THE GOOD:

Variety is the piece of the universe

Having the ability to switch from various factions is Retribution’s greatest strength. It’s a lot of fun to see each of the factions’ unique abilities. Tyrannids have swarms of units that literally swarm enemies for instance, while the imperials tend to stick back, pick off targets, with longer range firepower. Orks are completely bananas, building their own contraptions with parts littered from space. It’s awesome to see a particular mission from various angles as well as employing different tactics in the other game modes.

The return of bases… somewhat

Relic’s been trying their best to move away from the base game with Dawn of War II but Retribution somewhat brings back a few base build elements. You don’t build bases per se during missions, but you’re able to fortify capture points and get expendable ground forces that can help out your hero characters. Keeping these fortifications is vital during most of the missions and do play a big role in later difficulty settings.

MULTIPLAYER!

Dawn of War II had a pretty decent multiplayer host of options but Retribution takes it to another level. The Last Stand mode is a survival based multiplayer level that pits you and up to three other people against increasingly tougher odds. Although there are only two maps to pick from, The Last Stand is a lot of fun to play with friends or even randoms, even more if your character is already somewhat leveled.

Leveling… the best of…

Character development plays a big part in Dawn of War II and even though Retribution is a standalone product and not an expansion, it borrows a lot from the previous game. The upgrade system is very complex and you’ll be more often than not having to make tough choices in terms of what abilities to pick when you level up, thanks to all the roads you can take in a skill tree, like a powerful gun upgrade in place of a movement speed upgrade. You can ticker and build a big deck of characters from just the base faction choices, which adds a lot of replay to Retribution.

Holy crap… achievements

If you’re into Steam achievements, holy crap, be ready to spend a LOT of time in this one. There are over 70 unique achievements to earn that take you through the entire game and challenge you to be increasingly better. This is a pretty creative set of achievements for sure.

THE BAD

Weaker campaign

Retribution does have as good of a story campaign as Dawn of War II, feeling more like a mosaic of back stories thanks to the fact that it sports so many factions.

THE UGLY

Dawn of War II: Retribution is one of the best follow up pieces of content around. The fact that it’s a standalone product makes it an easy choice for newcomers to jump aboard, the kind that doesn’t want to worry about picking up every single shred of story. The other kind, though, that does want to dive into the lore, there’s plenty of threads that can lead you further down the 40K rabbit hole, as well as introduce you to the best gameplay features from the original Dawn of War II. For veterans, this is a great set of missions and game modes to play through and shouldn’t be missed if you already enjoyed previous Dawn of War games.

So what makes Bastion so great?

THE GOOD:

GORGEOUS!

This is one of the best looking downloadable games around. The art is amazingly colorful and detailed all throughout the game. Every environment you visit has its own look and feel, and the characters you’ll interact with, both allies and foes
feel like live, breathing creatures and not just sprites.

Atmosphere… breathe it all in!

Awesome art is just a slice of Bastion’s charm. The inclusion of a dynamic narrator is sure to keep you glued to the game until the end and probably beyond that. The way the narration follows your actions is easily one of Bastion’s coolest features. It hardly repeats, either, so the added challenge of discovering what else that guys has to say about the story if you do something different here or there is yet another reason to keep playing. Bastion’s soundtrack is also noteworthy, featuring some of the best tunes I’ve heard in a game, period.

So much in such a small download!

There’s a lot to do in this game. Depending on the combination of weapons you choose to use, there will be numerous other ways to play the game that will take you more than one playthrough to see. Some of which them are vastly different than the rest and require a whole other style of playing Bastion. Plus, you’ll want to discover all of the hidden idols and runes that add an extra layer of challenge to the game, along with making your score ever so popular in the leaderboards.

Combat revolved!

Bastion takes a cue from popular dungeon hacking games like Diablo but manages to carve its own style with much simplified controls. It’s all down to evade dodging incoming attacks and countering with your own. There are no magic bars preventing you from using certain weapons repeatedly, it’s all down to a very well designed cooldown system. Extra props to allowing the interchange between buttons when picking weapons – if you’re down to going with just ranged weapons, be Bastion’s guest!

THE BAD:

Chaos…

The combat in Bastion is tight and works extremely well regardless of the weapon combination you choose to implement. However, there are instances where you can get a little too busy, mainly at the beginning of the game when you don’t have as many weapons or power-ups, with enemies swarming you left and right. This happened very rarely during my playthrOugh and maybe it’s just my fault for not being very good at games! Who knows?

THE UGLY:

SuperGiantGames’ debut game is absolutely phenomenal. The influences from games like Diablo and Torchlight are obvious, but Bastion has a lot of personality and more than enough content to stand on its own as an unique game. From the start screen down to the final stage, Bastion has variety and challenge to keep you coming back for a long while.

