Dragon Age: Inquisition - You seem to have gotten some MMO in my Dragon Age....

*I had a very hectic January, so I apologize for not getting this review out sooner.*

So I have to say, I am actually kind of surprised that this release ever came out. Bioware showed a massive amount of success with the Mass Effect games. And after taking a bit of a beating for a very cut and pasted rush job in Dragon Age 2, and then the whole DLC debacle in Mass Effect 3 followed by the dissatisfaction of the ME3's ending, it was obvious that Bioware was going to take a moment to lick at its wounds. 

Aside from a handful of Star Wars: Old Republic dlc expansions, Bioware really took some time to knuckle down and really rebuild the experience for this series. After a 1 year turn around for Dragon Age 2, this installment took a number of years to see the light of day. Was the wait worth it? Time to take a trip back to Ferelden and see in....

DRAGON AGE: INQUISITION

The title screen opens up with a shot of Temple of Sacred Ashes sitting upon a snowy mountaintop. Two lines march single file towards it, on one side walk the Mages, and across from them are the Templars. When you select new game, a neon green explosion rips the sky and the blast blows back both of the lines.

We cut to a figure rousing into consciousness (where you create your character), and they arise to find themselves in the fade. Spiders surround them and give chase, but a glowing green figure calls out them as they climb after it, upon reaching the glowing outstretched hand, the player is dropped out of the fade and subdued by soldiers, your hand glowing the green of the fade and of the hand you took. 

Now imprisoned, we are interrogated by a Seeker named Cassandra, and Leliana from the previous two titles. They inform you that the fade has ripped a whole into the sky, and you were the only one found at the site of the explosion. Unfortunately, a large number of the Chantry officials, including the Chantry's divine priestess were lost in the explosion and people are looking for someone to blame, namely you. 

The Left and Right hands of the Divine. Cassandra may seem stoic, but
if you actually follow her substories, she's a fantastic character.

However, during a regrouping on the way to camp, we learn that the glowing mark on your hand allows you to close the rifts in the fade, thus preventing demons from continuing to enter the world. Cassandra and Leliana decide this is the best chance to close the giant rift, but the Chantry refuses as they see you as the cause. Cassandra invokes the right to reform the Inquisition, thus branding all of you as heretics in the eyes of the church and begins assembling an army to try to close the rift in the sky and bring stability to the world, with you at the forefront. 

As per my usual story line descriptions, I had to gloss over a good deal because Bioware tends to get pretty story heavy. While it certainly helps to have an understanding of the first two games, ultimately this is a brand new story with generally new characters. There are only two major holdovers from Origins, and two or three holdovers from Dragon Age 2. The rest are a brand new sect of dounkburgers. I'm not surprised, but I have to say I was hoping for this one to kind of tie the games together.

Actually, before I get to much farther, they sort of tried to address that to a degree. Prior to the release of Inquisition, they released something to Origin called Dragon Age Keep. What this was was essentially a mural that allowed you to tap into your uploaded saves and load up the characters and decisions you've made in previous titles to shape the world of Inquisition. The problem is I've played through Dragon Age: Origins with nearly every path possible, and practically none of my games were there. Which royally, ROYALLY sucks.

No matter, you can still go through and manually select all the outcomes of all the of the major events. Handy, but its very time consuming, and difficult to remember what decisions I made in a game I played nearly five years ago. Half of them I didn't remember who the people were in the event being discussed. Still, it was a cool feature (shame I forgot to import it to my game before I started).

Trying to remember choices I made years ago was harder than the game was.

The first thing I noticed is that it kept with the faster paced, more action oriented style of fighting you saw in Dragon Age 2. That's not to say it was active battle or action styled, there is still a great deal of RPG control. Generally you just move around the battle as needed, holding down a trigger to attack, The buttons on your pad can be mapped to your various abilities. The combat tends to play faster and more chaotically than I remember it.

The level of skill though really kinda hinges on what class you are playing as or building towards. My first playthrough of the game I started as a mage, and basically hung back and fired spells as my tanks took care of business up front. It was simple and easy to play, but then I upgraded to Knight-Enchanter which essentially puts your mage in the front line. It's low damage, but makes you very hard to bring down as each strike fills your barrier. Playing as a mage had challenges, but it wasn't difficult.

Standard View

I switched to a dagger rouge my 2nd time through, and I'm noticing a significantly increased challenge. My character is doing a lot more pure damage than my mage ever did, but she also can't take a beating as well as before, so I've needed to carefully map which skills would most be useful to get me through tougher fights with harder monsters. So this clearly isn't an RPG where you can basically metagame everything into taking care of it self, you do need to stay focused.

They did add a tactical mode which makes the game feel a bit more like Origins in regards to control. In this mode you can flip to character and have them use specific abilities one specific targets, and the action only moves when you allow it to, so you can oversee the whole battle and make adjustments where necessary. It almost gives the game somewhat of a JRPG/RTS feel to it with how it changes the feel of battle. I've been told for harder difficulties this is nearly mandatory, but outside of one or two battles or the need to revive a character, I barely used it.

