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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.
  • The Elder Scrolls Online Review Diary: First Impressions and Combat
    News
    • iOS
    • PC
    The Elder Scrolls Online Review Diary: First Impressions and Combat

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    MMOs tend to open with flashy, pre-rendered cutscenes to show of just how cool their universe is meant to feel. Seasoned players know this is just smoke and mirrors -- something to draw in the pedestrian crowd and invoke the "feeling" of what's actually conveyed by digital dice rolls and numbers leaping from wild boars' heads.The Elder Scrolls Online isn't really so different in the first sense. There's a lovely, action-packed trailer with all the excitement of chains crashing through the sky and wizard/barbarian types thrashing about demon-y things.Like all Elder Scrolls games, however, you start much more humbly -- as a prisoner. You've been taken to Coldharbour and had your soul removed. One of the big bads of The Elder Scrolls mythos needs it -- and those of several million of like-minded players -- to continue being evil. You escape from this contrived tutorial, of course, and the game drops you on Cyrodiil proper in one of three starting islands.Where you end up at first is determined by which faction you choose. Literally nothing is done to explain what choosing a faction means. I had to hit up the game's website to learn the Ebonheart Pact includes the vikings, lizard people and dark elves. These being the raddest of Elder Scrolls species, I obviously chose their alliance and wound up in Morrowind.
  • Advertising as Art: Free To Play isn’t a documentary, but it is a fascinating experience
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    • iOS
    • PC
    Advertising as Art: Free To Play isn’t a documentary, but it is a fascinating experience

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    If a documentary is meant to provide an objective view of real-life stories, Free to Play is an utter failure. It's a puff piece -- a bit of advertising meant to show the positive influence of a product.Free to Play is a "documentary" about Dota 2 made by Valve, the proprietors of Dota 2. As a result you shouldn't really expect it to provide a negative or even balanced depiction of their own product and, more specifically, esports.Snippets of match announcers and interviews with team managers constantly drive home just how big, how swift, how valid professional gaming has become. It may be true; I quite enjoy it myself, so I can't entirely deny that it's something worth exploring. However, it's a story that's perhaps best not taken at face value from the people who stand to profit most.Of course, that doesn't mean the stories on display are bad, or the film itself uninteresting. In fact, it's a quite well-put-together little piece that provides a fascinating, if not particularly fair, view of three young people exploring a new form of entertainment.
  • How to get a Canadian iTunes account
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    • iOS
    How to get a Canadian iTunes account

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    iPhone and iPad games sometimes launch early in specific regions - usually for those lucky ragamuffins living Canada, New Zealand or Australia. Many online-centric mobile games dance the staggered release routine to stress test servers and catch various other problems before launching in countries like the ol' U.S. of A.Not to fret, dear readers. Much like subsidized health insurance, you too can experience the same wonders as Canada just by setting up a spare Apple ID on your iDevice of choice with these few simple steps. These instructions will work on any free-to-play game in any country you may need, though Canada seems the region of choice for most developers.
  • FTL: Faster Than Light Walkthrough
    Walkthroughs
    • iOS
    • PC
    FTL: Faster Than Light Walkthrough

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    FTL is a spaceship command strategy game with rougelike elements by Subset Games. Gamezebo's strategy guide will give you all of the tips and tricks you'll need to brave the void of space and defeat the incredibly difficult closing chapter of the game. 
  • Amazon’s $99 box might be called Fire TV, but it’s the games that have me interested
    News
    • Android
    Amazon’s $99 box might be called Fire TV, but it’s the games that have me interested

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    Amazon pulled a Sega Saturn today (perhaps not the most auspicious comparison) and announced that you can buy the Fire TV for $99 at this very moment.The device is a clear competitor for set-top boxes like Apple TV, Chromecast and Roku. You'll be able to stream video from the obligatory services like Netflix and Hulu Plus alongside Amazon's own Instant Video apps.On the hardware end, it sports a dedicated graphics processor, 2GB of RAM and a Mimo dual-band wifi which, theoretically, makes it three times faster than those other devices I just mentioned. It also has voice control, so everyone can know when you're binge-watching Scandal as you shout it out to an empty room.What's most interesting about the little black box is how open it is. It operates on the open Android operating system, meaning it's very simple for software designers to bring content to the device in just about any way they choose. To me, that smells like a greater focus on games than its prime competitors.
  • Hellraid: The Escape draws inspiration from The Room
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    • iOS
    Hellraid: The Escape draws inspiration from The Room

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    One of my absolute favorite games on mobile is the first-person escape-puzzler, The Room. We were lucky enough to get a sequel recently, but there's still a dearth of such games, perfectly tuned to touchscreens as they are.Hellraid: The Escape has a silly name, but when a press release specifically cites The Room as influence, I'm willing to overlook a lot of things.Perhaps it's best the name is silly. The game itself certainly doesn't look serious, what with the autonomous, disembodied eyeball in front of the May 5, 2014 release date in the trailer. The Escape (which, by itself, may be a better name) is tied to the upcoming PC/console hack-and-slash game Hellraid from Techland.Techland is the team behind Call of Jaurez and Dead Island, if you didn't know. The studio can be very hit (like Call of Jaurez: Gunslinger) or miss (like Call of Jaurez: The Cartel). 
  • Infinite Crisis Walkthrough
    Walkthroughs
    • PC
    Infinite Crisis Walkthrough

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    Infinite Crisis is a multiplayer online battle arena game from Turbine. In this game, you play as heroes and villains from the DC Comics universe to attack and defend structures in multiplayer combat.  Gamezebo's walkthrough will provide you with some tips and hints that will help you understand some of the basic strategies of MOBA-style combat and tactics.
  • Infinite Crisis Review
    Reviews
    • PC
    Infinite Crisis Review

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    Comic book stories are a great backdrop for video games. Not only do you have thousands of canonical characters and decades of continuity to play with, but each of those characters and storylines have multiple versions thanks to the many universes of DC and Marvel Comics.Infinite Crisis marked the return of the "multiverse" concept to the world of Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman after a long absence. Now, Turbine has made a game by the same name, loosely based on the events of that storyline, and in doing so picked the perfect genre to employ the menagerie of metahumans at their disposal.Turbine is best known for its massively multiplayer games (Dungeons and Dragons Online, Lord of the Rings Online and Asheron's Call). Infinite Crisis is, however, that newest of multiplayer fads - a MOBA. That's short for "multiplayer online battle arena," and encompasses games like Dota 2 and League of Legends. Those two genre heavy-hitters may be vastly different from one another, but Infinite Crisis definitely mimics the latter.