Of the two bits of Fallout New Vegas DLC I have played so far, Dead Money had to be the dullest and most pointless of them both. Hell, I wouldn’t doubt if it ends up as my least favourite of all the DLC for this game. Set in a closed area which can only be accessed one time via a Brotherhood of Steel bunker, you follow the signal of an old broadcast offering the time of your life at the new Sierra Madre Casino. Turns out that the radio broadcast was just a trap to lure adventurers so as to do the dirty work for a crazy old kook called Father Elijah.

After being KO-ed in the bunker thanks to some surprise gas, you wake up with a bomb collar strapped to your neck and find yourself the newest recruit in Father Elijah’s master plan to break into the Sierra Madre Casino. You’ll have to hook up with three other prisoners (Christine, the muted Brotherhood woman, DOG/GOD, a dog with a split personality, and the famous Dean Domino) in order to perform your task and deal with the holographic security men keeping an eye on the place as you plan the biggest heist of your career.

You'll need to sic DOG on them if you want them to stay dead

The town surrounding Sierra Madre wasn’t always populated by holographic security and undead murderers. Once it housed the people building the place for it’s eccentric owner, so you’ll be able to explore the old quarters for better gear and unique items. The gun Father Elijah gives you after stripping you of all your personal items doesn’t do much damage, especially should you find yourself no longer dealing with holo-officers. The “men” walking the streets can be incapacitated with bullets, but you’ll need DOG by your side if you want to disable them permanently. I did love how the town was littered with vending machines offering you the basics: food, stimpaks, cigarettes. You could even collect cigarettes throughout the area and turn them in for Sierra Madre chips (the form of payment accepted in this section of the game). And if you come across the right notes laying around town, you can unlock some weapon upgrades and ammunition.

Try as the story might, it just never really grabs me as much as I want it to. There is a story in there, of love, addiction, and greed. But it’s so weakly presented that playing Dead Money was too much of a chore. At no point did I ever feel I was having fun with this chunk of additional story, only that I wanted it to be over as soon as possible. Not being able to go back and really clean out the safe was a bit of a downer, too.

Overall Opinion

Dead Money is definitely not worth the full DLC price tag, and if you play it as part of the content on the Ultimate Edition, then get this one out of the way earlier on. Aside from finding some pretty nice loot in the safe, the only other perk that benefited me from purchasing this was the +5 boost to my level cap.

Available on Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC/Mac

Dean Domino looks nothing like the posters you spot around the Wasteland

I just can't get away from spiders in video games

Status: Finished all levels on Casual and Regular (unlocked Hard-core mode), finding that I am awful at earning Medals (I have 2 of 24)

PixelJunk Monsters was one of the first PSN demos I gave any time to. Thanks to my time as a part of Sony’s now defunct Gamer Advisory Panel, I’d been aware of Q-Games new tower defense title for the PSN and was anxious to try it out. The demo gave me a small taste of what life would be like if I owned the game and I was excited for more. But I was working in video game retail at the time, and the amount of new games I told myself I needed every week kept pushing PJ Monsters to the back of my mind.

But I never forgot about it completely. It was on my video game wishlist on Amazon for a reason – even if years had passed, I still wanted that game. I was lucky enough to finally get my own copy of PJ Monsters Deluxe for my birthday, and promptly popped it into my PSP where it remained for 3 and a half months. I played it in the car, on the couch while watching TV, and even in bed instead of reading a book to help me fall asleep. When I wasn’t doing housework or playing Persona 4, PixelJunk Monsters was all I had on the brain.

PJ Monsters features three islands and a combined total of 47 levels, with difficulties ranging from Easy to Hard as you progress on each island. By clearing a stage without losing any of the little Tiki babies, you’ll earn a Rainbow. You’ll need  these in order to open new areas on each island. Earning rainbows isn’t always easy, but play a level a couple of times to find the best  spots to place the towers you’ll need to take out the enemy. And if you become obsessive about it as I did, you may just find yourself striving to perfect every stage because you’re just that anal about it.

So many towers!

The backbone of any tower defense game are the towers you have at your disposal. At the start of each level, certain base towers will be unlocked, such as the Arrow, Cannon and Anti-Air Gun. Other towers in your building wheel need to be unlocked by collecting blue gems dropped by the enemy or hidden among the trees. Once you have the gems you need to unlock a new tower, head over to the Tiki hut to unlock it. You’ll have to unlock these towers every time as they are not a permanent unlock. Some of the more unique towers will require completion of a particular level before they will show up in your building wheel, so don’t worry if you think you’re missing something.

Upgrading your towers can be done two ways: spending blue gems or dancing in front of them. Spending your rarely obtained gems will help you power up towers quickly but takes away from your ability to unlock new towers. Dancing takes more time but helps you save up for those more powerful towers. Each tower’s flag has five stages: base blue, yellow, red, purple, and finally black. Once you hit black, you’ll have the most powerful version of that tower with the best range it can get. Depending on the sort of level I am playing, I may power level one or two towers early on immediately around my hut as a last line of defense. The only way to figure out your best move is to play often and watch the movements of the enemy. A tower will also get a small boost of leveling when it successfully kills an enemy.

