Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim also receives Geek Woman’s Best Female Avatar and best Female NPC this year. This review you can expect lengthy sections about feminism and the females of Skyrim. I played as a female Arch Mage, and I got to marry the girl of my dreams. There are both funny, and touching stories about Skyrim which I can’t wait to tell my readers.

Although I’ve made many glowing remarks, and found many things about the game to be awesome, it is not perfect. On PS3 it is anything but perfect. Since I plan to do the Skyrim review in at least two parts, I am going to withhold scoring it until I have completed the next group of quests. For this review I will discuss my experience of the game in it’s social and feminist aspects. Next time I will analyze gameplay more.

Do I recommend Skyrim to any lady gamers reading this? Yes, is the short answer. Especially the PC version. Unfortunately the struggles that PS3 gamers have been having with the platform for the last year are still going on, with Sony throttling the ability of the developers to create a perfect port and to fix it via updates. If you don’t have an internet connection to your PS3, then you should go for the PC version. If you do have the PS3, and you are stuck with it, the major problems don’t come up until you are well into the game, when I discover work arounds I will include them in the next part.

Some of the the best features Skyrim has are the ones which several RPG’s and RPG hybrids just did not have. There were so many games in 2011 that were cheap, and cut corners. Lazily put together RPGs dominated the offerings last year. The trend was to provide a single player game of three to four hours, and then slap on a carbon copy multiplayer mode. Which, with the PSNetwork being only sporadically available last year, were rip offs. The lame earlier competition only made Skyrim coming in the fall that much better. Skyrim is a game with rich amounts of content in any direction you choose to play it, and has earned all the hype. It is well worth your purchase, and may keep you occupied for months of gaming. You’ll have a game that is epic in every sense of the word.

In Skyrim you have the best designed open world environments crafted to date. It is incredibly expansive, and alive. There are entire ecosystems of plants and wildlife that change presentation with the terrain. The weather and lighting are brilliant, delivering breath taking mountain views. Dank dripping fog banks are populated by giants and trolls hiding behind crumbled stone walls. Snow capped mountain tops are inhabited by spine chilling frost wraiths, spiders and snow cats. Errant elk or a flitting fox may lead you thankfully towards a trail, or to a tumbling cliffside that spawns deadly dragons. You can wander through these expanses on foot or by horse for hours.

There are enormous full moons, night skies painted with multi colored northern lights. Sunrise reveals a pretty hamlet with a spinning water wheel grinding grain, or a pleasant brewery. Cheerfully it is all lit up by dappled sunshine and voiced over by the chirruping of springtime birds twittering love trills.

The dungeons are far from repetitive. Always an achilles heel in RPG’s is the amount of time it must take to create and arrange monsters and traps in the dungeons. You usually see reused textures, or backsides of hallways that are just a single color. Here you have individual stones, bricks, plants, sand, pebbles, and rocks that can be seen as you walk on trails outdoors, or inside dark caverns, from dry land and below water, through ponds or rivers. And always there is something unexpected or a bit of loot for reward.

In Skyrim you will find a little of everything to hunt through. Dungeons, ruins and castles are each different and inviting in that perverse way which you will enjoyably find the next surprise around the corner. Dungeons are worthy, even on the easy setting. Getting to them is a challenge, and not because there is a lack of map markers or in availability of fast travel. It is the distractions. Bandits, thugs, hunters, people and creatures in distress or in need of your help, can keep you preoccupied for hours before you even find that cavern or crag that’s up upon a dizzying altitude.

There are enough plants to craft potions and even cook with. You can harvest and gather practically everything on your weekly grocery list right from the land. You can hunt for food animals, grow vegetables, harvest fish, cook them together into soups and stews that work like health potions. The flowers and herbs have been carefully designed to be plausible and pretty. Many of the ingredients emit a glow or translucence that just looks great, both in inventory or on the shelves in the Arch-Mages quarters. They even have up to four different properties like real herbs.

The ruins, castles and abandoned buildings have textures so life like you may think you can smell the hanging moss or the wet stone beneath your boots. At night if you climb beneath menhirs and dolmens of enchanted rock wondering if you will receive a blessing or a curse, and then come upon an altar laden with treasures to plunder, and magical books to to read and gain new spells from. Another moment will display luna moths dancing playfully about, offering you a lighted path to tempting ingredients. Then in an other instant it can all be taken away from you. What you thought was the twinkling of other enticing night lights, is deadly Spriggans that come upon you, and your horse unawares with their deceptive glittering beauty.

The flora and fauna in this, are done with exemplary attention to minute detail. The crafting, and RPG aspects are done incomparably well. It is a genuine pleasure to enjoy hours and hours of exploration. It does not scrimp on content in any way. Crafting includes blacksmithing, alchemy, weapon enchanting, mining smelting, hunting, and tanning. There is an encyclopedic amount of items to enjoy and to make.

Unlike Dark Souls which was sophomoric by comparison, but some writers still compare it, you can easily see where you need to go. Between the two games the lighting effects in Skyrim are masterful, and when it intends to be dark and scary it does so without resorting to a lurid, washed out color palette. A mage can carry a lighted torch, or even better there are spells for Candelight, or glow balls that you can shoot up like a flare to light an entire chamber.

You begin jailed, and it’s hardly the inscrutable confinement in the beginning of Dark Souls. From that point you create your character from several races. Each of course has it’s individual strengths and innate abilities. You can select age, gender and species. You have sliders for all aspects of character creation. You can design the facial features and makeup, skin tone, hair, eyes, tattoos and scars. You can even make your female character pretty! Ok, sort of pretty it’s still Bethesda.

