Electronic Gaming Monthly, We Hardly Knew You or How UGO Pissed on Our Parade

Big news in gaming today. No, 3D Realms hasn't released Duke Nukem Forever yet, but we do get to watch as some of the finest words within the industry get sucked up by a "publishing platform" that is nothing more than a poor man's IGN. Okay, 1Up and UGO isn't actually a bad pairing on paper. 1Up focuses on producing great content with a unique voice that is both entertaining and informative while UGO focuses on cramming a bunch of content into an environment that's friendly for advertisers.

1Up and UGO together are fine, whatever. What really gets me frayed around the edges is the fact that this buyout will result in the cancelation of Electronic Gaming Monthly. EGM was the last bastion of unbiased gamer news that existed in the print medium. GameInformer and GamePro are great in their own right, but they write in a language that needs to be decoded.

These days, a gaming journalist can't say that a game isn't good. When you read a review in GameInformer or GamePro, you have to ask yourself, "Does the publisher of this game have any ads in this magazine?" If the answer to that question is yes, you probably have to take the review with a grain of salt and be overly sensative to negative criticism. One of my favorite examples is Andrew Reiner's review of Kane & Lynch: Dead Men over at GameInformer. Meaning absolutely no disrespect to Mr. Reiner (since his job could easily be on the line if he didn't do this) he cites a ton of game-breaking flaws and mentions one positive moment and ultimately gives the game a 7. If you actually take the time to read the review, the game sounds closer to a 5 or even a 3, yet it got a 7.

EGM never had that issue, if they believed a game was bad they didn't sugar-coat it, and their scores accurately reflected their opinion even if that article ran right before a two-page splash for that exact game. Their brutal honesty was a high point in gaming journalism that you just don't see that often anymore in mainstream publications. Sure, you can find blogs all over that give you the bitter truth, but EGM was on the news rack! This was worthwhile writing from fellow concerned gamers that you could pick up alongside your copy of Newsweek or the Weekly World News, if that's what you're into.

As a kid who grew up on these kinds of print magazines, it hurts to see you go EGM. You will be missed.

-That Guy

Dungeons and Dragons

I've been a huge fan of Western RPGs ever since my first session of Morrowind despite the fact that I had to buy a new monitor because of the streaks I left on my old one from that fateful day. Between my love of interactive storytelling, my overactive imagination and all my failed attempts at tabletop gaming in my youth it's really surprising that I've never truly been introduced to D&D before.

Well, last night I got to play my first few turns in a rather unorthodox D&D campaign. A friend of mine is hosting a campaign with his younger brother and a couple of kids from his neighborhood. I guess their regulars didn't come out last night so I was called to sit in on the game. I arrived late into the evening because I thought it important to watch my beloved Minnesota Vikings get dismantled by the Phillidelphia Eagles which took longer than I had hoped. In the end, I only played a couple of turns, but those couple of turns really opened up my eyes.

When I say this game was unorthodox, that's an understatement. Instead of swords, sorcery, and the aforementioned dungeons and dragons, this campaign was designed around the American south west after the zombie apocolypse. So instead of dungeon crawling or hiking through enchanted forests, we were clearing zombies out of a drug lord's mansion in southern California.

In most game worlds, rules are the key to maintain order, but D&D is run purely by the imagination. This is a concept that everyone knows, but it doesn't really dawn on you until you have this interaction:

DM: "It's your turn."

Me: "What can I do?"

DM: "Well, what do you want to do?"

Me: "I want to kick that zombie in the face."

DM: "Roll to hit."

I think I could grow to like this game.

Another thing that I just need to throw out there: Why is it that D&D players are believed to have no friends when the game is designed to be played in groups? Just a thought.

-That Guy