I heard a lot of good things about Ghost Trick when it was released last year for the Nintendo DS, but I could never find a copy of it, which isn’t unusual for the adventure game genre, especially ones created by Shu Takumi (who also did the Ace Detective/Phoenix Wright series). I nearly forgot about it until I received an iPad and found it in the App Store.

The game places you in the role of Sissel, a recently diseased spirit who has only a single night to solve the mystery surrounding his death, as well as his true identity. Sissel has an assortment of “ghost tricks” that allow him to possess and manipulate inanimate objects. He also has the ability to return to 4 minutes before a person’s death. These skills come in handy, as he’ll need to save his living companions as they all work together to solve the mystery.

From what I can tell, the core mechanics haven’t changed when the game made the jump from the DS to iOS. Instead of using a stylus, you use your finger to guide Sissel’s spirit between objects. The graphics, however, received a major overhaul. All the sprites are now smoother and the game looks fantastic in an HD resolution.

The best part is that the first two chapters are free on iOS, so you can give them a try and see if you like it. The remaining 16 chapters must be purchased (either in 3 groups at $5 each or all at once for $10), but once you’ve played the first two chapters, you’ll probably be so hooked that you’ll end up paying for the rest of it before too long.

While there were some frustrating parts that mostly had to deal with my bad sense of timing, the story was so compelling that I had to finish it, no matter what. The cast of characters is so unique, and all their stories are interwoven into the plot, that it’s difficult to say who my favorite it, but it’s probably Bailey and his Panic Dance:

I will argue to the death that games can be seen as art. Just take thatgamecompany’s Journey. I had been hearing a lot of good things about it, but even with as much praise as it was getting, none of it simply did it any justice. And I don’t really expect my own review here to do it any justice.

I started my journey alone in a desert. I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do, other than walk towards the mountain I saw in the distance. After some time, I managed to work my way to the next level, picking up a glowing ball that made my scarf longer and seeing a glyph on a derelict wall.

It was this in next level that I met my companion. I didn’t know their name, but we immediately formed a bond. They helped me gather more glowing balls, showing extreme patience when I was having difficulties flying up to get one. But they never gave up on me and we eventually both got our glowing balls.

There were a few times that I couldn’t find my buddy. In those moments, I felt close to crying. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to them. But we always found each other again and we managed to stay together right up until the very end. Being with my pal until the very end was definitely the best way to finish up my first playthrough.

When it was all over, and the credits rolled, my pal’s name was finally revealed to me. I’ve sent them a friend request, as well as a note thanking them for an excellent journey together. I hope that wasn’t too cheesy of me, but I just wanted to thank them for really making my day amazing.

Journey is a game that must be experienced. If you have a Playstation 3, I cannot recommend enough that you pick this title up. Meanwhile, I’ll be wandering the desert again, hoping to find every secret that the game has to offer.

Friday nights in our household are game nights with the family. We take turns picking out what game we play each week. This week, we played Fortune Street on the Wii. It’s basically just like Monopoly, but with Mario and Dragon Quest characters.

There are actually quite a lot of characters to choose from, with four unlockable characters, including Princess Peach. For some reason, Daisy is available right from the beginning, but her more popular cousin isn’t. That made my daughter happy, since Daisy is her favorite, but it’s just a little strange and backwards from what usually is the case with other Mario titles.

The gameplay of Fortune Street is pretty simple: you roll a die and move around the board buying property and stocks. The goal is to be the first player to reach a certain money level (generally between 10,000G and 12,000G). And, much like Monopoly, each turn is actually pretty slow.

The slow pace of the game meant everyone wanted to stop playing before we even finished a full game. Even playing single player, the pace is awfully slow. It takes quite a while to get through all the computer players’ turns, especially when their speech bubbles pop up from time to time.

Even with the variety of levels hat there are to play on, one stage is pretty much like the others. The only difference between them are the way the shops and special spaces are laid out.

This is one game that I’d definitely say you should pass on, unless you just really like buying and selling real estate and stocks. Other than that, if you really must have a video board game to play, I’d just stick with a Mario Party title.

It’s not secret that I’ve got a deep love for everything MegaTen. I own just about every North American release there is for the series, including spin-offs like the Persona series. So even though I’ve owned Persona 3 FES for quite a while, I never actually got around to playing it. When I picked up my Vita, however, I knew that the first game I had to buy was the PSP remake of Persona 3.

Persona 3 Portable makes some pretty noticeable changes from the original; namely, the inclusion of a female protagonist. I think that’s probably the biggest reason why I wanted to play this version instead of the original or FES. Generally speaking, if I’m given a choice to play a male or female character, I will pick female 99% of the time.

Another change is the presentation. With P3P, Atlus made the game more like a visual novel. You still run around Tartarus and get into random battles with Shadows, but anytime you’re not in the labyrinth, you move with a cursor. I think this helps a bit with the story presentation, but if you’re one to avoid a lot of menus, this can be a bit of an irritant.

The story places you in the role of a new transfer student of Gekkoukan High, who is tasked with saving the world. Though it might seem like the usual JRPG fodder, the way it goes about this is pretty unique. You must balance school work and fighting, as well as maximizing your relationship with other characters, called Social Links. All of these aspects are important in successfully beating the game.

My first playthrough, I got the bad ending. I wasn’t following a guide and didn’t realize that by making a certain choice on December 31, I would be ending my game early. Luckily, it still allowed me to save my Clear data, so I could start a new game with all my levels and equipment. I’m on my second playthrough and am using a guide this time to max out my Social Links.

If you haven’t had a chance to play this yet, now’s as good a time as any, especially since Atlus recently reduced prices on many of their PSP titles through the PSN store. $20 is a steal for a game this solid.

By now, I think most people have played a Katamari Damacy game. The series has been out on multiple platforms since 2004, so I’m relatively certain that most of you will know what they are. But just in case you’ve been under a rock these past 8 years, your job is to roll up everything in sight, making your katamari as big as possible under a time limit.

Touch My Katamari is basically the same as every other Katamari title, but it brings along a new trick: you can squish or stretch your katamari by using the read touchpad. This is great for squeezing underneath or between tight spaces. This comes in handy quite a bit, since, even if you get to be a certain size, there’s still a way to get through areas that are smaller.

Another change is the way you find cousins and presents. The first time you play a stage, neither a cousin nor a present appear. If you play the stage a second time, the cousin will show up in the stage until you roll them up. The next time you play the stage after picking up the cousin, the present will be available. It’s kind of annoying to have to play a level at least 3 times in order to find everything, but I guess it will encourage players to replay the game.

That’s probably because game is awfully short. In a span of 2 days, I was able to make it through all the levels in the game, as well as pick up all the cousins. The levels also didn’t seem as big as even the Playstation 2 stages, which was disappointing, but I supposed compared to rolling up the cosmos, everything seems small in comparison.

