Skyrim's Perfect World

  ign.com

How crafting, alchemy and well-constructed mythology could make Skyrim one of the most impressively cohesive worlds in gaming.
UK

If there's one thing that games almost always lack, with their eagerness to entertain and often underdeveloped scripts, it's believability. It usually stems from a lack of cohesion: it's difficult to believe that you're wandering around a real world when everything that you can interact with gleams with a highlighted shine, or when helpful tips keep popping up to remind you to press Y to get on your horse, or when there's a ridiculous story told in unskippable cutscenes. You're often snapped back to real life by their lack of subtlety.

Indeed, modern games are so tailored to the player's comfort that they often compromise their own fiction for the sake of it, making things purposefully obvious and easy to digest instead of rich and rewarding. The end result is that their worlds aren't easy to really believe in. How many times in a game have you really felt like you were wandering around in a real place, rather than a series of carefully-crafted scenarios for you to "experience"? 

Bethesda has always excelled here, creating games that succeed where almost all others come up short. Bethesda's worlds exist independently of you, the player. Follow a Skingrad drug-dealer as she leaves her home in Oblivion, and you'll see her spend an entire day and a half walking all the way across the world to the Imperial City to supply some off-the-wagon soldier with Skooma, whether you're there to watch her do it or not. That haggard old booze hound in the derelict bar in Fallout 3 will sit there all day, getting up occasionally for a go at the slots. Foxes chase rabbits, wolves chase foxes, and guards valiantly defend villages from bandits (and dragons). Bethesda is far from the only developer to attempt this natural, player-independent game ecology, but it has always done it extraordinarily well.

From Dust Review

ign.com

Beautiful yet menacing, From Dust leaves a lasting impression.

God games 

are usually all about power. They give you omnipotence and the choice to do with it what you will – be good or evil, vengeful or merciful, kind or cruel. They give you power over your worshippers, the ability to command, help or destroy them. They court player fantasies.

From Dust 

is a god game in a different sense. You are not all-powerful; instead, you only have control over the land. You're able to shape and reshape it by scooping up the earth and water and magma in undulating orbs and depositing it elsewhere, creating bridges across channels, islands out of cooled lava and lakes in the middle of the desert. The people of the tribe under your care rely on you to make their harsh world habitable, but you have no influence over what they do.

King Arthur: Fallen Champions Review

Fallen Champions is a short and mostly sweet compression of many of the good elements in its King Arthur predecessor.

The Good
Innovative blend of choose-your-own-adventure quests and RTS battles Smartly designed battle scenarios Intelligently aggressive AI Impressive, atmospheric visuals. 

The Bad
No save-on-demand feature.

King Arthur - The Role-playing Wargame had surprise on its side when it was released in 2009. Developer NeoCore Games' blend of choose-your-own-adventure quests and real-time fantasy battles came out of nowhere with impressive cross-genre experimentations, even if the end result was uneven and a bit too offbeat for its own good. Stand-alone add-on Fallen Champions also comes as something of a surprise for how much it pulls back from what its big brother brought to the table. The action here is distilled to the basics, giving you a close-up view of the innovative storytelling devices and the tactical real-time strategy combat without any of the kingdom building that gave the earlier game a Total War vibe. So you might not be getting exactly what you expect, although the game is very good in its own right and a great way for newcomers to ease into the deeper waters that await in the full King Arthur.

Lord of the Rings Online: Rise of Isengard Preview - News

 Plenty more free content in the land of Middle-Earth

Ever since moving to the free-to-play model, Lord of the Rings Online has been enjoying great success, with even the cheapskates among us able to make a run for the gates of Mordor. It seems obvious then that penny-pinching gamers will be ecstatic over the game’s upcoming expansion, Rise of Isengard, the studio finally revealing some much desired details at PAX Prime.

For starters, three new regions will be introduced to the game. In addition to allowing players to battle their way towards the evil wizard Saruman’s tower in the land of Isengard, there’s also the perilous forests of Dunland to traverse, while the Gap of Rohan will require defending from the endless legions of Sauron. For players who believed themselves masters of the realm, the level cap has been newly raised to 75, allowing brave warriors to reach even greater heights. And perhaps most excitingly is the newly announced 24-player raid on the den of Draigoch, a gigantic battle between your clan and this ancient dragon.

