Kirby and the Rainbow Curse Review

Kirby and the Rainbow Curse is mechanically tied to Kirby: Canvas Curse, a 2005 Nintendo DS platformer. In Canvas Curse, you control Kirby with only the stylus, tapping to make him roll along and drawing rainbow lines to move him up, down, over enemies, and into the path of collectibles. Kirby could also copy enemies' skills and use them to his own advantage, making for an interesting and versatile mix of abilities to guide the beloved pink character through a handful of worlds packed with environmental puzzles.

Canvas Curse innovated a new way to move Kirby around, but Rainbow Curse has squandered most of its charm. Despite the beautiful claymation art style and eye-candy coloring, the game is dull. Kirby's movement and abilities have been oversimplified to the point that getting Kirby actually to do what you want is a gamble. This, coupled with a watery story mode and unexciting bonus modes, makes Rainbow Curse feel soulless, disconnected from a franchise that has made some strong decisions in past iterations.

In case you were wondering, Kirby's still adorable.

Movement in Rainbow Curse is minimalistic. Gameplay takes place entirely on the GamePad. To move Kirby forward, you tap him with the stylus, and he rolls. To switch directions, you draw a rainbow line in front of him, which he bumps into and then rolls the opposite way. Rolling him into certain types of blocks breaks them, and rolling onto an enemy's head kills it. To move Kirby up and through the air, you draw rainbow lines for him to roll along. Scattered through the environments are gold stars, and if Kirby collects 100, holding the stylus to the screen will charge him up for a more powerful attack that breaks metal and stone and damages larger enemies. He follows his lines dutifully, so draw them carefully.

Early levels are a breeze, but in later stages, Kirby's Jello-y physics makes them more difficult to complete. Stages are all slightly-different variants on each other, offering the same obstacles, just in different places. Sand and water you have to manipulate using lines, boxes you have to ram into, keys you have to collect to unlock the next area--some form of this was in every puzzle in every level, making things monotonous. I could expect at least one door to unlock in every first or second stage level. I knew Kirby would be a plane or tank come the last level before the boss fight. This pattern became familiar by the third stage, so I always knew what to expect and how to get around the pile of boxes in the room or collect the key. There isn't much variety to Rainbow Curse's stages of puzzle-solving.

Some puzzles and boss battles require quick reflexes, calling for a fast flick of the brush to paint a path to safety or change directions to bump a projectile back into an enemy's face. Guiding Kirby out of harm's way can prove difficult; he's a little slippery. Rainbow lines must be drawn quickly and strategically to roll him away, and sometimes even then, it's not enough to get the bugger. Kirby will roll along the top or bottom of a line depending on which side he touches, and if you're rolling on a line's underside and hit a wall, you're stuck, even if the line arcs over it and away. With this method, it's easy to back Kirby into corners, especially when the level includes a screen-moving component that means instant death if Kirby falls out of frame. More than once I drew lines hoping to bounce Kirby to safety but instead painted him into a corner. Kirby himself has also been granted some floaty physics this time around, making it feel like you're batting a bouncy cotton ball around the screen.

It's a tank!It's a sub!It's a plane!

Every action besides drawing lines relies on tapping the GamePad--you never use the face buttons or triggers--and with everything mapped to a tap, navigation gets sticky quickly. In some levels, Kirby is transformed into a tiny plane, tiny tank, or tiny submarine. As the former, Kirby relies absolutely on the player to draw rainbow lines to guide him. When he's a tank or submarine, you tap to both move Kirby and shoot projectiles at the same time. Submarine missiles, however, need those rainbow lines to guide them to targets; otherwise, they will shoot straight ahead. It's monotonous and deeply frustrating to have both moves mapped to the one command. If Kirby is in the middle of the screen and you want to shoot enemies below you and move to the left to collect a star, you need to tap to Kirby's left and also draw rainbow lines to guide the missiles towards the bad guys. The submarine-Kirby and tank-Kirby levels are also constantly, slowly scrolling alon g, meaning you need to keep in frame to stay alive.

The game has an infuriating learning curve. Being bound to a one-directional line is limiting, and the game demands early mastery without giving you time to adapt. When Kirby is forced to become a plane or tank, it limits movement even further. Fine control is difficult in many instances, especially when Kirby is in these vehicle forms. Plane Kirby is particularly unwieldy, and many times I went to draw a line only to accidentally tap on Kirby and have him speed away from the desired direction. And in one late-game boss battle, Kirby spent most of the time hovering on the screen's edges, where I couldn't reach him with the stylus and where the rainbow lines refused to appear to guide him. He was in a corner I couldn't get him out of. The general line-drawing takes some getting used to, but even after becoming moderately comfortable, after seven whole words and 28 stages, I still never felt like I had proper control of Kirby due to his flighty nature.

Also, those rainbow lines? Your paint can run out, and you'll need to wait for a quick two- or three-second recharge before you can use it again. This adds a bit of resource management when crossing wide chasms and dealing with loads of projectile-shooting enemies, forcing you to keep an eye on your reserves. The challenge in Rainbow Curse lies in mastering drawing these lines, but frustration can reach an all-time high depending on how committed you are to getting it right.

Better together.

Kirby typically feels floaty, because you inflate him to fly over obstacles and earn new powers by inhaling enemies. But you do neither of these things in Rainbow Curse. But Kirby feels useless here because the delicate physics don't quite sync with the mechanics. He can only roll into enemies or power up and roll into enemies, and if you roll into the enemy from the wrong angle--such as from the side or on top of its giant spiky head--you lose life. Some enemies jump or throw spears, and it's difficult to time how long it will take you to roll along a line and slam down on their heads before they sneak a hit in. Your only option is roll into them, though, so it's all you can do.

One way to get through the game is by literally babysitting Kirby, adding one to three other local players as his companion Waddle Dee to cover him to the finish line. Each Waddle Dee can jump, hover for a few moments, and slash enemies, totally free of the exasperating rainbow lines. I played with a friend as Waddle Dee, and he was able to do nearly everything without me; Kirby is needed to draw rainbow lines over un-jumpable spaces, and Waddle Dee took care of everything else solo. I played through several levels with my colleagues and nearly all of them preferred to grab Waddle Dee. It feels odd that the co-op character should be more powerful than the main hero.

There are a few more bells and whistles in Rainbow Curse that add content, but nothing incredibly interesting. Completing levels can unlock an additional stage that is accessible in Challenge mode. Each stage includes four small rooms packed with obstacles you've seen before; there's nothing here that isn't already offered somewhere in story mode. You must maneuver Kirby through each small room to a treasure chest. You only have 15 seconds to succeed in each room, and if you fail, you lose the challenge. These tiny contained challenges have no incentive to them, since they repeat ideas from the main campaign that have already been repeated umpteen times.

