Fallout 3 PT. 3

Fallout 3 begins with the birth of the player character, where character gender, name, and appearance can all be customized. Followed shortly after by the death of the character's mother, who dies in childbirth due to cardiac arrest, the story then jumps ahead to when your character begins walking. This is the first introduction to the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system, allowing for further character customization. Shortly after, the player enters their 10th birthday party, where they receive their Pip-Boy. Following a few altercations, the player enters 16 years of age, and takes their G.O.A.T. exam, determining their skills. Another advance occurs, and the player is awoken by Amata, who informs the character that their father, James, has left the vault without warning and under mysterious circumstances. This desertion attracts the ire of The Overseer, who attempts to apprehend you for questioning through his security force. The player fights their way to the father's lab, where they find the body of Jonas. In that lab, the player receives a message from their father, explaining that he had to leave and they should not follow. After persevering further through the vault, the player encounters Amata being questioned (or tortured) by her father. After securing her escape, the player learns of a secret exit through the Overseer's office, and fights their way to the exit. After leaving the vault, they venture out into an utterly destroyed Washington DC, though the wasteland is far from lifeless.

Fallout 3 PT.2

The game opens with your character being born, and there's a prologue in place that both serves as the character creation tools and a brief introduction to the game's world and controls. It's here that you set your stats, tag a few character skills as primary, and design the look of your character. You also get to know your father over the course of this sequence, which ends with him mysteriously escaping the vault, a move that has the Overseer of the vault hunting you down. So you escape the vault to avoid the Overseer's wrath, as well as to start tracking down your father. Along the way, you'll see how life on the surface works, follow your father's trail, and get wrapped up in a pile of side quests. Most of the quests in Fallout 3 can be completed in multiple ways, and the way you finish a quest can have substantial ramifications. Take, for example, the side quest called The Power of the Atom. This is one of the first side quests you might encounter in the town of Megaton. Megaton is so-named because there's a live nuclear bomb in the center of town. It leaks a bit of radiation and some local nutjobs worship it as some sort of great deity. The local law enforcement would be appreciative if you could quietly disarm the bomb. But a shadowy businessman in the local tavern offers you a hefty sum if you can rig the bomb to explode, instead. Since Megaton has other side quests and is also the place where you find your first lead on your father's whereabouts, blowing up the town can be a pretty dramatic act if you do it early on. It's a very cool moment. Unfortunately, most of the other quests don't quite have that level of impact. But that doesn't mean they aren't clever or interesting. You'll get sent on a lot of different missions, either purely as side endeavors or in order to satisfy a person and convince them to give you the next piece of the main quest line. And there are still others that you might be able to circumvent if your statistics are properly aligned. The speech skill seems especially useful for this, as talking your way out of violent situations is usually much faster and easier than blasting your way through the entire game. But some quests won't require you to have specific skills. It's more a function of whether you're going to play like a jerk, and choose the most negative thing on the dialogue tree, or try to be a bit more even-handed. The game does a good job of making you feel like your dialogue choices are meaningful, even if they're just different tones of voice that ultimately lead to the same conclusion.

Fallout 3 PT. 1

Vault 101 -- Jewel of the Wastes. For 200 years, Vault 101 has faithfully served the surviving residents of Washington DC and its environs, now known as the Capital Wasteland. Though the global atomic war of 2077 left the US all but destroyed, the residents of Vault 101 enjoy a life free from the constant stress of the outside world. Giant Insects, Raiders, Slavers, and yes, even Super Mutants are all no match for superior Vault-Tec engineering. Yet one fateful morning, you awake to find that your father has defied the Overseer and left the comfort and security afforded by Vault 101 for reasons unknown. Leaving the only home you've ever known, you emerge from the Vault into the harsh Wasteland sun to search for your father, and the truth. You know, let's just break it down up top. Fallout 3 takes the base level action of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, changes the setting from knights-and-wizards fantasy to mutants-and-raiders post-apocalyptic Washington DC, sprinkles on a handful of systems and references that are designed to remind you of the previous Fallout games, and sends you on your way. It's successful at giving you meaningful moral choices that, in a lot of cases, reshape the game pretty dramatically. But at the same time, by trying to be a wide-open game that accounts for multiple play styles, you really notice it when you bump up against the technical and storytelling limitations of the game and its narrative structure. The world of Fallout is the United States after a nuclear attack devastates the country and turns most of it into a flat, radioactive wasteland. To stay safe from the attack, many humans locked themselves in huge, underground vaults and lived there in relative safety. Others survive on the surface, and attempt to make lives for themselves in the rubble of what used to be the United States. Additionally, the game has a retro-futuristic tone to it that is one of its primary sources of humor.