Tactical View

The game starts off with a bit more character customization than Dragon Age 2 did. Get to choose from the 3 big fantasy races (Human, Elf, and Dwarf) and the Qunari. Get to pick your gender, pick your character class, then as I mentioned, you get to use the character creator. I have to say for the most art, its pretty good. Instead of sliders it gives me a grid kinda thing and I can easily see whats being moved around and how it looks. I liked that a lot. What I didn't like is the surprisingly limited number of hair options. Why would you go through all the trouble of full facial bone structure customization but not give us more than 10 hair options?

What liked even less is that everything you do in the created means exactly shit, because the moment you leave the awkward lighting of the creator, your beautiful elven mage will look like a roadkill disaster. No matter what setting you chose, no matter what color, or shade of gloss you pick, every single character you create in this game will look like they were just caught eating the contents of a colored glo-stick. The PC modders have probably worked around it, but I was kind stuck with it.

Its amazing how the creator can be vastly improved and incredibly limiting at the same time

So one of the biggest complaints about Dragon Age 2 is that it was tightly contained in the same town and used a lot of the same maps over and over again. It was rehashed, repetitive, and lacking a great deal of creativity. The game as a whole suffered for it, and people hated it. Dragon Age: Inquisition however basically meshed the map system of the first game, and environments that are incredibly expansive. I won't say they are as big as Skyrim in scope, but certainly bigger than the areas of Final Fantasy XIII-3.

You activate main quests from your base camp's war room, once you do so you can travel the necessary area where one of your scouts briefs you on the main reason you are there. But as you travel through the expanse, you will find a number of side quests to do as well. Doing so allows you to build the Inquisitions notoriety and therefore power. You use power to continue to unlock more quests, so its a good idea to keep a number of them open because you need them to progress in the game.

The problem is, some of the areas are too expansive and they have too much shit too. Way too much. So much so that both gaming sites such as Kotaku, and even Bioware themselves basically had to tell players "Hey! Leave the Hinterlands! We know there are a lot of quests in that first area, but there is so much cool stuff to see! You will be less bored if you actually play the game!!" Once I read that, I too needed to force myself to leave that area because I got caught up in trying to do everything I could in that area, and I won't lie I was getting bored doing it. 

Bioware took the complaints from DA2 and gave us some beautiful environments this time

And you will get caught up in side quests. MAN will you. This is one of those games that will straight up tell you "Yeah I don't care that you are 33 and working full time. You are not finishing this game in 5 hours. We worked hard on it, so have to as well." And its a pretty good change of pace. As much as I love a game I can rip through and enjoy the story, I also enjoy a game that is going to last and give me my monies worth, and on that front Dragon Age: Inquisition delivers.

This is a game for people who like to explore and while I found it a little to easy to get sidetracked from the main quests, I think that the game is better off for it. It gives the overall adventure a feeling of expansive bigness to it, and gives me the feeling of genuinely adventuring and exploring. Sometimes the game suffers from having crappy MMO sidequests like collect 10 of said plant, but sometimes you go out to slay some bandits or find a hidden treasure or cave. There is some puzzle solving in the game as well so it broadens the pallet out somewhat.

I guess if I was to say anything about that, is if that I wished main story missions were better indicated on the map, it would have let me know much easier what I had to head to if I wasn't in the mood for question. In games like this I hit a point where I just have to put it down, and if I didn't finish the story, I might never. Thankfully, I didn't in this one.

Considering I was looking forward to seeing the Origins characters again, it took a little bit of warming up to me but I have decided that I really like this cast. I might go as far as to say I like this cast the most of the three Dragon Age games. Origins had a mix of characters I liked and some I didn't (you were the worst, Sten), Dragon Age 2 had more characters I didn't much care about to ones I did. But Inquisition has a pretty strong and diverse cast through and through from varied genders, races, political stances, and faiths.

Blackwall fills the role of the honorable knight, Cassandra is the gruff crusader with a softer hidden side (and totally won me over), Sera is the wise cracking prankster, Vivienne plays the regal noble, Varric reprises his role as the cunning and dashing rogue, Iron Bull the rough and tumble thug with a heart of gold, and I could go on. Even the characters I didn't love still played their parts to compile a very interesting ensemble to give a well rounded team to cater to all tastes.

Which really is what made the decision making in this game so much more difficult. You have always had to make decisions in Dragon Age but this is a game where I've really felt the weight of the choices I've had to make. You will never, EVER, make a choice that will make the whole team happy. Because of the very nature of the story (IE: The ongoing hostilities between mages and the rest of the world) its very design means you can't please everyone. This doesn't just mean every little token decision you have to make, some of them have some very serious consequences.

Around midway through the game when the Inquisition is in full swing, you sort of take the role of judge, jury, and executioner to the villains you've fought, or people who you have apprehended via various missions or decisions as you play. Your adviser Josephine will explain to you their crime, give you something of a recommendation. You hear the defendant make their case, and you decide their fate. These decisions will have repercussions among your team and while some of them can be downright silly, a lot of them pose some very difficult choice where someone has to lose on the deal.

Most specifically are the choices near the end of the story. There is a final dungeon where you are forced to make some decisions about how to proceed, but then there is an incredibly difficult one near the end which would shake out the last few chapters of the game. Because of how I built my character it put me at a real crossroads, so much so that at 3am I was staring at my screen agonizing over the decision for 20 minutes, considering waking up my roommate to ask what he did. There was no black and white, good and evil. Just different shades of gray and those are the decisions that really make a game like this powerful.

