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Steven "The Future of Games Journalism" Strom plays entirely too much Dota 2. He sometimes plays games when he's not too busy writing about them and their place in our culture, and thinks maybe they're not just a fad after all.
  • Hitman GO Review
    Reviews
    • iOS
    Hitman GO Review

    By

    Agent 47, or Jonathan Hitman as I like to call him, is an assassin with a heart. He may garrote goons with piano wires taken from actual pianos and dump their bodies in children's ball pits, but he usually does so for some contrive good reason. I think the previous games involved clones or …something?You know what? It doesn't matter. Hitman GO is nothing like the games from which it derives. It's a board game - several board games, according to the main menu. You move the titular hitter of men across prescribed grids like a game piece while other pieces representing civilians and thugs of various orders patrol and/or survey the board to knock him over. The hitman always moves first, and moving into an opposing piece from behind or the sides will knock them over instead.That's literally all there is to the game. It's as minimalist as 47's own well-waxed dome, and far more appealing to look at than Timothy Olyphant's.
  • Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft Review
    Reviews
    • iOS
    • PC
    Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft Review

    By

    I've already written about how much I love Hearthstone. I talked about how the game is a ballet of mathematic interactions glazed with Blizzard's trademark visual flair, production values and the World of Warcraft aesthetic. I probably said something about how the free-to-play elements are balanced with in-game currency that accrues at just the right speed to keep you from ever feeling obligated to spend real money.I've admittedly fallen off my daily quest schedule quite hard in the months since Hearthstone's official release out of beta, but now it's on iPad. Now the game has changed.Except that it hasn't, really, which is a good thing. It's a fantastic thing, as Hearthstone was already a fantastic game. The transition to a mobile platform hasn't changed that. In fact, it feels rather like the game has come home.
  • Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft Walkthrough
    Walkthroughs
    • iOS
    • PC
    Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft Walkthrough

    By

    Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is a collectible card game from Blizzard Entertainment. In this game, you build decks of cards based on classes from World of Warcraft and battle opponents online. Gamezebo's guide will provide you with some tips and hints that will give you a headstart on the surprisingly wide array of strategies.
  • The Elder Scrolls Online Review Diary: Crafting and Exploration
    News
    • iOS
    • PC
    The Elder Scrolls Online Review Diary: Crafting and Exploration

    By

    Crafting isn't something I generally spend a lot of time with in MMOs. I usually find anything I want can be bought with gold I earned doing something more interesting than clicking "create" and watching progress bars fill up.The Elder Scrolls Online puts a surprisingly tall - and very enjoyable - emphasis on crafting. I was skeptical at first, but after spending most of an entire day exploring Cyrodiil, gathering materials and custom-building my personal arsenal I'm quite hooked.You see, crafting isn't treated like a completely separate aspect of the TESO experience. Each trade has its own skill tree, augmented with the same skill points used to build up a character's combat abilities. Some might groan at the tough choice between learning a new spell and being able to highlight resource nodes - and it does feel like a sacrifice at first - but it shows how important the developers want crafting to be.In most games, crafting is a gradual, granular slog. You build the crappy equipment until you've leveled up enough to make the slightly-less-crappy equipment and so on. TESO makes the time I spend feel worthwhile, as I leave a personal mark on each unique steel snowflake.
  • Steam user data reveals the best way to do Free-To-Play
    News
    • iOS
    • PC
    Steam user data reveals the best way to do Free-To-Play

    By

    If you want an intense and fantastic example of Real Games Journalism, I recommend checking out Kyle Orland's exhaustive analysis of Steam user data at Ars Technica. It shows some incredibly interesting trends on how Steam users are buying -- and playing -- their games.What I'm most interested in is what this means for free-to-play games and development in general. The top two games on Steam right now -- both in terms of total users and hours played -- are free-to-play. Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2 both cost nothing to play, are essentially multiplayer-only, and started out as paid games. (In the case of Dota 2, that payment was to get into the closed beta.)Ignoring Team Fortress 2 for a moment, I think Dota 2 is particularly interesting. About four thousand human years have been put into the game since it hit beta in 2011. My Steam profile says I account for nearly 400 hours of that, so I can hardly feign surprise.Steam is estimated to account for three-fourths of the PC gaming market so it's not surprising that a game by Valve, the service's creator, would have a top spot in downloads. Dota 2 gets understandably preferential treatment on Steam's front page just about daily. It's not surprising that a Valve game, according to Ars' statistics, makes up a fifth of total playtime on a Valve service.
  • Humble Mobile Bundle 5 includes The Cave, The Room Two
    News
    • Android
    Humble Mobile Bundle 5 includes The Cave, The Room Two

    By

    It's an odd thing to want an Android device to justify buying games I already own on other platforms. Such is the world we live in where games can be bought for next to nothing, as long as you wait long enough for sales like the Humble Mobile Bundle.If you're not familiar with the organization (and you really ought to be -- you're welcome) Humble Bundle provides packs of cheap games (and movies and ebooks and albums) on a pay-what-you want basis. If you pay more than the user average, you get a swathe of extras like more games and goodies like soundtracks.This, the fifth Humble Mobile Bundle, includes Android versions of games like The Room Two, The Cave, Carcassonne, Bag It!, Aralon: Sword and Shadow and R-Type II. More games will be added over time, and purchasing now will get you those as well.
  • Drinkbox Studios’ Severed: A little bit Kill Bill, a little bit Fruit Ninja
    News
    • Android
    • iOS
    Drinkbox Studios’ Severed: A little bit Kill Bill, a little bit Fruit Ninja

    By

    The previous game from Drinkbox Studios, Guacamelee! was a wonderful send up of the Metroidvania genre that's colorful in more ways than one. Its bright Day of the Dead/luchador aesthetic was a cheerful celebration of Mexican culture, while its story and characters were frenetic and entertaining without becoming cloying or clichéd.Severed looks similarly Central American, but a whole lot more serious. Guacamelee! had its sullen side, but Severed sounds like a tale of revenge. Our warrior protagonist has lost her arm (and possibly more, if I'm interpreting the above trailer correctly) and seeks retribution against supernatural forces.So far it's only been announced for mobile platforms, but the devs haven't ruled out the possibility of bringing Severed to touchsreen devices like Vita, 3DS and even the Wii U. Considering the company's history with Sony, at least one of those is probably a safe bet.
  • Hearthstone is getting its first expansion with Curse of Naxxramas
    News
    • iOS
    • PC
    Hearthstone is getting its first expansion with Curse of Naxxramas

    By

    Curse of Naxxramas: A Hearthstone Adventure will be the first-ever expansion for Blizzard's free-to-play digital card game, featuring 30 new cards, a new game board and single-player class challenges.The expansion takes the form of a card-based dungeon crawler, with five "wings" unlocking over as many weeks simultaneously on all platforms. Each will feature new single-player encounters with boss fights and unique cards. The first wing, The Arachnid Quarter, will be available for free to all Hearthstone players at launch. The remaining content, true to the game's free-to-play model, will be available either with real money orin-game gold.Hearthstone saw official release on PC last year, while the iOS version launched in Canada, Australia and New Zealand last week (though if you want to be sneaky, you can learn how to get around that here).There's no word on the expansion's pricing or release at this time.