Narrow escape.

You can also use Amiibo with Rainbow Curse with some restrictions. Tapping a Kirby, Dedede, or MetaKnight Amiibo to the GamePad will grant you a power-up; Kirby lets you use his dash ability whenever you want, Dedede gives you two extra health bars, and MetaKnight makes Kirby more powerful. But you can only use one Amiibo once a day, and if you die just once, you lose the power-up and have to wait a day to use it again. Since losing life is an inevitability in Rainbow Curse, it's disappointing that the Amiibo bonus is something you can't hold on to for your entire playtime.

Kirby and the Rainbow Curse is a tiring game. It's taxing without being rewarding, like doing a mile on a stationary bike and discovering that you only burned away calories from one bite of your lunch burrito. The game gets frustrating quickly due to repetitive obstacles and there's not much incentive to dig into a game that won't give you that agency. It's a mediocre romp through a gorgeously detailed world that doesn't give you the control you need as a player, which ultimately dulls its shine.

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The Order: 1886 Review

The Order: 1886 is a torturer and a tease. It promises you a circuitous story populated with near-immortal knights, it promises you exciting encounters with snarling werewolves, it promises you clever weaponry the likes of which you rarely see in video games. It dangles these hopes in front of you and then yanks them away, reneging on one promise after another, letting you hold that precious toy in your hand and then denying you the chance to maintain the thrill. The Order is cruel in the way it plays with your expectations, taking a promising premise and then sucking out much of the energy with boring cutscenes, an ending wholly devoid of closure, and shooting-gallery action sequences.

"Boring" is the best word to describe The Order in general, actually. That this third-person action game turns a parade of steampunk imagery and Arthurian legends into a dull stew of modern games' most tiresome cliches is quite a feat, though hardly one worth celebrating. It is (as you probably guessed) 1886, and you are Grayson, otherwise known as Galahad, one of the Knights of the Round Table. It is a time of trouble: common citizens have begun to rebel against the gentry, possibly allying with a race of werewolves the game alternately refers to as lycans and half-breeds. It's a brilliant setup, ripe with possibilities. You look to the sky and see zeppelins hovering overhead; you look to the armory, and you find a young Nikola Tesla ready to introduce you to clever armaments. That such a world could be so lifeless is unfathomable.

Ah yes, those black bars. The Order: 1886 really, really wants to be a movie.

Yet The Order turns the mystical into the mundane. You face lycans early on, leaping out of the way and shooting them down before killing them off for good by plunging a knife into them. And then they are cast aside for hours until the half-breeds are barely a memory. The Order pulls them out of hiding a few more times, though the circumstances are highly controlled, and conclude with the kind of anticlimax that becomes the game's calling card. The most dramatic of these few battles end with quick-time focused snoozes that betray the very idea of confronting such beasts. As for the nature of the lycans--where they come from, what their presence has meant for humanity, how humans could ally with such creatures--most of that is left to your imagination. Developer Ready at Dawn doesn't address the most interesting aspects of its own ideas.

Instead, the story focuses on its stale protagonists, who sit and argue at the round table every so often while getting to the bottom of the rebel plot. What a shame that interesting supernatural and social elements would be sidelined in favor of boardroom shenanigans, particularly given the light character development. I applaud the cast: the voice acting is brilliant, far better than the material deserved, and it is the acting talent alone that invested me in the characters' fates. The soundtrack, thick with cellos and violas, also rises above the blandness, but by the time the finale and its predictable quick-time events arrive, it is too late to squeeze emotion from this dry turnip. The credits roll after the button press that serves as an ending, and vital story threads are left dangling in the wind. Perhaps the Order: 1886 means to hint at a sequel, but whether or not that was Ready at Dawn's intention, it 's a disrespectful end to a plodding story. This may have been a fine close to the second act of a three-act story, but it's a rude sendoff to anyone hoping for explanation or reason.

The easiest way to identify the male Knights is by the style of facial hair.

How bizarre, then, that The Order is so focused on its narrative. During the initial sequences, you may assume that it is more Heavy Rain than Uncharted: you respond to threats by pressing the right buttons when prompted. As it happens, The Order is divided more or less equally into four disparate pieces: cutscenes, QTEs, walking around, and shooting. In time, the game strings these features into poorly-paced sequences that have no sense of rhythm. It is the modern action game personified: This is the part where I walk for three minutes, and now comes the short bit where I have to pick a bunch of things up and look at them, and then comes the brief shooting part that practically ends before it begins.

Walking, looking, and shooting aren't bad on their own, of course. What makes such basic mechanics so predictable and rote in The Order is how they are used. When the game forces you to holster your weapon and walk at a snail's pace, you may expect it to build tension or to develop its characters. Instead, The Order becomes an exposition machine, dropping basic plot points until you either open the door that leads to the next ultra-linear stage of the ultra-linear level, or another character does it for you.

The sequences in which you examine your surroundings looking for clues are even more tedious. You trudge about a room, picking up objects and looking at them, perhaps even turning them over in your hands before setting them down. In a few instances, the game might identify a detail of interest, and you have to press a button to continue, though the overall goal is typically to pick up everything in the vicinity until you trigger the next event--and in at least one case, you aren't even the one to discover the pertinent information, making all of that monotonous strolling aggravatingly pointless. A few weapons aside, you're rarely looking at anything of interest: old photographs of characters you barely know (if at all), letters that provide the tiniest morsel of backstory, and so forth. That The Order is so in love with its own object models is almost laughable: You pick up minor knick-knacks and lovingly rotate them as if you have discovered the Holy Grail. Yes, this model ship is lovely, but was the self-congratulatory time-padder necessary?

If you turn it around in your hand long enough, the game will eventually let you put it down.

I presume that The Order: 1886 wishes to build its world by demanding you admire the details, but Ready at Dawn needn't have tried so hard to point out how pretty their art is: it is simply pretty, full stop. The game has a few of the standard tricks up its sleeve to gloss over the occasional flaws: motion blur, a subtle film grain effect, overzealous depth-of-field effects, and the such. It's difficult to overlook The Order's tonally consistent aesthetics, however: It is fully committed to its style. From a bridge's vantage point, you wield an electrically charged cannon while gazing upon a smoky Victorian London. The bridge is dotted with iron carriages, some still sturdy, and some ravaged by the ongoing firefight. Rococo flourishes adorn the Knights' chamber: walls decorated with gold leaf, floors embellished with Latin script, flickering candles embedded within serpentine sconces. The Knights' weathered face s aren't quite beautiful, but they are remarkably human; Each of the Lord Chancellor's grimaces and squints betray a soul-crushing history you wish you could have partaken in.

