jackie. The loading segments in which each of these characters reveal more of the storyline were some of the most memorable portions of the game. Voice acting in video games can vary quite a bit, and it’s not usually very good; this game is definitely an exception. Sound effects and music were also decent.

Visuals were also a positive, but you shouldn’t go into it expecting total realism. The Darkness II was developed using cel-shaded animation, which is different from the first game. The cel-shading was different than what I have seen before in that it was subtle and at times almost unnoticeable. There was definitely a nice balance between realism and animation, which really made it seem as if I was experiencing the graphic novel on which the game is based.

In terms of difficulty, I’d have to say that I didn’t find The Darkness II overly challenging. The AI was easy to avoid and fool for the most part, but there were a few portions that I had to replay several times to finally move forward. Being equipped with the Darkness felt as if I was much more powerful than the majority of the enemies.

In addition to the single-player campaign The Darkness II also includes a Vendetta mode in which you can carry out missions for Jackie as one of four characters with special powers. These missions can be played alone or in co-op mode, but the Vendettas are definitely not the main attraction. It’s one of those extra things thrown in that you try once or twice but to which you never come back.

Overall, I’d say that The Darkness II is a decent shooter, but there is nothing in it that is amazing; it’s respectable but mostly predictable. Playing a more or less “evil” character felt different compared to all the other standard “save the Earth” games, but other than the Darkness it doesn’t include much that hasn’t been done before. The story and voice acting is a big plus. The main campaign isn’t that long, and the AI isn’t the greatest, but it is intense and still enjoyable if you’re an FPS fan.

“It is, by half a foot, my favorite game in the trilogy.”

It is, by half a foot, my favorite game in the trilogy. BioWare weaves in events and questions lingering since the beginning and wraps them up in a way that gives you the power to decide just how they conclude. The conflicts are dramatic; the characters are friends; the journey is often powerful. Mass Effect 3 is thoroughly complete in the things that count. Remember, I’m from the standpoint of the few who liked the ending. I felt like reiterating that. Seriously, I liked it. Let’s drop the subject and move on.

At the very beginning of the game, BioWare accidentally brings up the question: What the hell was the point of Mass Effect 2? Its irrelevance to the central plot is only overshadowed by the characters that were introduced in it, but, really, roughly 99% of that game didn’t matter. It was a game that indulged BioWare’s penchant for character writing, which they’ve always excelled at, and I guess that’s enough. As long as you were obsessed enough to make sure that no one died, they all return, often integrated into the core conflict.

That core conflict is divided into multiple, separate conflicts, each with its problems and hiccups that need resolving. Yeah, it’s the traditional BioWare hub structure, going system to system, planet to planet, figuring out problems with guns and dialogue wheels. It ha been streamlined further by stringing you along with one hub at a time, instead of having the option to tackle them in any order.

BioWare takes advantage of this by making the plotting tighter. It’s one of Mass Effect 3′s better elements; the plot moves and develops quickly, leading on to the next grand event that ends often with BioWare effortlessly making you feel something. Cold-hearted bastards beware, Mass Effect 3 might sneak right past your chilly exterior and make your heart increase many sizes too many.

It’s always something BioWare has always claimed that they were doing, that they make games that are emotionally resonant, but it’s always been something I wanted to believe, instead of something that actually was. With Mass Effect 3, that just isn’t the case. It’s a culmination of half a decade of world-building and character building, now unleashed in a cathartic shotgun of emotion. Something like that.

“Shepard is also much more of a character in the game…”

Shepard is also much more of a character in the game, instead of an empty, vapid cipher trapped by your input. More often than not, a dialogue choice makes up a third of a conversation of which you have any input in, as Shepard emotes, reacts and simply becomes a part of a conversation. You still make the decisions when it comes down to the bigger choices that will affect the fates of entire species, but much of the flavor text is automatic. When Shepard’s barking out orders to watch your flanks and to push forward, you get the sense that he was always a good tactician on the field. When Shepard’s tripping over his words, or gives a character a look conveying a thousand words, you understand the enormity of the pressure that surrounds him in having to save the galaxy. This in combination with Mark Meer’s immensely improved vocal delivery for Dude Shep.

This delicious, well-written center is often almost sabotaged by the amount of bloat that BioWare put into the game. Most of the side quests are such fluff and so empty, that they often look completely shameless. A handful have a good substance to them, while the majority can be categorized as fetch quests. BioWare does doubly wrong by making the quest rewards take the form of War Assets, which determine how ready you are for the counterattack against the Reapers. Mass Effect 3 could have lost ten hours of game and it would have been better for it.

Additionally, as great as the combat is and just how much better all the little additions have made Mass Effect 3‘s shooting all-around excellent, there’s often just too much of it. Too many waves, too many rooms to clear, too many guys to shoot. It’s an extremely exciting thing to be a part of, especially if you’ve chosen the Vanguard and decided to spec its space tackle to destroy everything around you, but contextually, you start to wonder just exactly how the Illusive Man was able to hire almost literally millions of mooks in the span of six months.

You start to wonder just how much better the game could’ve been if the splinter of BioWare who worked on the online co-op didn’t work on the co-op at all. What if they just built assets? Created more interesting side quests and content for the part of the game that matters most? There’s nothing egregious about a Mass Effect game having a wave-based survival mode, but when the cracks of a compressed development cycle of a game of this scale become apparent, you ask these kinds of questions.

