Act I (Normal Difficulty) Diablo III Hardcore Mode is Boring

Rarely does the health go low, so rarely is it exciting. But this isn't quite why it's boring. Or at least, I'm pretending it isn't; knowing you can perma-die from any lack of attention should make it all fun, right?

WRONG!!!! You and the enemy have so few abilities in Act I Normal, Boring Difficulty that thinking up the best strategy takes maybe up to a minute of the four-hour experience. I say four-hour assuming that you're running through it fast, 'cause you wanted that well-paced experience, changing the scenes quickly, not seeing the same things too often.' And I'm saying that not even in Hardcore mode, with the prospect of being under-leveled for a boss fight in perma-death land, does the faster pace make it fun; it just makes the pain go by faster, which is not fast enough.

Seriously, Blizzard. Normal Difficulty in Act I is one of the most boring things ever. Please fix.

(Well, to be fair, it's not bad playing it in coop. The monsters are stronger, and you can chat with your friends. And yes, I just now lied about it not being bad; the un-pausable random death lag makes any Hardcore Mode multiplayer stupid.

Or maybe it doesn't, for I have this new idea, which I'll explore and then detail right under this paragraph; it's called "Exiting to the desktop when the lag gets atrocious." If there is no 'you-cannot-do-anything-for-the-next-ten-seconds-so-hope-the-monsters-play-nice countdown, while you try to quit amidst a multiplayer battle, then it's not so bad.)

(Update: Yes, you can immediately exit the game)

Is It Bad if You Can't Tell What's Happening On-Screen?

Yatzhee "Ben" Croshaw has reviewed Diablo III, and one of his interesting criticisms (interesting because he's the only one who's made this particular one) is that the game has bad clusterfucks. By bad "clusterfucks" he means that the screen often gets so full of spells and monsters and shit that the player can't comprehend what exactly's going on. And by that definition I mean that I actually don't know what he means. He's used clusterfuck as a criticism in at least two reviews, and against the earlier game it makes sense, but against Diablo not so much.

The earlier game is Super Smash Bros. Brawl. There are so many particle effects on screen that you can't always know where your character is, and this is bad because not knowing where your character is tends to lead to death (in the game).

In Diablo III you always know where your character is. You always know because your character is at the center of the screen. So he's not complaining about this. (Although Diablo III does have the stupid fear spell, which takes away your control of your character, which is as bad as not knowing where your character is).

Perhaps what the Yatzhee means is it is hard to keep track of the enemies. There are so many things moving quickly onscreen that the player experiences information overload.

But...maybe it's not that. Because you can turn enemy health bars on, which makes tracking them easy.

MAYBE he means that it's hard to keep track of powerful monsters when they're surrounded by weaker ones. Yes. This must be it. And although the game wraps a colorful shroud around the powerful monsters, it is true that--the game wraps a colorful shroud around the powerful monsters....

OKAY! I think I got it! What he means is, so much is happening on screen, that it's difficult to tell exactly what is where and which of them you need to do whatever to. This is true.

But I kind of like that. It gives the non-hardcore mode a sense of chaos, and the hardcore mode a sense of "play cautious or die." IF this is the clusterfuck he's not liking, then I'd like to tell him, "This is actually a fun thing." Although I won't because I'm not a stupid, boring loser.

Or maybe I am because I'm reviewing a reviewers review.

What I've learned from this is that, when I criticize something, I need to make sure my audience understands why I don't like something.

Did Not Play Enough Diablo III

I have lowered my Diablo III review score to a 7/10. Find out why at the end of the review.

The lowering resulted from playing the game more. And what this teaches me is: I need to play as many of a game's features as I can before considering it reviewable.

Also related to this post, I will continue playing Diablo III. I want to know what it's like to lose a hardcore character.

Existential Diabloing Part 1

This is the first in a twenty-three part series.

I play Diablo III regular mode by myself.

I'm about to defeat the final boss again. This time in Nightmare.

It takes me awhile to inspect the items in the auction house. Sometimes I buy something.

I like to sell my old things.

I killed 27,071 monsters.

My friends are online. I want to play with them. But their characters are too many levels higher and lower than mine.

Act III's boss was easy this time.

I think Tyreal's kind of cool. Overall the character's are nothing special.

It's a sunny day. It's also Memorial Day. Maybe I should go outside.

I just got back from a run. We have to go to a restaurant soon. I'm not sure why, but all I want to do is write and play Diablo.

Wrath of the Lamb comes out today. I'm excited about it. That's true.

Just played a bit of Wrath of the Lamb. I died.

Told my friend Dale I got Wrath of the Lamb. I don't think he's interested in it.

Overall I like Blizzard games. Blizzard made Diablo III, not Wrath of the Lamb.

Maybe I should play Hardcore mode now.

Well, maybe it's better to get my regular character to Inferno difficulty, so I can play that with my friends who are already there.

I saw The Avengers move last night. It was good.

Is my Wizard like a super hero? Yeah.

Sometimes I wonder if having a girlfriend would be good. You know, overall? For her. For me. It wouldn't though. I still think about it.

I wonder if Diablo III is actually fun to play with friends. Well, it is if we talk.

What Must a Review Do?

A review must tell what the game is and what makes the game good and bad. It should begin with a hook and end with final conclusions.

POST FINISHED!

Okay a little more.

As to making the review readable -- making it well-paced and whatnot -- that's going to come down to writer skill. I'll need to continue reading great reviews and writing them.

It almost hurts not playing new games right now. I can't review nothing! Well, actually I can review nothing; in fact, that's what a lot of games are...

FINE! Tomorrow I begin playing Vanquish.

Diablo III Review Amendment

I wrote something confusing in my Diablo III review. I wrote that the non-hardcore mode was best as a coop game but would end up being mostly a singleplayer game. And that, though true for many, feels a bit misleading. It sounds like I was saying "singleplayer non-hardcore mode is definitely worth your time." Thus I must clear it up:

Non-hardcore mode is enjoyable as a coop game. Quite enjoyable when you play it with friends over Skype. As a solo game, at it's best it is stimulating.

Which is why, to you singleplayer Diabloers, I say: do yourself a favor and play ONLY HARDCORE MODE for your ANTI-SOCIAL DIABLO PLAY.

Because if you don't then all you'll be doing is stimulating yourself (OR trying to make a level 60, non-hardcore character that can play Inferno difficulty with your level 60 friends, whom you couldn't level up alongside because of conflicting schedules....Yeh, that's why I'm playing it).

The Dastardly Diablo Expansion Plan

Oh Blizzard. You like money.

In our review of Diablo 3, we (in the form of Paul) concluded that the only suck things in Diablo III were the first nine-ish hours of its non-hardcore mode and the random death-lag. In tonight's article I want to do more than summarize our two-page review into a sentence. I want to highlight how Blizzard wants you to suffer -- invest your life -- into your non-hardcore character(s), in order to make you buy their expansions.