The skill trees are as unique as your own gamer thumb print. For instance usually with Mage characters you don’t get to equip heavy armor or use swords in many games. Here, your skills develop with your playing style. If you make good use of your shield blocking blows, then your defense points will increase. If you make a butt load of potions, your alchemy will incase. Everything you do in game, counts for something. Like life you accumulate experience, through living life. Somehow the developers used a realistic model that actually worked. Everyone playing the game will have a uniquely built character that resembles their own playing style. You can be a battle Mage, or an Alchemist who uses poisons to harm, or potions to heal. The Alchemy system is completely separate from the Magic system as it should be, although one supports the other.

The Magical system is the best I have ever played as a Mage. Finally first person magical battle. It is easy and fun. You can watch the special effects and fireballs set back from third person, or hone in on it with first person. Again another game mechanic that all games should have. I have said it in practically each review, simple things make me happy. And make other female gamers happy. Give us playable female avatars – check. Complete character creation – check. Let us toggle between first and third person – check. Enable game Save at any point in the game. Equality and convenience, that adds up to a great game.

Generally the spells are based on the basic schools of elemental magic Destruction, Fire, Frost, and Lightening spells in gradually more powerful degrees are available. As well as Restoration which is a full menu of healing spells. Then you have Conjuration which ranges from benign summonings of elemental spirits and familiars to all out Necromancy, which you didn’t have in Oblivion. I will talk more about Magic in the next review about the game play in Skyrim.

You can play it dark or light, or a little of both. You can go as far as joining a Thieves Guild and perfect “skills” of sneaking and pick pocketing. You can even respond to the summons of the Dark Brotherhood and start a career of murderous espionage. The game has real choices and their consequences to deal with. It raises the bar beyond little dialog wheels. Your actions speak louder than words throughout the game, literally developing your character’s character. Skyrim has raised the bar in terms of powerful consequences affecting the outcome of the game, and the perception of your personality by the NPC’s who have better AI than most other games do.

You can pick dialogs that persuade, intimidate or mediate when dealing with NPC’s. Or you can actually offend them by committing crimes, which they won’t forget or easily forgive. Slaying that annoying little dirt bag that insults you on the roadside by taunting you with snide remarks “What’s the matter did someone steal your sweet roll?” slaying him in one hit where he stands in the center of town isn’t the best idea. But there are other more clever ways to dispose of that sleazy dick head character you despise without taking the rap for a murder in game.

There is a main story line, as well as several other quest lines. You can become a soldier, mage, werewolf or vampire. You can be a blacksmith or make enchanted weapons. I took the path of the Arch Mage quests. By gathering herbs and everything else I could find, I leveled my character with points from fighting with an Ancient Nord Sword of Frost, and specialized in flame and lightening spells. The handy part about carrying enchanted weapons, is that early on when you run out of magica power, the spell weapons or scrolls will still work. Or were I not a Mage and was a knight instead, then some spells would still be accessible.

As Arch Mage I eventually got a tower to live in, with secure space, and a safe to save my best loot, and gardens that would re-spawn ingredients. Without any rush, it took a month of real world time, to yield over a hundred days in game time to accomplish, so long before becoming Arch Mage I needed to get married.

There is a distinction in the game between a follower and a spouse. A follower can exchange items with you and carry loot in missions. You can equip them and outfit them. Which they may or may not enjoy, but will oblige you. I played the introductory missions which made me a Thane in Whiterun, and earned me the snarky house karl Lydia. As a follower she was able to provide additional storage on missions, even though her dialog was irritating. Alas for my poor Lydia. She perished needlessly in a dungeon due to my lack of experience. Followers can indeed die. The problem arose because I could not find her corpse, a problem many people have had. Another named character died on top of her body. I wasted time searching for her, and subsequently saved game without her in it, only to find her remains at a later time where she was killed. I was able to loot her corpse sadly, and recover all of the items. The way that I eventually obtained my next follower and lost him, is a story good enough for a soap opera. How dead is dead any way? We may see more of Lydia yet.

The selection process for my wife began with careful study of various Wiki’s describing the available women. Some of them were down right ugly. I was hoping for someone attractive-ish, with property and merchant abilities. There was Ysolda, who was a budding merchant, but she has a drug dealing problem. Another candidate had a fairly short introductory mission before she became available for marriage. None of the marriageable women came without some kind of baggage. Then I zeroed in on Camilla the sister of the merchant at Riverwood Traders. She often dropped hints about what a sexist, and unimaginative terd her brother was. I restrained myself from just frying the chauvinist where he stood. Camilla hit all the victim buttons for “Save Me”. So I did.

Camilla is the subject of one of the early missions. She and her brother are trying to recover a Golden Claw key that was stolen from their shop. I find the culprit and give it back to them. Camilla is eternally grateful, unfortunately she repeats a dialog loop about how glad she is “…to have the claw back where it belongs”, long after the mission, and she isn’t even at the Riverwood Traders anymore.

She has two suitors. An elven bard, which I hated instantly, and a wood elf ranger. Given the choice between the lesser of two elven bastards, I would choose the archer to help. In that mission Faendal has me deliver a fake letter to Camilla that put the bard out of the picture.

