The wait is over! We finally have details on the next Dragon Quest game and things have certainly gone an interesting direction. It’s titled Dragon Quest X Mezameshi Itsutsu no Shuzoku Online which already seems to have translations ranging from Andriasang’s The Five Awakening Races to 1up’s Rise of the Five Tribes.

The important word, though, is “online”. Dragon Quest X will evolve the ideas established in the previous game by allowing you to play with a customized character teamed up with several friends online. This includes cross-platform multiplayer between players on both the Wii and the freshly announced Wii U version. In addition to this, there will also be some kind of 3DS connectivity which seems to be in the brainstorming phase.

There are certainly a lot of “firsts” at play here as you will be able to create a non-human main character for the first time ever. As the subtitle suggests, you’ll be able to create characters of various different races and tribes. Dragon Quest X is also the first in the series to be developed internally by Square-Enix, with past games being developed by companies such as Level-5 and Chun Soft. Yuji Hori (designer), Koichi Sugiyama (composer) and Akira Toriyama (character designer) will still maintain their established roles. with Yosuke Saito (NieR) heading up development.

Character and world proportions are once again one-to-one as they were in Dragon Quest VIII. No more squat, chibi style adult characters are seen (other than some of the non-human races shown).

Battles show characters moving freely while engaging monsters and teamwork is highly emphasized. Some sort of crafting system was also shown, though this should come as no surprise to anyone that has followed the series.

The game will be available (in Japan) next year, though Hori mentioned some will get the chance to play it early in a beta test (of which details will come at a later time). Monthly fees are also currently unconfirmed, though a section for “usage fee” with the contents “TBA” does exist on the game’s spec sheet.

While you wait for more details to surface, here is the game’s first official screenshot:

Update: Here is the trailer shown in the stream courtesy of Nintendo Everything:

This video shows off character creation and some battles:

And here is some additional footage showing off some of the vistas and other aspects:

Source: Ustream with translations via 1up and Andriasang and video from Nintendo Everything

Final Fantasy XIII was a highly divisive game when it released last year. I found myself enjoying its finer points, but also finding fault in some of its design leading me to write a rather mixed review. With a sequel on the way, the opportunity for a more consistent experience has been opened.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 takes place three years after the first. Lightning has disappeared and Serah (her previously unplayable little sister) is out to find her with the help of a new character named Noel. The demo wasn’t heavy on exposition, but there was enough talk of “points in time” and “anomalies between dimensions” to pique my interest.

Almost immediately, I found myself in a boss battle. The hand of a giant, partially invisible creature named Atlas attacked while I got acquainted with the battle system. At first glance, the battles make use of a system quite similar to the one that turned convention on its head in the previous game. Focus is once again taken off of micromanaging individual actions and instead placed on when and how you switch job classes via paradigm shifts. Need a refresher on this system? Just watch my video explanation.

The first new change came in the form of “Cinematic Action” segments, which is really just a fancy way of saying quick time events. With a few button presses directed by on-screen prompts, I was able to deliver some extra damage to the boss. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t really add much to the experience. Thankfully, that wasn’t the only change.

My third party slot was reserved for captured monsters. Unlike the human characters, I could swap out monsters mid-battle with a paradigm shift. In fact, each monster seemed to correspond to a specific job class. My Ravager (Black Mage) was a Flan, my Commando (Warrior) a Behemoth, and my Sentinel (Defensive Class) was one of those scaly lizards whose name escapes me. I could definitely see monster collecting becoming an addicting feature.

Monster characters also have a “synchronize” bar similar to a limit break. When it’s full, you can unleash a powerful “Feral Attack”. This also involves light use of quick time events, but it feels less intrusive than the Cinematic Action segments and more similar to some of the special attacks found in older titles like Final Fantasy X.

I couldn’t help but notice that I recognized all these monsters, though. In fact, aside from the bosses, I seemed to recognize all the enemy monsters as well despite traveling through a new environment. I expected reused assets to some extent, but this seemed a bit much. Hopefully, the full game will have more new beasts to fight and tame.

Getting into battles feels like a hybrid of XIII and old-school random encounters. You won’t see monsters in the distance. Instead, monsters appear around you along with the Mog Clock. The amount of time you take to engage these monsters determines whether you receive bonuses or penalties at the start of battle.

Speaking of hybrids, the environment I explored was basically a town with dungeon paths jutting off of it. The center had lots of people walking around that I could speak with while the edges had paths leading to monster infested interior sections. It already felt a bit more branched than the maps found in XIII, but not as open as Gran Pulse. The map also had a few invisible treasure chests that had to be revealed with the help of your moogle buddy.

