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?