In the end, Mass Effect 3 still hits hard. Reading about how some people came close to crying or completely just broke down during certain moments actually doesn’t sound ridiculous. BioWare captures the scale of the conflict well, but always focuses on the people involved in it. It’s pretty amazing just how badly EA disregarded the heart of the game – the characters and the world – when they began their marking blitzkrieg, but don’t worry, it’s oh so definitely there – Day 1 DLC, controversial endings, and questionable use of resources be damned. This is a fine, lovingly crafted game with a clear vision despite the realities of corporations and damning business practices.

The Elder Scrolls games are the standard for single-player single-character fantasy role playing games, and any game designer wanting to make something in this genre has to address, at all times, how their game is to compare to Bethesda’s juggernaut. Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning (KAR) is Electonic Arts’ answer to Skryim, and it does a fine job of representing itself in the important ways and a passable job everywhere else.

The strength of any of these games is story, and KAR doesn’t skimp, with famous author R.A. Salvatore (yeah, the guy who, for good or ill, inflicted the 2-weapon warrior cliché upon us) creating a deep and interesting game world that’s a cut above generic medieval fantasy, and on a par with anything Bethesda has offered. This is a big world, and, much like with Elder Scrolls, much of the background is presented via many books; in addition, talky-stones give oral narratives describing various game areas. Various characters also give considerable background (although the voices all sort of blend together after a while). You can avoid the background easily enough, as helpful quest circles, guides, and exclamation points point out where you need to go and what you need to do, even if you’re not otherwise paying attention. Through sheer osmosis you’ll pick up quite a bit of information. It’s an impressive world, and it’s presented smoothly.

Combat has always been a weak point of Elder Scrolls, and KAR leaps high over Bethesda’s low bar. Each weapon has quite a number of special attacks, combat often pits you against multiple foes, and you have multiple strategies to achieve victory. It may have too much of an arcade feel for some folks, but it sure beats the “walk up and bash into the ground or snipe helpless enemies from a distance” options of Skyrim. In addition to weapons and tactics, there are a ridiculous number of potions you can use to augment your fight; their duration is brief, and I fear Skyrim’s “potions can be ignored except for healing” mentality has made it hard for me to really appreciate this part of the game, even as I carry a dozen different types around just in case.

“Great story and combat can take you pretty far, which is good, as KAR falls short in most other categories.”

Great story and combat can take you pretty far, which is good, as KAR falls short in most other categories. The graphics, for example, are cartoonish, which detracts a great deal from immersion. There’s never an occasion where I feel I’m in anything but a constructed world. Granted, this may just be my own artistic opinion, but it seems as though nobody cared to have the world make sense. There are boxes and chests literally everywhere, even in towns, and nobody seems to mind as you smash open boxes that, clearly, somebody piled up in front of the store for a reason, and that’s not even factoring in all the “free” chests laying around (some chests do count as stealing if you take from them, at least). There are night and day cycles, but I had a very difficult time distinguishing broad daylight from evening; only folks going to bed give me much of a clue.

Character development is also unsatisfying. When you gain a level, you gain a skill point for special noncombat skills, from Lockpicking to Persuasion to Alchemy. More points make these skills more effective, and you can find trainers. Unfortunately, trainers only help you if you have low skill, so if you improve too quickly, you’re out of luck unless you go to visit a Fateweaver, who resets everything you’ve gained from level 1… forcing you to rebuild your character from scratch just to get that one lousy point. It’s annoying and serves no purpose.

Each time you level up, you also gain three combat skill points that go into making your character a warrior, wizard, or rogue. This too, is unsatisfying, as this is all pure combat stuff, and it’s mostly +5% here, +7% there… it works, but I really don’t see more than a couple of viable builds, and it wouldn’t surprise me if most everyone plays a fighter/mage, using rogue, at best, for archery (which isn’t all that useful, as most combat devolves into melee quickly).

After that, you pick a destiny based on how you’ve allocated points; you can change destiny at every level, and, once again, it’s mostly just giving percentages here and there. It’s all a playable system, mind you, and the Fateweavers guarantee you’ll get a character you like; it’s just fairly narrow, meaning this game is good for one play-through. This is no great loss considering the size of the game world, although I do wish there was a mount of some sort: It’s slow, slow business running everywhere when fast travel isn’t available.

There’s also a treasure system. Inexplicably, they have set items here, granting bonuses if you somehow get multiple items together. While this works well in a game where you’ll use multiple characters and can transfer items between them, it’s flat out stupid in this game… there’s little chance of finding a whole set, and no chance whatsoever of finding it before you’re too high-level to get any use out of it, except for whole sets that are handed to you outright. At least the plentiful unique items are truly unique, with a back story and bonuses that make some sort of sense (instead of the very random feel that I usually get in these types of treasure systems). Even when useless, the unique items still give a feeling of accomplishment for finding them.

There’s a crafting and repair system, but, again, it integrates poorly. You can blacksmith various items, but, seriously, you’ll find plenty of good stuff through adventuring. There was never a time when I needed anything. Similarly, you can craft your own potions… you can trivially buy or find what you need, however. You can repair your items, but you’ll usually find new items more appropriate to your level before your old items wear out enough to require repair. There are also gems and socketing, but it doesn’t really fit, either – you can only socket a gem at a gem socketing station, which is rarely anywhere near where you are, assuming you have a decent gem (you generally won’t) and an item that you’re willing to use, with a socket (never found such a thing).