Eventually, I was presented with a dialogue option and a choice of how to proceed. The dialogue was more about who to hear advice from than what to actually do as the important decision was whether or not to walk up to a boss or try to weaken it first by locating its control unit found further in the dungeon. I decided on the latter as it seemed like a safe bet.

Near the control unit, I was presented with a puzzle section. I had to walk along a series of squares to pick up crystals while never touching the same square twice. It was easy enough, but the tutorial implied there would be other types of puzzles (though none were shown in the demo). It was a mildly interesting diversion along the lines of Final Fantasy X‘s Cloister of Trials.

Finally, I took on Atlas whose full body had now materialized. I assume the demo takes place very early in the game because, until this point, I hardly had to pay attention to battles at all. Atlas thankfully provided a little more challenge, forcing me to actually make use of the Medic class, but still went down rather fast, bringing the demo to a close.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 has potential. Collecting monsters excites my inner Pokémaniac and the prospect of towns, a bit of choice on how to proceed, and what appeared to be a more open stage map seemed promising. But the real test will be if it can avoid the painfully slow pacing of the first game.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 will release on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in January 2012.

I would say I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with strategy games, but I’d be lying to you. We just met. I don’t want to do that. No, I’ve never liked strategy games much. Just couldn’t work ‘em. Too many buttons.

I only started playing Starcraft 2 with any regularity over the past couple of months, and my skills are shaky at best. Some would say that this makes me an awful candidate to review King Arthur: Fallen Champions. I would say it makes me the perfect choice. After all, if I can figure it out and enjoy it, so could anybody!

King Arthur: Fallen Champions is an RPG/RTS and serves as the connecting tissue between King Arthur I and King Arthur II, meant to bridge the story and satiate the appetites of the fans before the later comes out in Q1 next year. The game takes place across three separate campaigns, each three missions long, where the player takes control of one of three distinctly different heroes who all possess their own unique powers. Once all three campaigns are completed, the three heroes join together for a final battle. Those heroes can be upgraded with new skills and outfitted with artifacts found on the battlefield.

"Simple choices like this can have a big impact on the next mission."

In between missions, players work their way through mini text adventures where their choices determine things like how many and what type of units you take into battle. At certain points, those choices even grant or take away power from your character. It’s a really interesting alternative to the standard resource management/unit factory format of most RTS games, and is executed fairly well. Most of the time, however, I couldn’t help but feel that the “correct” choices were all too obvious. I was almost always rewarded for pushing situations or picking whatever seemed like the worst option. If faced with a choice between a dark abandoned hut or a quiet forest path leading into a meadow, of course I would choose the hut. Surprise! There’s an army in there, just waiting for you to lead them. In some cases, making certain choices prevents you from making other choices. For instance, during one sequence I convinced a small group of soldiers to follow me. Some time later, I ran into a rival group of soldiers and was forced to make a choice between the two.

Of course, the real bread and butter of the game takes place on the battlefield. While some missions have you simply pressing onward and taking on every unit in your path, other missions present you with slightly more complicated objectives such as storming a hill where a warlock is summoning an infinite number of ghost warriors, or sneaking past large armies with your outnumbered platoon. Still others have you capturing and holding key locations on a battlefield. On this point, the game does a great job. No mission felt like a cookie cutter copy of the last, and the choices I made in the adventure portion of the game forced me to play each mission a little differently. However, an RTS is only as good as its combat. This is where Fallen Champions stumbles.

As far as units go, the player has access to various types: archers, calvary, and various types of infantry. Each unit type has advantages and disadvantages against other unit types. The problem is that the units are way too small, making it hard to distinguish what type of unit you have selected. On numerous occasions I would accidentally send my archers in to meet an army of spearmen in toe-to-toe combat, or even cast a harmful spell on my own units.

"Hold me closer, tiny soldiers!"

Compounding the problem, the camera was uncooperative more often than not. Sometimes it wouldn’t let me move the camera outside of a certain range of whatever unit I had selected. Other times, it was almost impossible to select the unit I needed because the camera would get caught on the terrain. There were even times where a unit wouldn’t accept a movement command outside of a certain distance, posing a problem when you tried to move particularly large armies as every so often, a squad would just stay behind.

