"The SideQuesting Spade" logo design by Anthony Spadaro

SideQuesting is thankful to have ties to the art, music, and design worlds. Each month, we have asked our friends in these industries to recreate our logo in their visions. We think that you’ll enjoy seeing how others view our website, our community, and our passion through their eyes and hands. In return we will present their work for the entire month, and they’ll become our featured artists.

It’s February — we took January off — and the world is in the thick of football, yearly resolutions, and car shows. It seemed a natural fit that we would bring in an automotive designer to take a crack at our logo design for the month. Anthony “Tony” Spadaro is a recent college graduate, but you wouldn’t be able to tell by his incredible level of work. We’re proud and excited to have him bring a very different “spin” to our logo, as well as to share his art with us.

Spadaro's "Gremlin X-Treme"

You may remember Tony from our “Dystopia” contest back in October. He created several interesting concepts for the competition, and earned an honorable mention in the US category. Even then his work impressed us. Tony is a recent graduate from the Cleveland Institute of Art in Ohio, studying product and automotive design. He grew up in a car family, working with his father on project cars and creating designs for customers. It’s a cliche saying, but he is definitely the kind of person to have “gasoline in his veins”.

Trans Am Firebird

Tony loves to sketch cars, bikes, and sci-fi vehicles, never resting. His idea of relaxing is sitting at his desk, long after a work day is over, and letting ideas spill out. His hands move effortlessly across 11″x17″ sheets of white paper with a ball point pen, his weapon of choice, though he’s expertly adapted to digital painting in Photoshop. In a matter of minutes he’s managed to create a beautiful sketch, often helping himself keep his brain moving during long corporate meetings. In fact, these phone call doodles are worthy of framing and sticking to walls. Even the simplest black & white drawings are inspiring to look at, let alone the hot renderings.

Motorcycle Two

It’s not just existing vehicles that he likes to draw, either. As a graduated designer, he likes to create new ideas just as much as revisit the past. His takes on modern automotive design turn traditional vehicle form language on its head. Long, flowing ribbons and surfaces twist around the full perimeter of the car, with color and lighting accents peering out from underneath. He draws his creations with moody lighting, extreme perspective angles, and high detail, all to showcase the future of transportation in a more exciting light.

Concept Vehicle

For the February logo design, Tony chose to take a look at hot rod graphics and how that would translate to the site. The spade is an eternal icon in games, both digital and physical, and Tony’s twist on it begs us to have it painted on the hood of our modified road rage chariots.

We want to thank Tony for his design for the logo. You can find more of Tony’s work at his blog:

Anthony Spadaro Blog

Motorcycle in Red

During downtime, people will do things you'd never expect or want to see, ever.

I think it’s safe to call it “group-speak”. This language we used was almost hieroglyphic in use. We utilized what the game offered us to work with. It was a shorthand for strategy in the five-player dungeons, it saved lives. Without it the chat box was nothing but a venue for whining, bragging, arguing, and excessive caps lock use.

“Ready?” someone would ask just before we began our conquest into the enemy-infested halls of the dungeon. “Hold on,” the healer would quickly type into the chat bar while munching away on a quick meal to replenish his heath and mana bar.  After what feels like hours but was only mere seconds, the healer stands up, ready to go, without communicating his status to the rest of us. We wait a little longer until someone gets impatient and asks again, “ready?”. “Yep,” everyone answers in unison, but it shows up in order of connection quality on-screen.

“Pull,” we’d say just as a group of enemies, or “mobs”, were in the most tactical position to engage them. With competent groups the bruiser at the front, the tank, would be the one to pull, but in a lot of cases back then a misunderstanding of what pull meant was somehow widespread amongst all Hunters. Another seemingly widespread thing back then was the lack of quality internet connections, it felt like it was a requirement to have one of those poor souls in each group. These two problems caused less-than ideal results. The Hunter’s arrows wiz by, strikes one of the enemies in the group, effectively pulling them, and immediately following that dreaded moment of eye-rolling shock, the Hunter begins walking in place. As the group of baddies rushed toward the now four-person group, it was only a matter of time until someone uttered the phrase: “I think he d/ced,” and sure enough his character icon will darken, yes, he disconnected.

After a violent, outnumbered slaughter, or “wipe”, we re-group at the entrance of the dungeon, each of us burning holes into the greyed out icon of the player who lost connection to the server. It isn’t a a minute later and the Hunter comes back completely oblivious of what had just transpired. He asks, we explain. “Ready?”

Everything would go smoothly for a while until the healer would choose to say “oom” mid-battle, that means they’re out of mana, or, no more healing. They are the day-old bandages holding the group together, without them everything plummets into a frenzied chaos. The classes that couldn’t heal a dying plant drain their mana in some deranged confidence that they are capable of keeping the tank alive, while the classes that can’t, start toying with the idea of abandoning ship to avoid any kind of responsibilities. In short succession the group will be reduced to the Rogue standing in the corner, safe from his Vanish ability that makes him invisible to everyone but his teammates. It’s not until much later while sitting in the auction house selling off loot, the healer finds a mana potion in his inventory.

Breaking up is the hardest hurdle to overcome when participating in dungeons, everyone always has other things to do. In the event the group doesn’t fall apart out of frustration and patience, we give it another go. Morale is vital to World of Warcraft grouping, it can disappear in seconds. Seeing how we stuck together this far, the effort to pull the last few bundle of enemies feels like nothing. Most of the time those last few moments of combat before the final boss feel easier, because through the many mishaps you each feel strengthened.

Only through trial-and-error do you find the right speed to get the group working with efficiency. You have to run at each other until everything meshes and forms something solid. The patience required to do that is a rare trait in most players, many will leave after one failure.

WoW bosses are funny, sometimes they are unbelievably simple, and sometimes they are so annoyingly difficult it feels like a glitch. For the few times that happens, the group is done and there’s nothing you can do about it, often though,  the players accompanying you know the fights and will usually be nice enough to jot out the strategy in chat. “Ready?” they ask, “Go,” we say, and the boss is eradicated quicker than the Hunter’s downtime.

Experiences like the random five-player dungeon are the essence of an MMO, however irritating they are. They take you from a few anonymous pieces of a dynamic archetypal role system and bring each of you together in beautiful unison. It’s not even a matter of getting to know each other past what the game wants, it’s recognizing the roles at play and finding out how to compensate for the group’s weaknesses. They start out rough, but they end in triumph.

“Good group.” “Again?”

]]> http://www.sidequesting.com/2012/01/remembering-warcraft-dungeons/feed/ 1 http://www.sidequesting.com/2012/01/remembering-warcraft-cheater/ http://www.sidequesting.com/2012/01/remembering-warcraft-cheater/#comments Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:05:04 +0000 Tyler Colp http://www.sidequesting.com/?p=18633

I think it was impatience that drove me to cheat. I wasn’t angry, nor was I frustrated, I think it was the MMO drive to play with the big boys. I had friends that would be amazed at the stories I could tell and the equipment I could display. I would tell them, “I have been to the depths of the Outlands; I have defeated the monstrosities that call it their home!” I had no intention of going as deep as I did.

Finding a venue to act out my fantasy was much more difficult than I thought it would be. Hundreds of private servers begged me to join with descriptors like “Fun Server” and “Blizzlike”, I didn’t realize what I had gotten into. It turns out Blizzlike servers are similar to the official Blizzard ones as the name implies, meaning the rate of gaining levels was only slightly tweaked up. Fun Servers were the opposite, everything that had a multiplier was ratcheted up as far as possible. I saw values like 300 times the speed of Blizzard’s servers and higher. Some of them even had entirely custom content, the one I remember in particular took the largest dungeon in the game and shoved in a long line of enemies that you could slaughter from the beginning (level 1) to the end (level 70), it brought a new meaning to “streamlined”.

