RandomNPC – Video Game RPG Reviews, Editorials, and Features

If all we could discuss in a review are the facts, the nuts and bolts of a game, then S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – Shadow of Chernobyl would have been dead on arrival.  The long-delayed shooter from THQ and GSC Game World falters on too many technical points for one to fairly recommend it without a whole heap of warnings.  However, when the topic changes to the ephemeral, to things like atmosphere, artistry, a sense of adventure, then any attempt to score it suddenly becomes far more complicated.  Know at least this: for all its faults, you’ve never played anything quite like it, and may not for a very long time. (more…)

‘ello me good smilin’ friends! It’s that time of the week again. Sadly, the very nature of RPGs ensures that we’ll be largely playing the same things from week to week, but sometimes we surprise even ourselves by what we get involved in. Observe!

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A fair review of Rogue Galaxy would involve overuse of the words ‘juxtapose’ and ‘contrast;’ the former meaning to place things side-by-side for comparison, the latter meaning comparisons with stark differences. Vocabulary lessons aside, Rogue Galaxy is plagued with both spectacular highs and criminal lows; a fantastic presentation that is brought low by the foibles of the role-playing genre. What could have been an epic space opera winds up feeling like the same anime nonsense we’ve seen before, and what could have been a truly memorable game is resigned to the ‘flawed, but still good’ category. (more…)

So, what’s on our collective and individual gaming platters this week, you might ask? To which I’d reply TOUCHDOWN! THURMAN THOMAS! Then while you wonder what I said that for, I answer your question. So, here we go ^^ (more…)

“Bigger and mostly better” is one way to describe Oblivion, the fourth installment in the Elder Scrolls series. An ambitious and engagingly epic fantasy RPG, Oblivion improves on many of the problems its predecessors faced. The series’ hallmarks have always been big, sprawling worlds chock full of things to do and rich in detail, with the main plot almost as a side point to the adventures you have along the way. Oblivion capably carries this torch, and admirably gives its plot a stronger focus than that of Morrowind, the previous game in the series. For fans of the series it may be hard to shake the feeling that something’s been lost, but Oblivion does possess undeniable improvements to the gameplay that should appeal to newcomers and veterans alike. (more…)

’tis the season to be gaming, fa la la la laaaaughh I can’t do this, I’m sorry. I’ve heard too many Christmas songs over the radio at work and each one of them saps at my will to live. I love the season, I really do, but a man can only take so much of the same f-ing songs and the same f-ing movies over and over and over.

Anyway, here’s what we’re up to.

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Coming in on the heels of the popular Fallout RPGs, Fallout: Tactics was bound to confuse more than a few fans with its radical departure in gameplay and story. As a squad-based strategy game, Tactics feels closer to titles like Silent Storm or X-Com than its role-playing ancestors, with the Fallout license as essentially a coat of paint. Though it has its share of problems, and suffers simply by virtue of not being Fallout 3, Tactics is nonetheless a competent strategy game with an uncommon amount of content and depth. (more…)

Numerous would be the number of editorials written about the nature and purpose of reviewing video games; countless, the number of words. The token truism is that on the one hand, a factual breakdown of a game’s mechanics – its controls, its visual style and the quality of its presentation – is necessary to inform the reader, but on the other hand a reviewer’s own tilt can and usually does influence their opinion. Tiresome button-mashing in a fighting game, endless grinding in a role-playing game, constant shooting in, of all things, a first-person shooter; few are the games that don’t have a deal-breaker for somebody, and so even the best review is anything but the final word. (more…)

It’s difficult enough for a video game to tackle the second World War without seeming stale and cliche; to remind us we’ve landed at Omaha beach before, and in better games. Compound that with the typical problems of an expansion pack – that they tend to retread the same ideas in the same engine featuring the same story – and you’ve got every reason to believe that Nival’s add-on to their sleeper hit Silent Storm is going to be underwhelming. Against all odds, however, Silent Storm: Sentinels is bolstered by the strong gameplay of its predecessor and brings enough new ideas to the table to keep the formula fresh – or at least from becoming too stale. (more…)

We return once more to the consoles and disc drives of our staffers, each one more staffier than the staffer before them. You can almost feel your brain cells dying when you try to deconstruct that sentence. Well, I can, anyway. I can feel mine, I mean, not yours. That would actually be kind of creepy, albeit impressive. But anyway… (more…)

The Role-Playing genre is rife with fantasy settings and medieval landscapes tailor-made for big, epic adventures.  Less common are science-fiction tropes and plotlines, from space travel to grim, dystopian futures.  But rarest of all are settings that explore the common ground between the two, that take a setting from one and inject a healthy dose of the other.  Enter Arcanum: of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, Troika’s sprawling, open-ended RPG that stakes a claim in just such a setting, taking swords and sorcery and meshing it with steam engines and gunpowder.

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Forget about a good chunk of what you’ve heard about Bioshock, the spiritual descendant of the System Shock games from the same people that made them (2K Boston, formerly Irrational/Looking Glass). Forget about what the box advertises and the developers promised, forget about entering a living world complicated by moral choices and topped with profound questions. Forget everything except the fact that it’s a great shooter with an interesting story and wonderful atmosphere, because that’s pretty much what you’re going to get. The final package is ultimately shallower than one might expect, but at the end of the day Bioshock is still a shooter worth the attention of anyone who likes a little intellect with their action. (more…)

Hello me good smilin’ friends! Bit of a dry spell this week as everybody catches up with their work, but fret not. Content is on the way! In the meantime, let’s have a looksee into the current gaming appetites of our fine people here, shall we?

Don’t give me that look. If you don’t want to, just say so. We’re not going to force you until I finish saying this sentence. BAG ‘EM!

…okay, I stole that from Futurama. Sue me, it’s clever.

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World War II games are a dime a dozen these days, so normally it takes a unique hook or extremely skillful presentation to set a game apart from the pack. Silent Storm, a strategy RPG by Nival Interactive, has the good sense to try for both, and fortunately it usually succeeds. It is a game brought low by technical issues and a threadbare plot, but elevated to almost epic status by fantastic gameplay and almost unprecedented tactical depth. (more…)

Let us take a long look at an oft-mentioned classic, the FPS/RPG hybrid that would inspire the recent hit Bioshock, and the not-so-recent hit Deus Ex.

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As our pasttime grows more complex and intricate, so too does our means of classifying it; by this I speak of genres, which at the most basic level are simply common traits and similarities between certain movies, music and video games. (more…)