Some levels in the main section of the game will throw challenges at you, like the monsters won’t drop coins or gems so you need to be wise with what you have. This really enforces some creative strategizing with tower placement and getting the optimal range in the designated level. I love the challenge, even when I have to restart the level six or seven times because I placed a tower in a bad spot.

One challenges dares you to not cross the bridge

And then, if you haven’t driven yourself crazy trying to get rainbows on every level, you can venture to the Tiki Hut from the main menu and take on up to 24 different challenges. These challenges unlock once you’ve cleared the level in the main game. So far I’ve been able to knock out two of these – one which dared me to complete the level without a single flag upgrading to yellow, the second a Scrooge challenge where I was tasked to clear the level with over 10000 coins. Sadly, I haven’t figured out the winning formula to the other twenty two challenges just yet.

Overall Opinion

Even after spending hours upon hours with PixelJunk Monsters, I find that going back to it for “just one level” ends up turning into hours. I believe that is a sign of a truly enjoyable game. There are few of these more casual style titles in my “Completely Addicted” list, Ninjatown and Plants vs Zombies being the other two. And just when I thought I had weened myself off of the PJ high, Q-Games went and put a version of PJ Monsters on Facebook . Needless to say that just pumped fuel back in my fire tower.

(As of posting this, PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe for PSP is on sale for $3.99 on Amazon. $3.99!!!! You cannot go wrong here, people.)

You can buy PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe from Amazon or the original game and the Encore expansion on the Playstation Store

Watch out! The snowy levels are slippery. You don't want to slide into the monsters.

Status: Completed
Achievements: 10 of 12
Gamerscore: 155/200
DLC Purchased: None

Things seemed to be all well in good in Spanktopia after DeathSpank collected all of the Thongs of Virtue and vanquished Sandy. But the peace didn’t last forever, as DeathSpank soon discovers his wearing of all of the Thongs at once has created a new evil: the AntiSpank. Now he must travel across SpankTopia seeking out the Bacon Fires and destroy the extra Thongs that caused the problem in the first place if he hopes to bring down his evil creation and get back to mocking orphans and keeping overdue library books.

If you have played the previous two installments of DeathSpank’s adventure, you’ll find that The Baconing is pretty much the same thing. A humour-packed action RPG from Hothead Games, it follows the same sort of quest-based storyline combines with hack and slash real time battles that we’ve played previously. All new locations have been added for us to explore like the Forest of Tomorrow, a twisted Disney park of sorts for the scientifically-inclined, the Forbidden Zone, an expansive wasteland home to a city hosting a great Arena, and the TRON-inspired house of Z.I.M.O.N., to name a few.

Let's play Z.I.M.O.N. Says

All new locations does not mean completely new characters for DeathSpank to toil for. Familiar faces like Strunken and his wife are around, still with their marital issues for you to work out, as well as the Thongolith Researcher and a few others. There are also orphans a plenty for you to mock, should you so choose. And let’s not forget DeathSpank’s mentor, the wise cow. New to the game are Cyborques, cybernetic Orques who lust for DeathSpank’s head on a stick. And like their ancestors, they aren’t really the brightest enemy out there. Each location also has unique new pests for you to exterminate, my favourite being the weirdos in the casino Rainbow’s End.

Each location has a Bacon Fire to be discovered, so you will need to solve puzzles, help out the locals and fight your way to them and one by one burn the Thongs until you come face to face with your new nemesis. New equipment and stronger weapons will drop the further you progress or as you finish doing chores for the seemingly lazy people you fight so hard to protect. Vendors can be found in your major areas if you are running short on supplies, like Mutoe chunks (which I still find a tad bit disturbing).

Fighting Evil Leprechauns

Where Thongs of Virtue added Weapons of Justice, The Baconing gives us new battle techniques such as Shield Bash and Perfect Reflect. Shield Bash is great for knocking back hordes of enemies when they surround you, and Perfect Reflect lets you reflect (obviously) ranged attacks, instead injuring the enemy who dared hurt DeathSpank in the first place. The real time fighting works the same as it did before, with barrels respawning and fallen foes returning to life after leaving and re-entering an area.

Compared to TOV, The Baconing has about the same amount of playtime, taking me somewhere around 10 hours or so to run through on normal mode and fully leveling up to level 20. The addition of the Arena and the challenges there helped me gain some ground early on in the game, but I did have to wait until I was level 18 or 19 to go back and finish it up for the achievements. I’m not one for playing these kinds of games co-op unless the character is already included with the purchase of the game, but since Roesha was another 160 points, I passed on her and only played the game in single player mode.