Of all the characters, Sera is probably the only "Must Use" in my book. She is an
absolute trouble maker, talks in circles, and somehow still innocent. She sometimes
Can come off as dumb but has some complex workings about her. You just kinda have to love her.

There is a multiplayer mode to this game as well, I opened it like, once. I suppose it can turn the game into a Gauntlet-esq dungeon crawler but honestly, After one level I haven't played it since, and probably never will. I understand they want to shoehorn multiplayer into everything, but this is a place where it really didn't need to be.

I really don't know what else I can say about Dragon Age: Inquisition that hasn't already been said by paid reviewers who actually got their thoughts out when the game came out. The first game came out and it was good, the second game came out and they took a beating. So they hung back, licked their wounds, actually learned from their mistakes, and produced a very worthy successor to the Dragon Age linage that satisfied all my desires as a RPG gamer.

I think that Dragon Age: Inquisition only won game of the year honors because it was the hot new game around the time the year ended. But deserving or no, Inquisition was an absolutely stellar experience that I highly recommend to anyone who loves a good long RPG or is a fan of the classic fantasy genre.

Fuck You, Druffy. It was an accident.

Dishonored (XB360): Stealthing its way out of my memory.

As you found out from my Black Ops 2 review I recently learned that Redbox rents games, which is super helpful now that I am not gainfully employed at my local Derpstop, (thats a joke, nobody is gainfully employed there). But in this continued quest to branch and try games I don't normally play, and partially because the only other option was Borderlands 2 I decided to step into the steampunk universe of a game marketed out the ass in....

DISHONORED:(XB360)

In Dishonored you play as silent protagonist Corvo Attano, assassin and bodyguard to the empress Jessamine Kaldwin. The game picks up with Corvo returning from a dignitary mission to the surrounding foreign lands seeking aid from a plague infection affecting the Dunwall empire. After your boat docks you meet up with the empress and her daughter to report on your mission.

After a brief few seconds of conversation, teleporting assassins descend on you and you get a very quick crash course in the combat where you fend off 2 or 3, and then the empress is killed in front of you. The assassin's make off with the empress's daughter Emily, and with her dying breath the empress implores you to find and save her. Of course this is shot immediately in the foot as Lord Regent enters and blames you for her murder and are promptly arrested.

Corvo is held and tortured for six months before the Lord Regent reveals that he was in on the murder and you will be executed to be made an example of. After being thrown your cell, you receive a letter and key from Empire Loyalists who help him escape and request his help to save Emily and return the empire to the proper bloodline.

Ok Bethesda Games, really? You know what? No. You guys are suspended from me ever trying your games again. This is now the 3rd game of yours I've played where you start off as a silent protagonist who is captured and near executed before the game actually starts. I know it must be hard to write a story but you can't keep using the same goddamn opening for all of your fucking games and expect me to keep giving a shit. 

So as the savvy gamer can already tell, this is going to be a first person western RPG like all Bethesda games are. But I will say this one breaks the established convention I've come to expect out of this developer. At a glance, I could say that this game is the ungodly offspring of an orgy between Assassin's Creed, Fable 3, Mirrors Edge, and Bioshock over a skeletal structure of a Bethesda RPG.

Its visual design definitely borrows the most from Fable 3. Lots of bright colors in a tightly confined steampunk city with character models that are seem a bit too cartoony for the violence this game has. They are a bit more grim and dark than say Fable 3's character models that look like they have been ripped from a Sims title. The game starts with one of those "set your brightness for the proper play visuals" but I don't know why its there. Pretty much every stage is brightly lit with little issues of visuals. One last little visual side note about the game, watching bodies getting picked to the bone by swarms of rats never loses its charm with me. That was fucking awesome.

Dishonored's overall play style feels like a hybrid of the Assassin's Creed and Mirror's Edge parkour. The problem I have with this is the game is strictly first person, and I feel that inhibits that style of running game play. They spruce things up by giving you different magical abilities like blink teleports which allow you to zip to the tops of ledges or from building to building or to swoop in for a kill.

One of the abilities allows you to see through walls so you can track your target better

It may be why the NPC guards that wander around seem to be kind of dopey and seem to have a pretty generous margin for error. But what bothers me is if they spot you once, it takes FOREVER for them to stop looking for you so you can complete your mission. It can be somewhat aggravating  and even more so if you are trying to play the game via non-lethal methods. 

First person combat and I never get along. Even in games that I love that have it such as Left4Dead 2 the melee combat never feels as smooth as I would like it to. Admittedly, Dishonored probably has some of the cleanest first person combat I have played in a game but its still not great. Again, the margin for error seems kinda big here as guards really telegraph their attacks long enough for you to fumble your way to the block button and then allows you to mash the trigger all to hell. I did not have the game very long but I never felt I got to the point where I could fight without taking damage. Perhaps that is by design so you are forced to try to stealth around.

This is where Bioshock's meager influence pops up aside from the steampunk setting. Littered throughout the stage are cakes and candies and snacks that you can pick up to restore your health through out most of the stages. Generally all the looting you do pretty much pays out in cash for all the items you pick up along the way which you use to upgrade your health and items and such.  