King Arthur: Fallen Champions did grow on me. I’ve always felt that medieval strategy games are only for a very specific hardcore audience, and I still feel that’s true. But the missions are varied, the units are diverse, and there’s quite a bit of customization possible. Also, it’s relatively short. All this comes together to form a game worth playing two or three times, if you can deal with a few interface problems. If you’re a fan of the King Arthur series or you just can’t quit playing strategy games, I would say Fallen Champions is worth checking out. For ten bucks, I can live with its shortcomings.

This review is based on the PC version of King Arthur: Fallen Champions provided to us by Paradox Interactive.

Hopefully you cast “Read On,” because it sounds like NEStalgia creator, Ben Mallahan, has made something really special. Described as “Dragon Warrior 3 meets World of Warcraft,” NEStalgia combines all the charm of 8bit RPGs with the MMO genre.

More than just a superficial hybrid, the game also brings the turn based mechanics of old school RPGs into an MMO setting. You can team up with a party of other players across one of the available small scale servers or fight each other in some PvP battles. There’s even an auction house where you can trade your epic loot between other players.

Best of all, NEStalgia is completely free to play. Of course, if you want to show your support to the game, you can sign up for a $9 annual subscription or $20 lifetime subscription that unlocks four additional character classes and a few other optional features. Either way, the world of NEStalgia is just a download away.

News Credit: Joystiq
Official Site: SilkGames.com/NEStalgia/

The Last Story Diary is a series of articles in which I will chronicle my adventures while playing the Japanese version of Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi’s The Last Story. While there will be no spoilers of the story’s dialogue (I don’t know Japanese), there will be descriptions of certain situations I encounter that could be considered spoilers.

After playing awhile, I came to realize the best control scheme is the Classic Controller Pro. There are no motion controls or IR sensor controls, so the Wii Remote & Nunchuck hold no advantage. In fact, that scheme doesn’t have free camera movement, though you can still snap the camera behind you. The standard Classic Controller is almost perfect, but the second L & R buttons (which the game makes use of) are next to the first L & R instead of underneath like the Pro. Both of these schemes still work adequately, but the Classic Controller Pro is by far the most comfortable.

But I digress. Back to the story!

It was time for me to enter Ruli City. Immediately, I found myself in the town’s bar. This appeared to be the main base of operations for my rag tag crew. Seiren, my dual sword-wielding warrior, seemed to be in a constant state of drunkenness everytime I talked to her.

As I talked to more of my party members, I was occasionally confronted with dialogue trees. These were pretty minimal. Each contained only two or, on rarer occasion, three options. Sometimes characters would give me money for picking a certain option, though I have no idea why.

Finally, I left the bar and was free to explore the city. Ruli is surprisingly large. There are all kinds of paths and alleyways to take and plenty of people going about their lives. It’s very reminiscent of the way cities are portrayed in the Assassin’s Creed series, though on a smaller scale and without all the climbing. You can even run into people and shove them around, though nobody seems to care enough to stop your tomfoolery.

Thankfully, you can bring up a large version of the map while walking around. This makes finding the city’s many shops much easier. For how big and detailed the city is, I was a bit surprised to find that entering the shops sent me straight to a menu instead of taking me to an actual room to explore. The various shops allow you to purchase new equipment and ammo, upgrade your existing equipment, and even purchase new colors to customize your appearance. Unfortunately, both upgrades and new colors required materials I did not have.

"Ruli City has many alleyways."

After exploring the city a bit, I stumbled upon a giant building that housed an arena. Sieren took this opportunity to drunkenly persuade me to enter (or so I gather). The arena seems to be where you can take the opportunity to grind experience and money.

The arena fight was divided into multiple battles. I found myself in a room with many walls (both chest high and full height) creating a maze-like structure. This type of map made the battles pretty interesting. This is also where I was granted a new ability. While taking cover, I could move my stick toward an enemy to target them. After that, the press of a button would send Elza out to perform a charging slash on the targeted enemy. It proved to be quite useful.

After clearing out the room, a door opened. This led to another similarly maze-like room with what seemed to be increasingly stronger enemies. Eventually, I went from fighting soldiers to giant spiders.

When all the fighting was done, I started exploring Ruli a little more. Occasionally, my free-look icon would glow. This meant something would be revealed if I looked at it in first person view. Often times, it would be an item that, after looking at it, would become available for me to collect. One of these times, however, it revealed an event scene.

I found the girl from the cover art, Kanan, hiding in a cart. I took her for a stroll through the town until a turn of events led guards to start chasing us. This turned into a bit of a minigame. Occasionally, the guards would catch us and I’d have to keep tapping a button to shake them off of me. I ran around the city wondering what my destination was suppose to be. Really, though, I think I was just suppose to lose them. And after running through some alleyways and taking tricky corners, I did.