Editor’s note: Special thanks goes out to SuperGiantGames Creative Diretor Greg Kasavin for kindly providing a review code for the game. Also, if you aren’t very interested in diving into this title on an Xbox 360, be sure to check out the upcoming Steam version of Bastion on August 16th.

WH4K Kill Team is an isometric twin stick shooter. Okay, don’t jump off your window yet. It’s not just another shooter. You get to pick from a handful of classes based on the 40,000 fiction. I picked the engineer marine who had the ability to hey, put down automated sentries down. But hey, he had other powers as well, like a super grenade that practically decimated all orks and greenskins that flooded the many screens I ran through.

Cooperative play is probably the best part of this game. I had a buddy along for the ride during the demo and it made all the difference. I’m not sure how balanced the game is for solo play, but it’s pretty ridiculously fun playing with someone else. Orks really outnumber you all the time and your marine is a complete murder machine.

You turn said soldier into a murder machine when you get to upgrade that bad boy when he levels up. You get experience points as you defeat enemies and such, as usual. The upgrades, though, are pretty cool and benefit each class specifically. For instance, my engineer was able to get a few new abilities in the demo when it was time to upgrade, like a stronger ‘area of effect’ (AOE) attack that I ended up not using, sadly.

Kill Team looked pretty darn cool, especially considering it’s a downloadable game. The customary super-exaggerated armor proportions that’s Warhammer’s signature is in full effect in this game and so were the ridiculously slimmy, disgusting and hilarious orks. They die oh-so funnily.

In a way, I really can’t wait to fully play this sucker when it’s out later this year. It’s just fun and in the end, that’s pretty much the reason I still play games. Sure, bring on the serious games but keep making stuff like this, people. It’s fun to shoot monsters in the face. And I certainly love that.

It features two new challenge scenarios and a few new weapons based on the war, like the Moisin Nagant, a rocket launchers and even the famous AK-47. And napalm of course, for your spell book.

The Good

Funny!

Magicka was hilarious and Vietnam is just as, if not little more overboard. Sensitivies might be put to test due to the subject matter, though, since you’ll be killing hoardes of “Goblincongs” along the way and burning miles of forest… all in good fun.

Join the army they said… meet different people they said…

Vietnam ups the challenge to new heights, which really drills in the point of cooperative play. Enemies are dastardly placed along the way and due to the nature of one of the challenge maps, you’re gonna need a lot of help clearing out objectives. Plus, it’s always good to have a friend to bring you back to life (if they aren’t dead themselves).

Cool new weapons

The M-16 was a huge surprise in the original Magicka and Vietnam only racks it up, adding a few new firearms, each with its own unique attributes – the aforementioned Moisin Nagant fires slow, but extremely precise shots, while an Uzi, for instance, is quick but spreads bullets all over the place. I dug the variety.

The Bad

Bugs’ aplenty!

The original game was no stranger to bugs and Vietnam inherits most of the problems. You’re still liable to get stuck in the environment and crashes, although much rarer than before, still happen.

The jungle doesn’t like single dishes…

Vietnam is even harder to play alone than Magicka. I had a ton of trouble making my way through the objective based challenge mode, let alone the survival, wave-based scenario. If you’re a solo player, be prepared to get a boot in your face… Magicka is not playing around. Checkpoints are very far in-between and you’re likely to start over a lot. This isn’t a very friendly game for lone wolves.

Only two ‘new’ modes

I’m calling these ‘new’ because technically, only one can be truly considered new – the time-based objective mode. The other is a survival map set in the jungle and the survival challenge mode was already a part of Magicka in its original release. The objective mode is fairly short too, especially after you’ve made your way through it a few times.

The Bad?

Magicka Vietnam does a few things right, keeping the original’s humor intact, breaking the fantasy wall somewhat even though it is fairly light in terms of new features and content. It surely won’t keep you busy for too long.

Magicka is one of those games that is easy to love but tough to handle in the long run. Often compared to Gauntlet, it far surpasses the old arcade game by presenting some of the most creative use of magic spells ever seen in a game. And even so, it can get extremely repetitive and formulaic rather quickly.

The world of Midgard is a weird fantasy realm that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Things are hairy nowadays with the return of an ancient evil. The famous school of mages sends you, and up and coming sorcerer to save the world, either by yourself or with a few friends by your side.

The Good

Fun and challenging

Like any quest worth its salt, the adventure mode in Magicka is a tough cookie right from the start. As a mage, you’re not particularly resilient and must rely on smart use of the elements in order to defend yourself. Want fireballs? Fuse rock and fire. Rain? Easy! Add some water to your arsenal. Super laser beam of death? Hah, I won’t divulge this particular one!

Creative use of the magic mechanics leads to chaotic fun

You’ll be having a lot more fun if you invite some peeps into your game. Not only can you revive friends as much as needed, spells can be combined and thus further empowered and crossing your beams is an extremely effective tactic (against Dr. Spengler’s advice).