I accomplished finding the needed Amulet of Mara by discovering one accidentally by clearing a Silent Moons Camp near Whiterun. I did a small mission for the Priest of Mara in the Temple in Riften. With the Amulet of Mara equipped as a signal that my character was in the marriage market, I visited the fair, for Bethesda, Camilla. As usual she was complaining that she wanted to host a sale at the their shop, and her brother wasn’t having it. Then she saw my amulet of Mara and her dialog actually changed to flirty comments. I went for it and asked Camilla to marry me. She never battled an eyelash that my character is a chick also.

There was something tremendously moving about that fake ceremony between two unreal females. A good virtual experience, or movie should evoke feelings, associations or memories in the viewer. These are different times, what is possible today for the young wasn’t in the universe that I lived in years ago. Beyond being able to cast fireball spells that look real, or slaying dragons, it was the humane aspects of this alternate reality that I found to be the most excellent.

There’s your dog, which you only get one of, who is a best friend in your Skyrim life. And your horse who may fight for you until it’s own death, as will your Follower, as dear or as undesirable a character as he or she maybe.

Here is the part of the story where things began to get even more interesting. Shortly after I married Camilla, I realized that I needed to buy a house for us both. Even though she part owned the house and store with her brother in Riverwood he would not go away. Her bed was a single twin in a room shared with him. “Darn it,” I thought, “maybe this was the developers way of preventing a lesbian sexual situation in the game?”

I chose Breezehome in Whiterun because of it’s proximity with Warmaiden’s sword and armor traders, and Arcadia’s alchemy shop. With it being so close by I saved 500 gold on outfitting the house with an Alchemy Lab. The game has an auto save function which kicks in as you move from one area or building to the next. It also autosaves when you Sleep. Your character may use beds in Inns or at the homes of friends, and while camping out during a quest to rest and renew the stats that drop off over time without sleep. Your character can catch diseases or become poisoned, so a good sleep now and then is important for even the Skyrim version of yourself.

After yet another mission, that unlocked the privilege of homeownership, I finally had a double bed. Camilla’s dialog box permitted me to move her to Breezehome. Being a tidy woman, Camilla stepped off to bed at around midnight. After she lay down I was also able to press X to Sleep, and the screen darkened, leaving a progress bar with numbers ticking down. So was spent the first night of my happily gay marriage with my wife. No sex, no nudity, and not even a glimpse of both married characters in the same bed. It does the same for hetero marriages as well. I did get the Lover’s Comfort boost to stats, and would continue to, anytime I used the Sleep function at the same house she was in, even if we weren’t sleeping at the same time.

Camilla continued to have her merchant abilities, and began to sell an eye opening array of things. Another plus is that she is “open” or able to transact business for me at any time of day or night unlike the regular merchants who were only available from 8 am to 8 pm. She also pays me a share of what she makes. But as a spouse, I am not able to equip her with new clothes or remove them. I can’t give her jewels or other gifts to impress her to add to, or grow our relationship.

Breezehome was pretty barren. It needed upgrades and furniture. Camilla looked sad sitting on a hay bale. I took Lydia as my follower and headed out to find some lost books for the Mages College story line and to gain treasure and gold. It was there that Lydia got killed. The next time I returned to Breezehome I was greeted by Camilla who was upstairs, with Faendal! Conveniently for him, his dialog box offered him to me as a follower. Once after returning from Mzulft I was shocked to see that with the delivery of dining room furniture came what looked like a cradle. Taking Faendal out on the road with me would hopefully curtail any further cheating between those two. Nine months of Skyrim in game time will prove whether they did it, because from what I’ve read there are children in the game.

My trials with Faendal didn’t end there though. He seemed a decent enough follower. He carried and equipped plenty of weapons and armor for me. I made several dungeon runs with him. Until one day when we were in Mzulft, I sprung a trap that was set in front of me and let stones fall, which didn’t hit either of us, but when Faendal ran past the stones, he read it as if my character was attacking him, and killed her, even though her weapons and magic were unequipped.

I reloaded to the last save and went through there again very slowly without being attacked by him. But sure enough on the way back, he outright killed my character again without provocation, because of these rocks. At that point I decided that Faendal was too unstable to trust and travel with. I couldn’t just kill him and leave him there though. He was carrying too much of my loot on him. When I returned to Whiterun, I took back all the weapons and armor that I had equipped him with. My intention was to just allow him to die off in the next major battle. Perhaps his uncanny resemblance to an old ex didn’t help him. Not too long after that I was at Soljund’s Sinkhole when we were attacked by a Blood Dragon. I had a change of heart as I saw brave old Faendal trying to fight the dragon with his fists. I reconsidered, and used Healing Hands on him. I gave him good armor and weapons again. But despite my renewed faith in him, he was killed again in a dragon attack, and I didn’t revive him. I checked my stats, and since I was clear of guilt, I let dead elves lie.

Camilla, if she knew of his death or felt anything, she was unable to say it, except for the usual “…back from some adventure my love?”
“Why yes Camilla, indeed. And your lover Faendal was killed by a dragon, honorably in battle.”

Here you can play the top game of 2011 and there isn’t a trace of sexism that I see in it on the part of the developers.. The same goes for their Fallout franchise as well. These developers truly “get it”. The characters feel inspired by the best of fantasy and science fiction books which are popularly written by female writers. Warm engaging characters take talent to embody, with Skyrim you can see that the level of sophistication of female characters we have been repeatedly asking for can be accomplished. There isn’t a ho in sight in Skyrim.