"What?" You say.
"Yes!" I say. They want you to suffer those many first hours, so you will feel like you sacrificed for your character(s). A sacrifice of your time in the form of boredom. Work. The payment for which is a grown up character finally ready to start the actual game (which, in non-hardcore mode, begins on Nightmare Difficulty).

With this feeling of investment (compounded by the drug-like loot gathering) your character feels somewhat like your child. And thus, you must spend more time with it, when the expansions come out.

Don't Read This

Reviews! How review-focused they are! With their obsession with discussing the good and bad and features of games, instead of effective writing. Why can't I seem to write reviews I want to read?

This is a problem because I've found that I have not liked doing a third of game journalism (the writing reviews part). Everything else is wonderful. I like writing funny advertorial. I like going places, meeting people, writing about those meetings, and playing novel, good games. But reviews? Sure I enjoy discussing games' pros and cons, but the writing....I dunno. I have yet to write a review I've liked.

There is good news about this; my ability to analyze a game, to understand what makes it work and not, that is finally as good as it should be. But at the same time, why should I care? Why should you care? So my analysis is good. If that's the only good in my reviews, then I should just make videos. Attract watchers with the shiny game visuals and speak game analysis in the background. Although they won't remember any of my words (as the words would be too dry to compete with the flashy imagery), at least I would be reviewing, and they'd get the review score -- SEE?! That's terrible! I want my work to be great! All of it!

I'm going to slow down a bit. Review a little less. I'm going to ask myself, every time I review over the next couple months, how to make this review worth reading. The goal won't be comprehensive analysis. Effective writing'll be the goal.

Diablo III Review

Let's get right to it --

The first nine hours of Diablo III are boring. Specifically Acts I and II on the unskippable Normal Difficulty. It's too easy. Almost every monster can be beaten via the "Just click on them until they die" strategy. And the random events and near-constant loot drops and the achievements and even the coop cannot save it. Although there is the Hardcore (permadeath) Mode. Playing that makes every bit of the game thrilling, until you die (both in the game and then in real life).

But I'm going too fast. First: what's Diablo III really about other than being the fastest-selling PC game of all time?

It's about playing out your God fantasy, wearing the coolest clothes (called "loot"), and showing it off to other players. It's a four act, poorly-written epic, and you're the badass protagonist. Or at least one of them. Diablo III's designed to be an up-to four coop game, in which you can play as a male or female Barbarian (as in "Conan the Barbarian"), a male or female Monk (think the opposite of monks), a male or female Demon Hunter (think Medieval Terminator), a transvestite Wizard (think Wizard), and the Witch Doctor (think "person who  likes throwing dangerous animals"). These are the weirdos you can play as on your quest to save the universe from the ugly Lords of Bad. Everything you kill dies beautifully. Many things in the environment can be smashed.

Diablo III's not about story (which exists only so you can fight demons in exotic places). And it's definitely not about witty, interesting, deserves-to-exist dialogue. Blizzard has a strict "gameplay first" policy, you see, and they've spent five years making sure that their game says nothing special. Not that this should turn you off from their latest. The Diablo games were never about their stories.

Everyone already knows Diablo III is an Action RPG, a great grandchild of Rogue, and a Diablo-like. But not everyone agrees on whether it's best as a singleplayer game or a coop game. This assertion may seem silly; it's obviously a coop game, with its four-player cap -- best number for coop -- and its drop-into-another's-game-easily system (it's as easy as clicking on a friend's portrait a few times). But at the same time, it's not meant to only be a "coop game," because chances are you'll want to kill the final boss, on the hardest difficulty, by yourself (as well as with others). Diablo III is more like a drop-in action RPG. Coop only makes the monsters tougher, recommends teamwork, and allows you to play socially if you're chatting on Skype. You'll want Skype; the monsters won't let you take your hands away from the seven buttons. Well, the non-Normal difficulty monsters will, but you'll know what I mean when they lunge at you at sixty miles per hour.

I could discuss how ungrindy Blizzard managed to make this famously grindy series. Diablo II was famous for addicting players to killing the boss Mephisto over and over, in sad attempts to get the game's best loot, for no better reason than to, well, feel even more like God, in that virtual materialist way. Blizzard's saved the potential addicts the Mephisto fate by introducing an auction house and the fourth, final, super difficult Inferno Difficulty. The auction house makes it so you can spend money -- in-game gold or real money  -- to get good items. And if that's too time-saving for you, you can actually attempt to play Inferno difficulty, finding that even the "minor" elite monsters, are potential Mephisto-style pinatas.

Blizzard's also ungrindified the inventory screen and the healing system and the town portal system and the leveling up.

Gone is Diablo II's "Manage me lots!" inventory. The key fix is making it so you can stack dozens, hundreds, a thousand, one-square items in just one of your limited squares.

Blizzard did away with drinking healing potions by the gallon. Now there's a cool down for every health-filled bottle you down. Now there are God of War-style health orbs that might fall from enemies, with a big stress on the word might.

Also gone is the insta-town portal; that blue hole you used to be able to instantly summon which let retreat to town, away from the enemy. Now you must charge up the town portal. Enemies can kill you while you summon your escape.

And the no-going-back-because-you-made-a-mistake stat-leveling and skill-picking? Gone. The game does it all for you. One of the most addictive, time-consuming, ultimately pointless features from D2 has been streamlined out of your hands. Stats auto-level now, and as for your skills, you can simply switch from this one to that one whenever you want, providing you're a high enough level. (Also elegant: the level cap is 60, and the last ability you unlock, you'll likely find, is at level 60).

Also gone are the boring boss battles. Yes, I did just actually say that. Diablo 2's bosses were basically damage sponges who did a lot of damage. Diablo III's are that, too, but they have abilities that encourage you to dodge, plus they wait for you on proper boss levels, with fire that burns through the floors, and explosions, lasers, traps. And the bosses look great. Not most of Act I's bosses, sure. But yes, Blizzard's World of Warcraft-funded budget did wonders on most of the boss showmanship.

And if this sounds too overwhelmingly positive, then that's because the game really is excellent once you pay your 60+ dollars and your 9 hours of sedentary not-being-challenged. But don't worry, I haven't forgotten the always-online essentially DRM that the game requires you accept (even you singleplayer gamers). Do I think it's bad? Yes. But, depressingly, I'm not sure how bad it really is, despite thinking that I understand it.

The immediate badness of the basically DRM comes from the lag and the server shutdowns and the inability to play the game wherever there are the right outlets and voltage. Server shutdowns prevent you from playing or having LAN parties (remember those?) whenever you want. And the lag causes you to die in coop matches if you're surrounded by powerful mobs. This is especially bad for Hardcore Mode, coop players; it's like a bug -- a by-design, game-breaking bug -- that can separate you from your Hardcore Mode friends, with your level 60 dead and their level 60s still there.