Lots to do beside single player

Once you’re done with the main adventure mode, which can take you up to six hours to complete, you can tackle Magicka’s arena setting, called Challenge Mode that locks you into a closed off stage and launches wave after wave of fiends. This is by far the most hectic of situations you’ll get into in Magicka and it’s practically impossible to do so alone. There are similar spots in the story where the odds stack up incredibly high against a lone mage, resulting in a game that can only be (sanely) played solo so far before the need to call for some help.

Funny!

The amount of charm in this game is just plain staggering to me, down to the graphical presentation. Sure, some of the interface is kind of muddy, particularly the elemental symbols that tend to blend together when you’re trying to get a specific spell off the ground. Character designs are pretty well thought out, especially mages (of course!) that borrow something off from Orko, a hood with no face and a funny way of talking. There’s complete voice acting in this game but it’s delivered in a strangely mumbling language that sometimes sounds intelligible but when it does you’ll probably think you’re getting insane. There’s a narrator that speaks English in between the stages and that’s about all you’ll understand with the rest of writing being delivered well… in text.

The Bad

Magic works both ways…

The use of spells in Magicka is one of its strong points and one of its limitations. Some combinations are pretty game-breaking, like the aforementioned death ray and really become the backbone of your attacks. This becomes evident later on in the game, where climatic changes like rain really add to the benefit of sticking to a particular spell.

Some quinks and issues…

The game’s performance drops severely when playing online, even after a lot of patches since release. Lag is one of the worse problems with this game and it gets in the way of spell casting which causes some annoying deaths. Luckily, dying in multiplayer might not be the end of your adventure online if your pals are still kicking, since they can resurrect you but with so many performance issues, they probably won’t.

The Ugly?

It’s tough to unconditionally recommend Magicka. On one hand, it only costs ten bucks on Steam and the investment pays itself rather quickly, thanks to some undeniable charm and fun gameplay mechanics. On the other, there are some issues that will keep you from getting to the end of the game on your own. Even worse, things get buggy when you call in friends and when there are bugs on a game’s flagship feature, not even a keyword like BANANERS can save you. Hopefully things will get better a few more patches in.

In 16^th century Japanese feudal society, the shogun is feeling pressure as the competing clans erupt into total war. The alliances and rivalries that have maintained order in society are quickly breaking down as Japan descends into utter chaos with several great clans poised to take advantage. In Total War: Shogun 2, players take control of one of these clans.  You must use all of your abilities as a statesmen and a general to guide your clan through the turbulent times in hopes of seizing the shogunate in the capital, Kyoto.

In the 7^th installment of the Total War franchise, developer Creative Assembly has returned to the melee centric medieval combat that started the storied PC franchise. Is Shogun 2 a welcome return to form or a step in the wrong direction?

The Good

The Computer is Getting Smarter!

The AI in Shogun is remarkably better than in previous Total War installments. Overall, your rival clans will compete in a Machiavellian fashion. Enemy daimyos play won’t hesitate to declare war on you if you are becoming too powerful or if you are spending too much on economic and social development.

On the battlefield, the AI has stopped sending units in small waves that can be quickly defeated by your troops. Instead, they usually command with a grand strategy and send the troops en masse to attack. It’s more realistic, more difficult, and makes for a more hectic and exciting experience.

Bigger Challenge:

Shogun 2 is much harder than previous games. While many fans were clamoring for ramped up difficulty, the AI will often resort to summoning massive armies out of nowhere to create a challenge. It’s sometimes frustrating and a good reason for players to save often, but it really forces the player to think in broader strategy and not solely on a short-term solutions.

Return to Form:

Empire: Total War was an ambitious game but with its scale came a number of crippling technical problems. After playing almost 100 hours and about to achieve victory, the game froze on me—every single time I hit the next turn button. It was beyond frustrating, but the worst part was that Creative Assembly never released a patch to fix the problem. Instead they seemed to concede defeat and move on to Napoleon: Total War.

While Shogun 2 is not without its technical problems (see below for issues with the multiplayer), the game ran smoothly through my first two campaigns. It does have some above average load times, but I will gladly trade those for an experience that doesn’t break down at the most inconvenient times.

Wonderful Aesthetic Puts You Into the Time Period:

One of the first things that you notice when you start playing Shogun 2 is the authenticity and beauty of the medieval Japanese world. The user interface is minimal, yet the parts that are in sight add to the setting splendidly. Creative Assembly put together a wonderful variety of traditional Japanese paintings and woodblock art to decorate the world and create a pleasing aesthetic.

The Bad

Troop Movement and Path Finding Are Often Moronic:

Setting up your troops before the battle, you wait for the carnage to commence. However, in the heat of the battle, you simply don’t have the precise controls needed for a game that is sometimes brutally difficult.  Empire and Napoleon introduced the simple yet important troop movement control that allowed you to order your troops to move forward without breaking rank or changing angles. For some reason, this control was taken out of Shogun 2, and we are back to the days of troops setting up in awkward and weak positions. There were several battles that were lost simply because units would inexplicably change their positioning after given a basic maneuver order.

