This is a step in the right direction. They now have my attention, but will have to earn my trust. And for those bemoaning the lack of innovation, well ... (and I'll probably get flamed with "lol, pc master race" comments for this) consoles haven't been doing anything innovative for most of the past generation. The…

This is among the better pieces I've read on today's "Xbox 180."

I built my current rig for about $900. I built it during the PS3/360 era (about 2 years ago) and while it's no longer a high-end system, it'll be good to go for sometime into the PS4/Xbone era. If you've bought at least one of each (not to mention a TV — I just use my monitor for everything) you've already spent more…

Or a journalist. And as a journalist, I wouldn't wish that on anyone!

Then Krieg is your man. Seriously, while gamers should never trivially through money at stuff just because it's cheap, considering that so many games have crazy high price points these days and Krieg is just $9 on Steam, I'd he's worth it. I had a blast playing him — he feels a lot like the Gunzerker in some ways, but…

Except that I meant "VI and VII" instead of "XI and XII." Which is what I get when I stay up all night leveling a Psycho in Borderlands 2 and then rant before coffee.

FFXII is by far one of the most under appreciated entries in the series. I've never understood why, personally. For a PlayStation 2 game it's remarkably pretty. While Vaan is annoying, the other characters are interesting, the environments are gorgeous and the Gambit system is open enough for some real subtlety. It…

Just last night I was playing Pathfinder with a couple of guys and thought to myself, "You know what this needs? More explosions." CAN'T WAIT.

As a professional journalist and sometime game critic who has struggled to find an audience, to get my stuff out there and seen, I can understand the pressure. Lots of people work very hard to cover the gaming community — so many that it's easy to get drowned out in the clamor of digital voices all screaming headlines…

You could conceivably beat Skyrim's main quest line, maybe 1 or 2 or the other large quest lines and plenty of short side-quests in 50-60 hours. It's not that the game REQUIRES that much time — it's just really, really easy to get lost in the world Bethesda created for Skyrim.

Great response. I'd done something similar to myself with shooters and hack-n-slash dungeon crawlers. Then Skyrim came along and suddenly I was back in 1994, playing Ultima VII for the first and doing whatever I want in a game world that felt open and mysterious. Fantastic.

Have you played Dragonborn? Solstheim is pretty large. It might not be quite Shivering Isles big, but it's still really, really big.

That's almost exactly my experience except (and I freely admit I might be in the minority on this), new playthroughs seem to almost rekindle the magic for me. I'm working on my third, maybe fourth character. I try to make sure to do completely different quests, mostly stay away from crafting etc.

Skyrim is a…

I hope you skipped Morrowind, my friend. It's a piece of gaming history, a great game and an amazing achievement in it's own time, but is not for you, good sir. It's a whole Skyrim-sized, "rude mushroom" kingdom.

This.

Sorry in advance to some of the Skyrim detractors; you all have some good points — points I've made myself before — but there's never been a prettier sandbox. Better? Arguably. Bigger? Almost certainly. But none lately and none that captured the imagination of the gaming community quite like this. It's not quite a…