Overall Opinion

Yes, a lot of people will tell you that The Baconing is more of the same, just with a new coat of paint. And you know what? I am okay with that. I love the humour Hothead has incorporated in the series, even the pokes at their Canadianism (Canoonies!) which may only be understood by gamers such as myself. But it’s because of that humour and the relative ease of play that I keep coming back to them. On days where I really don’t want anything plot heavy, I can pick up a DeathSpank title and lose myself in a vibrant and slightly disturbing world where orphans have a God, unicorn poop is highly sought after manure and something that looks like a skinned Mickey Mouse is encouraging me to kill him.

Pick up The Baconing on Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation Network or Steam

Welcome to the Forest of Tomorrow

Warning: This review will most likely contain a few spoilers. Read at your own risk.

Status: Completed in 29 days (minus glitched quests), reached Level 62, 179hrs 17mins 37secs
Achievements: 47 of 50
Gamerscore: 940/1000
DLC Purchased: None

The fifth installment in Bethesda Game Studios’ epic role playing franchise, Skyrim offers players an exceptional adventure in the northern most province of Tamriel. Home to the Nords, Skyrim is in the midst of a civil war, a war in which you are unintentionally dragged into. Imperial guards believe you to be a member of the Stormcloak uprising, and bring you to Helgen for your execution. As your head rests on the chopping block, you witness a terrifying dragon land on one of the battlements, sending everyone into a panic and giving you the chance to escape.

Voices few can hear call out to you and name you “Dovahkiin”, thus leading you to a group of hermits known as the Greybeards. In their home on the highest mountain peak in Skyrim, this handful of men reveal to you your true nature and offer to assist you in learning the Way of the Voice, the tongue of the Dragons. It is no coincidence to them that you should arrive at their doorstep at the same time dragons reappear.

And so begins your journey to discover the truth behind the resurgence of the dragons. An epic task that will take you all over the beautiful northern province and beyond, literally.

Along the way you can stop and pick the flowers (literally, you can pick flowers, nirnroot, and other local herbs for alchemy purposes), spend time searching for bandit or necromancer infested caves to loot, or join one of the many groups looking for a lackey. Skyrim follows in the tradition of other Western RPGs, giving the player all sorts of freedom to play the game however he or she so chooses.

I chose to focus on discovery and guild quests in the beginning, making trips here and there to the main story as they intersected with whatever other goals I was pursuing at the time. I have this thing about trying to get all of the extra bits of games tidied up before sinking my teeth into the main focus of the story, although it can be contested that in Skyrim the extra bits are just as meaty and delicious as the main course. And because there are so many ways to play the game, outcomes may vary depending on what actions you’ve previously done. Killing the brother of a townsperson  who has a quest for you before taking the job can mean different dialogue options, and so forth.

By far my favourite change up from Oblivion to Skyrim was the elimination of structured classes and the introduction of the Perk system. Instead of forcing the player to select a class type (Warrior, Mage, Thief) when creating their character, you evolve your hero the way you want them to as you play by using the skills you wish to increase often. When your character gains enough overall experience and goes up a level, you are granted a Perk point that you can use to unlock any bonus you wish from the Perk map. This allows for a more natural type of development, as it is truer to real life circumstances. It also means you can start out as a mage, duel-wielding powerful spells and increasing the potency of your magic, and switch to more warrior-like skills with some pickpocketing and haggling on the side.

Increasing your skills comes from practice, practice and more practice. Example: You notice on the Perk map that if you get your Smithing up to Level 100, you’ll be able to make armour from the dragon scales and bones you collect from killing the beasts. You have a lot of leather in your inventory and that’s the only sort of armor you can currently make, but it’s low level stuff and you’re wearing much better stuff. Don’t just sell that leather. Make as many types of leather pieces as you can at the forge until you’ve exhausted your materials. Every time you hammer out a new chestplate or boots you’re increasing that Smith stat. Next, sell those to the nearest vendor with money but sell each one of them one piece at a time. That will bump up your Speech which will help you get better prices as you level it up. It’s thinking like this that will help you power level early on, making battles and other sections of the story easier to get through.

You can also collect Companions who will help you if you so wish to drag them along. Some are acquired by helping with personal quests, while others come bundled with the purchase of one of the several fine homes you can purchase. The companion I dragged around with me when I wasn’t trying to sneak into someone’s home for a Thieves Guild quest was Lydia. She was the housecarl that came with my first home, a cozy two floor home in Whiterun next door to the armor shop. Lydia prefers heavy armor and ranged weapons, and if you make the mistake of giving her magical staffs, you should fear for your life and the lives of any people you might have to rescue from dungeons. She wasn’t always the smartest person to work with, stepping on traps that I clearly went around and then getting stuck on them, which led me to believe the AI needed a touch more time and attention. Lydia made up for it by being a great pack mule. I would load her up with all sorts of ore, materials and random items I wanted to sell and fast travel to the nearest shop just as soon as she stopped trying to kill my magical horse.

