Wordsmith's Anvil

Image credit: Jump Over the Age "'More Human than Human' is our motto," Tyrell says with a mixture of matter-of-fact clarification and barely contained pride.     Deckard scoffs at the very idea that one of these replicants could be anything like a human.       Let alone more.     Blade Runner is, and probably always will be, my all-time favorite movie. It combines the raw human emotion I love in films alongside great sci-fi action. I could go on for hours, but we're not here to talk about Ridley Scott's masterpiece. We're here to talk about the one created by Jump Over the Age.     You read that right.     In Citizen Sleeper , you play as a "sleeper" on an almost-forgotten space station in a remote corner of the galaxy. To figure out just what the hell I'm talking about, let me clarify a few things. First off, in this distant future AI has been outlawed entirely. Perhaps not such a bad thing... Either way, it is illegal for an...

  Image Credit: A44 Games Last year I was pleasantly surprised when I stumbled across the game called Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn . It was fun, explosive, and had just the right amount of difficulty in there to lightly frustrate while urging for just a little more from the player. Flintlock didn't just arrive from a fledgling team on their first outing, however. They had already created an arguably more famous game in Ashen .     In Ashen, you play a nameless and literally faceless character who is traversing the depths of some caves for seemingly no reason. Your companion is a blond adventurer who has little to say in the offset, but you two work together to reach the minuscule beginnings of a village. Only a couple people are hanging out here, and it becomes readily apparent in a matter of moments that you are going to be required to help them out in building this place from scratch.     As the villagers of Vagrant's Rest begin to build something to call home...

  Image Credit: Makee Games & Forever Entertainment S.A. Once in a while a game series comes along that just snaps up your attention and refuses to let go.       This is not one of them.     Rise Eterna tells a familiar tale of woe and ruin. We are first introduced to a hard-nose mercenary who has limits to what he will and will not do. Rob townsfolk? Sure. Let others butcher them in cold blood? Okay, fine. Participate in said butchery? No, ma'am! Absolutely not.     These are the morals that compose Natheal, the man who arguably fills the role of lead protagonist in the original game. His cynical view on the jaded aspects of everyday life changes once he starts to "connect" with Lua. I put connect in quotes because the connection here is minimal, at best. Lua is the stereotypical "I may be small but don't mess with me" female that we see in a lot of these types of games. Her connection to Natheal is that of a daughterly one, we're told i...

Image credit: Owlcat Games Those of you who have already been privy to my thoughts and feelings on Owlcat Games know that this review has been a long time coming. I've already given my thoughts on the incredible work of art that is Rogue Trader , and although I've played Kingmaker before... it's been a little while. I did a replay of Wrath of the Righteous in order to really home in on my feelings for this one.     Once again, Owlcat does not disappoint.     In Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous , we start as a wounded individual brought to the middle of a festival in the grand city of Kenabres. After some quick healing from the local dragon, you read that right, we get to participate in a couple activities before the proverbial sh!t hits the fan. Deskari, a demon lord hell-bent on destroying civilization as everyone knows it, shows up to wreck the party and sever a dragon's head in the process. After a timely spell prevents your death, you explore some caves and eme...

  Image credit: Ocean Drive Studio I love when a game comes around and has the confidence... nay, the audacity... to just completely usurp the time that my other games take up. It's not often, but sometimes you'll get in a gaming slump that really just means that anything and everything doesn't really seem all that appealing.     Lost Eidolons: Veil of the Witch to the rescue.     In this spin-off from Ocean Drive Studio's initial Lost Eidolons project, we find ourselves occupying the boots of Ashe. Ashe can be male or female depending on your pick in the offset, but the difference is largely negligible when it comes to the narrative. Ashe doesn't remember who he or she is, and only has snippets of recollections as to why they would possibly be on the faraway island they find themselves on in the first place.     Our first companions to join us are Evie and "Marco," a cleric and a berserker, who do not seem to have lost any of their own memories but a...

  Images courtesy of Harebrained Schemes I think most trilogies try to improve upon their formula with each iteration. This can be seen with film classics like the original Star Wars trilogy, and also with gaming epics like Mass Effect . It's a tried and true method of getting your audience to continue returning. The stakes have been amped up from piece to piece, and we all want to find out what happens next.     The same can definitely be said for Shadowrun .     I never had the privilege of playing the original Shadowrun on SNES, but I was pretty excited to find out that some of the original creators of the work landed themselves in Harebrained Schemes to set up the Kickstarter campaigns needed to flesh out a new series for the title. Now, granted, this trilogy came out quite a few years ago and then was ported to current consoles several years later (still a couple years back, by now), but it was a new foray for me into a cyberpunk world the likes I'd never...

Image courtesy of BioWare & EA's Custom Art Creator      Every so often a game comes along that challenges the perceived notions people have regarding whether or not it could be considered art. Is it a good story? Or is it just a good game? The question doesn't sound too crazy nowadays because we live in an age of the revamped God of War or The Last of Us where there are no questions on whether or not they're good stories. One has been adapted to HBO and showed incredible success in doing so and the other is in development at Amazon Prime. That being said, when the original Mass Effect came out in 2007 there wasn't really any question in people's minds over whether or not it was a great story or just a great game. It was inconceivable that games could be both for a long time, but I would venture to say that as Mass Effect 's sequels rolled out it quickly became apparent this was more than just a game.     Comic-Cons will also show the lasting impact and g...