You can get your own homes in some of the towns, but again, it just doesn’t work. You can’t personalize your home beyond the pre-set decorations; there’s no dropping stuff on the floor, for example. All you’ll care about is the stash where you can go and dump the stuff for which you think, maybe, you might have a use (mostly, for set items in futile hope of getting a set together, gems that you hope someday will fit in an item, or potions that you think someday might be useful).

This is my first game through Origin, which is EA’s answer to Steam. It works well, but I just don’t see the point. The whole reason I go to download sites like GamersGate is so that I can get the feeling that I actually own my games. This is a feeling Steam doesn’t offer and, so far, doesn’t seem to come from Origin either.

For all the things that don’t work well, the exciting combat and deep world make KAR a very worthy game to play. It’s a shame Electronic Arts is doing such a poor job of promoting it, as there is enough here to make the foundation of a very solid franchise. Check it out if you’re tiring of bashing Skyrim’s dragons, at the very least.

The titular Alan Wake, the biggest Stephen King fan on Earth, is a big-time writer. Severe writer’s block has prevented him writing more mega-hits, so he and his wife Alice go up to the town of Bright Falls, where they’ve rented a cabin lodged in the middle of a lake. Things get weird quickly, and somewhere in the chain of events, Wake wakes up in a car crash of which he has no recollection. Plus, he can’t find his wife, is stuck in a dark forest, realizes that two weeks have gone by, and he has no idea how the hell any of that happened.

This game is weird. It takes a hard left early on and never looks back, which is good, because Alan Wake makes a poor first impression. The cut scenes display a level of uncanny valley previously unheard of, with human-looking-things-who-actually-are-human characters doing human-like things to awkward effect. Everything about them looks wrong, from how they talk to how they animate.

This starts to go away once you’re in-game, in the thick of all the madness. Somewhere between getting to Bright Falls and waking up in a crashed car, a darkness chases Wake, figuratively and literally. It’s the game’s primary antagonist and a central theme to the narrative that crazy ol’ Remedy has cooked up, and just how Remedy manages to take this central concept of darkness across fifteen hours of video game is truly impressive.

It starts with a flashlight and a gun. The two-step combat of shine then shoot works well: shine the light on darkness-engulfed crazy men throwing sickles at you, and then take them out with bullets. It’s double the satisfaction, because it’s almost like killing them twice. Remedy builds on its base mechanics, with flares to create some temporary space between you and everything that wants to kill you and flashbangs as last-resort light explosives. A bunch of one-off gameplay situations, like shining a massive headlight into a group of crazy men, also offers a good variety into the whole experience. Even with the gunplay being inherently fun and exciting, the game miraculously, and this is key, still has this element of survival.

“Mechanically, Alan Wake falls into the third-person shooter category, but the emotions and sensations it generates are more in line with survival horror.”

Most of the game takes place in dark forests, with tall pines and the moonlight piercing through. As an exploratory space, it’s some extremely handsome stuff. Games don’t usually get forests right, but here it really feels like you’re in one. As a gameplay space, it makes for opportunities to get lost and disoriented while constantly surrounded by them. A dodge mechanic allows for quick evasion, but with multiple AI variants, Wake’s limited health, and overwhelming numbers, the situation often feels desperate. Play without the HUD, not having a yellow dot guide you makes getting confused and lost easier (remember, this is a good thing), while level design remains logical and makes smart use of bright light sources to guide the player. Mechanically, Alan Wake falls into the third-person shooter category, but the emotions and sensations it generates are more in line with survival horror.

Sadly, this doesn’t last throughout the entire game. The last-third gets heavy on action and light on “Oh god oh god oh god, GET TO THE GODDAMN LIGHT, WAKE” as you smash the sprint key. It does show that Wake has grown accustomed to the strange proceedings, and so in that way this new action bent is justified, but it’s considerably less interesting than everything before this turn. That said, the two extra DLC packs, which come with the PC version for free, go back to what makes Alan Wake truly great.

Then there’s that other half, the narrative part. The monologues, the asides, the metaphors – all the things that have defined Remedy’s games since Max Payne are in full force here. They are an integral part of what defines Alan Wake as a unique. Pages of a manuscript Wake doesn’t remember writing are littered everywhere, foreshadowing events that have yet to happen. It creates a tension and an excited expectation, because you know that the things written in these manuscripts will happen, but you don’t know when. It’s a good hook to keep things going, if the gameplay isn’t enough.

The game just gets weirder and weirder, as you keep playing, and it’s an all-in move from Remedy to just keep pushing its story to its absolute limit of insanity. It reaches its zenith of crazy by the last episode of the game, and it’s just such a great culmination of everything that’s happened before, that if there were such an award as Best One Hour of a Game, Alan Wake would take the prize.

Priced at a generous $30, Alan Wake is a nice reminder that Remedy can make great game, a reminder that the developers of Max Payne and the classic and completely audaciously-titled Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne – A Film Noir Love Story are still relevant. Let me just say again: Hi, Remedy. It’s really nice to see you. I hope we see you again really soon, because nine years is quite a long time. Don’t be a stranger!