The action is almost an afterthought, given all the talking, the walking, and the quick-time events, few of which complement onscreen motion in the manner of Telltale Games' best QTEs. It's a shame that The Order evokes Heavy Rain so early in its six-hour play time, because the comparison does not work in this game's favor. The Order clearly has cinematic aspirations, regardless: The loose camera hews close behind you, to the point where you can not often see much of the battlefield once you have taken cover. The game is at its best when it allows itself to be a shooter, which is what makes its failings all the more disheartening. The thermite rifle is one of the most interesting weapons in recent memory, letting you fire a round of magnesium ammo and then ignite it with a rush of air. What a blast it is to mess with such a unique firearm--and what a heartbreaker to have such grossly limited use of it. The same is true of the previously mentioned cannon: It is ripped from your hands all too quickly and replaced with less-interesting pistols and carbine rifles.

Too many levels have you trapped in sniping position. Too few levels give you the really good guns.

Those weapons function just fine, at least. The level design is functional, too, but uninspired. You know a turkey shoot is about to begin as you enter an area and see all the obvious cover spots--and then the turkeys appear, right on schedule, ready to die at your hands. Expectedly, such predictability breeds apathy. Grenade-lobbing supersoldiers aside, it's all too easy to mow down the opposition, making the blacksight mechanic, which allows you to temporarily slow down time and pelt foes with bullets, all but unnecessary on medium difficulty. There's a system in place for recovering if you are downed in combat, but it, too, is superfluous: should you fall, a rebel soldier almost always lands a killing shot.

All of these gameplay tropes are then shoved together into herky-jerky levels that end just when you think they might gain momentum. The only individual sequence lengthy enough to find a rhythm is a later stealth level, though it's far too simple to inspire wishes for more sneaky sections. What, then, to make of The Order: 1886? It is, at best, perfectly playable, and lovely to look at and listen to. But it is also the face of mediocrity and missed opportunities. A bad game can make a case for itself. A boring one is harder to forgive.

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Criminal Girls: Invite Only Review

Criminal Girls: Invite Only is a perverted, uncomfortable crack at a role-playing game. You find the trappings of a standard turn-based adventure here, from the incessant random battles to the monumental bosses with seemingly endless hit points. The multi-floored dungeons and rich progression system can last you dozens of hours, but with whipping the sinful desires of young girls acting as one of the core hooks, it's difficult to take Criminal Girls seriously. What could have been a basic, if uninspired, JRPG is ultimately little more than a sleazy grab at an audience pining to watch bloated bosoms bounce at the touch of the Vita's front and back screens. The overall package isn't wholly without merit, but Criminal Girls is far too focused on satiating raw desire in lieu of promoting its few interesting features.
The peculiar narrative does little to contextualize the near-nudity and hyper-sexualized moments. You find yourself deep in the bowels of Hell as the game opens, greeted by an officious warden who tasks you with taking care of a medley of sinful souls. These female delinquents have been damned to a life in Hades, but if they can pass the Redemption Program and overcome the challenges ahead, their sins will be forgiven. Of course, each of the seven unique characters has been banished and disregarded for a reason, so it takes time to gain their trust and convince them to actually earn the right to be redeemed.
Welcome to Cell Block NC-17.
Relationships among the girls are built and then tested as you climb out of Hell, but one of the keys to unlocking special skills and stat boosts is through individual motivation. After gaining the universal currency through battles and treasure chests, you can choose the Motivate option at any save point to whip, drip liquids on, or tickle any of the delinquents. During these sequences--which become more involved as your character progresses--your girl of choice either sheepishly or aggressively questions your intentions as she dons an outfit that ranges from risqué to borderline pornographic. If you want your party to reach its full potential, your participation in these shameless sequences is necessary.
And surprisingly, these scenes were even more explicit in Japan. This is a touched-up edition of a PSP game released in 2010, with the motivation scenes being edited so that pink steam obfuscates portions of the screen before eventually dissipating at your touch. Moans and groans have also been removed, but somehow, the silence is even more unsettling.
If you really want to be turned on, porn without pink haze is free on the Internet.
The whole process is vulgar and unnecessary. The basic dialogue that litters your journey can be crude, drawing attention to one of the character's breasts or bottom. But going from cheap sexual jokes to rubbing a stripped-down teenager on your Vita screen is a thematic leap that's not only jarring but repellent. The story isn't stellar by any means, but any emotional connection you build with these characters from dungeon to dungeon is immediately snapped once you throw them into such compromising positions.
It'd be easy just to disregard Criminal Girls: Invite Only if the surrounding elements were just as tasteless. However, the actual video game part, where you battle monsters and raise levels, is fun, and pretty novelbesides. Instead of controlling the action of all four party members in a given turn, you pick just one of four options. One girl might feel bold and want to do a solo attack, while another decides that an elemental ability is the best course of action. As your characters grow closer and learn new abilities, new provisional avenues appear. By the end, it's common to see all four girls working together to dole out damage as a team or maybe even combine for a special duo ability dealing triple damage.

These combat quirks add a healthy dose of diversity to the moment-to-moment action. You have to scroll through your options and pick the proper technique for the given situation rather than simply hammer away at the X button until you've earned a victory jingle. The many useful offensive and defensive skills that become available make each of the seven characters useful, meaning that you likely won't pigeonhole yourself to a specific combination of characters.
The combat is Criminal Girls' saving grace.
Surprisingly, the combat stays mostly fresh even in the face of innumerable random battles. There's a medley of monsters waiting to greet you after every few feet, and the story often asks you to retrace your steps over and over again. If the environments were interesting, this wouldn't be a major problem. Unfortunately, trudging up and down a featureless bend isn't fun or exciting, and doing so just to make the bustiest member of your crew sweat through her top to grab the attention of a carnal boss isn't a good enough excuse. It's just a poor way to pad out an already lengthy experience.
You can escape from battles, but it's not a wise decision if you hope to progress. Each floor of this dungeon crawler presents stronger enemies, so you'll have to grind early and often to pass the later trials. I spent hours strengthening my party before attempting major battles but still found myself struggling because most of the late-game bosses use frequent healing techniques to make most of your offensive efforts toothless.
In this game, crime and punishment are one and the same.
The turn-based action might be fun, but every other element of Criminal Girls: Invite Only does its best to stamp out its only saving grace. When it's not pushing discomforting images of barely dressed teens in your face, Criminal Girls is leading you back and forth across a lifeless dungeon just so you can thumb through lines of dull dialogue. There's enjoyment to be found within the game's combat, but it's just not worth stomaching the tedious design and perverse activities to find the pearl inside.