Namco Bandai did a fantastic job with the DLC. Instead of having to pay for new levels, you can earn Fan Damacies in order to unlock them. They show up from time to time in any stage and all you have to do is roll them up. Once you collect 10, you can use them to unlock a new stage. I haven’t quite gotten enough for one stage yet (I’m stuck on 7), but it’s great that there’s a way to play without having to pay more. That was one of the biggest gripes I had about Beautiful Katamari.

If you’ve got a Vita, I highly recommend this title. The storyline is hilarious and very King-of-All-Cosmos-centric. And even though the stages are relatively small, there’s still a lot of fun things to discover laying around as you roll everything up.

It’s rare when a Final Fantasy game gets a proper sequel, but by the time I finished the original Final Fantasy XIII, I knew that I’d want more of Lightning. After all, she was perfect: a strong female character who didn’t need saving. Then a sequel was announced and I was giddy. The more I saw of it, the more excited I got.

Up until they revealed that you don’t get to play as Lightning very much at all.

Honestly, I almost didn’t buy the game because of that. Don’t get me wrong, Serah is an interesting character, but she served as the Damsel in Distress pretty much for the entirety of the original. But I couldn’t pass up to find out more about what happens and why Lightning ended up in Valhalla.

I wasn’t exactly disappointed. The game is nice, but it works more of an extension of the Fabula Nova Crystallis collection than a proper sequel to Final Fantasy XIII.

As I mentioned before, the story follows Serah, Lightning’s sister, as she works with Noel, a boy from the future, to fix the paradoxes of history that were caused when Lightning disappeared. I won’t spoil too much of the story, since that’s the biggest draw into the game, but most of the characters from the first game make an appearance. Sazh even gets his own DLC episode (which I’ve yet to play).

The battle system from the first game is pretty much the same: you can still switch paradigms at will to change up your strategy in the middle of a fight. Because there are only two human party members that you get to control, you also can capture monsters to fight with you that will act as a third member of the group. Each monster has its own role and cannot change, so it’s important to have lots of different monsters to help round out your paradigms.

The biggest complaint people had about the original has been fixed: this game is not very linear at all. Because of all the time travel, you’re allowed to visit whatever era you’d like in whatever order, as long as you’ve unlocked it first. There are even quite a few areas that are completely optional and have no direct bearing on the main story, but do provide a nice backstory to the game.

After you beat the game, there is still plenty to do. Most of the areas can be re-explored and new items and monsters can be found, harder versions of certain bosses can be re-conquered, and there is always new DLC (though that will cost you more money).

While I enjoyed my time with the game, there were parts that felt like it really dragged on, particularly towards the end. The last boss fight didn’t help, considering you have a number of bosses to fight with no break between them and no way to save if you fail. Luckily, I got through them on my first try after about 45 minutes of playing.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a decent follow-up to the original, but I don’t think I can recommend it for anyone other than fans of the first game. On its own, the story is pretty weak and only really holds up if you understand the backstory. The action is good, but be prepared to invest a lot of time into boss battles, especially if you’re underpowered.

5. Dragon Age II

From what I’ve noticed, you either love Dragon Age II or you hated it. There really didn’t seem to be much in-between in the people I talked to. I’m one of the ones who loved it. Even after finishing it twice, I still find myself thinking back to the characters and how it sets the stage for the third game that will, hopefully, come out before too long. A lot of people criticize it for its repetitious maps, but it’s easy to look past it when you’re having fun. I wish I had more of a reason to put it back in my Xbox, but after getting all the achievements (including for all the DLC that’s been released so far) and thinking on about how many other games I have yet to finish, I just can’t justify it. But I really, REALLY want to.

4. Catherine

In the months leading up to Catherine’s release, I was obsessed. I created a Japanese Live account, just to try out the Japanese demo over and over and over. This game showed that a “mature” rating could mean more than just violence by tackling a touchy subject like infidelity. I found myself sympathizing with Vincent, which only drew me into the game even further. Add all that up with unique gameplay and multiple endings, and Catherine really had cemented itself as one of my favorite games of all time. My one gripe is the fandom, many of whom really ruined the whole experience for me, so much that I didn’t even finish recording my playthrough videos.

3. Assassin’s Creed: Revelations

I haven’t had this many emotions for a video game series ever. Assassin’s Creed: Revelations brought Ezio’s and Altaïr’s stories to an amazing end, and I couldn’t even play it until I was sure that I was ready for that. After the ending credits rolled, I felt a little empty. Maybe it’s silly to get so attached to a video game, but I really enjoyed experiencing the journeys of the Assassins. And sure, there’s always the opportunity to replay them, but it won’t be the same as that magical first time.

2. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Up until late December, I couldn’t stop playing Skyrim. Even in my dreams, I would be traveling across the snowy landscape, fighting dragons. The game really has something for everyone, since you’re not forced to do anything that you don’t really want to do. It’s perfect for a gamer that doesn’t have a lot of time to focus all at once, like me, since I could stop in the middle of pretty much whatever I was doing and pick it back up again later. I haven’t finished the main story yet, but that’s only because my journeys across Skyrim have taken me far and wide.

1. Star Wars: The Old Republic

I often told people, when talking about Skyrim, that it would so much better if there were a way to adventure with your friends. But that’s exactly what BioWare has done with Star Wars: The Old Republic. I’m not going to lie: I didn’t have high hopes for SW:TOR. I’m not much of an MMO player; I’ve never played WoW and my only experience with the genre has been with Free-to-Play games that just aren’t the same caliber as a Pay-to-Play. And if I’m having this much fun with it solo, I can’t imagine what will happen once I actually find a guild that I enjoy!

Normally, I wait until I finish a game before I put up a review, but with Skyrim being the huge game it is, there is no way I’m going to ever be “finished” with this game. I mean, sure, I could probably get around to beating the main storyline if I wanted to, but there is just so much to do and I want to do it all.

I will be quite upfront: the only other Elder Scrolls game I’ve ever played was Oblivion, but I never got very far out of the sewers before giving up in frustration. I tried to follow the storyline and head to Kvatch, but then there were the Oblivion gates and that didn’t end up so well. Then I decided to restart and head over to the Shivering Isles. That was more successful, but I still quickly lost interest.

I was kind of afraid that would happen with Skyrim, but it hasn’t. I keep finding things I enjoy about the game and I’ve even managed to get quite a bit into the story quests! And even after all that, I keep finding more things that I want to do.

Skyrim puts you in the role as the Dovahkiin, the Dragonborn. Dragons are returning to Skyrim and only you can stop them. Where you go from there, however, is entirely up to you. As I said before, there is just so much to do that I doubt that anyone could ever truly be finished with the game.

However, the sense of “doing anything you want” can be a bit overwhelming at times. Even though I have a million quests queued up to play, I don’t really want to do any of them because I don’t know which would be the best to do first. So I end up just wandering around and goofing off. Which isn’t a bad thing, but I sometimes like a little more structure.