Letting elves lie was the best decision I ever made. Consulting a Wiki told me that mercenaries were available to hire for gold. I went in search of Jenassa, a clay skinned Dunmer ranger who I found sitting at the Drunken Huntsman shop in Whiterun. Jenassa turned out to be the soul mate of my character. Unlike Lydia she complemented me, saying I was courageous. She carried my lootings gladly and commented about being of a like mind. Perfect. Her skin tone fluxed between blue, green or gray making her look otherworldly in the varied light sources. I never mistook Jenassa for an enemy in battle, her coloring, curves and efficiency were and are unmistakable. Not more than once I was sorry that I had married Camilla and not her. But in a game where you can’t have sex or even see two characters on the same bed fully clothed – one omission from Oblivion, then cheating on my part was impossible.

Jenassa has many lines of dialog. She will comment about the atmosphere she senses. She fights with two swords or a bow. Another one of the most exciting parts about Skyrim is that Jenassa represents only one of many strong female NPC roles in the game. Her dialog is honorable and brave. She has respect and deference for my character and makes fighting together a pleasure to be a team. She can open many locks almost up to expert, and she is hardier than the other followers I had. She hasn’t died on me yet. I return her loyalty by giving her riches. I outfitted her with ghostly looking pair of Drainheart swords that she dual wields and which she has preferred over more valuable ones. It seems as though she was a developers favorite too, and a few extra lines of code were written for her.

When I looted some Forsaken armor and gave her the armor to carry back to trade, she equipped it instead. And then she looked amazing and exotic, and almost hot even, again, for a Bethesda female. I gave her potions to keep her healthy, as well as soul gems to keep her weapons charged up. Amazingly, when we went up to the extremely cold and snowy Throat of the World locations, she changed back into her warmer, original armor. Then when we were in warmer climates, she put back on the bikini top, and crazy headdress again by herself!

Playing with Jenassa as a partner improved an all ready excellent game. Not only do I have a tremendous playable female avatar for myself to play as which I created, but they made a pretty damn good AI with Jenassa. She is my choice for female NPC of the year.

Next, I plan to acquire the house in Solitude called Proudspire because it comes with Jordis the Sword Maiden, whom PC modders are fond of showing nude. She is given as a house karl that you can bring out as a follower. I’d like to see how skillful she is compared to Jenassa,

The female characters who populate Skyrim are a fierce bunch. The city bred ladies and nobles speak intelligently, and some of them are rulers. The female alchemists, mages and merchants all have a proud bearing, and dignity. The serving women will let you know just how seriously they take their jobs and how dedicated they are to them and the families they serve. A few of them look only a bit sexy, although in the original game they are fully clothed. One entertainer has a top on which is slightly tighter and lower than other female outfits or armor. The women are alive with dialog that speaks of all ordinary tasks of life and exactly how they feel about it. There are female blacksmiths, female Hagravens, and one matriarchal culture among the diverse people of Skyrim. Bethesda takes their female gamers and their female characters seriously and exemplifies what I look for in a game.

One complaint though, the footwear. The shoes are terrible. The feet and shoes are grainy and indistinct. Occasionally the feet of my character and followers do disappear into the terrain texture. I like to see good looking shoes and boots on my characters which have as much detail as the other pieces of armor. The other accessories look great. There are tiaras, which will grant plus to stats. The clothing in many cases comes with non removable purses or pouches.

With some maneuvering you can create your own all (almost) female dream team. If you do the main quest to the point where Delphine and Esburn the last Blades are going with you, you can prolong their fighting service, by avoiding the later mission that takes them off in the story line. Delphine is a fine sword fighter who carries a bow as well as wielding a lightening wand that I don’t know how she acquired. Delphine and Esburn aren’t exactly followers. Some have suggested that by carefully reverse pickpocketing them, you can give them things. There is disagreement as to how well that works.

If you want to fill your house with ladies, you can start with these four. Including my character it’s a party of six females and one male. You can get married, choose a female follower, conscript Delphine, gain a female house karl like Jordis. Then once your Conjuration skill becomes 90 you can raise a zombie permanently. Which is when I will be going back for Lydia. That will be in part 2 of this review.

Next time I will go over gameplay, magic and the glitches. I’ll talk about the main mission, politics and religion of Skyrim, and calculate a score. Until then happy plundering!

The casino doors won’t open. There aren’t any strip clubs and the weed dispensaries, like many of the properties you own, do not have functioning doors that open, or a menu screen to vend you anything. Not even a cannabis flavored lollipop, never mind a 40 of beer or a blunt. Another disappointment is the yacht and speed boat don’t have interiors that you can walk around in. The boats in Saints Row 2 were great.

Unfortunately Saints Row the Third pales by comparison with Saints Row 2 in too many ways to even count. It has lost its edge, and many of the connections you made to the game that made it fun and unique for it’s time. With all the closed doors and non interactive buildings it resembles an older GTA more. Underdog title Yakuza 4 has edged out the bigger name game in one way. Yakuza 4 had so many mini games and little areas to explore, as well as whores to exploit that all Saints Row did was remind me to go back to Yakuza 4 and delve into all the intricate funny parts and mini games that it has to offer.

Sure everyone has heard about the giant purple dildo bat. But equally everyone misses things like the sewage truck that sprayed buildings with poop, and the presence and character model of Eliza Dushku. The kind of irreverent humor that the previous installment had isn’t here and because of it the game seems to be a watered down imitation of itself. I din’t feel the sense of camaraderie with these characters and the gang as an ersatz family. My character becomes a stranger to me when she coldly tells the new Shaundi to get over the killing of Johnny. Breaking the street code of loyalty. Like the story in Saints Row, the game has become a parody of itself. Meta isn’t better, it is just over inflation, that gets farther and farther away from the blend of wit it had before.