Where was I...Oh yeah, the potential long term badness. Every big game publisher is waiting to see if we -- every PC gamer on the planet -- are willing to buy a DRM, non-MMO. And we are. Thus the fear is every big budget PC game will eventually have DRM, which will produce a less-friendly environment for mods and require that game companies' servers are running in order for us to play what we spent sixty plus dollars on. The word is "potential" though, because no one knows if the big publishers will say, "The customer's willing to pay more for less. Let's DRM them!" Or: "PC gamers were willing to accept DRM that time because it was Diablo III."

I agree with most that D3's always-online is more bad than good, but, I guess what I'm really trying to say is that it currently doesn't bother me. I just don't care about the vast majority of big budget games, since they tend to be either barely good or just bad, and thus I don't care if they go DRM. Plus, I don't really want to play much of Hardcore Mode with my friends; the more players in a game, the harder the average monster and the more likely I'll become depressed.

8/10


The review score was lowered from an 8 to a 7, due to the following sentence: In light of learning that Hardcore mode is best played by first knowing what the monsters will be like, a knowledge most efficiently come upon by playing the game in non-hardcore mode, I am lowering the Diablo III review score to a 7/10.

The review score was raised from a 7 to an 8, due to the following sentence: All my criticism regarding hardcore mode just died. The ideas were: one - many players will want their hardcore run to go as far into the game as possible, before they die, and then they won't want to play Diablo III ever again; I realized many players like being surprised especially when permadeath is involved; although it may make a sudden, cheap, permadeath more likely, it raises the tension even more. The other idea was about the lag killing off hardcore characters in coop games; well it turns out you can immediately quit; press ESC, click exit game, click "now." Character almost certainly saved.

Future Reviewy notes (related to this game) will follow here:
Act I (Normal Difficulty) Diablo III Hardcore Mode is Boring

Ready to Write Diablo 3 Review

I've played enough. It turns out that the first half of Normal difficulty can be made "stimulating," but nothing more. If you run through it quickly, the scenes, abilities, and monsters will change at a rate that should prevent boredom. But you won't be having fun.

I also found out that I liked the Wizard more than the Witch Doctor. The witch doctor may be more creative, but it feels to me like there's only one way to play it; summon the gargantuan and shoot stuff.

And now a question for myself regarding after the review. Should I keep playing Diablo III? (Yes; I want to beat Inferno difficulty).

Which class should I play before the expansion? Wizard or Barbarian?

Wizard. I don't want to play any more of Normal difficulty until Blizzard makes the game better.

Diablo III Act IV (Normal Difficulty)

I'm sold. Act IV was fun, complete with many boss battles and bad dialogue and the only original setting in the game. It also ends with the game's best boss battle (bet you can't guess who it is).

And there's really nothing else to say, except that I'm going to see if doing a speed run of the first two Acts on normal difficulty, an experience I labeled that word, "boring," are still boring despite being part of a speed run. My theory says, because there will be less leveling up, the monsters will end up being challenging.

This means no posts for a couple days and time to play more Diablo. And for game journalism reasons not because I'm addicted to it, obviously.

Diablo III Act 3 (Normal Difficulty)

Okay now it's excellent. Without spoiling anything that you probably already know, the levels (though grayish) put on a show, and the monsters are even harder. I have to make many split-second decisions during battles, and many of the decisions involve multiple actions. I've also been swapping skills a lot, trying to see what works best on different levels.

Now I love the game.

However I noticed something frightening. I noticed that Act III's final boss battle was easier than most of the elite monster battles, and it gave a lot of rare loot. It makes me think this is the new Mephisto run. It makes me think Blizzard wants its players to be addicted (other evidence includes the achievements, plus the constant sense of reward).

Even the twist at the end of Act III was decent (I knew something was up, but I had no idea THAT was going to happen).

Diablo III, Act 2 (Normal Difficulty)

We at Stage Zero supposed that once we unlocked more character abilities the gameplay would get interesting. And then the unlocking happened, along with something else: the new enemies were much stronger and had more abilities than their Act 1 friends. All these unlockings led to combat finally having enough depth to almost call fun. Now the clicking needs to be faster; sometimes it even needs thought behind it. Now Diablo III feels like we're playing a game and not just clicking on things until they die.

In fact, in Act 2, we died five whole times! This is a significant increase from Act 1's death rate of once. Our math powers tell us that this is something like a five times increase in game difficulty.

We also like the desert palate swap. There's something exotic about deserts, especially when comparing them to Act 1's swamps.

We also like the new, flashier boss fights. Although, to be extra fawning to the new Blizzard, all of Diablo 3's boss fights thus far have been more interesting than Diablo II's (though also much easier, for good design reasons which we'll discuss in review). The bosses' levels themselves involve some depth. Their arranged differently from each other and make it so you can't just stand around and click on the boss until you or the boss goes down; in one level, parts of the floor have a tendency to catch on fire; in another, seemingly random parts of the floor attract smashings of the gigantic boss. And unlike Diablo II, you cannot just spam the potions buttons to victory, for there are no potions buttons! There's just one potion button, and this potion button has a cool down, JUST LIKE DRINKING POTIONS WOULD BE LIKE IN REAL LIFE (minus the part where it's consumed instantly).

Act 2 makes us a bit and finally excited for what comes next. There are still so many abilities to unlock. On our side and the monster side.

Yet the game remains nothing special.

Super Mario World (singleplayer) Review

I am incapable of writing this review (therefore you should keep reading). No seriously, I haven't played Super Mario Bros. 2, 3, and 1, so I can't tell you if this one is better than those.

However, I did play New Super Mario Bros., and I even played Super Mario World! (Super Mario World has better level design and has better controls).

And knowing that you already know why these 2D Mario Bros. games are fun, I will only discuss Super Mario World's faults:

It seems that Nintendo knew the lives system was annoying.

(What is the lives system?) In these Mario games, you begin with a small amount of lives. Every time you die in a level, you lose a life, and if you lose all your lives, game over occurs. The console will note your death, and you'll have to start from the very beginning; all the levels you unlocked are relocked, which is annoying. So, what Nintendo did to preclude the pain was put in levels that allow you to maxout your lives to 99 in minutes (here's an example). I'm assuming they put these in on purpose (because they did). Many game designers would say "it's an exploit of the rules and is bad game design," but I say it's a secret designed to be found by curious humans (proof: that hyperlinked level has "secret" as part of its title). And what joy it must have been to discover this secret, unless of course the player had already lost the game many times before finding it out....

And now, on to the actually bad stuff!