Most of the servers were completely unreliable. Plagued with atrocious server lag and bugs, they were nothing like the curated experience Blizzard offered. Hacking was much easier without Blizzard’s built in security system, it wasn’t surprising to see players flying around or walking by with giant-like proportions. Sometimes I’d log on with items missing, ability bars rearranged, even characters gone. It was a disaster, but somehow the times where everything went smoothly outweighed the chaos surrounding it.

It wasn’t long after my glorious discovery that I quit officially playing World of Warcraft. Private servers held all the excitement I desired to occupy my time with. Not only did I get to witness what it was like at max level, but I had the ability to see things I never eventually did after years of playing WoW officially. I mean look at that, a phoenix mount!

I fell down the private server hold every now and then during my WoW campaign. One time I found one I liked so much I applied for the role of a Game Master. My job was to police the bedlam I mentioned earlier, but that story is fit for a completely separate Remembering Warcraft addition.

Years later my Battle.net account was hacked because of my trips into the back alleys of private servers. Everything was returned with an added bonus (the hacker’s 15,000 gold from gold selling was mailed to me along with a few leftover extremely valuable items). I haven’t touched one since.

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) have lost a lot of ground in the previous week. With politicians, corporations and the ESA all pulling their support for the legislation in the wake of the largest online protest in history, voting on the bills has finally been postponed indefinitely. But that doesn’t mean that the danger has passed just yet. Ordinary gamers, in particular, must continue to stand up for themselves until the egregious laws are put to rest for good.

Many people know that the bills will be detrimental to the internet in many different ways (if you didn’t already know that, you probably wouldn’t be reading this article). But what exactly will SOPA and PIPA mean specifically for the video game industry?

As gamers, how will SOPA/PIPA affect us?

The video game industry has seen a pretty sizable explosion in content over the past few years. In large part, that’s because of how much easier and profitable the industry has become for independent developers. Minecraft was created by a single man with an idea. Now, two years after the game first launched into an open alpha, the game has earned millions of dollars and funded an entirely new development team.

"Organizations like Google helped to protest SOPA."

But how do millions of people pick up a game and bring it up to sensation-status when the game has literally zero funds in terms of marketing and publicity? Well, that’s where we came in.

Gamers, bloggers and journalists manned their media siege engines and showed everyone just how wonderful Minecraft was. Videos showcasing fan-made tutorials, scale-models of the Enterprise-D and simulated computers within games within computers set the likes of Youtube and gaming blogs ablaze. Rarely before had so many fallen in love with something brought to them by so few.

And that’s exactly the sort of communal spirit what SOPA and PIPA would destroy.

You see, word of mouth is a very powerful thing. Minecraft isn’t the only indie sensation that can attest to that. However, word of mouth also relies on one’s ability to actually spread the word. Things like Twitter, Reddit, Wikipedia, Facebook, Youtube, gaming blogs, N4G, LinkedIn, Stumble Upon and just about the entire goddamn internet make this easier than ever. However, SOPA and PIPA would make spreading the word about anything tangible without the express permission of those behind the product in question illegal. Not only that, but it would make the service that allowed something as tragic as free promotion to pass without question liable.

Smaller games that rely on all of those precious stories and videos could be silenced in the shockwave caused by some blitzkrieg CEO that doesn’t like what someone said about the latest Madden game on Youtube or even a news blog like Joystiq or Kotaku.

It’s also true that our homegrown video games wouldn’t bear the brunt of the damage. That’s because the legislators behind SOPA and PIPA have decided to veil their ridiculous bills behind the xenophobic notion that those barbarian hordes known as ‘foreigners’ are somehow more liable to be pirates than us here in the States. SOPA and PIPA are technically only supposed to be able to block content from other countries. The trouble is, most gamers these days aren’t old enough to even remember what a Regan looks like. Tons of games, big and small, good and bad, come from all corners of the globe. On average, foreign games tend to rely a lot more heavily on word of mouth than domestic stock. Not only that, but (and this may be a surprise to the kind of people writing these kinds of laws) not every country in the world is run like the United States. If some nation out there does things a little bit differently than those behind SOPA/PIPA would like, they could potentially restrict access to content from that country. That means we might never hear about games like The Witcher 2, which was developed in Poland and managed to crack SideQuesting’s own 2011 Game of the Year list.

"Lamar Smith – author of SOPA."

Obviously, journalists and developers depend on people being able to know about video games. However, so do all of the gamers out there that rely on healthy competition and innovation to ensure the best possible quality for the products that they spend money on. If television stations were to lampoon a FOX property, the government wouldn’t be able shut down every other network but FOX. I’m pretty sure that this is the case since I still don’t watch Fox News (that being said, I don’t watch a lot of network television period).

So if you thought that SOPA and PIPA were only dangerous to pirates or the film and music industries, you were wrong. These bills are dangerous to just about everyone; possibly to gamers most of all.

That’s okay. It’s not always wrong to be wrong and it’s never too late to make things right.

Recent protests have made a lot of headway in terms of shutting down the threat of SOPA and PIPA. The internet has shown a lot of solidarity in pushing the bills back to their wrinkly, Gold Bond-soaked hives. The bills are likely in for some major overhauls before voting finally begins. But the fight isn’t over. You can still support the cause, as well as your hobby and yourself, by contacting your local representatives and telling them that they shouldn’t support these draconian laws in their current states, or not at all unless drastic changes are made.

It’s not too late for them to be right too.

It’s a difficult task to top a nearly-perfect gaming experience. Excellent storytelling, engaging characters, and thrilling puzzles are already a rare combination, and one that is usually impossible to follow up in a sequel. In fact, it becomes very easy to be let down by a sequel to a game we love as a less-than-stellar sequel can ruin our impressions of the first.

Valve Software has an incredulous record of sequels that top their predecessors (when they actually release, that is), so when they announced that the wonderful Portal would receive one the entire Internet let out an excitedly happy “whoop” without knowing a lick of what the game would encompass. The initial expectations were massive; how would the beloved game’s simple brilliance of mechanic and snappy, humor-filled plot translate to this new game, and would it need to be similar to the original or something completely new?

The development team quickly let fans know that the core of the game — shooting portals — would remain, while new mechanics and physics-based puzzles would be added. Further on, cooperative play was announced and a wonderful voice cast was revealed, and even Steam integration for the game would come to the Playstation 3. The game seemed to be pushing all of the right buttons leading up to its release, but the niggling feeling remained: would Portal 2 actually live up to the hype?

OH. HELL. YES.

It’s not just the “When Nature Calls” version of Portal. Yes, it carries over many of the same constructs of the first game — notably, the mind-mending puzzle structure and the humor — but it uses them as a pedestal to jump from instead of copying. The new mechanics that result from the gels, vortexes, jump platforms and gravity lifts allow for some of the greatest puzzles in video game history, almost always resulting in “oohs” and “ahhs” and “holy shit, it worked” responses when playing. What may seem like an accidental solution is almost always the one that Valve intended. We are supposed to figure this out, in any way possible, even if we’re meant to break the game.

The co-operative play is itself an amazing feat. It isn’t just an extension of known Portal 2 levels, or a clone of it’s magnificent plot, but an entirely separate game on the same disc. Heck, it’s perhaps a better experience than the single-player mode.

And speaking of the plot: the character development and several narrative twists throughout the adventure are simple, yet extremely fulfilling. It’s not a new plot, by any means, but the delivery is magic. Wheatley, voiced by Stephen Merchant, may be the greatest bumbling sidekick in video game history, and his rise within the game’s plot left us hoping to see him again post-Portal.