Never the less SRtT delivers the fun factor and the enjoyment is pretty high. Temporaily at least, there are a decent number of game play hours there, but you mayget bored long before you finish it. If it’s your first venture into the franchise, then you won’t know what you are missing. Or just pick up Saints Row 2 on sale and save your money on buying this one.

There are in fact many things that it does right. It has some of the funniest, and most bad ass female characters in gaming. The average lady or ho on the street are all going to give you at least an ear full, or more if you get too close. NPCs that you go up against, are tough ladies.

Saints Row: The Third has improved the character customization. You can create everything from a super model to a monster with it. You can create your own female gang leader, and even have an all female customized gang, which I did. That is hilarious, as they all have a few lines of dialog, and they are constantly cracking on each other, or your character’s driving. They look hot, but unfortunately they can’t swim, you can’t equip them, or un-equip them, for example into bikini’s. Thankfully when you whistle for them to follow you, if you are driving a two seater car, they will jack their own car and follow along. With all the cuts to the budget of this game, I was happily surprised that it was left in.

The cribs aren’t as much fun either. A little more realism would have been more interesting. Weapons, food and drinks are painted into the backgrounds but she can’t touch them, or consume them. She can’t sit on her couch, or her bed. There are several nice looking rooms in the penthouse, but every door has the same hand print plastered all over that says Access Crib on it. When you are inside the crib, it should say something more accurate. It would have been better if a wardrobe offered clothing, a closet offered weapons, and the kitchen offered storage for collectibles and consumables. The way it is set up is non-interactive, sloppy, and lacks detail.

The controls are problematical. It is squishy as hell. You can bang away at the fire button and it takes forever to respond. Practically every gesture, from trying to get her to turn around, and then run takes several button mashes to accomplish. The whole game feels like it was built by depressed coders.

It is sad to see the gritty underworld Saints of Saints Row 2, who have become international celebrities. They are more like branded Kardashians with their their own energy drinks, and signature clothing line. Unfortunately the licensed clothing for real humans isn’t the Saints’ apparel from the game. You could fabricate some of your own inspired designs on Zazzle I suppose, if you wanted to. As far as I’ve gotten in the game the number of outfits and pieces of clothing don’t seem to be increased or improved over the last installment.

The distribution of power and territories has to be re-established in a new town, complete with costumed gangs, who you need to defeat as in the previous game. Missions forward the storyline, and offer most of the humor through cutscenes. The activities include “Snatch” where you drive prostitutes. “Tank Mayhem” is fun, you destroy as much as possible to attain a high dollar mark before time runs out. “Insurance Fraud” , “Professor Genki’s Super Ethical Reality Climax” which is an obstacle course and shooting range are two of the other Activities.

The new setting of Steelport is technically larger than Stillwater in area. I kept seeing buildings that I recognized from SR2. The old headquarters, and safe house area seemed to be reproduced, even though it is supposed to be a different town, I noticed architecture that I had seen before. The graphics are clear and crisp. It has excellent lighting effects.

There is a commercial district, factories, a suburban zone and an airport. It doesn’t seem very large. When compared to Saints Row 2, which had the university, a Chinatown, and a very detailed fictional suburbia that felt like a living suburban environment with an underground mall, the marina and casinos, Steeleport falls far short. Everyone is a mere caricature such as Zimos, a pimp with an auto-tune voice, or the mascot headed Dr. Genki whose presence insures that there isn’t even the slightest dose of realism in this game.

Add to this the loss of voice talent Eliza Dushku and Neil Patrick Harris, and the addition of wrestler Hulk Hogan instead and you get the general idea of what has happened here. Sexy porn star Sasha Grey does lend her voice, but not her slender figure.

Weapons don’t seem to do much except for the shot gun. Waves of gang bangers can be easily dealt with by shooting up vehicles from a roof top. They explode nicely adding up kills, money and other stats. But it gets old. The guns themselves are kind of boring. You don’t get many missiles and an RPG or grenade launcher would have been welcome if I could have been patient enough find something like those later in the game. Being impatient, I delved into the cheats and just began doing random things, seeing no point in the Missions, or in fact the sequel in general.

Like others who loved, loved Saints Row 2, I too desperately wanted to love Saints Row: The Third. But being a reviewer has taught me to always rent before buying, and that you cannot believe the hype put out there by the commercial websites who are paid to give the fake – ass glowing reviews. This time it certainly held true.

Like as scorpion without it’s stinger, the vanillaization of Saints Row: The Third rendered it average and irrelevant. Save your money my friends because, I think you are going to see a flood of copies of this turd on eBay in the very near future. What happens when you take a terrific, creative, cutting edge development studio and buy it, sell it and have it demoralized by a boardroom table of corporate suits? You get inane shovel ware like Saints Row: The Third, instead of ground breaking exciting entertainment. I give Saints Row: The Third 6 empty shell casings out of 10,

You can choose a female gender character. You can control the body dimensions a and size. You can use presets for the face, or you can get deeper into it and adjust individual facial features. My character turned out scarred and zombie-ish no matter what I did. Perhaps this is no place for pretty. Another plus was having the choice to play as a Pyromancer.