 

Dishonored

Dishonored is set in Dunwall, an industrial whaling city where strange steampunk- inspired technology and otherworldly forces coexist in the shadows. You are the once-trusted bodyguard of the beloved Empress. Framed for her murder, you become an infamous assassin, known only by the disturbing mask that has become your calling card. In a time of uncertainty, when the city is besieged by plague and ruled by a corrupt government armed with industrial technologies, dark forces conspire to bestow upon you abilities beyond those of any common man – but at what cost? The truth behind your betrayal is as murky as the waters surrounding the city, and the life you once had is gone forever. You are Covano Attano, Royal Protector to the Empress of Dunwall. Or at least you used to be before the Empress is slain before your eyes by assassins. The Empress' consort then frame you for the murder, before kidnapping the Empress' daughter and seize power in a meticulously prepared coup. But you're no normal man, and that's why a group known as The Loyalists go to great lengths to help you break out of Coldridge Prison in what is in effect a tutorial level. The Loyalists are an eclectic group of activists led by the imperious Admiral Havelock. Their members span the full range of society - from aristocrats to paupers - but they're all united by a common goal; to overthrow the rogue government and reinstate the missing princess. None of the Loyalists seem particularly trustworthy. But they seem to be your only allies in a city where loudspeakers remind everyone on the hour every hour that you're public enemy number one - so Corvo goes along with their plans for the time being. Initially, each level sees Corvo travelling to a different district of Dunwall to incapacitate an influential member of the makeshift government. The Loyalists openly squabble over how Corvo should go about doing this, and their differences in opinion foreshadow the incredible freedom Dishonored affords you in choosing how to complete each objective.

The Walking Dead: 400 Days

The Walking Dead: 400 Days does little to make us feel better about the nebulous, open-ended finale of The Walking Dead: The Game Season 1. In fact, meeting five brand new characters and seeing their lives torn apart only reinforces how heartbreaking the world of The Walking Dead is, but anyone who wants to know how Season 2 is going to begin -- or at least some of the characters we’re probably going to see in it -- owes it to him or herself to play this stellar adventure in what can only be called short story video game fiction. 400 Days is a $4.99 bridge between Season 1 and Season 2 of The Walking Dead: The Game. If you have a keen eye, you’ll see a familiar face or two, but this isn’t picking up where Episode 5 left off (even though it is reading your Season 1 save). Here, we play as five different characters through five different stories, each of which take place somewhere within a span of 400 days wrapped around a Georgia truck stop. What’s amazing about The Walking Dead: 400 Days is how quickly -- and how differently -- developer Telltale Games has you start caring about the folks here. Shel’s just trying to be a good sister, but when that conflicts with being a good survivor, what do you do? You’d think you could hate Vince the convict, but his motivations of family make him human. And anybody who plays “Would You Rather” in a zombie apocalypse is immediately cool.

 

 

 

DayZ (Standalone)

Welcome to Chernarus -- an open world post-Soviet state and one of the areas hit by a new and presently unknown infection which has wiped out most of the world's population. You are one of the few who have survived and now you must search this new wasteland in order to fight for your life against what is left of the indigenous population, now infected with the disease.  Designed on an updated version of the powerful ArmA II engine, this stand-alone version of DayZ takes everything that stunned players in the original MOD to a new level. Expect a more complex and authentic scenario (with more infected character types and more fully-modeled building interiors) that will immerse you in the survival horror like never before. The gameplay looks the same as the regular version mod. It will be also on Steam. To play DayZ you had to pay $39.99 on steam to download Arma then the DayZ mod.

MapleStory Gameplay

With over 70 million accounts created, Maplestory is probably the most played free-to-play MMORPG of all time.  Maplestory is a 2D side-scrolling, fantasy MMORPG with a massive amount of features and things to do.  Although the game is now a little bit over three years old, it still remains fresh, as the game has undergone countless content updates and patches.  If you can look past MapleStory’s childish, cartoony graphics, there is simply lot this game has to offer.  Each player starts out as a classless novice, but can advance to their first jobs at level ten (level eight for magicians).  The game launched with the following job advancements:
Warrior- Warriors are the strongest melee class in the game, with an incredible amount of hit points.  They are perhaps the weakest characters in the game for the first 30-40 levels, but become incredibly powerful later on.
Magician- Magicians are the strongest characters in the early parts of the game.  They are capable of dealing massive damage with their offensive spells, but they have the least hit points out of all the classes.
Bowman- The Bowman in Maplestory are the generic ‘archer’ character, with the ability to deal a large amount of damage from a distance, but are vulnerable in close quarters combat.
Thief- A Thief in Maplestory is the standard ‘rogue’ archetype, with the ability to use either daggers or throwing weapons.  Thieves can deal massive amounts of damage at higher levels, but tend to have low hit points.
Pirate- Pirates were recently introduced to MapleStory within the last few content updates.  They are very fast attackers, like rogues, with the ability to use both guns and fist weapons.
*Since the Cygnus Knight, Aran, and Evan updates, 7 New Playable classes have been added to the game.
*Since the Dual Blade and Big Bang Updates there a total of 18+ playable classes. The new Big Bang classes are Battle Mage, Wild Hunter and The Mechanic.