The combat is pretty visceral though and to that end its actually pretty enjoyable. Scoring a well placed block or a sneaking up on some unsuspecting doofus results in you watching your blade wedge deeply into their neck or spine. But if there is more than two or three people on, you might as well just chalk the fight up as a loss.

I found myself not even worrying about the stealth after a while because once you unlock the slow time ability, there really didn't seem to be a need to use anything else. I would get caught, let them chase me a second, slow time, then cut the lot of them to fucking ribbons before I broke a sweat. If you are going to try to make this a stealth game, then you really shouldn't give me abilities that render sneaking pointless.

Some of the quick kills are very satisfying to watch.

Dishonored has been getting really solid reviews from all the major outlets, but it certainly isn't going to get one from me, I found this game to be really insubstantial. Maybe I am an overly rigid judge of games, or maybe I just can't be convinced that this boring style of western RPG that people seem to enjoy is actually fun. But I sat down with this game for a solid 8 or 10 hours, and much like other Bethesda games I've played like Oblivion, Skyrim, or Fallout 3 I just found myself trudging along from mission to mission in a half lulled state of sleep. I was constantly getting distracted by Internet videos or instant messages or even just staring out my window and usually that is not a great sign of the game. 

I think if this game had given me a 3rd person option much like Skyrim did I might have been a bit more favorable to it. Bethesda has shown me that they can do it and make it work, because it got me to play Skyrim to the story's end. But instead I got a slow paced parkour RPG with some decent combat mechanics but not engaging enough to keep going.

Dishonored shot itself in the foot with me because after Dead Island I don't trust game trailers that don't show me game footage and all the trailers I saw of this were all fully CG with no game footage. I was right to stick to this belief, because if they aren't showing me game play footage then even the devs know their game is lacking. Had I seen actual gameplay prior to playing it, I wouldn't have wasted the 2 bucks to rent it. I'm sure Dishonored will find its crowd, its reviews will see to that. But this game does nothing for me and I don't intend to pick it up again. 

Rage Quitter Omniderp: #1

Don't have much to write about lately, so I whipped up this vid for you. Enjoy

My Rebuilding Silent Hill article.

Dragon's Dogma (XB360/PS3): Rewarding Patience since 2012

Sometimes I have to admit when a game has me licked. I fucking tried with this game but man did I fucking suck at it. I was ready to just hop on here and smash this game to bits but really I couldn't give you much with the exception that I sucked at it. So in a vain attempt to maintain some journalistic integrity, today's review comes from the evil mastermind that is Brett Campbell. Take it away, sir. --

DRAGON'S DOGMA: (XB360/PS3)

This console generation has been a landmark for RPG's if only for the fact that it's been dominated by western development. Sales charts clearly show that gamers would rather slay dragons in open fantasy worlds than, say, try to save the world for the umpteenth time as a melodramatic teenager with a bad emo haircut. Capcom must have kept that in mind when developing Dragon's Dogma, because with the exception of a few common Japanese mannerisms, this couldn't feel more like an authentic western RPG. In fact, in certain ways it manages to exceed the qualities of the very games it tries to emulate.

You start your adventure in a small, peaceful fishing village when *dah duh DAHHHH* a dragon attacks. In the ensuing chaos, your hapless hero (completely customized to your own liking) grabs a sword and foolishly decides to take the beast on. Obviously this doesn't go well. The dragon eats your heart, then, in so many words, tells you if you want it back to come and get it.

It's not Shakespeare, thankfully, but then again, what is? From there on you have free roam of the hauntingly gorgeous country known as Gransys. Dead trees lurch over dusty valley floors, crow's cages hold citizens being tortured by harpies, foggy swamps are populated by goblins. Think of the landscape in the George Lucas classic "Willow" and you'll be in the atmospheric ballpark.

After some more story points you'll be rewarded with the opportunity to create your "pawn". Pawns are basically husks of humanity that have no will except to serve you. You can tweak the behavior of your pawn from the skills they learn to the way the address you. Best of all, if you're playing online your servant will be uploaded into The Rift, a ethereal fog where other players can summon your creation to help them in combat. Everything your pawn learns about quests, enemies and the environment from assisting other players will be retained the next time you log in. Say your pawn learns from The Rift that setting a griffon's wings ablaze will bring it to the ground; when you encounter a griffon he or she will inform you of the strategy. It's a brilliant, simple and engaging use of online, and something I'd love to see in future games.

From this point on you'll start to notice a lot of ways this game tries to take the best of Skyrim, Dragon Age, Dark Souls, even Shadow of the Colossus, and mold them into some amazing sort of unicorn of a game. Sometimes it falls short of all those games it obviously draws inspiration from but majorly it manages to equal, and in surprising moments, surpass them.

The game's music is standard fare for the genre, though it is quite good. Hearing the music change once you find an enemy's weakness signals the change in dominance on the battlefield, and really adds a level of excitement to the game. A lot of the time you're simply listening to the wind blow, though. It adds an eerie quality to the occasions when you're enjoying the questionably peaceful beauty of the land.

Combat in Dragon's Dogma is a hack and slash, spell slinging dream. You're equipped with a light and heavy attack along with a button used to defend with a shield. Holding either shoulder button and pressing one of the top three face buttons will enact your character's spells or skills. Skills consist of devastating blows, slashing or skewering your opponents and opening them up for juggles or combos.