Super Mario World's last -- and hardest -- levels don't have checkpoints. Most of the game's levels have checkpoints halfway through them, and when you die you can restart from them. But, perhaps to reinforce the epicness of the final levels, Nintendo threw out the pain-relieving checkpoints. What?

To make these levels worse, the game doesn't let you stack powerups the way they should be stacked (i.e. the New Super Mario Bros. way; yes, NSMB has an advantage). Super Mario World's most common powerups give you, among other things, two hit points before dying. You can carry two of these powerups at a time; one will be active; one will be in reserve. If you get hurt while carrying them, you'll lose the active one, and the other will fall from the sky for you to grab. If you lose that powerup, then you've lost your powerups, are very unlikely to gain the level's few powerups, and you'll likely need to travel back to much easier levels, via the world map, to get some more; you'll have to waste your time playing levels you were done with. It took me an hour and a half just to finish the final bits of the game. Some of you will finish faster, yeah that's nice, but it's still horrible evil level design (the final boss fight is good).

But these are just the last two levels. Overall the game's difficulty feels to me "just right" for a new player to the games. To veteran players of other old school Mario games I didn't play, well, you might as well skip Super Mario World, especially if you played Super Mario Bros. 3. Youtube tells me that Super Mario World is similar enough to those games (and so much easier than SMB 3) that you'll have little to gain from this one. There'll basically be no challenge for you, and the novelty of the experience won't be so novel.

9/10


Super Mario World was originally released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) in 1990. It is available for the Wii (virtual console); you will need a classic controller to play it.

Diablo III, Act 1 (Normal Difficulty)

So far the game's pretty boring. You begin with access to so few skills that there's almost no depth to the combat -- click on the enemy until they die, maybe run a way a little and drink a health potion, and press the skills buttons sometimes. In Act 1 on Normal difficulty, Diablo 3 is gaming for babies.

Because Blizzard (obviously) wanted its players to train their way, slowly and effectively, through their characters' skills (and thus not have access to most skills until after many hours of play) the enemies are really easy (hence "'Normal' Difficulty"). My brain tells me the game might start being fun once Nightmare difficulty rolls in, which is about 12 hours of mostly depthless, challengeless gameplay from now. Bleegh.

But! So far the experience isn't intolerable. Seeing all the spiffy-looking effects and new features and environments and people, and being more and more impressed by how well designed the interface is, keeps me headed towards the finish. Or maybe that's just my wanting to write a review of the entire hack-n-slash, action RPG genre.

Speaking of writing! The game's writing is trite! Luckily my Spanish isn't strong enough to comprehend the triteness. (i.e. I'm playing the Spanish version of the game; it's called Diablo for a reason)

The other annoyance is that the game currently has a tendency to be in "emergency server maintenance" and thus be unplayable. I have to wait so long to be bored! For details read Tom Chick's beginner's guide to Diablo III.

Diablo is Back to Ruin Our Lives!

I've finished Super Mario World and have compiled my notes for its review, but now Diablo III is out, and I begin playing it in nine hours.

So, expect the Super Mario Review on Sunday. Until then, it's Diablo this and that.

The Best Computer Games Ever!

These are the 10/10 computer games I've played. If humanity is destroyed and aliens show up to find the art we've made, I would like them to stumble upon these, along with the best books and films and songs.

Portal (PC or XBOX 360 versions)

If there's a perfect game, then it's probably Portal. If you can find a flaw in it, then you're probably insane. Not even the legendary British critic Ben "Bingo" Croshaw could find anything bad in it.

Portal is a first-person-shooter-puzzle-game. Seeming like it'd be an interesting extra in Valve's Orange Box, it ended up taking the super hardcore gaming crowd by storm, putting them all into song (I'm not kidding) and telling each other existential cake "jokes." Some people even considered it "the Citizen Kane of gaming;" although once we learned that we didn't know what that means, that merit died.

What I remember most fondly about Portal is not its unforgettable antagonist, nor its puzzles (which I've forgotten). What I remember best is that the game got me emotionally distraught over a block with pink hearts painted on it.

Portal 2 (PC or PS3 or XBOX 360) 

I've told friends that this one's "even better than Portal even though Portal is perfect and this one's not." And thus I am silly. But that doesn't change the fact that Portal 2 is wonderful. It's even funnier than Portal and has this undefinable Pixar magic to it, defined as: "when it ends, you feel like humanity is totally worth it (the 60 bucks, that is; plus the tax; best to wait till it's on sale)." P2 features even more great characters (including Portal's insane antagonist). And it expands upon its shoot-portals-at-walls-and-go-through-portals-to-reach-new-halls gameplay, with goo! Three colors of it!

The Binding Of Isaac: Rebirth (and any expansions) (PC) 

Many critics claim The Binding of Isaac's too hard, but you can ignore them. Why? Because, for one thing, it is a scientific fact that said critics are bad at games; and for another, the game is hard because its game designer loves you. Originally, Mr. Edmund McMillen wasn't going to sell it; he was going to put it on the Internet for all for free. But someone convinced him to sell it, so he made it available for download for $5.00. And it is almost thoroughly great; and otherwise good.

The Binding of Isaac is, what my friend called, an arcade something. In it you play as a naked child escaping his mother who is out to kill him for religious reasons. He flees to the basement, which happens to be akin to the circles of Hell. Full of bloody monstrosities, Isaac (or other playable stars from the Bible) must fight, shooting their tears and accumulating items which boost your powers. And like any good RPG, the items not just boost your stats, they make big visual changes on and around the child. You can get extra powers (super in nature) and then eventually use them on your Mom (in the game). And when you die, you lose everything (in real life) and have to restart from nothing.

Bastion (PC and XBOX 360)

Another action RPG that is so-not like action RPGs which are so-defined by Diablo II, Bastion is an indie game and the best game from 2011. Yes, even better than Portal 2.

You play as an anime, water-colored boy in blown up world, bits of which come up from an abyss to form the path you walk. I mean: you'll be walking toward nothing, and tiles and grass and walk-on-able stuff will come from nowhere. Plus you get to kill things.

Sexiest of all is the voice that narrates your doings. It speaks intelligent words -- a good thing in a narrator -- and when I say he narrates your doings, I mean, you'll be doing something, and it will almost certainly get narrated. But do not think this sounds annoying; he speaks in a voice that sounds like an Isaac Hayes version of Tom Waits.

World of Goo (Wii version)

Imagine a puzzle game in which you move lots of goo balls and in which the cutscenes are anti-consumerist, anti-stupidity, anti-people cartoons. Truly something to enjoy with your friends, on your Wii. Do this and you'll understand....something. How this game makes my list I still don't know. Next!

