So beloved gamespot reviewer Kevin VanOrd is to leave the site this week and I am saddened that I won't be able to read and watch his reviews anymore but happy of course that he had found a new exciting adventure to pursue. I often think about how someone can have a huge affect on your gaming choices without them ever knowing about it and what a strange relationship that really is.

I use an example in the form of Kevin's Dark Souls review. My favourite kind of reviews are the ones in which a reviewer will put his or her personality into it and the way in which Kevin talked about this game was something more than just a checklist of what makes games good or bad. I really felt like he understood what the true soul (pun most defiantly intended) of the game was and how it was trying to convey that said soul to the player. This was a game I was unsure about buying but Kevin's words swayed me and I've never looked back since.

Words have always been powerful throughout history when spoken by the right person and indeed have been used in both good and evil ways. They have the ability to inspire, inform, persuade and move a person to tears if they connect to the audience in such a way. Now a video game review is perhaps not up there with religious texts or presidential speeches in terms of how they can shape the world but in my own little world of videogames Kevin's voice will be sorely missed.

When me and Tarz Chain-Driver first met our swords clashed and he threatened me verbally about how much he would enjoy killing me. Just another day in Mordor for Talion and even when he killed me and got promoted I was alright with it. I mean I am basically invincible in this game anyway so no big deal Tarz I'll get you later.

A few dead Captains later and sure enough me and Tarz come face to face again. It was bound to happen sooner or later and so I tore his head off with a Caragor. Seemed like the natural reaction and I got on my way. Next day I'm fighting another Captain and who shows up but my old rival Tarz Chain Driver.

Surprisingly he's fairly intact for an Orc who got his head chewed on not a day ago. He stands there with his new makeshift metal stiching on his head and boasts about how he survived our previous engagement and then a strange feeling comes over me. I don't really want to kill him. This Orc is perhaps the most interesting character in the game so far and his story comes entirely from my battles with him. I remember his name better than the wraiths currently sharing my body and thats just both wrong and utterly brilliant.

So a few battles and shared deaths later Tarz is a level 20 Captain who at this point in our relationship I now actively want to become a Warcheif so that I can have a epic final battle with him. I don't know how the game ends but I've a feeling than the final boss will not compare to me and Tarz's bumpy relationship to say the least.

This hand crafted story between myself and a random NPC is the sole reason why Middle of Earth Shadow of Mordor is one of my favourite games of the year so far. Games try so hard to create relationships between characters and so few succeed in making me care about those said relationships but by allowing me to put in the effort myself I have created a rivalry that is more fun for me to play out than any other given pre-defined enemy in any other game.

So you can keep your Katherine Marlowe's and Haytham Kenways because the only nemesis I need is Tarz Chain-Driver.

Honourable mentions go to my other not quite so interesting rivals Hork the Poet and Lorm the Handsome but my heart can only choose one nemesis and Tarz just edges you guys out. Bad luck.

My nameless guardian stands in the tower overlooking the traveller, her bluish skin shining in the nightlight, her tasteful pink mohawk blowing slightly in the breeze. She looks every bit the famed guardian everyone in this tower seemed to talk about but theres a problem with this picture. My guardian is boring, she has no personality to speak of, does exactly as she's told when she's told with no reservations or arguments. The description of a hunter class was someone who has learned to "bend the rules" where necessary but so far she's said about three sentences none of which inspire the "legend" I'm supposed to become.

This problem with my guardian runs over into the entire world of Destiny. On the surface this seems like a classic hero story. A band of warrior guardians awoken to fight back against the darkness. Its not original but that not necessarily bad. There are elements here that break the mould. The mysterious traveller that protects the last city on Earth is interesting and a few other tidbits make the story unique but it all seems lifeless. I am woken up by Peter Dinklage and he briefly explains that I've been dead a long time and theres much I won't understand. Well will someone please explain to me the stuff I don't understand. Who are the fallen, the hive, who am I for that matter. I've always enjoyed RPG's and when compered to something like Mass Effect Destiny just does not hold up in the character development and story department but maybe thats not what its going for.