Valve created a true masterpiece that should be played over, and over, and over again, with and without friends, for everything it has to offer. It’s better than a sequel should be, even for an already-beloved classic, and sits alongside Bioshock and Uncharted 2 as the greatest games of this generation. Quite simply put, Portal 2 was an easy selection for Game of the Year.

We live in a world where videogames are now constantly being scrutinized to see if they are ‘art.’ Some games go out of their way to provide you with a somewhat dull experience just so they can provide what they think is an artful tale of woe and wonder. None of these games are Saints Row: The Third.

Saints Row: The Third is a game that follows in the shoes of Bayonetta. It is nothing alike it in structure nor story, but it is exactly like it in the way that it is pure insanity. In one moment I went from diving out of a plane to rescue a crew member, to letting go of that crew member so I could smash through the front window of the same plane, to flying out the back and returning to my falling crew member once again. Not to mention the whole time I had to dodge the excessive amount of junk flying from plane while shooting copious amounts of bad guys. So why did I just spoil the craziest part of Saints Row: The Third? Well, I didn’t. This is the second mission and nearly tame to the badassery that happens throughout the game. VTOL jets, jet bikes, Atari style tanks…the list would go on for hours. The amount of stuff worth your while in this game is simply staggering.

Saints Row: The Third may not be artful, moral, or even appropriate for anyone of any age, but it is FUN. I have not had a more fun time playing a videogame in a long time, and Saints does very little wrong in my eyes. Even the open world jank that is in the game is unoffensive because it feels like it was put there for a reason (even if it wasn’t).

Saints Row: The Third should not be taken seriously, but as a pure videogame, I could not have been happier. That is why it is SideQuesting’s second favorite game of 2011.

The Nintendo 3DS was released in March of 2011.

Until this past November the system subsisted on ports as well as mediocre and fair original content. That all changed with the release of Super Mario 3D Land. The 3DS had finally gotten its killer app. Mario opened the floodgates and ended the drought for fans of handheld games.

Super Mario 3D Land represents the marriage of the two conflicting schools of Mario game design. The game is played out entirely in 3 dimensions, but the level design is clearly inspired from 2D Mario games. And, the game incorporates lots of elements from past Mario games. The only complaint that I have is that the game is too steeped in Mario lore, if one can even cite that as a complaint.

This game stands as the finest title on the 3DS and will prove to be a very difficult champion to dethrone. And as one of the best Mario games ever, it’d be hard to deny it from any “Best of 2011″ list.

When you’re not shouting ungodly amounts of cheese wheels, decapitating each and every female passerby in a sick, twisted fantasy, or sneering at the sight of a misdirected arrow shot, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is an innocent puppy full of wonder beyond your imagination, just begging to be embraced. And how could you deny that? Thieves, Barbarians, Magi, and of course, dragons await you at every step on the frigid grounds of Skyrim. Then you finish the main quest.

Isn’t it something truly extraordinary that a game like Skyrim that switches its focus from streamline to freedom exists? Almost mischievously it plays on our attention span with a jolt of curiosity here and a jolt of curiosity there, or rather an undiscovered cavern here and an ancient Dwarven mine there. It’s tough but Skyrim’s only rule, or suggestion because it’s so kind like that, is to let go, only then will the journey become that much more meaningful and spontaneous. When you do force yourself to release and thrive, Skyrim isn’t about playing, it’s about living. Do yourself a favor and don’t waste your time trying to name a game of equal stature that was available this year.

Take a moment, if you will, to listen to that boisterous main theme again. Chant with me into a crescendo, an explosion of might. Grab your sword, your staff, your bow, your dagger, your bucket, and give me a “FUS RO DAH!”, friend.

*Images courtesy of Duncan Harris (Dead End Thrills), you can find more of his work here.

When the first hints of Bastion made their way to the collective hive-mind that is The Internet I became immediately enthralled; I was obsessed with finding out any and every detail about this masterpiece-in-waiting. Even when next to nothing was known about it I was already talking about what an amazing experience we were all in store for when it would finally came out… and nobody else seemed to have any idea what I was talking about.

As a coworker of mine headed off to GDC just prior to the release of Bastion, I demanded that he take the time to do an interview with Supergiant Games, just so I could absorb that much more information while I transcribed the audio of his interview. It was a touch of synchronicity that almost all of the information I had came from a plethora of audio sources and the final product itself utilized audio in a way never before seen in a modern game.

Playing as The Kid is almost an incidental part of Bastion. It’s expertly crafted, of course, but it’s the constant companion of the narration that really made the game something special. There is clever dialogue for possibly everything you could hope to do, from exploring the levels to mixing and matching weapons. As if that one facet wasn’t enough there is also the world itself to consider, a world so shattered that it has to rebuild itself in front of you as you move forward. It’s just an incredible thing.

The fact that Bastion placed as highly as it did on a list put together by a collection of writers with vastly, often diametrically opposed tastes in games is a testament to how amazing of an experience it actually is.

I think that there are two main genres of daydreaming that geeks today subscribed to while growing up: science fiction and fantasy. For me, it was the latter that helped shape the geek that I am today (I didn’t discover Star Wars until college. I know; I’m awful.) I loved the Middle Ages as a kid. It was the only unit in social studies that I cared to learn anything about. As the timid, straight-A Asian kid in class, there was something about the Middle Ages that really appealed to me. Maybe it was the heroics, chivalry, and saving the lady that I really fell in love with because that was the furthest thing from who I was in real life. Either way, this is what I day dreamed about as a child.

Running around with a sword, slaying monsters, and saving the princess were all ideas that never would have touched my five-year old mind if it werent for The Legend of Zelda. Before I even knew there was such thing as the Middle Ages, there was The Legend of Zelda. Before I even knew what a dragon was, there was Aquamentus at the end of Level 1. At that age, if I wasn’t playing Zelda, I was out in my backyard in Long Island with a wooden paint stirrer from Home Depot killing imaginary monsters and smooching up on imaginary princesses.

As a kid, I wanted to be Link. And today, as a grown-ass man, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has allowed me to interact with that fantasy at a deeper level than I ever had before.

I would like to think that anyone with a heart would give anything to be able to vividly experience a childhood daydream as an adult. It’s a chance to truly forget and remember. That’s what Nintendo offered me in the form of Skyward Sword. And I bit.

Hard.

Two summers ago, I was the SideQuesting staffer who wrote the preview for this game after the Nintendo presser. I cold-heartedly broke down each mechanic that an item brought to the experience as a Wii Sports Resort mini-game. This assessment still holds true, but it’s hard to dismiss it as just that. After securing a finished game and playing through it in its entirety, this is one of those cases where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Skyward Sword was successful because it provided the “backyard experience” of playing as (pretending to be) Link and filled in the blanks — normally sketched in with my imagination — with a colorful rendition of Hyrule and a story that would satisfy the most rabid Zelda fan.

For someone like me who fears getting old, playing Skyward Sword and being able to daydream like I did as a kid in a world that I love was an incredibly therapeutic experience.

“I’m Batman” – Me, October 2011

From its lowliest gutter to its highest rooftop, Batman: Arkham City is the next evolutionary step to make you truly feel like the Dark Knight. The more claustrophobic feel of Arkham Asylum is traded for an open experience, bringing Batman back to the streets and into the sky. There is nowhere Batman cannot go, nowhere for a criminal to hide, even inside their own prison. You see, a large section of Gotham has been evacuated and walled off to create Arkham City, an enormous open-air prison for the combined populations of the former Arkham Asylum and Blackgate Prison. Run by the villainous psychiatrist Hugo Strange, the inmates have free reign within the walls. Bruce Wayne/Batman believes this powder keg is about to explode and endeavors to shut it down from the inside.

