Open World

An Evolutionary Dead End

HIGH The Prototype characters are über-badasses.

LOW Outdated mission and world structure, repetitive tasks.

WTF The eleventh-hour attempt to humanize Heller.

Since the days of Morrowind, players and game critics alike have often described Bethesda's beloved Elder Scrolls series as "an offline MMO." The titles have had many of the elements that make Massively Multiplayer titles like World of Warcraft a huge hit, but it's never allowed for other players to come together and share the experience—until now.

In this episode we feature a full blown discussion of The Walking Dead, Episode 1, and Richard drinks the most Richard-like thing that he could possibly drink. Not enough, you say? We also look at the good, the bad and the ugly of open world games. Stop what you're doing right now...unless it is downloading this PODCAST! With Chi Kong Lui, Brad Gallaway, Mike Bracken, Richard "I'm not wasting a bullet" Naik and Dylan Collins.

• The Walking Dead, Toy Soldiers DLC and Escape Goat Shirts!
  
• The Walking Dead: Episode One—A New Day Review

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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.

The Falmer are coming. You can hear guards whispering about them in Skyrim's towns. You can encounter them through their attacks on trading caravans or isolated, unlucky outposts. In the journey to Blackreach, if not before, you will encounter the Falmer. Blind and pale, they scurry through the caves beneath Skyrim, clothed and armed with chitin from their hideous insect livestock, communicating in primitive hisses. Considering only these characteristics, it would be easy to dismiss the Falmer as goblins by another name, like Mass Effect's awful Vorcha. However, the fiction surrounding the Falmer positions them as a touchstone for many of Skyrim's main ideas.

You Got Your MMO in My KOTOR

HIGH Keeping my party barely alive as we take down a nasty boss during a flashpoint.

LOW Being thrown into a PvP match against players 20 levels above me.

WTF Acquiring a companion who is the last of his kind, then walking outside and seeing five more of him.

When Skyrim tries to go big, it often falters due to poor writing, over-promising, or a disconnect between the story and the gameplay. The happiest exception to this trend is the Dark Brotherhood questline, which is one of the game's great successes. This is because it obeys the rules of good writing, and of good game design.

Hmmm, criticizing The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim's opening for being lackluster compared to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare's now (in)famous opening? Is it fair to compare two games from two seemingly disparate genres like an open-world role-playing game and a scripted, set-piece-heavy, first-person military shooter? Maybe it isn't, but it does sound like something GameCritics would do. No wonder we like this video.

So, the Mass Effect 3 demo. I hesitate to bring it up, but I can't let it pass without making at least a few brief comments. First off, I really hope that the game addresses Ashley's radical make over... if the game hadn't told me that's who it was, I never would have recognized her, and I don't mean that in a good way.

The Dragon of Dojima's Looking a bit Paunchy

HIGH Playing baseball with kids on the beach.

LOW The slow trickle of new moves makes combat painfully stale.

WTF "You have learned the art of pole dancing."