Review: The Walking Dead - Season 2 (PC)

This review takes a look at The Walking Dead: Season 2, Episodes 3 - 5.

There are few things I'll give developer Telltale credit for and one of them is owning up to the fact The Walking Dead series is merely a Choose Your Own Adventure (or possibly more accurately, "gamebook" or "interactive story") rather than an adventure game, where players might have to solve a puzzle or two along the way. You know, combine items, use game logic to figure things out... there's really none of that, even in comparison to first season of The Walking Dead.

Interview: Jane Jensen (Gabriel Knight 20th Anniversary Edition)

I suppose the first question is, why now. Why now for a remastered version of Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers (besides the 20th Anniversary aspect)?
It was really just a series of fortunate events. I first started talking to Activision about doing something with them around the time of our Pinkerton Road Kickstarter in 2012. There were some managers there who wanted to see the old Sierra franchises brought back (those same people were behind the new Sierra brand I expect). The idea of doing a 20th anniversary edition of GK1 came up. (We were all shocked to realize it had been 20 years.) The chance to be able to redo the game that established me as a designer as one of our first Pinkerton Road titles was too good to pass up.

Hardware Review: HyperX Cloud Gaming Headset

There's something to be said for the simple approach and it's often that same approach that's often eschewed in favour of extra doo-dads and poppler-danglers.

Kingston's HyperX Cloud gaming headset takes the simple approach and still offers some great sound and recording capabilities. Though it's somewhat over-packaged, you'll spend more time removing the outer box then opening the heavy interior box than it takes to get the HyperX Cloud working. Plug in the headphone jack (and mic if you need to record something or communicate a multiplayer games) and it works.

For this review, I used the HyperX Cloud with my laptop.

Taking a Peak at Malevolence: The Sword of Ahkranox (PC)

Villagers!

The very first computer RPG that I ever played was Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. My dad and I would take our party into the maze and map our way around there while fighting all sorts of monsters and hoping we didn't accidentally step onto a teleporter. Good times were had, and the game imbued me at an early age with a taste for role-playing games presented from a first person perspective. From there, I went on to search out other such games like this, eventually absorbing myself in the likes of The Bard's Tale, Might and Magic, and Eye of the Beholder. So, when I found out about Malevolence: The Sword of Ahkranox, an RPG of similar ilk currently in development, I knew that I had to check it out.

Review: EA Sports UFC (PS4)

It seems like every time a console cycle starts, there's always a title or two that shows off the graphical powerhouse of the next gen consoles.

On the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 it was Fight Night; for PlayStation 4 it is UFC. It just happens to be a "coincidence" that both Fight Night and UFC are published by Electronic Arts.

UFC is a drop dead gorgeous game. Little details like sweat, muscle and tattoos look photorealistic. Even the instant replays show off the games graphical prowess. Seeing every muscle react to an opponent being punched in slow motion shows what these next generation (now, current gen) consoles are capable of.

Review: Divinity: Original Sin (PC)

Over the last decade, there's been a shift in a lot of RPGs toward more stripped down, cinematic affairs. A lot of the meat and potatoes of the genre were removed in favor of a more streamlined experience. Some folks really warmed up to this. Others did not, though, instead longing for days of old when we had huge, open worlds to explore a la Ultima, or complex tactical combat like Baldur's Gate. This is where the deluge of Kickstarter projects swept in with games that would hark back to those days. One such title promising these experiences was Divinity: Original Sin, and now that it's out it has very handily delivered with a huge world to explore, interesting characters to meet, satisfying combat, and it looks pretty darn good to boot.

Subscriptions for Everyone!

Recently, Electronic Arts has begun rolling out its EA Access program where, for a monthly fee, people will be able to play a bunch of their games, both new and old. The service is extremely limited at the moment, only being on the Xbox One after Sony turned it down, but it is making waves as some folks fear that, should it take off, the program could set a nasty precedent whereby other major publishers feel emboldened to erect their own little walled gardens for their IPs as well. Where once it was just a matter of going to a shop, or online digital distributor to get a game, suddenly things could become a lot more complicated, as people have to register multiple accounts with different services while being nickle and dimed on multiple subscriptions to play the games that they're interested in.