Brad Gallaway's blog

Haven't had much free time in front of the consoles lately, but what little time I have had has been going into Dragon's Dogma.

Dragon's Dogma was a game I was very curious about since seeing an early demo last year, but there were a lot of questions in my mind about what the final product would be like. After speaking with others who were also looking forward to it, I see that I wasn't alone in wanting more information. Now that I've logged some time with it, I thought it might be helpful to clear up a few things for those of you who are considering picking it up.

Looking forward to a Gamecritics review of Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition? I'm sorry to disappoint you, but we won't be covering it anytime soon due to the game shipping in an unplayable state.

As an early adopter of an Vita, I was supporting Sony with my wallet and giving them the full benefit of the doubt when I ponied up on day one. I'm well aware of the dangers when you invest in a piece of hardware too early, but the PlayStation Portable ended up being something that I got quite a bit of mileage out of, and I was confident that Sony would have learned from past mistakes. I mean, how could they not, right?

If you read this blog with any regularity, you probably remember that I was a huge fan of Dead Island last year. So huge, in fact, that I was one of the critics who chose it as our overall game of 2011. We got more than a few funny looks from other critics when we made the announcement, but I still feel good about the choice in comparison to what the competition was, and I definitely think it was the right direction to go.

Over the last few days, there's been a lot of heat directed at Bobby Hunter, the reviewer who covered Witcher 2 for Gamer Limit. In any event, the reason I bring this up is not because I agree with the criticisms, but to express a little surprise at how many people in the review sphere seemed eager to take Mr. Hunter to task for any number of reasons.

Started playing (and finished, actually) The Walking Dead, Episode 1—A New Day on Xbox 360 last night. It runs about two hours and costs $5. For fans of the comic/show, it's an absolute must-play. It's best described as a combination of point-and-click gameplay with some Heavy Rain thrown in, and the mood and atmosphere are just perfect.

The Dragon's Dogma demo is now out for both XBL and PSN, apparently. I haven't had a chance to play it yet, but from what people have been telling me, it sounds extremely similar to the demo they had running at last year's PAX.

I was talking to someone who would know, and the current word is that XSeed games currently has no plans to localize Pandora's Tower (Wii) for the states. Out of the three Operation Rainfall titles, this was the one I was most interested in and after seeing XSeed step up for The Last Story, I'd hoped that they would do the same for this one as well.

The other day on Twitter, I had a discussion with a friend about being dissatisfied with the current types of games produced by the industry. He countered by saying that there were games in the indie space that filled that need, and that it was important for critics to seek them out and spread word of their existence.