Fruit Ninja Kinect Review

 I wonder if in a few years people will talk about IOS games being consolized. If they did, would they use the term in a good way or would it still have the derogative connotation that's attached to it now? Whatever the case ends up being we've got one of our first true case studies in Halfbrick Studios Fruit Ninja Kinect, the popular IOS game that's been adapted for Microsoft's Kinect motion sensor. It's a strange choice for the Summer of Arcade and people might wonder why they'd pay for a game they can already get on their phones, but the most surprising thing is that it's actually a great showcase for the Kinect and hopefully a model they can learn from going forward.

Ten Times The Fun?

Fruit Ninja is a game for mobile devices where you use your fingers or thumbs to slice fruit. You might have to avoid bombs mixed in with the pineapple and papaya or you may be tasked with getting as high of a score as possible in a short time limit but for the most part that's really all the game is. Fruit goes up and you have to slice it before it falls. It's a simple game but it more than earns its 99-cent price tag. Fruit Ninja Kinect isn't 99-cents, though, it's 800 MS point ($10) and that's going to be a hard thing for a lot of people to ignore. I can't really justify a game that's ten times the price on one platform when it adds very little. Fruit Ninja Kinect adds some, but not necessarily enough. The good news is that it's still a highly addictive and enjoyable game.

Dragon Age: Origins - Classically Immersing

 RPGs, or Role Playing Games, have always been very popular. Those role playing games allow the player to create a character and live in a fictional world, the game, through his character. The player therefore becomes "responsible" for the action of his or her character. With their immense popularity, it is not surprising that the popularity of RPGs transferred to the multimedia. Hence, who hasn't seen Final Fantasy, or even Zelda?

Although these classics remain the favorite of many, other RPGs have known a great success among video game players. These new RPGs stand out by their realistic graphics and outstanding gameplay. And one of the best RPGs ever made is "Dragon Age: Origins".

The video game "Dragon Age: Origins" can be described as a "good versus evil" type of video game. The storyline tells your story, where you are part of one of the surviving groups of the legendary guardians, the Grey Warden. You character takes on the responsibility to save humanity from its archenemy. The are 6 possible playable preludes known as 'Origin Stories' and players must travel across Ferelden in order to end the political struggles that lead into the kingdom's civil war.

Shaiya: Light and Darkness - Free-To-Play Fantasy MMORPG

 Shaiya: Light and Darkness is a free-to-play, fantasy-themed MMORPG set in ancient times, in the world of Teos. The story begins when The Goddess Etain created three races - the Dragons, Nordein and the Dumianas. The Nordein were deemed imperfect by Etain, and were cast into the soil. The Dumianas questioned The Goddesses power and authority, and as a result, was weakened. The Dumianas took the opportunity to attempt to kill her, but instead, her soul was ripped in two. Teos was left out of balance, and other gods began to vie for power, creating monsters in an attempt to conquer the land for themselves. The dragons faded from the face of the world, hiding themselves amongst the chaos. In time, two Goddesses came to rule over Teos, and the remaining Dumianas were split into two factions - the Elves and the Vail. Soon after, Humans appeared, and joined with the Elves. Similarly, the Nordein re-emerged, became the Deatheaters and joined with the Vail. The two resulting factions became known as the Alliance of Light and the Union of Fury.

Shaiya: Light and Darkness caters to many play-styles, whether your preference is solo, questing with groups or forming large, powerful guilds to take on the game's greatest challenges. There are 12 classes available in Shaiya - each of the 4 playable races (Humans, Elves, Vail, Nordein) have 3 classes to choose from, each with their own well-balanced strengths and weaknesses. Shaiya is largely set apart from other free-to-play MMOS (or really MMO games, in general) by the fact that there are 4 difficulty modes. In Easy mode, less experience is required to gain levels, but levels are capped at level 30. The other 3 modes are capped at level 70. Normal mode is a "standard" baseline, Hard is unlocked once a character reaches level 40 in Normal mode, and Ultimate mode is unlocked once a character reaches level 40 in Hard mode. Though the harder difficulty settings offer greater challenges and characters gain experience slower, there are also increasingly greater rewards for the harder difficulties. But beware - if you are brave enough to attempt to play on Ultimate mode and your character is slain and if they are not resurrected within 3 minutes, that character will be permanently deleted! A harsh punishment to be sure, but it truly adds a unique sense of danger and excitement to gameplay.