Upwards and Onwards

HIGH Using Deep Forest Lore the first time

LOW Getting stuck (twice) after falling for false in-game information.

WTF Four great games and this series is still largely unknown?

Fire Emblem: Awakening is easily one of my favorite games of the year so far, from a design perspective. No question. However, after rolling credits I noticed a couple of things which made me raise an eyebrow, and those were already on top of a problem I had with the game even earlier on—essentially, Awakening has quite a bit to say about female characters and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) issues, while never overtly saying anything at all.

A Night to Remember

HIGH Finally bringing the entire team on a mission.

LOW Dr. Chakwas was a no-show.

WTF Finding Kasumi going through Shep's panty drawer.

This time, it's the ratio of depth vs complexity that Extra Credits seeks to explain.

Extra Credits has a response-episode to feedback for a recent episode about religion and games. As usual the guys do a great job challenging those that blindly worship science.

In this episode we bid a fond farewell to one of our own, plus everyone tries to talk Richard into buying a 3DS with completely meaningless results. With Richard Naik, Chi Kong Lui, Brad "Sweet Can" Gallaway, Mike Bracken, and Dylan Collins.

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In a nutshell, I Am Alive's a post-apocalyptic story about a father who was trapped far from home when disaster struck, and is only just now returning to find his wife and daughter. There are a number of things that make this title unique, such as the extremely stark visuals, the dark, mature subject matter and the interesting combination of environmental traversal and highly non-standard combat which is more like lethal puzzle-solving than it is about punching dudes out.

The last week or so has been off-the-charts crazy here at GameCritics.com West—tons of stuff going on and all of it equally important, capped off with the left front tire of my car literally falling off as I was in the middle of a busy intersection in Seattle. I don't like to go so long between updates, but there you go.

Still a D*ck

HIGH Seeing that Vergil has his own fully-developed skill trees.

LOW Too many of those irritating Wisps.

WTF Why isn't Mission 5 the final mission?

Dante Must Combat

HIGH More glorious DmC combat...

LOW ...that takes too long to really get going.

WTF The time required for an entire session is substantial.