Dark Souls was a fine Halloween and creepy November rain game to review. It is an excellent hardcore RPG sure to satisfy anyone who has complained about games being A. Too short, or B. Too easy. This is a game that takes dedication and time to solve. Nothing about it is a gimmie. You will have to work to figure out what to do about every situation that you are ungently thrust into. You’ll have to strategize about surviving every step of the way and each enemy you encounter. The enemies are so varied and gruesomely interesting that it will give you pause while you experiment with builds needed in order to kill them.

The environments, though not straying far from dank gothic, occasionally burst out into teaming lush jungles with eye watering lighting effects. You’ll delve deeply into soggy dank dungeons and emerge into the oozey areas of stat-sucking swamps.

They have carefully gone over each aspect of the game, from the game play, and inventory to the array of abilities that you can customize and level up. It feels like they have taken every opportunity to excel where ever they could. Dark Souls stands in contrast to so many other games that were released this year that had four or six hours of gameplay for the same amount of money. And multiplayer is no excuse, because this game has a hundred hours of game play, replay ability, and a new set of multiplayer modes which are truly innovative. It really seems to depend on how much effort the developers are willing to put into it, and it does pay to bide your time and avoid the games of lesser quality that don’t give you as long of an experience for your dollar.

My only complaint is that I didn’t have enough time to do this game justice. I wanted to get Skyrim in here, and because Gamefly is so unpredictable I had to send Dark Souls back – for now. This is a game that you need to buy and make a time commitment to. With Skyrim and Modern Warfare Three on the table downstairs Saints Row the Third coming today and Uncharted 3 on the way, this is a rough week for an outstandingly time hungry RPG to drop.

At the start you are trapped inside a castle which you need to escape from. It is guarded by skeletal inmates, an enormous dragon and attacking corpses. There is only one way to solve the puzzle of getting out of there. You will have to find the right keys to open specific doors.

The environmental graphics aren’t bad. There are misty woods, and caves with quartz shining in the dim lights. There are rocks and ruins there which look very good. But has the unfortunate luck to come out too close to Skyrim. Because when it comes to exploration, no other game does it better.

Dark Souls is based on trial and error by death. Your character dies repeatedly like you are playing an old school platformer instead of a modern first person dungeon crawler. It is a difficult game and it could seem tedious to some, and enthralling to others. It is going to depend on what you feel is challenging vs what you feel is annoying. In most games the idea is to avoid the deaths. In the latest Modern Warfare game the character re-spawns in a matter of seconds after a death, that is a game with a play style that is all about speed and ease of use. Dark Souls suffers for trying to distinguish itself by being the “hardest game of the year” in the absence of another unassailable Ninja Gaiden monolith. The value of the high difficult level is debatable. In a times where your competition is as close as the next game on the pile of rentals, it’s agreed that a developer has to come up with a gimmick to make it stand out. Although, the hardest game you have at home usually ends up at the bottom of the pile then doesn’t it?

This an interesting game, I will give it that. It has many things going for it like good lighting effects, lots of detail in the weapons and character modeling, strong magical spells, hidden passages and traps. It takes the pace back down to concentrate fully on the single player experience, which is where so many games in the past two years have lost it. You have to play cautiously, and consider every move and each enemy. If you can hang in there, you will see some spectacular bosses. This game makes you work it hard for each step ahead that you gain, and to some critics that makes it a great game. Healing isn’t easy, the enemies do some real damage, and your character will die often.

Dark Souls has achieved the individuality that it has sought after and has a solid, if limited audience. It would be a good idea to Rent this one first and see if it is worth it to you. If you are waiting for them to get around to sending you all the other premium games that came out this past week, then you’ll have something to play. It isn’t a bad game really, if it had come out in the summer, it would have made a fine, lazy, time consumer. Unfortunately it can’t quite stand up to Skyrim. I give Dark Souls 6 untimely deaths out of 10.

It offers a single player game mode, but it is woefully short. We finished it in under four hours. That is disappointing, and really not a good value for the money at all. There is multiplayer, but not two person one console co-op which would have been fantastic in this game.

All too often we get games like this that rely too heavily on the multiplayer for content. This is PS3 we are talking about not XBL. You don’t have the same kind of audience. Over at harcoreware they have been doing an independent analysis of PSN and XBL for a number of years. Although PSN does not have a monthly subscription fee, they do charge more for the machine up front. There is on average an extra 120.00 US on the cost of a PS3, almost like a one year subscription at ten dollars a month.the Xbox 360 which continues to have price drops and new bundles remains more popular and has better consumer satisfaction, despite many of the Xbox360 owners being on their second or third machine since they came out in ’05.

XBOX Live charges more for the subscription to use its many, functional online services. PSN has not been able to come close or compete with them. XBOX Live has consistently given better, longer, more dedicated multiplayer experiences. Games that are played predominantly in multiplayer mode are infinitely more popular on XBOX Live. On PSN there are lower overall amounts of online gamers.

It is simple mathematics. If I pay sixty dollars for a game, I expect a sixty hour single player experience. So with the low population numbers widely documented, why do developers continue to make such short single player games? Looking over the best of PS3 exclusives they trend towards exploration, adventure and creativity, rather than multiplayer.

Thankfully I rented it.

There is too much time scrambling around on the ground and shooting upwards at guards on scaffolds. It feels rewarding, but again all too brief in those moments when you actually get up high in the trees, on top of a mountain cliff, or on a building.