Rocksteady Studios again proves its expertise in distilling the key essence of Batman into a tangible gaming experience. The gameplay elements brought to the table in Arkham Asylum were by no means broken so the name of the game here is refinement and expansion of what worked so well before. The free flow combat, stealth and gadgets – in particular the grapnel gun and gliding ability expanded to maximize Batman’s ability to move quickly around the gorgeous and incredibly detailed city. Little additions like smoke pellets and being able to call swarms of bats to your aid just add to the Batman authenticity. It all functions to make you feel like a one man wrecking crew, the way Batman should feel.

Aside from the main storyline, there is an amazing amount of extra content in Arkham City that keeps you very much occupied as you zip around, almost to the point of distraction. Interesting sidequests that breathe further life into the Batman mythos are everywhere and those Riddler trophies are almost impossible to ignore. Arkham City embraces DLC much more than Asylum, including a Catwoman side story seamlessly integrated into the main plot of the game as well as a plethora of character skins for post-game and challenge rooms, serving to enrich the universe created here by Rocksteady.

Batman: Arkham City has everything a sequel should be – bigger environments, broader scope, a fresh yet familiar experience while fleshing out a grander overall story. When you’re grappling from rooftop to rooftop, change directions mid-glide in order to swoop down toward a thug and kick him square right in the freaking face, yeah you better believe you’ll actually feel like THE GODDAMN BATMAN.

Based on the bestselling series of Polish fantasy novels, the Witcher games follow the man-turned-mutant Geralt of Rivia after the events of Andrzej Sapkowski’s final book. There is no medium finer at crafting intriguing, organic worlds than video games. And you would be hard-pressed to find a game that does it better than The Witcher 2. From character’s that feel honest and sympathetic to an environment that feels well lived-in, The Witcher 2 delivers on all the promise of interactive entertainment.

The game can be punishing at times, but the challenge only serves to make the player’s every move feel as though it has weight and meaning. Entire storylines can be lost, found, forgotten or changed completely depending on the choices made over the course of the impressively mature and envelope-pushing campaign.

While the hefty PC requirements may have kept many players away, the forthcoming Xbox 360 version should give everyone an opportunity to see why this game made our top ten.

Arguably Grasshopper Manufacture’s most accessible title to date, Shadows of the Damned did the unthinkable by successfully marrying solid gameplay and a coherent plot to the typical Suda51 fare of  outrageous characters, gratuitous violence, and an overabundance of dick jokes.  Placed in the role of Garcia (Fucking) Hotspur, career demon hunter, players were tasked with rescuing Garcia’s girlfriend from the clutches of the Demon Lord, Fleming.   Though the journey led Garcia through Hell, thankfully, SotD was anything but; each act brimmed with memorable baddies, delightful music, and hilarious dialogue.

It wasn’t perfect, but the few tedious bits and slightly baffling design choices were far outweighed by the sheer ridiculousness of shooting a sometimes-skull-sometimes-motorcycle-sometimes-gun sidekick at an enormous, foul-mouthed crow’s glowing crotch (where else?) or hand feeding some collectible gems to a twangy human/demon “mix-cher” named Christopher.  If you haven’t yet played Shadows of the Damned, you’re not only missing out on what was easily one of the best games to have come out in 2011, you’re also denying yourself a truly enjoyable experience.

All images courtesy of Electronic Arts.

Despite its perceived handicap, Deus Ex: Human Revolution managed to capture most of its progenitor’s black magic. Ignoring the much maligned boss fights, the latest Deus Ex brought so much variety – from its cyberpunk aesthetic to its emergent gameplay options – it puts most other games in the genre to shame. And all the while it allowed itself to be accessible to new players and referential to Warren Spector’s classic.

We may not be able to see the end of Deus Ex from here, after all. And according to its placement on this list, that’s a very, very good thing.

No, nobody from SideQuesting is going to Vox Games (that I know of).

At the same time, a new year brings with it a lot of new hope and optimism just the same. At SideQuesting it’s no different. When we first created the site nearly 3 years ago its name reflected writing about games as a sometime-hobby. We wanted an outlet to write, rant, and rave about the games we loved. Since that time the site grew a lot larger than we ever anticipated. We’ve had some incredible articles and features, huge days of eyeballs, and epic events. Many of our writers have gone on to “real” paying writing gigs. And, we’ve made some incredible connections within the industry. It’s been, quite frankly, awesome.

We’ve naturally evolved beyond the original focus of the site. Now, we’d like to get a little of that back.

What does that mean? Well, not much if you like the content that we already deliver. The same features will continue, the same great content, the same people. On a regular basis people ask me about how to break into the industry, and while I haven’t fully broken in myself I can definitely point them in the right direction. What we’re aiming to do now is bring some of that original freedom and passion to new, hungry writers.

Going forward we’re going to be featuring a lot of writers on the site. You may have already recently seen great posts by Jonah Gregory and Mike Suszek, or you might have enjoyed our themed weeks (8-bit Week, JPAG Week, etc) that allowed more voices to be heard. We’re going to be building up SideQuesting to allow for writers to have a chance, to improve, and to get their names out there.  With help from our staff and community, we’ll be editing their work, giving advice, and sharing ideas back and forth. We have a bunch of different ways this is going to be happening, and many will be unveiled over the coming days (after our 2011 GOTY proceedings) so stick around.

We love to play and write about games, and we hope you do too.

Dali

Give me a moment to age myself here. Back in my day, questing wasn’t so speedy, I had to read the quest text and walk to (unmarked!) objectives. Sometimes you’d spend 20 minutes trying to find a certain type of boar to slaughter only to realize it’s on the other side of the world. How did you get there? You walked. This was routine until that fateful day you finally reached level 40, the day you could purchase a mount. Achieving 40 levels wasn’t the hard part, no, getting the 100 gold pieces to buy the training and the mount itself was. You either needed to have a higher level character without much need for currency, the dignity to dance on top of a mailbox for money, or a loyal friend like I did.

His name was Faviopeave. The name came from the “randomize” button below the character creation screen. “I thought it sounded cool,” he told me. He was a Troll Mage, level 60, my idol. His presence was that of a god, I was terrified to talk to him, to say the wrong thing, for fear he would take me off his friends list. I was desperate though, I needed Faviopeave. So I asked him if he could power level me through some dungeons. The plan was for me to stand there gaining effortless experience, loot, and most importantly money, while he massacred each and every thing the dungeon threw at him. All I needed was that mount, and he could go on with whatever powerful deeds he performed elsewhere. To my delight, he agreed to help me out.

Standing there, purple text scattering my computer monitor with experience gains, I felt guilty. What could I ever do for Faviopeave in return? For all I knew, every time he read my, “I have 12 bars left,” to himself in the chat log, he was growing with frustration. But he never complained, he was silent all the way until the end, slipping a “you’re welcome,” as he returned home.

Faviopeave was my friend, I didn’t know who he really was, but his silent demeanor and kindness felt suffice enough to refer to him that way. Days later I was questing in style on my giant mount, a privilege Faviopeave granted me.

He never asked for anything in return. In some way, I wish I still knew him now. At some point in my World of Warcraft career, I could have lent him a hand. I’ve logged onto that particular server since then, but his name in my friends list was unlit for years. I still went back, hoping maybe I’ll catch him, give him an update, say hello.

Faviopeave, if for some reason you’re reading this, thank you. Thank you for making my first MMO experience that much better by helping me earn enough cash for my ride. Thank you for helping me out. Thank you for giving me friendship during a time I had so much left to learn.

