Adam's Venture Episode 3: Revelations - Review

The third and final episode in the Adam's Venture trilogy, Revelations, brings closure to Adam's quest of uncovering the secret of the Garden of Eden and putting a stop to the Clairvaux Corporation's evil schemes. Left for dead in the crumbling tomb of King Solomon, Adam loses consciousness and experiences a flashback of how he met his partner, Evelyn, and how they came to be involved with the Clairvaux Corporation. When he comes to, he feels reinvigorated in his promise to protect Evelyn, and sets out to rescue her from the clutches of the Clairvaux leader.

The majority of Revelations takes place during the flashback, as Adam explores the hidden depths of the University of Oxford, the French town of Luz, and a Templar mausoleum. While the flashback offers some backstory to the game's premise, it doesn't offer much newfound depth to any of the characters. Interactions with Evelyn, Adam's father, and Professor Saint-Omair scarcely go beyond the mechanical necessities of what needs to be said or done to advance to the next puzzle or location. Learning how Adam met Evelyn doesn't prove to be all that interesting because their depictions remain as flat and shallow as cardboard cutouts.

Once the flashback has concluded, the rest of the game is over with so quickly that it leaves the entire experience feeling abrupt and underwhelming. After regaining consciousness, you watch a few cutscenes while solving the same two puzzles over and over again, and follow extremely linear paths to the next cutscene or puzzle. At one point the villain just flat-out tells you his evil plan in a matter of just a few sentences. Nothing in this episode really builds towards this big revelation -- it just comes out of nowhere for one fleeting moment, so it feels cursory and unsatisfying. To top things off, once you solve the final puzzle, the game's practically over with no real resolution to everything that's happened.

The Walking Dead: Episode Two - Review

Much like its source material, The Walking Dead: Episode Two - Starved For Help is less about zombies and more about human relations in the wake of an inhuman apocalypse. Set three months after the conclusion of Episode One - A New Day, Lee Everett and his band of survivors have taken up residence in the Travalier Motel. With the walls barricaded, they seem set to survive until things blow over -- until they start running low on food. Forced to hunt the local wildlife, tensions mount on how to ration their remaining food supplies and whether or not to set out for a new location. As the group becomes more restless and malcontent with their situation, they meet a pair of brothers who own a dairy farm, and offer to trade gasoline for food.

The rest of Episode Two plays out like a suspense thriller as you try to gauge whether the St John family is trustworthy, and whether their farm (with its gasoline-powered electric fence) is really as safe from the zombies (and bandit raiders) as they claim it is. On the walk to their farm, the brothers ask oddly specific questions about your group, and once you arrive at the farm, they're rather selective of where you're allowed to roam. Are the St Johns up to no good, or are they just being overly cautious around a large group of heavily-armed strangers?

Besides trying to assess the potential for new living arrangements with the St Johns, with your group desperate for food and a safer shelter, you also have to contend with occasional zombie encounters as well as the mutual threat of bandit raiders. Human conflict takes center stage in this episode with even more tension dividing the group. All of your decisions from the previous episode carry over into this episode, meaning that characters will hold different opinions of you based on your prior actions within the group, and these tempered relationships get pushed to their limits in some of most tense and dramatic moments the series has offered thus far.

New Vegas is a Better RPG Than Skyrim

When I played Skyrim, it was obvious to me that it was a pretty shallow, mediocre RPG with a lot of problems. I had a whole bunch of criticisms to lay against it, and I still don't understand how people consider it such a great, phenomenal game. Replaying Fallout: New Vegas made it painfully clear that Bethesda really has no idea what they're doing when it comes to implementing RPG mechanics and designing sophisticated, compelling gameplay. New Vegas is a better RPG than Skyrim, and here's why.