Magic is quite often graphically impressive and fun to wield. Summoning a rain of meteorites, walls of fire and even whips of concentrated lightning blaze up the battlefield into a fit of chaos. You can also enchant your and your party's weapons and shields with elemental magic, making the all the more deadly. Best of all, there's a "grab" button, making it easy to lift a weakened bandit over your shoulder and throw him off of a cliff (believe me, that never gets old). As enjoyable as it is to take out a gang of hobgoblins in this manner, the real joy in Dragon's Dogma's combat is the big monsters. Using the previously mentioned "grab" button, you can climb up any of the beasts, go for a ride (or flight), find their weak point and hack away, a la Shadow of the Colossus.

Mounting a chimera with your three pawns (your creation and up to two others uploaded from The Rift) feels so visceral and intense, especially when you kill off parts of the mythological beast. There are more big encounters to go on about, but I think it's best to enjoy the surprise and see the realistic animations at work. They're managed to top my list of boss encounters for this generation of consoles.

So, with all this gushing comes with some gripes. The difficulty in the early stages of the game is overwhelming. Sticking to the main quests until around lv. 10 or 15 is a must, though the game doesn't let you know that. The graphics are hit or miss, with the latter being more prevalent during the opening hours of the game. Perhaps most annoying, aside from the costly use of ferrystones, there is no easy way to fast travel across the land of Gransys. You will be doing a ton of walking, often back and forth across the huge map until very late in the game. Once you get over some of those bumps, you're really in for a treat.

What it comes down to is this: if you like classic fantasy, this game is very much worth giving a serious look at. More so if you loved the games previously mentioned in this article. This game definitely stole my heart, and I don't mind if I don't get it back during my second playthrough. -- Brett Campbell

Elder Scrolls- Skyrim (XB360/PS3): What the hell is wrong with you people?

I didn't want to write this one. 

I REALLY didn't want to write this one.

But I had a number people clamoring to me about this game telling me that its going to get game of the year nods and stands one of the best releases this fall. But god damn it, I knew how I was going to feel about it going in. Western RPGS and I have never gotten along. We have a very Love/Hate relationship. They love to suck, and I hate playing them. I didn't care of the games that have come before it, specifically: Morrowind, Oblivion, and Fallout 3. But people kept asking, and kept asking, and kept asking for me to do this one. So I said to myself if I was going to review this game, I have 3 rules to follow: 

1.) Try to be as objective as possible.
2.) Do not compare it to Dark Souls at every given opportunity.

3.) Give it at least 3 days of play before I write anything.

So here we go. Remember readers: you asked me to do this. I didn't want to.

ELDER SCROLLS: SKYRIM(XB360)

The story starts off with my character waking up in a wagon with shackles on. Apparently he was caught and knocked out on the border of Skyrim, and is being carted away for execution because they assume you are part of a rebel resistance against their empire. This is where you create your character. Typically when I play an RPG of any kind where I get to create a character, I tend to fall into the archetype of either the area of effect mage, or the damage soaking damage dealing tank character.  So since I was playing something outside of my comfort spectrum, I decided to play a character type I usually never do. So Thus I used Skyrim's terrible create-a-character to create "Bainan Elvendrez" who was going to specialize in stealth and thievery. While the character creation did provide me with a myriad of options, I tend to find that all the options didn't seem remarkably different from each other besides the races. All the character designs looks rough, and despite giving me a number of slider options, all the characters still looked like shit. So after settling on a wood elf with some light scruff and a stupid Mohawk, my character is brought up to the execution block and just before the axe comes down, a dragon appears on a tower and wrecks havoc. My character bolts off to follow and you take control of the game. You can chose to follow either your captor or your fellow prisoner, but it was so clusterfucky that I just followed who it was I saw.

After a brief escape segment where it somewhat explains the buttons and directions and gives you some introductory equipment and some minimal direction, you enter the world of Skyrim. The open world map, much like it predecessors, is friggen massive. It doesn't give very much in the way of a linear path so it is easy to get lost just exploring things. Or if you are like me and have a poor sense of direction, just easy to get lost. After I escaped the first town from the dragon attack, my partner said I could find a small town just north of where I was. Instead of following him down the path I fiddled with the buttons a bit  to familiarize myself and lost him. So I tried to follow what seemed to be an obvious path, but where it ended up being a very narrow path on the side of mountain, not being a great first person player I misstepped and fell off the side of the mountain into a chasmy area. Basically a hole around steep walls. There was no where to walk and unable to climb. In a matter of minutes of starting the game, I got myself glitch locked in the side of a mountain. Not a great start for a game I had severe trepidation about playing to begin with.

