Nintendo DS

I knew very little about XCOM before the show, but now it's one of my most anticipated titles. A re-imagining of the classic PC strategy series, Enemy Unknown gave me a very distinct Frozen Synapse vibe, which makes sense since it was itself heavily influenced by the XCOM games. There was no playable demo at the show and the presentation consisted of a pre-beta build, but I liked what I saw and will likely be picking it up when it releases.

And here it is, the final part of Extra Credits' take Western role-playing game vs Japanese role-playing games. Here they look at why the Japanese RPG has fallen behind its Western counterpart and maybe how to reverse its course.

Extra Credits returns with more on the Western role-playing game vs Japanese role-playing games debate. This time they challenge our genre classifications and dare to imply that they are a bit antiquated.

With such seemingly opposite takes on the genre, the argument usually devolves down to proponents of each genre arguing that theirs is the best example of "role-playing." Extra Credits dares to jump into the fray to see is one group is right, or perhaps if one is more right than the other or maybe even if both are wrong. Clearly it's not an easy task or it wouldn't be broken up into three parts.

It's all about sequels this episode on the podcast! From Super Mario Bros. 2 to Devil Survivor 2, we're all over them! Also, Mass Effect 3: has BioWare reclaimed Brad's seal of approval? What about the ending controversy? All that plus thumbs, AND a birthday! With Dylan Collins, Chi Kong Lui, Brad Gallaway, Richard Naik and Mike "I live near a den of spiders" Bracken.

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The crew at Extra Credits return with the second part of their two-part series on how to become a developer.

Do you love spending hours in front of a computer writing code? Do you prefer spending many more hours debugging software than spending time with your loved ones? Do you want to spend time justifying your hard work to fickle gamers and an even more fickle gaming press? Then you want to be a video game developer and this video might be right for you.

In a way, it's good to see that there hasn't been the reaction to February's NPD data that I anticipated. On the flip side, February was another month of deep Year-over-year (YOY) negatives and presents questions to me about just how long the current console cycle can remain viable.

It took nearly a decade, three console generations, and some "epic" help for gamers to get their hands on Too Human. This flawed gem from developer Silicon Knights was anything but a watershed moment for the developer. I believe this game failed with the core gaming demographic is because of two things: Denis Dyack and combat controlled by the right stick.

Frosty

HIGH Cleaning out a hallway, unscathed, with grenades and pulse rifle.

LOW The pathetically weak Flamer should be a sub-weapon.

WTF Only missing two Marines? Where were they??