Platform: PC

In terms of overall game-play, Skyrim stays pretty close to the system Oblivion used. You roam a giant open-world map, revealing new locations to explore as go. Along the way you receive quests that you can complete at your own leisure. Therein lies the danger of this game: it is easy to get distracted and veer off from your goals and before you know it you’ve wasted twenty hours just trying to level up your blacksmithing or collect ingredients. I have already sunk 126 hours into this game, completing most of the main quests, and there’s still the urge to keep playing. I think I “only” managed to log about 95 hours in Oblivion.

But, this isn’t just a re-skinning of Oblivion. There have been many improvements not the least of which was removing the scaling-up the enemy difficulty as your character advanced. It’s good to actually feel more powerful as you gain more and more levels rather than having to fight uber-powerful rats throughout the entire game. In addition, the dual-wielding controls feel a bit more natural now but the game’s inventory system, although improved, was still clumsy enough to force me to install the SkyUI mod to fix it.

The graphical improvements are notable especially in terms of character animation. It’s not near the level of polish as some other recent games I’ve played like Tomb Raider, but it manages to be a pretty realistic world to explore with tons of details and vistas to discover.

I found the main quest line to be not terribly interesting. The world is on the verge of ending because of a reemergence  of ancient dragons. You must stop them, yadda yadda. At first I tried to immerse myself in the lore by reading every tome I discovered, but this got boring really quick. I suppose an Elder Scrolls lore obsessed player might think otherwise, but text info-dumps are just not a good way to reveal a fantasy universe in a video game. But, as my hours of playing will attest to, a riveting story is not the only way to keep players hooked. The exploration, the character building and loot collection are really what make this game so addicting and excellent.

The BioShock Infinite season pass DLC is a nice way to get a few extra hours out of the original game. The two Burial at Sea episodes a entertaining but not mind-blowing like the core game was. The return to Rapture is fun and the new emphasis on stealth changes things up enough to make this worth a play through.

The other section of the game is an arena combat mode with an emphasis on completing challenges. This sort of arcade-style game play is fun but I don’t think I will be finishing it to completion because there are just so many more story-driven gaming experiences out there to play. Ahem, Skyrim. See you in 120 hours…

I guess they are rebooting Tomb Raider again? I really liked the last two games in the series and I don’t really think this is a franchise that needed to get dark and gritty. But, there you go. These days, f-bombs and blood are what the kids want in their action platformers.

That said, Tomb Raider is a great game and the focus on Lara’s character development during the first quarter of the game is satisfying (despite the frightened heavy breathing and constant utterances of, “I can do this!” by Lara). Eventually the tone shifts to the more familiar bad guys wanting a relic story cliche. But unlike its predecessors, there is a much greater emphasis on combat over puzzle rooms. There are still some optional tombs to raid that feel like Tomb Raider of old, but for the most part you are exploring the map looking for collectibles and shooting mercenaries. And you know what, that’s okay by me. 

Well, I tried. Three times I have started playing System Shock 2 and each time I just get frustrated or bored and just give up. This game just has not aged all that well, especially when compared with its Bioshock successors. It’s from a time when first person shooter games were trying to branch out and evolve away from just non-stop shooting. I’m sure at the time that players loved the added story and inventory complexity, but it just feels bogged down and sluggish to my ADD sensibilities. Uninstalled!

I thought the original Call of Juarez was a better-than-average shooter that was bolstered by it being set in the Old West. I’m really surprised by the lack of western themed games given that for seventy-five odd years that was the go to “universe” for pulp stories and films.

Gunslinger isn’t a sequel. It does use some of the same mechanics and has one level that supposedly takes place in Juarez. Other than that, there is no connection to Billy and the Reverend from the first game. In fact, most of the story here takes place in the form of a frame story and narration in which the Gunslinger is telling tall tales of his adventures years after the fact. Although well acted, the plot is just a means of getting the player from one area to the next without any real character development. However, the story telling becomes a game play device as the narrator forgets facts and has to backtrack causing the game to reverse itself or slow down to clarify a detail.

Really this game is all about the shooting. There’s no stealth, no NPC dialogues. Just solid, fun and satisfying gun play. Even the dueling mini-game at the end of each level is a fun challenge as you try to manage your focus and hand position while waiting to draw. Adding to the fun is the the hint of Borderlands cell-shading style which complements the over-the-top Western Sukiyaki Django art direction and character design.

This was a free game on Steam on the day of the sequel’s release. I grabbed it without knowing anything about the game. Apparently, the distinguishing feature of Sniper Elite V2 is its over the top x-ray view gore simulation. Make a head shot and watch as the bullet shatters bones and eyeballs. This adds absolutely nothing to the game other than a novelty cool factor and it starts to get in the way when you are trying to make successive shots quickly. Fortunately, the act of just moving through the rather straightforward, story-free levels and sniping foes from a distance was satisfying enough to keep me going once the thrill of slow motion bone fragmentation wore off.

The fourth Blackwell game continues to make improvements over its predecessors in terms of technical polish. There is also a bit more depth to the puzzles and game play. This is still no where near the brutal difficulty of an old school point-and-click game, but it’s nice to have more options in terms of combining inventory items, switching characters and querying your in-game search engine to advance the game. As usual, the story and characters are the highlight here, and the broader character arcs are starting to come to a head. There is one more game left in the series and I am anxious dig in to it soon.

This and the previous Blackwell Unbound apparently were intended to be a single game with flashbacks and intertwined plot lines. Many of the same characters appear again and it’s nice to see a larger story arc developing. The quality of the game play and puzzles has improved with each game as has the voice acting and sound. In some respects the art has improved, but each game seems to be the work of a different artist(s) and there are details that I miss.

Another day, another Blackwell game completed. These are solid point-and-click adventure games. The puzzles aren’t too hard and the stories are good. This one is a little less slick graphically than the first, but the soundtrack and mood are much more appropriate to the ghostly noir theme. On to the next…

The first four Blackwell games went on sale on Steam this week for around 50¢ each. These games have been on my radar ever since I saw this Mattchat interview with Wadjet Eye company founder Dave Gilbert. Basically, he was a hobbyist using the Adventure Game Studio to create Lucasarts style point-and-click adventures. He decided to make a go at transforming his hobby into a business and some dozen or so games later the company has survived.

The Blackwell Legacy is the first in a series of five games that have the player acting as a spiritual medium who, with the help of her deceased sidekick Joey, seeks to guide tormented ghosts into the afterlife. It’s kinda like a noir version of The Frighteners. The theme lends itself very well to episodic storytelling. Every game features a new mystery and there are larger main character story arcs to be explored across the whole series.

The game itself is not too puzzle driven. I was stumped a couple of times, but it was mostly because I didn’t fully grasp the note taking inventory mechanic. For the most part you are simply clicking through dialogue and revisiting characters as more information becomes available. I enjoyed the leisurely pace and was quite impressed with the characters and plot. It’s a short game which can be finished in one or two sittings, but it felt just about right in length to me.

Of course, this being a first outing by a new game developer, there are a few rough edges. The voice overs are a nice addition, but the acting is spotty and the sound design (by the developer’s own admission) is lacking. You gotta rock the mic with the pantyhose!

The art, however, is stunning. I love the painterly style rendered with a limited color palette. It’s not trying to be cute like most pixel-art games do these days, it’s trying to be the best possible hand-drawn art within the lo-res constraints of the authoring environment.

I’m glad I bought this package and will probably be paying full-price for future Wadjet Eye games when they come out. Can’t wait to get on to the next Blackwell adventure.