I’m a regular at Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3). It’s amazing how many games have the “E3 effect,” where they look positively awesome on display there… but lackluster at best once I get them on my home computer.

Swords of the Stars 2: Lords of Winter (LoW) may have the strongest E3 effect I’ve ever seen. The game looked awesome at E3. LoW is a “4x” game, a turn-based science fiction strategy game where you eXplore, eXploit, eXpand, and eXterminate all that stand in the way of the first three goals. Master of Orion 2 put this genre on the map, with addictively easy gameplay. In recent years, 4x games have become ever more complicated, making merely learning such games, much less playing them, a big investment in time, so big that I haven’t played many recent titles in this genre.

LoW’s demo at E3, however, looked great enough to motivate me to commit to learning this type of game again. LoW promised viable diplomacy, a huge universe to explore, a vast tech tree, and real-time space combat that was at least somewhat three-dimensional.

When it finally launched last November, I was stoked enough to ask for a review copy. Alas, the launch was disastrous, the game wasn’t really playable, and their PR asked me to wait a bit before giving a review. No problem; I was also pretty excited to play Skryim, which launched about the same time.

All good things come to an end, and, after my third play-through of Skyrim, it was time to give LoW a whirl—two months is plenty of time to fix some bugs, right? So I read through the massive manual, and I honestly didn’t have a clue how to play. Most of my time in attempting to play was me clicking randomly hoping to get a clue. I looked on YouTube, and it was funny how many of the “let’s play” videos for LoW featured the host clicking randomly, trying to get even a clue what to do. I read through the “Beginner’s Guide” from Paradox (dozens of pages), and finally had an inkling, sort of, of what I needed to do. Honestly, though, on a scale of user-friendly, where “10” is “Holds your hand through everything so that there’s no way to ever get confused,” and “1” is “Grabs you by the shirt and punches you in the face repeatedly until you promise to stop playing,” I’d put LoW at about 3, which is dangerously low for something that’s supposed to be fun. The learning curve is brutally steep, and if the game really worked, I suspect many of the mistakes I’m making would be fatal, meriting a lower score. For what it’s worth, Skryim would rate around a 9.5, and Dwarf Fortress is a 1.5 (I did play a game that merited a 1, but it is so deservedly obscure that I intend to keep it that way). Of course, Dwarf Fortess is a perpetually in beta game that you can get for free, which means I can give it some slack for such a user-hostile interface.

“The game is buggier than Starship Troopers…”

So, back to LoW. Did you catch that “if the game really worked” line? The game is buggier than Starship Troopers, and I consistently got corrupted save games, forcing complete restarts; the developers, to their credit, have been patching maniacally for the last two months, and the game is certainly better than it used to be. I pity the fools that purchased this game at release, as each patch comes with a recommendation not to use old save files.

My apologies if this review rambles so much, but it’s hard to review a game with so many programming issues; I can’t draw the line between bad game design and bad programming here. That said, I’ll try to focus on the game as it is now.

The basic premise of the game has you leading a stellar travel-capable race to universal domination. What sets this game apart from similar titles is each race has their own special way of space travel. Humans, for example, can only travel along nodes between stars – fast, but sometimes you can’t get to near stars as easily as distant ones. Other races use jump gates – even faster, but setting up the initial gates can be problematic. It’s a neat enough premise, but it’s brutally hard to defend, as most races can attack any star system with impunity (there is no combat in the spaces between star systems). The starting ships are vastly superior to planetary defenses, and your initial fleets can wreak incredible havoc on enemy home worlds as well as obliterate colonies with one salvo.

All system defenses are currently bugged and not working, so the only means of defense is to dedicate fleets of starships for defense. These are led by admirals that have special abilities, loyalties, and age (although I’ve yet to play a game that lasts long enough for such to matter, as the game really only works on small maps). Combat can be handled in real time, but that can be time consuming (even with the five-minute limit on such battles, much of that time is sitting around doing nothing, as there doesn’t seem to be a way for the player to accelerate time). The auto-combat is much quicker, but the AI is a bit buggy. Often your defending fleet will simply sit around and watch as enemy fleets depopulate your colonies… only the ease with which you can do the same to your enemies makes this a little tolerable. Generally, you’ll just destroy enemy populations; there’s an “invade” option, but after many such invasions with many types of ships, I don’t know if you can actually take over an enemy world (the enemy AI has obliterated many of my worlds, and never captured any, even with fleets named “Invasion Fleet”).

There’s an extensive tech tree, well over 100 things to research. The game randomly assigns what is available each time you play, so that you can’t always count on having any particular technology. Unfortunately, some technologies (e.g., shields for your space ships) are not yet implemented, and others don’t seem to work as advertised, so it’s hard to appreciate this and other aspects of research.

You can, and must, design your own ships, placing various weapon technologies that you research onto your ships. I don’t know if new research automatically upgrades onto your old ships; as there doesn’t seem to be a way to trash/decommission old ships, I presume as much, although naturally it makes sense to design ships based around your newest technology. New ship designs don’t come out automatically; you must first build a prototype before “regular” ships can be cranked out. There is a huge variety of such ships you can design, from drone-carrying support ships to specialized colony ships to vessels that can repair your ships during combat (those might not work, however). The enemy AI doesn’t seem to exploit many of these build options, and as “fast combat” goes way too fast to see much of what is happening, very little of it means anything.