2011 was an incredible year for video games. Some of the greatest experiences in genres came to be. But, several incredible games were announced as well — games that will be coming to us in 2012. I’ve channeled my excitement into my fingertips, and I’ve summoned up enough Friday Night Energy (thanks to a couple fo bottle sof 5-Hour) to put together this trailer bonanza.

In this post you’ll find the trailers for the biggest games of just the first 3 months (January – March) of 2012. Incredible fighting games, massive RPGs, and eagerly-anticipated sequels will make these first three months a nice wallet drain. At least, they’ll make our eyes bleed enough to warrant new glasses.

Grab a napkin, it’s about to get sexy up in hurr.

Twisted Metal is due sometime in the first quarter of 2012. No official date announced.

Mass Effect 3 launches on March 6th, 2012

Max Payne 3 hits the streets on March 6th, 2012

Final Fantasy XIII-2 arrives January 31st, 2012

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning arrives on February 7th, 2012

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier arrives March 6th, 2012

Silent Hill: Downpour falls on March 6th, 2012

SoulCalibur V arrives on February 7th, 2012

SSX slides in on February 28th, 2012

Xcom revives on March 6th, 2012

Street Fighter x Tekken fights onto your console on March 6th, 2012

Mario Party 9 arrives on the Wii March 11th, 2012

Resident Evil: Revelations arrives on the 3DS on March 20th, 2012

Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City arrives Q1 2012

Kid Icarus: Uprising rescues the 3DS on March 23rd, 2012

Dragon’s Dogma arrives on March 27th, 2012

Alan Wake’s American Nightmare lands in Q1 2012

Yakuza: Dead Souls arrives in Q1 2012

Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock swoops in during Q1 2012

Metal Gear Solid Snake Eater 3D sneaks onto your 3DS in Q1 2012… maybe

The Darkness II releases on February 7th, 2012

Asura’s Wrath launches Feb 21st, 2012

Syndicate arrives on February 21st, 2012

Rhythm Heaven Fever arrives on the Wii on February 13th

Uncharted: Golden Abyss launches for the Vita on February 22nd

All dates are tentative, and can (and probably will) change.

Shattrath, located in Terokkar Forest, part of The Burning Crusade expansion’s newly introduced area The Outlands, was forbidden to underdeveloped players. It was a place for the refined tastes of the healthiest of adventurers, drunk off of defeating monsters and saving the world. They could rest, chat with their friends, or boast the accomplishments they wore with pride. It was no place for sub-level cap characters like me.

That is unless I did the unexpected and cheated the system. You see, I was a smart thinker. The Mage class had the ability to teleport anyone to a major city, one like Shattrath. Calling a bored Mage over by bribing him with a few gold pieces was easy enough. In seconds, I arrived. No one could stop me from snapping a few photos for proof. I was outside of the law.

Of course, the adrenaline I felt wasn’t really for good reason. Many others of similar level range did the same, especially after hearing the wonderful tales of tranquility and peace exercised at Shattrath. But in the moment, I was more powerful than the game I was playing, I had outsmarted Blizzard themselves.

The introduction to WoW’s psuedo-linearity became apparent. Despite having a rigid leveling progression, WoW provided the option to veer off the path and discover on your own. With the use of the game’s own systems you could break the predetermined path, a prospect that brought an increased definition to its open world. I wasn’t high off of what I thought was rebellious nature, I was sinking the needle of addiction deeper.

Nintendo’s 3DS has had a rough first year trying to gain traction in the handheld space and the favor of gamers worldwide. While it has been selling well when compared to the launch of the original DS system, it has had a hard time shaking it’s poor reputation. The price drop has certainly helped build good will to new buyers, and most early adopters seem happy enough with the majority of games picked for the Ambassador program.

But technophiles and gamers are as fickle as they come, and leaving things as they were wasn’t going to cut it in the long term. Thankfully, in a very un-Nintendo-like move, the company has released an update that has added some much needed functionality to the device, and even made it relevant.

The eShop Cometh

Nintendo has had a well documented misunderstanding of how Western gamers utilize digital downloads and content. Well, thanks to the growth of iOS devices and the upswing in popularity of PSN in Japan, the company has now set its sites on finally, really getting their butts in gear with downloads.

Do you know what has resulted in me buying more games than anything (second to friend recommendations)? Demos. Something that has been severely lacking in the past is now possible in the 3DS eShop. While they won’t be required (a practice still unique to Xbox Live Arcade), at least developers have now been given the option.

PC and console games have their DLC (Downloadable Content). Smartphones have in-app purchasing. It’s common practice to expand a game using this method. Letting your players pay actual dollars to continue to add new content to a game they are already playing is one way developers are using to get a good return on investment these days. But until now, Nintendo has never supported that business model. With the update, the 3DS is now the first Nintendo system to fully support DLC (the WIi had minimal DLC capabilities) and in-game purchasing. Unfortunately, the feature is too new to try out since there aren’t any games that use it. To go hand-in-hand with this, we no longer have to sit with our 3DS open and watch the screen as it downloads the content. The update also added the ability to download while the console is closed and in sleep mode.

Purchasing through the eShop has always been a hassle in the past. Every time I want to buy a game, I would have to enter all of my information into the system. Thankfully, the option to save credit card info is now available. Even better, we can choose to add only the amount needed to buy whatever piece of software you are after, rather than having to add funds in five dollar increments.

But the biggest improvement is in the content found on the eShop. There are finally games designed specifically for the 3DS available, instead of just DSiWare. The Virtual Console has some great Game Boy and Game Boy Color software, with many more on the way, including the inevitable expansion into other portables (and consoles). The 3D Classics are becoming slightly more regular (at once per month). The pricing structure is satisfactory, as full classic games can generally be purchased for around 4 bucks. All that’s needed is perhaps a bit better organization, and the service becomes comparable to console marketplaces. Heck, it’s already more enjoyable to use than iOS.

Accomplishment Unlocked: Mii Plaza 

If you’ve had your 3DS for any length of time, or attended any comic book or gaming conventions since acquiring it, chances are you’ve done all there is to do in the Mii Plaza. You have all the puzzles, you’ve collected all the sweet hats. Now what?

There are new puzzles and a sequel to Find Mii in the software update, cleverly [sic] titled Find Mii 2. In Find Mii 2 we go on an adventure to save not just our Mii as king, but also our Mii’s children: the prince and princess of the land. As before, this will lead to the unlocking of many hats which we can use to deck out your Mii when sending it off to other player’s consoles via StreetPass. This time around, we can also hire previously met heroes, so if we’ve been maxing out those coins we might be able to blast through the entire game in one go.

What’s that you say? You are addicted to achievements and/or trophies? Well now Mii Plaza has “Accomplishments”. I tried to muster up as much enthusiasm as I could for that one, but I just couldn’t fake it. The lack of exclamation point was indicative of my feelings toward this particular segment of the update. However, the inclusion of an achievement system is the first real step towards getting us to hold onto our games, if it spills over onto other games & software for the portable.

In the Nintendo Zone

A similar function to those found in mobile phone apps liks Foursquare and Shopkick, Nintendo Zone is a way to connect online in popular stores like Starbucks, McDonald’s, and Best Buy. Connecting through the app at a participating store can get us promotions or coupons for that business, information about the products or services there, interactive features, and more. The first (and only) one I’ve heard of nets $5 off of Mario Kart 7 at Best Buy locations.

