The lights are on
The auction houses change the way that the excitement of loot drops plays out, yes, but the fact of the matter is that Diablo III is the first Diablo game to make so much as a token effort at balancing skills, monsters, items, and classes.
Congratulations to blogger and gaming enthusiast Chris from Slacker Werks, whose review I selected as the winner of CDProjekt RED's "Become A Pro Reviewer" community contest. More
Congratulations to blogger and gaming enthusiast Chris from Slacker Werks, whose review I selected as the winner of CDProjekt RED's "Become A Pro Reviewer" community contest.
The first MOO truly is the Baldur's Gate II of strategy games. You think it isn't? Come on in and see how wrong you are.[This is the second in a series of posts informing everyone which exactly are the best games ever. Read the inaugural Baldur's Gate II entry here.]MOO vs. Civilization IVWhat's more fun: counting out worker forest-chopping turns, or deciding between research on gatling lasers or planetary shields? How about the difference between designing a space cruiser with the right balance of pulsar missiles and disruptor cannons, or picking between +10 percent healing and a 25 percent bonus to defense in forest tiles? Hint: The answer is the one that makes you feel like an awesome space dictator.Civ IV lets you customize your empire in dozens of unique little ways. That's great and all, but MOO gives you 90 percent of the effect (i.e. where your people and robots are spending their time and resources) with 10 percent of the effort. Do you really care about the type of pollution your factories are dumping into the environments of your colonies? I suppose you might, but I'm busy ordering my enormous space fleets to hustle to the other end of my empire to fend off an incoming invasion of silicon-based rock people and their Death Spores. Can't I just throw a big pile of money at my environmental protection agencies and have them deal with it? Yes, yes I can. Master of Orion's simple sliders for resource allocation give plenty of control and nuance without bogging down the player with lame, insignificant decisions.Civilization's embrace of alternative victory conditions is admirable, but it comes at a price. Make sure your people are farming enough food to let the idle rich doodle away on art so your culture grows! Don't forget to build courthouses so your minions can't siphon off huge chunks of your money with corruption in outlying provinces! Fund expensive universities so your society keeps up with worldwide research, or die ignobly!Ugh. Sometimes you just want to conquer the galaxy without holding your entire empire's hand. Nobody ever became Master of Orion by having the fanciest pants.
It's far from the first, and probably not the most purely effective Final Fantasy Tactics party setup ever. But my crew of Blade Grasping atheists is pretty close to invincible. More
It's far from the first, and probably not the most purely effective Final Fantasy Tactics party setup ever. But my crew of Blade Grasping atheists is pretty close to invincible.
How many homages to classic Atari games can you fit in a single Flash game and still have it be awesome? I believe Missilebreak Outvaders is the current record holder at three. More
How many homages to classic Atari games can you fit in a single Flash game and still have it be awesome? I believe Missilebreak Outvaders is the current record holder at three.
However brief it may have been, it was cool to see one of my idols in person. Even though he was being pushed through literal buckets of stuff to autograph on his way to do a promotional appearance at the Mall of America to launch his new Joe Mauer-branded Nike shoe on a game day, Mauer was the most polite celebrity I've had the pleasure to meet. More
Playing the heck out of Total War: Shogun 2 for the review didn't prepare me for the Tokugawa clan's unusual starting conditions. What follows is an excerpt of the shortest Total War campaign I've ever played. More
Playing the heck out of Total War: Shogun 2 for the review didn't prepare me for the Tokugawa clan's unusual starting conditions.
Would I lie to you? BioWare's 2000 magnum opus is still the best RPG of all time. I'll prove it. With science. More
Would I lie to you? BioWare's 2000 magnum opus is still the best RPG of all time. I'll prove it. With science.
Have you ever wondered what attending a day of video game press conferences is like? Based on my email inbox, you probably have. Allow me to tell the story of my day today and just how very exciting the life of a game journalist can be. More
Have you ever wondered what attending a day of video game press conferences is like? Allow me to tell the story of my day today and just how very exciting the life of a game journalist can be.
You already know about the high-octane announcements that came out of Nintendo's press conference. Out of my twelve pages of notes, however, a few things stand out that you might have missed. More
I’m all out of hate. Maybe Microsoft’s strategy was to get the Kinect launch’s vast stupidity out of the way at the Cirque du Soleil show so that I could roll my eyes and move on. More
Cirque du Soleil tickets go for what, $80? I wish I were exaggerating when I say that you would've had to pay me more than that to go to Microsoft's embarrassing Kinect (nee Project Natal) event. More