Downloadable Content(DLC) has become increasingly commonplace in the modern gaming industry. Most of the biggest gaming releases utilize it to some extent. Done well, DLC can bring new life to a game, extending its shelf life and keeping players engaged for longer than they normally would be. Done...

It has been a few weeks since Mass Effect 3 has been released, and the controversies surrounding it have been going strong. People throughout the internet have discussed this issue to death. The fan backlash has been truly astounding. Bioware has reached George Lucas levels of hatred because of the...

If there is one thing that my previous articles have made obvious, it is that I approve of games giving players choice with regards to how their own experience plays out. I love being able to impose my own morality on the world and its denizens. However, there is one particular type of “choice”...

This topic is a serious issue among the gaming community. Simply inserting the words “used games” into a forum post is bound to transform whatever, otherwise benign, discussion into a huge flame war. Nonetheless, it is an issue that needs to be discussed. Game publishers have been trying for a...

(Major Spoilers for the Assassin's Creed series and L.A. Noire abound.)Last week, I discussed how games could be used as a storytelling medium. I talked about the benefits of using games to explore philosophies and scenarios in a free form way: That player choice was an important concept and that...

This is a topic that I have touched on in the past, but recently, I have been given the opportunity to talk about it. A couple of weeks back, David Jaffe, creator of Twisted Metal and God of War, said, regarding to storytelling in video games, “If you've really got something inside of you that's...

There is one thing that my gamer friends complain about over and over again. Since I now have a bit of a lull in regards to things I want to talk about, I might as well address it this week. Are games too easy nowadays? The answer is not nearly as simple as you probably think. A game's difficulty...

(Spoiler Warning: I discuss Final Fantasy XIII-2's plot.) Time travel is one of many in a list of often utilized science-fiction tropes. It is easy to understand why that would be. Most people are fascinated by the concept of going back and forth through time for a variety of reasons. Some people...

Most gamers are already aware of what a quicktime event is. A quicktime event is a cutscene in a game where the player is required to correctly input a series of button prompts. From that base, quicktime events can vary in how they are executed. Some require different sets and types of inputs. Some...

I have been spending a good chunk of time lately playing games made by Bethesda, like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 3. While they are generally great games that I would recommend, they do have their weaknesses. Bethesda games are notorious for being buggy and the bastardization of the...