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Heroes of Might & Magic III - HD Edition Review

Even if you don't remember the specifics, you may remember greatly enjoying the original Heroes of Might & Magic III--and perhaps getting lost in it for hours, days, weeks at a time. The new HD edition of the game is also likely to sink its claws into you, so great is its power to absorb your time and your thoughts. That said, I have more than a few significant misgivings about the re-release's cost and content, especially when compared with the more complete versions of the original game on sale elsewhere online.

Set aside the aforementioned caveats for a moment, though, and note that this revamped HOMM III is mostly like the fantastic original game. As the title indicates, Heroes of Might & Magic III HD is the same 16-year-old game with a facelift to satisfy modern tastes for high-resolution graphics. The gameplay is fundamentally identical: You take on the role of fantasy heroes in campaign scenarios, some 50 individual scenarios (most with stories and settings that make them play like mini-campaigns), and a number of local and online multiplayer modes of play.

The best part of HOMM III is exploring the richly detailed world maps.

Activities are split between the three components of play: exploring, building cities, and engaging in combat. Exploring the world maps representing regions of the fantasy realm of Erathia is probably the most enjoyable part of HOMM III HD. There are an incredible number of goodies to be discovered, including resource pits, treasure piles, magical artifacts, wandering monsters, and even goofy treats like leprechauns with pots of gold. The intricate nature of these maps has long been a hallmark of the HOMM franchise. It's all a little ridiculous--you can't go five feet into the wilderness without tripping over a bunch of gems or running into a murderous pack of halberdiers--but the style perfectly brings to life a colorful, much-missed fantasy atmosphere that went out of vogue about the same time that Erol Otus stopped drawing the covers of D&D modules.

Combat runs a close second. Armies are fronted by heroes who level up and gain skills with might and magic as in any traditional Gygaxian RPG, but their ranks are filled with warriors, wizards, monsters, and more drawn from factions based on D&D archetypes. Castle comes with knights and angels, Inferno features imps and demons, Necropolis boasts wights and liches, Rampart is home to elves and unicorns, and so forth. Battles themselves are turn-based affairs taking place on hex maps, either out in the open or in sieges before city walls. The great variety of the units gives these scraps some real tactical texture. Armies need to be built smartly, with a real balance between melee and ranged units, or you'll inevitably get chewed up and spit out. Magic is also crucial. Your hero needs a reasonably thick spell book to be able to deal with larger battles, as the assistance of a well-timed fireball can mean the difference between victory and being vanquished.

Conquering and building cities are an integral part of every HOMM III scenario.

Finally, you have to spend time conquering and then building up towns specific to each faction. Conquest is a big part of every scenario, as you need access to new cities on the maps to increase production levels, vary the types of troops you can create, and just generally creep your way to victory. This can get a little grind-happy after a while. The selection of buildings and upgrades is fairly limited. You max out buildings fairly quickly with your first city, then do it again, then do it again. There are also few meaningful differences between the cities of the factions. So basically, there is a lot of rinse, lather, and repeat going on here while you're cranking out streams of troops.

Even after the passage of going on two decades, HOMM III remains one a sprawling, immersive experience that can take over your life. Time hasn't had much impact on one of the biggest (you could easily play the game for hundreds of hours between the campaign scenarios, the skirmish maps, and online multiplayer) and best titles from the golden age of PC gaming. It actually is a bit shocking today by comparison with modern games. The sheer size and intricacy of the maps, the diversity of the units, and the challenge presented by the AI even on the easy difficulty setting is like stepping into an ice-cold shower first thing in the morning.

Your hero needs a reasonably thick spell book to be able to deal with larger battles.

I am particularly taken aback by how tough the game is in the beginning. I had to restart my opening campaign four times before I got back into the groove and figured out the proper pace. HOMM III always forced you to maintain a tricky balancing act. Hole up in your cities to build up sizable numbers of troops, and you give away the goodies on the map to adventurous opponents. Expand too soon, and your troops wind up spread too thin, opening the way for enemy armies to sneak behind you and capture your cities without a struggle. It's still impressive just how thin a line you have to walk in order to succeed. In addition, the artificial intelligence is formidable when playing solo. It cheats a little, as enemy forces always know your weaknesses and notice when you make dumb moves like leaving a city wide open. Suffice it to say, the bad guys here are never pushovers.

So HOMM III is just where you left it. That's good. And that's also bad, because publisher Ubisoft could have been more generous. First of all, HOMM III HD doesn't include the two expansion packs released for the original game, apparently due to the loss of the source code. Regardless of the reason, this HD edition is not the entire HOMM III package. That causes some concerns about pricing, as $14.99 for this game via Steam arguably gets you less than the HOMM III Complete version with both expansions selling for $9.99 at GOG.com. Granted, this cheaper edition is the unadorned original game in all of its pixelated glory. But seeing as you can apply a free--and quite good--high-definition mod to that original game, the differences suddenly become a lot less significant.

The lumpy blobs of old have been turned into veritable wargame miniatures.

And the HD aspects of this re-release don't really amount to much. Yes, the game looks better, particularly in the combat screens, thanks to support for higher modern resolutions and widescreen monitors. Unit art has been dramatically upscaled, to the point where creatures look like little cartoons instead of the old-school colored blobs where you had to squint to make out a dragon's tail. But the animations are still rudimentary. Units just shrug when they rip off spells or swing swords. There are no frills whatsoever, so don't expect any snazzy cutscenes showing an ice bolt spell taking down a horde of skeletons. And some miscues spoil the presentation a little bit, mainly the way that map features like castle walls and other units in close combat frequently block key information like the number of units in a stack.

The main adventure map has some problems. While it is clearer than it was before, it still isn't actually clear--not even close. I had to constantly peer at the screen like an old man checking labels at the grocery store. Is that a gang of demons? Or is that an artifact? Is that odd-looking lump of grass just an odd-looking lump of grass, or is it something I can activate to grab some goodies? This map is also finicky when it comes to clicking, often demanding three and four tries to choose points of interest due to the game demanding that you select very precise spots before activating encounters. All in all, the "Huh?" factor is strong with this one, which can be frustrating in a turn-based game where wasting even the slightest bit of unit movement can kill you.

The sheer size and intricacy of the maps, the diversity of the units, and the challenge presented by the AI even on the easy difficulty setting is like stepping into an ice-cold shower first thing in the morning.

Even given the greatness at the heart of HOMM III, it is impossible to fully recommend the HD edition. Making such a legendary game accessible to a modern audience is always a good thing, but Ubisoft just didn't do enough here to set this refurbished version apart from the original and its free high-definition mod. More effort could have--and should have--been made to ensure that this would be the definitive and complete HOMM III that all fans of the series would have to have. As much as I loved this trip back in time, I would recommend that anyone else interested in the same sort of journey book it with a different and cheaper travel agent.

