Brad Gallaway's blog

After Skyrim bored me to the point that I did not care to continue, I was still in the mood for a Western-style RPG, and a quick look at my backlog reminded me that I still had an unopened copy of Fallout: New Vegas that I picked up but never played thanks to the widely reported of glitches and bugs that plagued it.

So I've formally bailed on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. However, after my initial post about being tired of it after fifteen hours, I was inundated with comments from people on Twitter and elsewhere regarding my lack of enthusiasm for it.

So, Skyrim. Everybody's heard of it, everybody's playing it, and it's getting stellar reviews. Clearly this game is the jam for a whole lot of people right now, and that's pretty cool. Seriously, no hate coming from me towards those of you who dig it, at all. For me, though... I have to say I'm just not feeling it.

I never play racing games. There are a number of reasons for this, but part is that I'm not very interested in cars in general, and I'm even less interested in playing a game that makes me repeat sections over and over and over in an effort to get my performance exactly right.

I recently started Fate/Extra for the PlayStation Portable. I know that it's based on an anime or some other related property, but I'm not familiar with the source material. In fact, my only other exposure to anything from the Fate series was the Fate/Unlimited Codes fighting game, also for PSP. (And really, that was pretty good!)

I finally started playing Two Worlds II: Pirates of the Flying Fortress on Xbox 360.As you've probably guessed, it's a DLC add-on to Two Worlds II which released way back in January. I liked the core game quite a bit and this new chunk is basically more of the same. That's not a bad thing at all, but after nearly a year away from the original adventure, it feels like the window of opportunity has passed it by.

I used to be a huge Ghost Rider fan for many years, starting with the original Johnny Blaze stuff from back in the '70s, and I was pretty okay with the later reboot starring Danny Ketch, but things got too silly after a while and I had to bail. It seemed to me that the mythology was getting to complicated and too ridiculous, and I just couldn't swallow it anymore.

So, after eighty-two hours with Dark Souls, I finally defeated the cheese-tastic final boss and completed the game. Whoopee.

So, let me guess... You haven't played Rochard yet. In fact, there's probably a pretty good chance you haven't even heard of it—and that's a damned shame, since it's one of the best download-only titles I've played all year. I gave it an absolutely glowing review, but a game like this deserves more. So, in my pursuit of fighting the good fight, I'd like to present this brief interview I was fortunate enough to have with the Lead Level Designer of Rochard, Samuli Viikinen.

At PAX Prime 2011, one of the smaller indie-sized games that caught my eye was a strange, almost unclassifiable project called The Splatters, about shooting colored blobs around small arenas and exploding them at every opportunity. It was a blast to play even if it's a bit difficult to describe, and I'm quite pleased to share a brief interview with one of the developers, Niv Fisher of SpikySnail Games.