I must say after finding Ruli city, the language barrier started making itself more apparent. There were a few times were I became stuck, not knowing how to progress. But often times, the solution is simply to talk to everyone you can find.

"Beware of giant spiders."

When I found the right trigger, I was abruptly dropped into what the game referred to as “Robber’s Hideout.” After taking out a lone guard, I began to loot a decent amount of treasure chests. So in effect, I started stealing what were probably other peoples’ stolen goods with no intention of finding their rightful owners.

At this point, I had a few new party members with me: Jackal and Manamia. Jackal has a scarf and blond hair, so naturally I colored him like Fred from Scooby Doo. I also unlocked a few visual effects that could be optionally attached to characters in the color menu. One of them makes characters sparkle. So yes, Fred from Scooby Doo is in my party and he constantly sparkles inexplicably whether he’s fighting enemies, in a cutscreen, or just hanging out in the bar. The fact that I attached it to him and nobody else only adds to the silliness, as he is the only character in the game’s world that has this mysterious sparkling quality.

Shortly after journeying through the hideout, my party was split up, leaving me and Manamia to fend for ourselves. It didn’t last long before we were rejoined by the rest of the party and eventually confronted with the second full-on boss.

A little ways into the fight, I was confronted with a very familiar problem. My party members began shouting at me, trying to tell me something very important in a language I do not understand (that being Japanese, of course). This time though, the camera panned over to whatever this important thing was. “Hurray!” I thought to myself. This time, I might actually know what to do.

No dice. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how I was suppose to interact with… well… whatever it was I was suppose to be looking at (even the focal point I wasn’t quite sure on). Despite my party members’ diligent efforts to tell me how to defeat the boss (I assume), I was left killing him the old fashioned way once again. Much like the first boss, this ended up taking awhile since I was doing it all wrong.

And that’s where I stopped. Tune in next time for my trip to Ruli Castle!

Previous Posts:

Diary Entry #2 – Online
Diary Entry #1 – Journey Through the Lizard’s Cave

The Last Story Diary is a series of articles in which I will chronicle my adventures while playing the Japanese version of Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi’s The Last Story. While there will be no spoilers of the story’s dialogue (I don’t know Japanese), there will be descriptions of certain situations I encounter that could be considered spoilers.

After fighting the glowing blue tiger until he retreated, I decided to explore The Last Story‘s online modes a bit. There are two types of online modes. Versus mode has six players fighting each other in a deathmatch while Online Raid groups you with a party to play cooperatively.

I decided to try versus mode first. Unlike story mode (which has you controlling only Elza), I was able to choose from a rather large list of characters in versus. While the basic controls were the same for each, I found each character had unique strengths and abilities.

Everybody I used seemed to share the sword and crossbow combo, but with key differences. One character (who looked remarkably similar to Gannondorf) shot tiny arrows that seemed weak. But he was strong at close range, actually having a full shield for blocking instead of just using his weapon. I was also able to perform a running charge move to catch up with other players and stab them.

"Online Versus mode is chaotic, but fun."

Another character’s crossbow shot out larger, more powerful blasts. When holding a button down, they rose into the air to power up a magic attack. I could then aim around before unleashing a large area attack. It was powerful, but quite slow. Also, I couldn’t aim directly underneath me, so I had to have a nice distance between myself and my opponent for it to be effective.

Sometimes the battles were a free for all, but other times players were divided into 2 teams of 3. I’m not sure if somebody was selecting this option or if it was randomized. The map selection definitely looked randomized as a cursor bounced around a list at a high speed.

The free for all battles were pure chaos; six people running around like mad men, swinging their swords, shooting from behind cover, and casting giant magic attacks. But as I learned how to control different characters and actually started getting kills, it became a fun chaos.

Items occasionally drop on the map. Some of these gave me different ammo types to use with my crossbow. They all had limited ammo, but I didn’t lose them when I died, which was nice. Different ammo had different effects. One of them shot out banana peels. Yes, you can shoot banana peels out of your crossbow to make your opponents slip in true slapstick fashion. If that wasn’t enough, I found an item that swapped out my sword for a frying pan.

Team battles seemed a bit more organized. A red and blue score was visible at the top of the screen. Your team is awarded 10 points when you make a kill, but they lose 5 points when you die.

"Online Raids have you and five others fighting cooperatively against a boss."