Even in video games, I hate spiders.

But as with every other Bethsoft game of this magnitude, there are just too many unacceptable issues that can potentially ruin the experience for you – especially if you are short on patience.

The biggest problem for me was the amount of glitches that happened in my game, making certain quests and side missions impossible to either continue or perpetually stuck in my queue. Most disheartening of these was when the last Daedric Quest I needed to complete for the corresponding achievement (or trophy if you’re a PS3 gamer) suffered from a massive bug making it so that I could not talk with the target and progress to the end of the quest. Here we are two months and three patches later and there is still no fix for this problem. With all of the time I dedicated to that character and only missing a few achievements, I just can’t bring myself to start a second character, so I am impatiently waiting for the 1.4 patch and hoping my quest line will be fixed.

Definitely not as problematic but just as irritating is the freezing. I will admit that for me personally, it has improved since Oblivion, but that could be due to the fact that I’ve had to cut down on how many save files I’m now using. It also doesn’t hurt that since Oblivion I’ve learned to save a lot more frequently in Bethesda games. I’ve also since learned that I really shouldn’t put every item I want to keep in the same chest or dresser. Now I split everything up and store like items in different drawers in my house. And how to not be a hoarder, which is hard in these games as you want to keep everything that has a cool name and you think might be worth something. Ideally, I have no more than thirty or so different types of item in one place at a time, which meant a lot of over-encumbered trips around Whiterun to sell off various swords, junk armour and potions I’d crafted to level up my skills.

However, the pros and fun I’ve had playing Skyrim far weighs the disappointment I’ve suffered from the game. I wouldn’t call it my Game of the Year for 2011, because in my eyes any game that requires three patches within a month of release and still has major issues does not deserve those accolades. Obviously, Skyrim needed more time in QA before being rushed to store shelves for Holiday sales and I still hold that with digital distribution at their fingertips, gaming companies are using it more and more as a crutch so they can hit deadlines and leave the gamer to suffer the consequences. But enough of that for now.

Overall Opinion

I had an absolute blast playing Skyrim on a near daily basis from the midnight it came out until I discovered there was no way I could tidy up that last Daedric Quest. Just ask my husband, as he watched my play it until 3 or 4 am every single night and all day on the weekends. I yelled at my housecarl Lydia on a regular basis that you would have thought I renamed her idiot for all the times she stepped on traps I clearly went around or for using the staffs I gave her and nearly killing herself. Hunting dragons and searching for their Words of Power could at times be aggravating, but the rewards were worth every potion sucked down to keep going. My favourite thing to do has always been looting caverns, and Skyrim did not disappoint me, giving me some great ones early on that helped me buy my first home.

Odds are high that I will eventually replay the game with a new character; I really did love the game, despite the issues with quest lines buggering up. Or I may just wait until they announce DLC for the game and take my Hero and her moronic companion Lydia on new adventures. Either way, Skyrim has rooted itself in my list of favourite RPGs, and is one title I would gladly recommend to anyone looking to drop off the face of the earth for a good month or two.

Status: 1 playthrough complete

Total Time:  19hr 1min
Puzzles Solved: 138 
Total Picarats: 5048

Professor Layton and the Last Specter (or Specter’s Flute, depending on your region) it the first in a trilogy of prequels to the best selling puzzle series. Layton receives a letter from his old friend Clark Triton, requesting his help in the town of Misthallery. A mysterious specter comes out at night, destroying homes in various parts of town, and putting the lives of many innocent people in jeopardy. Layton barely has time to meet his new assistant, Emmy, when the two rush off to Misthallery and solve the puzzle that awaits them.

When Professor Layton reaches his friend’s home, he finds Clark shocked to see him. His friend swears he did not send the letter asking for aid. It is after this exchange that the Professor makes an effort to introduce himself to Clark’s son, Luke. Luke is amazed to meet his father’s dearest friend and asks that he join Layton and Emmy on their quest to find out what is really going on in town.

Emmy, Luke and Professor Layton

In true Professor Layton fashion, Last Specter once again offers an intriguing whodunit littered with mind-stretching puzzles around every corner. You never have to go too far to find a resident willing to share a brainteaser. Many of the puzzles you’ll encounter will seem familiar to those solved in the past. They are definitely different puzzles, just very familiar in format: sliding puzzles, math, elimination, etc. If you miss a puzzle here and there, don’t fret! Those unfinished puzzles will head over to Granny Riddleton’s shack or you can keep an eye out for her cat, Keats, around town. He’s minding the shack while Granny heads off on vacation as it is.  Hint coins are all over the place, hiding in windows and bushes to help out when you are positively stumped. Also returning is the Super Hint option first available in Unwound Future.