Half-Life 2: Episode 2 (PC and XBOX 360 versions)

One day, Gordon Freeman, genius and M.I.T.-educated physicist, was doing his boring, quotidian, top secret research in a New Mexican canyon, when all of a sudden he accidentally opened up many portals of alien invasion. Subsequently Earth was taken over by aliens, and it was all Gordon's fault! Luckily for you, you get to play as him! And your job? To save what's left of the human race in a guns-blazing attempt to say "sorry."

Half-Life 2: Episode 2 continues his apologizing in an Eastern European forest of all places. It's a perfectly-paced first-person shooter. It is a beautifully-graphicked adventure. It is a character-filled, story-telling thingy. Play it!

Super Meat Boy (PC and XBOX 360)

It's a lot like Super Mario Brothers, except that: it's ludicrously challenging; you mostly play as a cube of meat; the antagonist is a robot/suit-wearing fetus; you can't kill much of anything; practically the entire EVERYTHING can (and will) kill you; and there's plenty of blood and poo. Super Meat Boy might be the best indie platformer ever, right up there with-

Cave Story (PC and Wii)

If you haven't played Cave Story, then google it, download it for free, and play it. If you don't like it, then you suck. Or maybe you just don't like it. That's cool.

Left 4 Dead 2 (PC version) 

Many people debate whether we should love this one because - one - it is a sequel to a game quite similar - and two - it doesn't really capture the "zombie apocalypse ethos" more than the "action game" one. But all you need to know is that none of that matters. Play this game with your friends, work your way up to Expert  Realism difficulty, and say "aaaaah" (or scream). I can say "ah" because, thanks to this cooperative shooter, I've personally killed 23,876 zombies, and that's not including the ones in Left 4 Dead 1! Genocide is wunderbar!

StarCraft 2's Multiplayer (PC and Mac) 

If I had all the time in the world, I would still play this. No game (or activity in general) puts me into the frantic state of flow this one does. It's about balancing good decisions with actions-per-millisecond, measured in actions per minute. Plus it looks spiffy. Great artwork, and almost all the units do what you'd want the AI to do. StarCraft also sports a darling community, made so darling by their ceremonial, pre-game message of "GLHF" and post game message of "GG." I still have no idea what it means; but I respond with the same. Although come to think of it, I wonder if the other players even know what it means. Maybe we're all just programmed to type those things; maybe they mean nothing......

(Latest Version of) Street Fighter IV (PC, XBOX 360, PS3) 

It's like Street Fighter II, but way better. Play it with your friends, and not with yourself.

Unreal Tournament (PC version) 

Unreal Tournament is ultraviolent, profane, frightening to parents, and great in general. Released in the final November of the last millennium, it would become the prime competitor, in the arena of arena shooters, of Id Software's Quake 3 Arena, which itself was released just a few days later. Back then, we PC gamers would have embarrassing, shameless arguments over which was better; Id's game would win the graphics engine part of the argument; Epic Games's would win the gameplay mechanics argument. And now nobody plays either.

God of War (PS2 and PS3)

"My name is Kratos! And I'm pissed!" Boobs and blood and gore and Greeks. God of War is the best God of War-like. Yes, I compare it to itself, and not because of its uniqueness (Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, and Rocksteady's Batman games share with it many similarities). I compare it to itself because it's better than those other games. And no, it's not really like 300. The writing's actually fine. And the story even throws in an anagnorisis (google it). (I just googled it, and it turns out that it doesn't have an anagnorisis...)

Resident Evil 4 (Many Systems)

Secret Service Agent Justin Bieber Hair must save the president's teenage daughter from the world's most evil corporation in a gothic, zombie monster town in "Spain."

Freespace 2 (PC)

Pew, pew, lasers.

Okay I'll write more. This space fighter and bomber sim had battles even bigger than this! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khIWdolT9xY, and graphics that look like that! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZuA9zvxs0Q

Unts. Unts. Unts. Unts. Don't worry, that music's not in the game. But what is in the game is the best space sim ever made, ever. And if that sentence doesn't make you want to play it, then these should: the dev that made 1999's Freespace 2 is the same dev that does Saint's Row. And that big laser in the cinematic? Well, the game has even BIGGERER ones. And yes, I am trying to sell you this game (it was so-well critically acclaimed, yet sold little more than 30,000 copies :( The game plays well with mouse and keyboard.

S.W.A.T. 4 (PC)

Despite Freedom Force, S.W.A.T. 4 is Irrational Games's funnest game.
Despite Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis, S.W.A.T. 4 is the best tactical shooter ever made.
Despite the original StarCraft, S.W.A.T. 4 has nothing to do with StarCraft.
Actually, it does! For S.W.A.T. 4 definitely has real-time strategy (I think). Criminals will move around, and you'll need to make a series of tactical decisions. You have to give your S.W.A.T. members orders. You get to pepper spray people. You get to shoot them. Both! Although my favorite thing is tazering people in the face. High scores go for arresting everyone, preferably alive.

The Rock Band Games (the consoles)

One of the best drinking games ever. What you do is get three friends to take the roles of the band behind their plastic instruments. And every time you fail a song, everyone has to take a shot. Play until you've beaten all the songs anyone on the band even remotely likes.

It's also fun to play the Rock Bands with children.

Counter-Strike: Condition Zero (PC & MAC)

The best version of the best team vs. team shooter. Play it.

Papers, Please (PC & MAC & Linux)

The best game of 2013: this game is the equivalent of reading a novel about living under a pseudo-communist dictatorship. Plus the game part of the game has you playing as a passport stamper, and yet be fun! An instant classic, and even more: the biggest kick in the face to the soul-destroying big games industry. Cheap graphics, cheap music, cheap everything made by one guy. And all that cheapness was superior to the expensive artwork and games "design" of the big games industry.

The Sims 2 with expansions (PC and MAC)

It may not be a game, but it is a life simulator. It can be a lot of fun to watch. It can be a horrifying reflection of life. It's the ultimate doll house, so good that even guys like it. It even proposes a philosophical argument. A flawed one? Perhaps, but still a compelling one. I'm gladdened by the fact that this product is one of the best-selling PC titles of all time.

(NOTE: Many may find that The Sims 3 is the best iteration of this series; I personally will not know.)

THE END (But to be continued...)

Why You Should Be Excited for the Wrath of the Lamb

Remember that game about killing your murderous mom? "The Binding of Isaac?!" Yes, that one!

Well pretend that Diablo III doesn't exist and be excited for The Binding of Isaac's expansion: Wrath of the Lamb. It's coming out on May 28th; and it may turn The Binding of Isaac into a classic.

The only issue I can find in the currently unexpanded The Binding of Isaac is the sameyness of its runthroughs.  Each play session feels a bit repetitive.

But on May 28th that changes, because Wrath of the Lamb adds (1..2..) a billion variety-making things to the game!

