The Choice Between Mind-Controlled Orcs and Riding Elephants is Surprisingly Difficult

Well I'm having no luck with motivating myself to write anything for uni, so I'm gonna write a couple of reviews instead. They're a little late - both games I'm talking about here came out late 2014, so why not ring in the new year with them? I wanna talk about two of my favourite games: Shadow of Mordor, and Far Cry 4.

A look at good games and "meh" games

I haven't been to see any movies recently, as you might have noticed, and that's partly why I've been branching out into book reviews and game reviews. These past coupla weeks I've been reading about game design and what makes a game good or addictive, so today I'm going to talk about a couple of games, one an example of what I consider good game design, and one I consider not-so-good game design.

Hacked Off

I have to start this review by saying I'm not all that far through Watch Dogs. What I've heard of the storyline (and it's very little) is promising, but for my part I haven't really done much of it. I've had it for a few days now, and every time I play I get stuck on it, sucked in, unable to quit or leave. Many a night has been spent staying up 'til three in the morning trying to finish another side mission or just muck about and hack as many random NPC's as possible. Because here's the thing about Watch Dogs: there's so much of it, and it's all so much fun.

A Bundle of Reviews

So I've had an Xbox One for about a week now, and most of my time on it has been spent either grinding through ridiculously difficult side-scrolling platformers or expressing my disbelief that they actually bothered with a campaign mode in Titanfall. Anyway, I think I week is long enough to have bought all the good games (short of Watch Dogs with its extravagant £60 price tag or anything which involves a sport and is not affiliated with the Kinect) and to have time to review the console itself. So here are my thoughts on the Xbox One.