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Elite: Dangerous Review

I am skillfully piloting my Zorgon Peterson brand Hauler through the rotating port of one of the eighty bazillion space stations in Elite: Dangerous. I fiddle with system checks on the holographic dashboard, wearing an expression of self-satisfied disinterest. Almost casually, I flip on the landing gear, invert my ship, and reverse thrusters, deftly drifting into landing pad number 44. I'm master and commander at the far side of the galaxy. I'm an ace. I'm the Star Lord. I'm...not docking?

Well. In a Whedonesque bit of bathos, Elite: Dangerous has glitched, and instead of the chirps of the landing guidance system, I'm being rewarded with the angry, electric snapping sound of my shields grinding on raw space station. No problem--I'll just cancel my docking request and resend it. I make the requisite clicks. And that's when things go very, very bad. "TRESPASS WARNING" flashes in deadly red text, and a timer begins counting down from thirty. "Loitering is a crime punishable by death," a female voice helpfully intones over a loudspeaker, as I'm perforated by what is, frankly, an irresponsible amount of laser fire from station security. End scene.

Exiting hyperdrive up-close and personal with a star is wonderfully jarring.

Lasers, explosions, dystopian public service announcements...that was one of my more dramatic deaths in Elite: Dangerous, but it's actually in the routine of the parts preceding my demise that I experienced the quintessential sci-fi experience. It's the genre's unique thrill: seeing the incredible trappings of futuristic life fade into the background, turn second nature, become mundane. It's Chris Pratt punting alien lizards while dancing along to a cassette, or the way Cowboy Bebop segues from interstellar gateways to bell peppers and beef. The science is still there, of course, doing all the work to keep the cold void of space safely on the other side of the glass. But all the fussy details have been neatly elided, the edges gently worn and rounded from use. That's my kind of sci-fi, and Elite: Dangerous often delivers it, like a spacefaring Euro Truck Simulator.

But in Elite, that sort of familiarity is hard-won. Even if you do your due diligence in the game's tutorial--tampering with the controls, pitching and rolling until you can parallel park at half the speed of light--the game's vision of spaceflight simulation still proves aloof. It's quite a thing, to dump a player into a scale representation of the entire Milky Way galaxy with only the vaguest hint of direction. There's no expressed goal in Elite: Dangerous; if you're looking for signs of progress they might be found in your reputation, a one-word descriptor ranging from "Harmless" to "Elite." But you could just as easily mark your improvement by the accrual of bigger and better ships, or in cold hard credits. A few intersecting occupations are accounted for: trader or smuggler, pirate or bounty hunter… and miner for those who prefer the company of floating bits of rock.

You have the freedom to go where you will and do what you want, but friction and false starts ensure that you won't be going there very fast or doing it very efficiently for some time. There's the inscrutability of your cockpit dashboard to contend with, loaded for bear with functionality that never gets articulated. That, and the imposing galaxy map, with its disorienting scale and legion of similar-sounding star systems. There are the glitches, like the time I spawned into the game to find a shiny new "Wanted" label I'd earned for no reason, or the aforementioned docking snafu. And there's all the missing data that can only be found outside of the game, from critical trade information to a plain-words explanation of how your ship's fuel tank actually works.

In supercruise, astral bodies fly by like billboards.

It wasn't until I totalled the shiny new spacecraft I'd been loaned and tried to make a go of it with the chintzy, standard-issue Sidewinder that I came to better grasp Elite's systems. The Sidewinder's rinky-dink frame shift drive forced me to take a more considered look at the galaxy map or risk leaving myself stranded between long system jumps. The absence of a docking computer meant that I'd be guiding the little craft into station on manual instead having the autopilot unceremoniously dump me onto landing pads. Elite is at its best when it's forcing this more deliberate level of engagement, and I wish it happened more often. Tellingly, there's a pre-flight systems checklist that you can run through every time you take off, but Elite pulls its punch and lets you opt out. Even as I write this, I'm hurtling through space on a trade run at 16.64c, window minimized. It's perfectly possible, as it turns out, to conduct an intragalactic smuggling operation en passant. All that's necessary is the occasional alt + tab to make sure I'm not about to plow headlong into a star.

Once you've gotten your space legs under you and upgraded to something resembling a viable ship, it's easy to settle into semi-comfortable routine. Check the station bulletin board for courier missions or a tantalizing bounty payout, or the commodities market for a decent-looking buy-low option. Set a course, leapfrogging from star to nearby star. Arrive at your destination system, drop out of hyperspace and into a slightly slower supercruise, and throttle down so that you don't overshoot the beacon for your target station or combat zone. Deliver your supplies, ply your wares, blow up your mark, and repeat. Profits can be reinvested in your ship once you're safely docked, towards upgraded cargo holds or, say, advanced lasers. The nuances of kitting out a good ship are as obscure as any of the rest of Elite's systems, but generously, anything bought can be sold back for the same price if it turns out you've made a colossal error. Elite is less charitable when it comes to trading outside the garage. The game plays it coy when you look for trade data in other star systems--the best you can hope for is a suggestion that "maybe" a given product is "sometimes" exported from some station therein. Often times it isn't there, however, and let me tell you: there's a real novel frustration in traveling eighty light years away to find out they're all out of tea this week.

You have the freedom to go where you will and do what you want, but friction and false starts ensure that you won't be going there very fast or doing it very efficiently for some time.

It's enough to drive a fellow to tea piracy, which happens to be well accommodated for in Elite's laissez-faire frontier. One can buy interdiction systems that forcibly drag an NPC or a player character's ship out of supercruise, opening them up to predation should they fail a minigame of "keep the crosshairs aligned." Thus engaged, combat unfolds with straightforward but precise dogfights, where momentum and trajectory are the secret killers, not the missiles or lasers. I confess that I'm not particularly good at this sector of Elite, whether it comes to gauging an enemy's skill from afar, or sticking to his six in the heat of battle. I even have trouble remembering to keep my speed at the sweet spot that lets you turn quickest. But a more practiced hand can make use of the more advanced tactical offerings, redistributing power to the parts of one's ship in the most need, or pulling the slick-looking maneuvers conferred by a stick and throttle system or Oculus VR headset (the peripherals pair so naturally with Elite that the game almost seems built just to leverage them). That's a wrinkle I've yet to master, but the promise of dramatic, large-scale battles between federal armadas tucked away in distant systems is more than enough incentive to learn the ropes. Would that you could effectively team up with other players to run them--Elite's tools for inter-player cooperation are almost nonexistent.

