Even if microtransactions are incentivized by publishers and thrust onto consumers, a vast majority of gamers can ignore them and still enjoy the games they love, often with the added bonus of not having to buy maps for titles like Star Wars Battlefront II . However, to players with tendencies towards addiction, the temptation can be too great, and much of their disposable income will go towards paying for games they already own. A player who bought the first Battlefront on launch day with the Season Pass spent $110. Someone who buys Battlefront II and invests heavily in loot crates could potentially spend many hundreds of dollars or more before they move on to another game. Is that an unfortunate side effect of enabling reckless spending, or is it the goal of having loot crates in the first place? The dubious ethics of loot crates have led to them be regulated in some countries, though they remain completely legal, and technically not a form of gambling , in the United Sta
The success of the third Witcher game has helped to draw more attention to the series of novels and short stories on which the games are based though, with more and more people becoming interested in the work of Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski in recent years. The Netflix series has also helped in this regard , and, so far, at least, follows the books a lot more closely than its video game counterpa
Like the games themselves, Parasite Eve can at times be quite terrifying through its exploration of human biology and helped the author to win numerous literary prizes. There was even a movie adaptation of the novel in Japan, which managed to rake in almost a million dollars despite its limited theatrical rele
Released as a launch title for the Xbox One, Ryse remains an absolute spectacle of a game. It's not set in Ancient Greece and lacks the fantasy element of Odyssey, but it's still the perfect title for fans of swords and sandals epics and historical fict
There have been plenty of video games based on the work of J.R.R. Tolkien over the years, though not all of them have quite lived up to the excellence of the great author . With its fantastic nemesis system and well-refined combat mechanics though, that's not really a criticism that could ever be levied against the fantastic Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mord
Many of the big Mosou game series draw their inspiration from the exact same place; a 14th-century Chinese novel by Luo Guanzhong called Romance of the Three Kingdoms . It's widely regarded as being one of the four great classic novels of Chinese literature and tells the tale of the reunification of China, which serves as the main storyline in each and every Dynasty Warriors g
You begin the game as either Sara or Scott Ryder, who awakens in Andromeda after traveling for more than 600 years. Your character will be tasked with finding a new world for humanity to live on while trying to fend off the evil Kett aliens. For anyone who enjoys games with lots of story and lore, the Mass Effect series is a m
An example of that is the lack of restrictions on climbing. Link is able to scale anything, with only his stamina bar slowing him down. It was an interesting addition to the game as climbing hasn't always been a big feature in previous Zelda instalments, but it is a welcome cha
Assassin's Creed Shadows walkthrough|https://creedshadowgame.com/ Creed Odyssey is the latest and most ambitious Assassin's Creed game in the franchise. In it, you get to choose between playing Kassandra or Alexios and going on a mission to reunite your family in addition to taking down the formidable Cult of Kosmos. The game is an epic adventure and open-world roleplaying g
As per its title, the game is set in Tolkien's middle-earth and encompasses much of the lore detailed in the author's many novels. There are even one or two familiar faces thrown in there just for good measure, though it's really the gameplay that takes center stage in this one rather than the characters or narrative. The sequel's pretty good too, although fails to recapture the brilliance of its predeces
2018 was a great year for gaming, and many defining new titles were released. Among the various critically-acclaimed games of 2018, there were games that featured some tough female characters. In many games released this year, such as Assassins Creed Odyssey and Far Cry 5 , players even had the option to play as either a male or a female character. Here are the five best female characters that featured in video games this y
Originally, microtransactions were only seen in MMOs, which are usually Free to Play. Even cheaper games, like LawBreakers and Drawn to Death, have an easy time getting away with their overt reliance on microtransactions. The question then becomes, do microtransactions have any place in a $60 game? After all, the consumer just paid $60 doll
Square Enix's classic survival-horror series Parasite Eve serves not as an adaptation of a novel, but instead a direct sequel . The first entry picks up right where Japanese pharmacologist Hideaki Sena's 1995 novel left off and incorporates many of the same themes, ideas, and charact