There apparently is a deep economic system, and you can build freighters and stations to maximize your empire’s economy; much of this doesn’t seem to work, or if it does it works invisibly. Similarly, you can build scientific stations to maximize or focus research, or to aid in diplomacy (although, with small maps, there’s really not much option for diplomacy, not that you’ll be much interested in it after the AI casually smashes one of your worlds with a roving scout ship).

Bottom line is that on paper, this is an incredibly deep and varied game, but time and again, the reach of the programmers vastly exceeds their grasp. Even months after release, there’s so little in this game that’s working as intended, that only the most desperate die-hard fan of the genre should even consider this game. Everyone else should wait at least another six months, and even then I’m probably being over optimistic.

As you can guess from the title, Serious Sam 3 is the third Serious Sam game, although it’s more of a prequel, chronologically set before the previous two games (BFE is for “Before First Encounter”). It hardly matters. Serious Sam has always been about discovering a vast array of weird alien creatures and killing them as grotesquely as possible.

You’re introduced to hyper-macho Sam in the opening sequence, complaining that he should be “doing blow off a stripper’s ass”; killing aliens is apparently the next best thing. A chopper accident and a de-eyeballing of a cyclopean monstrosity later, the game begins.

Serious Same 3 is a throwback to old school first-person shooter days, when graphics and realism were far more limited by computer processing speed. Instead, the old games were about killing enemies, lots and lots of them. That’s the core gameplay of Serious Sam 3, and it’s been a long time since a game focused on interesting (or at least challenging) fights over ever more detailed graphics.

A gamer should go into this knowing the graphics are hit-and-miss. Often the streets and scenery look cut-and-pasted, and there will definitely be times when the geysers of blood that spray from your enemies (I’m not exaggerating) will be more annoying than anything else. Sam himself seems out of place in the world, like he’s been drawn by a different, more skilled, hand.

Sound likewise has ups and downs. The music is often annoying but necessary as it changes when monsters are around — some monsters are sneaky, so you’ll need the music to get a clue at times. Sam’s lines are pretty funny, and I often found myself laughing at his mockery of the enemies, a rarity in shooter games.

"The trusty ol’ shotgun is your pal as always…"

The guns are straight out of central casting. The trusty ol’ shotgun is your pal as always, and the other weapons are all familiar. The best “new” weapon is the sledgehammer, a devastatingly useful tool that kills most monsters in one shot, provided you’re willing to get within melee range. Sam also has a built-in “melee attack,” useful for finishing monsters that get too close.

While most modern shooters feature maps that are basically linear railroads (to better support the graphics), the maps here allow for plenty of side paths. It’s very easy to get lost in the bland-looking city streets and various tunnels. I found myself often missing the modern convention of an ever present arrow telling me which way to go, but this game is clearly trying to be retro. The maps are loaded with sometimes diabolically-hidden secret areas filled with little goodies like extra ammo and armor. There are also very welcome wide-open areas, the better to support the swarms of monsters. It may not be a full sandbox, but you’re definitely on a wide set of rails here.

The battles with monsters are the whole point of the game, and, goodness, what battles they are. The game starts slowly, carefully introducing monsters one at a time, then groups of the same monsters, then swarms of complementary monsters. Another throwback to older shooters is the “player always has a chance” idea. You always hear the monsters coming (especially the guys with bombs for hands). Even the monsters with guns and missiles give you every opportunity to realize you’re about to meet your end. While recent shooters revel in the “Bam, you’re dead, re-spawn is in ten seconds” philosophy, your death in Serious Sam is always preceded by fair notification, and you almost always get to realize it was your own mistake that caused it. Got blown up by a rocket? Rockets move slowly enough that you had opportunity to get out of the way. Blasted by a goon with a shotgun? They always grunt before they raise their weapons and fire. Blown up by a swarm of bomb guys? You probably shouldn’t have moved into the swarm, then. Every monster telegraphs its moves; trying to pay attention to everything is what makes and keeps the game exciting.

"…now this design of constant arcade style combat is a rarity."

The battles start simply, but after an hour or two become very challenging. Overall strategy is simply to kill everything, and while general tactics seldom vary from conducting fighting retreats to previously cleared territory, the sheer quantity of monsters creates a quality of combat all its own. Twenty years ago, nearly every shooting game was like this, but now this design of constant arcade style combat is a rarity.

Death comes often in a game like this, but the game auto-saves before every major battle, and you can quick-save whenever you like. Various items restore hit points (again, a throwback to older games, where you have 100 hit points and lose them through taking damage), and small pieces of armor are scattered about the game, as is ammunition and weaponry. You don’t have “lives,” but you must replay each mission until you defeat everything without being killed.

Adding considerably to the replay value of the game is a scoring system for each mission, which generally runs for five minutes or so. You gain points for killing monsters (of course), finding secrets, and completing the map as quickly as possible, even losing points if you take too long — easy to do if you spend time looking for secrets. You get a multiplier to those points based on the difficulty level (from “tourist” easy to “serious” impossibility). I think Doom, from the 1990s, was the last game to actually track time and secrets like this, and it’s amazing how much of a motivator it is to replay the game, trying to find those last few secrets or track down a few well-hidden monsters, or simply to complete the mission as quickly as possible.

Serious Sam 3 might not be for everyone, but it’s the type of game that made first-person shooters a genre all their own, and serious – at the risk of abusing the word – gamers should absolutely give this game, if not the whole series, a serious look.