The little joys of Elite: Dangerous' solo play suffice, though. Peals of thunder rumble past your ship in supercruise, and I don't care if they're as fake as the pumped-in crowd noise at the Georgia Dome, because they sound great. Ditto for the sudden, 18-wheeler horn that accompanies a drop out of hyperspace into close proximity with a giant, iridescent star. The hottest of these visibly cook your ship if you get too close, which happens to be a requirement if you want to use a fuel scoop to replenish your stores on the fly. They're also functional light emitters in the game's engine, and you can see the shadow of your craft ripple down the side of a station if you get between the two bodies. There are a few curiosities out in the ether, too, though they're harder to appreciate if you're not an astrophysics hobbyist. For example, the chance discovery of a station orbiting, well, nothing, struck me as odd. There's a term for this, apparently: a "LaGrange Point," but instead of making me contemplate the wonder of the universe, it mostly brought ZZ Top to mind. Still, this a game where light years can be hopped in a moment, and yet the prospect of traveling from one end of Elite's map to the other remains inconceivable. It's hard to overstate how remarkable that is, how the simple act of playing a game can engender such an acute awareness of size and scale.

It's an accomplishment in its own right, but that breadth doesn't come into play elsewhere in the experience. Like most space sims, Elite: Dangerous partitions the universe into discreet "rooms," in this case representing individual star systems. At a glance, it appears that almost a third of these systems purport to be in open rebellion, though you'd never know it from the pervasive quiet. Slaves are purchasable and tradable commodities, an inclusion that's sometimes played for ironic humor in the missions but usually rings as off-putting. The only way to interact with that underbelly of rebellion and slavery is from the comfort of my captain's chair, through a market speculation interface or a salvo of missiles. I pick up contracts for the assassination of high-ranking government officials on the same screen that I get my tea delivery requests.

Elite: Dangerous' galaxy map zooms from galaxy-wide, down to individual stars.

The old problem remains: when time and distance are bumped out to these impossible ranges, the only systems capable of following them out there are the most discreet and elastic ones. Trade just happens to scale well, a daisy chain of supply to demand, demand to supply, all the way to the white nothing at the edge of the universe. Perhaps the next true frontier is the search for a procedural generation system that can create something more ostentatious, something that can surprise…something not so visibly derived from an underlying system of ones and zeroes. But then, maybe it's there in Elite: Dangerous, in its way, and the problem is that I need to learn to start being more impressed by LaGrange points.

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The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D Review

It's hard not to compare The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D to Nintendo's other foray into handheld Zelda remakes, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D. Ocarina of Time's upgrades for the 3DS significantly improved the experience; artfully placed Sheikah Stones offered visions and showed where and how to solve the next puzzle, and the 3DS's gyroscope added motion controls to certain actions, such as shooting arrows. These additions were designed to make the game accessible to modern audiences and more palatable for short play sessions.
For 3DS, Majora's Mask was retooled to be friendlier in shorter player sessions, with great success. A more detailed quest log lets you keep track of every completed, uncompleted, and rumored item on your to-do list. You can set alarms to remind you when certain events will occur. Small tweaks to how songs affect time and the flow of boss battles give you deeper control of time itself, while the rearrangement of collectible items throughout dungeons and the overworld make Majora's Mask feel fresh for those coming back after 15 years.
"My preciousss..."
Majora's Mask is inarguably the weirdest Legend of Zelda game. Sometime shortly after the events of Ocarina of Time, our hero Link wanders into a country called Termina. Hyrule it is not: The ominously named region is home to an eerie cast of characters and hosts an inordinate number of strange happenings. An erratic mask salesman hoarding cursed objects? We've got one. Alien abductions? Frequent. Ghost hands in toilets and ghost giants throwing boulders and ghosts doing tai chi on huge mushrooms? More common that you'd like.
The strangest happening is the grimacing moon falling out of the sky. Link is given 72 hours to find Skull Kid, an impetuous young creature, and steal back an item of terrible power, the titular Majora's Mask. To do so, Link must liberate four spirits located in four temples scattered throughout the world. These spirits can help save the world, but for now, they have also fallen prey to the bizarre magic clouding Termina. He only has three days to do it, but with the help of his trusty magic ocarina, Link can rewind time for those three days and live them over and over like some Groundhog Day redux.

Time management is the name of the game here. Anytime during the 72-hour window, you can play the Song of Time to rewind back to dawn of the first day. Having this limit means you must allot yourself ample time to clear regional quests and complete dungeons. In each area, what you do in the surrounding area directly affects your access to the dungeon and side quests, so you'll need those full 72 hours. In one region the town is iced over, and defeating the dungeon boss is the only way to restore spring. In spring you have access to a handful of smaller missions that in turn reveal more major gains, like upping your sword power and finding your long-lost horse. Once, I completed this dungeon and then immediately rewound back to the first day...only to find it all frozen again. It's this kind of thing you need to be mindful of as you play Majora's Mask, and forces you to forgo leisurely exploration in favoring of beelining between quest points.

Like in most Legend of Zelda games, extensive travel across the continent and back is required to collect special items. These items range from a bigger bag to carry your bombs to a bow and arrows and everything in between. The traditional Zelda gear accumulation formula is present: help NPCs to gain helpful combat items, complete dungeons to get useful items like the aforementioned bow and fire arrows, and beat the dungeon boss to collect a key item.

But other than mystical weapons and keys to defeating the game's ultimate enemy--the power of Majora's Mask--you're also on the hunt for masks. Masks do many special things, and, more often than not, donning one can solve a difficult problem. A Blast Mask allows you to explode an enemy or rock wall without using bombs. The Great Fairy mask attracts stray fairies to you, making them easier to collect. Another mask teaches people to dance, another charms animals into parading around after you, and yet another lets you run faster and jump longer. Still more transform you into other Termina races. The Deku Mask turns you into a Deku Scrub and lets you utilize cannon-like flowers and glide through the air, while the Goron Mask grants you powerful punching abilities and the race's stony look. Masks grant you situational powers and are the key to navigating most puzzles. The variety and versatility make it hard to resist taking time to collect them all, especially when y ou know they'll make life in Termina easier.
Not quite the weirdest thing Link's ever done.
When you're not exploring the overworld, running fetch-quests for various townsfolk and mask hunting, you're in dungeons. Majora's Mask features four main dungeons and a handful of mini-dungeons where you can collect rare items like bigger wallets and mystical Zora eggs. Dungeons are the same as they've always been in Zelda: make your way through a labyrinthine, multi-level temple solving environment puzzles to get to the final boss. Defeating this final boss yields a health upgrade and liberates one of the four spirits that can help stop the moon from falling. Puzzles make up the meat of dungeon content, but you still spend an awful lot of time fighting.
Combat in Majora's Mask is simple. You use the left analog stick and face buttons to stab, slash, and parry, while the shoulder buttons help you block with your shield and lock on to enemies. The ability to lock on to enemies is helpful, as some opponents can crawl up onto the ceiling or leap long lengths, and keeping track of them becomes tricky.