Once more, there are collectibles and mini-games to acquire during the course of your time in Misthallery. Twenty four odds and ends are hidden in this country town, waiting for you to find them. (Hint: there is one under a table in the cafe.) Tapping certain areas repeatedly with the stylus and clearing the dust will help you find them. As for mini-games, Last Specter contains three. The first are the Toy Train courses. Each course has a different layout, and you must form a track that helps the train (or trains) get from start to finish while visiting every station on the map. Next is the Fish Tank game. In this game, you must help the fish eat all of the coins by using air bubbles to redirect their course. The final game, the Puppet Theatre, requires you to “direct” three different plays and insert the correct action word into the script. All courses and action words are gained by correctly solving certain puzzles throughout the main game.

Separate from the main game but included on the game card is yet a fourth mini-game. London Life is accessed via the main select screen, and here you will create a Layton-esque avatar which you will use to help out your neighbours (all familiar faces from the series). Each day, new quests will open up for you to complete; solving crimes, finding lost items, and taking part time jobs to earn more Wealth, as examples. Doing good deeds for your neighbours will also increase your Happiness. The higher (and maxed out) your Happiness, the more Wealth you will collect. Your Wealth can be spent on clothing, items needed for quests and decorating your bedroom. Red quests have the shortest time frame for completion, yellow ones second, and the green ones are more forgiving for time.

Level-5 has always done amazingly well with the cut scenes and audio work in the Professor Layton series, keeping me in awe of their ability to get the most out of the DS card. As before, I am impressed with the quality of the voice overs, as those British accents are the only voices I can associate with Layton and Luke that ring true to my ears. And as much as I wasn’t too keen on Emmy’s character (she seemed a little too cheery and possessive of Layton for me), her voice did fit her character well. Extremely happy with what Level-5 has put together, as I expected I would.

The Specter of Misthallery

Overall Opinion

My addiction to the Professor Layton series is a well-established fact. As I sit here writing this review with my Layton Revoltech figure on my desk and my DS on a table to my left (which still has the game inside as I intend to finish the last half dozen puzzles I missed), I am already anxious for the next game to be released outside of Japan. So anxious that I plan on watching the Eternal Diva movie at least once a month until that time comes. If you had told me years ago that I would be this in love with a puzzle game, I would have scoffed and told you you were dead wrong. I have Cathy, my old Nintendo rep, to thank for getting me hooked on the series.

I had a great time witnessing the first interactions of Layton and his new apprentice, Luke. And as much as I am not overly fond of Emmy, I want to see how her story with Layton plays out. The London Life mini-game is also entertaining, and after only a couple of hours, I’ve played about 10 “days” in the game.

I suppose the only negative thing I have to say about Last Specter is that the spine of the case does not match the others, making it look dull alongside the other installments on my DS shelf.

Purchase Professor Layton and the Last Specter on Amazon

Status: Completed and unlocked all 5 achievements
Achievements: 49 of 75
Gamerscore: 965/1655

After previous experiences with Fallout 3′s add on content suffering major release issues, I decided that I’d wait a while before picking up new quests for New Vegas. I didn’t want to be burned again with purchasing content on release day and being unable to play it. So when Bethesda had a recent Xbox Live sale, I picked up Honest Hearts and Dead Money. I polled my friends, and heeding their advice, chose to venture into Zion and deal with the White Legs in Honest Hearts.

As with most Fallout DLC, Honest Hearts starts off with a radio transmission. A trading company is looking to hire some help making a trip into Zion to do some trading and check on the inhabitants. They haven’t heard from anyone in a while and want to make sure they aren’t walking into a trap. As soon as you arrive, your companions are slaughtered when a band of renegade Natives called the White Legs ambushes you. You’ll survive, and thanks to the help of another Native, Follows-Chalk, you are soon brought to safety and meet the infamous Burned Man. (To catch you up, Joshua Graham the Burned Man was once Caesar’s right hand man, until he betrayed the leader and was set on fire as punishment.)

Joshua explains that the New Canaanites were killed by the White Legs, who are trying to prove loyalty to Caesar and join his fold. Those who survived fled to Zion, where Joshua now leads the Dead Horse tribe, teaching them how to use modern artillery to defend themselves. Another retired warrior named Daniel leads a second tribe, the Sorrows, who are friendly to the Dead Horses but not as aggressive in their ways. Joshua wants you to help him defend Zion Canyon so that both tribes can stay here in peace; Daniel refuses to make the Sorrows become a war-like people and hopes you will assist him in aiding their flight.

Help the Natives either flee or reclaim their homeland

Zion Canyon is full of old camping sites, ranger stations and other buildings the Native people have marked as taboo. Anything deemed taboo has been marked and should be checked out. Follows-Chalk, your Dead Horse companion, loves checking out these off-limits places, and comes with an added map making perk; travel with him to high locations and he will scout out nearby destinations and have them marked on your map. I recommend traveling with him all over the place in the beginning so he can help you find all of the hidden locations you won’t find on your own if you stick to the story. You’ll also have access to a companion from the Sorrows tribe acquired through the quest about halfway through.

