A great RPG is one where choices actually matter, but The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings takes that to an entirely new level. Instead of merely swapping out a few dialogue lines and enemies, certain decisions affect the outcome of your entire story, thus leading you into vastly different settings and confrontations. More than that,…
Gone are the days when saying you played an MMORPG meant you either played World of Warcraft or EverQuest; these days, the field is crowded with worthy rivals like Guild Wars 2, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, and a surfeit of free-to-play MMORPGs that run the gamut from garbage to gold. And the field’s…
Dig far enough under all the news about the tussles over mandatory Kinects and indie support for either the Xbox One and the PS4, and you’ll find a shocking bit of info: PC gaming is at its best since the 1990s. Were it John Lennon, PC gaming would be making haughty claims about how it’s…
EverQuest Next may have dazzled us with promises of a destructible fantasy world and parkour-trained heroes during the MMORPG’s recent unveiling, but once you ventured beyond the carefully prepared videos and statements, you ran into a near-unassailable wall of evasive answers. Key features such as PvP and group-based combat remain cloaked in secrecy, as does…
On the screen, a lumbering Kerran warrior slashed his way through foes in a whirlwind of blades, while by his side, a mage teleported a few yards forward to keep up with him. So far, I thought, so familiar. Impressive though the models were, their flashy variations on familiar MMO attacks left me ready to…
Final? Square Enix doesn’t know the meaning of the word. That’s apparent enough from the avalanche of Final Fantasy games we’ve seen since 1987, but it’s especially true of its approach to its last MMORPG. By all accounts–including Square Enix’s–2010’s Final Fantasy XIV was an abomination, a shameful excuse for an MMORPG that couldn’t even…
After I finished the new temporary dungeon content that concludes Guild Wars 2’s “Flame & Frost” story arc, I had an unfamiliar feeling. I wanted to do it again. Mind you, I haven’t felt this way after finishing a Guild Wars 2 dungeon in months. I’d become so accustomed to Guild Wars 2’s numbing practice…
My, what a different 100 years make. I don’t think anyone could call the modern world a shining beacon of perfection, but BioShock Infinite wastes no time in demonstrating how much ideas about racism, religion, and patriotism have advanced with all the subtlety of swatting flies with a baseball bat. Columbia, the sprawling city in…
When Chicago’s Meigs Field was destroyed in the middle of the night by King Daley in March of 2003, there were a surprising amount of protesters from around the country who condemned the incident—not because they had personally used the tiny downtown airstrip for travel, but because they had fond memories of beginning every version…
Leif Johnson 