Michael Calva
The folks at Vogster Entertainment have had their hands full over the past few months, and rightfully so. CrimeCraft came to the frontlines of the video game market at the beginning of September, its glossy package design promising 'gripping, action-packed shootouts' and 'role-playing elements exclusive to today's hottest MMO games. Read More.
It's been almost a decade since the original Majesty: Fantasy Kingdom Sim made its hit debut in 2000, and some speculated that it might never see a sequel. Now, thanks to publisher Paradox Interactive and the well-established Russian developer, 1C Company, Majesty 2 will finally see light. Read More.
Red Fly Studio began in 2005 with a handful of members from other development studios (Ion Storm and Retro Studios, to name a couple), all of whom wanted to step out of the norm of creating games for someone else and develop something they wanted to see done. Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars was that brainchild, and now, nearly four years later, Red Fly has released the title . Read More.
The original Fable was something of an awakening in the role-playing world, an accomplishment that spoke volumes about character customization. Gamers had seen the multitude of shining armor and Armageddon-bringing weapons they could collect in other titles within the same genre. Read More.
So, you see green orc-blood in your dreams. The whistle of a battle-axe cleaving a rival in two is music to your ears. You've played so many role-playing games that your fingers automatically go to their respective hotkeys even when you're simply typing an e-mail. Read More.
It's been almost three years since Introversion released Darwinia on the Steam platform, a move that allowed them to access a much larger community than they could with Darwinia's original March 2005 release. With its simplistic graphical design and game-play that made anyone that touched the game crave for more, Darwinia became a hit beyond anything like Introversion's previous two cult classics. Read More.
After years of development and console side-stepping, Silicon Knights finally revealed its freshest role-playing game for the Xbox 360 console: Too Human. While close to a million gamers downloaded the demo over the Xbox Live Marketplace, there was some disparagement seen throughout its initial user reviews. Read More.
Nemesis, indeed. Back in the beginning of the 20th Century, author Maurice Leblanc introduced a new kind of literary protagonist, Mr. Arsene Lupin. A well-behaved thief, a "gentleman thief" in so many words, Lupin starred in over twenty volumes, and came to be very popular in France. Read More.
The Middle Ages spanned hundreds of years, and developer Unicorn Games and publishers Atari and 1C have built upon a single century from that era: the thirteenth century. In XIII Century: Death or Glory, the war is on as the English, the French, the Mongols, the Germans and the Russians let the spittle fly and take up arms. Read More.
There are three surefire ways to kill a vampire: gunfire, fruitcake, and the black spot behind your toilet that you're afraid to identify. Of course, most would disagree with that statement, and one man in particular would scoff at such an idea. In Dracula: Origin, a PC title developed by the adventure don Frogwares and published by The Adventure Company and Focus Home Interactive, Professor Van Helsing is that man. Read More.
Simulators, more often than not, appeal to players that seek a specific niche. In the case of Trainz Railwayz by developer Auran and publishers Merscom and Just Trains, that simulator pigeonhole happens to be railroads. The fifth installment in the series, Trainz Railwayz strives to continue the Trainz legacy by building off of the initial success of the series. Read More.
A crashed supertanker has become overgrown and dilapidated, and its previous inhabitants have had it loaded it to the brim with high-end technology and a wide variety of cameras and trendy gadgets. Read More.
As an adventure game junky and a lover of grand stories to boot, I had high hopes for Next Life, a game that seemed to promise fun exploration and a worthy quest. Developed by Future Games and published by The Adventure Company, Next Life's story revolves around man from Prague, Adam Raichl, whose life is swiftly snatched away by an explosive accident. Read More.
At first, the forefront of Fantasy Wars will seem familiar; Humans, Orcs and Elves are all pretty ticked off at each other and are at war. While this has been done before, developers 1C and Ino-Co, and publisher Atari, do well to include a lot of background story that distinguishes the plot from any other. Read More.
What do you get when you take the characters from an ongoing television show and previous game title of the same name, and throw them into a melting pot roiling with hackneyed ingredients? Well, a lot of answers may apply here, but Krome Studios' Viva Pinata: Party Animals for the Xbox 360 definitely fits the bill. Read More.