If I take a different path and choose to see Destiny as a FPS then it starts to look much more attractive. Weapons are varied enough to be interesting, level progression makes me feel like i'm crafting my own personal way of killing things and best of all the moment to moment shooting is just fun to play. My few forays into the crucible have been enjoyable but PvP just doesn't suit me well and so while I might get into it later for now it's something I won't comment on too much.

My primary reservations before buying the game were tailored around the emphasis on multiplayer association. I dabble in such things now and then and sometimes something grabs me for a while but mostly i like to play alone. Missions are easy enough to play alone but this is not just your world. People come and go constantly and this can be both exhilarating and annoying. Its fun to team up and take on some fallen together and then go your separate ways a la Dark Souls but sometimes you might want the challenge of doing something on your own and a well meaning level 20 guardian decimating your opponents can be frustrating.

The biggest compliment i can give to Destiny is that I can't seem to stop playing it. The repetitive nature of shooting aliens, getting better gear and levelling up is addictive and fun. I don't know how long my fascination will last but I can honestly say its the most pure fun I've had in a video game in sometime.

Truth be told I still don't know what to think of Destiny. Its certainly fun and I feel like i need to embrace some more co-op and PvP activities to truly appreciate what Destiny is trying to do but time will tell whether this game is something special or just nonsensical fun. Hopefully it will turn out to be a bit of both.

So a news story popped up on Gamespot entitled "Microsoft changing Xbox One policies" and so I read it like everyone else and by force of habit scrolled down to the comments to see what people thought about it. As it turns out people think a lot about it and are not shy about telling people. 

So I sit there for a minute and watch in amazement at the speed the comments were rolling in before you could get through the first sentence of one before another pops up. Literally every second a new one arrives to respond to the last one and on and on the cycle goes.

This has been the same story throughout this E3 Sony/Microsoft war. Any article which pits these two companies against each other will always get the most comments above almost everything else. Its both unsettling and riveting to watch and while I'm glad that people care about the future of this industry as much as I do the content of these comments are hardly the works of Shakespeare. Mostly just people vowing that the console they chose beforehand it still obviously the best one.

Once the E3 fever has died down and all the facts are out there people will die down pick a side and lie in their bed but for now in the words of Fallout, 

War never changes.

So I was a bit of a late comer to Skyrim and got round to playing it about 6 months after it came out. Of course by this point the complaints were already rife about the quality of the game on PS3. From laggy screen tears to game crashes it seemed something just wasn't right with many PS3 versions of this game. I had looked forward to this game for a while and wasn't going to let me these complaints deter me from playing it so I jumped in....

186 hours later and I've finished the main quest-line done every companion, theif and mage quest collected every dragon shout and bought houses in every city to hold my various Daedric artifacts, assorted potions and occasional wife. I am Dragonborn, saviour of the world and loved by all the people of Skyrim and perhaps the most surprising thing, all done with no notable crashes and minimal lagging. 

Suffice to say I loved the game and when the DLC came out half price on PSN I purchased it and decided to start a new game. This is where my experience changed for the worse. After a good few hours in again with no real problems thing started to go wrong, load times were getting longer, pauses to allow for texture pop in became a regular occurrence and a couple of quest breaking bugs appeared. Still I trudged on hoping it wouldn't get any worse but now at this point just before writing this  the game is not too far of being unplayable. Sprinting for any length of time is out of the question, going through a door yields a good chance of the never reaching the other side before the game crashes and waiting for the load times of a fast travel requires a good book.

Its been a long, hard road for Bethesda while trying to fix this game for the PS3 and the sad fact is a year and a half later the game still is not fixed and at this point perhaps never will be. Some people have gotten very angry at the way Skyrim has played out on the PS3 and rightly so and maybe I should be one of them and I definitely will be wary of future products but if I'm honest all Bethesda needs to tell me to secure my purchase of their next game is one word and one number.

Fallout 4.