Dragonball Xenoverse 2: An Excellent Game for Fans and Those Who've Never Seen the Franchise Alike

If you haven't played the first Xenoverse, let me open by telling you that it was great, but had a few hiccups. The servers were constantly crashing or unavailable, you could level up faster than you could learn relevant techniques, your character who spends 99% of their time flying around at high speeds had to walk everywhere out of combat, etc. Dragonball Xenoverse 2 takes notes from those failures and addresses them all with varying degrees of success, but is universally an improvement. 

Pathfinder: Ultimate Intrigue

So, Ultimate Intrigue took a while for me to come to a complete opinion on. 

The Vigilante class introduced in this book is, in my opinion, easily the best non-spellcasting class Paizo has ever created. It breaks up its social options and combat options in such a way that you have a great character able to participate in all areas of the game without having to choose whether you want to be competent in combat or in the myriad other facets of the game like exploration, social encounters, etc. It has deep and well-designed talents that allow you to pick any of a variety of different ways to participate in combat, with or without weapons, and numerous tools for allowing players to influence the story with safe houses, contacts, and more. 

Kingston Hyper X Cloud II Review: MY New Favorite Sound Hat

This post, much like all of my posts is a bit overdue. At PAX Prime in 2015 I spoke to some representatives from Kingston who set me up with a pair of their Cloud II headsets. When it comes to hardware I prefer to put my items through a bit of a durability test before going ahead and writing about them, and not only has the Kingston Cloud II (in a very stylish pink and white) has not only succeeded, but prevailed!

Kingston Cloud II boasts foam cushions over the ears which re modular and you can switch between the soft leather and plush material.  It also features a detachable microphone, adjustable earphones, and  a USB "remote control" that I highly recommend using . All this and Dolby 7.1 digital in a $100 package? Yes, please!

Time Machine VR: Jurassic Park Done Right

The last thing that I imagined I would be doing at PAX Prime is swimming with dinosaurs, but an Oculus and Time Machine VR made it possible! , there has been such deep ice cap drilling that mankind has unleashed a 15 million year old virus and humans are beginning to go extinct. Your job, as a scientist, is to go back to the Jurassic are and study the creatures living there and how they survive with this virus in their ecosystem. The demo was straightforward but breathtaking.

Occult Adventures

I believe it was a couple years ago that I interviewed Erik Mona and asked him about his thoughts on Dreamscarred Press' Ultimate Psionics. He was actually really excited about it, and told me that he was glad someone had done the psionics and power point system such justice, because Paizo had different plans. With an almost childish glee in his eyes, Erik described to me his dream of a book with classes and mechanics informed by Lovecraftian mythos and new age spiritualism, with a healthy dose of 19th century mysticism for good measure.

Time passed. Paizo released its Advanced Class Guide, a book so poorly edited and sublimely uninspired that I had almost given up hope that we'd see anything as amazing and awesome as the Alchemist, Oracle, or Witch from the Advanced Player's Guide, the first book where they really came out and said "We're Paizo, and this is what we're about". But where the Advanced Class Guide was a barely redeemable slog of mostly uninspired and largely formulaic class design with very few bright spots, Occult Adventures immediately leaps off the shelf as something special, something that shows that spark of creativity and healthy dose of love from the writers and contributors that is hard to quantify or explain but which is immediately recognizable in their work, and which was very much Paizo's hallmark when the Pathfinder Core Rulebook first came on the scene. When I talked with Erik Mona this year at PAX, there was really nothing I could say to him beyond "Well done, man. You guys knocked this one out of the park".

Post Pax 2015: Armello

We are still going through the oodles of info we brought back from PAX Prime. Bear with us, there's still quite a bit to cover. In August, Playstation Plus members were allowed to vote for one of the free games. Though the Ubisoft published Grow Home eventually won the voting, I cast my vote for Armello; a digital boardgame with an interesting, Redwall-esque aesthetic to it. Later, while wandering the Indie Megabooth at PAX, I happened upon its developer's booth and was given an opportunity to play. 

Razer Has New Goodies!

Recently, at PAX Prime Razer had some fun items to reveal! I stopped by their booth and attended their panel during the Expo and am excited to show you what I saw.

PAX Prime 2015: Runic Game's Hob is Beautiful, Mysterious

We sat down with Marsh Lefler, President of Runic Games, at PAX to talk about Hob. The third game from the Seattle based company, Hob is an adventure game set in a strange world humming with life and mysterious technology. As you traverse this world you will learn more about where you are and what your role is. We arrived at Runic's booth very curious about Hob, and our time there left us even hungrier for details.

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes (A unique take on a tired trope)

As a red-blooded American who was raised by an unhealthy dose of TV as a child, I am on a first name basis with the common action trope of frantic bomb defusal. We all know it; someone is trapped with a bomb/warhead capable of terrible destructive power. No one can get in or out. The expert in defusing just this explosive item has to talk our inexperienced hero through the process via some sort of lifeline. The red numerals tick down closer and closer to the big Kaboom. Will they ever make it in time??

Rhyme of the Bearded Mariners

The point and click adventure genre is a large draw for me, principally because it was a substantial part of my childhood gaming foundation. Hours of adventuring with Guybrush Threepwood and Bobbin Threadbare have laid a deep grove in my gaming preferences. And so I found myself drawn in by the siren call of Burley Men at Sea at the PAX Prime Indie MegaBooth and had the opportunity to play their teaser demo.