The sniping mechanics are well built. You can grab the controls with little or no learning curve. It feels like it should and intuitively aims and fires just right. When you get a head shot there is a slow mo animation. You hear your character’s (male of course), heartbeat and breathing. There are little or no RPG elements here. Almost no inventory to speak of. The ammo and weapons aren’t particularly featured. You would think there would be some sweet guns in this game but it is all very average and not exciting.

The graphics are very good to almost excellent in some places. There are jungle environments with plants that are interactive and fairly detailed. You can wade through dense weeds and brush, or water. The plants will move aside, or afford you some cover and you can shoot through them.

The lighting effects on water are pretty good but not stunning. It is excellent in some places, but it sin’t consistent. The environments do look like they might have been made by separate teams of artists, and it lacks cohesiveness.

I did not enjoy using the crappy pistol. Or using the mounted gun. Those are usually a high light in a game, but here where you are working on your shooting accuracy, those things cooperate about as much as a bull, and mess up my stats.

The AI and the stealth kill functions could have used more work to get them smoothed out. Sometimes the enemy AI was really turned up too much and in other places they were like pieces of wood. Why or why not they would hear you coming, or notice if you shot someone with the silencer on there, is anybody’s guess. You do expect some stealth killing in a sniper game, and it can be a lot of fun too, but I have seen it done better in so many other places, in much older games, that this game is shown up by it.

It is really difficult to figure out who is shooting at you, which is very frustrating. The indicators for where you are supposed to go, and the compass aren’t very distinct. There are white dots and arrows that are very vague. They should be color coded differently to convey more information, if they are going to go with such an underfed mapping system. A sniper game should have a very geeked out mapping system, with GPS and make the whole aspect of finding the target more enhanced and interesting. Again, done better in other games. I hate to say it but, Assassins Creed…

The PS3 version which came out so long after the PC and 360 incarnations seems to have been an after thought. It is a lean port over to the console. The single player ‘Challenge Missions’ don’t add much to the experience because all you are doing is going back into the same levels to improve your scores. That is a really cheap way to go about additional modes, and should be included standard, and not considered as features. Come on. The multiplayer options are up to 12 player battle. With modes such as Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture The Flag and V.I.P.

There are so many missed opportunities in this game that they are too numerous to mention. And yeah, no female avatar. No contribution to the female audience whatsoever. All I can say is that I hope they were planning lots of free downloadable content to people who bought this game for PS3. Overall it was a potentially fun, but unfinished game, that needed more weapons, more levels, and just more of everything. I give it 6 fifty caliber bullet time head shots out of 10.

Steve Jobs The Crazy Ones

I hate you Death! Fuck you hard Death! The place where my writing mojo comes from is deep down at soul level. It exists right next to the depression section in my psyche. I’ve been in mourning.

I haven’t written a word in two weeks. Almost two years ago my older brother, an expert hiker “fell” off a cliff and died in a freak hiking accident. That uber-nerd older brother was my geek mentor. I’ve mentioned him in several places in this blog. Apple’s soap opera story, and inventions were something that my brother and I bonded over throughout the years. So Death got him. And then George Carlin, and now of course Steve Jobs. This trinity of brainiacs keeps forming into a visual of a black and white tattoo of the three of them.

“Oh where, oh where have all the smart people gone?” I can’t get the line from Pink’s Bush era lament, Stupid Girls, out of my brain. Yes, I know that the new smart people are out there, but you are half my age and one of my boobs is probably the size of your head. It isn’t always about what’s good, as you will one day find, it’s what you grew up with. Maybe all this pain is good for song writing, and there’s an App for that… Ah, see what I mean?

I grew up along with Apple. Steve Jobs has always been inside my computer. Not just the code, but the covenant of understanding between a person that you know and trust, which was what made Apple different from IBM and Microsoft. Steve, and his belief system permeated what I have always felt from my Macs is a rudimentary artificial intelligence. The “ghost” if you will, in the machine. Job’s computer liberalism as perhaps a real world precursor that might lead to a philosophy something like Azimov’s Three Laws. From iMac to iPad to Wall-e, benevolent, cheerful hoppy icon-ed little friends came from Apple, not just cold devices.

There is Woz. He still lives. I will make sure that I have him on my Twitter and look up whatever else he is doing. I’m slowly picking up my geek pieces. As disheartened as I may feel in that empty mojo place next to my soul, there are fun PS3 games to review. There’s a brand new iPad 2, that has become very sentimental suddenly, to explore the world with. I’ll go on, continuing to look for that spark of true genius in the next computer Lama whomever he or she may be. Yep, I will geek on. I, robot?

It is buggy, eye shattering, and so 2008. Like everything else in 2011 it’s been done over and over a hundred times. That doesn’t mean that you won’t get a few nights of fun out of this game before you forget about it. Just don’t forget to send it back to your rental service.

If Hell is a neon laced palace then they got this vision of evil right. A demon kidnaps main character Garcia’s girl friend Paula, makes blow job references, licks her entire body and then disappears with her down a hole. It isn’t just Garcia’s nightmare but the players too as the sexist save-the-princess plot ho hums along across your TV.

His gun is alive. It’s name is – Johnson. Wonderful, a guy shooting off his Johnson. Oh, puhleeze! Somehow sentenced to serve Garcia, a demon is bound to him and becomes a gun, or torch or a semi comical skull who is there to provide a few jokes. It is an odd fighting team. One weapon is called The Big Boner, need I say more about who this M rated game is obviously and semi illegally targeted towards?