In addition, the AI’s path finding is often mindless. Units take indirect paths to their ordered destinations, which is problematic when trying to withdraw troops from a skirmish.  On several occasions siege battles collapsed largely because certain individual troops would leave the castle despite being ordered to stand by the walls. Although the AI was greatly improved in Shogun 2, troop movement and path finding continue to be a thorn in the franchise’s side.

Limited Scale of Units and Technologies:

Unlike previous installments of the Total War franchise, Shogun 2’s units and technologies are specific and limited. It is a reflection of the historical time period in which the game takes place, yet players will soon find that battles become formulaic due to the lack of diversity. Although the game includes certain western gunpowder and siege weapons, after playing through the campaign twice with two different factions, I never encountered them.

The entire campaign can be completed (with greater difficulty) using only the basic spear and bow units. The clans may have certain abilities over others, but it never appeared to make a big difference when fighting the battles.

Multiplayer Experience Is Unreliable:

As mentioned above, Shogun 2 includes a completely revamped multiplayer component. Playing either a co-op campaign or avatar conquest mode is a great addition to the Total War experience, but there is one problem—most of the times it just doesn’t work.

In this age where patches are regular and plentiful, Shogun 2 is in desperate need one to correct the multiplayer performance issues. One day I was simply unable to connect to any matches and no players appeared online while the next, the clan page wasn’t working properly. In both cases, the game crashed repeatedly.  A patch would be welcomed here, but based on their past actions, Creative Assembly may be slow to release one.

The Ugly?

Total War: Shogun 2 is an impressive entry into Creative Assembly’s franchise. The return to the melee-centric combat is a return to the franchise’s comfort zone but one that includes a number of improvements and a great amount of detail. Although there are still some technical problems that should be addressed, the overall experience is an overwhelmingly positive one.

Like most MMOs, World of Warcraft is an extremely difficult game to review for a variety of reasons. The main one is that it’s a world that is constantly changing, ever since its introduction back in 2004. After two expansion packs and numerous content patches over the years, the biggest revolution to World of Warcraft, though, might just be its third expansion pack, aptly named Cataclysm. These changes were so chaotic that Blizzard didn’t even wait for this expansion to come out in order to dig into the old Azeroth content in order to breathe new life into it, meaning that the geographical upgrade to the world can be witnessed by any player subscribed to WoW, regardless of owning this new expansion pack. This puts Cataclysm in a weird spot that might confuse quite a few players with whether or not it’s worth diving into.

The Azeroth as you might have known it if you’ve been playing World of Warcraft these past few years is gone. With the threat of the Lich King gone, it’s time to bring back yet another villain who’s been in slumber for a while. The hulking Deathwing, a gigantic dragon has ripped out of his abode in the bowels of the world, ripping it apart in the process. All of the old world areas, like Darkshore and Westfall, have suffered severe repercussions, with climatic shifts, changes to flora and fauna to even being completely flooded, like in Thousand Needles’ case. The quests in each of the old areas have been completely revamped, making the creation (or ‘rolling’, like the kids like to call it) of new characters a huge incentive. That’s even more true for some of the original selectable races, like the Gnomes and Trolls. These two have received brand new starting areas that benefit from the story progression introduced in an earlier content patch where players helped their respective faction’s ally recapture their home turf. Unlike the Lich King, Deathwing is much more reclusive and as a result, is a sight to behold if you happen to be somewhere minding your own business when he flies over, torching everything and everyone in his path (including yourself).

Along with the “older” selectable races, Cataclysm introduces a new race to each of the two warring factions. The Horde gets to deal with the inventive and dastardly Goblins, who have an urban, GTA-esque environment as a starting zone, while the Alliance welcomes the Worgen, a previously isolated lycanthropic race of men from the far kingdom of Gilneas. Both of the new races bring brilliantly designed starting content for new rollers to play through, that make smart use of the phasing technology first introduced in Wrath of the Lich King, for the first twelve or so levels. The Worgen have an unique form of transportation once they reach level 20: their own selves. They drop to all fours and “run wild”, at normal mount speed, which makes sense considering they’re werewolves. Goblins prove to be crafty by building their own hot rod and adding their own twist to the visuals of some of the selectable classes, like mechanical totems if you happen to play a Goblin shaman. Speaking of classes, Cataclysm makes more class and race combinations possible, and for some of the classes that’s a refreshing chance, like for paladins, which for the Horde, were limited to only one race choice.