Ammunition and weapons are pretty limited in Zion, which means you need to choose wisely what items you will bring with you on the journey. You need to make sure you have room in your pack as it is to make the initial leg of the trip with the traders, leaving you to scavenge and loot your way through the canyon. Fortunately, you’ll find reloading tables hidden in caves along with some caches of supplies left behind by someone who chronicled their remaining days after the initial nuclear attack. And if you’re really in a pinch, Joshua has guns and ammo for trade, while Daniel sticks with healing supplies.

Keep your eyes open for these spore plants

If you want to clean up all five achievements with one go, it’s important to note that you will know when it’s time to make that decision. You’ll be able to get the first three just fine following the story, so just before you decide who’s plan to go along with, save your game! You can always reload from this point and choose option number two. Regardless of how you leave Zion, the area does not become shut off and you can come back later on should you want to do so.

Overall Opinion

Honest Hearts added a good six hours of story, adventuring and scavenging to my Fallout New Vegas experience. It was a nice little side story to bring myself back into the Fallout universe with, seeing as I hadn’t played the game in months. Thankfully, I ran into no major issues (super pixel glitches, freezing, hiccups with text) which either means a better job was done making sure the DLC worked properly as of Day One or there had been an update between release and when I purchased it. Finally, a near flawless expansion in the Fallout universe that I was able to enjoy start to finish.

Available on Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC/Mac

Status: Finished once on Normal (107h 40m) with the Good Ending, started New Game+ on Expert

The Persona franchise is one of my absolute favourites. It combines so many things that I love into one giant ball of twistedness, and I always go back in for seconds or thirds. Persona 4 is no exception to that rule, as I began a New Game+ just as soon as the ending credits finished rolling.

Your main character in Persona 4 is a transfer student moving from the big city to small town Inaba. Here you will live with your detective uncle and his very young daughter for the next year since your parents have gone overseas for work and just couldn’t manage to drag you along. Some say life in small towns is dull and boring, and any other year that would be true of Inaba. Unfortunately, this year the town ends up as the stage for a high profile murder which you find yourself dragged into.

Life in the quiet town turns upside down when a disgraced TV announcer is found dead on your first day of school. The police are investigating, but with few leads and no suspect in sight, the folks in Inaba are getting more and more uneasy. When a second body is spotted exactly the same way as the first victim, you and your new classmate friends are sure there is some connection between the women and the strange rainy day midnight TV broadcasts. It doesn’t help that you suddenly have the ability to stick yourself inside the TV.

Inside the TV is a curious bear who goes by the name Teddie. He doesn’t know where he came from or how he got to this place, only that it has always been his home and now that someone is throwing people inside, the Shadows who live there with him are becoming more aggressive. In exchange for promising him you will find the culprit, Teddie assists you by providing analysis in battle and crafting glasses that help you see through the thick fog that engulfs this side and only lifts when fog comes to Inaba.

Yosuke's Persona Jiraiya

Rumors have always played a major role in the Persona series, and P4 is no exception. The rumor fueling what the kids call the Midnight Channel affects all those who watch it in some way or another. Each person who appears on the Midnight Channel needs to be rescued, and on those rainy nights when you tune in and see a new silhouette in the static, you know it’s time to locate new Personas and unlock more Social Links. Those poor souls need to be rescued before the fog sets in, and only your bespectacled team of high schoolers can do the job.

A staple to the Persona franchise, the Velvet Room in P4 comes in the form of a stretch limo, complete with Igor and Margaret to help you fuse and catalog the various Persona you use in battle. Talking with Igor will give you all the information you need on fusing Persona and unlocking more powerful allies in battle, as well as letting you know of any special outcomes of fusing on a particular day. Margaret registers your Persona and holds the compendium which you can use to call forth Personas you may have released but would like to have once more, for a price, of course. She also has requests for you, and by accepting and completing them, you will forge a Social Link with her.

Hanging out with friends strengthens Social Links

Social Links are the backbone of Persona games. Yes, collecting as many Personas as you can after battle and fusing them in the Velvet Room is great, but without strengthening your Social Links, the most powerful Personas that you will need as the year progresses with elude you, making it tougher to survive inside the TV. If you choose to ignore relationships with others, you’ll find yourself grinding through the dungeons to level up takes more time than it needs to. Not only that, but if you level up the Social Links of your female friends, you will be able to date one of them. For my first time through, I focused on leveling my link with Rise, the former idol. Have yet to decide who I’ll woo in my new game, but I hear Naoto has the best Christmas Eve event….

There are also some fairly easy side quests you can do along the way. Talk to your peers and neighbours to hear requests for items they are looking for, and in exchange you’ll receive some handy battle items. These requests mostly require you to revisit some old dungeons to collect items from battle, so pay attention to the clues the NPCs offer you to know where to look and for which type of Shadows you’ll need to defeat.