Reminding me that they just don’t make games like Army of Darkness anymore. I miss old Naughty Dog before they got insorbed by one of the mega game corporations.

Supposedly based on the epic poem “Inferno” by Dante Alighieri who is now spinning in his grave. This irreverent telling of that tale has about as much to do with the classic as El Shaddai Acension of the Metatron had to do with the bible and Quabalah. Here’s a thought, think up a new intellectual property on your own developers. We don’t really need more rehashes of moldy old books or cape wearing super hero comics.

I enjoy some T&A entertainment at times, as much as any hetero guy, but the overt and useless level design such as the walk on the stomach of a naked stripper, is neither erotic or sexy.

Part of the game play involves the use of the forces of light versus the dark. If your character spends too long during the games dark phases and dark areas he will loose vitality energy and could die. Keys like strawberries for the door babies, and other pick ups that you need are inevitably hidden in these dark regions. By using Johnson to shoot t goat headed sconces the areas will light up making them safer. That is usually followed by being mobbed by skeletons.

At least there is some adult humor and language in the game. It isn’t hilarious, but it is an improvement over many games which take themselves too seriously.

I found his movement and fighting to be be very clunky and awkward. Even the quick-turn provided for in the controls wasn’t quite enough to make fighting feel natural. The odd over-the-shoulder aim was strange and diffucult to get used to. His laser sights being the only way there could be any accuracy.

Shadows of the Damned is vivid, colorful fun for a few hours. You probably don’t want to buy it, rent it instead because it is very short. Gameplay is tedious, the boss battles are very challenging. They are stuck in there as road blocks to keep you from progressing too quickly through the rest of the repetitve game. I give Shadows of the Damned 6 Golden Goat heads out of 10.

Sand Slides has been around for a year, why haven’t I seen it before. It has retina graphics display support now as well. I used the automatic download on my new iPad2 and it simultaneously appeared on both of my iPads.

Game play may sound very simple, until you try it. You have a background screen of soothing ocean waves. Gentle new age-y music plays in the background making it ideal to relax to. All the pretty colors man! It resembles Bejeweled in that way. What you do to play is just move falling sand from the dispensers at the top of the screen, to the receptacles at the bottom. It sounds easy, it starts out that way. Depending on the mode you choose, from Practice, and Easy all the way up to Insane, it can go from stress reduction to complete freak out.

You use your finger to draw a Slide or a Bucket for the sand. That’s it. Sand Slides is brilliantly simple. Therefore addictive in the best way. The backgrounds look exceptional on my iPad2, making some superior eye candy. Which is what you want when you get a new device. The game is fun. It’s Free, it should be on your iPad.

It is a good enough time waster game. When I look at these games I often mention that they are perfect for standing in a line or sitting in a waiting room. Although these days whipping out an iPad could get you mugged or worse. Especially around crime beleaguered Boston.

One of the things that is nice about it, is that it isn’t gross and doesn’t really involve killing. You can play with a child, and yet it is still entertaining enough for a grown up. The game might not be as appealing to guys as gals. It is puppies, which tends to be universally loved, but the colors and the baby sounds the puppies make are going to make those who enjoy it melt from intense cuteness.

In essence it’s a match game. The puppies jump from a scaffold and have to be guided safely down to land atop a pile of other rolly – polly canines that match their coat, below. Sometimes they fall into a cannon, which they can be shot from. The more jumping and the more points they score the happier they seem. Exclaiming “Yay!” or “Whee” when you give them a good ride down.

The game mechanic is mainly run by tilting the iPad. If you are in a place where you are going to be embarrassed by tipping your iPad around, having weird noises coming out while you laugh your ass off, then you should be aware of your surroundings before you start.

Dog Pile represents a kind of game that we are seeing less and less of for iOS these days. It is inexpensive, simple and just plain fun. At times you need a game that requires nothing of the player, except to enjoy yourself, and Dog Pile fills the bill. This one is a keeper.

It is a first person shooter where you pick up contracts from icons on the map. Each one explains who to take out or shoot with a tranquilizer gun. Everything takes place starting with the map that has locations for your Safehouse and a Store. On the map the location icons reveal more about the story line. Or contacts with funny cliche names confide in you with assignments to fulfill.

Gameplay is mainly centered around the shooting and the variety of guns available in the game. You play as a lone sniper hidden in the rooftops of the city. Below are city streets and buildings. The guns zoom in and you can snipe with a scope from an eagle’s perch. But your character is not immune to the barrage of bullets that may come at you from below.

If you shoot a civilian, you loose. Some contracts are timed and you have to take out a number of targets or get a boss, or you fail. Your character can die too. That reduces your resources. You need energy to play, and if you waste it by failing then you might have to spend some time out from the game while you wait for your energy to build up again.

When you do well and get headshots and complete missions within specific times, you will earn more energy, credits and money. You need all three it seems in this game. That’s how they get you. If you like that sniper gun which costs four hundred credits? Be careful because those credits sell for $19.99 in real money.

The Energy which can be restored by food items that replenish it. Of course you need Credits that you buy with in-app purchases. There are 17 Story mode missions. Random missions and five different locations. You can level up your character and weapons as you progress.

The game is fun and humorus. I liked it better than Silent Ops the offereing from the other freemium giant Gameloft. It has a couple problems such as not being able to sell or trade off weapons tht you no longer want to use. You are always running out of time or energy to play. They could let up on that and allow people to play an unlimited ammount of time, it would probably increase their all ready astronomical profits from avid micro purchases.