By far, the most satisfying thing in the game is the fights with the dragons. It’s extremely satisfying to use Shouts (magic using the language of dragons) back at them or to perform a killing blow with your weapon of choice (mine is a mace). Although sometimes, even after they die, they don’t stop moving:

My biggest complaint comes from how racist everyone in the world of Tamriel seems to be. The Storkcloaks pretty much hate everyone who isn’t a Nord. Everyone hates the Khajit. Most Nords, whether Stormcloak or not, distrust the Altmer. I know that there are in-game reasons for this, but it all seems so wrong. While Kyril (my character) never had much trouble, it was because she was a Nord, which is the most populous race in the area, so everyone pretty much loved her. I can’t imagine what I’d do if I faced racism in a game. I get enough of that in my day-to-day life and video games should be an escape from that.

Overall, though, my time in Skyrim has been a lot of fun. I’ve already finished the Companions storyline and I’ve helped the Stormcloaks take over Skyrim. I just wish I could have discovered they were so racist before I agreed to help Ulfric. But I look forward to getting through the main quest line and seeing what happens with the dragons.

I can’t even explain how excited I was the days leading up to the release of Assassin’s Creed: Revelations.  I managed to finish Brotherhood the week before the release of Revelations, so I was all caught up on the story. And, knowing how Brotherhood ended, I wanted to know what would come next. Was Lucy really dead after Desmond stabbed her while under Juno’s control? How would Ezio’s story end? Would we learn more about Altaïr?

Revelations is the third game in Ezio’s trilogy, and the final game to feature both the Italian assassin and Altaïr, the assassin from the original game. After taking revenge against the people who murdered his family and freeing Rome from the rule of the Borgia, Ezio has dedicated the later years of his life to learning what he can from his mentor, Altaïr. He discovers that there was a hidden library in Masyaf, containing knowledge that could make a huge difference in the struggles with the Templars. However, the former Assassin Stronghold has been overrun with Templars who have discovered the same thing. Lucky for Ezio, the library has been locked and can only be opened with five keys (which resembled CDs more than actual keys). Traveling to Constantinople, Ezio searches for the keys before they fall into Templar hands.

Most of the action pieces are the same as previous Assassin’s Creed titles: you’ll still be climbing buildings and killing people to get through most of the memories, but there are a few new toys to play with this time around. Yusuf, a Turkish assassin that Ezio meets in Constantinople, teaches him early on about the wonders of the hookblade. It acts as an extension of the arm while climbing and also allows Ezio to use ziplines to get around the city quicker. I loved performing hook-and-runs while I was trying to escape from enemies that I didn’t want to fight.

Bombs are another new addition. Through the use of crafting tables, you can make a large variety of bombs to distract, kill, and evade enemies. I never really used this feature unless it was part of a memory sequence and I had to, because I found it a bit cumbersome. Mostly, I sold my bomb crafting ingredients to make money to help renovate Constantinople.

Yes, just like in Brotherhood, you can renovate the city you’re in. And, just like before, you have to take out Templar Dens in order to unlock the shops in the city. But Revelations takes this mechanic a step further with the Den Defense minigame. When you’ve liberated a Templar Den, you turn it into an Assassin Den. If you allow your Templar Awareness (formerly Notoriety) to raise too high, there’s a chance the Templars will strike back and attack your Den. Den Defense plays like a tower defense game. You arrange fighters on rooftops to try and stop waves of Templars before they destroy your Den. It was an interesting mechanic but, again, one I didn’t experience a lot unless I had to for a memory sequence.

The thing that makes me the happiest about the game is Sophia. She’s smart, funny, and doesn’t end up being killed just for the sake of moving along the story (unlike Maria, Christina, and Lucy). It’s safe to say that she’s probably my favorite character in the whole series so far, with the possible exception of Yusuf.

I’m not ashamed to admit to tearing up at the end, particularly with the “Sit a moment and rest” objective. To see the end of both Ezio and Altaïr’s stories was very emotional for me, as a fan who has practically devoured every bit of media that there has been. This series has kindled a love of history in me that no teacher ever had been able to (fun fact: the only subject I ever received anything lower than a B in during high school was history).

The game did a good job answering the questions I asked earlier. The only problem is that there are now new questions that need answering. Where exactly did Jupiter instruct Desmond to go? How will the rest of Desmond’s team react to him being awake? Where did Desmond’s scar go? What about the descendant of Eve that Desmond is supposed to find?

Ideally, I’d really like Assassin’s Creed 3 to take place in the present, with Desmond and his team trying to figure out what’s going on in the vault that Jupiter sent Desmond to. There are also speculations that the next game will take place in Egypt or Japan.

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations was a fantastic game and one you shouldn’t miss. If you’ve never played another Assassin’s Creed game, you might not understand everything that’s going on, but they do try and catch you up in the first few minutes of the game. Plus, there’s always multiplayer.

The first LEGO Harry Potter game has a special place in my heart. It was the first retail game that I ever got 100% of the achievements for. When the second game came out, I knew I’d probably be playing it just as obsessively to get every achievement.

As I mentioned when I reviewed LEGO Star Wars III, every LEGO game tends to be pretty similar to all the others. If you’ve played one, you know how to play all the others pretty much. The only thing that really differs is abilities. LEGO Harry Potter has a big focus on spells, and most characters can use the same spells, with few exceptions.

As with the books and movies before them, the second LEGO Harry Potter game takes a darker turn. That’s not to say that the usual humor isn’t there, but there are some definite sad parts, as anyone who has had previous exposure to the series will tell you. I won’t spoil too much, but people die. Sure, it’s done in a humorous way, but if you really think about what’s going on with these characters, it’s horribly sad.

I was amazed at the size of the game. It’s very easy to get lost in Hogwarts, particularly after you’ve beaten the game and your ghostly guide isn’t taking you from room-to-room anymore. And you’ll need to explore every nook and cranny because there are a lot of collectibles this time around.

Gone are minikits and, in their place, are character tokens. 200 of them, in fact. And you can’t use any new characters until you find their tokens, unlike in previous games where you would unlock characters as soon as you used them in a level. This proved to be the most irksome part of the game for me, because it’s often really difficult to find some of them. I spent 2 days trying to find a character that could use a key (there are only 3 and they cannot be obtained until you have at least one Dark Magic user).

200 characters seems like a lot, but quite a few of them are different variations of the same character. Harry alone has 6 or 7, not including his default that unlocks at the beginning of the game. But even with all the variations, everyone’s favorites are more than likely there, since there are a lot of obscure characters included. Unfortunately, there is not a single “19 Years Later” character, nor can you play as the kids of the students.

Also new this time around are wizard duels. They’re actually kind of annoying and really feel like they break up the action. Basically, you and the wizard that you’re dueling stand in a circle. You have to fire a spell at your opponent that matches the color spell they’re going to throw at you, than mash a button to win that round of the duel. The first person to lose all their hearts loses. If that’s you, you have to start the duel over from the beginning.

