Preview: Blood Bowl II (PC)

There is nothing at all whimsical about Games Workshop's Warhammer setting.  Humor, if it exists, is bitter and fleeting.  Blood, thunder, and death are the three great constants which every being lives under every day.  Entertainment must be cheap to obtain and easy to consume.

Fortunately, there is one thing that makes all the pain and suffering worth it: watching other people experience it on the playing fields of the Blood Bowl League.  For all the senseless violence and constant warfare between Humans and Elves, Orcs and Dwarves, Chaos and Order, it's nice to know that some purpose can be found in two teams lining up to throw around a spiky ball and beating the living hell out of each other for points.

Preview: Mordheim: City of the Damned (PC)

When most people think of Warhammer, they think of the massive armies, the giant tables, and the punishing costs to their wallets in terms of figures and paint.  But Games Workshop has explored other avenues for their grim fantasy setting in the past, and one of them has been a cult classic: Mordheim.  Instead of grand strategy, it's more tactical, more intimate, and combined with role-playing game elements incredibly more personal.  Rogue Factor has taken this little known game and translated it to the PC, and it looks phenomenal.

Review: The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (360)

Movie-tie in games should almost be treated as a separate entity since the quality level on them seems to naturally start off with a handicap. For every Goldeneye, we get an ET… with many more movie tie-in games being destined for the garbage dump than any Hall of Fame.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is no Goldeneye, and mercifully not an ET either.

Preview: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

I want to know precisely what sort of raw meat the developers at CD Projekt RED are being fed on a daily basis, because whatever it is, it's giving them some absolutely fantastic powers which are being used to create what looks to be the must-have action RPG for next year.  I didn't think it was possible, but this thing looks better now that it did a year ago on what was disclaimed as an alpha stage project.  For the press demo at E3 2014, CD Projekt RED took us through a new adventure, likely part of the main quest line.

Review: How to Train your Dragon 2 (Xbox 360)

We all know that licensed movie games tend to be bad on our gaming systems, and yet somebody keeps buying them (otherwise, somebody would stop making them). Sadly, nothing has changed this time as How to Train your Dragon 2 has come out on multiple platforms to coincide with the release of the movie.

Over the years, publishers have reduced costs over the years by eliminating printed manuals and including training missions or modes in games at the beginning to get players used to the controls. This game is no different, although because the word "training" is in the title I'm afraid the entire game feels like a training mission.

Review: Soul Sacrifice Delta (PS Vita)

Soul Sacrifice Delta isn't quite a sequel, yet it still feels like a fresh game. It improves upon many aspects that people disliked about the previous game, and adds a bevy of new content on top of it to encourage us to take another look through Librom's pages.

A major gripe with the first soul sacrifice was that of the difficulty curve. Delta mixes this up by rebalancing a lot of the offerings, as well as the damage and HP of earlier monsters. Going back to early quests makes you feel sufficiently powerful, while the late game pacts are incredibly challenging in some instances. Your most powerful offerings can also be upgraded into Black offerings, giving increased potency at the cost of fewer casts. This may not always be worth the trade-off, but some spells become more powerful than they ever were before.

Review: Dark Souls II (360)

Dark Souls came along and the gaming universe declared it, "Good."

As a gamer that has too many games on the go at any moment, I couldn't find time in my schedule to tackle a game that would politely be described as bloody hard. While I am familiar with the original from hearsay, I didn't play any of it. From the time that I've put into Dark Souls II, I can wholeheartedly agree with the assessment of the previous game: Dark Souls II is infuriatingly hard.

Most games will have their difficulty established by asking the gamer to accomplish a nearly flawless series of commands, or use a weak control structure to unfairly limit the gamer against an unencumbered opponent. Dark Souls II does neither, it gives you the tools to succeed right from the beginning, but does so little hand-holding that you are thrown into the deep end and expected to swim. With such a brutal difficulty curve, I found the praise to be a little surprising.