But after cussing a bit, getting a drink, and reloading my save I figured out that I could take the game out of First person mode and instead play third person. This was a billion times more comfortable to me and this is what I stuck with the whole time with the game. So now I followed the guy down and found the town of my own accord. Helyen or whatever if was called. First thing I see when I walk into town is a chicken on the ground, so for shits and giggles I take a swing at it. Suddenly, the entire hamlet of Derpingsburg grabbed the torches and pitchforks and proceeded to lynch and gut my elven ass in a matter of seconds. Seemed like a simple "Don't do that or we are are calling the guards" would have been more and sufficient in this situation. The next time around I go around town and try to get a room at the Inn, I wanted to get a feel for the thievery aspects my character would be doing. For locked doors and chests, there is a small lock picking mini game, that's difficulty decreases the better you get at it. I was actually a big fan of this because it reminded me of a very old Nintendo game by the name of Hillsfar were you would you would have to pick locks with actual pick tools. However any fun I would have with this was effectively dashed by Delphie, the innkeeper. This bitch would stand in the doorway of the room I was in, and WOULD NOT FUCKING MOVE. I would walk around the room and try to duck or do ANYTHING to get her leave. Sometimes she would take a few steps away, I would dart to the door only to have her step back in the way. It took me me almost 20 minutes to get out of the damn Inn. Finally after talking to some of the villiage idiots and spending what little money I had on heath potions, I decided to do some quests.

Is Bainan Elvendrez gonna have ta cut a bitch?

The maps are too big, and the way points are not clear. This has always been a massive complaint of mine for this series. Traveling through the Skyrim countryside is picturesque and impressive. While the character models I felt look like shit, they really do a pretty good job with their landscapes. Everything that I saw from a distance was very serene and I also liked how the game appeared to move in real time between light and dark, and perhaps I'm remember wrong but I thought there were weather changes as well. My problem is without any major guide to let me know if I was on the right path or not, I continued to find myself wandering around, trying to find what specific path or road or cave I was trying to find to get my side quest started. I can't tell you how many times I was walking straight towards a way point marker and found myself circling a fucking mountain trying to figure out how to get up. More often than not I would start climbing areas I was not supposed to be and getting myself perched on ledges with no means of going higher but too steep a drop to get back down. If not that, I found myself getting bored just walking around. Sometimes eating up more than 30 or 40 minutes of time just trying to get to a destination. Occasionally I would get attacked by a wolf or try to kill some wild game. But that's not enough for me. This is a complaint I have made before in games like Borderlands, Dead Island, Oblivion, or even the Assassin's Creed franchise. If you are going to give me a stupidly large map to wander then you better give me some means to traverse it fast, or have shit happen while I'm walking into it. I never have this problem in like Red Dead Redemption, Saint's Row, or GTA because they provide fast modes of travel or things to do along the way. But no, In the Elder Scrolls franchise its just walk walk walk walk walk. It gets incredibly boring to me. Many people immediately shoot to me "Oh but you can fast travel." Which is true. But you can only use after you have already visited a location. And trust me, once I have I fast traveled constantly, but the over world travel is just boring as hell for me.

Yo Dawg, I herd you liek Trees and Mountains. So we put in like
10 billion of them between you and the destination. Enjoy.

So finally getting to some crypts for a quest I was doing, I finally got into the some combat. I think the first major one I did was trying to find a gold claw or something. The combat has a slightly similar button configuration to that of Demon's/Dark Souls in way that the shoulders are needed to swing the weapon or raise my shield. So because of those familiar buttons I didn't have much trouble getting used to that. What DID bother me, was the location of the jump and menu buttons. Perhaps I've played too many JRPGs but from the SNES on, the Top button (Y, Triangle, etc) is always the menu and B/O button is always jump. So in the heat of fights, I would try to quickly get to the menu so I can used my potions and instead I would jump in place and get killed. After a few cheap deaths, I finally had to switch those around. I still did it as I was learning to adjust to the new button locations but I finally did it less after the fact. The combat seems to be very loose as this games combat takes more of an action RPG route. It requires your reticle to be on target or the attack might miss. This is something that will happen often if you are trying to do a power swing, as the animation will usually have you swing right past the enemy. This to me is in desperate need of a lock on of some type, it would make the third person combat a bit more precise, Demon's/Dark Souls has pretty good example of how this kind of combat works, and while I am pining on about this, a couple of hit or stun animations would have been nice to signify when I hit or am getting hit. The life bars drop yeah, but if I am fighting two or more enemies I am not looking at the life bars. If its going to be like that then the least they can do is give me more of a window for my strikes to land, something comparable to Dragon Age might have helped too where you need to be somewhat within range. Much like the over world, the caves and dungeons seemed incredibly long and I would often find myself wondering how much longer before I found the end of it. They were never so long that I wanted to put the game down though, and some of them did keep playing a few hours longer than I wanted to for a session.

I suppose my biggest complaint, and this is probably more of just me being a snooty English major (not a good one, mind you), in the regard that I felt no weight for the story. I knew I was captured and that I was a "Dragonborne", and that I needed to meet the Grey Beards. But after that point I got so lost and distracted by side quests I didn't even remember where it was I was supposed to be going. A lot of times when I am trying to follow the story, some other asshole NPC will shout some dialogue over what I'm listening to and then I miss something important. I never felt like there was any weight behind my actions, and everything had an annoying fetch quest MMO feel to it. I was starting to get interested in the werewolf story lines, (and for exploration the beast form was a necessity for me) but even those got bogged down by massively far destinations, which would usually result in me starting up closer quests.

All the werewolf stuff was the most fun I had. Coolest looking characters too.

