Initial Impressions: State of Decay (PC)

I'm not a big fan of the zombie genre. Nonetheless, in the past decade, zombies have just exploded (both metaphorically and otherwise) all over the various forms of entertainment. I'm not sure exactly what made them so popular so suddenly, but I never really got swept up in the movement. I enjoy the classic Romero films and the occasional zombie movie for either the quality horror experience or the entertainment of ironic MST3K deconstruction.

My indifference towards zombie entertainment translates to the video game medium as well. I will partake in something fun and stupid like Dead Rising from time to time and one of my favorite games on the original Playstation was Resident Evil 2, but most of the time, I steer clear. Nonetheless, I still have games on my steam list like Left 4 Dead, Dead Island, and the one I mentioned in the title: State of Decay.

Quick n Dirty (Games): Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale

Super Smash Bros is one of the most popular fighting games out there and with the recent release on the 3DS and all its attention it has gotten lately for the Wii-U release, I somehow found myself playing the underwhelming Sony knock-off: Playstation All-Stars Battle Royal.

Quick n Dirty: There Will Be Blood

Daniel Day-Lewis may go down in history as one of the greatest actors who ever lived and who also managed to avoid being the spotlight of American pop-culture. I've seen several of his movies and I believe he is worthy of his Oscars if not several others he hasn't gotten for his performances, yet I rarely ever hear his name mentioned unless simply discussing great movies.

Quick n Dirty: Annabelle

When The Conjuring came out last year, I read the reviews, saw that it was praised for being a proper ghost horror story, and decided to go see a horror movie in the theater. I don't typically go to the theaters for my horror movies, considering how expensive it can be. Not to mention, the last horror movie in theaters I to since Alien: Resurrection was Woman in Black for the sole reason that my girlfriend wanted to see what other movies Daniel Radcliffe was in post-Harry Potter. Nonetheless, I saw The Conjuring when it first came out, and it was good. It wasn't great, it certainly had its moments that were cliche, boring, and cringe-inducing with it's melodrama and dialogue, but I enjoy horror movies for some of the same reasons I criticize them. It's fun to poke at their flaws and pick apart their issues. While still flawed and arguably 'dumb', The Conjuring was better than an average haunting film, so when I heard that a movie was being pumped out to give background to the 5 minute doll story at the beginning of The Conjuring, I had low expectations but was still interested.

Quick n Dirty: Dishonored

Well after the original release date, I decided to give Dishonored a try. I remember seeing a fair amount about it prior to its release. Plenty of comparisons were made to Bioshock, Tenchu, and especially  Deus Ex considering one of the people on the development team was involved in the design of the original Deus Ex (one of my favorite games of all time). I can safely say that the comparisons are fairly accurate, and while I don't think it measures up to my favorite games on that list of comparisons, it is still a rather satisfying and fun game. So, before I go full-blown into a lengthy Late Bird Review of the game, I'll do a quick and dirty look at it.

You Defeated! XCOM: Enemy Unknown

It's been a while since my last post. Time to burn those pages again and get back into the habit of writing. Let's kick it off with a recent  personal experience I had in the world of video games.

At long last, the elusive victory over XCOM: Enemy Unknown has been achieved. XCOM EU, for those that don't know, is a turn-based strategy game that came out in 2012. I won't go into the details about it as I outlined them in a review and if you want to know more, you can always find sites on the net about them, like this one.

I picked up XCOM around its launch and, until now, have never completed the base campaign. That's not to say that I haven't played it at all since its release. It's been an on-and-off affair mostly, but if you asked anyone in my house, they'd say that they'd seen me play it enough to have codenames for the game as well as the situation I was in; the most common term was Broadside-of-a-Barn, which meant my soldiers were missing easy shots and dying as a result. So if I played that much, why did it take so long for me to finally beat the game?

Late Bird Review: XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Originally posted December 2012

Strategy games (turn-based or otherwise) usually have their own niche market. Sure, there are the Blizzard strategy games that have a wide appeal and the franchises like Civilization that have been around for decades. With no new Starcraft experience till next year, and the popularity of the first-person shooter ever increasing, it was unlikely there were going to be any big strategy games in time for the holidays. Yet the people at Fireaxis were able to deliver the goods. It may not have been a new Civilization game, but XCOM: Enemy Unknown is still a true gem of this year along with a franchise name about as old as the Civilization games. But is this gem a perfect diamond, or do the cracks make the edges too sharp to hold?