“Oops, this game has stopped working and now must close” is a frequent message for some of the games being released today. What we see now is companies in a rush to push out games that don’t work. Case 1: Fallout 3. Case 2: Dawn of War 2, there are many games that have been released with fatal game flaws at are later patched, my query to those companies releasing such games is: why? Why do you like to shit on your customers for getting one of your games? Why do you like to release games before they’re fucking finished? Why do release patches that don’t do shit? Let’s go into this topic for a bit.

When I first got Fallout 3, I was impressed with the graphics and in some ways the gameplay, but I wasn’t impressed with the staggering amount of crashes, glitches, and overall graphical tomfoolery in the game. The worst part is, that this problem still exists. I can understand you want to keep a schedule for the game being released, but you’re only going to hurt your future prospects by releasing an unfinished game.
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Tired of killing creatures such as goblins, elves, druids, etc.? Then do I have a game for you. Fallout 2 is a game that’s totally revolutionary; with a post apocalyptic world, violence, and a lot of side quests.There’s an infinite amount of things to do in this game, which will make you want to play through it several times.
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Preface

Everyone has an opinion. There’s a rude saying that compares opinions to a part of the human anatomy that practically says one’s opinion is worthless. So why read any reviews? If you’re not a terrible cynic you may be able to pore through a handful of reviews, develop and understanding for what sort of lens the reviewer sees games with and define some sort of truth from the fluffy words of praise or harsh criticisms that would have no tangible value.

You might be thinking, “Get to the review already!” or “Stop wasting my time and give me your score!” but without a preface you may not understand the “lens” I see games through and how to get what you need from my opinions. If you really can’t stomach anymore though feel free to jump ahead and read the review.
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2008 is forever going to go down in history as one of the greatest years for the gaming industry. No matter which platform or genre you follow religiously, there was something for everyone. To the casual gamer to the hardcore, there is something that will appeal to you. This is just one person’s modest opinion of what stood out in 2008.
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What ho, vault dwellers. Having a buggy time in Fallout 3? Well, no matter what your version of it is, things should be looking up right about now, as Bethesda has just released a very big patch update for the post-apocalyptic RPG. Yes, they just released it yesterday, and it fixes whatever flavor of the game you’ve got: the PC, the PS3, and even the Xbox 360 one. It’s also available in five different languages (English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish) and will be required to play the upcoming DLC pack that’s slated for January 27, Operation: Anchorage.

Here’s a list of the fixes:
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Ah, the Fallout series. An iconic post-apocalyptic RPG set after a nuclear war that forces humanity to live in underground Vaults for years as radiation dies down. The series was originally developed by Black Isle, before Bethesda took the reigns for the game. Bethesda, as you may know, developed the popular Elder Scrolls series of games, the latest of which being Oblivion.

Although Oblivion is a great game, as are the other Elder Scrolls games, their gameplay mechanics are completely different compared to Fallout 1 and 2’s, so this aroused much concern from fans as to whether Bethesda could faithfully reconstruct the much loved series or if they would just make Oblivion with guns. Well, judging on face value alone, it’s easy to say they went with the “Oblivion with guns” option, but how true is this? Read the review to find out.

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So much to do . . .

A child-like accord has swept the gaming mass: The majority seem to prefer the sandbox. When I say that, I am, of course, referencing the sandbox-style gameplay that is introducing itself into all manner of game as “nonlinearity”. What the public doesn’t realize while playing with their little, sand-soiled, plastic Ferrari knock-off is that they’re actually playing a blatantly linear game with mini-games carelessly mottled in.

“Nonlinear” video games utilize a couple of devices in order to mask their true nature. Firstly is the multi-mission structure that suggests it’s offering varied constructs for the player to follow in order to shape his own in-game identity. Instead, it’s actually just one set of missions linked exclusively to the story mode that all lead to the same end no matter what you do, and another set of side missions that can be interesting, but offer little to no effect on the main story. Fallout 3 is perhaps the biggest offender here, with Grand Theft Auto IV entering as the most deceptive and offensive: It offers exactly the same sort of structure despite being the industry leader.

Niko’s notorious crime simulator also hints at the second device: the allusion of choice. The game offers points in the story to choose whether or not certain characters die. One problem with this is that it acts like a dialogue tree out of a Bioware game. It pauses the action so that the player can choose from one or the other as if it were a selection on a menu, which generally detracts from something that would normally be intense and spur-of-the-moment (I’ve played God many a time in my day). However, the biggest problem is that it, again, has little to no effect on the overall story. The player still heads to the same drawn-out conclusion, which could be a slight on the pointlessness of life, but lets not pretend that the developers actually hire competent writers (that’s a rant for another day).

The final proponent of the nonlinear delusion is developer’s assessment of good vs. evil. Countless games capitalize on this epidemic, and they do it amazingly arbitrarily. The ability to steal and slaughter and then dance away the sin as if emotes were baptismal, never, never gets tiresome. My personal favorite is starring at the screen wondering if Dialogue Choice A or Dialogue Choice B is the one that the developer defines as “good” and then having to reload, because my already heavy conscience and rife personal distress wouldn’t allow me to see Little Stevey form a robotic frown. Goddamn. In the end, it’s all arbitrary, anyway, because it either leads to the ending or the same ending but with horns.

So, what have I learned today? Hmmm.

Developer’s are overtly ambitious. However, I can’t fault them for that. If you have a passion for creation but you don’t have the tools to create, you do your damnedest to do it anyway. One day the technology will catch up with developer’s ambitions and then they’ll overshoot the mark again and fall flat. The world’s a vicious cycle; what can I say? At least we might have legitimate nonlinear games by then.

Maybe.