Even more than creating new characters and leveling them through the brand new content, one of the main reasons you’ll be playing Cataclysm will be to take higher level characters to the new level cap of 85. Five levels might not seem like much at first glance, especially after going through a couple of the five new high-level zones introduced in Cataclysm, but the divide between a level 80 character and another at 81 is staggering. With each new level, basic stats increase to ridiculous values and by the time you’re at level 85, you’ll probably have twice the amount of vitality points than you had before starting Cataclysm, which makes the gap between 80 to 85 seem more like level 80 to 90.

Similarly to Wrath of the Lich King, you have the choice between two new areas to start leveling past 80. By visiting your respective faction’s capital city, you pick up the “bread crumb” trail quest line that leads you these new areas. Vashj’ir is one of these starting zones and is one of Cataclysm‘s show pieces, both visually and content-wise. It’s a huge underwater area with more that makes use of three separate maps just to chart its length. You’re given a tamed seahorse a few quests into the zone that makes travelling a whole lot easier, along with a water-breathing enchantment that works as long as you’re in Vash’jir. The lore in this zone is some of the best in World of Warcraft and so are the quests. Blizzard makes use of some of talented art direction that turns rather simple, low polygon structures and characters into beautiful set pieces. The quality in the art direction carries over to Mount Hyjal, which is the other option you can pick to start the high level Cataclsym play. First introduced in Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, Hyjal used to be a secluded area that was only really seen in a particular raid event in World of Warcraft that re-enacted the events of the former game. It’s relatively smaller than Vashj’ir, but it’s just as epic in terms of content, with some of the most intense battles WoW‘s extensive lore has ever seen.

Once you’re past these two zones, you’re introduced to my personal favorite out of the new areas, Deepholm, a massive underground cave that used to serve as Deathwing’s home. This is probably World of Warcraft‘s most colorful and craziest zones yet, with multi-colored rock formations contrasting with icy structures and volcanoes every which way. The next zone, Uldum, is a Egyptian-influenced desert map that probably makes the heaviest use of phasing and in-engine cutscenes during its quests. You’ll run into an Indiana Jones wannabe and see a metric ton of references to adventure movies too. Blizzard’s decision to reference pop culture in just about everywhere in World of Warcraft is most evident in Uldum, which makes it the weaker of the new zones. They go so far as to even add an analog to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis to counter your Indy buddy. Even though the comedy is pretty well developed, it comes as a little too weird and out of place, even for WoW standards. Twilight Highlands is the last of new places to explore and the highest level zone to quest in, and serves as the hunter’s paradise equivalent to Nagrand from The Burning Crusade, up to having a combat arena of its own.

The instancing system in World of Warcraft got tweaked in Cataclysm as well. In order to make use of the ‘looking for dungeon’ tool, you’re first tasked with finding the entrance of the new dungeons and if you’re hoping to jump into heroic difficulty dungeons right away, be prepared to be disappointed. Blizzard has implemented a minimum equipment level limit in order to join a group, which helps prevent some of the frustrations of group management, although it’s no replacement for skill. And skill is definitely required to complete the new Cataclysm dungeons that require plenty of crowd control and smart play with less of the “nuke-them-all” mentality from the previous expansion. PvP is also looked into in Cataclysm, with the addition of Tol Barad, a player versus player battleground that occurs every two hours between Horde and Alliance. Control of the zone, like in Wrath of the Lich King‘s Winterspring, gives the winning faction access to special vendors and a raid zone.

Archaeology is the new job that’s introduced in Cataclysm. Like first aid, cooking and fishing, it’s a secondary profession that can be learned in tandem with the crafting and/or gathering jobs that you already are proficient in. It becomes available at level 20 but only really becomes something to invest in once you have a flying mount due to how this profession works. Digs appear in various spots on Azeroth’s continents and by a mix of dumb luck and dedication, you might uncover some nifty trinkets, pets or even special mounts. The mechanic of exploring and discovering relic spots seems really interesting on paper even though it’s a little dull in actuality and yet another cause of headaches if you’re the sort of player who wants to find everything and has to compete with a crowded server with others doing exactly the same thing as you. It takes time for archaeology to become something feasible to work towards and hopefully it’ll be tweaked in future content patches in order to make it more interesting than it is now.

Guilds also receive a pretty hefty makeover as well and now can level along with their members. Leveling isn’t limited to bragging rights, as each new level awards a guild-wide award and buff, like increased experience bonuses and reputation gains. By gaining more reputation in your guild, you’ll be able to buy a host of special items that are unlocked as the guild earns more achievements that benefit members that group with ‘guildies’ for raids and dungeons or even more mundane activities like crafting a certain number of items in a particular profession. Dedication to a guild leads to a lot of rewards and makes being in a guild much more than getting together with friends, but also an investment of time and effort.

There’s no doubt World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is a huge expansion to an already immense game. Even so, players have a choice to make depending on how dedicated they are to it or on their play style. Not all changes to Azeroth require the expansion to be installed. It’s important to note that the changes to the old world content is available to all subscribers. The new races, class combos, the new archaeology profession and 80-85 content require Cataclysm to be installed, so if you’re only picking up World of Warcraft now, this new expansion isn’t as vital as in the case of being a WoW fan with high level characters at the ready for new content.