It’s kind of sad saying goodbye to Hogwarts. Out of all the LEGO games, the Harry Potter series is definitely my favorite, even more than Star Wars (which is saying something, coming from the woman whose bedroom is covered in LEGO Star Wars kits). This game was definitely a great sendoff for the series, though. Unfortunately, once you get all the achievements, the replay value does take a bit of a dive, but until you do, it’s a fun ride.

I don’t own many 3DS games, despite having one since near launch. There just aren’t that many that I’m interested in, and even less that I’d consider “good.” But I actually went out of my way to hunt down a copy of Gabrielle’s Ghostly Groove 3D. And even though I had to wait for it to ship here from who-knows-where, I eventually had it in my hands and haven’t been able to put it down since.

G3D (as I’ve been calling it in my head) is a rhythm game along the same lines of Elite Beat Agents.  You follow on-screen cues to tap the touch screen and help Gabrielle and her friends dance the Ghostly Groove. The only difference is that, while EBA had you directly tap on the numbers as they show up, G3D has you tap one big button. While this might seem like it’d be easier, it becomes more difficult once the moving notes come in. If you tap too far to the right, then need to drag your stylus even further to the right, you’re going to run out of room.

The story is pretty cute. You basically play as Gabrielle, a girl who has sneezed her spirit out of her body. You have to help her dance the Ghostly Groove to collect screams to return to her body. Along the way, you meet some of the residents of Monsterville, who teach you to dance and help you collect screams. There are a total of 20 music stages and 4 mini-game stages. The mini-games aren’t anything spectacular and feel a bit tacked on. Luckily, you only have to play each one once if you don’t like them.

The music tracks leave a lot to be desired. Most of the songs are original songs for the game and have a very JPop feel to them. The others are all classical pieces that have been pop-ified to fit in with the rest of the music. While it’s tolerable, it’s certainly not something I want to listen to outside of playing the game.

The part I enjoyed the best was dressing up Gabrielle. You can collect dresses and accessories for doing well at the game and you can customize Gabrielle anyway you’d like. Even when you dance each stage, your character will remain dressed up as you left her.

Even after you’ve beaten the game, there are things to do. There are new outfits and accessories to unlock (by playing the songs over on Hard and Impossible difficulties). You can also get your fortune read by the witch, Crystal, and collect tarot cards and Monster Badges. All told, there are 117 in-game items to hunt down.

Gabrielle’s Ghostly Groove 3D is a pretty fun game, especially if you enjoy other rhythm style games. I had a blast collecting all the dresses and styling Gabrielle. But once all that was done, there’s not much left to it. I don’t think the $40 price tag is justified, but it was also pretty difficult for me to find a copy of. I don’t think it will be in print much longer, so if you want it, you should probably snatch it up now.

After finally prying myself away from London Life, I turned my attention back to Professor Layton and the Last Specter properly. If you’ve played previous Layton titles, you know what you’re in for with this one: people continually throw puzzles your way as you try to uncover a mystery surrounding the area you’re visiting. Specifically, the professor is tasked with finding out what’s behind the mysterious specter that’s attacking the town of Misthallery.

This game is actually the start of a new trilogy and tells the story of how Luke met the professor and eventually became his apprentice. We’re also introduced to Emmy Altava, the professor’s assistant. I rather like her character, as she kind of adds a bit of spunk to the group. I like that they’ve put in a strong female character, instead of ones that need rescuing or are very meek.

Not a meek woman.

As usual, the puzzles are a mix of math questions, logic problems, and sliding puzzles. It actually seemed like there were more sliding puzzles this time around than ever, but I’m sure that’s not necessarily the case. There was also some slight recycling of puzzles from the first games. None of them were exactly the same, but instead of having to get wolves and chickens across a lake, there are dogs and cats.

While I enjoyed my time in Misthallery, I felt kind of let down at how weak the story felt. I mean, there were some points I liked (particularly everything having to do with the Black Raven), but other times, it felt like everything was just too forced. So we’re not only looking for a specter, but a witch as well? And Luke is apparently psychic on top of it? It was all a bit too much for me.

Then there’s London Life. It really should be treated as if it were some separate game from Last Specter, since the only thing the two have in common are characters. The stories are different and few characters from the newest game make an appearance. It’s touted as being “100 hours long,” but I think the appeal of any but the most dedicated will wane far before than.

That said, Professor Layton and the Last Specter is a must-have if you love anything related to the professor. I would also recommend it as a starting point to anyone that has never before experienced the Layton-verse. And for the price tag, you basically get two games in one.

Ever since the X-Men animated series aired on Fox Kids, I have been a fan of the X-Men. I read the comics, I collected the action figures, I had the phone card that let you call up a hotline and play an X-Men game over the phone. Unfortunately, I lost the love of the X-Men right around the Operation: Zero Tolerance storyline, so I’ve kind of been out of the loop for years.

Despite that, I wanted to give X-Men: Destiny a shot. For years, I had been hearing about it and had loved the idea of creating my own mutant. I had envisioned something along the lines of City of Heroes, something where complete customization was up to me. Unfortunately, that’s not at all what I got.

In X-Men: Destiny, you get a choice of one of three characters. Truth be told, I couldn’t give two shits about the male characters, because they both seemed boring to me. So I picked the female: Aimi Yoshida, the daughter of Sunfire. Of course, the game makes no mention of this and I think the only way you’d know is if you were a fan of the comics.

In addition to three characters, you also get your choice of three different mutant powers. I chose Shadow Blades, because the others really sounded kind of lame. Definitely not what I would have came up with myself if I were to create my own mutant.

Along the way, you also are given opportunities to flesh out your powers a little bit more, having them branch out a bit. Unfortunately, all the branches lead to the same conclusions, so there’s really no advantage of taking a certain power over another.

You can also choose to side with either the X-Men or the Brotherhood of Mutants, but it mostly doesn’t matter, either. There are little differences between them and the only reason to play through again would be to get all faction-specific costumes (if you’re into that sort of thing). There are also other costumes based on other mutants that you can collect that provide buffs.

Aimi in the Wolverine costume

The biggest problem I had with X-Men: Destiny is that the game didn’t give a lot of backstory throughout playing it. Instead, it kind of gives a very quick overview of the events prior to the start of the game in the sequence right before the load screen. Now, I don’t know about anyone else, but I tend to skip right over those screens. I didn’t even find out about it until I had already beaten the game twice. There’s also a point where one of the characters is kidnapped, but you don’t find that out until you’re already on a rescue mission to find her. No one tells you, you just know that she needs to be rescued.