And it's only three dollars! Unlike Diablo 3. Which doesn't exist.

Trails Evolution (Singleplayer) Review

I have a theory. It goes that the average games journalist plays so many turd games that, when a remotely good one comes out, they think it's the best thing ever. This is the only theory I can think of to explain Trials Evolution's 91% on metacritic, including 9 out of 10s from good games sites whose names, for the next twenty minutes, I will not remember.

Trials Evolution is a dirt bike, obstacle course, racing game in which you move two-dimensionally through a 3D environment; i.e. it's a 2.5D platformer. The game attracts young, XBOX 360-owning males via its silly environments, perfect controls, and Looney Tunes murderings of players at the end of every track; by 'silliness,' I mean "being crushed by a piano upon crossing the finish line," and "racing through, say, a level of the Danish (depressing) game Limbo."

And yes, as butt hurt as I am about metacritic scores right now, I'll admit that the new Trials is good. Just its presentation makes me ask, "Why aren't more sports games trying to be less boring? Why are the biggest video game versions of sports games set in the boring fields and courts we see in real life? Why can't the athletes be fed to bears?" "Why is this the first dirt-biking game I've played that lets me race across a D-Day beach and then get bombed (by bombers) as a reward for crossing the finish line?"

Unlike the original game -- Trials HD -- the environments are outside, which gives Evolution a sense of not-being-like-the-claustraphobia-inducing-Trials HD. Also unlike the first game (which you should never ever get, because it might cause you to lose fifteen dollars), this one's been made noob friendly. The difficulty curve of the proceeding tracks rises slowly from "so easy that all you need to do is hold the accelerator button" to "You know what's easier than this? Eating a brick, that's what!" Each track has a difficulty label labled to them, and the harder-to-get medals and friends list scores encourage replayings of all maps, assuming that you have friends who play the game, and assuming that you'll be able to tolerate the checkpoint system, a surprising failure in game design, which I'll later discuss.

But first! The "easy to learn and hard to master" theme is definitely in this game and represented by its three buttons, which are accelerate, break, and move the stick to angle the bike up or down. The bike control is easy to learn because "there are basically three buttons" and its hard to master because of the game's goal requirements -- get past these obstacles in the shortest times and fewest crashes as possible -- and the game's simulated gravity and the way the bike gets angled: the simulated gravity acts like...gravity! And the bike angling works by the driver shifting his weight (via your stick fingering). Pull the stick left, the rider leans back, forcing the front wheel up. Rightwards fingering forces the rider forward and the bike down. This makes even the angles of coming hills a challenge, as landing on them at the wrong angle can break every bone in your virtual body (there's an achievement for doing that).

(We're getting closer to the problem) Every time you crash your bike, you can immediately respawn from the last checkpoint (and there's a check point after every obstacle); respawning from a checkpoint doesn't reset the timer or your number of crashes, though, so if you want the harder tracks' silver and gold medals, or the super difficult platinum medals -- you'll usually find that your medal runs will involve restarting from the beginning to reset the timer and the crash count.

And now, the problem, the checkpoints. There are too many of them.

"What?" You say. "How can there be 'too many' checkpoints? Are you bigoted against noobs?"

No, of course not! Noobs are wonderful...No seriously, that the game is noob-friendly isn't the problem. If a noob wants to spend fifteen bucks and breeze through an explosive-filled, easy-to-learn, visceral, dirt bike, obstacle game in a few afternoons, instead of doing something that doesn't tell them variations of the they-killed-Kenny joke over and over again at the ends of fairly imaginative race tracks, then Trials Evolution! Kill   that time!

Anyways, finally here comes the problem (yay). The problem isn't that the game's easy (it's not easy). The problem is doing its challenges is grindingly frustrating, a frustration caused by how the respawning works at the too-many checkpoints.

Respawning to the checkpoints respawns you stationary and on the ground; thus they're basically incapable of wiring the fast surmounting of obstacles into your muscle memory. All the checkpoints do is help you memorize how to pass the obstacles from a stationary, on the ground position. That won't help  you train for the challenging medals, which usually demand that you pass the obstacles moving fast, and coming in from the sky.

So, for the core gamer looking for a challenge, Trails Evolution is either easy or too frustrating.

I fear (not really) that many gamers, seeing those 9/10s  from good games sites, will tell themselves, "I...I'm not frustrated! That one website said this game's brilliant and that only the metal/rap music is boring and that the in-game money used to buy mostly identical biker clothes and bike decals is useless!" And yes, the clothes and music play too hard for their target audience, and the said ways the game's an elegant thing. But the checkpoint system makes this hardcore gamer proof. Or, smart hardcore gamer proof. If Red Lynx notices the error, or reads my review (which they won't), they'll release a patch that gives players the option to turn half the checkpoints off.

On the brighter side, the game has a stellar level editor (think LittleBigPlanet). Maybe that will spawn greatness. But for now, what we have is a mildly amusing show.

7/10

New Reviews Policy!

I have switched to the number out of ten scoring system. I've decided to because:

One: I now prefer the number out of ten scoring system.

Two: I was annoyed with my Batman review ending in 5 stars. Five stars sounds like 10/10, and that game is too cliche-ridden to deserve that game that score. So there! Now we've got a numbers system. That game's a 9/10.

"What does this mean to the ratings criteria?"

Nothing! Sort of. Well, okay. Here is what the ratings'll mean: 10/10 means that the game's one of the very best things ever made and that everyone who has any interest in computer games should try it. 9/10 means that it's one of the best games ever made, but has something, or somethings, preventing it from being palatable to every gamer. 8 out of 10 means it's really good. It may not be one of the best games ever, but you'll almost certainly like it. 7 out of 10 means it can provide a pretty good experience but has some serious problems. 6 out of 10 means it's good (barely). 5/10 would make the game so-so, or "almost certainly a waste of your time." 4/10 equals bad (do not get). 3/10 equals very bad. 2/10 equals terrible. 1/10 is one of the worst games ever made. 0/10 is so unfathomably bad that, in theory, it cannot exist.

Batman: Arkham City Review

Batman: Arkham City is a better, open-world version of Batman: Arkham Asylum. If you decided to skip the asylum game, then continue skipping that and consider this one. If you didn't skip the asylum then skip down to the last few paragraphs.

The gameplay of Arkham City comprises fighting, sneaking, flying, and puzzles.

The fighting remains one of the simpler, more elegant takes on the God of War/Ninja Gaiden/Devil May Cry genre. "X" hits enemies. "Y" stops enemy attacks and hurts their originators. "A," tapped twice, leaps. And "B" dazes. There are some enemies who require simple button combos, but they're introduced to you gradually, giving you enough time to memorize the right button mashings and thus preventing frustration.