I found I did much better as ranged characters. Shooting people from cover and doing area attacks on people fighting amongst themselves was a lot of fun. Of course, I didn’t stand a chance against melee experts in a sword fight, but that’s where I discovered a nice thing about team battles. If somebody made their way to me, I could run away and lead them into my teammates where we could gang up on them together. Essentially, I learned to lead people into traps.

It was getting late, but I decided to try an online raid before calling it quits for the night. To my surprise, this was not a dungeon, but simply a boss fight. There were still a decent number of characters I could chose from, but far less than the versus mode allowed. I’m guessing this listed only the “good guys” and left out evil characters, but that’s just a guess.

When I fell in battle, I had to wait for another player to come revive me. The same 4 life system from the story mode was in play. After awhile of fighting the beast with five other players, we were able to take it down.

Interestingly, playing online earned me a couple pieces of equipment that I could use in story mode. One of the swords I got was about double the attack power of the one I started the game with. I also moved up to Rank 2. I’m not sure if this is for anything more than bragging rights, but most of the other players I encountered were around Rank 8.

That’s where I stopped for the night. Next up, I’ll talk about The Last Story’s main base of operations, Ruli City. Stay tuned!

Previous Post: Diary Entry #1 – Journey Through the Lizard’s Cave

The Last Story Diary is a series of articles in which I will chronicle my adventures while playing the Japanese version of Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi’s The Last Story. While there will be no spoilers of the story’s dialogue (I don’t know Japanese), there will be descriptions of certain situations I encounter that could be considered spoilers.

As I booted up my imported copy of The Last Story, I was greeted by its elegant title screen. A beautiful piece by legendary composer Nobuo Uematsu plays as the screen fades to white and the title appears.

Upon choosing New Game, I was shocked to find myself in direct control within seconds. There were no incredibly long cutscreens explaining the world to me or seemingly endless segments in a peaceful town, waiting for some ancient evil to show up. Instead, a short camera pan showing my location, Lizard’s Cave, was the only thing preceding my journey through the first dungeon.

A very brief, optional video tutorial showed me the basics of the controls. Always on the lookout for treasure, I decided to venture in the opposite direction from the game’s initial starting point. I came across a weakened part of a wall which I was able to break open. This revealed a treasure chest. Yes, there was already a secret to find before I had ever gone in the direction the game wanted me to.

After moving around a bit, I decided to delve into the game’s menus. Not only do they have a slick design, many of them thankfully have a decent amount of English text. I noticed an option named Color. It allowed me to change the color of eight different aspects of each character’s clothing as well as toggle visibility on certain pieces of my armor.

I could tell I was going to have some fun with this. Immediately, I switched from the grim, funeral-ready palette my characters wore to a bright, pink jacket and blue jeans. You can save these pallets for quick access.

While familiarizing myself with my abilities, I found that I can take cover behind walls (both chest high and regular height) and take pot shots with my crossbow. By accident, I also discovered that I could cartwheel over the backs of my party members (forward or backward). Any game that allows you to cartwheel over your comrade’s back while wearing a bright pink jacket is a-ok in my book.

Before encountering enemies, I was presented with a battle map. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t any actions I could take at this stage. It did, however, give me an overview of everything I was up against. After an easy battle, I noticed my party’s health seemed to regenerate between large encounters.

A later battle proved more interesting as it introduced me to destructible environments. By looking around in first person view, I was able to find a structure and order one of my party members to cast a magic attack to bring it down. At this point, I fought not only enemies on the ground, but also snipers on a bridge above. This forced me to make use of both my sword and crossbow.

Things got much more interesting, though, when I received the gathering ability. The touch of a button will toggle it on, causing all enemies to focus on you. There are obvious dangers by pushing the “Hey, guys! Come kill me!” button, but it allows you to manipulate enemies into leaving your magic users alone. Magic attacks have a countdown timer and if your party member is hit before it reaches zero, they’ll lose their progress on casting that attack.

Another interesting bit about gathering is that you must have it on to revive fallen party members. Everybody, including main character Elza, has four lives essentially. Lose one of your own and you’ll get up after a moment with your gathering ability turned back off. But if your party members need a revive, you’ll have to run over to them and enable your gathering ability, alerting the enemy in the process.

A special circle right before the dungeon’s boss allowed me to respawn enemies in case I wanted to grind. I unintentionally tried it once before continuing. After I entered the boss room, everything really started falling apart. I had no idea what I was doing, and almost lost. A giant creature threw spears of energy that exploded after a delay. Occasionally, I got impaled by one which, after blowing up, caused massive damage.