Mannaging in Mann vs Machine

I have a bitter relationship with Team Fortress 2. I tried to get into it a few times (once in 2008, then again in 2010) and just didn't see much lasting appeal in it. I'm not a big fan of PVP shooters in the first place, and once TF2 became a hat simulator I almost completely wrote it off. Then more and more of my friends started playing and I got dragged back into it. I still hold very mixed opinions of the PVP modes (sometimes it's real fun, other times it's stale and monotonous, other times it's pure rage-inducing), so my curiosity was piqued when a new co-op mode was released: Mann vs Machine.

The concept sounded vaguely similar to that of Killing Floor, a game in which I've invested hundreds of hours over the past two years; both are co-op shooters with six players per team, both task you with fighting waves of mindless droning enemies, and both have you spending collected money at a trader between waves. Essentially, Mann vs Machine is Killing Floor with TF2 classes and its own unique premise, and I think it has the potential to be a really great game mode. I've had a lot of fun with MVM over the past week, but I do have a few issues with it. Here's my pseudo-review of MVM.

Impressions of Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition

As an ardent PC gamer, I've long lamented the fact that the Souls series remained exclusive to the console boxes. When I'd heard that Atlus were planning to take down the servers for Demon's Souls, I bought a PS3 just so I could have a chance to play Demon's Souls before its final curtain call. I haven't done much with the console since. So when I'd heard that Bandai Namco were planning to release a PC port of Dark Souls, I was very excited.

As news poured in that it was going to be a straight port with no fancification for the PC, my hopes dwindled to reserved skepticism. Over 100,000 PC gamers signed a petition asking for a port, but I don't think this is exactly what anyone had in mind. I've played about eight hours of Dark Souls now, and I can confirm that it is a rather rubbish port. If not for the new content, the Steam integration, and the fan-made resolution patch, I would almost recommend against the PC version. As for the game itself, well, I have a few opinions on that, too. My thoughts await after the jump.

Ranking the New Vegas DLCs

I first played Fallout: New Vegas shortly after it was released (back in the fall/winter of 2010), long before any of these DLC packs had been released. I'd spent so much time in my first playthrough that I had no desire to go back and do it all over again, just for the sake of some new content. I needed to let some time pass for everything to feel fresh again, so I'm only just now getting around to playing the DLCs. For the most part, they're all enjoyable and add a lot of variety to the game, each with their own unique charm and personality (though I still may have preferred a single extensive expansion than four separate, smaller DLCs). Either way, here are my thoughts on the four New Vegas DLC packs.

At the Smithsonian: The Art of Video Games

A while ago I visited the Art of Video Games exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. I spent about two hours looking at all of the exhibits and was generally pleased with the experience. It's nice to see video games getting some national recognition from such a reputable institution (and by extension, the government), validating the notion that video games may indeed constitute art. After all, video games are just as expressive as other visual art forms, but with the added element of interactivity potentially enhancing the individual's experience.

The exhibit itself is divided into three main sections: one section chronicling the history of video games with video displays of iconic examples from every notable gaming platform; one section with playable demos (on large-screen projections) of about a half-dozen games; and one section for concept art and displays of specific gameplay mechanics. It's quite an impressive set-up, but I have to wonder how educational it really is for gamers and non-gamers alike. As cool as it was for me to see and experience everything, I didn't feel especially enlightened when I walked out of the exhibit.

I would have liked to have seen a little more emphasis on the underlying characteristics of video games as art. For the most part, the exhibit felt like it was glorifying video games themselves, as specific entities, rather than the medium as a whole. They have a handful of monitors set up rotating video loops of developer interviews and commentary which is where most of the deeper substance is to be found, but these often felt like they were preaching to the choir, telling me things I already knew or understood. Still, they were interesting to watch, and I imagine they'd be more enlightening to a non-gamer.

I feel like they could've tapped the subject matter a little better by discussing things like how games are created, the challenge of making effective games, how developers specifically approach artistic decisions, and so on -- the things you don't get to see in the games themselves. That would've been a little more interesting for someone like me. Either way, it's an impressive exhibit with a lot to experience, so if you find yourself in DC before the exhibit closes at the end of September, it's worth checking out. I've got more pictures and descriptions in the full article.