There’s also the matter of having multiple characters to play through the new high level content. There aren’t enough zones past Vashj’ir and Hyjal to make leveling two separate characters completely unique experiences. You’re bound to repeat some quests at some point during the high level grind, even if you skip some areas in benefit of others. Fully playing through all the new areas is recommended, though, since the quest quality and rewards are some of the best World of Warcraft has to offer, not to mention what’s to come in future patches. If you’re the die hard sort of Warcraft fan, you’re probably already playing through Cataclysm, but if you’re one of the many still on the fence, pondering whether or not it’s worth taking the plunge into World of Warcraft, there’s no better time to do so than now.

Well, ‘peaceful’ isn’t technically what you get when you step into the secret poker club called ‘The Inventory’ and sit down to play. You get to see some familiar faces right off the bat if you’ve been playing Telltale’s many adventure games, like Winslow from Tales of Monkey Island, who is the host and Sam & Max‘s buddy gumshoe Flint Paper, who’s having a well-deserved drink in the background.

The four characters you meet up with to play Texas Hold ‘Em are probably the chattiest of bunches, at least when they’re sitting down and betting on cards. Sam from the Sam & Max games plays his poker just like his detecting, as in completely disregarding financial safety, while Tycho, from HotHead Games’ Rainslick Precipice of Darkness and Penny Arcade, plays pretty conservatively. Homestar Runner‘s  also antes up, making some of the more all out, or should I say, all-in plays against The Heavy from Team Fortress 2, who’s probably the least aggressive player of the bunch.

Poker Night‘s main draw is most certainly the banter between the cast of characters. The poker game mechanics are pretty solid and you’ll be losing a lot, but the obvious focus from Telltale’s part is the excellent but ultimately short dialogue script between the players during the matches. Penny Arcade’s Tycho gets a voice for the first time ever and puts into sound the wonderful curses we’ve grown accustomed to reading in the comics, while Strong Bad loves to make lame rhymes. These exchanges are mostly hilarious and are of one Poker Night‘s many charms.

You won’t have to worry about walking away with an empty handed if you happen to lose and get cleaned out. The ten thousand dollar buy-in is merely cosmetic and your funds are infinite, so you can join in as many times as you want. The same, however, can’t be said about your competition, who often offer up personal belongings as collateral when buying into a match. If you’re able to bust them out of the game, these items become unlocks for Team Fortress 2, which is yet another reason to dip into Poker Night.

There are other incentives for winning poker games other than unlocks for Valve’s cartoony multiplayer shooter. There are bonus card decks and tables for the main Poker Night game that are unlocked as you win more tournaments too. As an added incentive, Telltale offers a Steam import in case you buy it from their own store, which is thoroughly recommended if you’re into Steam achievements. Some are really evil, like winning a hand with a four-of-a-kind combo, which add some extra replay value.

Poker Night at the Inventory is a competent Texas Hold ‘Em simulator and an even better comedic experience. Even though the dialogue becomes repetitive after a few hours of playing the game, the five dollar price tag makes it a no-brainer for newcomers to these franchises that band together for this friendly competition or for longtime fans craving for more jokes and laughs. Considering how digital distribution works, I bet you’ll be able to grab this for even less than that not very far from now. There’s no reason not to.

One word that can easily describe DeathSpank is: hilarious. Ron Gilbert’s (one of the guys behind Monkey Island) newest creation is one of the funniest games this year. The hero DeathSpank has finally reached the prize he’s sought his entire life, called The Artifact. Things aren’t that simple though and thankfully for us the game opens up soon after our heroic figure claims his reward since there are bigger evils to slay and the Dispenser of Justice still has plenty to vanquish as an evil ruler threatens the land.

DeathSpank is a hack ‘n slasher in the veins of the PlayStation 2 Baldur’s Gate Dark Alliance games in which plenty of different weapons can be equipped to the controller’s face buttons that are applied in a very simple combat system. The only real stat you have to worry about is health in DeathSpank and with experience level earned, you get to pick one of three improvements to combat or mobility. By the end, once you reach the level cap of 20, you’ll have all of the improvements, so choosing which bonus you want is more of a cosmetic choice than a vital one in the long run.

In terms of loot, which games like these are known for, there’s plenty to pick up in DeathSpank. Your armor is constantly updated with the most ridiculous looking metal ever to grace a game. There’s plenty of different sets with a handful of bonuses for defense against elements like fire, ice and nature damage. By the end of the game you’ll probably have plenty of cash to buy the most powerful armor set thanks to how generous enemies are with gold drops. Speaking of enemies, they’re hilarious too. Evil demonic donkeys and deranged unicorns are just two examples of the disturbed creations you’ll have to deal with as you run around doing random quests for the crazy population from DeathSpank’s world.

