At one point slated to bea full-on separate release, the Ravenstone Mine expansion for Ravenwood Fair is finally available. And while it may look quite different that its predecessor. the core gameplay remains largely unchanged. But considering we gave the original four and a half stars, that's not necessarily a bad thing. So even though there's not really any gameplay twists in Ravenstone, the addition of a new, very different area to explore and new characters to interact with make it a great choice for those looking for a change of scenery.
A.Typical RPG sounds like a lot of fun when you read about it. The game's premise is very Groundhog Day, letting you control a typical college student through one day of his largely mundane life. In the course of that day you will play soccer with bullies, wander around town, attempt to woo a lovely girl, and try to pass an exam. The game promises that it will make these mundane tasks feel epic through gameplay, an ambition that's never really realized. Instead A.Typical RPG is a funny game hampered by design flaws.
Little Cave Hero is a game that borrows heavily from others, yet still manages to feel fresh and interesting. It sports the pixelated style of classic adventure and role-playing games, but with gameplay that resembles social-style treasure hunting games. And when you throw in a unique puzzle element and a snarky, self-referential sense of humor, you end up with a game that's as funny as it is fun.
It's hard not to think of BioWare's Mass Effect series of console and PC RPGs when you first begin playing Planet Stronghold. A lot of the defining features of Mass Effect are present in Planet Stronghold, if in a simplified form: you can date many of the game's characters, you can select your main character's class and gender, and you can select your responses in dialog at many different points in the story. Planet Stronghold is obviously a much simpler game than Mass Effect, but it holds up surprisingly well to the comparison.
I've always found card battle games to be a bit of a tough thing to imagine in real life. Maybe we'd all be better off if we settled our battles with cards instead of weapons, but it's certainly hard to imagine, you know? Even in the anything goes realm of video games, it's just hard to picture a band of Orcs stomping around the countryside breaking out their decks of cards when it's time to pillage. Yet that's pretty much the setup for Deckmake Fantasy.
After seeing the teaser trailer put out by Gameloft last month, Order & Chaos Online quickly fell into the "too good to be true" category. That is, until we played it. The trailer promised an MMORPG experience that took everything we loved about World of Warcraft and stuck it onto an iPhone. Not only did it deliver on that promise, but it took us the better part of a week for us to pick our jaws up off the floor long enough to write this review.
I love Magicka the way a fat kid loves cake. I adore it completely, see my addiction with some guilt and know for a fact that it will inevitably get me killed. Of course, unlike diabetes, death in Magicka tends to happen with greater frequency and more hilarity. Best played with four people and easier completed with two, Arrowhead Studio's action-adventure is the textbook definition of the phrase "Hell is Other People."
Being an orphan is tough: you just can't catch a break. When you're growing up, you have to put up with endless abuse from the local bullies. Then, it always turns out that you're destined to save the world. It's just work, work, work. Chael, the star of Zenonia 3, has to deal with all of this, but it also turns out that he's the heir to a heroic dynasty. Like its predecessors, the game is a lot of fun, but the series is starting to reach the point where it feels a little redundant.