The creature occasionally went on a rampage, destroying pillars in the room. One of my party members cast a circle of fire which, when I entered it, powered up my weapon with the fire element. There were also items on the ground labeled “cannon” that I could throw, causing a white circle to appear, though I wasn’t entirely sure how they worked.

After a long fight in which all my party members died, I finally bested the beast. It wasn’t until looking online later that I learned I was suppose to lure him to a bridge with the gathering ability and blow it up, causing him to fall to an instant death. Whoops! Better luck next time, I suppose. Still, having the “insta-kill” be optional rather than required is a nice change of pace, even if it meant me doing things the hard way.

Shortly after leaving the dungeon, I found another large fight waiting for me. I ran across a mountainside as tons of civilians ran the opposite direction until I came across a white tiger with a blue glow. This boss fight was much less drawn out (since, you know… I was actually SUPPOSE to fight this one). But aside from the standard attacking, dodging, and guarding, I also needed to lure it away as one of my party members helped a few trapped civilians escape. It added an interesting layer to the fight.

And that’s where I ended my first play session with The Last Story. Be sure to check back soon for the next entry!

The Mojave wasteland is a dangerous place. It’s full of giant mutated animals, raiders, and warring factions, all vying for the same small pieces of dust that are still livable. In other words, it’s just an average day in the Fallout universe.

This time around, Obsidian Entertainment is at the helm, and their team has some of the guys from the original PC Fallout games. While I’ve only briefly experienced the first two games, I was very interested to see what they would bring to the table for Fallout: New Vegas.

Let’s get this out of the way right off the bat; New Vegas is not Fallout 4. Obsidian used Bethesda’s Gamebryo engine to build the game. New Vegas looks and feels a lot like Fallout 3. Some might even say exactly like it. The FPS mechanics are in place, the V.A.T.S. system is there, and the character models are still kind of ugly, while the wasteland has it’s own strange beauty to it. This is, as it was intended to be, a spin-off.

Basic game mechanics aside, Obsidian did leave their stamp on the franchise once again.

The Fallout series has always been known for its Karma system. Knowledge of your good or bad deeds will spread around the wasteland. This will effect how various characters react to you in conversations, even opening or closing quest chains depending on what they think of you. There is another layer added to that in New Vegas. Now, all the characters belong to various factions.

Your behavior towards the factions will cause you to either be liked, which opens up new quests and gives you discounts in their stores, or hated. If a faction hates you, they will usually attack you on site. There is one way around this, in which you can wear the clothes of their faction and they will accept you as one of their own. Sounds like a get out of jail free card, right?

Well, it would be, but sometimes the NPC’s are smarter than that.

After becoming hated with a group of outlaws because I defended a town against them, I tried to infiltrate the prison they had taken over by wearing their faction armor. However, when I got to the guard at their door, he knew something was up. I played as a female character, and he knew there were no woman at the prison before the takeover. It was an interesting twist that I was not expecting to come across.

And that is really the strength of New Vegas. As you would expect with a story driven RPG, Fallout: New Vegas has a plot full of twists and turns. It’s these sort of moments where the game takes you completely by surprise that really drive things forward. Every quest has multiple ways to approach it, depending on your character stats, and several different outcomes. This is great news if you are the kind of gamer that re-plays their games several times. If you want to try something fun, put your intelligence down to 1. Characters will comment on how stupid you are, and your responses in conversations will sometimes reflect your lack of communication skills.

That speaks to another aspect that is very firmly intact for New Vegas. The games have traditionally had a very dark sense of humor, and that is definitely present here. There is even a special perk you can choose at the start of the game called “Wild Wasteland” which will add such Easter eggs as an adventurer that was killed in the nuclear blast while hiding in a fridge, a scorched couple you can find in a destroyed town named Owen and Beru, and many more such nerdy references.

"Me and RoboCop, chillin in the Wasteland"

But sadly, it isn’t all fun and games in the wasteland. Those that bought the game at launch, or that don’t have an internet connection, are very likely to encounter bugs. I started playing New Vegas the day the first patch hit the PC version. Even still, I encountered some crashes, framerate issues when playing for extended periods of time, and one instance where my companion stopped following me and I had to reload my save file to correct the issue.

Since this was post-patch, the issues were pretty few and far between for me. There is also already a second patch in the works. But please be aware; if you normally don’t have your console of choice hooked up to the internet to download the latest software patches, you will likely encounter some very strange bugs. If you have the means to hook your machine to the internets, please do so if you plan on playing through New Vegas. For your own sake.

