I'm leaving World of Warcraft. I played the game from before the beginning, during its beta test prior to the game's formal release in November 2004. After putting time and energy and money into the game for 15 years, I feel like some nostalgia and introspection; hence this blog post. World of Warcraft (WoW) is part of…
It occurred to me that I've mentioned Horizon: Zero Dawn a couple of times in this blog, but my review of it never appeared here. For the sake of completeness and comparison, here are my reviews of Horizon: Zero Dawn and its expansion, Horizon: The Frozen Wilds. These reviews first appeared in a small members-only World of…
As some of you may know, I'm homebound for a few weeks and was looking for a game to pass the time. I found one: Final Fantasy XV. Before I get to my review, I have to address the elephant in room (though it's more like a T-Rex in a broom closet): The very first female character…
Red Dead Redemption 2 is a massive simulation of the Old West around the beginning of the 20th century. It's an incredibly detailed game, loaded with quests, challenges, secrets, and several systems in which the world responds to how you play the game. You play Arthur Morgan, a member of the Dutch Van der Linde gang. Among…
I've played in World of Warcraft (WoW) since before its formal beginning; that is, I played in WoW beta test in 2004. When you start either a Human or a Dwarf character in WoW, you quickly learn about flying between the Human capital of Stormwind and the Dwarf capital of Ironforge. Your character flies on the back…
It's probably unfair for me to review Shadow of the Tomb Raider so soon after Spider-Man. My viewpoint is skewed because Spider-Man is clearly the better game. It's also unfair because I'm not a professional videogame reviewer, though I feel compelled to write reviews; I feel that one game is better than the other, but I struggle…
I'll start by addressing the big problem with this game: On its easy difficulty setting (dubbed "Friendly"), the game is much too hard for casual players -- at first. The game starts in media res, with Spider-Man fighting the thugs of Wilson Fisk, aka the Kingpin. Since this videogame is frequently compared with Batman: Arkham Asylum, I'll…
Through a World of Warcraft discussion message board, I heard of a research study being conducted by West Virginia University on the relationships between videogame players and their avatars. In a "what the hell" mood, I responded to the survey with a story about one of my WoW characters. I thought the story was minor, but to…
About a year ago, I joked that from now on, all console games that I played must have a colon in their name, because the ones I played with a colon were more fun. Then I played God of War, which I enjoyed despite its lack of a colon. Now I come to NieR: Automata. I purchased…
When you step into the middle of a franchise, whether it's written, on screen, or in a video game, you run the risk of not understanding references to past events. Within a couple of minutes of playing God of War, I watched the main character, Kratos, fiddle with his arm wrappings. There was a strong sense of…