The Killer App: 3D Video Camera

In my day, we took pictures in only two dimension and we were happy to have that! Now even static 3D pictures aren’t enough for us. Nintendo heard this theoretical outcry, and we can now take 3D videos in increments of up to ten minutes. There is even a stop-motion/time lapse feature if we’d like to recreate that skeleton battle scene from “Jason and the Argonauts”. The popularity of 3D inclusion in entertainment has always been debate. One of the reasons that it hasn’t caught on is because until now the average joe can only consume it. Trends have shown that technology becomes much more adaptable and accepted (and affordable) once consumers are able to create with it. The 3DS is an affordable 3D video & still camera now, and placed in the hands of kids it now exposes an entire generation to the creation and sharing of 3D content instead of just viewing it. This Christmas expect to see a lot of kids walking around Christmas trees and shooting ornaments up close in 3D.

While the idea of shooting video in 3D is intriguing, it doesn’t change the fact that the cameras themselves are pretty low quality. It’s a real shame and sadly not something that can be fixed without a hardware change.

And The Rest…

Not to be outdone, one of the coolest updates in practice actually dropped with the release of Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7. That is the ability to jump into games that our friends are playing via the friend list. This is huge if we want to have any kind of ongoing support for a modern game. I can’t count the number of times I’ve logged into my 360 or Steam account to play a single player game, saw friends playing multiplayer on something completely different, and joined them instead. It’s great for community building and for multiplayer longevity.

I was an early adopter of the 3DS and I don’t regret that decision. I think Nintendo’s latest foray into the handheld market definitely has it’s place among my video game collection. On the other hand, if you’ve been holding off on the 3DS to see how things would pan out, now might be the time to take the plunge. Not only has there been the massive price drop to a tantalizing level, but there are now games worth playing on the retail shelves, 3DSWare, and a growing Virtual Console with some great classic games. All of the bundles and holiday sales don’t hurt either.

Nintendo always seems to do things at their own pace. Should they have delayed the release of the 3DS until all of this functionality was already in place? Who can say. All I know is that if they keep on making these kinds of software improvements without forcing me to prematurely update the hardware, I will continue to stick with them. And perhaps this latest software iteration of the 3DS shows that the console can improve while I own it, grow and change with new features, and let me finally think about bringing a different device with me onto the couch (or the bathroom).

Jonah Gregory is the Editor-in-Chief of WingDamage.com

Recently, I was moving my necessities off of an old computer when I stumbled upon a file named “screenshots”. Of course I opened it, like anyone would do, and to my nostalgic delight, found a ton of photos depicting my early days with World of Warcraft. Somewhere in my 13-year-old mind, I found the need to document my achievements and the otherwise odd moments during my stay in Blizzard’s virtual world. They could be outright embarrassing or entirely intriguing since the game itself has come a long, long way. Let’s take a look.

I’m not exactly sure when this screenshot was taken, obviously it was during World of Warcraft’s infancy. I started playing a few weeks prior to the Burning Crusade, WoW’s first expansion. At this stage, WoW was all about discovery. The Barrens were known somewhat infamously for the general chat, or oddly specific chat, tormenting players in what was one of the first open quest zones available. Again, my time with the game, and MMOs in general, was sparse, so The Barrens’ leveling experience was way longer than Blizzard intended it to be. I came to know and love this part of Azeroth, it’s where I spent most of my time. It’s also where I met an undead man and his obsession with postage.

Something about this mage or warlock (I can’t remember) sparked an interest in me. There he was, classed up in fancy armor, far better than anything I had worn, spending his time not defeating dragons but sitting atop a mailbox. What provoked him? Was there a benefit to mailbox sitting?

Looking at it from another angle, what was the human behind this avatar doing? On second thought, that is probably better off unanswered.

This is where I’d like to think I learned one of the many facets of playing an MMO: it’s a persistent world. I could have logged out and Mailbox Man would have been sitting there waiting for my return. I could have left town, gone about clearing my quest log and in the meantime, Mailbox Man would still be doing his thing. Azeroth didn’t depend on me to live and breathe, it was always there. It brought a strange, assuring feeling knowing that I wasn’t alone in this exotic land.

The feeling I felt back then was probably integral to my continued stay in WoW. I didn’t want to be forced to communicate with anonymous internet people dressed up in fantasy-themed polygons. I’m a shy person already, I didn’t need to deal with it in the games I played. Should Mailbox Man be a passerby, I had no disadvantage in ignoring him. He could look at me in disgust while I looked at him in awe. We were living amongst each other, Mailbox Man and I. I knew that someday I would be skilled enough to take his place upon that postage throne.

Mailbox Man taught me an important lesson, one that probably could have been conveyed in a much simpler manner, but important nonetheless.

It’s 2011. We’ve occupied streets, asked our phones where to find risque items, and survived countless natural disasters. So much has happened, but one thing has remained stable: We love to buy stuff.

Hence the need for another truly awesome, epic last minute gift guide from Team SideQuesting (2010′s is here).

The list that follows includes gadgets, gear, fashion, and objects that we desire, all priced at under $30 to go easy on your budgets. Now break out the debit cards and let’s get to saving the economy!

Netflix monthly membership ($7.99/Month)

Erron Kelly: Everybody loves Netflix. Drop a tenner on your favorite person and shower them in quality content.

Red Vines Red Original Licorice Twists, 64-Ounce Tub ($18)

Jenna Pitcher:  Ultimate holiday sustenance for extended gaming stretches. (Being an Aussie, I would floor spin with joy if I got this as a gift.)

SanDisk Cruzer 16 GB Cruzer USB 2.0 Flash Drive ($16.33)

Lewis Garcia: Everyone needs to carry certain files and documents from one place to another.

Whiskey Stones ($21.95)

Aaron Kirchhoff: Put hair on your chest without watering down your drink.

Reamde: A Novel ($20)

Matt Wetzel: Neal Stephenson is one of the best Sci Fi authors of our generation, and his latest work continues his legacy of amazing, engrossing thrill rides, that once they get going, don’t stop till the last page.

GIVEAWAY RULES

• Contest starts today (Tuesday, December 20th) and running through Sunday, Dec 25th at 11:59PM EDT Eastern (8:59PM PDT Pacific).
• Leave a comment on this post up to once per day, Tuesday through to Sunday, for a total of 6 chances to win.
• Winner selected by SideQuesting on Monday morning, December 26th, around 12:00AM EDT.
• Available to US residents only
• Please see our official Contest Rules for more information.

SideQuesting logo design by Kayleigh Doughty

SideQuesting is thankful to have ties to the art, music, and design worlds. Each month, we have asked our friends in these industries to recreate our logo in their visions. We think that you’ll enjoy seeing how others view our website, our community, and our passion through their eyes and hands. In return we will present their work for the entire month, and they’ll become our featured artists.

For December 2011, SideQuesting reached across the sea to the UK for our logo design. Artist/Designer Kayleigh Doughty has earned herself a reputation for mixing mediums like she mixes paint, producing vibrant, explosive works of energy that have made their appearances throughout British pop culture. We’re extremely pleased and excited to have her not only create our logo, but also share her work with us.

Marsh T-Shirt Design

What may sound like a strange statement, Kayleigh is very much inspired by the blank walls she passes on the streets of London. To her each one is a blank canvas, standing at the ready to be populated by what she’s seen recently or felt a connection to. She views white space as a sort of challenge to unload her full mind. She has worked on T-shirt designs, cartoons, and even giant wall paintings for clients, and her “style” translates well across all of the mediums. Thick illustrative lines outline bright colors with only necessary details, so the excess isn’t about what we see in the sketch but what our minds do to fill the spaces in between.

When it came to designing the logo, Doughty followed the same formula. The collection of game controllers scatters onto the page from her memory, creating a backdrop for the dynamic letters that spell “SideQuesting” in the almost “Gamecube purple”. The logo recalls several gaming memories all at once for those that view it, and it’s almost a visual game to try and name each accessory. There’s a certain modern graffiti facet to it that is both complex and simple, and extremely beautiful.