Boss battles in Majora's Mask 3D have been substantially fixed, and while they feel more manageable than they did in the Nintendo 64 version, they aren't necessarily easier. These fights have been adjusted to prevent you from exploiting the boss's attack pattern, meaning that they won't always do the same thing with the same regularity in the same way. You need to knock bosses over and then attack their weak spots three times before you're victorious, but this time around, it's harder to sneak in cheap hits when they don't follow the same attack, rinse, and repeat formula. It makes these long fights feel new and interesting and makes success more satisfying. For example, the first dungeon boss can summon waves of smaller critters. The first time this happened, it was a handful of beetles. I expected him to go back to attacking me without his minions, but half a minute later, I had beetles and moths to contend with. Then he went back to attacking me solo until the end of the fight.

While bosses haven't been made easier, some other areas have been. There are more save points throughout the world, mercifully saving you from long stretches of lost progress in the event you fail. The Song of Soaring allows you to teleport to any save point, and now there are more of them to make navigation easier. Additionally, the Song of Double Time lets you fast forward to whatever hour you choose within a same-day window. In the original game, this song only let you fast-forward to dawn or dusk; in the 3DS version, you can teleport to any hour on the hour, allowing you to more carefully manage how and when you complete tasks. This also comes in handy when you just want to quickly wrap up a few side quests before rewinding to the first day and tackling a dungeon.
Ain't nobody got time for that.
Even smaller changes make Majora's Mask 3D more digestible in small quantities and make the puzzles feel newer for repeat players. Scattered throughout each dungeon are a dozen or so stray fairies that can be returned to the region's Great Fairy for combat upgrades. These stray fairy locations have been changed up from the original game, so if you think you know where all fairies are going in, you'll likely be hunting a little harder. Some exits put you into areas closer to where you need to go, eliminating running time. For example, after collecting beans underground, I was dumped outside a platform I needed rather than the front of the temple, eliminating a minute of wandering.
Google Calendar hasn't made it to Termina yet, but this will do.
But by far the best changes to Majora's Mask are the more detailed and comprehensive Bomber's Notebooks. These notebooks serve as your quest log, helping you keep track of where you should go and what you should be on the lookout for. The original Majora's Mask Notebooks were a little more cryptic and made you sweat out finding solutions a little more. Now, for the 3DS version, literally everything you need to know is there with a button press. The Notebooks keep track of rumors you hear from NPCs and gently suggest where you need to be to complete a task. Successful and failed tasks are also recorded, so if you mess something up on day three, you can rewind to day one and keep better track of how to fix it. These tiny tweaks make the game friendly in small doses. By giving players quick, efficient ways to tackle one sidequest or a mini-dungeon, they've ensured that they'll be comfortable playing the game in short bursts. Lunch breaks and morning commutes can now safely yield a fully completed Majora's Mask task.
The new Notebooks also keep track of the specific day and time that certain events occur and let you set alarms for them, so wherever you are in Termina, you'll know when you need to be back in Clocktown to catch a ghost or some extra cash. This is an amazing addition that makes housekeeping more manageable and lets you keep track of what items you get and when without having to take written notes yourself. Games with Majora's kind of time-management mechanics would do well to steal this gem of an idea.

In Majora's Mask, you have a set number of spaces to equip items and masks, and you're always swapping them around. Having the 3DS bottom screen show your gear and items at all times is an indispensable addition. You can fluidly explode a wall, attract a stray fairy, and then turn into a Deku Scrub and jump into a flower in a hot moment. It's convenient in every way that the original version was tedious. So many different items are needed at any given time, and having them all a tap away saves frustration and, more importantly, in-game time.
Best kept secret.
Majora's Mask 3D runs just fine on older 3DS models, but the experience is much more improved and cozy on the latest version, the New Nintendo 3DS. The additional tiny C-stick on the right side allows you to change the camera angle at will. This helps the most in boss fights, where both you and the boss are in constant motion, and it's often hard to keep track of where you both are. It also makes navigating large spaces while riding Epona much easier. In one quest, I had to ride around a wide expanse of farmland shooting aliens, and being able to shift where I was looking while riding at breakneck speed made fending them off a breeze.

If you're playing on the old 3DS, you have to lock Link in place and look around with the circle pad or use the gyroscope feature, which can get clunky. It's also frustrating for tasks that require you to move and look around quickly. Boss fights become equally annoying because lock-on targeting becomes the only way to keep tabs on the opposing monster. So while you can use your older 3DS with Majora's Mask 3D, I would highly recommend giving it a go on the newest handheld model.

The overall package for Majora's Mask 3D preserves all the weird delight of the original game while lowering the barrier of entry for new players. There's still a lot that's challenging about the puzzles and fights, but a few minor tweaks make your hard-won heart containers and masks feel that much more satisfying. The changes to how you can control and manage time mean the otherwise dense Majora's Mask is comfortable for shorter play sessions, making it a great fit for the handheld. It's evident that Nintendo put a lot of thought into updating this classic, which takes the game beyond a simple remake to become a new-old classic.

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Game of Thrones: Episode Two - The Lost Lords Review

Author George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire opens with a densely packed prologue. He gives you a taste of the world and its simmering dangers, a glimpse of attitudes in Westeros, and just enough information to get you wondering. It's a slow build-up to a dramatic payoff, and it takes a lot of patience and faith that things will get interesting before you get there. Telltale Games has taken this approach with its Game of Thrones video game, in that its second episode is where the story really begins. Having dedicated the entire first episode to setting the stage for the Forrester family's troubles, Telltale gets the ball rolling in Episode Two, The Lost Lords. The Forresters and their companions continue to be the most interesting characters on screen, and their ups and downs echo the flow of Martin's storytelling to great effect.

The Lost Lords opens on one of Episode One's more enigmatic lost ones, Asher Forrester, second-eldest son of the house and currently exiled in Yunkai. Yunkai, as you know, is Daenerys Targaryen's current pit-stop on her march to reclaim the Iron Throne. Meanwhile, Mira is still trying to leverage the favors of Margaery Tyrell and Tyrion Lannister in her family's favor, as well as balancing her strained friendship with another handmaiden. Gared Tuttle has just reached the Wall and is preparing to take the Black, joining the ranks of the Watchers that guard Westeros's northern border. And the situation at Ironrath continues to worsen, with the death of one lord and the unexpected arrival of another.

Brienne's got nothing on Beskha.