That aside, I really enjoyed my time with Fallout: New Vegas. The writing was interesting and took turns that surprised me. The mechanics I loved in 3 were back and worked just as well as I remembered. For fans of the series, New Vegas is going to be a must play. If you are new to the franchise, I would probably suggest either waiting for the second patch or picking up Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition. Either way, you are in for some fun in the desolate wasteland sun.

This review is based on a copy of the PC (Steam) version of Fallout: New Vegas provided to us by Bethesda Softworks.

I’m not going to lie. Most of the time I spend playing games on my iPod Touch is when I’m either bored waiting in a line somewhere or on the can. This doesn’t so much reflect poorly on the quality of games on the platform as it does on me as a consumer.

On rare occasion, a game for my beloved music/audiobook/podcast machine will come out that is so addictive I actually choose to play it on my couch under “normal” gaming conditions.

Game Dev Story is such a game.

Game Dev Story has a simple premise: you manage a fledgling game studio. It is up to you to choose projects and assign tasks to your team of programmers to get the job done. Your product will then get released to the reviewers and finally the mass market.

At the start of the game, you are in a small studio with only two developers and room for two more. You don’t own any licenses for the few consoles on the market, so you can either make a PC game, buy a license for a console currently on the market, or take a contract making a product as a third party (which is usually a quick way to raise capital).

When you do go to make your first game, you’ll have a limited number of game types and styles to choose from. You also pick the directions the game goes in, putting your few available points into cuteness, realism, niche appeal, polish, etc. If the game type, style, and direction work well together, you have a better chance at being successful on the market. Popular games will grow your fanbase, which will result in higher sales on future titles.

Game development is broken up into segments. When you first start a game, you pick one of your developers to write up the proposal, or you can pay extra to outsource it. As your developers work on the game, their stats will determine how many points they are putting into the fun, creativity, graphics, and sound on the game. In the alpha and beta phases, you have opportunities for a developer with the relevant job and skills to add big boosts to those categories.

As you progress, you can level up your developers job classes, train them for new skills and in doing so, unlock new game types and styles. As time passes, new consoles will come onto the market, and old ones will vanish.

If your game gets good enough review scores, it will enter the hall of fame and you will be able to make sequels, which will automatically have hype built into them. Once you have the funds and have leveled your characters up enough, you can even build your own console.

Game Dev Story has a certain charm for those that have followed gaming throughout the years. The art is all done in a charming pixelated style. The consoles are all parodies of actual game consoles, from the IES to the Playstatus and Game-Box. Even the developers are parodies of famous programmers, artist, and actors. There is even a game conference where you can hire a mascot, booth babes, or a celebrity guest to promote your work.

While it has some light strategy and RPG elements, most of the gameplay is pretty automated. You make the decisions of who does what, but you don’t do any of the actual work. Your characters are really just a list of stats, and this is where the game started to fall apart for me.

When WingDamage, Inc. (my in-game studio) was small and had only a few programmers with fairly low stats, it felt like I had to really try my best to match up game styles and directions to make a hit. The reviewer that gave my game a 6 and said “Only hardcore players will like it…” might have had a point. Maybe I should adjust the direction on my next effort.

So I tweaked things until I finally had a game with scores that were eights and above and made the Hall of Fame.

Once I had my first hit, Dungeon Guy IV (I didn’t know about sequels, and was naming them as such myself), I was on a roll. I had money coming in. Enough that I could throw huge amounts at my next game. I experimented with a pop star simulator (Kidz Popz), its spin-off, a pop star puzzle game (Kidz Popz Puzzlz), and an Egypt themed audio novel called Dr. Egypt.

Since I had money to throw at these projects, the stats automatically turned into good scores from reviewers, which in turn became more sales.

By the time I was up to Dungeon Guy IV 3, I was unstoppable. I had so much money that I was able to hire all-new, super talented people to my staff, max their levels, and continually throw money at their training. I released my first console, The Barrel Roll, and made even more money.

While Game Dev Story is incredible fun and addictive, especially when you first start out and are struggling to get off the ground, it does have some major flaws. It is incredibly easy to break the game once you have money rolling in.

I could not longer fail. Even when I intentionally started making unpopular game combinations which would get less than stellar reviews, they would sell. My card based checkers game, Card Checkz sold gangbusters. And that is when I stopped playing.