Kayleigh Doughty always starts with a sketch

When creating her work, Doughty admits to always starting with a concept sketch… or several. There’s something magical about the emptiness of a sketchbook as it almost begs to be filled with ideas. Patterns, random objects, and illustrated characters fill the page. She chooses the medium that is best for the piece, so whether that is spray paint, marker, or digital it’s all very important to remain true to the intention.

Kayleigh has been creating art professionally at least since she was four years old, when one of her pieces was sold on Christmas cards as the result of a major art competition. From then on, she worked to improve her skills and grow her mountain of work, selling canvased paintings and working with major studios and clothing lines. Just recently some of her work was accepted into the Tate Modern, one of the most well-known and largest galleries in Europe.

When we asked Kayleigh about who inspires her work, she relays that a good mix of both traditional fine artists and modern musicians has had an effect on her, as has drawing from her closest family and friends.

Doughty's Rihanna vector illustration was inspired by the video for the song "Hard"

We’re extremely proud to have Kayleigh as our Featured Artist for the month of December. Please take some time to take a look at more of her work at the links below, follow her on Twitter, and get in contact with her. Her work certainly speaks to her high level of  passion!

• WEBSITE PORTFOLIO
• TWITTER
• FACEBOOK

Kayleigh has been gracious enough to share some of her pieces below.

Music pattern for Wrappz.com

The latest illustration for Collab Nation

Large-scale chicken illustration

"No Boys Allowed" Keri Hilson vector illustration

How does one judge a world? Diverse cultures and complex traditions demand individual attention. Each detail must be inspected, weighed and measured according to their own contributions and flaws. They say that the best way to learn a language is to live where it’s spoken. And there are few series that capture a sense of place like The Elder Scrolls.

And after the dozens of hours you will no doubt spend in Skyrim, you’ll speak the language fluently.

A society is nothing if not the collection of its peoples, places and events. Rather than taking up the expansionist ideals of open world role-playing games before it, Skyrim instead fills in most the cracks left unsealed in other games. Every character has something to say. Every bookshelf holds some piece of forgotten (and often very well-written) lore. No crumbling ruin or babbling brook appears as though it wasn’t given just the right amount of care and attention.

At times, the sheer amount of content — both that which is useful and that which is merely fascinating — can be overwhelming. Players fresh off the boat will find themselves strangers in an immense civilization. While map markers which number fewer than those found in Oblivion or Fallout lead to much more engrossing ends. Those more accustomed to linear paths may succumb to culture shock at first. However, when the  murky depths of uncertainty break, wanderlust and a severely shortened attention span will conspire to keep players rooted in the Skyrim’s frozen expanses for longer than most entire franchises.

This is the part in which the dragons make their presence felt.

Inescapable, unavoidable and undoubtedly amazing; the dragons of Skyrim aren’t just this year’s Oblivion gates and will argue that point till their last, fiery (or frosty) breath. The scaly beasts lend a sense of agency; a living, breathing (sort of) reminder of who you — Dovahkiin, the dragon-born — are and why you are here. The enemy is no longer sequestered behind quest lines and alternate dimensions. He is above you; laying waste to the society that you have come to call home, if only for a few dozen hours. Slaying the beasts and becoming quickened with their souls to power your Shouts — magical dragon abilities — reminds you that you and the narrative are inextricable from the land of Skyrim. The winged terrors keep the story salient, rather than incidental and provide a real narrative tether to your importance to the world around you.

Also keeping Dovakhiin feeling like a crucial component is the marked “Game of Thrones-ification” of the franchise. Political intrigue, rebellion and civil war are the rule of law in the birthplace of the Nords. As such a prominent and powerful figure in the fiction, the dragon-born would be a natural choice as a political powerhouse; able to sway both the opinions of the people and the tides of war. While the dragon infestation may moor players to the plot, it’s the civil war that makes one care for Skyrim’s dense and colorful population. The more human and down-to-earth has the debatably adverse side-effect of fantastical whimsy found in earlier titles. The oddball quests are still there to be found (I implore everyone to search out a quest concerning a certain stray dog) but they are an endangered species in this frigid region. Then again, the new tone also means that, unlike in previous entries in the series, you are no longer the least interesting part of the game.

It’s most unfortunate, then, that the actual act of slaying is Skyrim’s least interesting component. The mechanics of combat feel more entrenched and less disconnected than those of Morrowind and Oblivion. However, the combat system is still hardly even that. Shouts and dual-wielding provides more variety on-the-fly but do little to alleviate the “Press [blank] to swat enemy with [blank] until it’s dead.” It’s really a shame that your most primary method of interaction with the world is also the least engaging.

What’s even more distressing is the way in which Skyrim interacts with itself, and in turn, the player. Every culture has its eccentricities, of course, but it can be assumed that Bethesda didn’t intend for atrocious pathfinding to be part of the rich Nordic heritage. Enemies, NPC’s, companions; none are spared from consistently walking into walls and each other. Nothing interrupts your conversation with the local blacksmith quite like the town bard moonwalking into your partner face-first for fifteen seconds. Or how about when that horrifying monster you’ve been duking it out with is suddenly foiled by that most implacable of obstacles; a two-foot high wooden table? In either case, you will be left feeling more like a visitor and less like a true resident of the sandbox that is Skyrim.

These moments of navigational error manifest themselves most egregiously in your employable companions. It’s easy to thank the developer for finally gracing Elder Scrolls players with a bit of support in the big, bad world. Unfortunately, your stalwart friends will tend to misunderstand some of the more exotic concepts that we take for granted. Such imports as stepping out of the way of your fireballs or following your example through lethal, swinging blades.

And while you’re gawking at these spectacles of quickly diminishing amusement, why not take a second to notice that these dumbfounded citizens all seem to look, move and sound exactly alike. Bethesda’s full-to-bursting world has once again come at the cost of  incestuous use of character models and voice actors.

But then there comes a time when you realize that none of this actually bothers you. The alien customs of the game’s AI doesn’t hold a candle to the bizarrely emergent embers of endearment you find burning within for your companions. Equally self-sustaining and perhaps more ubiquitous are personal stories that will crop up along the way. These don’t just include the tales of the occasionally frustrating but often amusing assortment of glitches inherent to all Bethesda games with which you will regale your friends. They’re made up of all the small choices you can and will make during your stay in Skyrim. They are the methods you engineer to best a boss or the discoveries you make after first venturing past the tutorial area. Even the minuscule deductions you make about the environment, its people and its locales. All of these moments are your own and they are legion. Yet at the same time, they are built from the same bricks and mortar that Skyrim has laid out for everyone. The world is there as it is, but it is up to you to decide at least part of what it was and nearly all of what it will be.

There is no doubting that Skyrim is a great game. What’s truly exciting (and maybe even a bit shocking) is that this, the fifth Elder Scrolls game, is the first ultimate deliverance on the series’ promise. It is a fertile world with purpose and the foundations of nearly infinitely variable stories to be discovered and even written. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim sets a new standard for how virtual worlds should be sculpted. It’s more than a place worth visiting, it’s a place with a language that’s worth learning.

This review is based on a copy of the game purchased by SideQuesting.

It has long since been established on The SideQuest that I spend money on things I don’t particularly need. Usually I can keep myself in check, but sometimes I can go overboard in a bad way. The purchasing of three tablets is a prime example of that.