Not to say the fighting hasn't changed at all. This time the fights get even bigger (say, twenty enemies at once), and you can interrupt the attacks of multiple opponents at once, often by smashing them into the environment or their friends! It's fun!

The stealthery is also (a bit) deeper. Sometimes enemies will have something they call "thermal vision goggles." What those actually mean gameplay-wise is that you can no longer just swing around, gargoyle to gargoyle, right above the enemies' heads, to remain undetected (which was the dominant strategy that boringified most of Arkham Asylum's sneakiness). Sometimes enemies will lob or launch grenades where they think you are, forcing you to move and maybe accidentally revealing yourself. And because Arkham City is city-like, with tall buildings you can zoom up via your grappling hook, and the smoke pellets you can drop to disorient your enemies, sneaking and escaping the way Batman would feels like you think it should, without taking out millions to make your own Batsuit and killing yourself in attempts at Batmannery.

Which brings us to Flying! And this time, it actually feels like flying! In the first game you could glide down from high places and feel satisfied as you saw Batman's cape winged out. But now! You get that and can fly! You can do it by sling-shotting yourself past the object you're grappling to and repeating this every time you go too low. Or you can leap from a high place, "dive bomb" downwards building up speed, aim back upwards with your new momentum, and repeat. Or both. The game's mechanics are flexibly mixable.

And the boss fights!...are kind of fun this time! They involve much more than Asylum's "leap out of the path of the large charging enemy so he can crash into a wall" style of "boss" battle; that's a mere feature of a many-feature boss battle. And there are a lot more bosses, some of whom can only be encountered via sidequesting.

Speaking of which!

Getting the Riddler trophies isn't nearly as boring this time! (hooray?) The cheap reason why they're not boring is that there are so many trophies (in the form of little green question mark statues) all over the place; you'll keep getting them and their extra XP and unlocking Batman memorabilia at an MMORPG-reward system rate. How they are not MMORPG-like, and thus not merely addictive, is that many of them are simple puzzles and require you to prove your Batmanning skills, such as flying batman or his remote control batarang, here and there, through this and that. And unlike the original game set in the nut house, many of these Riddler trophies aren't obtained merely by unlocking new equipment (although there's plenty of that).

There's only one annoying thing in the new Batman simulation. It is the developer's continued obsession with appealing to a teenage, male audience, the symptoms of which are hypersexualized female characters and cliche-ridden writing of the "let's get this party started" variety. (An example?) The only 'bad' word in the game seems to be "bitch"; it gets repeated a lot due to the contradiction of going for a Teen, ESRB rating and trying to insert vulgarity into common criminal speech. The non-existence of artistic freedom, I bet, explains why so many lines get repeated on the cannot-be-turned-off radio, and why so many trite phrases come from the so-called super-genius villians.

And this is why, if you've already played Arkham Asylum, you probably should skip this one. Everything we liked in the first game was so good that Rocksteady couldn't improve upon it much, and the writing, the improvement of which could have made this one feel fresh, remains stagnant in Appeal-to-Teenage-Boy Land.

The joy the earlier, inferior game gave us came in its elegant, novel Batmanning and the depictions of Gotham's surprisingly interesting psychos. The Batman games' joy of discovery, you Arkham Asylum veterans, you've already enjoyed. The challenge rooms you can unlock in Arkham City you basically played through long ago. The ministories behind the villians you've pretty much read. There's nothing new for you here. Catwoman plays pretty much the same.

9/10

This review is based on the PC version of the game, played with an XBOX 360 controller on "Hard" difficulty.

It's Time to Start Writing Game News

Readers! It's time I write game news! And not just opinions and reviews!

"YOU GOT A GAMES JOURNALIST JOB?!!" 

Nope! But I am out of things to write! It takes time to finish games for review, and I'm out of random ideas. So it's time to steal info from other websites and rewrite the news!

The only rule is that my advertorial is entertaining. Everyone wins this way! You win by having fun reading. I win by having something to practice writing with. And game companies win by having free, unneeded advertising!

I will start tomorrow.

Xenoblade Chronicles Review

It may seem harsh to label the RPGs between now and Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic as mostly "uninspired, poorly-written and paced wastes of your time, full of geriatric-looking, depth-less gameplay and bad level design," but truth is: that's just how it is, which is a long way of saying: I'm (somehow) embarrassed by the hardcore gamer community who say the opposite, who fawn over the first two Mass Effect games and worship Bethesda's games. And especially those metacritic scores!

HOW CAN SO MANY SMART PEOPLE BE SO BORED YET SAY THEY'RE HAVING THE TIMES OF THEIR LIVES?!...Anyways, onwards! Xenoblade Chronicles!

First off, the game's setting! In Xenoblade Chronicles the world is two nation-sized titans, the Mechonis (which is mechanical) and the Bionis (which is bionical). These titans were trying to destroy each other when, once upon a time, the Mechonis smashed his sword into the side of the Bionis, and they both stopped moving. Then (a jillion years later) in a scratch on the Mechonis's sword, you begin playing.

Another remarkable, original thing this RPG does is characters who don't bombard you with mind-numbing boredom. I like to think that fun, emotionally-stirring, interesting dialogue is very much why we pay for RPGs with hundreds of hours of our lives. So why is it that Xenoblade Chronicles is the RPG in a decade whose dialogue is almost entirely good, while the dialogue of almost every other RPG is almost entirely boring?

I suspect the answer is: because Xenoblade Chronicle's characters aren't a bunch of generic, fantasy/sci-fi cliches. Let's run a list.

In Skyrim! Here we have another orc trying to be orcish. Or an elf trying to be elfish. Blah.

In the Mass Effects we have: another space marine, scientist, doctor, bounty hunter, Star Trek Wars whatever (and a few fun characters).

In Final Fantasy we have dull and annoying stereotypes who make you hate your fellow man.

And now, Xenoblade Chronicles, which at first appears to have a few cliches, like the killer robot army and the protagonist Shulk, who is a 17-year old chosen one, with the power to wield a magical sword. But then we find out these cliches end up being turned on their heads. Plus there's a character named Sharla who heals people by shooting them with her anti-tank rifle.

Speaking of combat, THE COMBAT! Xenoblade Chronicles's combat is like an MMORPG's but with teams of three and actual depth. In your typical MMO you have your tank people deal damage and get hit, and the healers heal them, and maybe they'll be some attacking spell-casters. A well-practiced group with high enough stats, doing that for a billion hours, is the meat of those games (along, of course, with exploring the cliche fantasy world and the auctioning of ultimately meaningless loot). Xenoblade Chronicles doesn't really stray from the exploring, tank/healer/spell caster model, but it DOES say to the player, "Attacking the sides and backs of enemies with certain attacks increases the damage," plus you can switch characters between battles. You always play as the character set as the leader (usually you can decide who's the leader), and the AI controls the two character's that aren't the leader. (So, if the team leader is Shulk, for example, you play as Shulk) Unlike, say, Final Fantasy Whatever, you don't micromanage the other characters, except for during chain attacks, or if you get a "magic sword glimpse" of the future, in which case you can  run up to a teammate and tell them to do something only they can do. And, of course, you can tell your team to attack a specific target, and run away, and not attack, and attack whatever they want. What you've just read is all the team-micromanagement in Xenoblade Chronicles's battles.