It's that good. “I stop playing only when the game crashes.” That's a gold quote to put on the back of the box. For all its major and minor failures and all the little things that Bethesda continues to screw up on, Skyrim is a helluva of a game, a game that pulls you from a thousand different directions, begging you to explore this, find that, or talk to him or her or that thing.

"…there's always something to see, do, and discover."

Its enormity is only part of it, as it’s all contained in a world that has, for a lack of a better term, a genuine sense place – caves, hideouts, old abandoned temples all have history behind them and places within the geography that makes sense. Whether its a pile of dead bandits next to a table of embalming tools or fossilized mammoths near the geo-thermal regions of Skyrim, there's always something to see, do, and discover. It isn't as foreign and alien as Morrowind, but it's much, much better than the uninteresting landscapes of Cyrodiil in Oblivion. Hand-crafting the world has done wonders for the game, constantly resulting in interesting sights and places to go.

The closer you get to any semblance of civilization in Skyrim, the less of an achievement the game becomes. Anything human or anthropomorphic are awkward at best. The voice acting is better across the board, but with so many lines of dialogue, only a few characters feel like they're given any specific direction to their rhetoric or enunciation, making a lot of the lines sound dry. The animation, while a huge step up relative to Bethesda's previous work, is still pretty poor, as characters fail to transition between animations all that well.

This has always been Bethesda's struggle – making interesting characters and flexible quests with good writing to support them. It's substantially better than their work in Oblivion – the lore is better, and the civil war has a surprising amount of ambiguity in it, but the things some of these people say and the limited amount of dialogue options you get are still only bearable – and abysmal once you compare to it something like Fallout: New Vegas, which retained a lot of Bethesda's open-world exploration, while injecting with Obsidian's trademark writing and solid quest design. The only true winning quality about the quests in Skyrim is that they'll often take you to interesting places.

That's what it's really all about – interesting places for your character to traverse and to see how your build fares in it. The character system in Skyrim is arguably the best iteration in the series. All skills are given equal weight, and leveling up results in upgrading one of three attributes and then choosing a perk for any of the skill branches. It’s simplified but much more obvious that your character is gravitating towards a specific build, because the perks offer substantial bonuses to the skill tree in which you're investing. Also not having to look out for doubling or tripling attribute scores removes the meta-gaming aspect of leveling, which was uninteresting at best and exploitative at worst. Some of the skills, like acrobatics and athletics, have been cut out entirely, instead of providing anything interesting to replace them. It's a bummer when you know you won't ever jump any higher or run any faster, but overall it's far more rewarding and fun to level.

The scaling problems that got progressively worse in Oblivion has largely been redesigned. Bears, giants, dragons, mammoths and anything else that should be intimidating and respected is, up to a certain point. Eventually, you'll out-level them and have better gear, and the end result is you curb-stomping a lot of the things that gave you a ton of trouble before. This in itself is immensely satisfying, and Bethesda could've put in the extra effort to have loot do the same. The vast majority of the loot is randomly generated, and it seems that all of it is scaled. You'll find weaponry that did a moderate amount of damage before, only to find another specimen hours later with stats having been given a curious buff. Higher tier loot also becomes more common the more you level, making the scaling completely obvious. The looting experience is damaged because of this, as the game continually generates generic loot through all the spelunking.

It almost doesn't matter, though, because the exploration is so damn good. I've mentioned this just about four times already, but it's the reason why Skyrim is Skyrim. As a hiking/anthropologist/tourism simulator, it's unparalleled. The world, fragments of the lore, the various regions and their diverse landscapes – it all slowly seeps in to the point that simply running around and being in the world is fun.

It's massive too. Despite having roughly the same square miles of Oblivion, it plays with line of sight by shoving in towering mountains. It diversifies landscapes by adjusting elevations and geography. Giving regions themes while holding onto a unified look of a general chill in the air, where the north is ravaged by eternal winters, and where the southern regions feature more temperate climates, gives Skyrim a real identity, something that was lost in Oblivion.

The overall effect is a perception of utter hugeness, where you can genuinely get lost. The compass always keeps things manageable, but that thrilling sensation of being far, far away from any city or village is so intoxicating and freeing, that this alone makes Skyrim such a grand achievement in world-building.

It looks and sounds wonderful too; rewriting much of the renderer has resulted in one of the best-looking games out there. You'll see that shadows tend to get blocky, and a lot of light sources curiously don't draw shadows, but it's the kind of visual gravitas that could only be achieved after five years of constantly working on and reworking an existing engine.

Jeremy Soule's musical legacy in the Elder Scrolls series expands further with this game. The score here is simultaneously more sweeping and serene than any of his previous work in the series. He's been known as the go-to guy for a generic fantasy soundscape, but damn is he good at what he does. The soundtrack manages to work in compositions from both Morrowind and Oblivion, evoking a little bit of nostalgia, all the while fully embracing the grandness of Tamriel's northernmost province. Skyrim also contains Bethesda's best sound design to date. The foley work is impressive with its attention to just about every little bit of everything. Destruction magic sounds scary, conjuration spells sound… conjurey, the movement of earth in caves, the crackling of ice, and even the footsteps just sound so right.

"For every problem the game has, there's the world."