That said, I do think it’s worth picking up if you are looking for something fun and interesting for your iDevice. For only a couple of dollars, I played a good six hours or so of Game Dev Story. That’s more than I can say for some triple-A “blockbuster” titles I’ve played.

This is a game I would love to see a sequel to. If Kairosoft were able to expand on the basic ideas presented in Game Dev Story, I think they could potentially have one of the all-time great game concepts on their hands. They have a really interesting thing going on here and I would love to see more of it.

"Looking for treasure... just like the Goonies."

In any given RPG, the wooden sword and cardboard shield you start with aren’t going to be the ones you keep forever. Usually you get rid of them by the time you hit your first town. But when you buy that new set of gear and equip it, only to find your character has only changed in numbers and not in appearance, it is a bit of a letdown.

If you are talking about old school sprite based games, I will concede that it was more trouble than it was probably worth to put visible loot into a game. Re-drawing that many sprites would be time consuming and prohibitively costly. Where 3D character models are involved, there aren’t a lot of excuses left when you are dealing with stat driven games and RPG mechanics.

There is nothing quite as addictive to me as a progressive, well thought out loot system that is reflected on your character.

I am not going to deny the merits of a well developed “static” character in this article. That is an entirely different subject. What I’m talking about are games where character growth is driven by a good system of fighting monsters, getting gold, and gathering random loot drops. Recently, three very different games have made me realize what a sucker I am for loot.

The first was Torchlight, which I originally saw when wandering the show floor of PAX last year. What drew me in at a glance was its aesthetics. Runic Games picked a very unique, cartoonish style for their world that I find very appealing.

I happily pre-ordered the game through Steam, then sunk a ton of hours into it upon its release. Torchlight is what has commonly become known as a “Diablo Clone”; a game where you fights hordes of enemies, gain levels and new abilities, and most importantly, collect randomly dropped loot. Combat takes place by clicking on your enemies and (most effectively) using keyboard shortcuts to use your special abilities to get yourself out of jams, buff your stats, etc.

The loot is progressively better as you delve deeper into the mines and fight tougher monsters. Being a class based game, much of what you find won’t apply to the character you are currently using. The good news is, you can store it in a special treasure chest for your other characters back in town or give them to your pet, who can go back to town and sell all your stuff while you keep fighting. This is a huge contributing factor as to why Torchlight is my favorite game in this genre.

Torchlight is an easy recommendation to make. For a mere $20, it provides hours of loot hunting goodness. If you keep your eyes pealed, it often goes on sale in both the Steam and Direct2Drive stores.

The second game that made me realize my loot addiction was Borderlands. 2k Games was stoking the fires of the hype machine for this game long before it’s release, but something about it just didn’t hook me; until I played it for myself, that is.

When I booted up Borderlands, my first thought was that it was trying a little hard to be “wacky”. The bus driver’s thick accent and abrasive personality while he regails you with stories of the vault and the aggressively goofy, nearly Jar Jar-esque first encounter with Claptrap turned me off.

I had heard good things and really wanted to give it a fare shake. I’m glad I did. Once I settled in to the world of Pandora, I found myself addicted. Once again, the game had a heavy focus on a loot mechanic. This time, instead of swords and armor, you find guns. Lots of guns.

The fun thing about the loot in Borderlands is the strange combination of stats the guns can have. I have found a shotgun that fires all the bullets in one big ball in a perfectly straight line, essentially making it act like a rocket launcher. I have found a 2-shot pistol that, despite a super-fast reload time, regenerated bullets faster than I could shoot them.

The loot system drew me in enough to not only end up loving the game (enough that it was #10 on my top games of last year), but I actually ended up enjoying the goofy aesthetic that went along with it.

The third game on my list works in an entirely different way, but is still all about the loot. Monster Hunter Tri doesn’t just hand you loot, you have to work for it.

I once told my wife that if they ever made an MMO that played like Fable 2, I would be hooked for life. I have to amend that and replace Fable 2 with Monster Hunter Tri.

The Monster Hunter series doesn’t have a level up mechanic. If you want to be stronger, then you need loot. But you aren’t just handed loot from killing the game’s impressively giant monsters. You kill monsters, skin them for parts, gather resources, then build and upgrade your own weapons and armor.

Even with as much as I enjoy random loot drops, there is something even more gratifying about doing a boss run to get that last piece of the puzzle you are missing to build that sweet new giant hammer or finish a full set of matching armor to get it’s additional bonuses.

There may not be a lot of story or any character development to speak of, but Monster Hunter Tri keeps me playing with my friends for one thing alone: the love of loot.