In short, the game has the best combat of all MMORPGs, is not an MMORPG, and doesn't waste your time with micromanagement or long cinematics-for-gameplay. It also doesn't force you to fight every enemy you see. The vast majority of battles you can skip; just run past the enemy; and if they do chase you, which happens when you get too close to them and they're not complete pushovers, you can just outrun them -- they'll soon give up the chase.

I'm not done trashing western RPGs. LEVEL VARIETY! Xenoblade Chronicle's levels not just look different from each other and have their own music (most areas even have daytime, nighttime music), but vary in degrees of linearity. Some areas are somewhat linear while others are almost not linear. And almost every level is massive! Imagine the Wii showing you an entire sea, with beaches and floating futuristic platforms in the sky. Imagine being able to swim in that entire sea (which is pretty damn sea-sized) at 60 frames per second with no load screens interrupting your exploring and fighting. And imagine that with brilliant art direction, although with Direct X 8 graphics, yes, BUT STILL brilliant art direction. Now compare that to the brown and grey of almost all the major RPGs.

But wait! There's more!

I could talk about how it has the best music of any RPG made since....ever. Here's a sample. A Xenoblade Chronicles's boss battle song.

I could talk about how, as long as you don't waste your time actually trying to do the sidequests, it might be the best-paced RPG ever made. But I won't because I already did.

I could talk about its bold, gripping, original story. But that would mean spoilers.

I could talk about how the relationships between characters actually affect gameplay and aren't merely about boring dialogue and un-erotic sex scenes (AHEM!!COUGH!!MASS EFFECT!!COUGH!!).

So now I should probably say something mean about it. But my criticisms are so petty that I really don't want to. But here it goes: one of the female characters is physically hyper-sexualized for teenage, male audience reasons. Some of the lines spoken during battle are terrible, particularly "Water! The source of all life!" and "We are one with the battlefield!" There are many Darth Vader "NOOOO!" moments, mostly in the form of "NAME OF PERSUUUUUUN!"

And the next complaint feels so petty that I almost decided not to mention it, but here it is: the final boss is, by far, not the strongest enemy in the game, and when you beat the final boss, the game is over and you cannot quickly brush up the tougher monsters and bosses. You have to either restart the game, or hold off on the final boss until you've beaten everything else. Restarting the game with your "cleared save" makes it so you start with some of the stuff from the end of your playthrough (if you chose to bring anything), and your ending character levels and the weapons and armor they wielded. And what's potentially annoying is that you have to progress through the story again (along with its easy enemies) to re-unlock the areas of the world. Personally I don't mind this because, by the end of the game, I felt like I played Xenoblade Chronicles and thus was done. But I also know that many players like to end games with the games' toughest battles, and that the idea of ending a game with final battles so easy that they end up as a thirty-minute cutscene, due to the shortness of said battles, might irk some.

Also, the equipment screen doesn't make it easy to compare the stats of equipment. It makes you memorize the numbers of weapons instead of showing you, side by side, what the numbers are. You'll end up flipping between weapons to see what's better. But, as long as you don't have your characters change gear much, this shouldn't bother you. Still, it does waste time.

There is a way to make yourself miserable with this game, though. And its through doing its sidequests. Most of them are of the typical MMORPG variety. "Kill/Find X number of Y." The other quest types are only slightly better and, for the most part, encourage you to explore parts of the world that you would probably investigate anyway for curiosity's sake. They do give you some extra XP and money, but money you can get lots of by selling weapons, and the XP you can get by killing challenging monsters. So my word on the sidequests is "talk to the non-playable characters with the exclamation marks over their heads, accept their boring quests, do not sell any "materials" and "collectables" which are used to complete many quests, and do not try to complete the sidequests on purpose. Read my XC sidequest guide for more details, and remember: The sidequests are just sidequests. If you're used to the painful sidequesting from the Mass Effects, then get this game and never sidequest again! Xenoblade Chronicles actually ends at the end of Xenoblade Chronicles, and the sidequests don't affect its ending (and the ending has 'closure').

And the last catch I can think of to the game is: if you don't have a Classic Controller, then you won't be spending fifty dollars on the game; you'll be spending something like seventy; i.e. get the classic controller Xenoblade Chronicles bundle. Granted, I didn't play any of the game with just the wii mote and nunchuck, but I'm glad I didn't.

Right now, I'm listening to some of the game's more beautiful songs on Youtube. Already I feel nostalgia. Although I suffered many sidequests (for youuu), I remember how wonderful the main game was. And I envy you who are about to play Xenoblade Chronicles, for the first and only time, armed with my avoid sidequesting advice.

9/10


Xenoblade Chronicles is available for the Wii and can be purchased from Nintendo.com and, if you're willing, Gamestop.

Reviewing Epics Blows

The challenge posed to me by games like Xenoblade Chronicles is that they prevent me from writing. Not because they're addictive (Xenoblade Chronicles is not really addictive, which is one of the great things about it). No. The writer preventor is the game's length. XENOBLADE CHRONICLES IS SOOOOO LOOOOOOONG! I just wanna review the damn, wonderful thing.

But I can't. So onwards with the playing....

But for the sake of writing a page-length thing, I should repeat that 100 billion hour games scream a problem. I'm a writer (OH NO!). Thus I must write every day or I will be a bad writer and will suffer the bad writer's fate: to be eaten by bears. And I seriously do not want to be eaten by bears, nor by any other large mammal. So I must find a way to write SOMETHING, that isn't a mere journal entry....Or maybe I should do a journal entry, just not a pointless one.

But how does one write a non-pointless journal entry?

Well, I've been spying on other games journalists. Or rather I've been reading articles from their websites. And the way they journal is about a game experience, a personal narrative. I think that's a wonderful idea! And I just realized that I think it's a wonderful idea! And I'm going to do one right now!

Except I'm not, because I can't think of a way to do a personal essay about Xenoblade Chronicles without spoiling it or spoiling the review.

Yet, I must write every day.

What about my humor blog?

Well, it takes time to come upon an inspired, humorous idea. And time is something I don't have because I'M PLAYING XENOBLADE CHRONICLES!

I think I have three days left (of Xenoblade). I can go a day or two without writing...although I really don't want to.

I'm just kidding of course. I will write something.