Another problem is more of a pet peeve of mine. I hate when a Japanese character is portrayed by Westerners. For the most part, everything is completely wrong. Case in point: Aimi’s ridiculous backstory. She grew up in Japan and lived there all her life. Fearing for her safety, her father put her on a ship to America. When she calls for her father, she’s calling to him in English that she speaks perfectly well without an accent. And it’s like that throughout the game. There are a few instances where they kind of have her try to guess the definition of a word (“Your name is Pyro. That means fire, right?”), but it’s all bullshit. Plus, the voice actress who plays her (who is Korean, because all us East Asians look/sound alike, amirite?) can’t even pronounce words correctly in Japanese (akuma, which should be said with even inflection, become aKOOma).

As much as I love the X-Men, this is a game I wish I had waited on until it came down in price. The environments are awfully boring, as are the array of enemies to fight, but it’s still kind of fun in a mindless beat-‘em-up kind of way. It’s just not $60 fun. If you are even remotely interested in it, either wait til it hits the bargain bin or pass on it completely; you won’t be missing out on much.

So I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus.  You can read more about it here if you’re that interested in my personal life.  But while I was away, I was playing games and managed to finish up The Baconing.

The Baconing starts off after DeathSpank has killed Sandy and taken all the thongs for himself.  Because the Thongs of Virtue were never meant to be worn together, the AntiSpank appears to destroy the world.  Being the hero to the downtrodden, DeathSpank is off to save the day once again.

If you’ve played DeathSpank and DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue, you really know what to expect from The Baconing: melee action with lots of loot to gather.  There aren’t any real big changes to the formula, but a few things have been changed from previous iterations.  The first is the ability to Shield Bash, which will momentarily stun enemies while blocking damage from you.  You can also reflect arrows coming towards you, damaging the enemy that shot at you.

There are a lot of new places to visit, as well as some returning characters to catch up with.  My favorite new area, by far, was the retirement home for gods.  Being a mythology geek, it was fun trying to figure out how to trick Anansi, and I got a bit of a giggle seeing Zeus’ walker made out of electricity.

I actually enjoyed The Baconing more than the other two games, mostly because Hothead Games actually listened to players about fetch quests.  The first two games had a lot of them and, while I always did them all to get maximum experience and loot, I was often bored.  In The Baconing, there are a few fetch quests, but they all feel like they have a purpose.

I’m not sure if most people would agree that the game was worth $15, since that has always been a big complaint with the DeathSpank series, but I was glad to pay it.  Especially once you consider that it’s the third part of a trilogy and, if you were to have paid $45 for all three, it’s about the length of a game you’d find at retail.  When you think about it that way, $15 is definitely not bad at all.

Pirates & Nobles is the first adventure pack for The Sims Medieval.  Like regular expansion packs for The Sims, this adds a slew of new clothing and items to buy for your Sims, as well as adding a new quest line, a new ambition, new gameplay features, and new achievements.  The Aarbyville pirates and the Trenody nobles are on the verge of war and your kingdom stands right in the middle of it all.  Can you stop their feud before your kingdom ends in flames?

The new ambition serves as a way for you to explore the new quests.  There are a number of different endings for the quests, so you’ll want to play the quest more than once in order to fully enjoy the story behind it.  You’re given the choice of either siding with the pirates or the nobles, or you can remain neutral.  Depending on who you side with, different quests open up.

In addition to the quests, there are some new things your Sims can do.  You can now own pets in the form of parrots and birds of prey.  Your birds can hunt and bring you items or they can attack your enemies.  There doesn’t seem to be a limit to the number of birds you can own, either, so you can have quite a number of birds hunting down random stuff for your Sims.

Another new feature is treasure hunting.  All your Sim needs is a shovel and you can start digging all over your kingdom for treasure.  If you’re lucky, you can even find a piece of a treasure map, which usually leads to pretty good weapons and armor.

The new achievements are all related to the new features and even come with their own achievement level (in addition to the Watcher level from the base game).  I haven’t unlocked any of the achievements yet, so I’m not sure if points earned by these ones also count towards Watcher levels, but I wouldn’t assume so.

If you find yourself bored with what the base game can offer you, The Sims Medieval: Pirates & Nobles Adventure Pack is a must-have.  There are a lot of new things to explore and I doubt even the more dedicated player can explore everything in a short amount of time.

Before Dungeon Siege III, I hadn’t played any of the games in the series (though I have seen the horrible Uwe Boll flick), so I wasn’t even sure if it was something I would enjoy.  After being reaffirmed that it’s slightly Diablo-esque, I knew I should at least give it a shot.  I wasn’t disappointed.

Once you’ve chosen one of four playable characters, the narrator starts by recapping the events 30 years prior to the start of the game: The 10th Legion was said to have killed the old king.  Because of this, Jeyne Kassynder hunted down and destroyed most of the Legion.  However, the sons and daughters of the murdered members survived and were invited to gather at the old Grand Master’s mansion in order to rebuild and eventually strike back.

Unfortunately, Jeyne Kassynder has heard about the gathering and hired mercenaries to attack.  The game starts with the burning of the mansion as you first arrive.  It serves as a brief tutorial, teaching you how to attack, change stances, guard, and equip new items.

As you make your way through the story, you are given choices on how to handle certain situations.  These choices affect the story, both in superficial ways (i.e. a bit of dialogue change) and in helpful ways.  At one point, I destroyed a powerful artifact before fighting the boss, which only served to make the boss stronger.

Once you get far enough, you can recruit other members, who you can then use as your teammates.  This makes fighting a lot easier, since the AI will focus more on the player than the PC-controlled fighter.  I found that all I had to do was block during many boss fights and my ally would take down the boss all on her own.

My biggest complaint is that the game is awfully linear for a Western RPG.  Sure, there are sidequests that you can partake in, but they usually coincide with where you need to go for the main story and can actually be done in conjunction with each other.  There are a few exceptions, most notably the Gunderic Mansion quest and the Tomb of Heroes quest, since neither are directly involved in the main storyline.  I just wish more of these would have shown themselves throughout the game.

I truly did enjoy the game and may go back some day as another character and make different story choices, just to see how it affects the outcome.  I also really hope for a sequel, though I’m not sure which ending would end up being canon.  But really, if you like action RPGs, you could do worse than Dungeon Siege III.

I’m not a fan of JRPGs, but I’ve been an off-and-on fan of NAMCO Bandai’s Tales series since first playing Tales of Destiny when I was in high school.

Like many other JRPGs, Tales of Vesperia takes a group of adventurers and charges them with saving the world.  The plot takes you through various twists and turns, which can definitely be confusing at times, if only because of the flood of weird terminology.  You use Blastia, which consumes Aer, in order to fight.  But the Aer is getting out of control, resulting in Aer Krene, which the Entelexia are fighting to prevent.  Along the way, you’ll also come across Apatheia, which are used to make Blastia Cores.

See what I mean?  It’s all very confusing, though if you can follow what’s going on in-game, it all makes sense.  Unfortunately, if you’re only casually paying attention, a lot of it goes over your head.  But because of all the confusing terms, if you put it down for a length of time, it might be difficult to remember what in the world is going on when you pick it back up.