Quests are fairly varied and are mostly very funny. Sure, some of them are not much more than fetch quests, making DeathSpank feel like an MMO game sometimes. Thankfully for my sanity, drop rates aren’t as evil as in say, World of WarCraft, and most missions that deal with this mechanic don’t take long at all to complete. As expected, the dialogue in DeathSpank is very well written and the voice acting delivery is incredible. DeathSpank is voiced by a ‘The Tick’-like actor who just kills it with inflections and an exaggerated bravado tone that fits in perfectly with the character design.

Speaking of character design, the art in DeathSpank looks beautiful. It’s one hell of a colorful game, especially in a 1080i widescreen display. The story is carried out in paper crafted animated cutscenes that are very fun to follow. The in-game character models are very simple but thanks to some very well detailed texture work, they look great and fit in well with the cutout style environments. You’ll travel across pink forests, gloomy graveyards and even red sand deserts that look very apart from each other, which help convey the feeling of how big this world really is.

I wouldn’t be making this much of a review if I did not mention some of DeathSpank’s problems. The combat tends to get a little bit repetitive by the end of the game thanks to some spotty enemy artificial intelligence (or lack there of) which is pretty much an “attack-on-sight” routine with little variation. Boss fights boil down to running around in circles, healing back your health and attacking until it’s dead for most of them, which is unfortunate to say the least. I also had issues with the checkpointing that is made through outhouses that revive you every time you die. Sometimes, the game would just revive me in a point that’s ridiculously far from where I originally died and by the time I got there, the money I dropped when I fell had already de-spawned. I didn’t run into this problem more than twice, but it was annoying enough to mention.

These reviving and checkpoint game mechanics help keep the pacing quite a bit and make for travelling around a breeze. The world in DeathSpank is relatively large but is easily explored thanks to the generous placement of the magic outhouses all around the globe. The campaign lasts quite a while and can be played on local co-op with up to one extra player, which are a welcome plus for a downloadable game. You could easily spend around ten hours if you decide to go after all the quests and hit the experience level cap, which is a great mark for a fifteen dollar title.

It’s great to see a new franchise gaining momentum and I hope Hothead Games keeps releasing new DeathSpank games in the future the way they’ve been doing this year. The story is simply too funny and tongue-in-cheek (ha, get it? thongs?) to drop now. With two games in the series, there’s incredible potential for even more laughs. The world needs a hero like DeathSpank to save the downtrodden, vanquish evil and dispense justice!

With Fallout 3 being one of my favorite games ever, I couldn’t pass the chance to play Fallout: New Vegas. Even though it was actually developed by Obsidian and not Bethesda, New Vegas has lots of charm and depth, along with plenty of bugs and glitches. It’s one of those games that has so much going for it that you (almost) don’t mind how broken it is sometimes. Obsidian has a track record of releasing beautifully written but buggy games. If you’ve been playing games since the Xbox era, you can probably recall how Knights of the Old Republic 2 was released unfinished. I know I do. Even so, I was willing to give them a pass for New Vegas. Hell, it was my chance for more Fallout 3 and in that regard, New Vegas succeeds.

You don’t start as a vault dweller this time, which is pretty novel considering the starting point of the previous Fallout games. As a courier, you were tasked with delivering a platinum cast chip but end up getting kidnapped and left for dead in some ditch. Luckily for you, someone manages to rescue you and put your head back together, giving you a chance to scour the Mojave Wasteland after your killers.  This desert terrain evokes plenty of that Fallout feel of isolation, all the while being fairly more condensed than Fallout 3′s Capitol Wasteland. The landmarks of the Nevada are there, too, with Hover Dam making an appearance along with some of the glitter of the Las Vegas Strip. Somehow, with all the bombs dropping, Vegas managed to stay pretty bright.

The Fallout series was always strong character-driven and New Vegas keeps with tradition. You’re given a host of options to start your character out with through special stats and traits. A high speech skill is paramount to my Fallout playing style and that proved to be a great decision as I made my way through the Mojave. New Vegas awards you for taking alternate approaches in quests and instead of rolling a dice every time a speech challenge pops up like in Fallout 3, if your skill is high enough, you are guaranteed to win, which is pretty darn nice. Even so, I managed to max out this base stat, which then let me focus on other options I like to have, like lock picking and science, which are pretty much identical to Fallout 3′s “invasion” minigames.

The actual shooting is what makes New Vegas feel a little bit different from Fallout 3. Stats still play a large part of using weapons and putting points into the different types of armaments proves to be a good investment in the long run. If you choose not to use the VATS system, Fallout’s combat automation system, direct aiming is a much more solid option this time around. There are working iron sights on all the weapons that actually work most of the times. I hardly made use of VATS in my playthrough due to the fact that I kept my courier a gunslinger, playing from a third person perspective. That’s not to say the VATS system is not useful, far from it, but given how much I relied on it in the previous game, I appreciate the slight care given to my actual skill aiming a gun.

