Ten tips for a better Dragon's Dogma experience.

It may be hiding under a few rough edges, but Dragon’s Dogma is one of the best fantasy experiences money can buy. As someone who is favors the adventure, over-the-top action and mystery that fantasy role-playing games often promise in the form of CGI trailers only to drop you into spreadsheet land, DD has already become my favorite game of this year, perhaps for all time. So allow me to enlighten you on the game’s most enticing features and some simple ways to get around a few minor flaws that seem to be driving people away.

Blizzard and Bioware's MMOs: Telling Stories From Opposite Directions

There’s a lot of presumption out there that MMORPGs can’t or don’t tell stories like their single-player counterparts. Me, I think it’s nonsense. Maybe that was true in the past. It isn’t now.

In fact, I’ve been amazed at how much they’ve evolved from oldschool monster-clubbing. Somehow, some way, MMOs started telling stories. Final Fantasy XI has character-focused missions bound together into a grand narrative, Age of Conan has its early-game switches between single-player and multiplayer, and Guild Wars has its hub-and-instance structure. Dungeons and Dragons Online actually has a narrator. Storytelling’s gotten big, and storytelling choices has become key to differentiation within the genre.

Even World of Warcraft (WoW) has evolved into a story-focused game.

Soundscapes – The Future of Sound

Have we perfected sound yet? No, not by a long shot. We imagine that graphics will be “done” when we can create anything we can imagine without hitting a hardware limit. Whether it’s a perfect recreation of reality or whatever

Don't Believe the Hype

What we believe and how we behave aren’t always in sync. In an ideal world people would act in ways supporting their beliefs and ideas, but the reality of it is that we live in a world of tangled webs

After pressing start: Unraveling Chrono Cross' chronological mysteries

Chrono Cross is the Led Zeppelin of video games. When it first arrived on scene, it was one of the highest rated games ever: I remember reading countless perfect score reviews, psyching myself up for launch. Of course, the hype

The Campfire: A nightmare in Hyrule

The Campfire is a column where we regale you with tales of our video game adventures. This is a tale of a young boy and an overclocked imagination…. The wonderful thing about childhood is that moments of fear, surprise, and

Waiting to Respawn: The Five Tenets of Most Excellent Co-Op

Friends and loved ones, we have gathered here today to celebrate the joining of Player 1 and Player 2 in the bonds of broly matrimony. In these days of online games and randomly assigned partners, this agreement to enter co-op

Feedback Loop: Long Live the Shooter, the Shooter is Dead

The dispatches from E3 seem to indicate that the shooter remains the same. How long can its dominance last? What comes next?

Is it High Noon for shooters? In his latest post on Brainy Gamer, Michael Abbott seems to think so. He compares the current generation of shooter games to Westerns in 1959, the last year before they started to disappear.

Caring for Polygons: NPC Bonding and Attachment

The post-apocalyptic Wasteland is a uncaring place. After leaving Vault 101, the Lone Wanderer is just that: alone in an unfamiliar and hostile environment. There is little friendship or love, especially that elusive, unconditional variety. In these desolate wastes, dogs

Skullgirls and the challenge of indie fighters

As mainstream games grow more expensive, indie games are gaining more of a presence. Indie games have always steered towards singleplayer experiences though with multiplayer rarely in mind. Even when playing with others in mind it’s usually not about being