Like other Tales games, battles aren’t turn based.  When you fight, you have full control of your character, making the battles much more fast paced.  Even the boss battles don’t ever take too long.  Which is good, because you end up fighting a lot.  The maximum level is 200, but you probably won’t need to get that high unless you’re trying to earn the achievement for it.

The characters are all pretty great, with none of them really feeling like I wish they weren’t around.  Even though I didn’t necessarily use them all evenly, I did use them all to the point where I knew who would be useful in different types of fights.

I did find that about 3/4 of the way through, the action kind of lagged.  That might, in part, due to your healer being kidnapped part way through.  Without those healing skills, it really just felt like a drag for me to play through.  Sure, other characters could as well, but nowhere near as good as the main healer.

Once you beat the game, you’re able to start over from the beginning.  If you’ve managed to earn enough Grade (by doing very well in battles on Normal difficulty or higher), you can even buy upgrades that will help on future playthroughs.

Overall, I truly enjoyed my time with Vesperia, but not enough to go back for a second playthrough quite yet.  If you’re a fan of JRPGs or other Tales games, this one isn’t that bad.  And, since it’s a few years old now, I’m sure you can get it for a pretty decent price.

Catherine is one of the most mature games I’ve ever had a chance to play. I don’t mean it in a “oh, teehee, there’s tits and ass all over the covers of the game box and it’s a game about sex!” kind of way, either. Between exploring the relationship between men and women and analyzing a person’s morality, there are all kinds of things that just made me sit up and think.

As I’m sure you know by now, Catherine is the story of Vincent Brooks. At 32 years old, he’s really not looking to settle down anytime soon. Unfortunately, his girlfriend, Katherine McBride, has different ideas. After a night of drinking while contemplating if marriage is really what he wants, he ends up meeting Catherine and the two have a drunken one night stand.

How Vincent copes with the fallout is up to the player. Through text messages and interacting with other characters, you can decide how Vincent thinks about and reacts to situations. When a new decision is made, a meter is shown with your current karmic position. So if, for example, you think Vincent should steer more towards being faithful to Katherine, you’ll likely end up in the blue (Law) portion of the meter. On the opposite end is red (Chaos), which indicates Vincent isn’t ready for someone else to decide his life for him.

As you progress through the story, you find that some of the choices Vincent is faced with aren’t that easy to make. Sure, it’s easy to point out that cheating is wrong, but what about those who aren’t ready to settle down? Or what about people who manipulate others into staying in a relationship that they’re not happy with in the first place?

The game is split between two modes of play: day, where most of the story takes place, as well as most interactions with other characters, and nightmare, where the bulk of the gameplay takes place. The core of Catherine‘s gameplay is a puzzle game. You start at the bottom of a tower and need to work your way up by pushing, pulling, and climbing boxes. You can’t take too long, however, because the bottom of the stage is always falling away. On occasion, you’ll even be chased by a boss monster.

There are a total of 9 nightmare stages to play through, with most of them offering more than one tower per stage. In between the towers is a landing, where you can interact with other dreaming sheep and where you’ll answer some questions (which determine your karmic position as well). Some of the questions are pretty deep and make you think about your own morality, especially if you’re answering them truthfully. A neat feature is that, after you’ve answered the question, you can see what other players have answered. Sometimes, I was really surprised by the answers that I saw. One of the questions I came across was along the lines of “if your significant other was into paraphilia, would you indulge them?” Surprisingly, the majority of players at the time I answered had said “I’ll try anything once.”

When the game was released in Japan, people complained about the unforgiving difficulty. So when AtlusUSA brought it to the west, the difficulty was retooled, but it was by no means dumbed down. Even on Easy mode, the game can be pretty difficult. However, once you get a Gold trophy on a stage, you’re able to skip it on any subsequent playthrough, making it easier to see all 8 endings.

If you manage to get a Gold trophy on certain levels playing on Normal or Hard difficulty, you unlock new stages in the Babel mode. In this mode, there are four stages, all of which are randomly generated each time you play, so there’s no way to plan ahead. You can either go it alone or work together, as Vincent and Katherine, with a friend.

Also, once you beat the game, you unlock Coliseum mode, which allows you and a friend to challenge each other in a race to the top of a randomly generated tower. The downside to both co-op and versus mode is that it is local multiplayer only. It would have been nice to be able to cooperate with friends all over the world, but I suppose it’s not something Atlus was all that interested in developing.

Catherine also features a game-within-the-game in the form of Rapunzel. It plays much like the Nightmare stages, only you’re allowed to take your time to think through the puzzles. There are initially 64 stages to get through and, if you play well enough and get all four rosaries, you can unlock an additional 64 stages. The game has its own storyline, too, which slightly parallels the story of the main game. (It’s also worth noting that, until you beat the game, you only have 3 game credits per night. Once you beat the game, you can play as much as you’d like.)

Overall, Catherine is an interesting game and one that I highly recommend. It doesn’t ever feel like it’s trying too hard and it tells a very honest story about people. In the end, I don’t think any of the characters are really truly “evil” or “good.” They’re just people, trying to make their way through life the best they can.

Much like Keflings, Akimi Village places you in the role as a giant tasked with helping the Akimi reclaim their land from the gloom.  Since you can’t build anything or harvest in the gloom, it’s necessary for you to work to bring the light back.  You do this by completing blueprints and gaining more culture.  Build up enough culture, and you’re given an acorn that can be used to purify gloomy areas.  The more you build, the more you can push back the gloom, giving you more room to build, more resources to build with, and more Akimi to do your bidding help out.  As you progress, you’ll unlock new blueprints and eventually the whole world will be colorful again.

The Akimi can be used to help you gather resources, though they can’t help you carry the building pieces with you.  There are a few buildings that will help upgrade the Akimi, though, and setting them to a basic task is definitely helpful for harvesting and clearing a path.

There have been some definite improvements made since Keflings, the biggest being the universal resource inventory.  Before, if you put all your rocks into the basic workshop, that was the only workshop that could use those rocks and you’d have to mine more for the others.  In Akimi Village, if you put stones into the basic workshop, the master craftsman still has access to those same stones.  It’s really helpful and saves from a lot of backtracking (which there is plenty of already).

If you’ve got friends on PSN that also play Akimi, you can send each other resources and building parts back and forth.  While I haven’t tried this out (mostly because I don’t have any PSN friends), it seems like it might not be too big of a help, especially since you ought to be able to get all the resources you need just from playing normally.

Some things did feel really irritating, such as the inclusion of lakes.  While it’s necessary to have the water to build some of the buildings, there are so many small lakes that it makes walking in a straight path difficult.  Add to that the fact that you often have to trek across the map multiple times to place all the building pieces, and you’ve spent a good chunk of time just walking around.  Luckily, this gives you an achievement trophy.

