Up late talking games & writing? You're...

Games: The Dragon Age 2 podcast is now up and available for your listening pleasure. You can check it out HERE and find out what four people systematically destroying a bad game sounds like.

My Mass Effect 2: Arrival review is also live. Click HERE to see what I thought of the final piece of DLC for the second leg of Commander Shepard’s interstellar adventure.


Games: My good friend John Laster over at XBLA Fans is running a week-long series on games that fall into the Brawler genre. There's a whole bunch of content, some contests, and other random things to click and read. You can check it out HERE, and tell him I sent you.


Games: I'm still playing Gods Eater Burst on PSP, but I'm thinking I may write the review and call it done for now. From what I can tell, I'm about 40-50% done with it, but it's just eating up my free time like crazy and the gameplay hasn't really changed since the first hour or two.


Unlike Monster Hunter, I'm not finding deeper layers of strategy or new mechanics that can be used in interesting ways. It's a much, much shallower experience and at this point it seems like all that's required to make it to the end is just a lot of repetition. It's not terrible by any means, but after playing something so deep and masterfully crafted, it's hard to be entertained with content that feels so lightweight by comparison.


Games: In other games news, I'm maybe a third of the way through Monster Tale for DS, and it's been a great experience so far.


In a nutshell, it's a quasi-Metroidvania adventure starring a little girl and her monster companion. She's got a bunch of moves on her own, but her buddy (named Chomp) evolves into different forms and has a whole variety of abilities and powerups that can be mixed and matched. It's cute, the gameplay is totally dialed-in, and it's from the same developers that created Henry Hatsworth, which is one of the all-time best DS games ever created.

For some bizarre reason, this game is not getting very much attention, and that is a real shame. Do yourself a favor and track down a copy... I have a feeling that finding a copy of this will be quite difficult once the initial print run disappears.

(Plus, you can be the cool kid on your block by being into a great game that nobody else knows about.)


Games: Now that I don't have any retail discs to review at the moment, I'm going to start a solid week of checking out Xbox Live Indie titles. I've got somewhere in the neighborhood of 300+ demos saved up on my hard drive, so I'm going to be taking on a couple a day and seeing if I can find any gems.

You can expect the first installment of this report pretty soon, but in the meantime I'd like to give thanks to everyone who suggested notable titles via Twitter:

@TheMirai
@OverordRor
@MerryGoDown
@ThiefOfHearts
@JakePPetersen
@MastaLCom
@MrAndyDixon
@WereZomPire
@Mahkia
@SilentHitoshura
@RyanOlson75
@OzymandiasAV
@MommysBestGames

Also, a very special thanks to @NaviFairyGG who absolutely blew me away with the sheer volume of games he thought were worth a look. Seriously, it was madness. In a good way.