You may notice I've forgotten to mention a lot of the problems that plague the game constantly. Path-finding is still screwy, AI is still very dim, and while the combat has become more dynamic and interesting, the aforementioned problems tend to sap a lot of the potential. The UI, while functional, could use a major overhaul in how it sorts items and, well, there's a lot more, but seriously – it really doesn't matter. For every problem the game has, there's the world. There's always Skyrim.

For the explorer in all of the us, for the curious in all of us, for the adventurer in all of us, Skyrim is our game.

That is a high compliment, I swear.

Its premise is comprised of some of the most lethally addicting game mechanics around: deftly-tuned, bouncy killing, coca-infused customization, and the chest-thumping camaraderie of four players placed against an ever-swelling, gloriously technicolored horde.

It all revolves around the Eternia Crystal – excuse the horrible, stock-fantasy name, please. The player, who selects one of four heroes (apprentice, squire, monk or huntress), is tasked with defending the Eternia Crystal from legions upon legions of evildoers, and, on occasion, horrific, gargantuan bosses. These heroic defenses occur in waves – once the player completes every wave, they beat the level. In between waves, the player gets to place defense mechanisms – towers, if you will – in strategic locations around the map.

This area of the game, what I like to call the raw meat, is fine-tuned and effortlessly playable. The heroes scurry and hop around the map with ease, and the dispatching of spells, towers (you can lay them during combat phases, too), and standard attacks is quick and ripe with compulsion. Every action is mechanically sound and dripping with the kind of feedback that makes them satisfying. Watching a furious knock-back attack send dozens of baddies flying backwards is the kind of visual narcotic that makes playing Dungeon Defenders so damned exciting.

There’s another addictive substance at work. Between and beneath the frenetic tower defense cores of the game is a layer of customization that will leave you foaming at the mouth. Both heroes and towers are upgradable in a variety of ways, from damage to health to movement and casting speed. I, for example, created a deadly glass-cannon-esque apprentice character – he looks like Vivi from Final Fantasy IX – by pumping stats solely into damage. Interestingly, the game eventually brings about diminishing returns on stacking abilities sky-high, which forces players into creating well-balanced heroes, and prevents game-breaking over-specialization.

"This kind of depth hurls Dungeon Defenders far past the typical tower defense game…"

And fear not, packrats, for there is an overflowing amount of gear. And the gear, too, is customizable. There are pets as well – and, you guessed it, they are customizable. This kind of depth hurls Dungeon Defenders far past the typical tower defense game and into something exceedingly rich and rewarding.

The game glows and sparkles too. Its visuals are a sugary kind of super-deformed, like if Final Fantasy V were 3D, a supercharged tower defense game, and far more brutal. The colors are lush, the models detailed. The sounds and soundtrack burst from the speakers with a youthful exuberance. These things only serve to make the raw, meaty core of the game taste sweet and fun – Dungeon Defenders could work wholesale without them, but the polish and swagger only make it more a joy. It runs like butter, too, even on low-end machines.

What matters most is that Dungeon Defenders is an unholy amount of fun to play with three other people. It’ll eat your nights and weekends alive and leave only a sugary-sweet resin behind. Cutting through the oncoming hordes and barking out commands through voice chat is a rush that will leave you grinning. Collaborating on defense placement will tease your brain, reward your smart moves and punish your idiocy.

It’s a game that wants you to play it. It’s a little complicated, but simply jumping in and slaughtering couldn’t be easier. Figuring out the depth will take a little bit, but – here’s a testament to how much I like this game – it will make you want to learn. It feels good to be clueless in Dungeon Defenders, and the thrill of discovery and, “Oh! That’s how that works,” will suck you in. It doesn’t hold your hand, but it isn’t frustrating, either.

Here’s a confession: there is a story, but its implications are minimal. I ignored it. I suspect it provides some context and additional flavor to the game – but it’s entirely non-essential. Dungeon Defenders is a game, a thing meant to be played and smiled at. It makes no pretenses.

The game’s single-player mode is practically non-existent – and I understand if people expect me to knock a few points off because of this – but I refuse. This is a downloadable game – you need an internet connection to obtain it and thus have one to play it. The match-making system is quick and streamlined. Jumping into a multiplayer orc-fest could not be easier. There’s no real reason for single player Dungeon Defenders, sure, but it’s there if you want it. The multiplayer is so accessible there’s no real reason not to play it – and thus no reason to punish Dungeon Defenders for a lackluster single player mode. And besides, the only thing single-player lacks is the rush of kinship that multiplayer has in spades (it is identical to multiplayer; you’re just alone) – and isn’t that intrinsic to solitary gaming?

"…this is the center of a Tootsie Pop, guys."

The bottom line: this is the center of a Tootsie Pop, guys. The sweet, sugary core of what it means to be a gamer – to hang out with your friends and play the night away. It is the pure joy of floaty, delicious, and streamlined gameplay. It’s the compulsive twitch that made you collect every Pokemon. It’s gaming in a pure, untainted form. It might not send the medium hurling into art museums around the world, but it will remind you of why you started gaming in the first place.

