Role-Playing

A Tactical RPG for People Who Hate Tactical RPGs?

HIGH Executing a flawless plan of attack in an important story battle.

LOW Sitting through the first ten hours or so as the game sets up its predictable story.

WTF Do I really want to find and try on different outfits for my bad anime-inspired helper?

I'm currently in the middle of a marvelous little window of time where I don't have any reviews that need to be done, so I took the chance to pick a few titles out of my back catalogue and get caught up. After three days of fairly steady play, I put the wraps on Infinity Blade II.

Too Small to Succeed

HIGH Solid Roguelikes are always welcome.

LOW Why in the world is this not Vita compatible?

WTF Even the water is bean sprouts.

After playing Hitman: Absolution at PAX Prime, I felt a lot more confident about it and decided to put $5 down at Gamestop in order to play the Sniper Challenge demo level.

In this episode, Brad is freshly back from PAX Prime and gives us the low-down on what he saw there. We then go into a huge, spoiler-ridden discussion of The Walking Dead Episode Three. Don't worry, we tell you before we start talking about it. Stop being paranoid. With Chi Kong "Mr. C" Lui, Brad "Richie" Gallaway, Mike "Potsie" Bracken, Richard "The Fonz" Naik and Dylan "Arnold" Collins.

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Spoiler Alert: This article contains spoilers for The Last Story.

The best-regarded cinematic games of today owe much of their structure to the currently-derided Japanese role-playing game. For all that players heaped scorn on the running-in-tubes gameplay of Final Fantasy XIII, it shared with the Uncharted games the feature that the player's task was to kill his way from one cutscene to the next.

The Butterfly Effect

HIGH Some of the game's features are refreshingly respectful of the player's time.

LOW Virtually everything else is not.

WTF One female quest-giver explains why she wants her comb fetched: "I want to impress my gallant Gorodo, but first I have to pimp myself."

Tonight, we talk games. Lots of games. Sleeping Dogs, Risen 2, Darksiders 2, Papo & Yo, Spec Ops, Way of the Samurai 4 and so many more! We're back and in full force, ladies and gentleman! With Chi Kong Lui, Brad Gallaway, Richard "Children must be taught to draw from birth" Naik, special guest Jeffrey Matulef and Dylan Collins.

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Please send feedback and mailbag questions to podcast (at) gamecritics (dot) com.

It's Deep

HIGH It's a well-rounded and substantial add-on.

LOW It's tough to revisit the game after the controversial ending.

WTF It really takes Shepard too long to figure this out.

The Man, or the Pauldron?

HIGH Watching Zael finally tell off the Earl.

LOW Watching is all I got.

WTF Is there anybody in this game who didn't lose their parents during childhood?