I've been told that the monsters in the game level up with your character, but a particularly infuriating moment of the game is when I actually needed to seek out these grey beards. I had a very difficult time finding where I needed to go specifically to get up to the top of the mountain they were on, climbing up on the wrong sides of them on more than one occasion, but after several hours I did eventually find the "7000 steps" I was supposed to take to get there. On the climb up I'd kill some baddies and then would be greeted at the top by a Frost Troll. This fucker wiped me out in a single hit. So I had to figure out were I went to get back up there. Eventually I found a path and kept getting crushed by it. I then had the brainstorm to save just before so I wouldn't have to keep climbing that fucking mountain. This thing was unbeatable for me. I couldn't take more than 2 or 3 hits tops from it, my spells were so piss weak I could barely register damage, my shouts did nothing to help me. This fight was a total wash, so my only recourse was to try to out run it to my destination. This eventually worked but not without multiple reloads.

Fuck these stupid things right up their hairy assholes. 

It was after that point I had a greater comfort level to the game, fast traveling to towns, ripping through dungeons, looting peoples stuff and trying to create new equipment. But during all of this, during the numerous hours I played it I could not once register any boss battle, enemy, dungeon or story plot that made me reflect that I was having fun. I just wasn't. Yeah some of it was interesting enough to keep me going, but I just was not enjoying this game.

I just don't get it. I'm a pretty savvy gamer. Ive played several games and pretty much will give everything a shot. I know that a number of the things that I said are the reasons people love these games. I argued with a number of my friends about my complaints and they stared at me baffled, like I was speaking another language. One friend said to me "You have a unique personality, You just look at things differently." and I suppose that makes sense, different people register different fun. I love bowling, but the template for whom Bainan Elvendrez was created has told me constantly he hates bowling. Different Tastes.

I really tried, people. I really did.  I really tried to give this game a shot, and try to take it for what it is, and tried to figure out what is that makes these games so goddamn popular.I didn't want to write some hate speech to be shocking, and did my best give an honest review with an honest opinion. But I am just not seeing it. Maybe I was just too late to the party to join in now. Maybe I'm too ingrained on the traditional JRPG systems that I grew up with. Maybe I just hate excessively long walks. I don't know. But what I do is this: I don't think I will ever enjoy the Elder Scrolls Series. Every single one of them leaves more bored and disappointed. I feel like I'm being left out of some club and everyone else is having a great time. But when I got in, I didn't feel right. I felt happier at the smaller club that was more to my taste and played the music I liked. I don't know how anyone could play a game like Dark Souls and then play Skyrim and then think Skyrim was better. It just baffles me. Making the map 300 times bigger than ridiculous doesn't make a game a epic, it makes it tedious. Having unresponsive combat doesn't make a game challenging, It makes it annoying. Having a multitude of different story options may deepen a game, but it can also distract. The VGA's (the biggest fucking Non-Award show in history) gave Skyrim game of the year, and nobody seemed bothered or surprised by it. Just met with a lukewarm acceptance that a game that's been out for about a month now is being mentioned as the best game of the year. It just stuns me. Look, if you are a fan of this series you will probably be a fan of this game.

But I think you people are friggen insane. Fuck this game.

PS: I put out a Gag Video for my friends before I started playing. Kinda wish I used the real stuff now. 

Dead Island (XB360): See? Told you we weren't Left 4 Dead.

I, like every other 18-32 year old and their brother in this country, love zombies. And because of this, by proxy I usually love anything that contains zombies. Tv shows, comics, movies, and of course video games. I usually have a rule of thumb that if it contains zombies, it must be good and history in the gaming world tends to back this theory. Here's a brief list of games that contain zombies:

-Disgaea

-Call of Duty

-Resident Evil
-Saints Row 2

-Castlevania

-Left 4 Dead
-Red Dead Redemption

-Silent Hill (if you could call them that.... maybe)

-Dead Rising

Different styles of games, all proven to be successful. I don't play maybe one of these games but as you can see, that's some company that produces money. So because of this theory, I don't research zombie games like I do others and this was the case with this weeks review.

DEAD ISLAND:(XB360)

Although perhaps in this case maybe I should have done a little research. I blindly reserved and purchased my special edition from my local LameStop and quickly unwrapped it. Initial views seemed very positive as it starts with a first person view of you getting blackout drunk at the Island Resort and waking up to zombie infestation. I picked the usual girl character like my custom from the racially stereotyped pick and mix  (and they are unabashedly stereotyped) and was treated to a cut scene of shit going haywire and started running through my tutorial. I was surprised that there was so much story right out the gate. It pretty much let me know right off that this game was not trying to be Left 4 Dead. I plugged my way through the hotel and tried to find my way to my first house full of survivors where the guy from The Hangover explained to me we need to help these people and get everyone to the Lifeguard Tower because its safer there. Sounds great. I wandered around the house and got me some side quests, grabbed a boat paddle and jumped out of the house to crack some skulls.

