Ginormo Sword is by no means a good game, but I still spent a few hours transfixed by its siren call of RPG minimalism just the same (while on the clock, naturally).

I’m a big fan of RPGs, the actionier and loot pornier the better, and Ginormo Sword is the genre stripped down to its most minimal essence. “Here are some numbers,” it says, “they represent you. Go; make them higher.”

There’s something inherently compelling about leveling up, raising your stats and finding that perfect piece of equipment. There’s a reason people shell out a monthly fee for the right to grind away in their same-y fantasy MMORPG of choice, filling imaginary bars. This shit is fun, yo.

So Meta It Hurts: Ginormo Sword [Rock Paper Shotgun]

The Matrix Online has finally joined Morpheus in the great beyond, joining the very short but always expanding list of commercially-released MMOs that have closed up shop.

Check out Giant Bomb‘s 1-hour long video of the end of the world above, and if you find yourself with an extra five hours of your life to waste, you could do worse than skimming through the other videos of Giant Bomb’s time spent with the game. It all starts out very silly and funny and ends up being genuinely sincere and depressing before the end.

The Matrix Online: Not Like This – Part 01
The Matrix Online: Not Like This – Part 02
The Matrix Online: Not Like This – Part 03
The Matrix Online: Not Like This – Part 04

Q: What do Max Payne 2 and Mass Effect have in common?
A: They’re not Halo.

Replaying Mass Effect as superbitch Renegade Jane Shepard, cutting a bloody path across the galaxy with her lesbian death squad, I’m reminded of the same issue I encountered when trying to play through Max Payne 2 (The Fall of Max Payne) a few months back: Deaths tend to be especially frustrating, potentially costing you multiple hours of progress.

Yes, Max Payne 2 is five years old, but neither game has any excuse. Both were released in the glorious, post-Halo world of modern gaming. So why am I spending time fumbling around with the save system when all I wanna do is play the damned game?

(more…)

This is the part where I try to maintain the site with some degree of regularity. Later, the site sits dormant with some dumbass post or another rotting on the front page for six months. I’m not sure if this is one of those “vicious cycles” we hear so much about or not, but its definitely a cycle, no fun for anyone, and starting again right here and now.

In my attempt to get this site up and functioning again, I accidentally wiped out the last year and a half of content. No big loss, really, but I’ve managed to recover it all through some Google wizardry and may or may not bother re-posting and backdating the whole mess.

The site will probably continue to exist in a half-complete purgatory state for a while as I decide what the hell to do with this/eventually lose interest.

So. The future. Look forward to it?