The first episode focuses entirely on the Forrester family, while The Lost Lords introduces others connected to them. We see two young women from other Northern houses come to comfort the grieving clan. In King's Landing, Mira's fellow handmaiden, Sera, is revealed as more than just an airheaded girl with dreams of marrying up. And in Yunkai, Asher hunts former slave-lords with his best friend, a female sellsword named Beskha.

Beskha is the most vivid of the new original characters, a boisterous, dirty-talking gal clad in leather who easily jokes about whores and who bounties with Asher. She's a strong addition to an already strong cast and is somewhat reminiscent of canon character Brienne of Tarth-- tall, muscular, brave, but with her own pack of secrets. During my time with The Lost Lords I latched onto Beskha, who felt like she had been hiding in dark corners of Westeros all along as we watched Daenerys and her retinue march on Yunkai.

She better be finishing The Winds of Winter...

Some of Episode Two's best moments take place at the beginning, and it's hard to describe how profoundly they affect the overall plot without giving too much away. If you're familiar with Martin's literary tricks--such as writing deaths of those gone for good, only from another character's perspective--you may have picked up their presence in Episode One, but in this episode they're more pronounced. The events in this episode's first two scenes feel like they were pulled directly out of the books or television show.

That's not where the familiarity stops, either. The Lost Lords feels like a piece straight from the source material and more intimately connected to the Game of Thrones universe than Iron from Ice. Granted, Iron from Ice was mostly scene-setting: who's dead, who's alive, who's unaccounted for but still not out of the game. Iron from Ice was the vehicle that got every character where they needed to be. Now, things become interesting. The Lost Lords is your reward for this long set-up, and not only is it well worth the wait, but it's worth several replays if you're the kind of person who needs to know the outcome of all choices on the table.

A motley crew.

As with the previous episode and other Telltale titles, combat requires the same string of quicktime prompts in order to dodge swords, stab opponents, and duck under flying furniture. The first combat sequence in The Lost Lords one-ups the intro to Iron from Ice, presenting a close-quarters scuffle bloodier and more acrobatic than anything thus far. It's intimate, violent and just so Game of Thrones, it sent a chill down my spine. This episode's action sequences also move a little more quickly, which can cause you to die more quickly. However, the game autosaves every few moves and plunks you into the action with little progress lost, forgiving mistakes more easily and minimizing grievances.

There are a few light sequences in which you have Gared training for a spot on the Night's Watch. You have to carry barrels across a yard, perform some basic sword moves against another trainee, and shoot straw dummies with arrows. It's a brief string of moments that bring you into the fold of black cloaks and justify Jon Snow's presence, and, while it's pleasant within Gared's story arc, it feels shoehorned in when you look at the broader scope of things. It's not as dire as choosing whether or not to dispose of a murder weapon or bully someone into marrying you, and creates a bit of a lull in the middle of an otherwise high-energy episode.

Pass this test and you will be sorted...

Telltale's games present the possibility of your choosing your own route through a story, with each choice impacting events further out. In Game of Thrones, you don't just have one way to steer; there are nearly half a dozen wheels spinning at once that need to be accounted for. And each spinning wheel affects the other without knowing the others' situation. Playing as the Forresters is a long game of telephone in which no one actually talks and all parties must consider each other at all times. The politics in Game of Thrones is incredibly stressful, and the scenarios produce the same feeling as episodes from the HBO show like "The Mountain and the Viper" and "Blackwater." Things have also started getting really scummy. The game nails the idea of backstabbing lords and unsuspecting servants in King's Landing, capturing the same urgency and dismay we've come to expect from something carrying "Game of Thrones" in the title.

Mind reading is a requirement of employment in King's Landing.

Normally, having so many things to keep track of in a video game is somewhat irritating, such as having to keep track of too many sidequests and remembering what NPCs need what item and when. Yet, Game of Thrones makes the act of forgetting what you did with one character not frustrating, but agonizing in the most entertaining way. Early on in the episode, I had an opportunity to forge a letter to someone that would greatly affect an outside union with House Forrester. I chose to write the letter, but by an hour later had completely forgotten about it, until someone suddenly brought it up. The letter-receiver and the member of my house they spoke to didn't know I had written the letter, taking the forged signature at face value. My first thought was how clever I had been. The second was that, oh my God, that act will probably destroy me later--both me and my house.

In Game of Thrones you're thinking for four people who, in turn, have to consider a dozen others in every decision they make. On a handful of occasions you have to choose whom to trust and whether or not to keep someone's confidence. Banking secrets may help you later, but breaking someone's faith may mean they throw you, literally, to the lions. Navigating conversations with some of the franchise's biggest characters like Tyrion and Jon Snow can be nerve-wracking, as these are the people in power you need to endear yourself to. But they are just the garnish on the proverbial cocktail Telltale has created with Game of Thrones' original characters.

There is one obvious choice here.

The Lost Lords offers no respite from the anguish of Iron from Ice, and keeps the energy and intrigue up in surprising ways. It's evident every choice you make affects members of your far-flung family, and while it's strenuous to keep track of who is doing what so you don't screw over one of your relatives, it's the fact that your entire family's honor is hanging in the balance that really keeps you on your toes. And with very few opportunities to breathe and survey the damage in Episode Two, you often forget just how strongly your choices ripple out to your loved ones. It's genuinely tough trying to decide the best way out. Or the safest way. This is the real Game of Thrones.

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Guess the GIF Android Answers Level 101-125

Is it pronounced gif or jif? I'm not sure, but I'm sticking with jif for now, at least. Anyways, welcome to the Guess the GIF Android Walkthrough! In this guide, you'll get all the answers to all the levels in the game. There is in total 200 levels in the entire game. Guess the GIF is a very unique game. It uses the traditional "guess the *insert noun here*, however, instead of pictures, the game uses GIFs! You know, those pictures that move, like a video, just without sound.
 

GUESS THE GIF ANSWERS LEVEL 101-125:

Level 101: Babe Ruth
Level 102: Super Mario Bros
Level 103: Kill Bill
Level 104: Fantasia
Level 105: Adam Sandler
Level 106: Wayne's World
Level 107: Pee Wee Herman
Level 108: Lady And The Tramp
Level 109: Ghost Busters
Level 110: Steve Jobs
Level 111: Walking Dead
Level 112: Dragonball Z
Level 113: Rocky

Level 114: Home Alone
Level 115: Bart Simpson
Level 116: Ren And Stimpy
Level 117: Conan Obrien
Level 118: Jason
Level 119: The Legend Of Zelda
Level 120: Spaceballs
Level 121: Austin Powers
Level 122: Lost
Level 123: Sonic The Hedgehog
Level 124: Peyton Manning
Level 125: Risky Business
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed! Be sure to check back for more news, reviews and guides for Android!

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