I had remembered hearing when I was looking at the initial reviews of this game that is primarily melee focused, and that is certainly the case. But for some reason, it does feel a little sloppy to me. First person games and I never get along as it is for the most part, but I understand the logic of lining up the reticule and pulling the trigger. But these are melee weapons, if I swing a baseball bat I'm going to hit the things I'm sweeping to the sides on. This is something that Dead Island doesn't exactly execute properly. For example, I use the Asian assassin who is proficient with bladed weapons (such as katana's if the stereotype wasn't bad enough yet). One of the earlier headaches you meet in the game are larger zombies called thugs. They are slow and lumbering but if you take a hit from them, they send you flying. They do have a fairly simple weakness though. Your kick move can hit them but keeps you just out of the range of their swing. You can usually land 3 or 4 of them before they yell and flail. At this point you can take some swings with bladed or blunt weapons to cut off or break the arms so they have use a less effective lunging headbutt. The problem is despite the huge swinging arc I am swinging with my machete, I only am scoring damage on the chest. Many of the early blades do not have all that great of durability and usually go down after a zombie or 2. So if you aren't moving your aim way over and scoring your arm attacks on the thugs you are in for some big hits.

God that's another massive complaint of mine in this game. How many games have you played where you thought to yourself: "Oh my weapon broke. That was pretty cool." Let me answer for you, NONE. I understand you are trying to go for realism in these games but its friggen annoying and it just frustrates a player especially in the middle of a tough fight the last thing you want is your character announce the beefed up bat with a saw blade sticking out of it is broken. They make up for this by having the kick move drain no stamina and a rage ability for a few seconds of high damage, but it doesn't balance it. You can repair and upgrade you weapons for a nominal fee, but you only get you money from completing quests or looting and usually you never have enough to repair all your favorites and will almost be left in a tight situation without a decent tool. Its friggen annoying.

Here's a quick tip to gain money fast. Whenever you need scratch, jump into a friends who game who is a much lower level than you. All the baddies are leveled with whoever hosts the game, but the rewards you get are to your level. So a simple level 3 fetch quest may only reward your friend with like 97 dollars but you might get up to a couple thou plus experience. A few missions and you can easily rack up some cash to repair or level up your favorite stuff.

Be careful in the water. Zombies can take drowning damage if you knock them over under water, and you can usually cut through beaches if you want avoid a scuffle. But if the water seems too deep, don't try. Its crystal clear over the surface but if you wander a little to deep the screen blurs badly and turns near black. Its VERY difficult to get yourself turned around the right way to get yourself back to land before you health depletes to zero. Apparently island resort beaches are just tar that looks really nice from above.

The kick is really broken by the way. As I eluded to, it doesn't use your stamina, it stuns your enemies and sometimes knocks them down, and if they start to get up another kick will keep them down. Later you will learn a head stomp move for stupid damage. In one on one situations you typically won't even need your weapon. But in group situations neither of these moves are great because you'll take a beating as you do it. By the 2nd act of the game its almost not worth it to you. As I have played through the game, I have collected some handguns so far, but for the most part they have been completely piss weak and not worth using the inventory slot on unless I'm fighting other survivors who have guns and can't close the gap to use my knives.

The Kick. The most useful tool in Dead Island

Here is my major gripe. While I was running around the island looking to complete the side quests I had taken, I found myself wondering "god where is a zombie so I can fight it already.". After minutes of walking I would beat one down and be like "That didnt last long enough to be fun, where the hell is the next one?" And after a few of these I realized I had these feelings before. It was like the time when I tried Borderlands and in that same fashion, I got bored as hell walking around looking for something to shoot or putting down the same type of skag or whatever. That was the major flaw for me. I was getting bored. I also have this problem when I play a game like Fallout 3 or Elder Scrolls. If I can walk around a field for 40 minutes and have nothing happen its not a game I am going to play for very long. And if that wasn't bad enough, the game hammers you with like 25 side quests right out the gate. So it is very easy to get distracted from the main campaign if you are like me and like to the get side stuff out of the way for you to be beefed up for the actual story missions. But this can be terribly exhausting to do and can slow the pace of the game to a legless zombie's crawl.

I was just about ready give up on the game and take it back but I had to opportunity to jump into the game with a couple of friends. Suddenly I wasn't just waiting to kill zombies. I was yelling at one friends bad driving, or tried to explain to them that electricity conducts through a car, or trying to get the lead out to save them from a thug or something. I was enjoying the game a lot more. I was having fun with it. I was starting to think that I should maybe Borderlands another try, but then my friends who I played with kinda dropped off.

I was back to playing the game alone. I was further along in the game now so I didn't have the problem of only having one zombie to fight every 500 steps but now everything was so high level I was just getting wiped out every few steps because when zombies get that many you need an effective gun, not a broken stick. Now I am skipping past zombies to get to objectives. I'm just running around the town now. I was getting bored.

Handy weapon against zombies but that many AND dealing with a ram? Yeah, you're eff'd.

I have never been the type of person to play games online because video game online communities are the anal wart of human society, and if I wanted to hear 7 year old's spit venomous racism at the top of their lungs, I could just go to the teen room of the library I work at. The bottom line is that this game is designed for you to play online with people. And since my friends don't play it that often and I don't like random assholes dropping in on my game, I figure I will not be getting much in the way of mulitplayer play. Which is not favorable for the longevity of this title. I'm already thinking of going on to the next game instead of finishing this one. But I'm going to try to plug it away at it so I can at least see how it ends. But really, had I known what I know now about this game when I first reserved this title? I probably wouldn't have.