X-Box One - The Console Equivalent of Windows 8?

As the tiny handful of people who read this blog are aware, I am not a console gamer. The only gaming consoles I've ever owned were all Nintendo consoles, so naturally I wasn't particularly excited about the announcement of Microsoft's latest incarnation of the X-Box...until I realised what a cock-up the thing was.

Right away, Microsoft shot themselves in the foot by spending 30 minutes of the X-Box One reveal speaking about Kinect and TV rather than talking about, you know, actual games. Already they've created the impression that this isn't a gaming console, but rather a set-top box for TV that happens to play games.

And the games themselves? Endless sequels...Call of Duty, Halo, Assassins Creed, Battlefield, endless EA Sports titles...aren't you tired of this already? And when you're first rep on stage is someone from EA, who are probably the most hated company in the industry, that doesn't exactly make a good first impression.

Really, I have to ask: are people willing to pay hundreds of dollars for a console just to play prettier versions of the same tired genres as before? When it comes to the systems's drawbacks, you can mention how the X-Box One charges you a fee to play used games, or how it's always not backwards compatible, or how it's required to connect to the internet every 24 hours, but the one thing that will damn system will be the games. You'd think the industry would have realised from the sliding software sales that maybe, just maybe, gamers were tired of playing endless rehashes of CoD or Halo.

I hope this system bombs hard, because it's the shock the industry needs to realise how badly they've buggered things up.

Dragon Age II Is A Horrible Game, And You Are A Horrible Person For Liking It

The late, great Roger Ebert, reviewing the legendarily-bad film Battlefield Earth, remarked "I watched it in mounting gloom, realizing I was witnessing something historic, a film that for decades to come will be the punch line of jokes about bad movies." Well my friends, Dragon Age II, along with its partner in crime Mass Effect 3, is the Battlefield Earth of RPGs.

Great Games That Actually Suck: Dragon Age: Origins

I'd like to begin this review by saying that the title is rather inaccurate; I would not say that BioWare's RPG Dragon Age: Origins "sucks," but I'm afraid that "Great Games That Aren't Quite As Good As People Say They Are" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

How To Enhance Your Edition of Baldur's Gate

After the release of the latest patch for Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition (version 2014) I finally shelved it. The most recent patch ended up introducing several more bugs, so until that game finally gets all the issues ironed out, I went back to my GOG.com copies of Baldur's Gate 1 & 2. In all honesty, I've come to conclusion that BG:EE isn't really worth the $20 admission cost. Baldur's Gate is a very long game with a massive amount of content to experience, so do we really need yet more content? Because three new characters, a handful of new areas, and an arena mode are the only features that BG:EE adds that cannot be found through mods (which, I might add, are completely free).

So here is my own personal list of modifications that I use for Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, and the order in which I install them:

Great Games That Actually Suck: Fallout 3

And now we come to the very nadir of my "Great Games That Actually Suck" series - Fallout 3. Now, don't misunderstand me - Fallout 3 is far from deserving the title of "Worst Game Ever;" instead, it's simply mediocre. But in a way, that makes it all the worse, especially considering that Fallout 1 & 2 are considered some of the greatest RPGs ever developed. Had Fallout 3 been a true stinker, we might have laughed at it as we would an Uwe Boll film and thought no more of it. Instead, it's practically offensive with its mediocrity, like following up a masterfully-prepared filet mignon with stale bread.

Great Games That Actually Suck: The Elder Scrolls V - Skyrim

As a child of the 80s, I was a pretty Nintendo-obsessed kid. The NES was the greatest gift anyone could ever bestow upon the world, and every game made for that console was beyond reproach. Nintendo could do no wrong in my eyes, and I considered every NES game released to be a masterpiece, regardless of whether or not it was actually developed by Nintendo.

That is, until my parents brought me a game they had purchased at a garage sale - Where's Waldo?

Great Games That Actually Suck: Mass Effect 2

The first Mass Effect was a game that was somehow enjoyable in spite of itself. Looking at its individual parts in isolation, it wasn't a very good game at all - the combat was generally dull, lifeless, and lacking in intensity, the weapons were bland and generic, differing only in some numerical statistic, planetary exploration was often tedious, and the game's dialogue system seemed intent on offering up paraphrases that bore no resemblance to what your character would actually say. Yet in spite of these flaws, Mass Effect created a compelling, believable universe that harkened back to the Golden Age of Science Fiction and seemed to offer huge array of possibilities for future installments. But alas, it wasn't to be. If the first game was a flawed attempt at making a Space Opera RPG, then its sequel is a half-hearted attempt at making a very generic sci-fi shooter.

Great Games That Actually Suck: The Witcher 2

I can't recall a game that received more hype than The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. No, not from the sycophantic gaming press (who will gush over anything, provided there's advertising revenue at stake), but from the fans, who will simply not shut up about its "brilliant" storytelling and the "mature" attitude the game takes towards the player. Hearing all the near-unanimous praise, I purchased The Witcher 2 for the same reason many did, I think - as an alternative to the wretchedly awful Dragon Age 2.

"I wanna be a durrrrgon..."

Video Games Are Not Art

"It's not porn, it's art!"

So goes the excuse for a film director to fill up his movie with nudity and sex. I wonder, then, how many egotistical game developers will scoff at the idea of producing a mere "game" and instead proclaim that their work is high art on par with Paradise Lost.

Dragon Age III: Inquisition - What To Expect

So BioWare is hard at work on the third Dragon Age III, and I have to ask, does anyone aside from die-hard BioWare fanatics actually think this game is going to be good? BioWare's track record of games developed under EA ownership has been a string of dismal failures: Dragon Age II, Mass Effect 3, Star Wars: The Old Republic, so I don't think I'm being overly pessimistic when I say that the odds are against Dragon Age III being a success by any measure.

Skyrim Mods - A Breakdown

I think this sums it up pretty well:

A Gaming Parable

Imagine you're feeling bored one day, and so you decide to head down to your local movie theatre to waste an hour or two. You want to see a good comedy or horror film, which shouldn't prove too difficult because there's always been a steady supply of those.

Or so you think.

Baldur's Gate: Enchanced Edition Review

The 2000's were a dismal time for PC gaming. The focus of developers and publishers had shifted firmly towards the console market, and it seemed like no genre had it worse than that of the CRPG. We went from the heights of Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment, and Fallout to the depths of mediocrity, where the prevailing attitude among developers was that shooters and action/adventure titles were the only thing worth making, and that RPGs that actually played like RPGs were outdated and archaic. You had the occasional flawed gem such as Dragon Age: Origins, but for the most part it was a time when the best you could hope for was something like Oblivion, a game so lacking in quality that the fans' rallying cry was, "The modders will fix it!"