Added to Persona 4 (and in turn to the port of P3P) was the ability to have part time jobs. Not only do you earn some spending cash, but each job also helps raise the level of certain attributes and even have Social Links available. You can find the job board posted in the shopping district and take as many positions as you want.

Attribute Status Screen for Main Character

The nice bonus of playing through with New Game+ is all the time you spent the first time leveling up your attributes (Knowledge, Understanding, Expression, Diligence and Courage) hasn’t gone to waste. Along with key items received from maxing out Social Links in your previous game, your attribute levels remain the same, meaning you can take the janitor job at the hospital as soon as it’s posted, and you can flirt with the girls a lot sooner. It also means I don’t need to waste my evenings studying and I can go fishing instead. (That damn cat eats a lot of fish!)

Overall Opinion

Fans of JRPGs and the Persona franchise will not be disappointed with P4. Everything we’ve loved in the previous games is here – grinding through dungeons, combining different Persona and seeing how many we could collect in one play through, characters with questionable morals and really weird bosses. My first time through the game was 108 hours of fun, making sure I played through to the Good Ending. The fact that I started a second game as soon as the ending credits finished should be a testament as to how much I enjoyed playing P4. I’m also excited for the port Atlus announced would be coming to the Playstation Vita, giving me one more reason to buy the new portable machine.

I’ve written about the PSP ports for the original game and for P3P, and will hopefully be adding the Persona 2 port to the list shortly.

You can purchase Persona 4 for the PS2 on Amazon

Status: Finished both The Signal & The Writer DLC
Achievements: 41 of 67
Gamerscore: 740/1500

Months after finishing Alan Wake’s original content and downloading both DLC add-ons, I still hadn’t gotten around to actually playing the new episodes.  I’d see the box for the game sitting on the top of my 360 shelving unit and think “Maybe this week”, but kept passing it over for something else. A couple of weeks ago, I finally sat myself down and played through the DLC thanks to stressing out over Catherine and wanting a change of pace.

My delay in finishing this extra content for Alan Wake was not because of the game itself. I loved the game (my original thoughts on it can be read here) and at the time was itching to get my hands on more. If anything, it was my gut feeling that these two episodes should have been part of the retail release, but due to having to make a release date, they were excluded and held back for polishing and rebranded as DLC. I was really hoping that I would be wrong, that these were just extra parts to the story.

Waking up to find himself locked inside his own nightmare, Wake makes his way through twisted versions of familiar locations, hoping to reconnect with Thomas Zane’s “presence”. According to Zane, Wake has left himself clues and assistance so that he can escape, which explains the phantom-like words and occasional pages of draft that flutter down to the author’s feet through out these two pieces of content. You’ll need to shine your light on the text if you want to replenish your depleting battery and ammo stashes, as well as opening up paths in order to progress. Plausible actions seeing as you are inside Alan’s imagination.

As I ran around this nightmare version revisiting old haunts with Barry’s “ghost” following me around, that feeling I had before I’d even begun started to nag at me. Here I was, searching for pointless collectibles and dealing with the evil and twisted side of Alan’s psyche, and I was right. Everything I was doing felt like it was always meant to be with the rest of the game from the start. And by the time I reached my destination, I was ready to throw my controller at something in anger of being right. I felt cheated and wronged, lied to by people I trusted to give me the best experience possible from the beginning.

But should I really be mad at Remedy for sacrificing those final two episodes in order to just get the game out? Or should I be angry with Microsoft, because we know they love to make calls favouring marketing schedules rather than just letting a studio get everything right the first time? It should have been clear to me when I saw the voucher for The Signal inside my limited edition box that someone from Microsoft was itching to see some profits from a game so long in development. Part of me knew – and it just did not want to accept the truth at the time. But now I can no longer deny that I was played.

Status: Can you really ever finish this game?
Achievements: 12 of 12
Gamerscore: 200/200
DLC Purchased: None

The Xbox Deal of the Week is always hit or miss for me. Too often it’s just a bunch of maps for shooter games that don’t interest me. That changed a couple of weeks back when I noticed that Torchlight was on sale for 800 points. I’d heard great things about the PC version of the game, and when I asked my friends for their advice on the XBL port their comments swayed me into taking the plunge.

Deep below the town of Torchlight lay mines and caverns filled with Ember, a material sought by the greatest adventurers for it’s unique enchanting element. Miners risk life and limb to bring Ember to the surface. What they do not realize is that an ancient evil lays in wait for someone to release him, as civilizations before this one have done. It is up to you to traverse the dungeons and defeat it before it claims Torchlight.

There are three basic adventurers you can choose from (ranged, magic, and melee), as well as three types of pets. The lone female hero favours ranged attacks, which worked to my advantage, as that was what I wanted my character to be in the first place. I chose the Cat as her pet and began gathering quests from the Torchlight inhabitants.

You won’t find yourself playing Torchlight for a riveting, on the edge of your seat story. It’s pretty thin, and really only a delivery system for the fun part: dungeon crawling and looting to your heart’s content. Gain a task, complete the objective, collect goodies, and then do it all over again.