Another source of irritation came from having to destroy the buildings to move them.  In World of Keflings, you were able to just push them around, which was a lot easier than destroying the building, than picking up each individual piece to move it to its new location.  As long as you’re not moving buildings too far away, or are moving smaller buildings, it’s not so bad.  But if you want to move a building from one side of the map to another, or it’s got over 6 or 7 pieces, and you’ll be spending a good 10 minutes just moving the one building.

All-in-all, Akimi Village is just as fun and relaxing as its predecessors, despite its flaws.  The new mechanics make for an interesting twist to an old formula.  If you never had a chance to play either Kingdom for Keflings or World of Keflings, you owe it to yourself to at least try out Akimi Village.

I’m not particularly a fan of Rockstar.  Sure, I played (and loved) Red Dead Redemption, but every attempt to get into any Grand Theft Auto games is met with me turning off the game and playing something fun five minutes into it.  I wasn’t even sure I was going to enjoy L.A. Noire, but I pre-ordered it anyway.  I’m definitely glad I did.

The story was phenomenal.  It centers around Cole Phelps, the LAPD’s newest detective.  You start out on the Traffic desk, but eventually move on to Homicide, Administrative Vice and Arson.  Along the way, you get to see some pretty accurately recreated sights from 1947 L.A. and you even get to touch on the real-life Black Dahlia murder.  Phelps discovers that there’s more to police work than catching the bad guy, as many of the cases have you choose between two suspects and there’s a lot of politics involved in which to lay the crime on.  There’s also a greater overarching story that is revealed through newspapers that you can find at crime scenes.  It all culminates at the end in a scene that I doubt I will forget anytime soon.  It left me in tears, which a video game hasn’t done in quite a long time.

L.A. Noire is less of an action game and more of a point-and-click adventure with some action sequences thrown in.  You spend most of your time searching for clues and interviewing suspects.  Searching for clues can be a downright pain in the ass if you don’t have a guide to help show you the way and trying to figure out what approach to use on suspects is difficult, but aided by how phenomenal Team Bondi did with their facial animations.  Not only did actors and actresses provide their voices, but also their faces.  Phelps looks just like Aaron Staton, the actor who provided his voice.

The soundtrack is also amazing.  Andrew Hale did a fantastic job capturing the feel of the music heard in many old noir films and the three vocal tracks ((I Always Kill) The Things I Love, Torched Song, and Guilty) are sung by the amazing Claudia Brucken.  The music really transported me into the game, which is unusual because I rarely pay much attention to music in games.

I truly enjoyed my time with L.A. Noire, even going back and trying to find some of the many collectibles that are scattered around Los Angeles.  So far, I’ve found about 50% of all the cars (some of which were modeled after cars in Jay Leno’s car collection) and all of the landmarks.  I haven’t even tried searching for the film reels or badges yet, but I probably will next time I play.  There are also some great DLC cases available, with more on the horizon.

So far, L.A. Noire my pick for game of the year.  Maybe it’s a bit preemptive, since the year isn’t half over yet, but I think it will be a tough act to beat.

I have been a fan of The Sims since the first game came out in 2000.  I loved the idea of creating all these little stories about people and then watching the drama unfold.  The only problem, however, is that the only stories that could really be told had to be in a modern setting.  11 years later and along comes The Sims Medieval, which lets you send your Hero Sims on quests to better your kingdom.  You start by selecting an Ambition and then creating your kingdom to fulfill that Ambition.  As you complete one, you unlock others to work towards.

The Sims Medieval runs on the same engine as The Sims 3, so many of the same customization options are there.  I say “many,” because there’s no real official way to mod your game, other than in Create a Style mode, which only allows you to change the colors of the default clothing.  But there are a lot of options for each Hero type.  You start off with a Monarch and build your kingdom up from there, recruiting other Heroes, such as a Knight, a Physician, a Merchant and a Priest.

Because of the Quest system, this game plays like a beautiful marriage between a traditional RPG and a simulation game.  Your Heroes gain levels as they progress through their quests and do things related to their professions (e.g. a Merchant gains XP by selling things at their stall, a Physician gains XP by diagnosing and treating patients).  As they gain levels, Heroes are given boosts to what they can do, so it’s beneficial to level up outside the parameters of the Quests.  As you complete Quests, you gain points to buy new buildings for your kingdom and unlock new Heroes.

You don’t have to micromanage your Heroes much, mostly because there’s only a Hunger and Energy bar to deal with.  While this might seem like the game is taking it easy on you, it also introduces new traits called Fatal Flaws.  If you don’t monitor how your Hero behaves according to their flaw, you’re given a penalty to your Focus, which is needed to attain higher ranks during Quests.  For example, my Monarch is licentious.  If he doesn’t kiss or woohoo other Sims often, he gets –35 to his Focus.

You can also earn Achievements, which increases your Watcher level.  I’m actually still not sure what you get for attaining higher levels, since I’ve only managed to complete two achievements so far.  There are just a ton of things to do with this game and it will certainly take more than a day to discover them all.  I really cannot recommend this game enough, though.  It’s fun and addicting and has yet to become boring, which is more than I can say for Sims 3 expansions.  It’s definitely worth the $50 for all the gameplay you get out of it.

As I said yesterday, I love Star Wars.  I even love the prequels and the Clone Wars TV series.  I also enjoyed Traveler’s Tale’s previous LEGO Star Wars games (or just The Complete Saga, if you must), so I figured that LEGO Star Wars III would be a natural pick for me.  I figured it would just be more of the same, but I don’t think I was prepared for the massive scale of this game.  As usual, you play through levels that tell the story of the movies (or, in this case, the TV series), unlocking characters as you move along.  There are three storyline branches this time around, and it depends on which baddie you follow.  You can choose to pursue Asajj Ventress, Count Dooku, and General Grievous.  After six stages, the branch is finished.  If you finish all three branches, an epilogue opens up.

The usual LEGO fun is had here: you can build things after destroying other things, there are many destructible things to blow up, and you can use awesome Force powers (including lightning if you’re playing as a Sith).  The Force works much differently now than in the first games.  You can manually control most of the pieces that you need to float around, much like you could in LEGO Harry Potter.  It can be a bit tricky at times, but it’s a lot better than how it was in the first games.

One of the new things added this time around are Ground Battles.  These are massive battles where you have to destroy enemy bases while building up your own.  These are actually pretty easy and were a bit of a disappointment, to be honest.  Building the bases kind of reminded me of Halo Wars, but with less options.  You also have to use studs you find to purchase the buildings, which cuts into your end total (and can deny you receiving True Jedi for the level).  You can only have 3 units built at each base, though you’re given an opportunity to build a lot of bases, generally around 9 per level.  You won’t really need them all, but it certainly helps.

