I’ve had the 4X game Endless Space sitting in my Steam library for a long time; one of many games I bought for a song during some sale or other and then forgot about as soon as the impulse passed. I tried it out this week, and so far I’m digging it. The setting has character, the tech tree is fun to explore, and the…

I’m still glad that I listened to the youtuber SuperBunnyhop’s advice to not let myself get bogged down in any of the extras tacked on to the game. Sure, the codex entries are actually pretty well-written and build a neat mythology, and sure, the buffs from completing arbitrary challenges can be nice, but the bottom…

This week I finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I liked the way the final stage changed things up by introducing crowds of people affected by a computer virus, mostly because I had enough gas grenades stored up from the previous chapter to neutralize most of the infected whenever a clump of them blocked my…

First of all: welcome!

That was an excellent write-up. Limiting oneself to just five titles per section seems like a difficult exercise; even a sprawling honorable-mention section still has to leave out many titles - and even entire genres - for the sake of focus and brevity. I could add the “RTS games aren’t dead; they just evolved into…

I’m well into the second act of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I appreciate how its escalation is done both narratively and mechanically: For the first time, a mission was interrupted and my dropship was shot down en route. A city hub was reused, but this time with security checkpoints manned by armed guards. It both…

My trusty old laptop was dying, so back on Boxing Day I dropped a bunch of money on a brand new one. The first thing I’ve done with it is finally try a game which my old rig couldn’t quite handle. So far I’m finding Deus Ex: Human Revolution to be utterly charming. I like it when game mechanics are written into the…

Over the holiday break, I was able to have the first big multiplayer Magic bash in a while. It was nice that everyone had the free time to get together to shuffle up some decks and play some games, but I am disappointed in how my playgroup has shifted to focusing 100% of their attention on the Commander format. It’s…

That’s an excellent synopsis of the brief period where 2D Brawlers were in vogue, along with a valid reasoning for their obsolescence and decline. But I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the last renaissance of the genre, where they cribbed from Diablo:

Brutal Legend was one of the most charming games I’ve ever played, from the live-action intro (which takes us into the Forbidden Metal section of a record shop) all the way to the Sea Of Black Tears at the end. Every single creature design and every single environment was stylized and freakin’ cool: it’s a game which…

There are two particular moments that best sum up the Doom campaign I played this fall: the Cyberdemon boss fight at the end of Map06, and the Arch-Vile maze that constituted the entirety of Map11. For Map11, the first time around I was doing my Continuous playthrough and had brought in a full backpack’s worth of ammo…

I’m a little surprised to hear that assessment: my memories of my level 30 ranger/sniper character are of how obnoxiously overpowered the Broken Steel monsters were: how I could dump clip after clip after clip of ammo into them and barely scratch them at all. At the beginning of the game, I could just casually stroll…

Desert Bus For Hope started its 13th annual charity marathon today. The entertainers of the LoadingReadyRun comedy troupe will be working in shifts to perform for the next ~120 hours in order to raise money for the Child’s Play charity. And this year’s intro promises shenanigans in a very appropriate way:

A friend and I started a new world in Terraria this week. This world’s gimmick is that, after making a shared starting base at the spawn point in the center of the map, we split the world down the middle and set off in opposite directions to settle this land. I get the left half, he gets the right half. Luck ended up…

But, SAM, the Goose is from an inherently gentle game. Even the good-natured whimsy of a Mario game contains plenty of moments where your avatar is doing battle against foes that seek to stop your progress, and vanquishing them. But UGG is such a nonviolent setting that imagining the Goose pecking someone so hard that…

Back on my Magic: the Gathering bullshit again. The first time I finished a set of five decks for the purpose of a Mafialike “hidden agenda” game, it was back in Ixalan block, depicting a collection of treacherous pirate captains in a fragile alliance. But what I’d really wanted was to do it as five feuding noble…

That’s an excellent counterpoint. Sure, JRPGs have gone the way of the dinosaur (I adore them but I’m not going to deny that the way they work is just a vestigial niche interest now), but when it comes to the classics of the system, I don’t see how any of them could come across as dull.

I’d just like to comment that I’ve enjoyed seeing the saga of your Pandemic Legacy game play itself out; your writing told tales of the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, and the uncertainty of wondering what curveball would be thrown your way next, and all without spoiling anything that actually happens in the…

If ever we’re going to just end Kinja. This is the place to do it.

Yeah, he’d be better off showing you all the tutorial videos (I assume) he’s been watching while he prepares, rather than his gameplay out of context. The game also, of course, has a comprehensive wiki with which one can educate themselves, but that requires getting over the initial hump of being able to parse its…