Ranged weapons and magic are great for avoiding traps

If there is one thing I love about RPGs of any kind, it’s slaughtering enemies in order to pick up loot. There is something satisfying about loading up your character’s inventory with brand new gear and trinkets. Torchlight provides players with a seemingly endless underground world chalk full of Ember-imbued baddies hoarding all sorts of unique items for you to weed through. You will constantly find better equipment to arm and protect yourself with, and there are bonuses for equipping sets of armor should you find all of the pieces. Identified armor that is better than what you are wearing and you have reached the required level for will auto-equip, which is handy for the beginner. Some armor and weapons also have sockets for you to insert pieces of Ember that you will find throughout the mines.

Having a pet is super handy for the looter. Both you and your furry friend can carry 50 items a piece, which means you can stay below ground and stock up longer. I love to load mine up with all of the weapons and armor that won’t improve my stats, as well as my cheaper accessories. Once I’ve decided on what I don’t need to carry, I can send my pet to town to sell everything they are carrying. The only time I can’t do this is when I am inside a Phase Portal within the caverns. When my pet returns, anything new I’ve gathered and doesn’t suit my needs is sloughed off again. It’s a perfect system for accumulating copious amounts of money.

Regardless of what type of adventurer you choose to play as, certain spells can be purchased and learned for both yourself and your pet. There are healing spells, elemental attacks and summoning spells you can find or purchase, all of which can be hot-keyed on your controller. I made sure to equip my pet with high level Heal All and Heal Self spells since I set him to be aggressive in the field. This saved me from having to worry about him fleeing from battle too often and made sure that I was keeping myself healed without eating through my reserves of healing potions. I made sure to have ice attacks in my arsenal for when I ran into dragonkin and hordes of shamblers, as it would slow them down a bit and eat away at their HP over time.

Enemies with gold lettered names mean special loot and lots of Fame

Overall Opinion

In less than a week, I managed to play through the quests that you would consider the main storyline, and also ran around collecting items for some of the locals. Looting and grinding for experience is fun, but after a while with nothing more than side quests to complete, the game starts to lose a bit of shine. It is an amazing game and I loved it for what it is, which is why I really hope that Torchlight 2 expands and gives more depth to the story and characters involved and becomes even better.

Status: Finished everything but the Mages’ Guild quests
Achievements: 54 of 60
Gamerscore: 1150/1250
DLC Purchased: Every last bit of DLC, including that ridiculous Horse Armor (only because it was on the GOTY disc)

Somehow I find it very fitting that the first game from Project Backlog that I am crossing off the list is actually the first Xbox 360 game I ever finished. Let me clarify that – the first game I finished before I had an Xbox Live gamertag.A long, long time ago in a far away land, I lived another life. In this life, the person I lived with had very strict rules about the internet. It could only be used for research and occasional emails, no “chatting”, which included a kibosh on online gaming. At the time it didn’t affect me all that much since I wasn’t really into shooters or MMOs. I’ve always preferred a single player experience for role playing games. Anyway, cutting to the chase, Oblivion was the first game I powered through and collected all achievements in.

I devoted hours to leveling up my character and completing as many side quests as I could. I started with the Thieves’ Guild, as I seem to do in most games that offer thievery as a lifestyle choice, and slowly but surely tied up all loose ends with the guilds before taking on the final quest. All told, I believe some 120 hours or so was spent traipsing all over the map, running from one end to the other. It was a great escape from the world I was living in at the time, and therefore has a special place in my heart.

Finally, I was on my own. I bought myself an Xbox 360 and with it a Game of the Year version of Oblivion. I had only ever played the main game content before, and now I could sink even more time into a character. Having to replay the game again knowing what the outcome would be didn’t dull the excitement of finally collecting gamerscore I could share with people. Oblivion and I were on our second honeymoon.

The beginning was great. I’d get home from work, raring to boot up the 360 (affectionately known as Betty) and loot dungeons for shiny new trinkets. This went on for about a month or so. There were new games in between, of course, but I really wanted to devour Oblivion. If I had done it once before, it surely would be a breeze the second time around. But I was wrong. Soon enough, I found I didn’t really want to play it anymore. I’d already done all of this once before and there was a growing pile of new games to give attention to.

So here I am a few years later clearing up loose ends. When I got right down to it, it only took about a week for me to collect the achievements I knew were possible with this character. A glitch in the Mages’ Guild storyline handicapped me from making it a perfect run through with my Champion, but nothing to keep me from crossing this one off of my list. Sure, I’ll go back at some point, make a new character and hope I can take care of those achievements for a 100% completion on my gamer card. Maybe next summer when the next lull in releases hits.

But now it is on to other things. Like Torchlight, probably the most awesome time-suck I have played in years.

Purchase Elder Scrolls: Oblivion 5th Anniversary from Amazon