When rebooting a franchise, you have to take into careful consideration what made that franchise so well-liked to begin with. When rebooting a franchise with a different developer at the helm, your chances of appealing to hardcore fans of the previous games has been reduced exponentially. Despite the outcries those fans, DmC: Devil May Cry manages to capture everything that was great about the original games, while carving out an identity that’s all its own. READ MORE
I feel like I need to apologize. I wanted to enjoy Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt. I love the Borderlands 2 base game, I liked Captain Scarlett and the Badass Crater of Badassitude as narrated by Mr. Torgue might be my favorite piece of DLC released all of last year. Coming off of that high, Hammerlock had a lot to live up to, and he just couldn’t do it. READ MORE
2012 was a surprisingly good year for stealth games. What surprised me even more is that I like all of them. Stealth isn’t typically a genre that I like, but Dishonored, Mark of the Ninja and Stealth Bastard have got me reconsidering my genre preferences. Stealth Bastard stands out from the other two, though, for being primarily a puzzle game instead of an action game. It’s a nice change of pace, the challenge is high, and it feels unique in a crowded year for the genre. READ MORE
With few exceptions, you don’t often see good stealth games these days. By that, I mean games that focus almost exclusively on the act of being as sneaky as possible; not games with shoehorned stealth levels or a mix of stealth and action as a focus. The Hitman franchise has always remained consistent in its approach to the genre, and after a six-year absence, Agent 47 is back again. Hitman: Absolution is a game that simultaneously attempts to update the gameplay style, while also returning to certain mechanics from older titles in the series.
While certain changes are more welcome than others, this feels like a true return of one of gaming’s premiere stealth franchises. READ MORE
For western RPG fans, Baldur’s Gate was one of the greatest games of the ’90s. While certainly not the first adaptation of Dungeons and Dragons into a video game, it is most definitely the best at the time of its release, and began a long series of Forgotten Realms-based PC RPGs, introducing many people to D&D at the same time. READ MORE
