Well, Electronic Arts has announced that it’s no longer going to pay to licence guns and accessories from manufacturers. Gun control advocates cheered, and most gamers didn’t care. All in all, it wasn’t so much a careful step or public relations coup so much as it was a brief pause in a seemingly endless parade of stupidity. 
For those not in the know, EA licensed weapons from real-life manufacturers for use in Medal of Honor: Warfighter and other games. Now, aside from the ongoing debate in the US over gun rights, why does this matter? Well, for one thing, it’s the reason your games are expensive. Continue reading
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Closing Ranks: Why We Need to Be Like BSN
It’s a well-known fact that publishers and developers have a simple if effective manner of dealing with discontent with their player bases: if they don’t say anything, eventually the ire will ebb away. Players will be distracted by other releases, placated by out-and-out bribes, or simply calm down and just be bitter. It’s not that these publishers and studio’s don’t deserve to be forgiven for things like Aliens: Colonial Marines, Diablo III and Duke Nukem Forever- they need to do things to earn that forgiveness, forever. If they don’t, players need to remember the actions of studios when making their next purchase.
So what does any of this have to do with one of the strangest, loudest communities in gaming?
Sins Darker Than Death or Night: Bioshock Infinite
Bioshock Infinite is a game that plays with your expectations. Bad is good, up is down, and no one is quite what they appear. The game does a masterful job of it, as well.
Like the previous article Bioshock Infinite article, I’m going to have to insist that people who haven’t completed the game not read past the jump. Trust me, you’ll thank me in the end.
Bachelor Chow: Ramen Done Right
Everyone’s done it. You’ve got two hours between work and school in which to get some food, play the game you crawled out of bed at 0700 to get from EB on launch day, shower, and put some caffeine into your body. You haven’t eaten much minus that questionable urban food log at ten in the morning, and you’ve got to prioritize. Alright, ten minutes for the shower, five minutes to eat (while cutscenes play, of course), and five minutes of food preparation. Your eating options are kind of limited if you want to maximize your game time; so you reach for that half-quid package of instant noodles.
I hate to break it to everyone, but like most things in life, there’s a right and a wrong way to do those noodles, and odds are you’ve been doing it wrong.
Review: BioShock Infinite
At first, I’ll be honest…I didn’t love BioShock Infinite the way I did its predecessors.
In fact, I kind of disliked it. It didn’t feel like a Shock game. The palette was too bright, the characters all human and in good cheer. Yeah, sure, the soundtrack in just the first ten minutes was incredible, and the visuals great, but I wasn’t…terrified. I wasn’t sprinting wild-eyed as an unknown person screamed at me, or trying to lay low in a bathysphere while a maniac tried to claw her way in. Where was the heart-pounding terror? After the first ten minutes, there wasn’t even anything super, overtly sinister happening! It took a little while for it to catch with me, but when it did…it all sort of made sense. Be warned, there are minor spoilers in this review.
Review: Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm
I didn’t love Starcraft II for the gameplay. I didn’t love it for nostalgia; hell, the first game’s multiplayer basically turned me off all multiplayer for years, until Warcraft III, which did the same thing. I didn’t love Starcraft II for the mechanics, the design. I loved it for the story and the flavor. It was one of my favourite games of the year, and it remains one of my absolute favourite gaming experiences. And, for those worried about spoilers…this review is completely free of them, even for Starcraft II.
Friday Night Magic Prep: Avacyn Humans
Standard is slowly starting to stabilize in favor of a few major archetypes, at long last. Naya and Jund seem to be the top competitors, with oddball control decks rounding out most top eights. It’s creature heavy, aggressive decks I’ve seen in play. It’s all ramp and throw down- it’s fun as hell, but I tend to want to play something out of the norm if possible, and there’s a few cards from the Innistrad block I feel were basically looked over. My prototypes for green/white humans wasn’t bad, but couldn’t keep up once Ravnica dropped. The control was simply too heavy, and options to protect my creatures simply too few. There’s a lot of very robust removal out there, including the highly-underrated Death’s Approach. But there’s a card that’s called out to me since Avacyn:
Mass Effect 3: Citadel DLC Review
I love Mass Effect. Let me make that clear- the original was a wondrous sanctuary where I got away from a hard time in my life. The second was a dark adventure that consumed every free moment of time I had through my first year of college. I hold the series to an extremely high standard, because it’s proved that it can be held, judged, and deal with the criticism. I was excited (and more than a little nervous) about the announcement of the Citadel DLC. Leviathan had proved to be an exercise in attempting to justify the ending; I was understandably a little gun-shy. I’ve tried to make this review as absolutely spoiler free as possible- mostly because there are so many surprises in the DLC that I don’t want to give away.
Minimum System Requirements: Games for the Utility Laptop
Due to the downturn in the economy and various other factors, I’ve found myself going back to school. This has, of course, led to me being away from my precious desktop: a glowing, mighty beast that looks like a stealth bomber and may have achieved sentience. As a consequence of returning to school, I’ve felt a need to get a laptop to record lectures, to keep up with notes, etc. It is, however, a dumpy little business model. I bought it for 120$ from a questionable electronics store, and it chugs along steadily. However, it just barely chugs along with Powerpoint and Skype on at the same time. With 2.20 Ghz, 2GB of RAM, and 80 gigs of space, I have to seriously question its capacity to be a gaming platform. Nonetheless, I did find a few golden old games which have made that three-hour stretch in the middle of the day bearable.
MTG: Gatecrash and Cipher
I have had a terrible vision of the future of Standard…a vision of total, absolute control. Cipher has seen virtually no tournament play, not because it’s a bad ability. Simply put, no one has broken it yet. Most of the cards are dreadfully overcosted, but once in play the results will speak for themselves. The logical starting point is, of course, using the opponent’s strengths against them.