PAX Prime '15 Discoveries- Southlands: Adventures Beneath the Pitiless Sun

I hadn't heard of "Southlands: Adventures Beneath the Pitiless Sun" until I stumbled across it at PAX. I'd somehow completely missed the Kickstarter, hadn't heard it mentioned or seen any reviews, and yet it leapt right off the shelf at me.

Post PAX Round-up : Prime 2015

PAX Prime 2015 is over. Our four days in Seattle brought us into contact with a great deal of interesting games and many of their developers. It was a strong year for indie titles and tabletop games, but a few AAA games shone through to capture our attention. We have a lot of content to unload over the next couple weeks, as well as a few surprises. Before we go in-depth with any of the games we played and the things we saw, here are some of my highlights.

PAX Adjacent: The Seattle Indies Expo

Once again, PAX Prime is upon us. Every year, the expo fills the Washington State Convention center, drawing thousands of fans, and tons of games from AAA video games to indie boardgames. It is an event we wait for all year, but it is notoriously difficult to get tickets for, usually selling out within an hour. If you're still in the area though, there is another way to fill your weekend with games.

D&D 5E: An Excellent Successor

I'm going to start by saying, I'm glad I waited to write this review. There were a lot of things about the newest edition of Dungeons and Dragons that I really needed to spend some time on; my opinion needed time to formulate and evolve past what I had played at PAX. I needed to add a little more experience with the new rules to the mix. Initially it seemed almost too simplified, like maybe Wizards of the Coast had jumped on the rules-lite bandwagon that's been fairly popular these days, but the simple introduction turned out to hide a fairly complex, but accessible, system.

North to the Future!

I'd like to start this by saying that the game I talk about today holds a VERY special place in my heart.  Growing up in Alaska, I have always loved learning about the Alaska Native tribes and their culture, through field trips in school, all the way to volunteering at the museum for a couple of years.  What has always captured my attention are the stories; especially native legends (American and Alaskan). We can read these legends, we can listen to the recordings of great storytellers, but this is the first time that we can play and interact with the legends in video game format.

Never Alone (Kisima Innitchuna) is based upon the Inupiaq tribe traditional story Kunuuksaayuka, which is the story of a village that is consumed within a never ending blizzard in which a brave young girl, Nuna, embarks on a journey to discover the source.  The game developers worked closely with the original storyteller's daughter Minnie Gray to ensure the accuracy of the legend.  

Portable Gaming Environment (With A Few Kinks)

I had the good fortune to come into possession of a GI55 Sentry portable gaming environment during Pax Prime this year. This was actually something I was very excited about, because I live on an island near Seattle and have an hour trip in to town every day. I figured this was going to be an excellent way for me to spend that hour, and I immediately set about transferring my Playstation 3 to the unit. So far, no problems, the unit clicks in great and there's plenty of space for all the accessories.

Dragon Fin Soup

I had the good fortune to grab some hands on time at PAX with Dragon Fin Soup, a gorgeous classic style 2D RPG with a blend of rouge-like elements produced by Grimm Bros. Inspired by iconic RPGs of yore (Zelda, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy), Dragon Fin soup is an artfully styled homage to them.

Of Orcs and More Orcs: Hands on With Shadow Of Mordor, A Post PAX Update

I spent the better part of an hour with Monolith and Warner Bros. Games Shadow of Mordor at PAX. During that time I was allowed to acquaint myself with many of the interesting systems at play in the latest Lord of The Rings based title. Its open world approach, varied enemies and fascinating Nemesis System took me by surprise.

In Shadow of Mordor, you play as Talion, a ranger of Gondor. You and your family are killed by Sauron in a ritual to summon the spirit of Celebrimbor, the elf who forged the rings of power. Celebrimbor's wraith possesses the body of Talion, resurrecting him (at least in part). With the promise of revenge, Celebrimbor empowers Talion to turn Sauron's armies against him.

Beyond that, very little else has been revealed about the story, but it's been written and directed by Christian Cantamessa, one of the writers of Red Dead Redemption and John Gonzalez, the lead writer of Fallout: New Vegas. These credits give me hope that the story won't tweak with the canon of the existing lore too much. What I played didn't showcase the story. Instead, it focused on the way the Nemesis System interacts with the game world.

Electric Boogio

I covered the Stinky Footboard a long while ago, which is an excellent pure-blooded gaming foot controller, but I came across another excellent foot controller this year at PAX Prime.  It's called the Boogio developed by Reflx Labs and Qi2, and you can wear it in your shoes with no added weight.  These things are efficient!  They are a sticker with pressure sensors, accelerometer, and soon will include gyroscopes, all of this on the bottom of your insole.  While I find the technology fascinating in itself and it's capacity, what I really find sexy is the potential for gaming, health, and general computing uses, particularly in tandem with Oculus Rift.

POST PAX UPDATE: Guns of Icarus

While at PAX, I got a chance to see some of the new features coming to Guns of Icarus Online, the steampunk airship combat game. Unlike many aerial combat games, you are just part of the crew with three other players filling essential roles onboard like navigating, manning weapons and repairing damaged components. Until now, it's been strictly PVP, but the latest update will add a new cooperative PVE mode that changes the tone of the game.