PS3

I had to put Demon's Souls aside for while to cover a couple of must-review titles, but I decided that I was going to take a break from reviewing for the weekend and just play for fun. Popping it back in my PS3, I was instantly sucked back in. Taking that short time away, I had forgotten how ridiculously awesome it is. The atmosphere, the feeling of exploration… everything. I totally love this game. That's not to say the game is flawless, though—it suffers from the same issue so common to many RPGs in that the developers want you to choose the type of character you play before you really know what your preferred play style will be.

Konami’s announced the official release date for their downloadable zombie slaughterfest, Zombie Apocalypse. Anyone with a hankering for killing hordes of the walking dead will want to mark September 23rd and 24th down on their calendars. Xbox 360 owners will be able to download the title one day earlier than their PS3-owning brethren for some reason. When I last saw the game, it looked a lot like Smash TV with zombies. Since I happen to love Smash TV, this got me very excited.

He's not angry, just misunderstood

HIGH Hanging motionless for a split second a hundred feet in the air above a boss before crashing down on it bionic fist first.

LOW Fumbling ineptly with certain biomech enemies for a large amount of time before discovering their weakness.

WTF When replaying certain sections, the in-game chatter is sometimes replaced with more profane versions of the same sentence.

Disclosure: This post has nothing to do with gender, sexism, or the like.

Playing inFamous made me think of other games that I've played where I have the ability to make choices that effect the story or other parts of the game—to be "good" or "evil" so to speak. And after some thought on the subject, I discovered I was hungry and made a sandwich. After that, games such as Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, BioShock, Morrowind/Oblivion, and Fallout 3 came to mind. The question that I pose is this—what makes a good way to allow the player to "choose" their path while not pandering to ideological extremes and still providing an engrossing experience? Ideally I would be able to chose virtually any action I wanted, and have the game respond accordingly regardless of what I chose. Is this even possible? Or has it been done already?

Apologies to all my readers. I completely forgot to post a message here to let everyone know that I would be skipping updates for a few days due to my wife and I moving to a new place. My computer has been in a crate since I posted the last update about PAX Day Two, and with all of the hubbub and box-lifting, it didn't even occur to me that I had forgotten to say something until this afternoon. If you've been checking in and wondering WTF was going on, wonder no longer.

Anyway, although I haven't quite gotten my office space properly set up, the blogging will commence... Now!!

The fruition of a dream three generations old

HIGH Incredibly immersive sense of true role-playing.

LOW Might be intimidating to newer, less experienced players.

WTF Why is pausing not an option in the offline mode?

Jenova Chen of thatgamecompany (flOw, Flower) is our guest this week, and his journey from Shanghai child to superstar developer was a perfect storm of determination, skill, and a whole lot of luck. You'll hear that story and many more in our jam-packed interview. And yes, he explains his Final Fantastic first name. With Chi Kong Lui, Brad Gallaway, Mike Bracken, and Tim Spaeth.

Download: Right click here and select "Save Target As..."
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Read: Transcript

Topic and Game References:

• Cloud
• flOw
• Flower
• Final Fantasy 7

Please send feedback and mailbag questions to podcast (at) gamecritics (dot) com.

Since this was my first year going to a conference as a family unit (mommy-daddy-baby) I decided to skip most of the presentations and after-hours events. My little boy was great on the exhibition floor, but I didn't want to push my luck… or his endurance. Since I don't have much to say on the other events that occurred (and boy, there were an absolute ton of them) here's my final rundown of the games I saw and played.