How GTA Became The Dragonforce Of Gaming

The game's setting is based on a fictionalized version of Tokyo's Kabukicho and Shinjuku Golden Gai in the late 80s, and follows series mainstays Kazuma Kiryu and Goro Majima. While the game isn't anywhere near as wide open like GTA, its areas jammed packed with distractions and side-que


For the uninitiated, it is a surprise assassination that sends the game's events into motion, forcing the player to prove their innocence and seek out the real killer. In 'The Knife of Dunwall,' players are given the chance to play as that assassin while learning the events surrounding his own struggles and betrayal. The DLC essentially turned Dishonored into the first part of a supernatural trilogy, concluded with the 'Brigmore Witches' DLC . Not to mention fine-tuning the acclaimed gameplay mechanics at the same t


The story in Far Cry 3 puts the player in the shoes of a tourist on vacation named Jason Brody. Brody is celebrating with his brother and friends and makes the unfortunate decision to skydive into the pirate-infested Rook Isl

Grand Theft Auto is now the Dragonforce of gaming, a series where "more, more, MORE!" is the mantra, slowly wasting away the substance and precision the series had achieved on Playstation 2. Rockstar, please think about what you’re doing before the inevitable GTA VI is released.

In recent years, one of the most popular genres has been open world games. Inspired by the success of series like Grand Theft Auto and The Elder Scrolls , there have been numerous new IP set in sprawling open worlds, along with new entries in established franchises that have morphed into open world ga


A lot of film enthusiasts are pummeling the upcoming Battleship movie for being an unabashed rip-off of Transformers . Honestly, I don’t mind. The movie seems purely designed to make money and never would have happened had it stuck to the actual board game roots. (You’d be hard pressed to make a Monopoly movie too these days without a sequoia in Marvin Gardens breeding a zombie infection.) Rather, it’s Activision and Hasbro’s announcement of an FPS/strategy hybrid based off the film that has me running for the lifebo

But once San Andreas was released in 2004, Rockstar adopted a mentality that ended up damaging the vision of an open-world. Unlike Vice City , San Andreas expanded the world size considerably, encompassing three major cities instead of just one. It was a technical endeavor for the Playstation 2, no doubt, but it also drew upon a number of issues that have made the open-world setup more problematic than it did back in the day. Making a world bigger requires many more activities to keep things interesting. Otherwise, you’re wandering around from mission to mission with barely any sort of activity. It might as well be empty space. Changeable topography, different challenges that appear while moving from location to location, these types of things keep that lull between missions away. San Andreas didn’t suffer from that too much, but it brought to light the idea that spreading something out can leave plenty of weak spots in between.


Few video game studios have distinguished themselves in the realm of post-launch support Gearbox Software , creators of the Borderlands series. With Borderlands 2 , the team took the mandate of DLC to a new level in multiple add-ons for varied groups of fans. For our money, 'Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep' sums up the attitude of the series perfec


In light of today's political climate, Watch Dogs 2 depicts mass government surveillance programs. Government surveillance and systemic repression are recurring themes Watch Dogs 2. The game should also be commended for the way it handles diversity in race and transgender


Given just how beloved Dragon Age: Origins is by longtime fans of BioWare and RPGs in general, it's no surprise that its only expansion is just as lauded. Picking up months after Origins concluded with the player's Grey Warden defeating the Darkspawn, 'Awakening' drops them back into a world where the enemy remains, now smarter and more devoted than ever bef


For the most part, DLC is a self-contained experience; whether meant to deliver another dose of gameplay, tell a shorter story in the universe, or flesh out the campaign. But rarely does it cause players to reconsider their assumptions about the released game - yet that was the exact goal of Dishonored 's 'The Knife of Dunwal

But there are games that are stupidly huge with slow traversal that are great. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is the perfect example of a slow trudge through a huge world, one that works fantastically. Skyrim dodges gta 5 new radio stations ’s pitfall because of how the open-world is set up. If you leave a town and find that you’re approaching a landmark, you’ll more than likely want to go there and mark it on your map. The landmarks and activities are spaced just far enough apart that they aren’t overwhelmingly close (ultimately feeling like busy work), but far away enough to be enticing and worth going after. And those brief periods between the activities are filled with enemies to fight, ingredients to gather, or even NPC’s to help. These things are good because they have inherent and meaningful value. Enemies to fight mean potential for experience. Ingredients to gather mean new items to craft. NPC’s to help means more missions or secrets. This is a pitch-perfect way to make a world big, but not empty. Bethesda intelligently placed each valuable thing in Skyrim to offer tantalizing reward, but a good enough distance to make the world big and full of expansive promise.