Another facet of realism that New Vegas makes use of is the addition of a new difficulty option – hardcore mode. In harcore, some of the “game-y” aspects of Fallout are turned on their head. Limb damage, for instance, can only be healed by doctors and healing packs only give you health over time. Extra stats also become available, like the need for sleep, hunger and thrist. Playing the game in this setting is a pretty insane proposition in case you are after plenty of immersion. I wasn’t really after so much dedication to the game myself, but I’ll probably save a playthrough exclusively for this new setting.

With New Vegas being set in the Western section of the U.S, you can expect to run into the old Fallout favorite factions like the Brotherhood of Steel and the New California Republic (NCR). Faction play is much more important this time around, with much more of an influence in the main story. The line between good and evil isn’t as clear as before this time around, though. Obviously, a legion of Roman centurions wannabes that crucifies innocent people aren’t really out for a picnic, but your alternatives aren’t a clear contrast in the karmic scale. Thanks to that, your shifts in karma don’t really play as strong of a part as your faction alignment. You’ll know when helping a faction kills just about every chance of going with another and if you’re the obsessive type that has to absolutely see just about every corner of the story and all the alternatives you could’ve gone with, you’ll have to play New Vegas multiple times.

The writing in New Vegas like I mentioned before, is top notch. The story takes its time unfolding, with plenty of twists and turns and unlike Fallout 3, it plays  a big role in the side content as well. Almost everything you do besides the main quest line in side missions somehow involve your pursuit of the truth. People need favors before lending you a hand along the way and doing these secondary tasks helps cement the narrative, making it worth going for that unexplored marker when running around in the Wasteland. Random characters have pretty good dialogue and the NPCs you’ll cross path with are pretty well written. Your companions are much more significant this time around, each with their own side story that can be found and developed, each with their own reward and impact on the story.

For instance, you’ll come across a robot dog that needs to be repaired. When you actually visit the person that will help this companion, he’ll give you the option to actually influence how this companion will be from that point on. These helpers are pretty useful out in the open and mostly dumb indoors. The intelligence scripting is all over the place in New Vegas, keeping with the tradition of recent Bethesda-powered free roaming games. Sometimes enemies are just stumped in place, in other situations, your own friends disappear, only to reappear hours later out of the ether. Things are just plain crazy in the world of Fallout, in both technical and story based ways.

You truly never know who or what you can find and that’s a big part of the fun in New Vegas – the distractions. Besides side questing, you can gamble in rebuilt ‘Vegas casinos for bonus caps or faction cash. The limited scope of the Strip is a little disappointing, but considering there was a nuclear apocalypse, I guess they’re doing alright. Each of the casinos has its own theme and quests to match, along with some of the more important factions from the Mojave. The gambling is pretty bare bones, but there’s really so much you can do with roulette, blackjack and slots. There’s also an unique card game to New Vegas called Caravan, that’s incredibly complicated and which I didn’t bother learning how to play. I just didn’t have to worry about cash this time around. It’s much easier to reap a small fortune this time around thanks to how generous most of the enemies are when you kill them or the weird barter system you’ll come across as you find some of the hidden collectibles that are hoarded (and bought) by a certain individual you’ll meet.

Something that helps give less of a value to money is how easily you can create your own weapon modifications and ammunition in New Vegas. Instead of giving schematics for new weapons like in Fallout 3, you’re able to modify weapons to fit your needs as long as you’re carrying the proper components. I didn’t really bother customizing my guns much since I just about found every gun I ever needed along the way. Crafting ammo is pretty useful, on the other hand. Every gun can carry different types of ammo and if things get sticky, you can always pop some of the less reliable crafted ammo at the touch of a button.

The unpredictability in New Vegas is also a given due to how unstable the game runs. I had more than a few desktop crashes during my Mojave trip and some of my companions simply disappeared forever. Thankfully, since I played the PC version of the game I was able to input console commands that warped my friends back to me. I can feel the anguish Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 players must be feeling when this sort of problem happens with their game and they have no way of circumventing it, though. If you’re planning on jumping aboard Fallout: New Vegas, be prepared for some bugs to rear their heads.

Fallout: New Vegas is an incredibly fun game that has a lot to offer if you don’t mind some of the technical problems you are bound to run into. I had a lot of fun with this game and I’m pretty much set for an added playthrough from scratch in hardcore mode. I’ll probably wait until it’s patched a little bit more, though. This is my first Fallout game that I started on release day and it shows. In the end though, I’d be more than willing to go all in with my chips in saying New Vegas is a great addition to the Fallout franchise.

Note: For the purposes for this review, I played the PC/Steam version of Fallout: New Vegas and the bug descriptions are based on my experience with that particular version of the game. At the time of this review, my version of the game was patched twice but the crash-to-desktop issues still remained.