Home is Where the Hearth is… Right?

HIGH Hiring a steward to handle the busywork.

LOW Needing a steward to handle the busywork.

WTF The steward I hired refusing to stay on the estate!

Often Imitated, Never Duplicated

HIGH Starts off very Monster Hunter-ish.

LOW Quickly succumbs to shallow design and tedium.

WTF Who thought locking the player in ambush killboxes was good design?

Since becoming a PlayStation 3-only owner, it's become apparent how much that at least some PS3 versions of multiplatform games are sub-standard. Frame rates falter, some visual effects don't look quite right, and a smattering of other issues put these games a notch below their Xbox 360 counterparts. There are notorious examples of PS3 sub-standard offerings, such as the ill-fated version of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. All of these things leave me to question whether buying into whatever follow-up console that Sony decides to offer when the next generation arrives.

Consider the Leviathan

HIGH Ghosting Dunwall Tower in under fifteen minutes.

LOW The interminable 7th level.

WTF Sending a woman off to a life of imprisonment and rape is the positive, "low chaos" option?

Here's the full interview with Greg Rice, producer at the great indie studio, Double Fine Productions! If you're not already aware, Double Fine is the home of gaming legends Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert. Their past console successes include Psychonauts and Brutal Legend. Their more recent games include the downloadable wonders Costume Quest, Iron Brigade, Happy Action Theater, and Stacking!

....Oh yeah, and they raised millions on Kickstarter in mere days to fund their upcoming adventure game; and don't you know that Greg had a huge part in this!?

Thanks for watching, and enjoy!

When Easy is Too Hard

HIGH Finally beating the game after a solid hour of continuous failure.

LOW Unavoidable special attacks.

WTF The last boss comes out of nowhere, plot-wise.

Attack of the Sidewalk-Surfing Cube Gleamers!

HIGH Winning a four-player game of graffiti by a single "tag."

LOW All these years later, I still suck at the nearly-impossible Downhill Jam.

WTF They didn't just preserve "hobo-bothering" as an objective, they added more of it?!

The guys at Extra Credits look into incorporating imbalance in a game. Ironically, imbalance is just the thing that when worked into character classes, weapons, tools and gameplay rules can wind up giving both the wet-behind-the-ears newbie and grizzled veteran new strategies as each plays and progresses through a game.

I've been asked a few times if I will be getting a Wii U, and what my plans are in regard to the system. Basically, my plans are... I have no immediate plans. Nintendo will not be sending review hardware to GameCritics (they never send us anything!) and discretionary spending on a new console is on hold right now. Apart from that, I've looked at the release list and as far as I'm concerned, there's nothing to get excited about.

Survival horror games aren't what they used to be. Once upon a time, they were about survival and horror. It makes sense. It's what the genre is called, after all. These titles would encompass qualities of mystery and exploration as the player fought to stay alive with every step. Over the years, they've increasingly become about action, gunfights, and an overload of cheap jump scares. I prefer the former, despite a plethora of the latter.