My biggest gripe is that there really is too much to do.  In addition to the main storyline, there are also Bounty Hunter Missions, Ground Battles, and Space MIssions to complete, all in an effort to get 130 Gold Bricks.  I like the game, but I don’t know if I’m that dedicated to seeing whatever is unlocked once I do get them all.  There are also a ton of characters to unlock, and quite a number of those come from finding every Minikit inside each stage, which is also a pain in the ass.  I’ve got roughly half the characters unlocked after beating the story mode for every level.  I’ve yet to actually complete a Minikit.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with LEGO Star Wars III.  I probably will keep playing it for a while, especially since I know there’s a way to unlock Boba Fett and I really don’t want to stop until I’ve got him.  Jango just doesn’t do it for me.  I can always cheat and use a code to unlock him, but where’s the fun in that?

I loved Dragon Age: Origins, nearly as much as I love Alan Wake.  I played the game (including all DLC and the expansion, Awakenings) and I read both of the prequel novels by David Gaider.  Which is why it was surprising that I wasn’t that interested in Dragon Age 2 until the demo came out.  But in the end, I’m glad that I played it, despite the initial uneasy feelings.

To compare it to the first game is a bit unfair.  It’s obviously trying not to be Origins.  Between the overhaul of combat and playing as a single character (instead of choosing from 6 different beginning stories), Dragon Age 2 is definitely its own game.  I liked the fast-paced combat, since I’m a fan of hack-and-slack games.  In fact, that’s probably one of the two things I liked most about DA2.  I did get kind of bored with combat in Origins.  It all felt way too slow.

Some characters from Origins show up as well, including minor characters like Cullen.  Heck, even some of the companions this time around were only minor characters in Origins (Merril was part of the Dalish elf origin and Isabella taught you the Duelist specialty).  It was fun to see that the actions I took in Origins carried over to this game.  There are certain quests that open up depending on who you sided with during certain points of Origins.  Even if you didn’t play Origins, you can still pick a history for the Warden during the Blight that will affect your Hawke differently.

Now onto the complaints.  Most of the game felt very rushed.  Even the composer admits to having rushed the soundtrack.  The story seemed to be barely there until halfway through Act 2, and when there’s only 3 acts to a game, that’s pretty bad.    But that last act, specifically the last hour of the game, were amazing.  If the whole game had been like that, I would have wept with joy.  I can understand that they wanted to get the game out soon after the first, but I think 18 months is just a little too fast.  Add in the fact that some of the achievements are glitched at the moment (the ones pertaining to the DLC, anyway) and it’s a little bit of a disappointment.

There is the possibility that you can permanently lose some of your companions.  Right away, depending on whether you’re a mage or not, you will either lose your sister, Bethany, or your brother, Carver.  At the end of Act 1, you’re given a chance to bring a party to the Deep Roads.  If you bring Bethany/Carver, but don’t bring Anders as well, you can kiss your other sibling good bye.  Even then, they either have to join the Grey Wardens or the Circle/Templars at the start of Act 2 and you lose them until the ending, anyway.  You can also lose Isabella at the end of Act 2 if you’re not at a high enough friendship or if you turn her over to the Arishok.  And, of course, if you side with the Mages or the Templars and your companions don’t like you enough, you lose them, too.  It makes things difficult and also made me make choices that I wouldn’t normally have (like sparing Anders after blowing up the Chantry), just because I needed certain characters to help out during the last fight.

Overall, I enjoyed the game.  Even as much as I enjoyed the faster combat, the strong personalities of the characters is what stirred me the most about this game.  I quickly found that you either hated or loved the characters right off the bat.  Or maybe that’s just me.  Right away, I loved Varric and Fenris and I had already loved Anders from Awakenings.  Naturally, these three ended up being who I took along with me most of the time, even though Fenris and Anders tended to fight a lot.  Fenris also happened to be who my Lady Hawke ended up with romantically.  I can’t help it, I love a man with a sexy melt-your-panties-off voice.

Plus, LOOK at him. Yum.

I actually want to go back and play Origins again, since I’d like to see what it’d be like importing a different playthrough to DA2.  But I won’t be playing DA2 again until they fix those achievements.

It’s no surprise that I liked Fable III.  After all, it was one of my top 5 games of 2010.  But I really was disappointed with the first DLC, Understone.  It was short and the rewards were lame for having to shell out $5 for it.  Then they announced Traitor’s Keep, which was released today.  I wasn’t sure what to think.  The first one was disappointing, but this one promised many new areas (3, to be exact) plus more clothing, a new dog potion, and a new demon door.  So I decided to try it out.

I wasn’t disappointed this time.

The main quest is pretty long and has you chasing down escaped prisoners with the help of the prison warden.  Along the way, there are new pieces of clothes to collect (the prisoner set, the prostitute set and the sand fury set) as well as books written by the escaped prisoners.  I’m not going to lie: it’s a pain in the ass trying to hunt down all the books.  Half the time, Potato (my dog) wouldn’t even bark when I was near one, though he would sometimes.

There’s a little twist at the end of the main quest line, but you can kind of see it coming a mile away.  And even after the main quest is done, you’re not done with the prison.  You’ve got even more books to hunt down.  I actually managed to find all these without too much trouble.  Then you get to decide what to do with the prison.  It’s a lot like making other decisions as ruler of Albion, in that there’s a good choice, a neutral choice, and an evil choice.  I bet if you complete this before the first year as ruler is up, it’ll probably affect the treasury, but I don’t know that for sure.

If you’re finding that you miss trudging around Albion, this is definitely a good purchase.  I played for about 3 hours and still haven’t completed everything there is.  Definitely worth the $7.

I remember playing the first Monkey Island and being stumped for days by the puzzles.  This was, of course, back in the day before the internet was a viable resource.  But even with as frustrated as I got with it, I endured and eventually beat it.  Since then, I had a love for point and click adventure games.  So whenever I hear of a new one, I usually grab a chance to try it out.  That’s why I literally squealed out loud when I found out that Launching Pad Game’s Scarlett and the Spark of Life for the iPhone/iPad was free today.

Seriously, you will do yourself a disservice if you miss getting this game for free.  Of course, it’s also worth the normal price of $1.99.  The story puts you in control of Scarlett, a kidnapped princess of Oysterguard.  Scarlett is a spunky princess and definitely isn’t the type to just sit around and wait to be rescued.  Your job is to help her get away from her kidnappers.  It sounds simple, but there’s some tricks involved and some puzzles to be solved.  What you’ll spend most of your time doing is putting together Gherkin, a mechanical horse, who happens to be your only ticket out of town.

The game itself can be completed from start to finish in an hour or two, but there are also Open Feint achievements to be found, which definitely ups the replay value.  The puzzles themselves aren’t too difficult to solve (though I did have trouble with acquiring Gherkin’s back legs at first) and the writing is pretty humorous.  I found the animation to be well done and rather enjoyed the full range of movement that most of the characters had.  This is definitely a game for someone who, like me, enjoys their point and click adventures.

Since this is obviously billed as “Episode 1,” I’m certain that there will be more sometime in the near future.  I will be anxiously awaiting more of Scarlett and Gherkin’s adventures!