And there’s so much I haven’t told you. I could mention the time my mighty sorcerer, Aberforth, came crashing down from the heavens (read: the stairs above) to send an unholy (read: level 11) knock-back attack crashing down upon an oncoming mass of an enemies, saving one of my teammates in the process. I could grimace and recall games lost in the waning seconds as our crystal was overwhelmed. I could describe how you might find your brow sweating a little as you spend an almost-eternity whittling down a boss’s mammoth health bar. Or I could tell you about the exhausted cheers you’ll let out alongside trusted companions – your battle-kin – as you collectively clear increasingly more difficult levels.

But I won’t. Instead, I’ll see you in the dungeons.

This game has been with us for over seven years now, which is a long time considering the limited nature of the realistic MilSim market. There's not much room for mediocrity when you can't command massive Call of Duty-sized audiences. But Tripwire, thanks to impeccable modder chops, has carved out its niche and capitalized fully on it.

Red Orchestra 2 has everything their audience expects: realistic (difficult) aiming via iron sights or scopes, serious recoil, bullet drop and penetration, a full suite of accurately modeled vehicles and weapons, etc. No surprises here. In addition Red Orchestra 2 also presents a new layer of realism on top of what we'd expect. In a game like Armed Assault, things can seem somewhat realistic and un-gamey in the wide-open expanses of the outdoors, but the moment you step into a building or some ruins, it's obvious, from your character's stilted movement and limited leaning/peeking repertoire, that you're playing a videogame. RO2 keeps the immersion, however, because of the expansion in tools the player has available to deal with corners, windowsills, walls, stairs, and other thorny urban obstacles. In RO2 players can now attach themselves to corners or windowsills and poke their heads out and withdraw back behind cover easily as in a cover shooter like Gears of War but from first person. Additionally, everyone (not just machine gunners) can now prop their weapons on any level surface and receive a significant boost to accuracy. You can also stick your gun out around a corner and fire blindly without exposing yourself (someone can still shoot your hand though). Suppression is also modeled, and even if you're not directly hit with a bullet, if someone sprays your general direction and manages to hit close enough, you'll get a few seconds of realistic disorientation that prevent you from firing back effectively. Even if someone takes a shot at you while you're behind cover, you can still get hit thanks to the penetration system, which renders everything short of reinforced concrete and thick metal plate somewhat risky from a cover perspective. It's OK to hide behind a wooden fence, but after you squeeze off a couple shots you should quickly move, because anyone firing back is probably going to send a bullet right through the flimsy boards into your rifleman's innards. Combine all of this with the requisite three stances (prone, crouched and upright), a great floating-aim system, and a complete lack of “accuracy cones” (bullets go where you aim), and the shooting in Red Orchestra 2 is basically the best I've ever seen in a videogame.

The small details of shooting have been improved, but the larger game has received attention as well. The subtitle “Heroes of Stalingrad” points to several changes to the standard class system. There are still several standard classes – rifleman, squad leader, machine-gunner, and so forth, but there are also “hero” classes, special time-limited class options that are granted to players who perform especially well in a given match. I was a hero for a few rounds, thanks to a lucky flanking maneuver I executed, which brought me behind a half-dozen oblivious Nazis poking their heads over a low wall. I popped everyone and the next round I had much better weapons, which, of course, I hardly got to use at all. A lesser form of the hero system is the promotion system: there are limited slots for elite riflemen (who get semi-autos, typically) and marksmen (who are the only ones allowed to use sniper rifles), but if you spawn as a rifleman and perform well enough you can bump someone out who is taking up one of those class slots and underperforming.

"Straight-ahead charges or highly mobile rear-area subterfuge are way more effective – and more satisfying."

The maps are centered on the battle of Stalingrad, and there are fewer wide-open areas where vehicles can rule unchallenged. There are a lot more collapsed buildings, narrow hallways, factories, trenches and apartment blocks. Most of the maps are still huge, though, and there are a million places to sit and snipe at people, as well as a million ways to rush and get the drop on people camping. Sniping in place in this game, despite the severe penalties for moving while shooting and suppression, is highly dangerous and (on a server where people know what they're doing) not even that effective. Straight-ahead charges or highly mobile rear-area subterfuge are way more effective – and more satisfying.

Your stats are saved (sort of), and killing more people with the same weapon will upgrade the weapon's condition and also grant access to nice goodies like bayonets or drum magazines. You also progress upwards in the different classes, and earning more points as a rifleman unlocks new weapons and improves your performance (your resistance to suppression, the steadiness of your aim). There are achievements, for winning matches and killing people but also for resupplying machine-gunners (every class carries MG ammo, it seems) and for bashing in enough heads with the stock of your weapon.

Even though Tripwire hasn't been making mods for years now, they still behave like modders. This is why they're so exacting about their realism and so comfortable with experimentation. It's also the reason why their QA isn't quite up to snuff, and why they care more about getting the sights on the Mosin right than they do about balancing the two sides. The early release of RO2 was rocky, and just recently Tripwire had to reset everyone's stats because they'd messed up the experience system (for example, on one map I suddenly got all the achievements related to the machinegun, despite the fact that I'd never fired one before). They're continuing to improve lag, which is a big problem at certain times on larger maps (up to 64 players, remember?). Player numbers have allegedly dropped off since release, but not to the point where I had trouble finding servers ready to play on at any given hour of the day or night.

These are minor quirks that can be worked on and fixed easily. The basic fact is that Red Orchestra 2 spoils you. Playing any other shooter, especially one that claims to be realistic, after going through a few rounds in RO2 is bound to be a disappointment.