In early July I picked up a Xoom, which I got for a mere $300. Then in August, the great TouchPad experiment of Hewlett Packard failed and they started jettisoning their stock. So, for $130 I picked up a TouchPad. I figured I was losing money if I didn’t grab this deal. Finally, at the end of August, my iPad 2 that I had ordered four weeks previous finally arrived, which I got for the base ticket price of $500.

Nearly a grand in the hole, I have been using my three devices quite a bit for the last three months. I never intended on looking critically at them — keep in mind that I have never reviewed a tablet before. I simply know what I like, what I need, and what I felt was best for me. But by the end of my purchasing experiment my better judgment got the better of me, and I’ve returned two of them.

The Xoom made sense as I enjoy the openness of Android. The easy root options the platform offers and being able to sideload apps to make the device whatever I want it to be is an awesome draw. In the early days of the Xoom, the reports of the UI being clunky and not exactly friendly steered me away from picking it up.

As months went on and updates kept rolling out, I noticed people mentioning that the tablet was getting better. So when I stepped up to the plate and bought it in July, I actually never faced a single UI issue. It moved quickly, no matter how many apps I would have running, and I never felt encumbered in any way.

The game support was excellent too; having an Android phone for the past three years helped me there. I saw the rise from “there aren’t any games here that anyone would care about” to “wow, there are a lot of great knockoff games on here.” Even to this day, most iOS games don’t venture into the Android Wild West, but it doesn’t matter as there are several knock-offs of each good iOS game that live up to their counterparts or sometimes even outstrip them. The public perception of the platform has held back Android in the way of gaming, but it is quite the ecosystem.

The Xoom ran all of the games that I had already purchased just fine, and I even tinkered with SNESoid (a Super Nintendo emulator) and connecting a Wii remote to the Xoom had myself a portable SNES console. (Ed. Note: Don’t pirate games, that is wrong.) As far as the Xoom went, it was a great device that did just about everything that I wanted it too.

The iPad 2 was meant to be my only tablet purchase of 2011. The other two we can call impulse buys. Many of my friends own iPads and swear by them, claiming there is nothing better in the tablet world. Of course, most of them only have Macbook Pros, iMacs, and iPhones, but they can’t all be crooked eyed, right? Well, to a point they aren’t. The iPad 2 is a phenomenal device. The speed at which the interface moves is absolutely astounding and the game support is off the charts.

Because iOS developers know exactly what size and resolution they are developing for, they can make apps that fit to the screen much better than Android developers can. The dual core A5 made work of just about anything thrown at it as well. The hardware in the iPad 2, from the processor to the dual cameras, is all excellent. The only place hardware suffers is the poorly placed and exceedingly limiting speaker along with the lack of native USB support.

The only problem I couldn’t overlook on the iPad 2 was iOS itself. Apple has conflicts with other companies that makes their platform inherently limited. Mainly, Google. Google support on the iPad 2 is lackluster. Sure, they develop apps for the platform, but they aren’t that good. Gmail, Maps, Docs, Youtube and Plus are things that I use on a daily basis that the iPad 2 does not do well.

Next, Adobe, with Flash. As much as most iOS owners will tell you otherwise, Flash is still an integral part of the web browsing experience. The main thing I use a tablet for is to browse the web. Many sites that I go to have a Flash integration that break wide open on the iPad 2. Sure, there may be apps for several of those sites, but I’m lazy and I don’t feel like opening 20 applications instead of going to the actual website.

That said, if I am Joe Six-Pack looking to pick up a tablet I would probably go with the iPad 2, even though it is more expensive. The simplicity of the OS is perfect for the regular person.

The last tablet, the TouchPad, was little more than a cheap experiment. In fact, the first night I owned it I almost threw it out a window. I tried updating WebOS but the device inexplicably turned off in the middle of installation, and from that point on the next day and a half was nothing but torture. Caught in between two versions of WebOS I couldn’t do anything, as it didn’t know what to load and kept rebooting itself every two or three minutes.

In fact I couldn’t even use HP’s doctor tools for the device as the reboot would happen even in the middle of trying to reset the firmware. Eventually, when I was mere minutes away from taking a sledge to the TouchPad, it somehow allowed the reset to work, and I was finally able to use the thing.

Having never even used a WebOS phone I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but WebOS is fantastic. The “card” system it uses for multitasking is awesome, being able to see all of the apps you have open at once makes everything a whole lot easier. WebOS is also an open platform, so sideloading apps that have been made by the community is simple. However, those apps are very limited in number, just as the marketplace is.

The HP App Catalog is pathetic. There are very few apps worth purchasing, and apps that are free on other platforms must be purchased here. Applications that you would assume would come bundled on a tablet aren’t, and when they are they aren’t TouchPad optimized. Even Netflix, Tweetdeck, and until recently a native camera app, didn’t exist. Game support is even more pathetic, with the only major game on the platform being Angry Birds.

No games, no app support. Why would I even remotely consider keeping this device? Four reasons:

1. Comicshelf HD. This comic viewer is the best I have used on any platform, including Comixology. It works exactly how I want and since I love comics, it is a big deal to me.

2. Solitaire. The only game I need. Not just Klondike, this app has about 40 different solitaire card games. So far I have probably played 1000 games of Klondike alone. Once again, this app is the best I have used for what it is, on any platform.

3. Web browser. As I mentioned earlier, tablets are small web browsing devices for me, and the WebOS browser is phenomenal. It is the best non-PC web browsing experience I have had. The lack of website apps doesn’t matter as I can visit any page with no troubles.

4. CyanogenMod. I was set to get rid of the TouchPad, or simply let it sit uncharged for the rest of its existence. Then, at the end of October the CyanogenMod community got their shit all the way together and released an alpha build of Android 2.3 for the TouchPad. After some reassurances from one John Noonan, I took the thirty minutes required to apply the mod. Running as a dual-boot OS makes it incredible. At any time, I can boot into Android or WebOS depending what I want or need to do.

Over the last month the extended warranty return dates came up for all three devices. The first decision I had to make was about the Xoom, and it wasn’t much of a decision at all. I had the TouchPad to run Android and it only cost a third of the price of the Xoom. So it went back.

The TouchPad was up next. My familiarity and comfort with Android and my enjoyment of some WebOS apps made me want to keep the thing around. Especially with the low price.

Just yesterday, Saturday, I had to decide whether or not I was going to keep my iPad 2 around for pretty much just gaming. In the end, having $500 was more attractive than having a second tablet. That sentence alone might bring out the hate in some people. The iPad 2 would have been at best a second tablet, and nobody needs a second tablet.

The red-headed stepchild, the ugly duckling, the TouchPad won out. I spent long enough with each of them to make a well-informed decision. Of course, unless HP actually makes a second run of the tablet you will have a tough time getting your hands on one. Even if you do, you won’t get one for the firesale price that took place back in August. However, if I knew long ago what I know now about the TouchPad going into the purchase, I gladly would have spent much more than I did.

All three tablets are great devices, and they each have their own benefits. I may have liked the TouchPad the most, but that doesn’t mean that it is inarguably the best, just the best for what I want a tablet to be.

What made you decide on what tablet to buy? Feel free to let us know below.

Image credit: Engadget.com

Have you ever seen a book, movie or comic and thought to yourself “This would make an amazing video game!” Well, Justin Russo and Steven Strom did! Welcome to Suspended License in which our heroic hosts discuss which franchises they would like to see as the next great video game.

On this, their inaugural episode, Steven and Justin contemplate the sci-fi classic, Blade Runner. Real-time Voight-Kampff tests? Replicant free-running? FLYING CAR CHASES? These lovable hosts have seen things you people wouldn’t believe… in their imaginations. And now you’ve got a chance to join in on the fun!

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Steven Strom and Justin Russo

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“Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car” – Billy Ocean

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