PSN

Sympathy for the Monster

Dishonored's melancholy city of Dunwall was not short of stories to tell.

A head in the clouds is an idiom normally assigned to the whimsical musings of idealistic dreamers. At Irrational Games it appears to be a declaration of faith. The hype surrounding their follow-up to BioShock was bound to go supersonic, but the wild ambition and blissful imagination that visible in BioShock Infinite's announcement and subsequent preview cycle sent expectations through the troposphere. Irrational was expected to reach for the stars, but what were the odds they were actually going to pull another one down?

You just run for an extended period of time. It's supposed to be wild.

With great power comes incredible irresponsibility.

The third game in a series is always the toughest planet to crack. If the sequel addressed mistakes and refined ideas of a first entry, and it if was successful, where does that leave the inevitable follow-up? The newly perfected formula won't work twice, and if its elements are altered too drastically it's likely to explode and make a mess. Visceral Games' solution to this volatile problem was to augment, rather than alter, the nature of Dead Space. An emphasis on weapon creation and cooperative play, both firsts for the series, seemed welcome - as long as surviving Dead Space's beloved horror was still in focus.

Arc System Works' Guilty Gear series has been around for some fifteen years now. In early December, the latest home version, Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus, was finally released on the PSN, having previously been released on XBLA, Wii, and PSP. The R version is live in select arcades now, so even though Plus isn't the latest, it's still a solid technical 2D fighter with a deep history.

Ron Gilbert and Double Fine Productions attempt to combine their trademark humor, nostalgia for point-and-click adventure games with the practicality of the modern puzzle-platformer.

Response Time.

Fast-paced and furious are the best words to describe your typical multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA). With games like League of Legends, it's tough to live without a keyboard and mouse in one of these types of games. With that said, is it possible for a console to have a MOBA game that could those on a PC? Oh, it's possible.